> You know, Ken, I admire all the activist work you've done over the
> years,I really do, but this constant anti-intellectualism, which I
> supposed is meant to heighten the contrast between people who've done
> real politics, like you, and those who are just a bunch of academic
> wankers - well, it gets very tedious. Alienating and pointlessly
> divisive too.
Being an intellectual myself, and with many comrades who are professional scholars, I am not anti-intellectual. Opposing scholasticism and academic aloofness is something quite different, and is a fundamental stance of every revolutionary intellectual. The problem affects not just intellectuals, but declassed professionals of every type. Some scholars, lawyers, doctors, etc., put their skills at the service of the working class, the poor, and the oppressed, by joining them in struggle, learning the ways in which those skills can be useful to the struggle, and doing so. For a splendid example, read Arthur Kinoy's autobiography, or Conrad Lynn's, or any biography of Karl Marx, or C.L.R. James, or the scholarly writings of George Rawick (forced out of three tenured professorships because of his involvement in the movement), and many others. But the most vocal academic participants in LBO-talk are the other kind, who presume to wag fingers at masses in struggle rather than joining them or working in solidarity with them. Most obnoxiously, the two most vigorous proponents of Zizek's writings, Ken M and Angela, are the very ones who argue the principle of abstention, unless the mass movements measure up to their standards.
Philip Ferguson's observation about Zizek's racism, which I forwarded to LBO-talk earlier, is directly pertinent. No scholar who is truly connected to the insurgent movements of today could have dared to write such a phrase. It is symptomatic not only of Zizek's detachment from mass struggle, but also his contempt for those who are engaged.
> Which mass movement? Organized how, towards what end? Where are the
> front lines drawn? What's the response on those front lines when the
> folks on the other side fight back? If you have any answers to these
> questions, then you've got a theory, whether you like or acknowledge
> it or not. What did Marx write? Manuals of revolutionary praxis?
Of course I have a theory, and I have been upholding Marx's theory and practice. Yesterday and today I specifically cited Marx's (and Engels's) writings on the Paris Commune, which they regarded as the greatest revolutionary advance in history, only to see those references disparaged by the Zizek-worshipping Mackendrick, who wants no part of Marx's revolutionary doctrine, but professes to admire Marx's "philosophy." (The Civil War in France is one of the finest handbooks of revolutionary practice, and the stance of Marxists, ever written. But our LBO-talk scholars can't take the time to read that small book.) I spelled out the strategy of dual power, and its importance, by which workers and oppressed people learn to view themselves as potential and rightful rulers of society.
You cannot approach mass struggles for proletarian emancipation as though ordering from a menu at a restaurant, selecting this tasty one, avoiding the other. When they erupt, you join them, in actual presence or in solidarity, regardless of specific criticisms you may harbor. They may not always choose the best tactics. Engels wrote, for example, "The most difficult thing to understand is the holy awe with which the Commune reverently stopped before the portals of the Bank of France. This was also a serious political error. The bank in the hands of the Commune -- this would have been worth more than ten thousand hostages." But this was written in the context of his unconditional support for the Commune. That is the attitude I'd like to see expressed by LBO-talk's scholars, but so far it has not been manifest by most of them.
Ken Lawrence