>
> On Thu, 11 Jan 2001, Peter van Heusden wrote:
>
> > > I was using the quote to illustrate that the separation of finance
> > > from production, and the demonization of finance, serves a similar
> > > psychological role to what a kind of anti-Semitism does - it becomes
> > > a repository for social guilt about the evils of capitalism. That is,
> > > "The Jew" is figured as greedy, cold, conniving, etc. - all features
> > > of the mindset encouraged by capitalism, but externalized in some
> > > figure of evil. (I stole this analysis of anti-Semitism from Zizek.)
> > >
> > Hm - who got to this first: Zizek or Moishe Postone? I read an excellent
> > analysis of anti-Semitism along these lines in a Postone essay reprinted
> > by B.M. Chronos.
>
> Um, maybe I'm missing some of the subtleties, but this analysis is at
> least a century old. It used to be summed up in the adage "Anti-semitism
> is the socialism of fools."
Not sure how exactly to read it, but Postone makes a big deal about how Nazi anti-Semitism grew from a fetish which grows from capitalist organisation of production - the apparent seperation of the 'financial' from the 'productive' results in a situation where the capitalist factory appears not as part of, but in contradiction to, capitalist organisation of work. Thus a worship of factory, and the process of capitalist production, is contrasted with a demonisation of finance, painted as the process which 'takes it all away'. In this way the process of extraction of surplus value is mystified - an in Nazi analysis in particular, the collective of collectivised productive labour is identified with the productive German people, and the parasite of finance is identified with the 'anti-patriotic' Jew. The actual process whereby surplus value is squeezed out in the factory (or any other capitalist productive centre) is thus hidden.
Maybe this is the same as what you talk about, but anyway, I found Postone's essay quite useful, in that it is a more clear analysis that either the 'anti-Semitism is (working class) prejudice' line or the 'Nazis were simply tools of capital' line. Postone's work is, as far as I know, closely linked to the analysis of the 'immediate process of production', and his analysis flows from this.
Finally, given that even today there is far too much of a tinge of 'hard working labourer' vs. 'parasitic, lazy capitalist' to much socialist analysis, and that the actual process whereby surplus value is squeezed out - and that squeezing out is resisted - in the workplace is generally ignored in much 'labour' analysis, Postone's warning is still timely.
Peter -- Peter van Heusden <pvh at egenetics.com> NOTE: I do not speak for my employer, Electric Genetics "Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower." - Karl Marx, 1844 OpenPGP: 1024D/0517502B : DE5B 6EAA 28AC 57F7 58EF 9295 6A26 6A92 0517 502B