----- Original Message ----- From: "Alex LoCascio" <alexlocascio at mail.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Sunday, December 01, 2002 1:15 PM Subject: Daniel Bensaid's Marx for Our Times
>
> Re: the request for info on this book
>
> Everyone seems to be busily slamming Desai's book (which I haven't read)
but nobody seems to have any comment on Bensaid's book (which I am currently
groping through).
>
> Full disclosure demands that I note that I share a political tendency with
this fellow. That being said, even if I didn't, I'd have to say this is one
of the most wonderful books to come down the pipe in quite some time.
>
> Rarely does a dustjacket ever come close to describing a book's content,
but in this case the term "post-post-modern" Marx would apply.
>
> The language of the book might be a bit off-putting for those who don't
already have some familiarity with much of the subject matter (it's
certainly not the easiest read I've encountered).
>
> To call it a "refreshing reinterpretation" of Marx or something like that
would be to miss the point entirely. What Bensaid does, like other thinkers
such as Ellen Meiksins Wood or Hal Draper, is excavate the real Marx which
has been buried for so long by the distortions of both Diamat hacks and
(no-longer-trendy)pomotistas.
=====================
Back to the monosemic Marx heh?
> Those who grind their teeth at Hardt and Negri's lazy "multitude" drivel
will find solace in Bensaid's recovery of the working class, which seems to
anticipate a lot of H&N's arguments, which is rather amazing considering
that this book was written in 1995. Basically, Bensaid correctly fights for
the notion of the "working-class" as the polarity of a dialectic rather than
an empirical sociological category (the arguments he makes might receive
some nods of approval from Carrol Cox, who has argued this point on lbo-talk
before).
=================
Of course the polarity of dialectic must subsume the empirical socioligical because if the latter describes class compostion in a manner different from Bensaid's neo-Leninist reading, we're moved from a zero-sum analytical approach to one that creates complementary approaches to looking at NSM's that dont' quite fit into 19th century categories, let alone be corralled by vanguardists in the process of actual resistance the current hegemony of Bush/Rumsfeld/Ashcroft/Rice/Woflowitz and their cadres.
>
> The other two sections of the book deal with Marx's critique of the
historicism and scientism of his day, and proving that Marx does the
contigency, unevenness, indeterminacy riff a hell of a lot better than all
those johnny-come-lately PoMos. Fans of Michael Lowy's critiques of Second
International ontology might find useful confirmation in Bensaid's book.
>
> If I get some time, maybe I'll try to transcribe some useful passages.
It's a wonderful book, beautifully written (but like I said, not exactly in
colloquial language).
>
> I'm a big fan of the two articles on Lenin that Yoshie posted. Hopefully
Bensaid will develop it into a book-length work.
>
> I attended a panel at the European Social Forum in Florence where Bensaid
gave a bravura critique of Empire, along the lines of whether we embrace
multitude and abandon working-class, debunking all this "anti-power"
nonsense, and tactfully, wittily, but incisively demolishing the tragically
inept misinterpretations of the Chiapas rebellion that Northern activists
use to rationalize these shoddy concepts.
>
==================
Anti-power is a place holder for the manifold methods of anti-authoritarianism that are indispensable for dealing with 21st century capitalism. They're far more appealing than the "Leninism in a hurry" that Bensaid espouses. Obviously the "tragically inept misinterpretations" of Chiapas -by the northern activists as well as the EZLN's own praxis- led to the failed march on Mexico city by the most vibrant, articulate and deliberately anti-Leninist social formation north of the Panama canal. No wonder the Leninists are upset. Reshuffling the institutional formations of "power-over" will not eradicate the problem of domination. Substitute anti-domination for anti-power. Are you against anti-domination? Do you think the working class needs to develop mirror images of Rumsfeld, Bush et al in order to get "it's" act together?
Ian