Deleuze & Guattari, Zizek on Arendt (More from Brennan)

Grant Lee grantlee at iinet.net.au
Fri Jan 10 00:23:25 PST 2003


Catherine:

The thing about popular culture, as opposed to everyday relations of production, is that pop culture is always open to reading and re-reading, but there are only so many ways you can interpret a striker being beaten by a cop.

By the way, when I said on this list in October that the Bali bombing _happened_ to hit at a cornerstone of Australian popular culture, you responded with an enigmatic/throwaway comment about the victims being footballers ... Some might have interpreted that as an antipathy to popular culture. Or are you only interested in some kinds of pop culture? If so, which ones?

Regards,

Grant.


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>
> Date: Thu, 9 Jan 2003 19:19:56 -0500
> From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
> Subject: Luntz & Watts
>
> Washington Post - January 9, 2003
>
> Watts, Luntz Form Partnership
>
> Former GOP congressman J.C. Watts Jr. of Oklahoma is going into
> business with conservative pollster Frank Luntz to do market
> research. The new company will be called Watts-Luntz Communications.
>
> Watts and Luntz couldn't be more in love, according to a release from
> Watts announcing the partnership. "J.C. Watts is the best pure
> communicator in America," Luntz is quoted as saying.
>
> "Frank is probably the best language artist in the business," added
> Watts, Republicans' most visible black lawmaker before he retired
> last year. "He is the maestro of messaging."
>
> Others have less regard for Luntz.
>
> He was officially reprimanded two years ago by the National Council
> on Public Polls, a polling watchdog organization, for claiming on
> MSNBC that views of participants in a focus group he organized at the
> Republican National Convention were "representative" opinions of
> Americans.
>
> The American Association for Public Opinion Research, the
> professional association of pollsters, found Luntz in violation of
> its ethics code when he repeatedly refused to make public details of
> research he conducted to support the GOP's Contract With America
> nearly a decade ago.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 09 Jan 2003 16:24:32 -0800
> From: Michael Pugliese <debsian at pacbell.net>
> Subject: Re: Color of Anarchism Re: Protest ISO...
>
> Chuck0>...I think we have a long way to go till we are as out of touch as
alt.politics.socialism
> trotsky. ;-)
>
> Hey, Heh, Huh. UK libertarian socialist sci-fi novelist, Ken MacLeod
> posts there on occasion.
> <URL: http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-
> 8&group=alt.politics.socialism.trotsky >
> Jan. 9, 2003
> A new mutation - from LM to GM (72 articles)
> Ken MacLeod
> An acquaintance, Dave Walters, a very funny, smart and affable Trot, who
> works on the Marxist Internet Archive website. And a fanatic for Ducati
> motorcycles.
> Jan. 9, 2003
> Marxists 2003 CD ROM just published! (1 article)
> David Walters
> Jan. 8, 2003
> Engels & Lenin were probably agents of big business... (61 articles)
> Hunter Watson
> That's like the title of a book by a very obscure Trot, assumed name
> George Marlen (Mar for Marx, Len short for Lenin, " like Lyn Marcus, " ,
> author of, "Dialectical Economics, "aka Lyndon LaRouche) in the 30's,
"Earl
> Browder: Communist Or Tool of Wall Street?" Marlen's real name was George
> Spiro. Under that name or his assumed name he wrote a humongous book,
> "Marxism and the USSR, " in the late 40's worth a look. <URL:
> http://www.bolerium.com/cgi-bin/bol48/find/keywords/Trotskyism.html >
>
>
>
> - --
> Michael Pugliese
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 09 Jan 2003 16:44:48 -0800
> From: Michael Pugliese <debsian at pacbell.net>
> Subject: Re: Color of Anarchism Re: Protest ISO...
>
> Liza Featherstone>..."What is your position on Pabloism?" he demanded.
>
> The strategic orientation enunciated at a conference of the Fourth
> International around '52 that postulated that the mass Stalinist parties
> were, in that conjucture, the leading anti-capitalist/anti-imperialist
> forces and that Trotskyists should engage in entryist tactics (united
front
> from below) like they did with the French and US Socialists around '37, in
> the, "French Turn." Such liquidationist tendencies have been the bane of
> more orthodox Trots, for ever more.
> A hefty book, full of fascinating detail, by an ex-Lovestoneite, Robert
> J. Alexander, "International Trotskyism, " Duke Univ. Press, 1986 or so.
> Online at the marx2mao website see, the A. Belden Fields book on French
and
> US Trotskyism and Maoism. And from the group that puts out the daily WSWS,
> this history of Trotskyism, <URL:
> http://web.mit.edu/fjk/Public/essays/heritage.html >
> Also, the Encyclopedia of Trotskyism Online and Revolutionary History
> websites.
> From the last URL>...Pabloism -- the disruption of the Fourth
> International In such conditions of the stabilization of capitalism and
the
> apparent successes of Stalinism, there developed within the Fourth
> International an opportunist wing which took this temporary stabilization
> for a permanent and normal phenomenon. Trotsky defined Stalinism as a
> temporary reaction against socialism, and a counterrevolutionary agency of
> imperialism in the working class. In 1949 and again in 1951, the leader of
> the International Secretariat of the Fourth International Michel Pablo
> began to insist that Stalinism is a legitimate phase along the road to
> socialism, that the Stalinist states will spread and widen, that these
vile
> anti-worker police states will last for centuries. Pablo even advanced a
> grotesque pessimist theory about a nuclear war-revolution between the
> systems of Stalinism and imperialism, using this perspective to justify
his
> move to support Stalinism. Pablo and Ernest Mandel insisted that Stalin's
> death in 1953 opened a process of the "self-reform" of Stalinism to the
> left. The basic conception of Trotskyism was and continues to be -- the
> construction of a revolutionary party and its assumption of the leadership
> of the working class. As opposed to that, the conception of Pabloism
stated
> that Stalinism and petty bourgeois nationalism can play a progressive role
> in the move from capitalism to socialism, that the role of Trotskyism
under
> conditions of continuing isolation of the revolutionary elements lies in
> criticism, in pushing these "mass movements" to the left. During the early
> 1950's Pablo, Pierre Frank, Ernest Mandel and many other leaders gave in
to
> the apparent omnipotence of Stalinism and led the 4th International into a
> series of self-liquidations. They used their own authority and the
> authority of the Fourth International, giving directions to the sections
of
> the FI to liquidate themselves into the various Stalinist parties. The
> differences between the tactic of the "French turn" of the 1930's and the
> Pabloite strategy of "integration in mass movements" consists in the
> following. Firstly, in the 1930's some of the social-democratic and
> centrist mass parties were of an amorphous, indeterminate character, often
> lacking a defined program, traditions and coloration. The Stalinists of
the
> 50's and 60's had a definite counterrevolutionary tradition. Secondly,
> following Hitler's victory, inside the French, American and some other
> socialist parties there developed a strong left wing which had to be
> wrested from the clutches of the social-democrats and the Stalinists and
> directed towards revolutionary Marxism. In the post-War period, under
> conditions of worldwide stabilization of capitalism and the growth of
> opportunism, the reformist tendencies of the Stalinists and social-
> democrats could successfully suppress and isolate any leftist criticism.
The
> third, and most important distinction was that the "French turn" was a
> temporary tactic, subordinated to the strategy of conquering the advanced
> masses to the banner of Trotskyism. Pabloite world view, on the other
hand,
> assigned a progressive role to Stalinism or petty bourgeois nationalism.
> Trotskyism was seen only as a movement of pressure and left criticism.
> According to Pablo and his cohort Ernest Mandel, the Fourth International
> was bound to dissolve in the mass Stalinist parties or movements of
> national liberation.
> On that renegade Ernest Mandel...<URL:
> http://web.mit.edu/fjk/Public/essays/mandel.html > "
> From the BT, <URL: http://www.bolshevik.org/history/gop.html > Genesis
> of Pabloism
>
> The following very important essay on the history of the Trotskyist
> movement after Trotsky appeared in SpartacistNo. 21 (Fall 1972). We have
> appended an article from 1917No. 8 (Summer 1990) entitled â?oRevolutionary
> Continuity & the Split in the Fourth International� which contains a few
> criticisms and some supplementary comments.
>
> The SWP and the Fourth International, 1946-54: Genesis of Pabloism The
> American Socialist Workers Party and the European Pabloists travelled at
> different rates along different paths to revisionism, to converge in
uneasy
> alliance in the early 1960's in an unprincipled "reunification," which has
> now broken down as the American SWP has completed the transition from
> Pabloist centrism to outright reformism. The "United Secretariat" which
> issued out of the 1963 "reunification" teeters on the edge of an open
> split; the "anti-revisionist" "International Committee" fractured last
> year. The collapse of the various competing pretenders to the mantle of
the
> Fourth International provides a crucial opportunity for the reemergence of
> an authentic Trotskyist international tendency. Key to the task of
> reconstructing the Fourth International through a process of splits and
> fusions is an understanding of the characteristics and causes of Pabloist
> revisionism and the flawed response of the anti-Pabloists who fought, too
> little and too late, on national terrain while in practice abandoning the
> world movement. World War II: U.S. and France Before the onset of the war,
> Trotsky and the Fourth international had believed that decaying capitalism
> and the rise of fascism removed the possibility for reformism and
therefore
> for bourgeois-democratic illusions among the masses. Yet they could not
but
> become increasingly aware that the revulsion of the working class against
> fascism and the threat of fascist occupation gave rise to social
chauvinism
> and a renewal of confidence in the "democratic" bourgeoisie permeating the
> proletarian masses throughout Europe and the U.S. Faced with such a
> contradiction, the powerful pressures for nationalist backwardness and
> democratic illusions in the working class tended to pull the sections of
> the Fourth International apart, some adopting a sectarian stance, others
> capitulating to the social patriotism which was rampant among the masses.
> The SWP briefly adopted the "Proletarian Military Policy" which called for
> military training under trade union control, implicitly posing the utopian
> idea that U.S. workers could fight German fascism without the existence of
> a workers state in the U.S., through "controlling'' U.S. imperialism's
> army. British Trotskyist Ted Grant went even further, in one speech
> referring to British imperialism's armed forces as "our Eighth Army." The
> German IKD returned to outright Menshevism with the theory that fascism
had
> brought about the need for "an intermediate stage fundamentally equivalent
> to a democratic revolution." ("Three Theses," 19 October I941) The French
> Trotskyist movement, fragmented during the course of the war, was the best
> example of the contradiction. One of its fragments subordinated the
> mobilisation of the working class to the political appetites of the
> Gaullist wing of the imperialist bourgeoisie; another grouping renounced
> any struggle within the resistance movement in favor of work exclusively
at
> the point of production and, not recognizing the existing level of
> reformist consciousness among the workers, adventurously attempted to
seize
> the factories during the "liberation" of Paris while the working masses
> were out on the streets. The February 1944 European Conference document
> which was the basis for a fusion between two French groupings to form the
> Parti Communiste Internationaliste characterized the two groups: "Instead
> of distinguishing between the nationalism of the defeated bourgeoisie
which
> remains an expression of its imperialist preoccupations, and the
> 'nationalism' of the masses which is only a reactionary expression of
their
> resistance against exploitation by the occupying imperialism, the
> leadership of the POI considered as progressive the struggle of its own
> bourgeoisie...." "the CCI...under the pretext of guarding intact the
> heritage of Marxism-Leninism, refused obstinately to distinguish the
> nationalism of the bourgeoisie from the resistance movement of the
masses."
>
> I. SWP ISOLATIONISM European Trotskyism and American Trotskyism responded
> in initially different ways to different tasks and problems following
World
> War II. The precarious internationalism of the American SWP, maintained
> through intimate collaboration with Trotsky during his exile in Mexico,
did
> not survive the assassination of Trotsky in 1940 and the onset of world
> war. The American Trotskyists retreated into an isolation only partially
> forced upon them by the disintegration of the European sections under
> conditions of fascist triumph and illegalization. Anticipating the
> difficulties of international coordination during the war, a resident
> International Executive Committee had been set up in New York. Its only
> notable achievement, however, appears to have been the convening of an
> "Emergency Conference" of the International, held 19-26 May 1940
"somewhere
> in the Western Hemisphere," "on the initiative of its U.S., Mexican and
> Canadian sections." A rump conference attended by less than half of the
> sections, the "Emergency Conference" was called for the purpose of dealing
> with the international ramifications of the Shachtman split in the U.S.
> section, which had resulted in the defection of a majority of the resident
> IEC. The meeting solidarized with the SWP in the faction fight and
> reaffirmed its status as the one U.S. section of the Fourth International.
> The conference also adopted a "Manifesto of the Fourth International on
the
> Imperialist War and the Proletariat World Revolution" written by Trotsky.
> Following Trotsky's death, however, the resident IEC lapsed into oblivion.
At
> least in hindsight, the American section of the Fourth International
> should have initiated a clandestine secretariat in a neutral country in
> Europe, staffed by qualified SWPers and emigres from other sections, to
> centralise and directly supervise the work of Trotskyists in fascist-
> occupied countries. But the SWP was content to limit its international
> activities during the war to the publication in its internal bulletins of
> letters and factional documents from European Trotskyists. The passage of
> the Voorhis Act in 1941 inhibiting U.S. groups from affiliation with
> international political organisationsâ?"a law which to this day has never
> been testedâ?"also gave the SWP a rationalization for downplaying its
> international responsibilities. The SWP's work during the war did evidence
> an internationalist perspective. SWP longshoremen used the opportunity of
> ships from Vladivostok docking on the West Coast to clandestinely
> distribute Trotsky's "Letter to Russian Workers" in Russian to the Soviet
> seamen. The SWP concentrated its merchant marine comrades on the supply
> runs to Murmansk until the extremely heavy casualties compelled the party
> to discontinue the Murmansk concentration. (It was in response to such
> activities that the GPU was directed to activate the Soblen
anti-Trotskyist
> espionage net. Testimony years afterward revealed that Cannon's telephone
> was tapped by the GPU and that the business manager of the SWP's Fourth
> Internationalmagazine, one "Michael Cort," was one of the GPU agents.) But
> the maintenance and direction of the Fourth International was part of the
> SWP's internationalist responsibility, and should have been a priority as
> urgent as the work which the SWP undertook on its own. The leadership of
> the SWP came through the war period essentially intact, but reinforced in
> its insularity and ill-equipped theoretically to deal with the post-war
> situation. During the later years of the war and the immediate post-war
> period, the SWP had registered some impressive successes in implanting its
> cadres in industry during the boom and in recruiting a new layer of
> proletarian militants drawn to the Trotskyists because of their opposition
> to the Communist Party's policies of social patriotism and class peace.
<SNIP>
> - --
> Michael Pugliese
>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of lbo-talk-digest V1 #7220
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