is there a punchline? or is just the thrust of the argument that discussing possible slogans is a way to get a conversation started. and, is the conversation the point? (sortuh like the israeli-palestinian dialogues or peace process----yeah, just keep talking about, you know, 2 states of some sort; or maybe even one, or none, or one for you, and none for me....meanwhile we'll accumulate a lil wealth as a diversion. lets get entrapped).
it does appear the 'left forums' and so on (someone mentioned some communist one back in the old country (god save that queen) where badiou and zizek spoke as another example, or say BNarhives on power or URPE) do create conversations. But I was under the impression, from the point of critique, that the purpose of thsese was to support the convention / hotel industry (though URPE has camping!!! yay.) or, maybe the left versions are sort of the High Gravity malt liquor/flea bag motel version of the red wine/marriot inn you get at the real conventions/talk shops.
i tend to think slogans are for advertizers, and the kind of social change you get based on ads or trademarks (my adidas!) is a road pretty well traveled, which alternative types might find less interesting. (Unless, perhaps we decide to try something like 'the power of the continuum is (by forcing) aleph 4, so masses unite: fusion!!! power!!!', so as a result social policy is such and such (...eg if you are on a street that begins with a vowel and ethically C=N(4), you cannot eat meat...My own thing is more like, hard line 'no smoking', in between cigarette breaks).
and conversation is just that. i gather most of it these days is really just twitter---an upgrade thanks to the infiormation age from blablabla . (this is one reason i either avoid meetings, or show up real late, since it seems like (civic) religion----basically a social excuse for doing little except reinforcing bad habits/prejudices (often based on refusing to read anything, just like religion). Of course, 'bad' is simply a convention scientifically. its all good.)
i already hear the twitter every morning anyweay as the sun begins to rise. 'bird is the word---time to get up'. (while in the beginning was the word, one can ask whether time might be more basic, as has been suggested here. (but bird is the time doesn't flow---but Bird did write Now is the Time. Be-in and time.) and time might be energy ( though the time/energy uncertainty principle supposedly does not exist (there is a research topic!---who is right?), unlike position and momentum) which goes along with my view that logical relations are basically the same as physical ones. (Numbers have masses, and if you believe schrodinger (mind and matter) they even have feelings, the lil dears.) So, maybe its word up, time to get down.
(as an aside we can mentiion here the ever believing Trevor Marshall and his down conversion disproof of quantum theory. his politics seemed even sketchier if i recall.)
maybe as a compromise, one just needs new slogans. (and dont tell anyone that is what they are.) you could even have a contest. The best slogan means you get to lead the left movement, and get addressed as such. (but that's all you get. r.e.s.p.e.c.t.).
it almost appears that the essay competely contradicts luxembourg while claiming to support her against berstein. the choice of slogans (brand names, dollar brand...) and conversation are not goals nor the purpose of the movement (as talk shop). (but sometimes tenured radicals, without realizing their class consiousness, try to turn the movement into that, since it creates a comfortable status quo...talking sh-t.)
i know some people who went to Left Forum, and interestingly I am in a group with them, but they neither told me nor invited any participation when they went and gave a panel there using the name of this group and supposedly representing that point of view. So, i tend to be skeptical. Things like the left forum (left for, um, just us) may just be a ruse and scam and thats all you'll here or there.
--- On Fri, 8/14/09, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
> Subject: [lbo-talk] Trapped in The Present: Part 2
> To: "lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org" <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
> Date: Friday, August 14, 2009, 9:30 AM
> (continued)
>
> Her insistence on escaping entrapment in the present is
> clearer yet in
> the conluding paragraph of the second speech, with its
> explicit focus on
> Bernstein's opposing slogan:
>
> <block quoete> And then the well-known statement [by
> Bernstein] in the
> Neue Zeit: "The final goal, whatever it may be, is nothing
> to me: the
> movement is everything! " Anyone who says that does not
> stand for the
> necessity of seizing political power. … Like the Roman
> Cato, we must say
> sharply and clearly, "In addition, I am of the opinion that
> this state
> must be destroyed." The conquest of political power remains
> the final
> goal and that final goal remains the soul of the struggle.
> The working
> class cannot take the decadent position of the
> philosophers: "The final
> goal is nothing to me, the movement is everything." No, on
> the contrary,
> without relating the movement to the final goal, the
> movement as an end
> in itself is nothing to me, the final goal is
> everything. [end quote]
>
> Let me reword this provisionally for the situation of
> leftists in the
> United States in 2009. Our current struggles - I have
> in mind whichever
> struggle you think is currrently most important - are
> meaningless except
> from the perspective of a future coherent left, nor can we
> assume that
> those struggles themselves will mutate into such a left:
> that is
> precisely the philosophy that the movement is everything.
> But still,
> somehow, in the midst of that present movement, we must
> turn some of our
> attention to the need to historicize our present, to find a
> perspective
> beyond it from which to view our current activity.
> Doubtless there are a
> number of ways to do this. I want to suggest and illustrate
> just one:
> projecting what, when some sort of coherent left again
> rises in the
> U.S., as it will, might be the demands that will
> characterize it. We can
> do this in discussions within local anti-war or living wage
> groups, or
> we can do it theoretical journals. To do so will I
> believe improve our
> convrsation a bit. We could do with far fewer lectures,
> articles, and
> e-mails proving that things are very bad now and are going
> to get worse,
> or giving endless reams of advice (which will never be
> heard) to those
> in power of how they could solve the present crisis.
> I have stopped
> reading on left e-mail list from terminal boredom with this
> literature.
> We cannot, I think, profitably speculate on organizational
> forms; that
> will have to be worked out in practice. Neither can we, I
> think,
> speculate profitably on which elements of the population
> will be a the
> forefront of future struggles. Almost always such
> speculation reveals
> itself as nostalgic for a dead past, not a perspective on
> the future.
> But I do believe we can speculate profitably, shocking
> ourselves out of
> our present entrapment in our present, by speculating on
> what would be
> the reforms such a left, arising presumably in a time of
> rising public
> discontent, would demand, such demands and the struggles
> for them would
> then, of course, becomr the present of that left, requiring
> in their
> turn to be historized from some future perspective.
> My thoughts were
> first driven in this direction by debates on left maillists
> in which,
> always, what dominated discussion were the constraints of
> current public
> opinion. I became increasingly convinced that, somehow,
> leftists must
> begin to emphasize not what was possible but what was
> necessary. Try
> thiese four:
>
> Close down the Prison System
>
> Open Borders
>
> Stop all Foreign Aid
>
> Four Day Week
>
> Remember now: we are not talking about the present. We are
> in a
> hypothetical future of great popular discontent & the
> kind of
> spontaneous struggles that emerge during such
> periods. We may be, as a
> result, in a period of heightened state repression,
> especially of such a
> promising scapegoat as "illegal aliens." Very probably of
> an intesified
> war on crime/drugs. Such campaigns will enhance police
> powers and turn
> the prisons into even more efficiennt Institutions of
> Organized Torture.
> Ther will be continued aid to repressive states around the
> world, with
> left liberals calling for aid to be refocused on more
> humane objectives,
> such demands undoubtedly resulting in minor cosmetic
> reforms, such as
> giving a few hundred thousand to some small country for
> "green
> development." You know the rap.
>
> To head off misunderstandings that arose on an e-mail list
> in respect to
> such principles, I do not regard them either as recipes for
> a fouture
> social order or as transition program to socialism but as
> demands which
> should be regarded as practical reforms within the present
> system. They
> may not be gainable in any form, though that is not
> certain, but the
> fight for them will be undoubtedly educational both for
> those within
> left organizations and for a broader public.
>
> One great immediate advantage of such proposals as these is
> that it
> focuses attention on power, as shown by a recent
> discussion, which I
> triggered, on the Pen-L maillist. A most interesting
> discussion of
> followed, one which I hope to pursue in the future.
> The first post
> below is from Hans Ehrbar, the distinguished Marxis scholar
> who also has
> done extensive research on ecology, particularly on the
> threat of global
> warming and the need for renewable energy.
>
>
> HaNs ehrbar replied:
>
> Carrol, I don't think the slogan "Stop all foreign aid" is
> defensible.
> Since the US has historically emitted a huge amount of CO2
> into the
> atmosphere, the US owes the developing nations a lot of aid
> to
> compensate them for the cost of climate change and to help
> them pursue a
> development path based on renewable energy. Almost
> nobody is talking
> about this, this is not part of common consciousness.
> If the Left
> promotes the slogan "Stop all foreign aid" they co-operate
> with this
> conspiracy of silence and put themselves in opposition to
> the
> necessities dictated by the present climate
> emergency. See The
> Greenhouse Development Rights Framework: The Right to
> Development in a
> Climate Constrained World.
>
> Then I responded:
>
> This is the third time I have enountered this argument
> though the
> occasion was different each time.
>
> I can't remember the details of the first time, but it
> involved an
> exchange between me and an ISU professor of political
> science who had
> been in Nicaraguar shortly before the Sandinistas took
> power. He thought
> we should urge the U.S. to provide aid to Nicaragua; I
> suggested that
> the best thing the U.S. could do for Nicaragua was leave it
> alone. He
> argued vigorously that the country was so poor, the
> earthquake had done
> so much damage, that they could not possibly survive
> without u.s. aid.
>
> Well we know that the U.S. sent aid in the form of the
> Contras.
>
> The second debate on this issue I remember concerned Iraq.
> Shortly
> aftert the U.S. invasion there was a discussion on another
> list over the
> proper position of the anti-war movement. Several writers
> urged that the
> left pressure the u.s. government to repair the damage it
> had done
> before leaving. Part of the evidence for this position was
> a poll in
> Iraq which showed that a large majority of Iraqi citizens
> held this
> position, while only 14% were for immediate withdrawal. But
> of course
> the longer the U.S. stays, the greater will be the damage
> that must be
> repaired, the more likely will be a savage civil wqr after
> the u.s.
> departs. The U.S. nevere repairs the damage it has done but
> simply
> increases the damage.
>
> And Hans Ehrbar responded: Carrol, do you think the
> developing
> countries, if left to their own devices, will embark on
> green
> development? They will do the only thing feasible for
> them to lift
> their populations out of poverty, and this is development
> based on
> fossil fuels. Which will grill the planet. By
> telling the United
> States to keep out of the rest of the world you are
> implicitly promoting
> a paradigm based on nation states. If we want to survive as
> a species,
> we have to overcome this paradigm, we need world-wide
> co-operation
> forced on the nation states by a world wide mass
> movement. Whether this
> is realistic or not, this is what I think is needed; if
> someone has
> better ideas, please speak up. Hans.
>
> My response in part: O.K. I'n all for mass movements, and I
> certainly
> want various po.icies foreced on the U.S. (as well as on
> the EU, Japan,
> Russia, China, etc.), but when you speak of compulsion the
> argument
> beomes empty except in the context of power relations. It
> is easy to
> say, "Mass Movementk"; I do it all the time. And the answer
> I usually
> get is some version of the question, "How do we get from
> here to there?"
> And the answer I am always tempted to give, and sometimes
> do give, is
> "We don't; we can't; starting here we can only stay here."
> In short, any
> line we draw from here to there ends, as you say, in our
> being cooked.
>
> And I quoted Rosa Luxemburg on political powerj, then
> continued: Now we
> are not talking about the overthrow of the state here, but
> we are
> talking about political power in a more limited form, the
> power of a
> mass movement to compel the state to carry out an
> extraordinarily
> complex set of operations on a global scale involving
> trillions of
> dollars expended in scores of areas with different local
> conditions and
> in different stages of political development. We seem to be
> moving
> towards the writing of quite complex recipes for what I
> fear will be an
> ever-receding future.
>
> And a temporary closing point. The paragraph Hans quoted
> from my post
> ends with, "Keep conversation going on such topics within
> both local
> organizations and national forums." This has been such a
> coversation,
> one I hope goes a bit further. That is one of the purposes
> of slogans.
> [end quote from post]
>
> I went on further in the post, but that is sufficient here.
> We do need
> to talk about power, not merely how bad things are or what
> good things
> someone should do or what leftists should want done. And I
> think talking
> about such slogans for the future as I listed above, as
> shown in this
> exchange from Pen-L, is one way to do it.
>
>
> -----Inline Attachment Follows-----
>
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