On Tue, 2009-10-13 at 14:14 -0400, Bhaskar Sunkara wrote: Shag's interesting point is basically a Gramscian one against orthodox Marxism and the old tendency of a portion of the left to fall into the trap of focusing too much on the "base". In the context of the Western Left in
Cox] I think the metaphor of base and superstructure was never a very good metaphor, and at the presnt point of thinking about starting to contribute to start building a new left movement the metaphor is a positive barrier to clear thought. (And it _is_ a metaphor; in the actual world of capitalist relations there is no base and there is no suerstructure. Both terms are from architexture and cannot provide illumination of a dynamic system. Class, as Wood as emphasized, is a _process_, not a static entity, and cannot be related to anything that could be called a "base" or anything that could be called a "superstructure." (Incidentally, caution is needed in using Gramsci: his war of postion takes us back to the trenches of WWI, and implies a neat division between two organized armies - which neer occurs inm class relations escept on the eve of an insurrecton.)
Voyon] I'm not sure that's right. It's odd to characterize shag as arguing against orthodox Marxism,
Cox]' The phrase "orthodox Marxism" doesn't identify anything very precisely. There are too many "orthodoxies," most of them to some extent incompatible with other orthodoxies.
Voyon] when one of the things she has been criticizing Michaels for is his non-Marxist understanding of class.
Cox] No - merely for not having _her_ marxist understanding. I agree with shag - but in the present state of marxist theorizing you just can't talk of Marxism period and make any sense. There are too many conflicting understanding of Marxism.
Voyon] Even if you re-interpret Michaels's point in Marxist terms,
Cox] I ignore this, because "Marxist terms" is too vague.
Voyon] the problem is not over-emphasizing the base at the expense of the superstructure;
Cox] Not really meaningful.
Voyon] the problem is considering race and gender to be parts of the superstructure while class is part of the base.
Cox] I will offer a paraphrase of this ignoring the terms base & superstructure, which simply do not contribute to understanding.
The problem is his failure to understand class as process, and the subsequent e irrelevancy of his conceptionof "class struggle" to the actuality of _any_ conceivable capitalist society, including the present one.
Voyon] Michaels's diminishing of politics structured around race and gender isn't an emphasis on the base, in fact it's the opposite, because race and gender are crucial parts of the base.
Cox] Again, base and supeerstructure fail to illuminate anything. Here trying to explain him in these terms obscures the fact that class as he conceives it is simply non-existent, an ideological figment. Eevn at the highest levelof abstraction class must be conceived as process, not as a static entity that enters into battle with some other static entity. The very discussionof "distraction from the class struggle" exhibits a hopeless failure to understand capitalism, class, or class struggle. If you read Ellen Meidsins Wood's _The Retreat from Class_ she means the retreat from class in the theorizing of capitalism. Class in a political sense is only something that comes into existence in the process of struggle. At the present time the working class does not exist as a class, and to speak of being distracted from its struggles (which are only class struggle in Postone's terms, as the health of capitalism) is simply silly.
Bhaskar Sunkara] in the early 21st century, a left coming out of decades of post-political identity politics ,
Cox] What evidence is there that a left is coming out, perid? I hope you are right, and I see some signs of this, but we can't merely assume it.
Bhaskar Sunkara]] I think we need more than a few doses of vuglar Marxism and a return to class
Cox] "Vulgar Marxism" is also an empty signifier. I can't construe this. But again, "return to class" can only mean return to class _in our theorizing_. One does no mechanically decide, I'm going to join the class struggle; one has to find out where in actuality there is such a beast, and (again) I would argue that the phrase is useful only in two ways: for theorizing the fundamental nature of capitalism, it is useful in Postone's sense of the health of capitalism. (Not his phrase but I think it names his point accurately.) It keeps capitalism going. Secondly, it names something (traditionally labelled the class for itself) during pre-revolutionary periods, which we are not abut to enter this year. But getting away from what (for now) is empty jargon, there are struggles for actual workers to join in. There is the struggle against the bourgeois consciousness which constitutes working-class ideology during times of low political activity, which means getting into struggles to change the conditions under which women, Blacks, poor whites, the disabled, etc live and work, because those conditons must change before there will be any change in racist, sexists, etcist ideology. That is the form that actual class struggle must take (and quite often does take) under current conditions. And it is necessary to keep it up until we are surprised by the sudden emergence (next year or next decadeor next generation) of a period of high political struggle, which will build on and emerge from the (mostly unsuiccessful) struggles of the present , against the war, in defense of social security, above all, against the conditions that racism, etc impose on the class as a whole.
Voyon] A dose of vulgar Marxism is OK; but why not a dose of a slightly more sophisticated Marxism
Cox] This is the mistake of calling for "new ideas." Don't call for sophisticated marxism. Begin to practice it.
Voyon] that can understand struggles around race and gender as something other than post-political identity politics? That would help to explain why, contra Michaels, a "return to class" doesn't require downplaying the importance of race and gender.
Cox] O.K.
Carrol
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