with usura
seeth no man Gonzaga his heirs and his concubines
no picture is made to endure nor to live with
but it is made to sell and sell quickly
[. . .]
None learneth to weave gold in her pattern
(XLV)
Amongst the art Pound still cares for we are told “the Light from Eleusis” still shines through: “in the light of light is the *virtù*” (LXXIV). Thus pagan and Christian rites are joined in the dialectical movement with art; usury is condemned by means of a concurrent chant stirring the moments when the “conspiracy of intelligence” meant artists supported by State economic policies. Pound’s paranoid experience of exile comes at a distance twice removed, and the reader is asked to share his pity: “I sat on the Dogana’s steps/ for the gondolas cost too much, that year [. . .]” (III). History — including that of art (as commodity) — is seen as a vast conspiracy*[i]*<#_edn1>; while Pound is unable to resolve the contradiction of striving for both ‘a life of art’ and a ‘life *within *art’: “Odysseus/ shalt return through spiteful Neptune, over dark seas,/ Lose all companions [. . .]” (I).
In Pound’s fascisms the art object, the Poem, like the State, transcends the definition of consumable product, suggesting that the poet should be a paid-up member excused from governmental interference, whose ‘public residence’ is as cast-iron and secure as the waged heads of the Fascist State. For example, we can note how Pound resists substituting ‘poetry’ for ‘commodity’ in statements such as: “Only the STATE can effectively fix the JUST PRICE of any commodity [. . .]”[ii] <#_edn2> From all this evidence we can doubt whether Pound understood that molarisation (to employ a delightful Deleuzian term Old Ez could hardly predict) demands the control over the means of recording and discourse when he wrote poppycock such as “whereas a jew will receive information/ he [the fascist hero] will gather up information” (LXXIV) or “’Buckie’ [Fuller] has gone in for structure (quite rightly)/ but consumption is still done by animals” (XCVII). Yet, for all the ideology that he does submit to, the poet cannot bring himself, as a disciple of the craft of poetry, to only use Duce-approved performatives, regime-words that enforce a concept of total precision.
Fascisms work precisely against the self-reflexive aim to “Illumine the words of procedure” (XCIX). The ‘totalising’ force of poetry generates its own poetic truths that are pointed toward an undecided future (a literal ‘not-place’, or u-topia) beyond that of the Fascist reality; beyond Mussolini’s claim that “Fact is all”. The poet is therefore wrong and/or naive in presuming his fascist sympathies allow his poem to “Distinguish between FACT and ideology.” From this extreme position Pound can define fascism as “a factual method; a method practical *in a certain time and place *against certain inertias”.[iii] <#_edn3>
Fascism absorbs the determinate contents of political discourse *because *it has already seized the power to control the articulating principle that unifies the non-class contradictions present in a people’s politics and ideology. This is why the class able to articulate these contradictions is not necessarily the class to which the individual belongs.
At times, Pound’s politics, for all (and because of) their naive, amateurish errors, prescribe quite accurately ideas of a reader’s response to the poem. For example, “Italian Fascism has never meant State control of Production. It has meant exhortation to producers [i.e. readers] to settle it among themselves, and as a last resource, appeal to government arbitration [presumably Pound’s Paideuma].”[i] <#_edn1> In this context it is interesting that *The* *Cantos *can be so blasé in their explicit acceptance of oppressive power structures: “one point needed for Stalin/ you need not, i.e. need not take over the means of production” (LXXIV). It would be extremely dangerous to presume Mussolini was so naive when he proposed that “the problem of production was solved.”[ii] <#_edn2> If the currency of poetry operates with abstract symbols, language itself is the ‘basic’ unimaginative material base open to the coercions of power. The “problem of production” Pound thought to clarify is precisely society’s irresolvable struggle for this pre-ideological, preconscious basis of language and action. Although *The Cantos* hardly display the kind of passivity accepted as a virtue of subjects attached to the fascist body, any resistance he might then show to the present regime comes in the forms of violence, vengeance, or supercilious hate-speech; proving that a man can be using fascisms of form without ever being a Fascist.
------------------------------
[i] <#_ednref1> ‘Italian Fascism’, *New English Weekly*, vi, no.3, 1 Nov, 1934, p.72.
[ii] <#_ednref2> From Mussolini’s speech of Oct.6, 1934, quoted by Pound in *JM *vii.
------------------------------
[i] <#_ednref1> cf. George Dekker’s astute comment that the *Cantos *are less a poem than a [self-]conspiracy. *Sailing After Knowledge *p.107.* *
[ii] <#_ednref2> *What Is Money For?* (1939) in *Selected Prose *p.263.
[iii] <#_ednref3> Letter to T.C. Wilson, 1 Dec. (1934 or 1935), Yale Collection, quoted in Nicholls (1984) p.81.
On 27 December 2010 12:23, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> I hadn't read this when I wrote my post, but I see that Inailed Wojtek's
> fundamental ignorance of what capitalism _is_ == and identified the
> political futility grounded in that ignorance. It is the same conception of
> capitalism, incidentally, that capitalists hold (who do not understand
> Mdarx
> even if they read and use him). They too believe that all depends on the
> right people being in charged. (In this sense, they resemble Trotskyists.)
>
> Incidentally, someone could write a fat book on Pound's _Cantos_ using
> Wojtek's phrase as his or her key: " incapacitating a handful of people
> forming the vanguard party of finance capital will do." It made a great
> epic, but it makes for lousy politics. Whatever Wojtek is, he is _not_ a
> deliberate apologist for capitalism, but here he states the central
> ideology
> which contributes to keeping capitalism going. The academic economists he
> sneers at may help the morale of some capitalists, but they have no great
> political impact. His delusion does since almost 300 million people believe
> it and act on it.
>
> Carrol
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
> On Behalf Of Shane Mage
> Sent: Monday, December 27, 2010 10:03 AM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Inside job
>
>
> On Dec 27, 2010, at 9:35 AM, Wojtek S wrote:
> > one does not need a revo and "withering of the state" to implement
> > far
> > reaching systemic changes - incapacitating a handful of people
> > forming the
> > vanguard party of finance capital will do.
>
> Now who will bell the cat?
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>
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>
--
In tyrannos