Well said Brian! To further distill the point: Marx wrote about the specific antagonisms of a particular historical period defined by processes of industrialization, and to romanticize the analysis of a past/outdated Marx as being universal without being attentive to the distinct material/historical forces that define the present is perhaps the most anti-Marxist position you could take.
~i On Mon, Oct 29, 2018 at 9:35 AM Frederic Neyrat <fney...@gmail.com> wrote: > Dear Brian, > > I totally agree with you, as usual. I'd like to highlight your last > sentence: "What we are missing is a theory of social relations in the > future" - but, let me play with your sentence, what future? A universal > subject could have been the green one, the wretched of the Earth (aka > Gaia); but it did not happen, or its advent is, like, buried in a > national-populist grave. At least we have his/her ghost, the ghost of the > collective that could have been able to embody the planetary exploited > subject. Not sure this ghost dares to haunt us. (Okay, I read too much Mark > Fisher these days...) > > Best, > > Frédéric > > On Mon, Oct 29, 2018 at 12:00 AM Brian Holmes < > bhcontinentaldr...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> On Sun, Oct 28, 2018 at 8:48 AM ari <a...@kein.org> wrote: >> >>> Does an understanding of politics as transformative action not clash >>> with one of it as a practice of belonging? >>> >> >> Certainly not. The whole Marxist tradition conceived of class >> consciousness as a practice of belonging. >> However there are problems the Marxist tradition never solved. You want a >> universal working class conscious of its own transformative agency; but you >> will not be able to describe this class in terms concrete enough to address >> any member of it in particular. No one can, those days are over, the >> language does not fit the times. >> When the *industrial* working class could still be conceived as a >> revolutionary subject, such a description was possible. Marx and Engels did >> it brilliantly, by spending years debating their ideas directly directly >> with the workers. But after the crisis of the 1930s, all capitalist states >> recognized the danger represented by the working class and made >> extraordinary efforts to integrate the industrial workers to capitalist >> practice, first through wage bargaining, then through benefits, then >> through a variety of cultural and even military appeals, culminating in the >> current situation where industrial workers are recruited to fascism with >> anti-immigrant nationalism and the vague promise of industrial jobs. >> This doesn't mean there is no transformative potential left in the >> industrial working classes. But they can't hold the place of a universal >> political subject,and the class you are looking for - singular, concrete, >> conscious of itself and ready to act - is not solely defined by work >> anymore. >> In fact, the focus of the state on work and the workplace encouraged >> anyone who cared about class to look outside the factory and even the wage >> relation for the inequality and injustice of capitalist societies. Because >> those societies now focused as much on consumption - and more broadly, on >> what Marxists call "social reproduction" - as they did on production, >> direct oppression exerted by the capitalist state and by the forms of >> social reproduction that it mandated could be found in many different >> places. Identity politics emerged as a way of naming those sites of >> oppression, and even more importantly, as a way to gain transformative >> agency through the consciousness of belonging to an oppressed group. >> The upshot is, that if you wanted to redo Marx and Engels, you would have >> to start not by rereading their books and their tradition, but by taking >> new ideas of both oppression and transformation down to the places where >> identity politics is debated, and giving those new ideas a go. >> Now, this all does not mean everything is fine with identity politics as >> it is practiced today. Certainly just abandoning the question of work is >> the wrong path (but no one serious does it, so I don't know what the >> problem is?). A new universal is definitely lacking, and much can be >> learned from the attempts to conceive a universal working class. However, >> it does mean that you can't just diss off identity in favor of some >> supposedly correct concept which you have totally dehistoricized, >> particularly by ignoring the dialectical negations to which it was subject. >> No one will take you seriously if you do. Today, pretty much every "return >> to Marx" is a return to some nostalgic and usually privileged self, alone >> even in the typically tiny groups, trying to convince themselves that their >> pure idea from the past can overcome everything that has happened in global >> society since 1968. >> >> Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying "Marx to the trashcan." I'm just >> saying that if you do go to the barricades, you will not find a universal >> working class, and the language with which you seek to invoke or catalyze >> one, will remain empty and useless. Doing real politics is far more >> demanding than most of us can handle. The "back to class' posts in this >> thread are so vague, so nostalgic, so empty, that they do not come anywhere >> near the goal. >> >> What we are missing is a theory of social relations in the future. To be >> transformative it will have to be inclusive, combative and aspirational, >> attuned to a possible life beyond the dead-ends of the twentieth century. >> >> best, BH >> # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission >> # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, >> # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets >> # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l >> # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org >> # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: > > # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission > # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, > # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets > # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l > # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org > # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
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