Re: [Marxism] Lenin's Tomb on Althusser

[Einde O'Callaghan]

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On 14.11.2011 07:06, Manuel Barrera wrote:




But I did, so, I'll just ask the question (you know, to get back to bein' historical an' all): Why exactly is 
Althusser's waiting out the anti-communist '50's to emerge with a "left" critique against Stalinism and his 
admitted (by Tomb, that is) failure to "establish the absolute scientificity [sic] of Marxist theory" 
important? Does Tomb really believe that actually establishing Marxist theory as absolutely scientific would really 
have prevented "party bosses, revisions, and rivals" from ignoring Marxist scientific principles or simply 
betraying them? Wouldn't that simply be a function of their alien class philosophical, theoretical, and political 
basis? What kind of useful "strategy" is inherent in sitting inside a Stalinist party for decades developing 
a critique that ultimately failed?

I have a rather different take on Althusser from Richard. Long ago when 
I was a student, I actually waded through all of Althusser's writings 
then available in English, and came to the conclusion that what he was 
doing was providing a sophisticated (and almost incomprehensiblle to 
those unfamiliar with the vocabulary/jargon he was using) theoretical 
justification for the fundamental politics of the PCF - even if he was 
critical of some aspects.


It's a long time ago and I don't think I have the critique I wrote then 
anymore and I've got no intention of going through his writings again - 
once was more than enough - so I'm afraid I can't now provide any 
justification for these conclusions.


As regards the mental health issues - I agree with Richard that they 
have absolutely nothing to do with his value or otherwise as a 
theoretician. On the killing of his wife - while I agree that there are 
innumerable people with serious mental health issues who don't murder 
their spouses, there are also others who do. The "reasons" they have are 
as varied as their personal circumstances. I don't think it's possible 
to draw any valid conclusions about their position on women's rights or 
anything else from their actions without much more profound knowledge of 
their state of mind than are available to us.


Einde O'Callaghan


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[Marxism] The Battles of Occupy Portland, by Shamus Cooke

[Adam Richmond]

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http://www.workerscompass.org/ck/ck2011/ck11132011.html
 
The Battles of Occupy
Portland
 
By Shamus Cooke 

For those who
were there, November 13th will be a day long remembered in Portland,
Oregon. Occupy Portland again proved why it remains the 2nd strongest
Occupy movement in the U.S. when it mobilized against police
eviction. Instead of the Occupiers being evicted it was the police who
were sent home demoralized.

The
following morning, however, the police again moved in to evict the
mostly-emptied camp, and again thousands of protesters arrived to protest. As
this article is being written there remain thousands of protesters in downtown
Portland trying to decide their next occupation spot with hundreds of riot
police nearby. Although the original occupied park is now surrounded by a
fence and hundreds of riot police, the movement has been strengthened
exponentially after the stunning victory the previous night and energetic
re-mobilization the following morning which grew throughout the day.  

The Mayor,
police, and the local 1% had set the stage to justify police violence while
scaring the public away from the downtown occupation spot; radio stations
warned listeners to "stay away from downtown,” businesses closed their
doors early for "fear of violence,” the media shamefully reported stories
without sources about people from "out of town" coming to Portland
with violent intent. The ultra-peaceful protest that ensued made a mockery
of these lies from Portland's 1%.  

The eviction
order was to begin at midnight, but there were 6,000 plus people already
assembled to prevent it. The police tried to wait the protesters
out. Hours later the Mayor got impatient and made mistake number two. The
riot police were sent in to provoke a riot; mounted police and foot soldiers
slammed themselves into the very peaceful crowd, to no avail. They were swarmed
by thousands of people unafraid, and the police retreated. The crowd
roared with ecstasy.  

There were
other scare tactics employed; loud speakers announced the use of "chemical
agents" to clear the streets, but the police had already lost their
nerve. The jubilant protesters stayed in the streets until the sun rose,
just to make sure the police didn't try any more tricks (though the tricks came 
hours
later).  

The
now-humiliated Portland Mayor had given the occupy camp a 48-hour eviction
notice on November 11th, having been pressured by the Portland Business
Association and now-humbled Police Chief into action.  

The reason
the Mayor hadn't acted before is that he is much more politically astute than
the police chief and understood the power of the Occupy Movement. In Portland
there have been three very large demonstrations that had immense popular
support. But the usually savvy Mayor miscalculated and attempted to strike
prematurely. Now he has provoked a strong reaction, pumping new energy into the
movement.  

Why did the
Mayor finally decide to act? Aside from pressure from his corporate and police
buddies, he watched the development of the Occupy Movement closely and waited
for public support to wane. The Mayor saw the Occupy demonstrations dwindle in
size, due in large part to the fracturing of the Occupy demonstrations into the
pre-Occupy dynamic of issue-based activism that has long infected the
left.   

For example,
several marches were held every week, each organized around a different issue:
there was an anti-coal march; anti-police brutality march; diversity march;
anti-pipeline march, etc. There were also several cases of small groups or
individuals practicing civil disobedience. The Mayor's confidence bloomed in
direct proportion to the shrinking sizes of the marches and actions. 

The Mayor's
confidence was warranted, and so were the fears of the Occupiers, many of whom
had already packed their tents and left. The kitchen, library, media center,
and everything else of value were plucked from the camp in anticipation of the
eviction, (this aided the police
the following morning when the camp was finally evicted). The camping Occupiers
seemed aware that they had lost touch with Portland's working class. 

In fact, the
Occupiers did not even issue a strong “call to action” in defense of the camp,
nor was the pre-eviction day of
events organized in a way that would mobilize massive numbers. There was a noon
rally, 2pm march, 5pm rally, 7pm festival — none
of which were well attended.    

After the
community festival drew only a couple hundred people, most 
activists — including myself — thought the camp was lost. At the
last hour, seemingly out of nowhere, thousands of people came streaming into
the streets. They came not because the organizers of Occupy Portland had
reached out to them effectively in the preceding weeks, but becau

Re: [Marxism] Lenin's Tomb on Althusser

[Einde O'Callaghan]

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On 13.11.2011 19:14, Manuel Barrera wrote:

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Hey, Lenin and everybody,





No wonder the British--you know, the ones who murdered each other over popery v. Luther 
and throw adolescents in jail for decades over some stolen bread--can retort about 
Americans being "uncivilised". Because, well, the political is personal and 
neologisms mark someone as an erudite scholar.

Since Richard is Irish, this comment is rather irrelevant - as well as 
being ignorant of the history of the Reformation in Britain. And since 
heretics were also persecuted and even killed and thieves were executed 
in the English-speaking Americas it's also an ahistorical non-criticism. 
Indeed today in the US under the "three strikes" laws it's quite 
possible to get life without parole for stealing a piece of bread.


Einde O'Callaghan


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Re: [Marxism] Italy and Greece: rule by the bankers

[Gary MacLennan]

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This was a fine post. I am wondering though if there is not something of a
desperate gamble here. By replacing Papandreou with a technocrat, one
effectively strips away a buffer from the capitalist class.  Pasok and
Papandreou may not have much credibility yet organisaitonally PASOK could
work to demobilise the protests.  Will they still want or be able to do
that now that Papandreou has gone?

Ditto for Italy and Berlosconi.

comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] Althusser

[Shane Mage]

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On 13/11/2011 22:49, Shane Mage wrote:

And for the rest of his life never any self-criticism, any  
understanding of what in him made him the willing enabler of such a  
series of monstrous crimes.


Your shrill anathemas would be more compelling if Althusser had done  
anything to 'enable' such crimes as the gulags and the suppression  
of the Hungarian revolution.  Althusser may be criticised, justly,  
for having accepted the discipline of the PCF rather than join  
others in attempting to found an alternative.  To blame him for the  
victims of Stalinism, which he lamented, is absurd.


Sure. And Heidegger may be criticized for accepting the discipline of  
the NSDAP but to ask him to accept responsibility for the holocaust,  
which he lamented, is...?  To accept the discipline of a party engaged  
as accomplice in the crimes of Stalinism or Nazism is to be an enabler  
of those crimes.


Shane Mage

> This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
> always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
> kindling in measures and going out in measures."
>
> Herakleitos of Ephesos






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[Marxism] Leftist Italian Economist on How The Italian & European Left Was Destroyed

[Louis Proyect]

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http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-2007/014736.html


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[Marxism] Althusser

[Sean Noonan]

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Richard,

You first suggested that I was engaged in a fourth hand mis-remembering of
something that Althusser wrote in his posthumous memoir. Now you change
your position and suggest that I am a pleasantly complacent obtuse
literalist because I don't appreciate how unreliable Althusser's own words
are admist the flux of his illness and that I am a trashy tabloid thinker.
How can I be a 4th hand misremember and an obtuse literalist at the same
time?  Make up your mind.

As far as a scientific theory aimed at getting us closer to socialism,
Althusser's Marxism has a number of shortcomings:

1)  The state is more instrumental and less autonomous than Althusser
suggests.
2)  Ideology is more embedded in social life and less a structure of ideas
hanging in the air.
3) The early-vs-late Marx dicotomy is weak.
4) A coherent and discernible dialectics runs throughout the Marxian
project.
5) Historicism and Humanism are distinct approaches and should not be
confounded.
6) Contrasting historicism with science is a false bifurcation and a
distortion of what social science is.

Althusser is Marxism for priggish graduate students in the social sciences
and humanities.  His obscurity makes you feel smart and his reformist
politics don't get in the way of a career in bourgeois academia.

Sean Noonan

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Re: [Marxism] BREAKING NEWS: Occupy Portland and cops in standoff on Main St

[Juan Fajardo]

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On 11/13/2011 6:48 PM, Gary MacLennan wrote:


any chance of a quick piece of analysis.  The live feed does not really
tell what is happening in political terms.



Wish I could, but I'm about an 11 hr. drive from Portland.

--
- Juan


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Re: [Marxism] BREAKING NEWS: Occupy Portland and cops in standoff on Main St

[Gary MacLennan]

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Hi Juan

any chance of a quick piece of analysis.  The live feed does not really
tell what is happening in political terms.

comradely

Gary

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[Marxism] OCCUPY WALL STREET AND THE HARD TASKS AHEAD

[CHRISTOPHERR CARRICO]

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INSURGENT ANTHROPOLOGIES: OCCUPY WALL STREET AND THE HARD TASKS AHEAD

http://asitoughttobe.com/2011/11/13/insurgent-anthropologies-occupy-wall-street-and-the-hard-tasks-ahead/
 by Christopher Carrico 

The Occupy Wall Street movement is one of the most significant developments
on the American left to have emerged in years. An important victory has
been won by the fact that the movement has already shifted American public
discourse to now include the recognition of economic inequality as a
political issue. This alone is long overdue, and will most likely be of
lasting historical significance.

We are experiencing, as Andrew Levine wrote in the wake of events in
Madison, Wisconsin earlier this year, the “endgame of the Reagan
Revolution.” The U.S. experienced increasing income and wealth equality
from the time of the Great Depression until the late 1960s.  The U.S.
capitalist class began, in the 1970s and even more markedly after the
election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, to engage in conscious class warfare for
the restoration of capitalist class power.

The economic crisis that began in 2007 and has continued to the present is
the end result of these three decades of class warfare, and the social
movements of 2011 mark the beginning of a new historical sequence that
cannot as yet be named. Having, at long last, revived the tradition of
egalitarian universalism in American political discourse, the Generation of
2012 must brace itself for the hard fight ahead against the forces of
reaction and entrenched power.

view full text here:
http://asitoughttobe.com/2011/11/13/insurgent-anthropologies-occupy-wall-street-and-the-hard-tasks-ahead/

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[Marxism] BREAKING NEWS: Occupy Portland and cops in standoff on Main St,

[DW]

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The 3 main parks where the OP has been taking place have been "de-occupied"
and cordoned off by police. Since early this morning 150 arrested in CD
actions against this. 1 cop hurt. Protesters as of 5pm pacific standard
time are gathering at the main court house at Pioneer Square. If you are in
the Portland area, and reading this at home, please put your computer to
bed and get down there.

DW
PS...Bring rain gear.

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[Marxism] BREAKING NEWS: Occupy Portland and cops in standoff on Main St

[Juan Fajardo]

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Live stream at:

http://www.kgw.com/live-stream


--
- Juan


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[Marxism] Technology and Occupy Sydney

[Stuart Munckton]

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Article on role of technology in political movements. Interviews Green Left

http://www.techworld.com.au/blog/talkingtech/2011/11/14/tech-and-protesters-at-occupysydney/
-- 
“Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is humanity’s
original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made,
through disobedience and through rebellion.” — Oscar Wilde, Soul of Man
Under Socialism

“The free market is perfectly natural... do you think I am some kind of
dummy?” — Jarvis Cocker

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Re: [Marxism] Althusser

[Lenin's Tomb]

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On 13/11/2011 22:49, Shane Mage wrote:
What he wrote, as Angelus has informed us, is that he never even 
*read* Capital until 1964.


Actually, I'm not sure that this is the quote that's being 
misremembered.  The quote from his posthumous memoirs that is closest to 
what is being alleged is this:


"Anyway, I carried out my duties as a philosophy teacher and felt more 
and more that I was a philosopher, despite all my misgivings. In fact, 
my philosophical knowledge of texts was rather limited. I was very 
familiar with Descartes and Malebranche, knew a little Spinoza, nothing 
about Aristotle, the Sophists and the Stoics, quite a lot about Plato 
and Pascal, nothing about Kant, a bit about Hegel, and finally a few 
passages of Marx which I had studied closely."


Now, I have no doubt that you will follow other similarly obtuse 
literalists in stowing this quote under your belt as further proof that 
you need not worry yourself with the nasty man and his funny ideas.  
However, before you lapse into this pleasant complacency, I do want to 
throw a little sand in the works.  First of all, the two quotes don't 
exactly match up.  Second of all, this is actually typical, since 
Althusser's memoirs are, as Gregory Elliot suggests, as knowingly 
unreliable as Nietzsche's /Ecce Homo/.  This account, written amid a 
manic-depressive flux, which is explicitly not offered as a literal 
biography, and which acknowledges 'hallucinations' as 'facts' of a 
person's life to be recounted, has been culpably travestied by those - 
as I say - obtuse literalists who insist on taking every word as a 
confession.  One expects this sort of trashy, tabloidy approach from 
hacks, correspondents, gossip columnists and a good few academic 
writers.  For someone wishing to carry himself as a serious marxist, 
this rebarbative tone - which is no better than that of the party hacks 
whom Althusser's work was aimed against - ought to be avoided.


  Think of it--a "philosopher," an activist in a professedly Marxist 
party for sixteen years who never bothered to read Marx! 


Even supposing this was literally true, Marx is not reducible to a 
single work.  Althusser's earlier writings attest to his close readings 
of Marx, including of /Capital/.


And when he got around to it he discovered, like Max Eastman (in every 
way his moral, theoretical, political, personal, and literary 
superior) thirty years earlier, that Marx needed to be deHegelianized, 
dedialecticized.  And this is someone who "really understood" Capital? 



Lenin (the real one) wrote all that needed to be said about this sort 
of "Marxist":  "It is impossible to understand Das Kapital without a 
thorough grasp of Hegel's *Science of Logic*. As a result, after half 
a century none of the Marxists have understood Marx." 


Althusser was thoroughly acquainted with Lenin's argument here: 
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1969/lenin-before-hegel.htm


L. Tomb admits that Althusser never read any of the antiStalinist 
Marxists, not Trotsky, not Marcuse, none of them.  He was, in the most 
literal sense, an ignoramus.  And this is someone on whose scribblings 
we are asked to waste our eyesight?


It's someone whose scribblings have obviously never troubled your 
eyesight.  But I did not say that he hadn't read any of the 
anti-Stalinist Marxists.  I made three specific statements: one, that 
his claim to be undertaking the 'first' left-wing critique of Stalinism 
'implies' ignorance of Trotsky; second, that in his typologies of the 
contemporary marxist scene, he did not acknowledge the Frankfurt school; 
third, that in his critique of humanism, he did not acknowledge 
ex-Communist Party members who remained affiliated to Marxism and who 
turned to humanism - his critique was aimed at the "practical ideology" 
of the Soviet regime, as he saw it.  Even if it were true, "in the most 
literal sense", that Althusser had never read a single word of any 
anti-Stalinist Marxist, that would not justify the claim that was "an 
ignoramus".  To take a random example from my bookshelf, one can pick up 
Eric Hobsbawm's writings on twentieth century Marxism, or the struggle 
against fascism, and search in vain for a reference to Trotsky.  One can 
even find what are arguably travesties and absurd arguments.  Yet, few 
would be so absurd as to say that this damned him as an ignoramus.  
Perhaps, though, I am assuming too much in thinking this would be a step 
too far for you.


And L. Tomb also writes: "Yet to simply read the failings of his 
followers back into Althusser's project would be a travesty as unfair 
as E P Thompson's execration of the 'Stalinist' Althusser."  Admire 
the scare quotes put around the word "Stalinist!"  Althusser merely 
joined a S

[Marxism] A few thoughts on Occupy

[Hunter Gray]

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As I've prefaced before, I'm not at Occupy and, beyond a certain point, 
reluctant to criticize. My inclinations have been supportive.  A few weeks ago, 
I raised the question on RBB about where it might be going and possible goals. 
While I recognized that its spontaneity and somewhat -- somewhat -- diversity 
were its considerable strength at that point, I was skeptical about those 
qualities alone giving it an enduring life in the sense of an "oak wood fire".  
As I recall, there were very few answers and no definitive ones to the points I 
briefly made.  The other day I, again briefly, opined on a couple of our lists 
that Occupy could benefit from some intra and inter organization and 
national/local and short range/longer range goals.  I don't think that drew any 
response.

It seems to me that Occupy is a remarkable protest movement which has raised 
and reinforced general awareness of some very key issues.  But, in my opinion, 
it isn't really a goal-oriented phenomenon, characterized by much internal 
strategy discussion and resultant discipline -- and its lack of cohesion and 
organization are sadly striking. In fact, as pieces of it seem to be fading 
away, its very life appears speculative, maybe questionable.  Whatever its 
future, it has undoubtedly radicalized  many people and may -- may -- be a 
stepping stone to something considerably more effective on several fronts.

These shortcoming, as I see them, are in sharp contrast to the almost always 
well organized Labor actions of yore -- and today.  The Bonus Marchers in the 
twilight of the Herbert Hoover administration had a very clear and specific 
goal.

Occupy is NOT comparable to the old Civil Rights Movement. To be honest, I 
personally resent that analogy. The Civil Rights Movement occurred in a very 
obvious on-going historical context, almost always had at all levels effective 
democratic leadership, and had very clear and specific goals -- local and 
national and long range and short-range. Its commitment to tactical 
non-violence was almost pervasive. Virtually every level and facet of that 
Movement was very well organized -- even to the point that there was usually 
cognizance of potentially unexpected developments -- say, during demonstrations 
-- and thus almost always back-up alternatives "at ready." The stakes were 
always very high. That Adversary was powerful, cunning, absolutely ruthless, 
and downright deadly.  

Hunter Bear

HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis 
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk 
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´ 
and Ohkwari' 
www.hunterbear.org 
(much social justice material)
 
For the new, just out (11/2011) and expanded/updated
edition of my "Organizer's Book," JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- 
with a new and substantial Introduction by me:
http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm
 
Our community organizing course:
http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm
 
Personal Background Narrative (with many links):
http://hunterbear.org/narrative.htm


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Re: [Marxism] Althusser

[Shane Mage]

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On Nov 13, 2011, at 2:31 PM, Lenin's Tomb wrote:


On 13/11/2011 19:17, Sean Noonan wrote:

1) Didn't Althusser admit he didn't really understand Capital?


No, not in the least.  This is obviously a fourth hand mis- 
remembering of something that Althusser wrote in his posthumous  
memoir.


What he wrote, as Angelus has informed us, is that he never even  
*read* Capital until 1964.  Think of it--a "philosopher," an activist  
in a professedly Marxist party for sixteen years who never bothered to  
read Marx!  And when he got around to it he discovered, like Max  
Eastman (in every way his moral, theoretical, political, personal, and  
literary superior) thirty years earlier, that Marx needed to be  
deHegelianized, dedialecticized.  And this is someone who "really  
understood" Capital?  Lenin (the real one) wrote all that needed to be  
said about this sort of "Marxist":  "It is impossible to understand  
Das Kapital without a thorough grasp of Hegel's *Science of Logic*. As  
a result, after half a century none of the Marxists have understood  
Marx."  L. Tomb admits that Althusser never read any of the  
antiStalinist Marxists, not Trotsky, not Marcuse, none of them.  He  
was, in the most literal sense, an ignoramus.  And this is someone on  
whose scribblings we are asked to waste our eyesight?


And L. Tomb also writes: "Yet to simply read the failings of his  
followers back into Althusser's project would be a travesty as unfair  
as E P Thompson's execration of the 'Stalinist' Althusser."  Admire  
the scare quotes put around the word "Stalinist!"  Althusser merely  
joined a Stalinist party in 1948 and remained a loyal disciplined  
member of that gang for almost all the rest of his life. Through the  
cold war against Yugoslavia; the murder of Mikhoels and the  Jewish  
Antifascist Committee; the Lysenko revolution in the biological  
sciences; the Rajk frameup; the Slansky frameup; the Kostov frameup;  
the humiliation of Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and Khachaturian; the  
incipient pogrom, aborted only with the fortuitous demise of the  
tyrant, signaled by the "Doctors' Plot;"  the June 17 Stalinallee  
uprising; all the GULAG Archipelago revelations from David Rousset to  
Solzhenitsyn; the Hungarian Revolution, etc. And for the rest of his  
life never any self-criticism, any understanding of what in him made  
him the willing enabler of such a series of monstrous crimes.
No, those scare quotes were indeed out of place--Stalinist does  
describe Althusser's political and mortal nature with total accuracy.


Note that this is not an *ad hominem* argument against anything  
Althusser may have said, anymore than Heidegger's Nazism is an  
argument against   anything Heidegger may have said.  Any arguments  
worth discussing from either man have undoubtedly been made by others  
and so should be discussed
in their own terms without needing to refer to their more-than-suspect  
originators.



Shane Mage

> This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
> always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
> kindling in measures and going out in measures."
>
> Herakleitos of Ephesos






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Re: [Marxism] Althusser

[Gary MacLennan]

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There's something about mental illness that precludes rational discussion
of it on mailing lists.  I have tried over the years and have only ended up
being deeply hurt.

For what it is worth though I am with Richard on this one. Althusser was a
"mighty thinker" and his work still commands serious engagement.

On a somewhat different track I suspect, though I have no certain
knowledge, that Althusser suffered from schizophrenia or schizo affective
disorder ratheer than manic depression.  The reason I suspect this is that
the pattern of his behaviour does not fit manic depression as far as the
limited extent of my knowledge of the syndrome would lead me to believe.

The other reason is that there is certainly less stigma attached to manic
depression than schizophrenia and it is often a diagnosis preferred by
those who want to maintain some one's reputation.  I once for instance
corresponded with an author (Pamela Blevins I think) who insisted the the
first World War poet, Ivor Gurney was bipolar and not a schizophrenia
sufferer. Her argument was based on the the quite false notion that people
with schizophrenia live in two worlds. I also tended to believe that she
could not quite accept her hero had schizophrenia.

I am not suggesting of course that Richard is motivated by that in any
way.  Still the diagnosis of a mental illness is by no means an exact
science. But leaving that all to one side the crucial thing to hold on to
is the suffering of the mentally ill.  It is truly terrible and terrifying
to behold.

I have nothing in my heart but the deepest sympathy for Althusser's fate.

comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] Althusser

[Ben fogel]

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The idea that Althusser did not really understand Marx can be traced back to 
Tony Judt's pathetic little article about Althusser titled "The Paris 
Strangler". In which Judt an "intellectual" essentially dabbles in the News of 
the World criticism.

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[Marxism] Barbershop Punk; A People Uncounted

[Louis Proyect]

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Two documentaries of note:

1. Barbershop Punk: a profile of Robb Potolski, a Republican and ex-cop, 
whose investigations of Comcast's refusal to transmit his mp3's of 
barbershop quartet recordings led to the key battle over "net neutrality"


2. A People Uncounted: a kind of "Shoah" for the Roma people

full: 
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2011/11/13/barbershop-punk-a-people-uncounted/



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[Marxism] Althusser and Capital

[Angelus Novus]

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This is probably the quote being misremembered:

"I only read Capital in 1964-65 for the seminar which was to lead to Livre 'Le 
Capital'.  If I remember correctly three individuals, Pierre Macherey, Etienne 
Balibar, and Francois Regnault, came to see me in my office in January 1965 to 
ask if I would help them read Marx's early works.  So it was not my initiative 
which led me to 
talk about Marx at the Ecole but rather a request on the part of a few 
students.  This initial collaboration gave rise to the Seminar of 1964-65. . . 
. Balibar, Macherey, Regnault, Miller, and Ranciere, etc., were there. . . . We 
worked on the text of Capital during the entire summer of 1965.  At the start 
of the new academic year, it was Ranciere, to our great relief, who agreed to 
sort out the difficulties.  He spoke for two hours on three occasions with 
extreme precision and rigour.  I 
still say that without him nothing would have been possible. . . . When 
the first person speaks at such length and in such detail, the others 
take advantage of it for their own work.  This is certainly what I did, and I 
admit quite openly that on this occasion I owed a great deal to Ranciere."

I think a lot of the hostility to Althusser from some people results from a 
misplaced desire to construct opposing dichotomies, i.e. Hegelian Marxism vs. 
Spinozaist Marxism, dialectical materialism vs. aleatory materialism, Lukacs 
vs. Althusser, Adorno vs. Foucault, etc.

The Platypus nitwits are the worst in this regard, having adopted the 
irritating polemical stance of labeling anyone who isn't Hegelian of being a 
"Heideggerian".

Althusser is like any other theorist: you take the useful stuff, disregard what 
isn't immediately useful, see how it helps you to understand reality.  The 
essay on ideology is damned insightful.


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Re: [Marxism] Althusser

[Lenin's Tomb]

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On 13/11/2011 19:17, Sean Noonan wrote:

1) Didn't Althusser admit he didn't really understand Capital?


No, not in the least.  This is obviously a fourth hand mis-remembering 
of something that Althusser wrote in his posthumous memoir.



2) as Lou suggests in his nugget from the archives much of Althusser is so
abstract it is vacuous.


This doesn't engage with the subject at its own level.


3) The rational kernal worth keeping in Althusser is already available in
Gramsci.


That's a view.  One way to make it persuasive is to back it up, 
demonstrate insight or knowledge.  You haven't done either yet.



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[Marxism] Althusser

[Sean Noonan]

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Lenin's tomb writes:
"If we reject this, as we should, then what does the fact that he strangled
Helene in the grip of manic depression have to do with his reading of
Capital."

1) Didn't Althusser admit he didn't really understand Capital?
2) as Lou suggests in his nugget from the archives much of Althusser is so
abstract it is vacuous.
3) The rational kernal worth keeping in Althusser is already available in
Gramsci.

Sean

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[Marxism] Krugman on EuroZone Debt

[Tom Cod]

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Krugman in a recent NYT Op-Ed said right wing and mainstream media
narratives of Euro debt crises of Greece, Italy etc as a product of
the "welfare state" and excessive public debt are wrong, pointing to
Canada and Sweden as countries with better social programs and higher
debt that are not in an economic crisis.  He points to the fact that
countries like Greece and Italy adopted the Euro currency as the
proximate cause of their troubles, that on that basis interest rates
on their debt were artificially inflated.  Any of our theoretical
minds here care to deconstruct that further?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/11/opinion/legends-of-the-fail.html?_r=1


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Re: [Marxism] Lenin's Tomb on Althusser

[Louis Proyect]

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On 11/13/11 2:15 PM, Tom Cod wrote:


And Mark Curtis as well?



You bring this kind of obscure stuff up on the SWP Yahoo mailing list, 
not here. Nobody knows and nobody cares about Mark Curtis here, starting 
with me.



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Re: [Marxism] Lenin's Tomb on Althusser

[Tom Cod]

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And Mark Curtis as well?

On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 10:11 AM, Louis Proyect  wrote:

> Yeah, fry them all...
>
> Althusser, Jared Loughner, John Hinckley Jr., Mark David Chapman...
>
> And then piss on their ashes...
>
> That's the revolutionary path...
>


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[Marxism] Social Opposition in Age of Internet: Desktop "Militants' and Public Intellectuals

[Negar Mottahedeh]

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"The internet, deliberately or not, has “privatized” political life. Many 
otherwise potential activists have come to believe that circulating manifestos 
to other individuals is a political act, forgetting that only public action, 
including confrontations with their adversaries in public spaces, in city 
centers and in the countryside, is the basis of political transformations...

Let us remember that the original impetus for the growth of “IT” came from the 
demands of big financial institutions, investment banks and speculative traders 
who sought to move billions of dollars and euros with the touch of a finger 
from one country to another, from one enterprise to another, from one commodity 
to another.

Internet technology was the motor force for the growth of globalization at the 
service of financial capital.

The public sphere diminished its role in the productive sector of the economy. 
However, the military sector has grown with expansion of colonial and imperial 
wars.
The basic issue underlying any discussion of the public sphere and the social 
opposition is not its decline or growth but rather the class interests which 
define the role of the public sphere. Under neo-liberalism, the public sphere 
is directed by the use of public treasury to finance bank bailouts, militarism 
and expanded police state intervention. A public sphere directed by the “social 
opposition” (workers, farmers, professionals, employees) would enlarge the 
scope of public sphere activity with regard to health, education, pensions, 
environment and employment.

The concept of the “public sphere” has two opposing faces (Janus-like): one 
facing capital and the military; the other labor/social opposition. The role of 
the internet is also subject to this duality: on the one hand the internet 
facilitates large scale movements of capital and rapid imperial military 
interventions; on the other hand it provides rapid flow of information to 
mobilize the social opposition. The basic question is what kind of information 
is transmitted to what political actors and for what social interest?"


Full text: 
http://www.eurasiareview.com/13112011-social-opposition-in-age-of-internet-desktop-militants-and-public-intellectuals-analysis/

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Re: [Marxism] Lenin's Tomb on Althusser

[Lenin's Tomb]

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On 13/11/2011 17:40, Kathleen McCook wrote:

There are a lot of
people who don't kill their spouses to care about before him.


Indeed.  But what does this have to do with Althusser's attempt to 
reconstitute Marxism?  I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't discuss the 
killing of Helene Althusser, but I am suggesting that the killing is no 
reason at all not to discuss Althusser's Marxism.



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Re: [Marxism] Lenin's Tomb on Althusser

[Lenin's Tomb]

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On 13/11/2011 18:03, Tom Cod wrote:

Oh, how about the issue of violence against women and holding those
responsible for it accountable.


I'm for this.  I'm against scoffing at mental illness and getting rid of 
the notion of "diminished responsibility".  I am also against any 
temptation to dismiss Althusser's theoretical contribution because he 
killed his wife.  There was a tendency among anticommunists to imply 
that Althusser's act somehow reflected his ideological commitments.  If 
we reject this, as we should, then what does the fact that he strangled 
Helene in the grip of manic depression have to do with his reading of 
Capital?



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[Marxism] Chapel Hill Anarchists Occupy Downtown Building

[Tristan Sloughter]

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http://trianarchy.wordpress.com/2011/11/13/this-building-is-ours-chapel-hill-anarchists-occupy-downtown-building/#

Will be interesting if other cities have groups start taking vacant
buildings and using them.

I believe this has already been happening in Detroit where vacant buildings
have been used for growing food.

Tristan

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Re: [Marxism] Lenin's Tomb on Althusser

[Manuel Barrera]

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Hey, Lenin and everybody,


He Killed His Wife. 

But, Damn, TC, Sandusky/kids=Althusser/Wife? Really?

No wonder the British--you know, the ones who murdered each other over popery 
v. Luther and throw adolescents in jail for decades over some stolen bread--can 
retort about Americans being "uncivilised". Because, well, the political is 
personal and neologisms mark someone as an erudite scholar.

signed

Marx and Engels
  

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Re: [Marxism] Lenin's Tomb on Althusser

[Louis Proyect]

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On 11/13/11 1:03 PM, Tom Cod wrote:


Oh, how about the issue of violence against women and holding those
responsible for it accountable.



Yeah, fry them all...

Althusser, Jared Loughner, John Hinckley Jr., Mark David Chapman...

And then piss on their ashes...

That's the revolutionary path...


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Re: [Marxism] Lenin's Tomb on Althusser

[Tom Cod]

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Oh, how about the issue of violence against women and holding those
responsible for it accountable.

>
> I don't know what the attitude of French feminists is, or why only French
> feminists should have a point of view about the killing of Helene Althusser,
> but I would imagine most aren't inclined to scoff at the subject of mental
> illness, or to dismantle the defence of "diminished responsibility" just
> because a country as uncivilised as the United States does so.
>


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Re: [Marxism] Lenin's Tomb on Althusser

[Jim Farmelant]

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On Sun, 13 Nov 2011 17:19:05 + Lenin's Tomb
 writes:

> 
> On 13/11/2011 17:05, Tom Cod wrote:
> > Yeah, I dunno, I was never into the personal is political mantra, 
> but
> > this is really over the top.  I wonder what French feminists had 
> to
> > say about this.  I note that the defense of "diminished
> > responsibility", rightly or wrongly, has been abolished in most of 
> the
> > US.  The guy kills his wife in a horrific act of domestic violence 
> and
> > it gets brushed off as an episode of his self reported and self
> > serving mental illness.
> 
> I'm afraid you don't know what you're talking about.  Althusser's 
> mental 
> illness was well known to friends, associates, medical professionals 
> and 
> his wife.  He had spent time repeatedly in psychiatric clinics, for 
> 
> longer periods each time.  Everyone who knew him knew of his 
> torment.  
> His severe and worsening manic depression was diagnosed and subject 
> to 
> ongoing treatment, not merely self-reported.

Richard is certainly correct about that.  Althusser suffered
from manic depression for virtually his entire adult life.
He was hospitalized many times for it and endured
virtually every treatment that French psychiatry had
available.  Everything from psychoanalytic talk therapy,
to drug therapies and even shock therapy.  These
treatments did seem to give him temporary relief
but no permanent cure.


> 
> I don't know what the attitude of French feminists is, or why only 
> French feminists should have a point of view about the killing of 
> Helene 
> Althusser, but I would imagine most aren't inclined to scoff at the 
> 
> subject of mental illness, or to dismantle the defence of 
> "diminished 
> responsibility" just because a country as uncivilised as the United 
> 
> States does so.

That in fact did become a big controversy in France at the time.
As I understand things, French laws concerning diminished
responsibility were tightened up, possibly in part as a reaction
to Althusser's case.  The French equivalent to the tabloid press
certainly made a big deal over it.  And various French intellectuals
felt the need to weigh in on it, either pro or con. Interestingly
enough, Catholic intellectuals were among some of Althusser's
strongest defenders.


Jim Farmelant
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Re: [Marxism] Lenin's Tomb on Althusser

[Kathleen McCook]

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Thank you on this.  There comes a point when the unreality of that mind
just falls too short based on behavior. There are a lot of people who have
done terrible things but can't write to make it less so. There are a lot of
people who don't kill their spouses to care about before him.

--Kathleen


> Yeah, I dunno, I was never into the personal is political mantra, but
> this is really over the top.  I wonder what French feminists had to
> say about this.  I note that the defense of "diminished
> responsibility", rightly or wrongly, has been abolished in most of the
> US.  The guy kills his wife in a horrific act of domestic violence and
> it gets brushed off as an episode of his self reported and self
> serving mental illness. We saw this same cavalier and dismissive
> attitude with DSK.  Sure, they had mental problems, there's not a
> criminal defendant out there that doesn't have mental problems, we all
> do.  It doesn't absolve them of responsibility, however.  It's not
> like he was Jared Loughner who was delusional and insane and "didn't
> understand the quality of his acts and know that they were wrong".
>
> We can just shrug that off and turn to a study of his obscure ideas as
> if nothing happened; personally I don't have much of an affinity for
> that at this point.  I mean, Paterno and Sandusky were good football
> coaches, but everybody who studies their legacy is gonna know about
> their moral failure as well.
>
> On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 8:35 AM, Lenin's Tomb
>  wrote:
> >
> >
> > If you mean to say, "isn't this the guy who, under the influence of manic
> > depression, strangled his wife", then indeed it is the very same
> individual.
>
> 
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Re: [Marxism] Lenin's Tomb on Althusser

[Jim Farmelant]

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On Sun, 13 Nov 2011 16:35:02 + Lenin's Tomb
 writes:
>

> On 13/11/2011 16:24, Tom Cod wrote:
> > Say, isn't this the guy who bludgeoned his wife to death?  
> Helluva
> > Sensitive New Age Guy of a Marxist Humanist.
> 
> If you mean to say, "isn't this the guy who, under the influence of 
> 
> manic depression, strangled his wife", then indeed it is the very 
> same 
> individual.  The laboured irony over Althusser being a sensitive New 
> Age 
> Marxist Humanist fails, however, on the simple ground that if there 
> is 
> one thing that Althusser never was, it is a humanist.
> 
> 

Althusser was not a humanist in the peculiary French
sense of that word.  For Althusser being a humanist
meant positing a philosophy of man which in turn
posits a concept of human nature.  Thus, according
to Althusser, the young Marx, in his earlier writings,
such as the 1844 Manuscripts, was most definately
a humanist, who talked much about human nature
and criticized capitalism for alienating man from his
own nature.  The mature Marx, as seen by Althusser,
instead explained thing scientifically in terms of
the conflicts between classes, the dialectic between
the forces of production and the relations of production, etc.
For Althusser, humanism is always a form of ideology.
It has no legitimate role in a science of history.


In fact in French thought, humanism versus antihumanism
was a big controversy in the 1960s and 1970s.  Most
of the structuralists, not just Althusser, were antihumanists.
Thus, Levi-Strauss was antihumanist, as was Althusser's
famous student, Michel Foucault and the famous psychoanalyst, 
Jacques Lacan. For Marxist antihumanists
like Althusser, antihumanism was seen as implicit in the
writings of the mature Marx, while many of the non-Marxist
antihumanists drew upon people like Heidegger or
figures liks Saussure or Freud as their source.


I think that Richard is a little bit off in saying that
Althusser was never a humanist.  He arguably was
back in the late 1940s and early 1950s when
he writing stuff on Marx and Hegel that were
not too different in substance from what other
humanist Marxists were writing at the time.
Arguably, Althusser himself experienced a kind
of epistemological rupture in his intellectual 
development, not unlike the one that he
attributed to Marx.
 
Jim Farmelant
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Re: [Marxism] Lenin's Tomb on Althusser

[Lenin's Tomb]

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On 13/11/2011 17:05, Tom Cod wrote:

Yeah, I dunno, I was never into the personal is political mantra, but
this is really over the top.  I wonder what French feminists had to
say about this.  I note that the defense of "diminished
responsibility", rightly or wrongly, has been abolished in most of the
US.  The guy kills his wife in a horrific act of domestic violence and
it gets brushed off as an episode of his self reported and self
serving mental illness.


I'm afraid you don't know what you're talking about.  Althusser's mental 
illness was well known to friends, associates, medical professionals and 
his wife.  He had spent time repeatedly in psychiatric clinics, for 
longer periods each time.  Everyone who knew him knew of his torment.  
His severe and worsening manic depression was diagnosed and subject to 
ongoing treatment, not merely self-reported.


I don't know what the attitude of French feminists is, or why only 
French feminists should have a point of view about the killing of Helene 
Althusser, but I would imagine most aren't inclined to scoff at the 
subject of mental illness, or to dismantle the defence of "diminished 
responsibility" just because a country as uncivilised as the United 
States does so.



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Re: [Marxism] Lenin's Tomb on Althusser

[Louis Proyect]

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On 11/13/11 9:17 AM, Louis Proyect wrote:


http://leninology.blogspot.com/2011/11/louis-althusser-and-socialist-strategy.html




Richard Seymour from above:

"The concept of overdetermination is taken over from Freudian 
psychoanalysis, in which it refers to the condensation of potent 
dream-thoughts, wishes, etc., in a single image."


http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/modernism/althusser.htm
Althusser

I don't have the patience or erudition to try to explain all of 
Althusser's connections to Lacanian structuralism or Hegelian 
dialectics. Neither do I have patience for much of his rather abstruse 
language, or for the neologisms like "overdetermination" that appear 
there. (That coke-head Freud invented the term "overdetermination", as 
far as I can tell, to describe objects in dreams that combined 
contradictory elements such as vampires in diapers riding motorcycles 
with training-wheels.)


I do have a favorable reaction, however, to things Althusser was saying 
in the 1962 article "Contradiction and Overdetermination". Basically 
this article is a call to arms against economic determinism, a bane of 
Marxism throughout the 20th century.


I hate economic determinism masquerading as Marxism. It makes me want to 
scream. I am usually confronted by the Trotskyist variant, while 
Althusser fought against the Stalinist version.


Economic determinism basically is a belief that social movements and 
beliefs are reflections of underlying economic structures. In its most 
sophisticated version, you get Charles Beard's "Economic Interpretation 
of the US Constitution" which attempted to explain the various clauses 
and subclauses in terms of the different economic interests of various 
constituencies of the American bourgeoisie. Now Beard was a 
Progressivist historian and didn't know any better. Stalin, a "Marxist", 
had no excuse when he elaborated his "3rd Period" theory, which stated 
that the Great Depression and the rise of fascism would create the 
contradictions necessary to turn the masses decisively toward 
revolutionary socialism. This undialectical approach had much in fact to 
do with the victory of Hitler and the destruction of the German 
Communist Party.


Althusser believed that it is a mistake to regard Marxism as a simple 
inversion of Hegel. If Hegel maintained that the dialectical unfolding 
of Ideas in history determine social relations and the state, then a 
simple view of Marx would tend to conclude that social relations 
determine ideas. Althusser is correct to point out that the relationship 
between social and economic relations is not "unmediated". Ideas, 
beliefs, customs, etc. become part of social relationships and can have 
as much material reality as a job or an apartment lease.


Althusser, interestingly enough, doesn't quote Marx as a counter- 
example to economic determinism. He cites Engels, that "distorter" of 
Marx who, along with Lenin, has been the favorite whipping-boy of 
academic Marxists for most of the century, including some folks on this 
list. Engels said, "The economic situation is the basis, but the various 
elements of the superstructure -- the political forms of the class 
struggle and its results: to wit constitutions established by the 
victorious class after a successful battle, etc., juridical forms, and 
then even the reflexes of all these actual struggles in the brains of 
the participants, political, juristic, philosophical theories, religious 
views and their further development into systems of dogmas -- also 
exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles, 
and in many cases preponderate in determing their form..."


Althusser, as I read him, is somebody who is urging the dogmatically 
minded--in his case, the French CP--to "go back" to Marx and Engels and 
forget about the one-dimensional malarkey coming from the pages of 
L'Humanitie. Good for Althusser.


Trotskyism and Maoism have also been a fertile ground for economic 
determinism. In their case, it has taken the most virulent form of 
"workerism". This is a belief that any social movement that does not 
rise directly out of the workplace at the point of production is to be 
suspected, if not viewed as reactionary. For a brief time, the SWP 
rejected "workerism" in the 1960's and 70's, but succumbed to it in the 
1980's. It is the kiss of death for a socialist organization.


Althusser's project seems to be of altogether different nature than that 
of the anti-Marxists grouped around the Frankfurt school, but I plan to 
say a word or two about them in the months to come. I also want to speak 
about Korsch, Gramsci, Lukacs, Laclau/Mouffe, Deleuze/Guattari and 
others. I am determined to speak about them in plain and perhaps 
unflattering language. Most o

Re: [Marxism] Lenin's Tomb on Althusser

[Lenin's Tomb]

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On 13/11/2011 16:24, Tom Cod wrote:

Say, isn't this the guy who bludgeoned his wife to death?  Helluva
Sensitive New Age Guy of a Marxist Humanist.


If you mean to say, "isn't this the guy who, under the influence of 
manic depression, strangled his wife", then indeed it is the very same 
individual.  The laboured irony over Althusser being a sensitive New Age 
Marxist Humanist fails, however, on the simple ground that if there is 
one thing that Althusser never was, it is a humanist.



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Re: [Marxism] Lenin's Tomb on Althusser

[Tom Cod]

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Say, isn't this the guy who bludgeoned his wife to death?  Helluva
Sensitive New Age Guy of a Marxist Humanist.


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[Marxism] How to build democracy, How to create a cooperative economy without profit

[Manuel Barrera]

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Hello, comradesI have been reading much on the "financial crisis" within the 
OWS; the growth of a significant amount of donations (over 1/2 $million at last 
count) and the processes that have become a challenge to the people of Zuccotti 
Park for how to manage this financial support democratically and transparently. 
This issue is, of course, exacerbated by the media scrutiny that will 
inevitably engage in a game of "gotcha" exposure attempting to de-legitimatize 
the goals of the movement against corporate greed. Further, what is also 
challenged is the unruliness of the movement's current decision-making 
processes using a "modified consensus" model (i.e., seeking consensus and then, 
if not, a 90% majority). The movement has also begun to engage in the use of a 
"spokes" council in between the deliberations of the General Assembly, which is 
still seen as the primary decision-making body. Some believe this development 
to be a step forward and others believe it to be a response to avoid the 
difficulties of attempting to reach consensus when money is involved. 


A number of Occupy cities (e.g., Oakland, Minnesota-Twin Cities are examples 
with which I am familiar) are experiencing similar issues though not in the 
same way. 

My questions here are "how should revolutionary marxists intervene in such 
discussions?" How would marxists approach a democratic rendering of the 
finances of this movement so that the movement does not either fall prey to 
anti-democratic mechanisms or become bogged down in debilitating discussions 
over the distribution of funds for engaging in the necessary actions to support 
this movement? In large part this issue of what do with money presages the 
greater question: what does a democratic and revolutionary socialist economy 
look like? 

Finally, for those in NYC, what is your analysis of the current decision-making 
structures at Liberty Park? 

I have been arguing here (MN) that (a) the consensus model is inherently 
anti-democratic but that (b) it is important bring honest believers in this 
model to a realization how such a model will inevitably result in silencing the 
very voices we are seeking to attract and (c) that we must move in successive 
stages toward a true democratic decision-making model. This approach is based 
on the real issues facing this Occupy movement with the existence of at least 
three distinct and contradictory forces--anarchist elements who use the 
consensus model to get their way, organized left groups such as Freedom Road 
and Socialist Alternative who see this movement as a source of mobilization for 
what they consider to be "their" issues often engaged outside of the GA 
process, and the left wing of the Democratic Party (embodied currently in the 
intervention of MoveOn.org) who are trying to push arbitrarily for "democratic 
majority" because it's how unions and political organizations "operate". With 
this array of forces, many of the more numerous un-affiliated activists waiver 
and all too often give in to the pressure or simply give up. To the credit of 
many, a large number of activist/militants remain committed to continuing the 
occupation and I plan to stay with them until the end (to the best of my 
current ability given so many of my own personal pressures). This larger 
majority resists the MoveOn push for "democracy" because of their healthy 
skepticism of union bureaucracy and Democratic machine politics. But they are 
equally dismayed by the clearly obstructionist maneuvering of anarchists and 
circumvention of the GA by more sectarian and anarchist elements [to be sure, 
there is also a small right wing Republican and Libertarian element that 
remains in the background but still present and "waiting in the wings"]

I have promoted the idea of the spokes council because it is my view that 
continuous GAs every evening seems unworkable at this moment when there is a 
definite downturn in participation (largely because of the combination of 
perceived chaos and winter). Having a spokes council in between GAs, in my 
view, helps the process of stronger deliberation over agenda-setting and such 
potentially hot-button issues such as money (though this issue is not nearly as 
acute as NYC, there is a budding issue beginning to emerge given that the purse 
strings are currently in one person's hands) and the more important political 
issues emerging over "black blocism". 

I will be very interested in hearing anyone's thoughts on the questions I've 
raised or perhaps links to other sources that address the issue of 
"revolutionary finances". I will also want to hear how people are addressing 
the specific issue in promoting democracy in the movement, especially any 
helpful transitional steps in educating toward a

[Marxism] David Harvey, Marx's method and the enigma of surplus

[robert mckee]

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http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2011/11/13/david-harvey-marxs-method-and-the-enigma-of-surplus/

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[Marxism] Niall Ferguson-Pankaj Mishra exchange

[Louis Proyect]

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http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n22/letters

Watch this man

It is not my habit to reply to hostile book reviews, but a personal 
attack that amounts to libel is another matter. Pankaj Mishra purports 
to discuss my book Civilisation: The West and the Rest, but in reality 
his review is a crude attempt at character assassination, which not only 
mendaciously misrepresents my work but also strongly implies that I am a 
racist (LRB, 3 November).


Mishra begins by insinuating a resemblance between me and the American 
racial theorist Theodore Lothrop Stoddard. Stoddard, the author of The 
Rising Tide of Color against White World-Supremacy (1920), was an 
out-and-out racist, a firm believer in ‘Aryan’ racial superiority, an 
opponent of unrestricted immigration and a Nazi sympathiser. Mishra 
describes my book The Pity of War as ‘Stoddardesque’. He goes on to say 
that my 2003 book Empire ‘belonged recognisably to the tradition of … 
“white people’s histories”’ and asserts that the book ‘celebrated … 
pith-helmeted missionaries’. Of my new book he says that I sound ‘like 
the Europeans … who “wanted gold and slaves”’ and that I feel ‘nostalgia 
for the intellectual certainties of the summer of 1914’.


As those who know me or who have read my work can attest, Mishra’s 
insinuation that I am a racist could scarcely be further from the truth. 
Unwittingly, he sabotages his own argument by quoting my words in 
Civilisation: ‘By 1913 … the world … was characterised by a yawning gap 
between the West and the Rest, which manifested itself in assumptions of 
white racial superiority and numerous … impediments to non-white 
advancement. This was the ultimate global imbalance.’ This is hardly a 
ringing endorsement of white supremacy. Mishra might also have quoted 
this passage from the same book:


The idea that the success of the United States was contingent on 
racial segregation was nonsense. It was quite wrong to believe, as 
[George] Wallace did, that the United States was more prosperous and 
stable than Venezuela or Brazil because of anti-miscegenation laws and 
the whole range of colour bars that kept white and black Americans apart 
in neighbourhoods, hospitals, schools, colleges, workplaces, parks, 
swimming pools, restaurants and even cemeteries. On the contrary, North 
America was better off than South America purely and simply because the 
British model of widely distributed private property rights and 
democracy worked better than the Spanish model of concentrated wealth 
and authoritarianism. Far from being indispensable to its success, 
slavery and segregation were handicaps to American development.


I could with ease cite many more passages conveying my own contempt for 
theories of racial difference. Indeed, the central theme of my book The 
War of the World – which Mishra does not mention – is the immense harm 
done by such theories in the 20th century. At the very least, Mishra 
owes me a public apology for his highly offensive and defamatory 
allegation of racism.


Not content with libelling me, Mishra also systematically misrepresents 
my new book, falsely alleging a whole series of omissions. He claims 
that in Civilisation I disregard ‘Muslim contributions to Western 
science’; in fact, I discuss them in some detail. He asserts that I 
‘offer no evidence’ for my claim that China was very far from being 
economically neck to neck with the West in 1800. In fact, the point is 
footnoted and the work of two Chinese scholars, Guan Hanhui and Li 
Daokui, clearly referenced; I also provide Angus Maddison’s figures for 
per capita income. Mishra alleges that ‘Asian leaders and intellectuals’ 
are ‘mute here as in all Ferguson’s books’ and that I do not discuss 
their growing awareness of Western predominance. In fact, I devote three 
pages each to the Ottoman and Japanese responses to Western ascendancy. 
Gandhi is quoted at length. He is no more ‘mute’ here than in Empire or 
War of the World. Mishra says I don’t mention the genocidal policies 
pursued by the Belgian rulers of the Congo: in fact, they are referred 
to twice. He claims that I do not discuss how Western innovations, when 
‘imposed on societies historically unprepared for them, could turn 
literally into killers’. Yet my discussions of the use of modern 
artillery in Chapter 2, and railways and ‘eugenics’ in Chapter 4, do 
precisely that.


Mishra also writes, gratuitously, that I am ‘immune to … humour and 
irony’. This is clearly his problem, not mine. He completely misses the 
point that the term ‘Chimerica’ coined by myself and Moritz Schularick 
in 2006 was from the outset – as the original article made clear – a pun 
on the word ‘chimera’, because we (correctly) regarded the post-1998 
Chinese-American economic relation

[Marxism] Lenin's Tomb on Althusser

[Louis Proyect]

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http://leninology.blogspot.com/2011/11/louis-althusser-and-socialist-strategy.html


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Re: [Marxism] Black bloc: we were inspired by Weathermen Days of Rag

[Greg McDonald]

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On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 6:34 PM, Dan  wrote:

, FOR private health-care (you got to be able to CHOOSE man).


NOAM CHOMSKY: "Well, healthcare is a dramatic case. I mean, for
decades, the healthcare issue has been right at the top of domestic
concerns, for very good reasons. The US has the most dysfunctional
healthcare system in the industrial world, has about twice the per
capita costs and some of the worst outcomes. It’s also the only
privatized system. And if you look closely, those two things are
related. And the privatized system is highly inefficient: a huge
amount of administration, bureaucracy, supervision, you know, all
kinds of things. It’s been studied pretty carefully.

Now, the public has had an opinion about this for decades. A
considerable majority want a national healthcare system, like other
industrial countries have. They usually say a Canadian-style system,
not because Canada is the best, but at least you know that Canada
exists. Nobody says an Australian-style system, which is much better,
because who knows anything about that? But something like what’s
sometimes called Medicare Plus, like extend Medicare to the
population."


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