Re: fascism and unions and the masses

[jinigo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Juan Inigo)]

Louis Proyect writes:

>I look forward to continuing discussions between you and Carlos over
>these matters, but I would strongly urge you to consider the following
>steps when you write about historical matters rather than the usual
>abstract philosophical or economical theories:
>
>1. Do not use more than 20 words per sentence.
>
>2. Do not use more than 4 sentences per paragraph.
>
>3. Do not use more than 5 words in a sentence that have more 3 syllables.
>
>They have computer software to assist you by the way. I recommend
>Microsoft Word's grammar-checker. Run your postings through this
>beforehand and do not post unless you are error-free. I guarantee that
>everybody on the list will deeply appreciate the changes.

Some time ago, Louis declared that my words were his obsession; an
obsession he could only calm down by drowning it in water from his outside
and in alcohol from his inside. Maybe he has somehow confused the two
liquids now, making an unaccustomed dose of water get into his brains.
Maybe it is only just Louis has the brains of a MS grammar-checker.

Of course, none of these possibilities concern me as such. The only thing
that concerns me in Louis post is that which I look for in every message
posted to the Marxism list: its political meaning. Yes, the Marxism list
makes no sense to me other than as a place were to develop a specific part
of my facing of science as a necessary concrete form of the proletariat's
conscious revolutionary action. It is from this point of view that I have
considered every discussion that has gone through the list, even those
dealing with such critical aspects for the proletariat's political action
as one carried some time ago through 20 or 30 messages about arugula,
radichio, Perrier and San Pellegrino waters, in which Louis was deeply
involved.

The political meaning of Louis' post starts to show quite before it takes
concrete shape through Louis' "readability index" narrowness:

>Louis: I usually don't find myself reading Juan Inigo's posts because I
>don't find much use in abstract discussions of the LTV and dialectics. I al=
so
>find his prose nearly unreadable. (I, by the way, studied Hegel, Husserl,
>Wittgenstein and Heidegger in graduate school, and apart from acting the
>buffoon on this list, can handle complex ideas as well as the next person.)

As Marx discovered, the products of human labor develop their specific
historical forms of values, thus becoming commodities, when the general
regulation of social life takes shape by making the material production to
be at the same time the production of this general regulation itself, the
production of the general social relation. This materialized general social
relation develops into the subject itself of social production, capital,
thus turning all human potencies into powers alienated in it. But, at the
same time, capital produces the proletariat as the social class that
carries in itself the necessity of personifying through its conscious
revolutionary action the development of this alienated social relation to
the point where it annihilates itself into a new general social relation:
the conscious regulation of social life by the therefore freely associated
individuals, socialism/communism.

So when one is facing the determinations of value, one is not dealing with
an ahistorical philosophical or economical abstraction. One is facing the
simplest historical specific form of our general social relation, and
therefore, the simplest specific determination of each and every of one's
political actions. One's political action can be a conscious one, an action
that cognizes its own necessity beyond appearances, only if it starts by
appropriating in thought its own necessity from the very beginning of this
necessity's development, hence, from _value_ (and, rather, commodities).

The alienation of human potencies as capital's potencies takes concrete
form in the alienation of human consciousness concerning its own
determinations. This alienation necessarily realizes itself by determining
the form itself of the process of scientific cognition as a
_representation_ of reality. As such, this representation necessarily
starts by stopping the analysis at the appearances of the concrete real
forms, turning them into mental abstractions. Then, it can only put these
abstractions into relation, represent them, by following a purely mental
necessity alien to their real one, a logic. The externality of the
necessity that underlies the resulting construction vis a vis the real
necessity at stake, and the apparent nature of the cognition thus achieved,
become immediately visible even from the representation's own point of
view: it is impossible to know if the represented relations truly
correspond to the real ones, before the action ruled by this cognition is
performed. Therefore, logical representations are just different forms of
interpreting the world, so the action ruled through them is the very
negation of the action that is aware of its own necessity beyond
appearances.

By facing a real concrete form, _capital_, Marx discovers that it is
possible to analytically discover the simplest specific necessity that
determines a real form, to follow thereafter this necessity in its
development until reproducing it in thought. Moreover, Marx discovers that
this reproduction is not an abstract question that just concerns scientific
method as such. He discovers that this reproduction is the concrete form
that the revolutionary production of the consciously regulated society
necessarily takes: this production needs to materialize itself in the
conscious action that is determined as such for being regulated through the
reproduction in thought of its own necessity as such revolutionary action.
And this is what "Capital" is about. In other words, Marx discovered that
the ruling of the proletariat conscious action necessarily takes form in a
cognition opposed even by its form itself to representation: the
_reproduction_ of the concrete through the path of thought, dialectics.

In brief, that which according to Louis is about "handling complex ideas"
about "abstract philosophical or economical theories" opposed to
"historical matters," from my point of view is about the conscious ruling
of the proletariat's revolutionary action. Each of us personifies a quite
different social necessity.

This difference reflects itself even in the way each one of us faces
reading, "Hegel, Husserl, Wittgenstein and Heidegger," for instance. For
Louis, it is about an academic matter, an abstract studying. For me, it is
always about facing real forms and, therefore, about critically reading
existing texts demanding from them that they provide me with the support
that can potentiate my individual process of cognizing those real forms.
How? By determining that process as a process, not of original cognition
but, of _recognition_ from the social point of view. Therefore, I only
spent my time in looking over Husserl, Wittgenstein and Heidegger, since I
rapidly discovered they were useless given my objective.

On the contrary, I found Hegel's "Logic" to be really productive, even to
follow the necessity of the inversion suffered by dialectics. And not only
in Hegel's hands, but in the hands of those that turn Marx's _reproduction_
in thought of the specificity of present-day society into a
_representation_ of this specificity, into an _interpretation_ of the
world. So I have never "studied" Hegel; what I have done is to "work" with
Hegel's "Logic" by facing the real concrete forms relevant to my action and
critically demanding Hegel's "Logic" to account for their necessity. But,
mainly, what I have been doing for more or less the same time that Louis
spent "immersed in Marxism," is to daily work with Marx's texts in that
same way.

It is time now to get into Louis' grammar-checker political points of view.
The grammar-checking spirited Louis demands from me: "Do not use more than
20 words per sentence, more than 4 sentences per paragraph, more than 5
words in a sentence that have more 3 syllables." Very concrete real forms,
Peronism for instance, do not fit into abstractly defined "short" sentences
if they are to be placed together with the determinations that make them be
such concrete forms. And this fact becomes even more critical in e-mail
posts, where only very brief forms of making these determinations explicit
fit even in the lengthiest posts. In dialectical cognition, paragraphs are
organically determined by the development of the real necessity that is
being reproduced in thought. Therefore, the length of a paragraph depends
on the complexity itself through which an abstract real form realizes the
necessity that determines it as such, by developing itself into its
concrete specific forms. In turn, the length of words has a historical
determination generally associated with how much of the referred real
object's specificity, and therefore, determinations, are explicitly
comprised in its name. Also in general, Spanish words tend to be longer
than their non-Latin English equivalent, let alone German words. Of course,
I tend to use English Latin words rather than their non-Latin synonyms. But
lengthier words can not actually affect a critical reading that demands
from the readers to reproduce by themselves the development presented in
the original text, as dialectical cognition does.

Besides, the use of active and passive voices is specifically determined in
a dialectical exposition depending on where the emphasis is placed: active
voice for the realization by the subject of the necessity that determines
it as such, passive voice to express the subject as the result of its
determinations.

The demand for abstractly defined "short sentences," "short paragraphs" and
"short words" is actually the concrete form taken by the ideological need
of capital to represent every real concrete form as an abstract one, by
isolating it from its determinations. But, of course, it is this need under
the concrete form of yet another abstraction: the "objectivity" of a
grammar-checker. Once the organicity of the real forms at stake has been
destroyed through "short sentences, paragraphs, words," the field is
prepared for the massive, fast, uncritical, reading demanded to win the
corresponding credits; yes, for the academic "study" of texts Louis handles
"as well as the next person" (in academic fields, of course). Louis wants
us to believe that grammar checkers do not carry in themselves any
ideological determination, but that they are the expressions of the eternal
nature of human writing!

>Juan's grammar is impeccable. It is the "Gunning fog factor" that
>is the problem. ... It involves
>factors such as length of sentence, number of sentences in paragraph,
>number of multisyllabic words, passive voice occurrence, etc ...
>If you get
>something like a 30, you are borderline readable. If you get a 20, you
>are in good shape. I ran Juan's piece on Peronism through my Microsoft
>grammar-checker (which performs readability testing) and he got a 645.

and then he added

>I don't object to Juan's writing in the style of Grundrisse when he is
>trying to address abstract philosophical/economical problems.
> ...
>But when he starts trying to explain Peronism using the same type of
>superinflated and philosophical language, I get irritated. Read the 18th
>Brumaire if you want to see a thought process and language that's appropria=
te
>to an analysis of such phenomena as Bonapartism, populism or fascism.

The grammar-checking spirited Louis opposes the forms of my writings to
Marx's "18th Brumaire." Since I am not interested in wasting my time in
abstract discussions, I have done what Louis should before showing himself
such a pedantic cretin. I ran my message that Louis was referring to
(excluding quotations) and a part of equivalent length randomly taken from
Marx's "18th Brumaire" (part 4 in the Colorado Archives) through Louis
beloved MS grammar-checker. Here are the results:

Sentences per paragraph: 6 (Marx), 2 (Juan)
Words per sentence: 30 (Marx), 26 (Juan)
Characters per word: 4 (Marx), 5 (Juan)
Passive sentences: 29% (Marx), 23% (Juan)
=46lesch reading ease: 40.7 (Marx), 37.7 (Juan)
=46lesch grade level: 14.3 (Marx), 14.8 (Juan)
=46lesch-Kincaid: 13.9 (Marx), 13.6 (Juan)

Were I a pedantic grammar-checker brained like Louis, I could start
boasting about my "reading ease" being greater than Marx's! But damn it, we
are both far beyond the border of "readability." Wait, maybe Louis approach
is actually taking us to a discovery of practical and historical
importance. Maybe Louis could tell us that the proletariat hasn't developed
a massive revolutionary consciousness yet because Marx didn't use ... a
grammar cheker! Or, maybe he could introduce more substance into the
=46ascism seminar through the hypothesis that Nazism arose in Germany becaus=
e
the length of German words and its verbal structures made Hitler's text's
lack "reading ease"! But no, in reality, Louis's "I strongly urge you to
consider the following steps" has a double faced, very miserable substance.

In the first place, it is an open attempt against the substance of my
arguments (in general and in the specific discussion about Peronism)
through an ad hominem argument stressed by the patronizing tone Louis uses,
his appeal to "I guarantee that everybody on the list," and the opposition
of Marx's comparative "ease" of reading to my "superinflated and
philosophical language."

The problem for Louis is that I didn't come to the Marxist list as a
political newborn. I came to the list with a very concrete political
object, that of introducing the discussion of the historical forms of
scientific cognition as a necessary concrete form of revolutionary action.
And I came to the list with enough political experience to distinguish a
true argument from a degraded and dirty trick in form and content.

In the second place, and what really matters, is that Louis needed to
resort to his ad hominem arguments to cover the true content of his points
of view:

>But when Juan asserts that the real question with respect to Peronism is
>the following, he is utterly incomprehensible:
>
>> What specificity of the national form taken by the process of capital
>> accumulation in Argentina needs to realize itself by taking such a
>> political and ideological expression that starts by abstracting from
>> reality at the same time that presents itself as following Marx's path?
>
>Juan, take a good look at these words. They might mean something to you,
>but they mean absolutely nothing to me. I have been immersed in Marxism
>for 27 years.
> ...
>What point are you trying to make about "capital accumulation"? If I pay
>very close attention to your argument, you begin to sound more and more
>like an economic determinist than a Marxist. Capital accumulation is
>interesting, but it is not the determinant factor in the class struggle.

Capital accumulation an abstractly "interesting" thing? How much
"interesting"? More interesting than weather for small talk perhaps? Is it
not the determinant "factor" of class struggle? Louis has been "immersed in
Marxism for 27 years." During that time, has he ever "paid very close
attention" to the fact that Marx even called the book were he reproduced in
thought the determinations of our general social relation until discovering
its necessity to annihilate itself into socialism/communism through the
revolutionary action of the proletariat, and therefore, through class
struggle, "Capital"? And most important, has Louis ever "paid very close
attention" to Marx's discoveries, synthesized in paragraphs (condemned to
"low readability" by grammar checkers, of course) as:

"Capital is the economic power wholly dominant of bourgeois society. It
must constitute the departing point as much as the ending point, =8A"
(Grundrisse)

or

"Capitalist production, therefore, under its aspect of a continuous
connected process, of a process of reproduction, produces not only
commodities, not only surplus-value, but it also produces and reproduces
the capitalist relation; on the one side the capitalist, on the other the
wage-labourer." (Capital I, part. VII, "The accumulation of capital")

I am no less, no more, "economic determinist" than Marx himself. What truly
happens is that Louis needs to turn class struggle, and therefore, the
proletariat's revolutionary action, into an abstraction determined by an
ideal "factor". What "determinant factor" is he talking about that is not
determined itself as a concrete form of the present-day general social
relation, of capital? Is it about some eternal "morality," "solidarity" or
"social justice"? Of course, these three social forms are only just three
ideological forms taken by the alienation of human potencies in capital,
that the revolutionary action needs to bring to their historical end. Is it
about some abstract traitorous spirit that descends as a damnation on the
proletarian leaders turning them into bureaucrats? Is it about some
abstract "subjective factor" that can only be a concrete social relation
and therefore a concrete form of the general social relation, capital, but
that, at the same time, floats somwhere in an idealistic conception beyond
the scope of capital? No wonder Louis finds no meaning in my developments.

Yet, Louis gives us a clear trace of what this fantastic determination is ab=
out:

>I also have a pretty good knowledge of Argentinian
>politics, having been chosen by my party to defend Nahuel Moreno's
>perspectives there against the Robin Hood ultraleftists of the PRT/Combatie=
nte.
> ...
>The reason bourgeois
>nationalism has been so successful at mystifying the masses in Latin
>American is that nine our of ten times it has been endorsed by the
>Communist Parties or by Social Democracy. What is so complicated about
>this?

Nahuel Moreno, indeed! In the early '50s Nahuel Moreno was a founding
member of the "Partido Socialista de la Revolucion Nacional" (Socialist
Party of the National Revolution), that boasted about belonging to the
Peronist movement! In the early '60s Nahuel Moreno was the Director of the
"Palabra Obrera" (The Worker Word) newspaper. Just beneath its title, it
claimed "Bajo la conduccion del General Peron" (Under the conduction of
General Peron)! This is of course something that anyone that has "a pretty
good knowledge of Argentinian politics" and that, furthermore, has taken
part in the discussions around the PRT in the late '60s can not ignore.
Yes, Louis came to Argentina in the late '60s to defend one of those "nine
out of ten" communists and socialists that "endorsed" "bourgeois
nationalism" "mystifying the masses in Latin American"! Que asco!

On the contrary, all along my political life I have belonged to the "one
out of ten" (just to take Louis' figures) that constantly pointed out the
nature of Peronism as the necessary political concrete form through which a
national process of capital accumulation that presents all the bloody
general forms inherent in capitalism, realizes itself. Moreover, and this
is the specificity of my own development, I have pointed out that this is a
national process of capital accumulation whose specificity arises from the
fact that it frees capital from its historical necessity to develop the
material productive powers of society, on the basis of the appropriation of
the ground-rent. Consequently, my political life has gone through constant
discussions with first-hand Peronists and the second-hand left "endorsers"
of Peronism. At this stage, a further discussion with a
grammar-checker-minded third-hand "endorser" of Peronism has little to do
with my political priorities.

Juan Inigo
jinigo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx



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