Left-wing Lester Bangs (WAS Re: Marxism, language and laughter)

["Daniel O'Connell" <dpoconnell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

?One big reason why party-building has been such a bust in the USA and other 
advanced
capitalist countries is. . .because today's Marxists have failed to develop a 
language
by which to communicate with working people. . .It's been my experience that 
most
American Marxists, depending on both their personal age and which political 
tendency
they belong to, use a language appropriate to

A) Czarist Russia
B) The Great Depression or
C) The Sixties

Read the People's World, The Militant, Worker's World, The Revolutionary 
Worker, or
any other ?organ? you like, and you'll see that ?Capitalism is knee deep in 
crisis;
the working class is organizing to fight back; (fill in your socialist 
motherland
here) is the only true bastion of socialism left on the planet, etc., etc., 
etc.??

?Julio
++++++++

Picking up this interesting thread again, I would have to say that there were 
two
writers who won me over to the Left through their writing: First, in his essays,
Jean-Paul Sartre, especially in his ?Elections?A Trap for Fools?(1)   in which 
he
advocates direct organizational action (as opposed to voting), in order to 
achieve
political change, also describing the primary barrier to such action, which 
consists
in the isolation of most (if not all) workers through racial, ethnic, and 
economic
serialization. He is describing France, circa 1973, but it might as well be the
U.S.A., circa 1983 (or any day, for that matter?there?s a relative timelessness 
about
it that?s engaging). I'm won't say I agree with him all of the time in his 
essays
(he's often off-track), but he writes well, and this essay is one place in his 
work
where his good writing and an accurate assessment of the situation at that time 
come
together.

And, in his novels, John Dos Passos, especially in his _U.S.A_ trilogy. While 
Dos
Passos is a bit more somber than Nestor?s candidate (Mark Twain), he has a way 
of
getting inside the hearts of his readers and leading them to sympathize with the
champions of the early part if this past century (the circa-1910 strugglers of 
The
I.W.W.), as opposed to Twain, who was more occupied with the Civil-War-era 
champions
(even?and especially?the quiet ones like Huck Finn).

It was only upon ?arriving on the Left,? as it were, and doing a bit of 
reading, that
I discovered what a pathetic state many of the journals are in right now. And
left-wing, journalistic fiction (analogous to what Dos Passos was doing)? 
Perhaps I'm
seriously ignorant (having spent the last 4 years reading mostly Robert Coover 
and
Philip K. Dick for my fiction), but does such a thing really exist in American
fiction? (I would propose Coover's "The Public Burning" as the last known 
candidate
for such a work.)

Even some of the more obvious candidates, which pass themselves off as political
fiction (_Primary Colors_ comes to mind), are merely recountings of private 
moments
which are jucily made public for the sake of harmless comedy (though the 
subjects of
this comedy pretend outrage).

The problem with contemporary fiction with regard to politics, whether Left or
Right?and I know this wasn?t Julio?s original concern, but Nestor?s mention of 
Mark
Twain as a starting point brings this digression on and, in so far as fiction 
_can_ be
viewed as a mobilizing force (we need think only of Sinclair?s _The Jungle_ 
here), I
think it?s relevant?I would say that the problem with contemporary fiction in 
this
regard is that it is mostly an excuse for retreat into the so-called inner 
life, the
"as-for-oneself (_quant-a-soi_) born of distrust, ignorance, and fear.?(2)

When it is not this, it is because a main character is forcibly pulled out of 
herself
on account of something more or less non-human?never on account of other people 
and
certainly?certainly?not on account of political goals.

This is not to say there is no good, recent fiction?that?s a different question.
(Obviously there are many talented writers out there?Jonathan Franzen and  Hanif
Kureishi are two favorites of mine.) But even in their writing, their is a turn 
to the
private, a turn inward. Even interactions between characters serve only to turn 
each
person back inward upon herself. (Even Coover himself takes this turn to the 
self in
his later work, such as in ?Gerald's Party? and ?Briar Rose?). Dos Passos, on 
the
other hand, always seemed to strike the right balance between the personal and 
the
political; it?s not that his character?s alleigances are any less heartfelt, 
but they
extend to people like ?Big Bill? Haywood and bodies like the I.W.W. But I 
digress
(still). . .

So, I couldn't agree with Julio more. The question is: What to do about it? 
Start a
journal of one's own? There's a good thought. . .I myself would be more 
inclined to
focus on fiction or drama myself, especially if I were to (first) steal and 
(then)
proclaim Ortega y Gasset's statement about the dramatic nature of future 
philosophy. .
.But still, it would be a real tool for organization and party-building to have 
a
journal you could count on every week or every month to turn out good, sharp,
persuasive writing on the matters that concern the Left. . .

The problem, which one inevitably encounters in imagining such a journal in the 
United
States, is stereotypies (as described by Roland Barthes)---those annoying 
whirlpools
of language so well-exemplified for us by Julio in his post. Those rhetorical 
tropes
and traps haave to be shunned at all costs before the "organs" of the left will
achieve anything like a modest following, because it's current sterotypies, 
rightly or
wrongly, are associated with a way of politics and life which has nothing to
contribute in the eyes of most white-collar and even blue-collar workers?and 
there's
the first stereotypy we could stand to smash right there: white-collar vs.
blue-collar.

But in sacrificing the sterotypies, we can't sacrifice the subject matter of a 
journal
to give people what (we think they think) they want to hear: To take the 
example of a
magazine, L(iving)M(arxism) did this in spades, and not only did they alienate 
people
?left and right,? as Louis noted, but?as far as I'm concerned?by the time they
expired, their name might just as well have been N(ational)R(eview) as LM, 
given some
of the articles they were running. So it's the way of speaking to people that 
needs
modification, but not what we're concerned with; our way of talking about what 
is most
vital to the interests of "those who work" in general----and we ALL work.

So, instead of talking to the man in the cubicle about worker ownership of the 
means
of production, and ending up looking like fodder for a mildly amusing Dilbert 
cartoon,
we might ask instead how it would be possible to radically alter that ESOP he?s 
so
familiar with?that opiate given out by the corporation which he holds like his 
own
limp d**k in his hands?so that it becomes a true, powerful, and genuine 
ownership on
the part of the one working and participating?

Instead of, for example, seeing in the legalization of gay marriage and partner
benefits as the two pillars of some sort of door which leads to a promised 
never-never
land of non-descrimination, we might ask instead how we can play off the current
disintigration of the so-called ?nuclear? family to bring about, not a tired 
mimetics
of the nuclear family, but different, collective-living models that would 
sublate (and
therefore preserve, to some extent), the disintigrating family in various 
forms, and
bridge the gap between family and the political sphere?

Those are just two examples, but this isn't about a specific position being 
taken
necessarily; rather, it's about good clear writing spiced with wit and humor. 
Clearly,
the party ?organs? show the ?road not-to-be-taken? in so far as they are glad 
just to
have copy of any quality for a given issue, as does most postmodernist stuff 
show it.
(The rub seems, sometimes, even to be getting ?the bucks? to assemble a good 
staff of
socialist writers, letting them really go to town on the issues of the day in a
transformative way, without being concerned by sales or profits beyond 
subsistence,
and having a good editor to back them up, who's not going to mind that his 
magazine
reaches only 4,000 people at first.) All these things are signs that have to be
heeded. And, of course, as Carrol points out, such a journal or such a magazine 
would
have to spring from a living active community, an ongoing struggle. This needs 
to be
explored further on this list, especially with regard for the que!
stion of the relation between the struggle and the writing that accompanies it.
There's little agreement, really, on the specifics of this relationship.

Look---Everyone on the left seems to say?and David (McReynolds) comes to mind
here?that our positions are just, our positions are  the products of common 
sense. But
where's the journal that's putting this stuff out there in the language of 
common
sense, albeit transformed? Where is this going on? Almost nowhere, as far as I 
can
tell. Could it be that our positions are _not_ common sense, after all? Surely 
we
can't be wrong about that? What is it then?...

Is the Chomskian thesis right, then? Would such a journal be drowned by apathy
engendered in ?the manufacture of consent??

I think we cannot _possibly_ know the answer to that question, because no one 
has
really tried truly kick-ass writing in the past 30 years, and every time they 
have,
it?s been in the service of something else (for the most part--a few exceptions 
come
to mind, obviously). But the Left needs a journal which could be its Archiv fur
Geschichte der Philosoophie (i.e., an academic powerhouse). But not _just_ 
that; the
Left also needs a Creem! Magazine. . .The Left needs. . . ---a Lester Bangs!(3)

Daniel
OCONNELL@xxxxxxx
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
(1) First published in Les Temps modernes, No. 318 / January 1973. Reprinted in
Situations X (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1975). Translated and published in
Life/Situations: Essays Written and Spoken (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977).

(2) Life/Situations, p. 12.

(3) You were wondering when I was going to mention Lester, weren't you? With 
apologies
to Lester...wherever he is...

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