[Marxism] Comic Marxism

["Jurriaan Bendien" <bendien@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

If commodity production makes no distinction between needs springing from
bodily appetites (Magen) and social imagination (Phantasie), it is because
their undialectical separation is a metaphysical illusion, a residue of the
Christian opposition between body and mind. Marx said that 'the criticism of
religion is the perquisite of all criticism' ['A Contribution To The
Critique Of Hegel's Philosophy Of Right. Introduction', 1844,
Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, translated Rodney Livingstone and Gregor
Benton, Early Writings, London: Penguin, 1975, p. 243].

There is no point in developing 'marxist' theories of culture if this
fundamental position on the christian denigration of the body is ignored. In
order to develop the 'spiritual sphere' as a social and political power,
with its churches and monasteries and land, Christianity adopted the
platonic argument that truth is eternal and abstract, while the actual
things of the world are temporary and imperfect. Those who questioned this
logic - Giordano Bruno for example - were burned at the stake. When Sokal is
denounced because he shows that Jacques Lacan does not understand topology
or that Julia Kristeva abuses mathematics, one feels a similar revulsion
against heresy: 'defend the stipend at all costs!'.

One argument against Sokal is that, despite his claim to be on the left, and
his record as a lecturer at the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua
under the Sandinistas, his crude scientific positivism gives the right an
opportunity to attack the left. All cultural work is in danger if we admit
that poststructuralist and postmodernist philosophy is idealist and
unconvincing. This shows a lack of confidence in the possibilities of a
genuine materialism, one predicated upon the marxist idea of the
emancipation of the working class, rather than upon creating academic spaces
for deluded speculation.

In the late 70s, the argument in England about Punk Rock was a graphic
example of the difference between idealists, who define what people are by
their choices in consumption, and materialists, for whom the essence of
mankind's species-being is productive labour. The Sex Pistols deliberately
produced music that was violent, nihilist and politically unsafe. It was not
possible to approach except in a productive manner. In 1977, the listener
had either to refuse the music, or become a punk in active opposition to
humdrum existence. There was no possibility of using the music like Tubular
Bells, as an ornamental addition to a regular life-style.

Some elements of the left - including the Workers Revolutionary Party -
denounced Punk as fascist, and would have nothing to do with it. In the
Socialist Workers Party, we decided to split punk apart over the issue of
racism, forcing its adherents to choose between nihilism against people and
nihilism against property relations and immigration controls. Rock Against
Racism was possible because, as marxists, we did not consider political
truth to reside in transcendental concepts - such as love, peace and
tolerance - but in the self-activity of bands and fans. The appetite for
punk records and gigs was an objective social fact which the left had to
relate to, not some 'commodity fetish' which the left could loftily ignore.
Since punk served adolescent sexual needs as well as the need for social
expression and adventure, there was no distinguishing between Magen and
Phantasie.

The full story at: http://www.militantesthetix.co.uk/Comic%20Marxism.htm




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