Re: [Marxism] Why Does Fahrenheit 9/11 Pursue Conspiracy Theory?

["James Daly" <james.irldaly@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Louis Proyect wrote:
 Marxism, by contrast, could never inspire literature or films such as these
[Capra, Stone]. Why not is an interesting question.

Reply:
Partly, no doubt, because the ruling ideas of every age are the ideas of its
ruling classes.  But it is also, I think, because "Marxism" (not Marx)
abandoned human values in favour of anti-humanist amoral positivism and
scientism (Bakunin had a point about government by scientists!).
The very influential Allen Wood (*Marx*, Routledge) argued at great length
that Marx rejected any appeal to justice, and was in fact an "immoralist";
in this he compared him to Nietzsche who "went beyond good and evil".  In
point of fact, however, Nietzsche, although he stigmatised appeals to
justice  (against evil) as "womanly weakness", upheld his own view of
justice -- the justice of the food chain and the pecking order.  In this
Marx was his antithesis.  He came to science from concern with humanity, to
expose bourgeois injustice and inhumanity.  To do this he had to study
political economy, to expose the bourgeois ideology -- still rampant
today -- of a divorce between "political" "human rights" and "economic"
"natural mechanisms", and to unite the moral, the political and economic in
one "human relation". (That was travestied by Marxists as technological and
"economic" basic/superstructure determinism).  He also had to expose the
bourgeois ideology of a divorce between science (reason) and
"sentimentality" (emotions), and to intellectually justify the possibility
of intellectual/emotional unity, as in the "righteous indignation" his own
powerful writing is full of.
Capra and Michael Moore achieve emotional impact by selecting.  Once one
begins to take in the broader canvas, as Moore's critics -- some on this
list -- have done, the emotion is dissipated, because the judgement is more
complex.  One danger that can lead to is the attitude "to understand all is
to forgive all"; this has its Marxist progressivist embodiments, one of
which (e.g. Bill Warren) echoes the prevalent bourgeois justification (found
at its most respectable in Rawls) of injustice by alleged utility -- the
theme of innumerable films of tenants' revolts against developers and their
progress.
However, perhaps Eisenstein's and other Soviet films and Pilger's
documentaries are examples and possible models of powerful Marxist film
making.  -- JD

**************************************

 Mark Lause wrote:
Finally, the medium itself requires a certain amount of personalization and
conveys emotional appeals far better than intellectual arguments. I've
rarely seen good documentaries about disembodied social forces, though
several Nova programs on PBS came close in discussing such things as
mathematical formulae
LPr replied:
I tried to make this point early on. Moore's film is strongly influenced not
only by Capra but Oliver Stone. This is a sensibility akin to that which
resulted in the powerful "JFK". It is a narrative that is as old as
literature, the stuff of Shakespeare really. Evil Kings. Aroused avengers.
Hubris. Resolution.
snip >
 Marxism, by contrast, could never inspire literature or films such as
these. Why not is an interesting question.





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