Re: [Marxism] Left Anti-intellectualism and Its Discontents

[kersplebedeb <info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Actually, while i must admit to not being an expert on Featherstone,
Henwood or Parenti, having read some other pieces by them, and having
read the article in question, i must say your analysis strikes me as a
bit of a stretch.

"Anti-intellectualism" or "activistism", whatever you call it, is a
major problem where it exists. While teach-ins about Iraq are a
necessity, so are teach-ins about capitalism, about imperialism, about
where one's actions are leading. Political theory, to paraphrase one of
my favourite political theorists, is like a road-map, which lets us know
where we're going and how not to get lost along the way.

While you are right in noting that prioritizing theory and analysis can
have the effect of impeding actual political practice (and it is also
true that the more sure one is of one's theoretical worldview the
greater the risk of ignoring new developments which may be of vital
importance yet full outside of what was expected), theory does not have
to have this effect. Indeed, i would argue that it tends to have the
opposite effect.

Your hostility towards political analysis seems to be linked to a
perception that "the movement" is on track, and so any discussion might
derail the train. But if the three points you mention -

"supporting candidates against the Republicans and Democrats, calling for 
immediate and unconditional withdrawal from Iraq, and supporting the struggle of the 
Iraqi people against the
occupation"

- are really good things, where do they come from; from instinctive good
politics somehow hardwired into the movement, or from a latent unspoken
political analysis which somehow dominates the movement? I would argue
that the former is not plausible, and if the latter is the case then
trying hard to keep the politics unspoken and latent for fear of rocking
the boat is an essentially anti-democratic impulse, and one which is
self-defeating as a movement built on eschewing thinking beyond tactics
will be easily manipulated or neutralized by those who do not share this
faith in things just falling into place on their own.

As for anti-activistism being linked to a decline fo Marxism, i think
you are reversing the authors' intended meaning here. The decline of
Marxism - a way of looking a things which, whatever its faults, made it
difficult for even its most boneheaded adherents to completely discount
political analysis - created a situation in which leftists were deprived
of a magnet that could pull them away from anti-intellectualism (albeit
one which could often inspire its own anti-theoretical backlash). So
it's not a matter of looking for how anti-intellectualism brought down
the Berlin Wall as noting that the decimation of Marxism worldwide
helped give anti-intellectualism a boost.





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