Re: Physicists Take Philosophers to Task in Paris (N.Y. Times)

[Louis N Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 6 Oct 1997, Harry M. Cleaver wrote:

> move in new directions. As far as I can remember they both considered
> themselves to be dialectical and historical materialists --theories which
> have kept their practitioners trapped within the neverending synthesis of
> capital's master narrative (as some pomo people might say). They

So what's the problem with historical materialism? I happen to find it
very useful in understanding fascism. What methodology D&G use in
understanding fascism is simply beyond me, but their conclusions are nuts:

"The concept of the totalitarian State applies only at the macropolitical
level, to a rigid segmentarity and a particular mode of totalization and
centralization. But fascism is inseparable from a proliferation of
molecular focuses in interaction, which skip from point to point, before
beginning to resonate together in the National Socialist State. Rural
fascism and city or neighborhood fascism, youth fascism and war veteran's
fascism, fascism of the Left and fascism of the Right, fascism of the
couple, family, school, and office: every fascism is defined by a
micro-black hole that stands on its own and communicates with the others,
before resonating in a great, generalized central black hole."

This is a totally superficial understanding of how fascism came about.
What is Left fascism? It is true that the Communist Party employed
thuggish behavior on occasion during the ultraleft "Third Period". They
broke up meetings of small Trotskyist groups while the Nazis were breaking
up the meetings of trade unions or Communists. Does this behavior equal
left Fascism? Fascism is a class term. It describes a mass movement of the
petty-bourgeoisie that seeks to destroy all vestiges of the working-class
movement. This at least is the Marxist definition.

Fascism is not intolerance, bad attitudes, meanness or insensitivity. It
is a violent, procapitalist mass movement of the middle-class that employs
socialist phrase-mongering.


> I don't know if "primitive" is the best word for this kind of work, but it
> was the one that came to mind. D&G's work which shifts our attention from
> domination to desire (and studies the former in terms of constraints on
> the latter) evokes, for me, the centrality of living labor (one form of
> human self activity) in Marx's own work, but is broader and evocative of
> more diverse meanings of self-activity. THAT moves us away from the
> productivist interpretation of Marx (despite their prediliction for
> talking about desiring-machines and production).
>

What the heck does "Desire" have to do with the recent UPS strike?
"Domination" seems like a much more useful term. D&G seem to occupy a
mid-point between classical Marxism and the sort pomo Marxism that
Laclau-Mouffe set forward.


> You know, like everyone else, I was delighted to have their stuff back in
> the 60s, it helped in denouncing capitalist excesses. It was only when I
> wanted to answer Lenin's question of what is to be done, and realized that
> it could only be answered fruitfully on the basis of understanding what
> kind of power we already had, that I realized that they had virtually
> nothing to offer in the way of conceptual tools to generate such an
> understanding. Oh, well, back I went to Marx and found a different guy
> than the one they told us about.
>

The Monthly Review school had the merit of trying to keep a classical
vision of Marxism alive in the 1950s and early 60s, no matter what
particular mistakes they made about Stalin, Mao, etc. I suspect that
Deleuze-Guattari, Laclau-Mouffe, et al, will go the same way as Herbert
Marcuse. The relative prosperity of the 1960s and the 1980s sent
philosophers and psychologists down all sorts of blind alleys.

Around the time I looked at Thousand Plateaus, I also took a look at Felix
Guattari and Toni Negri's "Communists like Us". Unlike Deleuze/Guattari's
word-salad collaborations, this is a perfectly straightforward political
manifesto that puts forward a basic challenge to Marxism. It is deeply
inspired by a reading of the 1968 struggle in France as a mass movement
for personal liberation. Students and other peripheral sectors move into
the foreground while workers become secondary. It is as dated as Herbert
Marcuse's "One Dimensional Man".

The pamphlet was written in 1985 but has the redolence of tie-dyed
paisley, patchouli oil and granny glasses. Get a whiff of this:

"Since the 1960's, new collective subjectivities have been affirmed in the
dramas of social transformation. We have noted what they owe to
modifications in the organization of work and to developments in
socialization; we have tried to establish that the antagonisms which they
contain are no longer recuperable within the traditional horizon of the
political. But it remains to be demonstrated that the innovations of the
'60s should above all be understood within the universe of
consciousnesses, of desires, and of modes of behaviour."

I have some trouble understanding why Deleuze and Guattari are such big
favorites with some people. Why read this sort of silliness when you can
spend time with a good novel, book of poetry, or some solid Marxist
historical materialism, like Mike Goldfield's important new book "The
Color of Politics."

My guess is that a lot of people who think D&G are groovy feel a certain
nostalgia for the counterculture of the 1960's and in a funny sort of way,
Deleuza/Guattari take that nostalgia and cater to it but in an
ultrasophisticated manner.  The fans of D&G wouldn't bother with Paul
Goodman and Charles Reich. But French and Italian theorists who write in a
highly allusive and self-referential manner: Like wow, man!

Louis Proyect