[PEN-L:2412] 1998 Bad Writing Contest winners

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Didn't classical Marxism demonstrate
some validity to its theory of
subjectivity and power, micro
and macro,  by the success of the
1917 Russian Revolution,
Chinese Revolution, Cuban
Revolution, Viet Namese
Revolution, etc. ? Didn't they
the hegemony problem some ?
Where are comparable postmodern
successes in practice even
 in liberation struggles
other than workers' emancipation
struggles ? How, where and when have
the postmods' interpretation
or understanding of the meaning
of the world changed the
world ? How, when and
where has the _Beyond Capital_
theory changed the world ?


Charles Brown

>>> Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 01/21 1:40 PM >>>
At 01:19 PM 1/21/99 -0500, you wrote:
Brad De Long wrote:
>>And then there are the deeper problems with the paragraph: power that is
dispersed and contingent ain't hegemony, and so forth...<<

Doug responds: >Well that's the point here, it can be: if power is in our
heads, if power forms our subjectivities, then it is dispersed in billions
of us, in trillions of daily contacts. This obviously comes out of
Foucault, who can be criticized for his excessively atomized view of power,
but it's a useful contrast to all those classically Marxian views of power,
which find the entire capitalist structure in every grain of sand. ...<

why this either/or? that is why is it _either_ Butler, Foucault, and PoMo
in general _or_ "classical Marxism"?  Why do we dwell on the "useful
contrast" rather than trying to build a critical synthesis?

What about, for example, Mike Lebowitz's view in his BEYOND CAPITAL, which
(in crude terms) sees actually-existing capitalism as being a combination
of capital struggling to conquer every grain of sand and people resisting
that takeover? In this view, again crudely, the power of capital is to some
extent "in our heads" (an atomized kind of power) but it's more importantly
in institutions, specifically in the centralized control of money and
control over productive and military resources and in the collective
organizational weakness of the working class and other dominated groups.

The interesting thing is that Mike's book is pretty explicity opposed to
both PoMo and "classical Marxism" but has generally been ignored. More
importantly, as he points out, a lot of the theoretical position he lays
out has been part of the broad culture of the Left even when it has not
been part of the official line. And it can even be found in offical Marxism
now and then. Why is this broad culture being ignored?

Or put another way, why choose between PoMo and stereotyped "classical
Marxism" when one could choose, say, Mike Albert, or for that matter, Louis
Proyect or Doug Henwood?

a dismal scientist,

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html