Fw:[marxist] Evaluating the work of Ben Seattle

[Michael Pugliese <debsian@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

    The below is from Barry Stoller, who I know nada about. Think he is too
tough on Ben, whose project I like. But then, in it's eccentricity, as a San
Franciscan boho, I'd be going against type to dislike it. I'd think only Lou
here has ever engaged in extensive polemicizing with Ben, so this is sent as
a fyi.
Michael Pugliese
P.S. As another fyi, here are some URL's for the mileau Ben emerged from.
http://www.flash.net/~comvoice/
http://www.mcs.net/~mlbooks/
.......................................................

-----Original Message-----
From: Barry Stoller <bstoller@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: marxist@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <marxist@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Saturday, March 17, 2001 4:37 PM
Subject: [marxist] Evaluating the work of Ben Seattle




About this time last year, a gentleman by the name of Ben Seattle made a
bit of a splash throughout Marxist and Marxist - Leninist internet
community. A voluble writer combining equal parts Bolshevik polemic and
beatnik brashness, his list contributions and web sites are colorful
tracts with an eye towards popularizing Leninism in the name of
CyberLeninism. Below are some of Seattle's meta-narratives evaluated.

> There is a reason that the anarchist ideology  (for all its weaknesses)
appeals more to many or most youth than the marxist (or communist) ideology:
The complete bankruptcy of communist theory in offering a vision of the
future. The dictatorship of the proletariat is considered synonomous with a
police state.  Until we have the ability (we certainly don't at present) to
offer youth a vision of the world worth fighting for--we will not move
forward an inch in building a movement that offers a serious alternative to
capitalism.

> The important and decisive questions, in my view, are being ignored by
intelligent and dedicated people who should be giving them greater
attention.  What will workers' rule look like in a modern society?  How will
a workers' state suppress the former bourgeoisie without also suppressing
groups of independent workers?

> Until we stop ignoring this question and give it the serious attention it
deserves--the best and most dedicated activists will find little about
marxism that is compelling.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/marxist/message/1181

There is much to commend this passionate call for a positive program of
socialism to bring unity to the socialist project of proletarian
revolution. After all, one only goes so far with platitudes such as
'down with capitalism.' SOME vision of a better alternative must
accompany the risks necessary to bring down capitalism---at least in
part.

Nevertheless, Marxists such as Marx have devoted precious little
bandwidth to such visions because such projections deny the material
footing upon which socialism, therefore socialist revolutions, occur. It
stands to reason that since socialism dialectically springs from
capitalism's problems, proletarian revolution will be shaped by the
challenges presented it BY the resisting capitalist powers. We really
cannot be sure what tomorrow will bring.

And I emphasize the word 'we.' The essential characteristic of utopian
visions of a better government is the unyielding---dare I say
TOTAL---confidence of the creator of such visions to speak in the name
of others. We may recall the idiocy of Fourier's blueprints, consummated
down to the precise population figures necessary to realize his utopian
schemes. Therefore, ONLY the most general sketches should be proffered
(such as Marx's projections for mass education, and so on)---although
they SHOULD. While it is true we really cannot be sure what tomorrow
will bring, must know in advance what we WANT from our sacrifices.

I, myself, have put forward a sketch or two in my time. Job rotation
based upon Bukharin & Preobrazhensky. A democratic application of
production (therefore consumption) based partially on Trotsky. And I
continue to defend these projections as I understand them.

What seems unsatisfying about Seattle's solution to the problem he
posited above (the lack of a positive Marxist program) is not his
temerity in proffering a sketch but, rather, that when he does so, he
offers only campaign clichés...

> Human society in the future will take the form of a high-synergy complex
adaptive system -- which will use "bottom-up" methods, "distributed
intelligence", "parallelity" and the principle that "information wants to be
free"... The forms in which the masses (thru their organization as
producers, consumers and shapers of public opinion -- and the struggles
flowing from and in turn heightening their consciousness) would effectively
control the economy, culture and politics---would be as advanced compared to
the method of leaving the real decisions and real authority in the hands of
either the marketplace, elected representatives or all-powerful central
planners---as the dexterity and deftness of the human hand is to the
pseudopod of an amoeba.

http://www.Leninism.org/some/index.htm

Another of Seattle's themes is that Leninism (meaning the October
Revolution) was corrupted by the remaining Bolsheviks.

> The bolsheviks were living atop a lighted stick of dynamite. The
revolutionary government had the right and the duty to carry out these
repressive measures, as emergency measures for a temporary period of time.
But such measures, necessary as they were, constituted a grave and severe
threat to the long-term health of the revolution and led to its eventual
suffocation.

> During this period, many serious mistakes were made. Some mistakes, such
as the practice of confiscating from peasants, at gunpoint, all grain beyond
the most minimal necessary for survival, were recognized and repudiated by
Lenin in March 1921. But Lenin did not have time to recognize from practice
and correct all the mistakes of this period, nor to lead the transition away
from the temporary emergency repressive measures and toward a more open
system allowing workers to more freely organize, improvise and experiment
politically and economically from below and learn from their own mistakes.

> Lenin was incapacited by a series of strokes beginning in May 1922 and his
political life was over in less than a year... Leninism continued to
evolve--but it evolved in the hands of its enemies...

The great man of history view of the October Revolution. Good Lenin, bad
Stalin. If only Lenin had lived... If only one person could 'save' the
Soviet Union, then that person must have been... Christ. Original sin
comes to Marxism, eradicating whole its materialist basis.

Engels: '[R]evolutions are not made deliberately and arbitrarily, but
that everywhere and at all times they were the essential outcome of
circumstances quite independent of the will and the leadership of
particular parties and entire classes' ('Principles of Communism,' Marx
& Engels' Selected Works volume one, Progress 1969, p. 89).

Then Seattle presents his conception of 'the fourth stage of
Leninism,'which he calls 'CyberLeninism'...

> This stage of Leninism would have brought about genuine proletarian
democracy--a phenomena that historically has only existed fleetingly and
never in any developed sense. This stage of Leninism would correspond to the
objective requirements of developing a complex economy via worker initiative
and would involve a ceaseless search for bottom-up methods by which the
interdependent (simultaneously competing as well as cooperating) economic
and political actions of many thousands and millions of workers would at all
levels be an indispensable component of orderly and planned (as well as
chaotic and unplanned) economic development.

[Yes, it's weird he's discussing it in past tense...]

> CyberLeninism corresponds to the unleashing of mass initiative in the
period where information goods and services will dominate the economy...
CyberLeninism involves the explicit addition, to classical Leninism, of the
principle of "information wants to be free". In a modern, developed, complex
society, the principle of "information wants to be free" fits classical
Leninism as a bullet does a rifle---and in the age in which information is
increasingly flowing in ways which cannot be stopped--restores to Leninism
the status of a weapon which, in the hands of the proletariat, will prove to
be invincible.

<http://www.Leninism.org/intro.htm#manifesto>

Thus, internet agitation holds the key to the 'fourth,' and proper,
stage of Leninism...

> In particular, the digital communications revolution, still in its
earliest stages, will bring "transparency" to the left (and in the process
have a transforming effect on the left) in all countries that develop modern
communications infrastructure.

> While the development of a new wave of attempts to create communist
organizations would be enormously accelerated by an upsurge of mass struggle
such as took place in the 60's, it is important to see that even in the face
of the current lull in the mass movement---the communications revolution
alone will have a very significant potential to magnify the impulses of
formerly isolated groups and individuals to link up, coordinate their
efforts and overcome the obstacles to the creation of genuine communist
organizations...

http://www.Leninism.org/stream/96/fire.htm

Of course, ALL this speculation never once mentions that ONLY half of
the U.S. has internet access, the poorer half, and ONLY half of the
world, the poorer half, has yet to even use a phone.

Yes, getting the theory together is invaluable. Yes, getting the
vanguard organized is important. But the revolution will NOT occur
because the proletariat sees the light over his and her monitor.

If it is even remotely possible that the proletariat---ALL of the
proletariat---gets computer access, then it stands to reason that
capitalism will have found some material means to create a working class
comprised of nothing BUT the labor aristocracy. Which means there will
NOT be socialism.

Then, Seattle enthuses about Napster...

> Twenty million people, mostly students, have found that their  material
interests are in opposition to the material interests of the big music
corporations--and are acting entirely appropriately.  Despite arrogant
lectures and scolding about  "stealing" young people have instinctively
grasped that the music should be theirs to do with what they will.

> Information wants to be free to serve the working class.  It is true in
realm of music and it will also prove to be true in the realm of news.
Eventually the progressive movement will create its own electronic news
services... As the revolution in digital communications unfolds, decade
after decade, it will result in the working class becoming conscious and
will ultimately lead to the overthrow of bourgeois rule.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/theorist/message/28

It doesn't seem to occur to Seattle that the black market is NOT
socialism. Why? Because the black market only appropriates the
distribution (circulation) end of things, NOT the production end.
Ripping off ruling class ideology in the form of pop music (social
stratification; biological determination; etc.)  INSTEAD of paying for
it doesn't change the CONTENT in the least. And that's because
consciousness follows production (not circulation).

Conclusion. More bohemian than Bolshevik, Ben Seattle is a talented but
altogether typical representative of circulation sphere
Marxism---Marxism corrupted by the idealism characteristic of the
ever-widening social division of labor. The internet, the newest engine
of circulation sphere, of course, promotes such a tendency. (Not that
Marxist theorizing or agitation over the internet is without value, far
from it, BUT it is vitally important that materialism informs the
theorizing and agitation instead of the 'medium' informing the
theorizing and agitation.) Therefore, Ben Seattle offers us little more
than utopian 'Leninism'---a true ideological mutant.


Barry Stoller
http://www.utopia2000.org






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