In his book The Palestine Communist Party Musa Budeiri explores the history of the book’s namesake which attempted to unite the Palestinian and Jewish populations in Palestine into a united revolutionary front. Budeiri divides the party’s near 30-year history into three periods mainly based on changes in the party’s policy towards the specific situation in Palestine. Throughout its short history the Palestine Communist Party adopted many different positions regarding the specific situation in Palestine and their successes and failures reflect the difficulties of applying a Marxist analysis in a settler-colonial context. The party grew out of the “labor Zionist” movement of the early 20th century in the Jewish community of Palestine known as the Yishuv. Budeiri dates the party’s early period between its creation in 1919 and 1929. The first decade of activity was characterized by varying stances towards Zionism and attempts to work within Zionist labor groups which excluded Palestinian workers. This flirting with Zionism ended in 1924 when the party was expelled from the Histadrut (the Yishuv’s exclusively Jewish labor organization) and accepted by the Commintern as the official communist party of Palestine. With this, the party began to characterize Zionism as a pawn of British imperialism in Palestine and called for a joint Palestinian-Jewish proletarian struggle against their bourgeoisie. Despite this proclaimed internationalism, party membership was nearly entirely Jewish and had little presence among the majority the Palestinian population. Changing this would be a major focus of the party’s second phase between 1930 and 1942. Under the influence of the Commintern, the party set out to attract more Arab members and become a truly territorial party reflective of the actual population in Palestine. This policy change entailed a greater focus on the Palestinian anticolonial struggle and establishing Palestinian leadership of the party. The party succeeded at this task in many ways becoming an important influence in the Palestinian labor movement and playing a supporting role in the Arab Revolt between 1936 and 1939. However, this stance caused a rift between Palestinian and Jewish communists on the role of the Yishuv which would only widen in World War II. The failure to resolve this question led to the party’s split in 1942 which created separate Palestinian and Jewish communist parties. These parties would continue until 1948 and the nakba which effectively ended any cross-community communist party. There are many lessons to be drawn from the experience of the PCP, but I think the most important is regarding its answer to the question of settler-colonialism and the role of the Yishuv in Palestine. The party correctly recognized the policy of the British government to provoke religious and ethnic conflict to prevent united resistance to their colonization. With this, the party initially sought to promote unity between Palestinian and Jewish workers with appeals to overthrow their respective bourgeoisie. Even after the party placed its support firmly behind the Palestinian national struggle, it never came to a final resolution to the Yishuv’s presence in Palestine and many within the party hoped to continue working within it. This strategy, while appealing to Marxist sensibilities of proletarian solidarity, failed to account for the imperial and settler-colonial situation in Palestine. The party failed to recognize the extent of support for Zionism within the Yishuv and its ability to draw thousands of settlers to Palestine. On the other hand, as far as the Palestinain population was concerned the ever-growing Yishuv itself was as foreign entity and an ally of British imperialism. Thus, its constant growth, exclusionary economic policies and constant demand for land represented a threat to Palestinian society. So, while the party’s attempts to peel the Yishuv away from Zionism landed on infertile ground, its appeals to proletarian solidarity failed to resonate among an agrarian Palestinian population resisting colonization which it saw represented in the expanding Yishuv. In this book, Musa Budeiri ably explains the considerable successes of the Palestine Communist party as a joint Palestinian-Jewish party, it also explores the root causes of their ultimate failure. That was the party’s inability to provide a satisfactory answer to the question of settler-colonialism and truly reconcile the interests of Jewish settlers with indigenous Palestinians. In this book we can see the importance for any communis party in a settler-colonial to provide a solution to these issues and find ways to foster the revolutionary national aspirations of colonized people. AuthorAlex Zambito was born and raised in Savannah, GA. He graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2017 with a degree in History and Sociology. He is currently seeking a Masters in History at Brooklyn College. His Interest include the history of Socialist experiments and proletarian struggles across the world. Archives September 2021
0 Comments
9/18/2021 Book Review: Nobility & Civility- Wm. Theodore de Bary (2004). Reviewed By: Thomas RigginsRead NowWm. Theodore de Bary (1919-2017) was one the deans of Asian Studies in the United States. Operating out of Columbia University he had edited and overseen the publication of the ubiquitous series of readers Sources of The Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Traditions. Sources of the Vietnamese Tradition was produced by others after his death’ In his book, Nobility & Civility: Asian Ideals of Leadership and the Common Good, published by Harvard, 2004, de Bary examines many Asian cultures to see what they may have to offer to the "humanizing" of the march towards globalization. "Nobility" refers to "leadership", "Civility" to "public morality." By studying the foundational cultural values of the Asian peoples (de Bary primarily discusses China and Japan with a nod to India) he hopes to show the possibility of a civilizational synthesis of western and eastern thought with respect to the future development of globalization. Without knowledge as to how the people of the past have dealt with the political consequences of their value systems "it will be difficult," he writes, "to see how anyone could be expected to recognize and cope with similar problems in the present." Without the humanizing values found in the Asian tradition, especially in Confucianism, becoming a part of the world’s educational background, globalization may become [I would say it already is] "degrading, dehumanizing, and destructive of the earth, beyond anything seen in the past." [The current Chinese promotion of Confucianism is thus part of the socialist humanism that will, hopefully, be the future basis of global culture.] He discusses Confucius’ conception of the "noble person" in the first chapter. Of course one cannot mechanically apply the Confucianism of ancient China, developed in a feudal society, to the modern world dominated by monopoly capitalism. Nevertheless, Confucianism is still a living force in Asia. What is still relevant, regardless of economic system, is the Confucian belief that the duty of government is to serve the people and should be consensual. The rulers have, according to Confucians "responsibilities towards the disadvantaged and uneducated.... noblesse oblige as it would be called in the West." De Bary quotes from a Confucian work from the 4th or 3rd century B.C. (Chronicle of Mr. Zuo) which talks about a ruler driven out by his people (a revolutionary act indeed) and concludes "if he exhausts the people’s livelihood... and betrays the hopes of the populace... what use is he? What can one do but expel him?" This is a fundamental Confucian value and is certainly applicable today, think of Trump in exile at Mar-A-Lago. I don’t think, however, that it is congruent with the fundamental values of the globalization process which is driven by the principle that the welfare of the people is always secondary to the need for profit and the financial supremacy of corporations. Confucianism might be used to try and mitigate the ravages of capitalism by well meaning (but ineffective) idealists, but more than likely it would be used to cover up and mask the social reality of exploitation and human enslavement, much as Christianity is used by the Republican Party and conservative Christians in the United States. This is not, of course, the fault of Confucianism. It is in its homeland China where it has the best chance to succeed. The basic values of socialism are not at odds with the Confucian ideal. It should be noted that after initial hostility to Confucianism (more to how it was abused by the ruling classes than to its philosophical content), the Chinese party now has a more positive relationship with Confucians. Under Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin [and now Xi Jinping] de Bary noted that some in the leadership have been led to reevaluate the role of tradition (especially after the excesses of the "Cultural Revolution" under Mao) and he concludes that "it is understandable that the regime might favor a more civil tradition like Confucianism to provide the Chinese content for a Chinese socialism. Thus it has sanctioned a Confucian Association to promote scholarly discussion of the subject and traditional observances of rituals like the celebration of Confucius’ birthday." Besides Confucianism in China, de Bary also traces the history of the Japanese reception of Confucianism. This is an interesting history and shows how the original pro-people content of this philosophy was corrupted by the ruling classes to justify their privileges and power. There are also chapters on the influence of Buddhism in both China and Japan. In an epilogue de Bary points out that in a time when people are talking about a "clash of civilizations" and the incompatibility of other cultures with their own it is important that students be educated in the classics of other civilizations. "We owe it to ourselves," he writes, "to make another, more determined effort to understand how the... resources available within these traditions afford the means for a meaningful discourse to take place on each other’s terms." One of the most important themes that de Bary thinks should be discussed is the Asian view of the status of the person. He attacks the chauvinist view that the value of the individual "is a peculiarly Western or Judeo-Christian idea and that people who do not recognize it cannot be expected to respect human rights." De Bary maintains that the Asian cultural tradition has always been aware of the importance of the individual and his or her self-cultivation. He quotes the Japanese Confucianist, Nakamura Masanao (1832-1890) who said "As far as individual morality is concerned, regardless of past and present, East or West, the main principle is the one thing of self governance.... This is the central concern of the independent self and is the source and principle of freedom." If we link this with the duty of the government to provide the conditions that best promote the principle of freedom we will find that Confucianism has a natural ally in Marxism in combating the inhumane practices of the movement towards globalization. This is an important book and should be read by anyone interested in Asian culture. Nobility and Civility: Asian Ideals of Leadership and the Common Good by Wm. Theodore de Bary, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2004, 256pp. AuthorThomas Riggins is a retired philosophy teacher (NYU, The New School of Social Research, among others) who received a PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center (1983). He has been active in the civil rights and peace movements since the 1960s when he was chairman of the Young People's Socialist League at Florida State University and also worked for CORE in voter registration in north Florida (Leon County). He has written for many online publications such as People's World and Political Affairs where he was an associate editor. He also served on the board of the Bertrand Russell Society and was president of the Corliss Lamont chapter in New York City of the American Humanist Association. Archives September 2021 In his introduction to The Dialectics of Art, John Molyneux presciently notes: ‘the even more rapidly changing material world of economics, politics and nature, means that my reflections at the end of the book on the present situation of art and its immediate prospects may already be out of date by the time they are published’ (xv). Like the rest of us, the author was unaware at that point that the greatest calamity of most of our lifetimes was around the corner. The Covid lockdowns of the past two years have provided unwanted reminders of the value of art for human beings. For long swathes of time, we have been deprived of the opportunity to visit galleries, concert halls, cinemas and other venues of cultural production. The consequent impoverishment of our daily existence has felt palpable to millions. At the same time, however, many have found much needed psychological comfort in the face of the pandemic from the greater access to culture provided by the internet and smartphones. The whole panoply of Western art, literature and music is available at our fingertips in a way previous generations could never have dreamed of. This is a suitable conjuncture, therefore, for a Marxist re-examination of both the function of art and culture in capitalist society and how it might play a role in the transition to socialism. Even though The Dialectics of Art was written before the pandemic, Molyneux still provides valuable contributions to a discussion of Marxist aesthetics in the era of what may turn out to be even greater capitalist catastrophes. The suggestions he makes regarding the status of art are not always convincing, but his explications of individual artists such as Rubens, Picasso and Pollock are as insightful as anything else available on the left. Most of the analysis here is focused on painting but a lot of Molyneux’s theoretical reflections are equally applicable to a wider definition of art that might include architecture, film, music and other mediums. Molyneux is a refreshingly clear and fluent writer who thankfully avoids a lot of the over-academic and obscure terminology that bedevils the output of other Marxist theoreticians on art such as Adorno or Horkheimer. This book is written with less emphasis on resolving theoretical disputes in the seminar room and more on the role culture can play in activating and articulating political struggle. The author frequently refers to the scale of the crisis that capitalism is inflicting on us and the urgency of the task of constructing a more sane social order: ‘Until that is achieved, art will take its place in the quest and fight for human freedom, if not on the front line – which will be occupied by the masses in struggle in the workplaces, the streets and on the barricades – then as an important ally and essential supplier of spiritual nourishment, as necessary, in its own way, as boots and medicine’ (238). Over the last year or so, we have witnessed powerful examples of Molyneux’s point that art is often integral to battles between the elite and the masses. The graffiti portrait of George Floyd painted on a Minneapolis wall became the visual detonator of the global Black Lives Matter movement. The latter also sparked a febrile debate about the relevance of statues of historical figures in our towns and cities, one of the most familiar and previously unquestioned forms of art in our daily lives. For a reader unacquainted with how historical materialism approaches questions of art, Molyneux’s book makes an accessible and lively overview. There are, however, some anomalous features to the book. One is the curiously conservative nature of subjects covered. The author wears his revolutionary heart on his sleeve so it is odd he is so traditional in his choice of subjects. Most of the artists discussed are shibboleths of the establishment canon; that is to say, largely Western, white men such as Michelangelo, Rubens, Picasso and Pollock. It seems incongruous that in this era of globalised capitalism, a Marxist account of art would sideline the importance of Chinese, African or Latin American contributions. Molyneux does acknowledge this limitation but it does slightly undermine the implied claim of the title to provide an all-encompassing perspective. There is one chapter on a Palestinian photographer, Yasser Alwan, but its inclusion unfortunately creates an impression of tokenism. There is also some inconsistency in the length of some sections. Artists such as Michelangelo and Picasso are favoured with substantive analyses that are worthy of their subjects. Other figures such as Warhol and Francis Bacon, however, barely receive a few pages, which can leave the reader frustrated that intriguing lines of thought are set up but then not fully explored. The most contentious section of The Dialectics of Art is the opening chapter on the foundational question of ‘What is Art?’ Molyneux proposes a definition that this form of human activity is best comprehended as a form of unalienated labour: ‘As the bulk of production, especially the manufacture of goods, becomes subsumed under wage labour and the rule of capital, so humanity, or rather some humans and overwhelmingly humans from a relatively privileged class position, carve out a sphere of production-art-not performed by alienated labour’ (20). One of the problems with this position is it removes art from the totality of the relations of capitalist production. Molyneux argues that the greatest artists, such as those discussed in the book, possess a degree of creative energy that enables them to somehow resist the compelling power of alienation that frames the existence of virtually all other forms of human labour. This falls back on a conservative notion that an ineffable and transhistorical form of genius is what marks out the creations of the likes of Raphael, Rembrandt and Cezanne. Perhaps it would be more in line with materialist principles to argue great art offers inspired glimpses of what an unalienated existence would look and feel like in a classless society. The best chapters of Molyneux’s book are the ones where he provides incisive analyses of how earlier waves of class struggle and political turbulence have affected the art of some of the masters of the Western canon. His discussions of how biography, socio-historical context and technical innovations have overlapped in specific cases to produce visual masterpieces are exemplary in terms of Marxist art criticism. Molyneux makes good use of Trotsky’s neglected writings on aesthetics to develop stimulating overviews of iconic figures such as Michelangelo, Rembrandt and Hirst, which do not resort to crass and deterministic correlations between art and politics. The author’s methodology of artistic evaluation is explicitly guided by the great Russian revolutionary’s finely tuned balancing of individual brilliance and sociological relevance. This is the dialectical interplay of forces implied in the book’s title. Molyneux cites Trotsky’s words on the crucial importance of avoiding readings of paintings that reduce them to mere expressions of class ideology: ‘Art, like science, not only does not seek orders, but by its very essence, cannot tolerate them. Artistic creation has its own laws – even when it consciously serves a social movement. Truly intellectual creation is incompatible with lies, hypocrisy and the spirit of conformity. Art can become a strong ally of revolution only in so far as it remains faithful to itself’ (30). Molyneux situates Michelangelo, for example, at the turn of sixteenth century when the disparate republics of the Italian peninsula were stumbling towards a cohesive nation-state that would have accelerated the emergence of Europe’s first capitalist state. Powerful and recalcitrant opposition in the forms of the Vatican and the Medici dynasty, however, stalled Italy’s path towards modernity and left the country economically and politically marooned between feudalism and capitalism. The revolutionary humanism on display in Michelangelo’s defining works such as the statues of David and Moses and the Sistine Chapel sublimely express the ultimately thwarted emancipatory impulse that characterised the Cinquecento: ‘Michelangelo expressed, more than any other artist, the hope and the dream of the Renaissance and the despair and misery of the betrayal and rushing of that dream’ (95). Much of Michelangelo’s art and sculpture, of course, was created in the service of the reactionary forces of the era such as bankers and popes. Other creations, however, were commissioned by progressive currents such as the Florentine republic. The artist found himself being pulled in different directions at different times by competing historical forces. Molyneux usefully highlights how only a Marxist methodology that is alert to the ebb and flow of class struggle can explain this apparent inconsistency in the artistic output of an individual. Molyneux likewise seeks to make a case for one of the most controversial living British artists being a conduit for the vicissitudes of social and political development. Tracy Emin’s standout artefacts such as ‘My Bed’ and ‘Everyone I Ever Slept With’ have brought her adulation and notoriety in equal measure. Although Emin has not associated herself with a revolutionary current in the same way Michelangelo did at times in his life, Molyneux wants to defend her status as an artist of historical significance: ‘the experiences represented in Emin’s art are not just personal experiences but are common to a wide layer of young women growing up in this time, in this society. […] By making these experiences into art (which is different from just exposing or confessing them), Emin actually engages in a process of democratic sharing with her audience’ (156). Molyneux’s defence of Emin, originally written in 2005, resonates more credibly now with the emergence of fourth-wave feminism and the MeToo movement. A reason to be more sceptical regarding Emin’s status among the greats, perhaps, would be the question of durability. Michelangelo has clearly stood the test of time but will human beings still be discussing Emin in 500 years? Molyneux rather apologetically adds a coda to this chapter, noting: ‘Tracy Emin’s political response to her success, wealth and celebrity led her to become a Tory’ (189). This unfortunate development does not, in itself, of course vitiate the author’s central claim that art represents unalienated labour – but it certainly makes it harder to sustain. Despite these inconsistencies in terms of argumentation and structure, The Dialectics of Art is a worthy application of Trotsky’s conviction that cultural enrichment ‘will still be needed when Marx’s Capital has been reduced to the status of a mere historical document’ (218). 18 August 2021 AuthorSean Ledwith is Lecturer in History and Sociology at York College. He is also a regular contributor to the Counterfire website. This Review was produced by Marx and Philosophy. Archives September 2021 8/4/2021 Book Review: Daniel A. Bell & Hahm Chaibong- Confucianism for The Modern World (2003). Reviewed By: Thomas RigginsRead Now"I have always heard that a gentleman helps the needy; he does not make the rich richer still."-- Confucius Daniel A. Bell and Hahm Chaibong have edited a book called Confucianism for the Modern World (Cambridge, 2003). In their introduction the editors discuss the contemporary relevance of the Confucian tradition (the purpose of the book). The question is – is Confucianism a dead tradition or is it meaningful for the contemporary world? There are five questions which they say must be addressed. I don’t think they are formulated quite rightly so I shall amend them slightly. The first is what Confucian values "should be promoted in contemporary East Asian societies?" This I think is too narrow. The "modern world" encompasses more than just East Asia. I would maintain that Confucianism has useful traditions that societies other than the traditional Asian ones can benefit from studying and applying. The second question is, "How should this be promoted?" The third is, "What are the political and institutional implications of ‘Confucian humanism’?" Confucian "humanism" can be summed up by saying that for a good Confucian the slogan "People Before Profits," that we on the left are very familiar with, would not sound out of place. The fourth question is "How do the practical implications of modern Confucianism differ from the values and workings of liberal capitalist societies?" The editors have added "modern" as a modifier for good reason. The values of traditional Confucianism can, I think, be brought into line with those of socialist or communist humanism but they can only be adapted to the values of capitalism, liberal or otherwise, by doing violence to their core ethical commitments. I think this question also reveals one of the purposes of the book is to try and use a warped and mutated "Confucianism" as an apologetic for East Asian capitalism. The last question deals with the adoption of Confucianism to this project (conformity to liberal capitalism) and if it can "be justified from a moral point of view." I don’t think that it can be, but I think the editors of this book think that it can. Here are two examples. One of the contributors, Gilbert Rozman, argues that Confucianism can be adapted to support "decentralization," "regionalism" and "localism." But to what purpose? Some of his examples suggest that the purpose is to further the interests of corporate globalization and not Confucian "humanism". For example, his reading of modern "Confucianism" might convince China to respect "Taiwan’s right to autonomy." He also suggests that it is a good counter- balance to "Anglo-Saxon liberalism" [Rozman’s term for monopoly capitalism] on the one hand, and "Soviet-launched socialism" on the other. The former represents "individualism," the latter "statism." He maintains East Asia has a third system – some type of "familyism." Actually, with the exception of China, Vietnam, the DPRK and Laos [statist in Rozman’s terminology], East Asia is firmly in the control of monopoly capitalism. Rozman thinks attempts to counter "U.S. influence endanger the gains achieved through trans-Pacific economic and security ties," The WTO is cited as a "gain." He forgot the IMF and the World Bank. This is, to my mind, merely using Confucianism as a cover for the trans-national imperialist exploitation of Asian peoples under the guise of "humanism" and decentralization. Daniel Bell, one of the editors, in his contribution, explicitly states that he assumes "some form of capitalism is here to stay for the foreseeable future and any realistic defense of economic arrangements in East Asia needs to take this fact into account." Since I am not interested in using Confucian philosophy in order to make a "defense of economic arrangements in East Asia" but rather to see what the logical implications of its humanistic values are, I cannot agree with Professor Bell’s use of Confucianism. I agree with him that the material welfare of the people is one of, if not the main duty of the state according to Confucianism, but disagree completely when he says, "There is no doubt that Confucians would... oppose Soviet-style planned economies." I say this because the reason he gives for saying that, "Absolute private property rights" might be justified if they provided for "the basic means of subsistence." This argument from instrumental grounds also applies to a planned economy. In fact, I think Confucian humanism is completely compatible with a Marxist interpretation and totally incompatible with the theoretical and practical functioning of capitalism with the possible exception of some capitalist inspired market reforms guided by a desire to strengthen a socialist state. AuthorThomas Riggins is a retired philosophy teacher (NYU, The New School of Social Research, among others) who received a PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center (1983). He has been active in the civil rights and peace movements since the 1960s when he was chairman of the Young People's Socialist League at Florida State University and also worked for CORE in voter registration in north Florida (Leon County). He has written for many online publications such as People's World and Political Affairs where he was an associate editor. He also served on the board of the Bertrand Russell Society and was president of the Corliss Lamont chapter in New York City of the American Humanist Association. Archives August 2021 The Cuban Revolution has faced immense hardship since the mid-twentieth century, with the imperialist forces of the United States and its allies constantly attacking and trying to undermine the efforts of building socialism in Cuba. This hardship has only been magnified as the crisis of Covid-19 still looms over our heads, with the difficulties of maintaining public health against a pandemic only exacerbating the shortages and similar issues created by the imperialist crusade against revolutionary Cuba. In true fashion to the capitalist establishment, solidifying his statement that “nothing will fundamentally change,” US President Joe Biden has acted in opportunistic fashion, co-opting and warping the narrative surrounding recent protests on the island as a means of trying to expand western hegemony through an illegitimate color revolution. The Biden Administration, in contrast to claims made during Biden’s 2020 election campaign that he would reverse some of Trump’s anti-Cuba policies, has placed another selection of sanctions on the socialist country. All the while, at least based on a post on Twitter, Biden claimed to stand with the Cuban people while enacting policy that actively harms them. This contradiction highlights one of the biggest mistakes of those who support such sanctions, amplifying claims of Cuba being a dystopian nightmare as a result of socialism, while completely ignoring the proper context as to why exactly Cuba has faced such difficulty since the beginning of the revolution into the modern day. In revisiting the book Cuba for Beginners by Mexican cartoonist and intellectual Rius, this work proves to have maintained relevancy in regards to Cuba’s development and struggle against colonialist and imperialist aggressors. As is the standard of the For Beginners series, Cuba for Beginners is presented in an easily digestible format, with simple yet effective language that displays a clear and concise timeline of the history of Cuba. Presented essentially in the style of a comic book or graphic novel, the illustrations and other visuals present in this book serve to keep a reader engaged in the reading, with these visuals being utilized primarily to further explain a concept or event. This simple presentation style ultimately works in the favor of the communist cause, allowing for those unfamiliar with Cuba’s history or caught up in the reactionary propaganda of the imperialist powers that tell constant lies about Socialist Cuba and socialism itself. Rius spends the early portions of the book explaining how the hands of Spanish colonialism ravaged the island for a great deal of time, that is until the United States began to take a strategic interest in helping liberate Cuba from the Spanish (that interest consisting mainly of sugar, tobacco, and the like). The import of African slaves by the conquistadors, colonialist and imperialist powers fighting over control of Cuba (particularly Spain, Britain, and the US), and the systematic slaughtering of indigenous Cubans being only about a third of pre-socialist Cuban history examined in this book before covering the rise of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, the 26th of July Movement, and other aspects of the militant struggle against western imperialism and colonialism. The contributions of Cuban hero José Martí are also briefly discussed in this work. Discussing the struggle against the various US puppet governments installed in Cuba, particularly the exploits of one Fulgencio Batista, and the aftermath of overthrowing the Batista regime allows for a wider perspective in understanding the conditions that Cuba continues to work through to this day. For instance, Rius touches upon the fact that for much of Cuba’s existence, the means of production had remained in the hands of colonial powers and/or assets of such powers. With the expelling of the Yankees and their lackeys, the liberating of Cuba in all forms from the grip of imperialist control, there were blows dealt to the structure of Cuban industry and the economy. Between page 80 and page 92 of the second edition of Cuba for Beginners, Rius introduces three of the major factors leading to the initial struggle of the Cuban economy; the agrarian reforms, the urban reforms, and the amount of those in connection to western powers that fled the island. A fourth major factor in consideration is the combination of the Cuban Missile Crisis with John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev, and the Kennedy administration’s enacting of the total blockade of Cuba. The ultimate effect of these four factors is then touched upon from page 128 to 132, particularly in regards to industry and production within Cuba. To quote the text; “The American technicians left… and in the process took along the few Cuban technicians… The factories were without money, formulas and management… the United States quit sending raw materials and prohibited other countries from supplying them to Cuba. And this happened to all the factories the Yankees had there.” At least in the early stages of the Cuban Revolution, the majority of industry that was at one point controlled by western powers had wound up, for a limited time, completely abandoned, with production effectively halted. Of course a great deal of the Cuban people stepped up to re-engage in factory production, displaying the power of a collective, united people dedicated to the developing of socialism and strengthening Cuba. The second edition of this book, however, was published all the way back in 1971. One of the issues of this book that does need to be addressed and put into proper context is the fact that at least in some aspects, Cuba for Beginners is noticeably dated. This is particularly highlighted in Rius’s explanation regarding the industrial situation in the early stages of Cuban socialism. Many of Cuba’s most important trading partners came from the Soviet Bloc and adjacent countries. From the Soviet Union to the German Democratic Republic, Cuba relied on importing the fruits of heavy industry from Eastern Europe. Rius claimed that due to such connections, Cuba had no need to undergo a mass industrialization campaign, which in the context of when this book was published indeed makes sense due to Cuba’s utilizing of its rich natural and mineral resources along with the development of light industry. Historically, however, the reliance on heavy industry from the Soviet sphere proved to have disastrous results. This is by no means the fault of the Cuban government, at least not in a major way. The illegal dissolution of one of the biggest trading partners for any government would result in hardship, especially when Cuba in particular has simultaneously been bombarded with sanctions in addition to other attacks on the island’s economy. Despite some of the more dated aspects of Cuba for Beginners, the book overall gives the reader a greater context to the issues that have been facing modern Cuba by explaining both the difficulties and positive advancements of the political, economic, and cultural structures of building socialism in Cuba on the ashes of western colonialism, not to mention the task of constructing socialism surrounded by the yoke of imperialism. Keeping the historical contexts of Cuban development in mind, along with the time at which this book was published, Cuba for Beginners by Rius allows for those unacquainted with the history of Cuba to (hopefully) garner a stronger understanding of both the historical and modern conditions of socialist Cuba. Strengthening the general understanding of Cuba’s history and advancement outside of the bourgeois sphere is vital in combating the imperialist narratives designed to demonize, destabilize, and manufacture consent for a continued offensive against Cuba. AuthorJymee C is an aspiring Marxist historian and teacher with a BA in history from Utica College, hoping to begin working towards his Master's degree in the near future. He's been studying Marxism-Leninism for the past five years and uses his knowledge and understanding of theory to strengthen and expand his historical analyses. His primary interests regarding Marxism-Leninism and history include the Soviet Union, China, the DPRK, and the various struggles throughout US history among other subjects. He is currently conducting research for a book on the Korean War and US-DPRK relations. In addition, he is a 3rd Degree black belt in karate and runs the YouTube channel "Jymee" where he releases videos regarding history, theory, self-defense, and the occasional jump into comedy https://www.youtube.com/c/Jymee Archives July 2021 7/26/2021 Book Review: Daniel Bensaïd- The Dispossessed: Karl Marx’s Debates on Wood Theft and the Right of the Poor. Reviewed By: Michael PrincipeRead NowIn this rather unusual volume edited by Robert Nichols, we find his translations of Bensaïd’s 2007 title essay, as well as new translations of Marx’s five 1842 Die Rheinische Zeitung articles on wood theft, from which Bensaïd draws. Nichols also provides a substantial introduction in which he calls this collection an ‘experiment’ representing ‘a deliberately asynchronic juxtaposition.’ Nichols’ thesis is that the pieces by Bensaïd and Marx each perform an analogous function for their respective temporal and spatial contexts. In an important sense, although his introduction takes up less than a third of the volume, this text belongs more to Nichols than to Bensaïd or Marx. Specifically, he reads the two principle parts of the collection through a conceptual lens which he regards as crucial for understanding our own time, which he calls the ‘crisis of kleptocracy’ (viii). In addition to providing his own commentary on these texts, Nichols provides a helpful, though brief, overview of Bensaïd’s life and works emphasizing both the connection of theory to practice as well as Bensaïd’s evolution over time. Nichols observes that Bensaïd’s essay arrives on the cusp of the great recession and should be understood as contributing to a cluster of analyses that attempt to conceptualize the events which proceed it, as well as corporate and state responses to it, including trillions of dollars of public funds spent to bail out private banks. Nichols notes that the transfer of public resources to private hands was theorized in a number of related ways, including the ‘primitive accumulation of capital,’ ‘enclosures of the commons,’ or David Harvey’s ‘privatization’ and/or ‘accumulation by dispossession’. As Nichols describes it, ‘each of these frameworks expresses a desire to find a theoretical vocabulary appropriate for naming the enduring (albeit uneven and punctuated) logics of capital accumulation via the coercive seizure of public goods and assets, as distinct from accumulation via the regularized exploitation of waged labor’ (x). Considering the pairing of texts by Bensaïd and Marx, Nichols reflects on the former’s late interest in Walter Benjamin, particularly the latter’s rejection of linear history. Bensaïd emphasizes the revolutionary dimension of Benjamin’s messianic thinking. History is at every moment open to interruption, to the arrival of a revolutionary event. Nichols’ collection partakes deeply of this Benjaminian sensibility, perhaps even more than he indicates in his introductory essay. For Benjamin, by rearranging historical narratives, unseen possibilities and hidden truths can emerge. Nichols hopes that this volume does more than ‘retrieve’ the writings of Bensaïd and Marx for our time, but instead helps set the stage for contemporary interventions. In his essay, Bensaïd returns to Marx’s wood theft articles in order to explore both contemporary and possible future dispossessions. What comes to be called wood theft emerges from a period of rural poverty where items such as berries, material necessary for the production of brushes, brooms, fishing rods, material for home repair, basket weaving and food for livestock, i.e. the objects ‘without which life itself could not be secured’, become contested. In this context, the Prussian state intervenes to resolve the conflict between rights of property and customary rights (9). Bensaïd notes that Marx’s critique is in part aimed at the ontology of private property employed by parliament, whose only unifying concept is what serves the interest of the property owner. Hybrid or uncertain property is abolished to the detriment of the rights of the poor and their access to the common property offered by nature. On Bensaïd’s reading, Marx’s approach is that of internal criticism, in which he uses the logic of property against the expansion of ownership rights. If an owner claims property rights over trees because they grow on his land or over timber which is transformed by labor, a consistent application of these principles would grant rights to the poor to gather fallen branches. If even this is theft, Marx writes, ‘[b]y regarding all attacks on property as instances of theft without distinction or further determination, would not all private property be theft?’ (11). Marx is here attracted to Proudhon’s What is Property? and will remain so up through the writing of The Holy Family. Marx also criticizes parliament’s empowering private property owners to enforce and punish wood theft. These punishments included fines paid directly to the owners as well as forced labor. Bensaïd points out that for Marx, this represents public functions being taken over by the private sphere. Marx writes, ‘[t]he wood possesses the remarkable character such that as soon as it is stolen it secures for its owner state qualities it did not previously possess. […] The wood thief has robbed the forest owner of wood, but the forest owner has used the wood thief to steal the state itself’ (25). Bensaïd interestingly connects these articles to other of Marx’s writings. The loss of traditional rights of the poor, excluding them from all property, Bensaïd states, resembles Marx’s famous formulation in ‘Introduction to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right’ where he first introduces the proletariat, ‘a class with radical chains, a class of bourgeois civil society that is not a class of bourgeois civil society, an estate the dissolution of which would be the dissolution of all social estates’ (14). Though unmentioned by Bensaïd, Marx does not connect this early notion of the proletariat to commodity production and the particularities of profit making under capital, which will serve to distinguish the categories of the poor and the proletariat later on. Importantly, we see in both Marx and Bensaïd that two concepts require attention in this context: ‘dispossession’ and ‘the dispossessed’. As Nichols points out, though Bensaïd’s essay bears the latter title, his focus is on dispossession. We will return to the former concept shortly. In mapping the history of dispossession both historically and conceptually, Bensaïd pays close attention both to Proudhon and Marx’s criticisms of him in The Poverty of Philosophy, where he derides Proudhon’s notion of fair exchange and fair wage as ahistorical, abstract and moralistic. Marx’s analysis of the commodity form found in Capital is key. As Bensaïd puts it, social relations are not between individual and individual but ‘between worker and capitalist, farmer and landowner, and so on’ (34). Bensaïd then moves into the twenty-first century with discussions of the privatization of knowledge, the privatization of life (the interpretation of gene sequences) and the possible privatization of everything needed for life and the existence of society. He writes, ‘[i]n this period of market globalization and widespread privatization of the world, Marx’s articles on the theft of wood are of troubling relevance.’ Privatization pushes into all domains of life. Bensaïd refers to education, information, laws, money, knowledge and violence – ‘in short, public space as a whole’ (37). Throughout this discussion, Bensaïd repeatedly matches Marx’s wit and insight. Consider: ‘could one go so far as to patent mathematical equations and subject them to property rights? The socialization of intellectual work begins with the practice of language, which is obviously a common good of humanity that cannot be appropriated’ (43). Reflecting on the operative logic of our times, Bensaïd writes further: ‘If computer science is a language, and if its innovations are patentable, can neologisms of everyday language become so? Concepts? Theories? To what unprecedented neuroses could this compulsion for intellectual property lead?’ (45). These contemporary ‘enclosures’ are, for Bensaïd, direct obstacles to human growth and wellbeing or, in other words, they are contradictions of capital. Furthermore, he states the ‘ecological crisis has put back on the agenda the idea of inappropriable common goods of humanity’ (47). Water, he notes, is an obvious example with various international bodies declaring water to be a human right. Returning now to the question of those who are dispossessed, Bensaïd briefly brings forward what amount to questions of the revolutionary or collective political subject. He states that ‘we are witnessing new forms of resistance of the dispossessed – those “without” (without documents, homes, shelter, employment, or rights) – in the name of the defense of public services, in the name of the energy and food sovereignty of countries subject to imperialist looting, in the name of common goods (e.g., water, land, air, life) coveted by cannibalistic companies or pharmaceutical firms on the lookout for new patentable molecules’ (48). Bensaïd’s linking of the category of ‘the poor’ with Marx’s conceptualization of ‘the proletariat’ noted earlier highlights this issue. Importantly, two different categories are operative here, though Bensaïd does not distinguish them in this essay. The dispossessed or those who are ‘without’ is clearly a different category than laborers subject to exploitation through the wage relation. Nichols reads Bensaid’s essay as highlighting the political importance of the former category, claiming that Bensaid’s ‘energy and acumen drive us forward into a future in which the struggle will increasingly be led by “dispossessed”’ (xxii). This is clearly different from the struggle being led by those who are subject to exploitation at the point of production. Nichols argues for the importance of dispossession as a distinctive category of capitalist violence, not reducible to exploitation, nor simply a necessary condition of exploitation. He asks, ‘[w]hen your body is not even wanted as a tool of exploitation, what leverage do you have over the machinery of power?’ The answer is yet to be determined. The concluding sentence of Bensaïd’s essay fittingly points at both elements of capitalist violence, first to exploitation, then to dispossession: ‘Our lives are worth more than their profits: “Rise up, dispossessed of the world!”’ (57). Bensaïd’s essay, as contextualized in this volume by Nichols, successfully pushes, especially those of a Marxist orientation, to make the idea of dispossession more central to their theoretical and practical work. With regard to Die Rheinische Zeitung articles contained in the volume, they are worth reading or rereading. Marx’s biting analogies and critical, sarcastic style as found throughout his works is in full display here. For example, he writes, ‘[w]e are only surprised that the forest owner is not allowed to heat his stove with the wood thieves’ (94). Finally, Nichols’ translation is a slightly modernized, slightly more readable version of the English translation by Clemens Palme Dutt, though much of the translation is identical. 23 July 2021 AuthorMichael Principe is Professor of Philosophy at Middle Tennessee State University and Middle Tennessee Chapter Vice-President for United Campus Workers-Communication Workers of America (Local 3865). This article was republished from Marx & Philosophy. Archives July 2021 7/15/2021 Book Review: Eric-John Russell- Spectacular Logic in Hegel and Debord: Why Everything is as it Seems. Reviewed By: Carson WelchRead NowThe work of Guy Debord has often been associated in the English-speaking world with the ubiquity of some vague menace called “the spectacle,” which amounts to little more than an impenetrable mass of images that paper over the reality of social antagonism. A few recent studies have begun to remedy such misunderstandings of Debord’s central concept by restoring the complexity of its engagement with the Hegelian Marxist philosophical tradition. Spectacular Logic in Hegel and Debord both contributes to this restoration and offers some revisions of the studies that preceded it. But in doing so, it provides far more than a mere analysis of Hegel’s influence on Debord. Having situated Debord’s thought among a range of dialectical thinkers, Russell ultimately shows how Debord’s engagement with Hegel evinces the continuing use of the concept of “appearance” for understanding, as Russell puts it, the “phenomenality of a world that cannot be seen otherwise” (4). At the heart of Russell’s study is the form of appearances in societies organized by political economy. What Russell means by “appearance,” as his subtitle suggests, is the way in which the world seems to subjects in a broad sense that includes the sort of conceptual immediacy associated with the term “ideology.” In Hegel’s Science of Logic, appearance more specifically denotes how the object reveals itself; there, in a complex dynamic that Russell lays out with refreshing clarity, mere illusion, Schein, unfolds into the more complex Erscheinung, the appearance whose necessity compels the phenomenal world to bear its own truth: as per Hegel’s famous phrase, which Adorno compared to the great climaxes of Beethoven’s symphonies, “essence must appear!”. The category of appearance thus spans the historically determinate meanings of “phenomenology” that each reflect in various ways on how the world ‘reveals itself’ to consciousness. But for Russell, “appearance” is more specifically the concept that renders possible Hegel’s speculative philosophy. The central gambit of Russell’s study hinges on precisely such elective affinities between “the speculative,” as a direct relation between appearance and essence, and “the spectacle,” as a historical manifestation of that relation. This realm of appearances was likewise the starting point of Marx’s critique of political economy. In Capital, Marx begins this critique not with labor, circulation, the working day, Feudalism, or any of the other possible starting points, but rather with the commodity, the sensible and ubiquitous manifestation of the mode of production whose logic it soon reveals. As for Debord, that the first sentence of The Society of the Spectacle should play on the opening sentence of Capital indexes from the outset the intent to update this analysis of the commodity for his own time: “The whole life of those societies in which modern conditions of production prevail presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles” (Debord, 1995; 12). Not only does the replacement of “commodities” with “spectacles” denote a generalized commodification, but it also encapsulates Debord’s project of updating those forms of appearance that, for Marx, offer a profound view onto the dynamics of capital (if only to give way to other views as Capital progresses). The shift of emphasis from commodity to spectacle does not entail the effacement of the commodity form as a central analytic concept, but rather the commodity’s emerging tendency toward the visual. As the highest form of commodification, the “image” is one of the obvious-seeming manifestations of the spectacle in the age of ubiquitous advertising, celebrity, mind-numbing TV, and so on, but it more importantly indexes a certain encroachment of the commodity form upon the sensory apparatus. While the image is thus an important site for understanding the mutations in the commodity form, the spectacle is not identical with “images,” and its tendency toward visuality in the 20th-century ultimately “refers back to the riddle of the money-fetish” (104). As a condensed expression of the historical transformation in the capitalist mode of appearance witnessed by Debord, this first sentence of Debord’s Society of the Spectacle also serves as a prime example of the Situationist logic (adopted from the Lettrists) of détournement—the estrangement of old content or an imposition of a new context that makes the old material suddenly give off a flash of relevance. But perhaps another détournement from Society of the Spectacle serves as a better entry into Russell’s erudite study, this time a reworking of Hegel: “In a world that really has been turned on its head, truth is a moment of falsehood” (14). The first chapter of Russell’s book is devoted to working through the development of the Hegelian aphorism from which this sentence is derived: “the true is the whole.” Taken up by Adorno, this aphorism revealed that social totality could only be comprehended at the expense of the very particulars of which it is composed, admitting of a profound reversal: “the whole is the untrue.” Russell draws clear parallels between Debord’s own engagement with this problematic and that of Adorno’s, especially insofar as both take heed of the form of appearances under late capitalism as the true expression of a corrupt world. For Russell, this is the only way to make sense of the concept of spectacle: the spectacle is not the illusion that obscures the way a society really functions; rather, it is that functioning itself. Spectacle is not an obfuscation of class struggle but one of its many facets. Returning to Hegel’s terminology, Russell argues that many misreadings of Debord ignore this rational kernel in the mystical shell of spectacle and could be remedied by recognizing that the spectacle is not so much caught in the illusory dualism of Schein—illusion and reality, misrecognition and truth—as it is an expression of the internal necessity of Erscheinungen described above. The moments of this paradoxical identity of essence and appearance in the spectacle follow so closely those articulated in Hegel’s Logic that, for Russell, the spectacle can be considered the latter’s manifestation in reality (in much the same way that Adorno considered the culture industry a realization of the most fanciful formulations of German Idealism, industrializing the function of conceptual schematization that Kant had reserved for the individual). As Russell makes clear, this is because the concept of spectacle is not so much concerned with appearances per se as their unity or organisation in a given social formation, aligning the spectacle with the dialectical reversals in use- and exchange-value detailed by Marx. Though Russell ultimately argues that the spectacle should be considered the manifestation of Hegel’s subjective logic, such assertions in large part sidestep the usual thorny disputes as to Hegel’s relationship to the critique of capitalism, insofar as the spectacle names not capitalism in particular but a “critical theory of society” that is better understood alongside the Frankfurt School than the so-called postmodern theorists like Baudrillard. Such disputes return, however, when the contemporary spectacle is considered the self-moving and internally differentiating force that Marx called the “automatic subject” of capital and that bears such a striking formal similarity to the self-movement of Hegel’s world spirit (making it no surprise that Hegel, too, was familiar with Adam Smith’s “invisible hand of the market”). Another such problem addressed in Russell’s book is that of “separation,” inherited by Debord from Lukács and the early Marx. Like in the studies of Tom Bunyard and Anselm Jappe on which Russell builds, Spectacular Logic gives detailed accounts of the process by which subjects are unable to recognize the products of their labor as their own when the objective social world becomes “separated” from those who have created it, acquiring the status of an inalterable “second nature.” Russell adequately traces this tradition and its problems, revising at times its treatment in recent scholarship—in particular what Russell considers Jappe’s over-emphasis on the value-form and Bunyard’s opposition of Hegel’s speculative philosophy to the real logic of spectacle. Though taking into account the influence of French Hegelians like Hyppolite and Lefebvre, Russell focuses more directly on Debord’s engagement with the German tradition from Hegel to Lukács. But it is only when Russell returns to his sustained reading of Hegel’s subjective logic and of the “Force and Understanding” section from the Phenomenology that this work most starkly stands out from its predecessors’. It is best not to spoil any of Russell’s thorough and idiosyncratic reading of Hegel’s speculative philosophy, except to point out that Spectacular Logic, as Étienne Balibar writes in the book’s foreword, “might very well become one of the best critical introductions to the reading of the Subjective Logic” (xviii). From the book’s opening, Russell admits that he will somewhat narrowly focus on the logic of appearances in capitalist society, leaving untouched a great deal of material at the margins of this already massive scholarly undertaking. Nonetheless, since Debord’s artistic works constitute in their own right a profound meditation on the social organisation of appearances, one might have expected Russell to extend his own insights into a consideration of Debord’s artistic practice. Despite his limited output, Debord primarily considered himself a filmmaker, even as he made one of the first, but certainly not the last, proclamations of cinema’s end—not to mention the possibility for art to transcend itself in the construction of a new reality (and as for media more generally, Debord could not have more clearly stated that “the media” constitute only the most immediate and particular example of a mode of appearance that extends far beyond them). Many of the strengths of Russell’s book, however, stem from this decision to bracket such topics within Debord’s thought. Such bracketing allows him to provide much more than a corrective to the reception of Debord in the Anglophone academy, however needed one may still be. Russell goes far beyond such correctives by providing a strong statement about why, to play on a sentence from Oscar Wilde that serves as the book’s epigraph, it is only shallow critics who do not judge by appearances. AuthorCarson Welch is a PhD student in the Program in Literature at Duke University. This article was republished from Marx & Philosophy. Archives July 2021 7/14/2021 Book Review: Henry Heller- The French Revolution and Historical Materialism: Selected Essays. Reviewed By: Jean-Pierre ReedRead NowThe French Revolution, a collection of articles and (review) essays previously published in Historical Materialism, is a must read. In it, Heller sets out to challenge the revisionist history associated with this historical event. What is at stake? The Marxist interpretation of the French revolution as a bourgeois revolution, a position that goes back to the work of Marx (among others, the German Ideology, Capital, Vol. 1, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850) and Engels (in the Origin of the Family), and which gains serious scholarly recognition starting at the turn of the twentieth century with the work of French Socialist Jean Jaurés and through the late 1960s at which point under the intellectual context of post-structuralism and post-modernism and the already existent geopolitical context of the Cold War, the Marxist – historical materialist – interpretation is challenged, first by French scholars (prominently François Furet representing the cultural turn) and subsequent to them, Anglo scholars (deniers of its historical impact). All in all, Heller provides us with an insightful and astute account of the historiography on the French revolution in the service of demonstrating the significance of historical materialism as an interpretative framework for the event in question. He does this in an expository way and in an elucidating back-and-forth manner with his critics (William Beik, David Parker, and Stephen Miller), whose essays are also part of the collection. At the centre of the revisionist debate are some obvious but important questions: Was the bourgeoisie a class-in-itself and/or a class-for-itself at the time of the revolution? Is there any historical evidence that can support the claim that capitalism and its representative class actors existed at the time of revolution? Revisionist accounts, Heller shows, deny both the existence of a bourgeois class actor and the history of capitalist development that would have given rise to it. Historical records show, Heller further conveys of the revisionist history, that the absence of a capitalist infrastructure in seventeenth century France undermined the development of the bourgeoisie into a class-in-itself and class-for-itself capable of overthrowing the ancien régime. These latter factors imply that class conflict as portrayed in Marxist accounts was non-existent since the actors implied in the scenario of class conflict were also, in essence, non-existent, given the absence of a fully formed (or even despite an emergent) capitalist infrastructure. State sanctioned property rights – ‘seigneurial rights, venal offices, tax farms, noble titles, and bonds sold by office holders, municipal magistracies, and provincial estates’ – similarly got in the way of capitalist infrastructural development (112). If the bourgeoise was in fact a “viable” actor in the socio-political context that resulted in the outbreak and overthrow of the French monarchy as one of his critics contends, they played ‘a relatively small role’ (84). The real struggle between contending forces was not between the monarchy and emergent entrepreneurial middle classes. It was, so revisionists claim, between the nobility and the monarchy, if not between the monarchy and a reactionary peasantry. Revisionist accounts, to succinctly summarise, have ‘questioned the link between’ the bourgeoisie and capitalism, ‘cast doubt on the strength of both capitalism and the bourgeoisie … sought to deny the meaning of the terms,’ and ‘questioned the significance of the revolution to French history, which, it is claimed, is a history of continuity rather than change’ (127). Heller’s response to revisionist contentions is to acknowledge, as the revisionists do, that the seventeenth century was indeed a period where the development of the French bourgeoisie was undermined on account of state practices that bolstered the logic of a feudal system. Yet, Heller further conveys, their undermining was not an indication that they lost momentum entirely from their emergence in the sixteenth century. The key to making sense of their influence is connected to what Marx referred to as primitive accumulation. A type of accumulation that comes in the form of rural capitalism and the social, economic, and technological changes that are correspondent to it. To make sense of this latter phenomenon that revisionist accounts readily dismiss, Heller conveys, one must consider the rationalisation of agricultural practices and the emergent wage system associated with a coming-into-being new mode of production and how these factors were connected to the material interests and the development, if in a limited way, of an emergent rural capitalist class and its influence (on agricultural practices, see 122-23). Yes, the seventeenth century was not as conducive to their development, as it was the case in the sixteenth century. The aforementioned feudal-state sponsored property practices are a key factor that largely explains their retardation. Yet, shifting agricultural and land practices in place – and despite ‘increased taxes and rents’ – kept them in a holding pattern that made it possible for them to sustain profits and to re-emerge and gain momentum in the eighteenth century, a more favourable context of opportunity to their material and political interests (122). Heller also maintains that their influence in the unfolding of revolutionary situations is easily found in the discourse of the time. The fact that the artisan classes frequently engaged in strikes is also telling, not to mention the role finance capital played in the expansion of external commerce and development of industry before and after the overthrow of the monarchy. The reality that a language of class was present at the time of the revolutionary crisis and soon thereafter tells us something about the transformation processes already in place. The discourse against and for the revolution – as found in the language of key figures and journals – for example, was often consistent of warnings against bourgeois hegemony or calls for alliances with them against the monarchy. It not only proved the presence of a class actor, it also projected inchoate class interests that eventually matured and took hold of French society. Artisan strikes were in effect Luddite attacks against the imposition of an emergent economic regime that was displacing them through technological innovation, and the surest indicator of class conflict in the revolution. Regarding finance capital, Heller notes the following: ‘bankers were clearly involved in the development of both mining and metallurgy as well as large-scale commercial capitalism, the latter being the most dynamic sector of the economy prior to the revolution. It was in this sector in particular that industrial enterprises developed prior to 1789. The revolutionary period further advanced the development of capitalism and the development of a capitalist class’ (236). The debate over whether the French revolution was a bourgeoisie revolution is likely to continue as past accounts are scrutinised, historical records come to light and are interpreted, and new insights develop from paradigm shifts in academia. Heller’s The French Revolution, however, gives credence to the usefulness of historical materialism, and in a significant way settles the score, to date, between liberal and radical interpretations. In this reviewer’s opinion The French Revolution has set the standard for Marxist interpretations for years to come. For this reason alone, it should be read. AuthorJean-Pierre Reed is Associate Professor of Sociology, Africana Studies, and Philosophy at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, USA. His scholarship falls within the sociology of revolutions/social movements, social theory, and culture. It explores the significance of popular culture (especially religion), discourse, emotion, and storytelling in (revolutionary) politics. He has published extensively on the religious dimensions of the Nicaraguan revolution. He is author of Sandinista Narratives: Religion, Sandinismo, and Emotions in the Making of the Nicaraguan Insurrection and Revolution (Lexington Books 2020). This article was republished from Marx & Philosophy. Archives July 2021 7/10/2021 Book Review: Richard Westerman- Lukacs's Phenomenology of Capitalism. Reviewed By: Paul Leduc BrowneRead NowMuch has been written about History and Class Consciousness (henceforth HCC); it is hard to imagine that anyone could come up with a substantially original interpretation. Richard Westerman has done so in his daring and surprising book, Lukács’s Phenomenology of Capitalism. Reification Revalued. Lucien Goldmann said that Lukács was a Kantian, who became a Hegelian, and then a Marxist. According to Westerman, Lukács in HCC was in fact a Husserlian. Rejecting a century of interpretations of HCC, Westerman views Hegel as an influence on Lukács – but only the Hegel of the Science of Logic, not that of the Phenomenology of Spirit. Lukács proposed a phenomenology of creative and receptive attitudes toward the work of art in his Heidelberg manuscripts (1912-1918), which he wrote with a view to obtaining his ‘habilitation’ in German universities. In them, Lukács wrote: ‘In the interest of terminological clarity, and unless the contrary is explicitly stated, it must be said here once and for all that the expression ‘phenomenology’ refers to Hegel’s and not Husserl’s use of the term’ (Lukács 1974: 37, n. 10). Indeed, the unfolding of proletarian class consciousness in HCC has mostly been read as structured along the lines of Hegel’s phenomenology. Westerman, however, claims that phenomenology in the manuscripts and in HCC is in fact strictly Husserlian, not Hegelian, and that the philosophies of Edmund Husserl and Emil Lask (as well as the writings of art historians Alois Riegl and Konrad Fiedler), offer the key to understanding both the Heidelberg manuscripts and HCC – Westerman does not cite Lukács’s own statement in this regard, but mentions (55) that Agnes Heller refers to such a passage, but that she also ‘concedes’ that Lukács’s interpretation of Hegel was very ‘idiosyncratic.’ Ultimately, Westerman concludes not only that Lukács rejects the notion of identity in Hegel, but that ‘Lukács’s solution, in contrast, eschews both identity and essence’ (168). Yet, Lukács’s whole argument aims to demonstrate that the proletariat will become ‘the identical subject-object of history’ (Lukács 1971: 197). Most readers of HCC believe that it is a work of Marxist philosophy. That is not the impression one gets from Lukács’s Phenomenology of Capitalism, which claims that Lukács ‘transfers Husserl’s account of the intentional structure of the mental acts and the phenomena of consciousness to the practical acts and phenomena of social being’ (127). The rehearsal of the Marxist sources of HCC is a well-trodden path; one can understand that Westerman should have chosen not to repeat common interpretations, but to outline a fresh one. However, he seems to be at pains to ignore the influences of Hegel and Marx on Lukács’s book (something he attempts to justify in his book’s conclusion). For example, in order to account for the relational character of Lukács’s approach, he invokes Georg Simmel. He does not see relationality here as stemming from the writings of Marx, who famously defined the human essence as the ‘ensemble of the social relations’ (Marx 1976: 3). In general, Westerman does not display great knowledge of Marx’s theory. He seems to believe that Marx had an economistic and class-reductionist approach, a rather debatable proposition. He claims that alienation ‘is the result of a dichotomy produced by the commodity structure’ (278) between form and content. But Marx did not aim to be a theorist of commodity exchange as such; his purpose was to theorize a very specific relationship, the sale of labour power in the relationship of capitalist and wage labourer. The issue was not commodity exchange, which has existed in many modes of production, but capital. Westerman regards as a sign of art historian Riegl’s influence the idea that ‘each type of society has a different “structure of objectivity”’ (102). One is tempted to reply: they are called modes of production (a notion that encompasses much more than economic relations). Westerman questions whether Lukács was an orthodox Marxist, arguing that Lukács’s theory of capitalism is based on reification, but does not deal with surplus value or the tendency of the rate of profit to fall – as if these were the touchstone of Marxist orthodoxy. The publication of the 1844 Manuscripts, but also of the Grundrisse and of the full version of German Ideology, revealed the extent to which HCC paralleled Marx’s thought in so many ways. Indeed, Westerman himself notes that Lukács in 1967 stressed the salience of the concept of alienation in twentieth-century thought and how HCC was centered on this problem. Westerman constructs a straw man he repeatedly knocks down throughout his book. He accuses a variety of interpreters of Lukács of believing that the latter ‘treat[s] the relation of subject to objectivity as the interaction of two mutually external entities’ (4). No such interpretation of Lukács should be taken seriously, because it completely misunderstands his concept of reification. For Westerman, ‘subject and object are treated [by Lukács] as structurally defined parts of a meaningful totality of consciousness’ (16). The key word here is ‘meaningful’: ‘Consciousness’ in HCC coincides with social being, writes Westerman. He writes that Lukács ‘interprets social being through a formal semantics of practices and the meaning of objects […] it is the logic of these meanings that drives social practice’ (277-278). On that view, it would seem that Lukács was an idealist after all, as critics of HCC in the Communist movement claimed! Westerman suggests that the young Lukács oscillated between two positions: a mystical, messianic one, expressed in Soul and Form, The Theory of the Novel, and Lukács’s political writings between 1919 and 1921; and a rigorous philosophical one stated in the Heidelberg manuscripts (1912-1914, 1916-1918) and the chapters of HCC written or rewritten in 1922. Westerman attributes this to Lukács’s return in 1922 to ideas inspired by Lask, Husserl, Riegl and Fiedler. This begs the question of why his early revolutionary writings were not inspired by them. Why, in 1919, 1920 and 1921, would he ‘forget’ about the views developed in the Heidelberg manuscripts, only to rediscover them in 1922? Is there not a simpler explanation? Ultimately, Westerman is not able to establish the unity of HCC. He proposes in his account to discard the two chapters on Rosa Luxemburg, as well as those on class consciousness, on legality and illegality, and on the changing function of historical materialism, and to focus only on the chapters ‘What Is Orthodox Marxism’, ‘Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat’, and ‘Towards a Methodology of the Problem of Organization’. Westerman cites approvingly Lukács’s notorious comment that the sole criterion of Marxist orthodoxy is the adherence to the method of Marxism, rather than to this or that theory or concept, or even to all or any of Marx’s individual discoveries. It is easy to point out that Marx’s ‘method’ could surely not so easily be abstracted from his discoveries, and that any rejection of the latter would surely imply a real indictment of the former. Yet when Lukács speaks of ‘method’, he means the practice of grasping events and processes as aspects of totality, in other words in the light of the actuality of the moment of proletarian revolution. Lukács’s Phenomenology of Capitalism is a very academic volume; it treats HCC as one might a work by Aquinas or La Mettrie, not as an eminently militant, communist book. Seeing it as principally influenced by Husserl, Lask or Riegl is also a way of making it a safe object of academic research in conservative universities. The publisher’s web site says that Lukács’s Phenomenology of Capitalism ‘offers a radical new interpretation of Georg Lukács’s History and Class Consciousness, showing for the first time [emphasis added] how the philosophical framework for his analysis of society was laid in the drafts of [his] “Heidelberg Aesthetics”’ and ‘reveals for the first time a range of unsuspected influences on his thought, such as Edmund Husserl, Emil Lask, and Alois Riegl’. This is simply untrue (and Westerman himself is much more careful in his utterances on this subject). Ernst Bloch (1923), Rosshof (1975), Rochlitz (1981, 1983) and Kavoulakos (2018) all noted or explored Lask’s influence on HCC. Agnes Heller wrote: ‘[The Heidelberg Aesthetics] constitutes the bridge between Soul and Form and History and Class Consciousness. One could even indulge in the dangerously unhermeneutical idea that there is no possible understanding of Lukács without the Heidelberg Aesthetics.’ (Heller 1989: 206) Miguelez wrote a doctoral thesis (published in 1973) supervised by Lucien Goldman, comparing Husserl and Lukács; Vajda (1978-79) compared them in a similar way. There is no doubt that Westerman goes much further than they did in reading Lukács’s work in the light of Husserl’s phenomenology. Lukács learned much from Kierkegaard, Husserl, Lask, Riegl and Fiedler; it is also evident that he was very deeply influenced by Marx, Luxemburg, Lenin, Hegel, Kant and many others. The aim of HCC was not to propose a phenomenology of capitalism, as in the title of Westerman’s book, but to shed light on the development of proletarian class consciousness, and, on this basis, to give an account of the proletarian revolution within the context of a theory of history. Why did Lukács call his book History and Class Consciousness? Westerman’s account provides no sense of this. Because he does not believe in the relevance today of class struggle or proletarian revolution, Westerman has, often ingeniously, tried to provide a new meaning for HCC, by reinterpreting it completely as a work of Husserlian phenomenology, rather than of historical materialism. The result no longer resembles History and Class Consciousness. References
AuthorPaul Leduc Browne is professeur honoraire at the Université du Québec en Outaouais in Gatineau, Québec, Canada. This article was republished from Marx and Philosophy. Archives July 2021 7/9/2021 Book Review: BreadTube Serves Imperialism - Caleb Maupin. Reviewed By: Edward Liger SmithRead NowFor at least a year now a bitter online feud has played out between Marxist-Leninist activist Caleb Maupin, and the group of online content creators known as BreadTube. Breadtube creators such as Ian “Vaush” Kochinski have grown large online followings for giving political and cultural commentary from the left. Ideologically Vaush claims to be both a socialist and a dialectical materialist, while the name “BreadTube” is derived from famous anarchist Peter Kropotkin’s text Conquest of Bread. Caleb Maupin has repeatedly criticized BreadTube as an entity since doing an online debate with Vaush over a year ago. Caleb’s new book BreadTube Serves Imperialism attempts to systematize his argument that BreadTube creators are overall harmful to the movement for socialism. Maupin suspects that there may be direct ties between the US State Department and BreadTube. Since there is no incriminating evidence of this the book sets out to prove that regardless of whether Vaush and other creators are tied to US intelligence or not, they serve the same purpose of propping up the American ruling class and American Imperialism by extension. While BreadTubers have mocked Caleb for even taking the time to write a book about them, a systematized formulation of these arguments is welcomed by those of us who have watched this conflict play out exclusively online. The online culture around politics is notoriously toxic and ideas are usually debated publicly through 280-character tweets or live-streamed online debates. The idea that anyone would write a book engaging with the ideas and tactics of their intellectual rivals is foreign to this online political climate, despite the fact that for years political theorists engaged with each other through publishing written material. Bad Empanada (a BreadTube figure not mentioned in the book) proudly declared in his original video response that he would not be reading the full book. Perhaps when Marx responded to Proudhon’s Philosophy of Poverty with a book titled Poverty of Philosophy, Proudhon should have simply refused to read the book, and challenged Marx to a Twitch debate instead. To make the argument that BreadTube is ultimately harmful to left politics Maupin draws comparisons between the online creators and the cold war counter gangs funded by the US State Department. These gangs masqueraded as advocates for socialism whilst purposefully acting in a way that is harmful to the movement and distorting the meaning of socialism. For example, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge in Cambodia was propped up by the United States from the beginning. Pol Pot claimed to be a Marxist who could raise the Cambodian peasantry from poverty. In reality, the Khmer leadership knew nothing of Marx. Philip Short’s Pol Pot Anatomy of a Nightmare says for Pot and the Cambodian leadership “Marxism signified an ideal, not a comprehensive system to be mastered and applied.” Pot’s Government committed horrific genocides in the name of Marx and seemed committed to building a form of socialism that left everyone in Cambodia equally impoverished. Pot was not someone who sought to construct a socialist mode of production, but rather a tool of Western imperialists who had no understanding of Marxist economics. With the CIA’s help Pot capitalized on the popularity of Marxism to bring himself into a position of power. It’s hyperbolic to imply Vaush and other BreadTubeers are the modern-day equivalents of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. It seems that Maupin’s personal dislike for the BreadTube personalities may have influenced his choice to compare them in the book to some of history’s most despicable enemies of socialism. Gangs funded by the American empire purposely fill people’s heads with wrong ideas about Marxist economics. Caleb’s accusations of State Department connections is almost surely a retaliation against some BreadTubers habit of publicly smearing him as a Fascist. BreadTuber Thought Slime introduced Caleb in one video as “a crypto-fascist posing as a leftist, because it allows him to condescend to people more often.” A completely disingenuous description of someone who has been an active communist for almost 20 years after getting involved with politics through Iraq war protests. Understandably, Maupin is upset that after years of organizing with the belief that he was fighting against fascism, someone with very few organizing credentials can smear him as a fascist to an audience of nearly 200,000 people who consider themselves leftists. He even claims to have recently been kicked out of an organizing event for supposedly being a fascist. The allegations from both sides are unprovable and non-materialist. Caleb Maupin is not a fascist, and we can’t know if BreadTube is a psyop similar to the Congress for Cultural Freedom. However, it’s worth noting that Maupin’s accusations here seem to be in retaliation to having his reputation smeared for over a year by people who call themselves socialists. So the origins of BreadTube and CIA counter gangs can’t be materially compared, but do they have similar practical effects on the overall struggle for socialism? The bulk of BreadTube Serves Imperialism is dedicated to making this argument. Of course, BreadTube is not a homogenous way of thinking, but rather a collective of various online personalities with many young and intellectually curious viewers who tune in to watch their content. So, while the BreadTube left is not a hive mind, the sheer amount of anti-Marxist and pro-imperialist rhetoric from some of BreadTube’s major figures should be concerning to anyone who is serious about seeing socialism in the United States or bringing about an end to capitalist imperialism. The root of BreadTube’s most imperialistic rhetoric is their misunderstanding or refusal to understand production. That which Marx called ‘the anatomy of civil society” in Capital Vol 1. When a Libertarian tells you to “study economics” they actually want you to accept the dogmatic belief that market forces are inherently rational. When a Marxist says “study economics” they mean to understand that production, and the relations by which it is carried out, are at the root of the evils and triumphs of society. Because socialists understand this, we see changing the relations of production as the key to changing the form of society. Maupin’s book goes into great depth explaining the relation between production and imperialism, explaining that capitalist imperialism is not defined by war and military action, but is an economic system allowing capitalists to expand their profits through setting up capital to steal resources from poorer nations. Only once this all-important process of production is threatened or interrupted do the western capitalists begin asking their buddies in Washington to destabilize another nation. BreadTubers are often missing this key concept at the core of their analysis. I’ll give an example separate from the many which are described in the book. In a response to one of my own videos critiquing him for labeling anyone who supports existing socialist countries as a “tankie,” Vaush appeared shocked that in my video I had accused the United States of keeping the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in a state of constant warfare and economic hardship. In an exasperated tone, he asked “Wait! Hold on! Are you suggesting America is responsible like currently… for North Korea’s Political isolation? They (The DPRK) maintain it deliberately.” He then goes on to say the DPRK purposefully isolates themselves so that they may be propped up by China. This is a misunderstanding that is rooted in idealist thinking. Vaush’s analysis begins with the cultural, political, and legal superstructures of the US and DPRK. By rooting his analysis in politics rather than production, Vaush made the common mistake of pinning the socio-political problems of Korea on the country’s political structure itself. While the political structure of the DPRK is certainly not beyond critique, someone like Vaush who claims to be a dialectical materialist should see the political arena as a reflection of the productive one. The DPRK was formed in the context of a bloody anti-imperialist struggle against the Japanese who’s ruling class enriched themselves using the raw materials and productive forces of Korea. Once the Japanese had been expelled, capitalists in the United States immediately realized that profits could be made if they were able to make Korea a colony of their own. Less than a year after gaining their independence in a bloody struggle the DPRK was at war once again. This time against the United States and their far-right Korean ally Syngham Rhee, who would go on to become the first President of South Korea, ruling as a brutal dictator. Rhee’s forces would commit massacres in the war, filling the city of Pyongyang with the dead bodies of communists. The US indiscriminately launched bombing campaigns decimating civilian areas. When all was said and done 20% of the DPRK’s population had been killed in the war. One person for every family of five. While the US claims to this day that the war was an effort to prevent the North Korean political structure from committing human rights abuses, any socialist should know the real goal is always to maximize profits through controlling production in as many places as possible. Now consider the state of Korean Production after the war. The country’s production had been dominated by the Japanese for years, and as happens in all colonized nations, this prevented the Korean productive forces from developing in a diversified way. Then, after finally gaining their independence, the United States leveled their countries infrastructure with bombs, and a United Nations manufactured voting plan split the country in half. At that point, it became the task of the DPRK’s Political structure to effectively manage the nation’s production and rebuild their country after it had been leveled by three years of continued bombing. It was at this point that the US surrounded each of the DPRK’s borders with troops, besides the border that touches China. They then put the country under a brutal sanction regime, hoping to prevent the productive forces of the DPRK from increasing and starve their people into submission. The sanctions have only intensified as capitalism shifts to the domination of Western-backed financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank. Marxist academic Vijay Prashad identifies this as the longest hybrid war carried out by the US in its history as they have now kept the DPRK relatively economically isolated for almost 70 years since slaughtering 20% of the population. Despite these sustained attacks, the DPRK has been able to maintain its independence (with the help of nuclear deterrents), and create a sustainable living situation for its people. Vaush’s claim that the country purposefully isolates itself in order to trade with China is an absurd lie, made even more absurd when you know that the country Vaush is sitting in has banned the DPRK from trading at every border except the one they share with China. Even former US President Jimmy Carter said, “the North Koreans have suffered because the United States has done everything we possibly could to destroy the economy of North Korea.” (Loyal Citizens of Pyonyang). Vaush’s analysis is simply based on a surface-level overview of the North Korean political system, which Vaush labels as “authoritarian” and therefore not worthy of defense from Imperialism. Despite claiming to be a dialectical materialist, his analysis is neither dialectical nor materialist. He does not view the Korean Political structure as something which arose from the relations of production. If he did he would see that in 1910, when the independence struggle was starting, the political structure was forming itself in relation to the conditions of production, that is, in opposition to the Japanese and American capitalists who sought to dominate Korean land and people in order to enrich themselves. Of course, there are human rights abuses in Korea committed by the State. However, it is truly harmful for a prominent socialist living in the United States to lie to his audience about the DPRK in a fashion which encourages them to believe the US State Department’s narrative. Imperialists do not care about defending people from the human rights abuses of foreign governments. They care about controlling production and selling what they produce. This is the nature of capitalist imperialism which stems from the productive relations at the root of capitalism itself. While socialists have historically understood the true character of imperialism and organized against it, BreadTube’s Vaush lends credence to the simplified narratives the US empire gives about the countries they seek to colonize. While writing a book about rival internet personalities may seem like a silly endeavor, BreadTube Serves Imperialism at least helps to identify trends on the left that are worth fighting back against. While I am unconvinced that BreadTube is funded by the CIA, it does appear to be middle-class radicalism masquerading as socialism. Political and Cultural analysis is often divorced from any analysis of class, and fighting imperialism becomes secondary to fighting reactionary anti-SJW trolls on the internet. Achieving political power for the working class no longer seems to be the goal. In a video detailing how he plans to build socialism, Vaush claims that a President implementing socialist policy via executive order would be questionable to him as it sets an authoritarian precedent. This kind of thinking is entirely at odds with Marxism, which encourages the working class to smash the capitalist state apparatus and use the State's power to seize the means of production from the capitalist class, eventually changing the relations of production, and therefore subsequently the whole of society. It seems to me it’s less likely that BreadTube is CIA funded than it is that they are middle class people who have figured out a financially lucrative way to play video games while giving surface level political and cultural analysis. Similar to Pol Pot, many of them seem to believe in socialism as an ideal, or worse, a popular online trend to be exploited for profit. Vaush’s socialism abandons the working class because he is not a worker and cares more about protecting his own class position than moving society towards a more humane mode of production or combatting capitalist imperialism. Vaush says that the first step in his plan to construct socialism is to change the cultural values of society. He says his job as a socialist commentator is to change the culture of society so that people will become more accepting of socialist values and eventually socialism can be implemented through the ballot box. This is undeniably a distortion of what socialism has meant even before Marx. In the BreadTube conception of socialism the principal contradiction is not between the class who works and the class who owns, but between those who agree with the cultural values of BreadTube and those who do not. In this explanation Vaush reveals that he does not share Marx’s view of the working class as the revolutionary agent of society, who’s position in the economy allows them to wrest societies productive capacities from the hands of capital. In Vaush’s conception of socialism the revolutionary agent is no longer the working class, but Vaush himself. His goal is not to organize the working class so that they can fight for better conditions, but to procure a large audience who can be convinced into sharing his cultural values. The focus is no longer on the relations of production which are the anatomy of society, but the culture and politics which spring from it. This conception strips socialism of its core principles, and replaces it with a toothless version of itself, which is incapable of even recognizing the core contradictions in capitalist society. In a beautiful contrast to the synthetic socialism of BreadTube Maupin ends the book with a "four point plan to rescue the country" from his socialist think tank, the Center for Political Innovation. 1. A mass mobilization to rebuild the country 2.Public Ownership of Natural Resources 3. Public Control of Banking 4. an economic bill of rights Included in these plans are specific proposals such as building a rail between the Midwest and more prosperous regions of the country, or creating a mass mobilization of workers to create jobs and rebuild our crumbling public infrastructure. As someone who has spent their entire life around Midwestern Workers, I can tell you that this is the kind of political plan that will appeal to the American working class. Midwestern workers want jobs, stability, and peace. They will only struggle for a socialism that will make their lives better, not one which seeks to deprogram them and their children from ideas that online twitch streamers deem to be incorrect. The working class is not stupid as they're often made out to be. They simply understand their own interests. And the plan put forth by CPI is exactly the kind of socialist agenda which is needed to convince workers that socialism is the path forward if they want to improve their conditions. While I think Caleb Maupin is early to jump to conclusions of CIA backing, BreadTube Serves Imperialism does thoroughly expose the anti-Marxist- and pro imperialist leanings of many prominent BreadTube creators. These are trends on the left which need to be criticized and struggled against. The purpose of Marxism is to give socialism a scientific base upon which it can be built. BreadTube’s distortion of socialism’s meaning and the history of existing socialist states is incredibly harmful to the overall struggle for socialism. I commend Caleb Maupin for his continued activism in the face of relentless smear campaigns and harassment, and for attempting to present systematic arguments against what he believes to be a harmful trend within left wing politics. Hopefully the Bread Tube creators will give it a read in the spirit of being self-critical, however, I won’t be holding my breath. AuthorEdward Liger Smith is an American Political Scientist and specialist in anti-imperialist and socialist projects, especially Venezuela and China. He also has research interests in the role southern slavery played in the development of American and European capitalism. He is a co-founder and editor of Midwestern Marx and the Journal of American Socialist Studies. He is currently a graduate student, assistant, and wrestling coach at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. Archives July 2021 6/23/2021 Book Review: Domenico Losurdo -Nietzsche, the Aristocratic Rebel: Intellectual Biography and Critical Balance-Sheet. Reviewed By: Rory JeffsRead NowWhat is most remarkable about Nietzsche’s post-war ascendancy in the philosophico-cultural field is that it emerges out of a prior history of his philosophy’s use in legitimating the Nazi and fascist regimes of Europe in the 1930s. Unlike Heidegger, whose Nazism has certainly impacted his readership, Nietzsche’s reputation was able to attain an efficacious divorce from his Nazi appropriation. This was due in part to Walter Kaufman’s ‘rehabilitation’ of Nietzsche for Anglo-American readership after World War II, with his updated English translations and commentaries that cited Nietzsche’s correspondences that contained critical attitudes to anti-Semitism. It has now become nearly almost commonplace that Nietzsche is innocent not only of any association with Nazism, but that any view of him as conservative, reactionary or proto-fascist, because those interpretations were always based on a selectively biased or distorted reading of his work. This legacy is an effect of what Domenico Losurdo calls the ‘hermeneutics of innocence’ – not simply propagated by theorists and commentators, but also editors and translators of the complete works and Nachlass. Losurdo’s epic historiography of Nietzsche’s philosophy extensively exposes the ‘hermeneutics of innocence’ for failing to attend to the historical-social origins and wider context of Nietzsche’s thought. For this reason, Losurdo’s book is long overdue in the English scholarship where ‘innocent’ or trusting readings of Nietzsche have arguably prevailed and become ‘canonical’ (734), and where there is a need for a more ‘critical balance sheet’, especially amidst the rise of the far-right in recent decades that continue to feed on Nietzsche’s work. What emerges from Losurdo’s reconstruction effort of ‘unifying’ Nietzsche’s thought in its various stages (e.g. ‘Young Nietzsche’, ‘Solitary Rebel’, ‘Enlightener’, ‘Mature Nietzsche’) is a core central argument that there exists from beginning to end in Nietzsche’s prolific output, a politics of ‘aristocratic radicalism’. That is, the seeds of a political ‘movement’ or ‘programme’ to counter ‘two millennia of history’ that has led to a crisis of civilisation in the West (862). The importance of this term ‘aristocratic radicalism’ – a term Nietzsche himself accepted as a legitimate description of his philosophy by friend Georg Brandes (355) – is that it helps Losurdo bridge Nietzsche’s wide-sweeping radical critique of metaphysics and modernity with a specific political project that animates or motivates it. Whereas the ‘aristocratic’ aspect of Nietzsche’s thinking has been noted before, it has often been so from an ‘apolitical’ or anarchistic context from Nietzsche’s assumed descriptive or amoralistic ‘genealogy’. In one sense, Losurdo recognises that Nietzsche is psychologically penetrating in his critique of bourgeois (liberal) society on the basis of a ‘tragic disposition’ and ‘crisis of culture’. And furthermore, that his critique of revolution – which Losurdo analyses in terms of Nietzsche ‘four stages’ – exposes a metaphysical faith in historical progress or objectivity. However, understood under the thread of aristocratic radicalism, Losurdo argues Nietzsche’s form of critique is a ‘metacritique’ that offers no progressive possibilities with modern civilisation. Whilst metacritique adopts and even mimics the ‘nonconformist flag’ of socialism, it does so for the sake of a ‘singular revolution’: the use of genealogical destruction of democratic-slave ideology underpinning modernity and revolution as a ‘precondition for aristocratic social engineering’ (355-56, 979). And it is on this point where Losurdo disturbs the assumed ‘postmodern’ narrative that Nietzsche’s genealogical method was the critique or deconstruction of power itself. It is not until Part Three of the book that Losurdo elaborates in detail on how aristocratic radicalism equates to a praxis or political programme of ‘social engineering’. The first thing to note about Losurdo use of a ‘wide-context’ method for a reconstruction of Nietzsche’s thinking is that it subtly shows how Nietzsche formulated reactionary ideas without being under the influence of the German nationalism characterised by Bismarck’s term as Chancellor of the Second Reich (‘Germomania’, ‘national liberalism’) and its extension in anti-Semitism (Wagner-Förster-Dühring). For in comparison to these trends, Nietzsche self-consciously distances himself from historical influences, presenting himself as ‘European soul’ and ‘untimely’ or politically ineffectual figure watching events from above with the ‘pathos of distance’ (a la his protagonist Zarathustra). However, to glean from this distance that Nietzsche was a deeply ‘antipolitical’ philosopher because there was no timely political project fit for his vision, is for Losurdo simply perpetuating Nietzsche’s self-mythmaking. The nuances of Nietzsche’s political project for Losurdo can be identified by way of a closer study of how Nietzsche re-theorises a set of reactionary tropes in a radical modern mode rather than in terms of classic conservative counter-revolutionary mode of a ‘return’ to the past. The central tenets consistently crossing over Nietzsche’s stages that outline such a program concern the real meaning of the last stage of his planned but unfinished project of ‘the revaluation of all values’, which Losurdo reconfigures in terms of Nietzsche’s ‘alternative’ revolution (alluded to in The Gay Science) of aristocratic radicalism that becomes defined by the call for a ‘new slavery’, ‘new nobility’ and a ‘new party of life’ (352-57). In terms of a new slavery, Losurdo compares Nietzsche’s thinking on the topic of slavery via the views of other groups, such as the Junker class in Germany, the American slave-owners and the Czarist monarchy in Russia. Core to all of them was their support of the institution of slavery and aristocratic values of otium et bellum (672-91) – which Losurdo underlines as a ‘watchword’ throughout Nietzsche’s writings. As Losurdo recounts, Nietzsche had formed in his early writings (e.g. ‘The Greek State [1871]’), a view that ‘slavery was the essence of culture’ (678). This view becomes the basis for Nietzsche’s later use of otium et bellum, where war is represented as an aristocratic ‘virtue’ and leisure is characterised by activities exclusive to the aristocracy that also are the source of higher culture (art, music, literature). What the phrase consciously excludes, as Losurdo notes, is labour as the source of virtue or culture – yet paradoxically, Nietzsche acknowledges that otium et bellum will always depend upon the institution of exploited labour of slave-classes in freeing the higher classes from having to work themselves. Therefore, any recovery of aristocratic virtues in a new age of ‘free spirits’ would require a new slave-class rather than the further democratisation of societies. For Losurdo, these links help explain why the crisis of culture was intrinsically connected by Nietzsche to the expansion of otium to the workers that would reduce it to values of peace, pleasure and commodification (929-30). The key for this project of recovery Losurdo claims is in finding a ‘new nobility’ or model of ‘rank-ordering’ for future societies. In his ‘mature’ period, Nietzsche himself reflected that the problem and aim of his philosophy had always been ‘rank-ordering’ (339, 966). Losurdo refers to Nietzsche’s sought-after model of social hierarchy as a form of ‘transversal racialisation’ (760-62, 780-85), where a social division is always marked between masters and servants and results from the expression of ‘noble’ (well-formed) and ‘base’ (malformed) natures or instincts that in turn determine the meaning of ‘race’. Losurdo distinguishes such a form of ‘rank-ordering’ from the fascist ‘horizontal racialisation’ of biological racism or white supremacy (783). This further explains the peculiarity of Nietzsche’s ‘anti-anti-Semitism’ that in effect even supports the idea of future society ruled by aristocrats and Jewish ‘Big Capital’ (543-45). However, how the noble natures or virtues are generated is an issue in the writings of the ‘mature’ Nietzsche as he refers to aristocratic societies (‘master moralities’) and caste orders of the past (‘Code of Manu’, cited at 793) – which all were ‘corrupted’ by Judaeo-Christianity. Here, Losurdo argues Nietzsche’s transversal racism adopts the caste distinction of ‘Aryans’ and ‘Chandalas’ because it can be applied within one nation or race and thus potentially undermine the modern egalitarian value-base of nation-states. In seeking to establish a clearer outline of Nietzsche’s ‘political programme of aristocratic radicalism’ that would base it in the socio-political circumstances of his own times, Losurdo compares Nietzsche’s ideas within the horizon of eugenic discourse of the mid-to-late nineteenth century (582-600, 692-710). Here, the later or ‘mature Nietzsche’ (from the Gay Science [1882] to 1889) is central to the comparative argument – given that his concepts of the will to power, eternal return and Ubermensch emerge in this period. Whilst there are some cited exceptions in the published texts of this period, ultimately, the posthumously published fragments of The Will to Power underline much of the source material used by Losurdo to discuss Nietzsche’s thoughts on a ‘new Party of Life’. This phrase affirmatively used by Nietzsche, as Losurdo cites, originates from the social Darwinist (and eugenicist) Frederic Galton (699). In Nietzsche’s hands, the ‘party’ will be of an intellectual vanguard of free Spirits and Übermenschen who will be unafraid to advocate (not necessarily employ) eugenic measures, for in Nietzsche’s own words, ‘the annihilation [vernichtung] of the millions of malformed’ (596-601). Despite the harshness of Nietzsche’s language in these kinds of passages, left-Nietzscheans such as Gianni Vattimo and Gilles Deleuze have attempted to allegorise or metaphorise these radical concepts on life and their relation to the will to power and the eternal return. Losurdo reveals the absurdity of such an approach that would discount any historical-social origins to the theory and ignore the brutality and danger with which Nietzsche seeks to shock his readers. Hence, the usual interpretation of Nietzsche as a ‘life-affirming’ philosopher is brought to bear on a darker political implication by Losurdo’s rendering here, knowing that where Nietzsche says life, he also states ‘the great majority of men have no right to existence’ (Nietzsche 1967: 464). Bearing on these sections of the book that dare to go into the eugenic question, the issue of the Nazi ‘appropriation’ is also inevitably addressed by Losurdo. He argues that the rehabilitative work of Nietzsche’s postwar editors (namely, Kaufmann and Colli and Montinari) was successful largely due to their attribution to Nietzsche’s sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, as the key instigator in rendering a Nazi-friendly Nietzsche in her assemblage and ‘forgery’ of the posthumous editions of The Will to Power (1901-06). However, Losurdo argues such defences of Nietzsche discount several important historical details. Firstly, he claims the official account of Elisabeth’s role in creating Nietzsche’s anti-Semitism is an ‘unsustainable conspiracy theory’ (711-15). Nietzsche’s defenders on this front never address Elisabeth’s own distancing of Nietzsche from anti-Semitism in her biography of him (Förster-Nietzsche 1895-1904). Furthermore, there is never any discussion of the fact that Nietzsche was attracting a right-wing audience of his published works before The Will to Power was released (566, 720-22). Whilst this does not necessarily resolve the issue of Nietzsche’s influence on Nazism, it does reveal something arbitrary about the ‘hermeneutics of innocence’ when it comes to the distinctions it makes over the ideological precursors to the Third Reich. With 1000+ pages critically re-examining the Nietzsche legacy, can Losurdo claim posthumously himself (having sadly passed in 2018) to have settled the ‘critical balance sheet’ on Nietzsche? Nothing of course written on Nietzsche has ever been settled, and Losurdo himself avows as much, following Gadamer’s own assessment (1001). Whilst Losurdo, of course, was never going to wait on deconstruction or hermeneutics to work out the questions of interpretation by way of their ‘speculative connections’, he makes a point that a gap steadily widens vis-à-vis Nietzsche between the defence of interpretation or theoretical licence and the historical research or record (726-27, 730-33). One of the risks of any unifying method, especially as politically applied, is what it leaves for future readers of Nietzsche. Throughout his account of Nietzsche’s intellectual history, Losurdo continues to remind us that to extract or ignore these unpalatable aspects of Nietzsche’s writings or his influence on the political right, would not actually ‘save’ Nietzsche, nor would it provide a more consistent method for understanding him. For Losurdo, a ‘theoretical surplus’ can only be recognised in Nietzsche’s work from seeing the whole of his philosophy as ‘totus politicus’ (827-28, 949). But it is this premise of unifying a thinker’s philosophy, via an ‘aristocratic’-political project, that would itself be contested by the hermeneuts of innocence. And as Losurdo notes, his contribution here exposes how deep a ‘conflict of the faculties’ exists, between history and philosophy departments who begin, at least in the case of Nietzsche, from different pages. References
AuthorRory Jeffs is a teaching fellow at University College, University of Tasmania. This Book review was republished from Marx and Philosophy. Archives June 2021 5/31/2021 The Relevance of Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man and its Failures. By: Carlos L. GarridoRead NowPosing the Question This year marks the 57th anniversary of Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man (1964). This text, although plagued with a pessimistic spirit, was a great source of inspiration for the development of the New Left and the May 68 uprisings. The question we must ask ourselves is whether a text that predates the last 50 years of neoliberalism has any pertinent take-aways for today’s revolutionary struggles. Before we examine this, let us first review the context and central observations in Marcuse’s famed work. Review Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man[i] (ODM) describes a world in which human rationality is uncritically used to perpetuate the irrational conditions whereby human instrumental ingenuity stifles human freedom and development. In the height of the cold war and potential atomic devastation, Marcuse observes that humanity submitted to the “peaceful production of the means of destruction” (HM, ix). Society developed its productive forces and technology to a scale never before seen. In doing so, it has created the conditions for the possibility of emancipating humanity from all forms of necessity and meaningless toil. The problem is, this development has not served humanity, it has been humanity that has been forced to serve this development. The instruments humans once made to serve them, are now the masters of their creators. The means have kidnapped the ends in a forced swap, the man now serves the hammer, not the other way around. The observation that our society has developed its productive forces and technologies in a manner that creates the conditions for more human freedom, while simultaneously using the development itself to serve the conditions for our un-freedom, is not a new one. The Marxist tradition has long emphasized this paradox in the development of capitalism. Marcuse’s ODM’s novel contribution is in the elucidation of the depth of this paradox’s submersion, as well as how this paradox has extended beyond capitalism into industrialized socialist societies as well. Let us now examine how Marcuse unfolds the effects of modern capitalist instrumental rationality’s closing of the political universe. Whereas the capitalism Marx would deal with in the mid-19th century demonstrated that along with clearly antagonistic relations to production, the working and owning class also shared vastly different cultures, modern one-dimensional society homogenizes the cultural differences between classes. Marcuse observes that one of the novelties of one-dimensional society is in its capacity to ‘flatten out’ the “antagonisms between culture and social reality through the obliteration of the oppositional, alien, and transcendent elements in higher culture” (HM, 57). This process liquidates two-dimensional culture and creates the conditions for social cohesion through the commodification, repressive desublimation, and wholesale incorporation and reproduction of these cultural elements into society by mass communication. In essence, the cultural differences the working and owning class had have dissipated, both are integrated in the same cultural logic. This does not mean there is no cultural opposition, but that the cultural opposition is itself “reduced” and “absorbed” into the society. Today, this absorption of the opposition is more visible than ever. Companies that donate millions to police departments post #BLM on their social medias, repressive state apparatuses who assaulted homosexuals in the 60s lavender scares now wave the LGBTQ+ flag, billion-dollar companies like Netflix who take loopholes to not pay taxes make a show on ‘democratic socialist’ Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, etc. All throughout our one-dimensional culture we experience the absorption of an ‘opposition’ whom in being absorbed fails to substantially oppose. This could be reformulated as, ‘all throughout our one-dimensional culture we experience the absorptions of any attempts at a great refusal, whom in being absorbed fail to substantially refuse.’ How did this happen? Well, in a way that paradoxically provides the material confirmation of Marxism as a science (according at least to Popper’s falsifiability requirement), while disconfirming one of its central theses, modern capitalism seems to have mended one of its central grave digging contradictions, the antagonistic contradiction between the proletariat and the owning class. According to Marcuse, modern industrial society has been able to do this because it provided the working masses (and society in general) a “comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom” (HM, 1). It superimposed on the working masses false needs which “perpetuate [their] toil, aggressiveness, misery,” and alienation for the sake of continuing the never-ending hamster wheel of consumption (HM, 5). In modern industrial society people are sold a false liberty which actively sustains them in a condition of enslavement. As Marcuse states, Free choice among a wide variety of goods and services does not signify freedom if these goods and services sustain social controls over a life of toil and fear – that is, if they sustain alienation (HM, 8). In essence, that which has unnecessarily sustained their working life long, exploitative, and alienating, has made their life at home more ‘comfortable.’ This consumerist, Brave New World-like hellish heaven has perpetuated the prevalent ‘happy consciousness’ present in modern industrial society, where your distraction, comfort, and self-identification with your newly bought gadgets has removed the rebellious tendencies that arise, in a Jeffersonian-like manner, when the accumulation of your degradation reaches a certain limit where revolution becomes your panacea. The phenomenon of happy consciousness, says Marcuse, even forces us to question the status of a worker’s alienation, for although at work alienation might continue, he reappropriates a relation to the products through his excessive identification with it when purchased as a consumer. In this manner, the ‘reappropriation’ of the worker’s alienation to the product manifests itself like Feuerbach’s man reappropriating his species-being now that it has passed through the medium (alienated objectification) of God – the commodity here serving the mediational role of God. The working mass, as we previously mentioned, is not the only one affected by the effects of one-dimensional society. Marcuse shows that the theorists are themselves participatory and promotional agents of this epoch. Whether in sociology or in philosophy, the general theoretical trends in academia are the same; the dominance of positivist thinking, and the repression and exclusion of negative (or dialectical) thinking. This hegemonized positivist thought presents itself as objective and neutral, caring only for the investigation of facts and the ridding of ‘wrongful thought’ that deals with transcendental “obscurities, illusions, and oddities” (HM, 170). What these one-dimensional theorists do is look at ‘facts’ how they stand dismembered from any of the factors that allowed the fact to be. In doing so, while they present their task as ‘positive’ and against abstractions, they are forced to abstract and reify the fact to engage with it separated from its context. By doing this these theorists limit themselves to engaging with this false concreteness they have conjured up from their abstracting of the ‘fact’ away from its general spatial-temporal context. Doing this not only proves to be futile in understanding phenomena – for it would be like trying to judge a fight after only having seen the last round – but reinforces the status quo of descriptive thinking at the expense of critical and hypothetical thought. As Marcuse states, This radical acceptance of the empirical violates the empirical, for in it speaks the mutilated, “abstract” individual who experiences (and expresses) only that which is given to him, who has only the facts and not the factors, whose behavior is one-dimensional and manipulated. By virtue of the factual repression, the experienced world is the result of a restricted experience, and the positivist cleaning of the mind brings the mind in line with restricted experience (HM, 182). Given that “operationalism,” this positivist one-dimensional thought, which in “theory and practice, becomes the theory and practice of containment,” has penetrated the thought and language of all aspects of society, is there an escape to this seemingly closed universe (HM, 17)? As a modest dialectician, Marcuse denies while leaving a slight ‘chance’ for an affirmation. On one end, the text is haunted by a spirit of pessimistic entrapment – not only has the logic of instrumental rationality that sustains one-dimensional society infiltrated all levels of society and human interaction, but the resources are vast enough to quickly absorb or militarily “take care of emergency situations”, viz., when a threat to one-dimensional society arises. On the other end, he says that “it is nothing but a chance,” but a chance nonetheless, that the conditions for a great refusal might arise (HM, 257). Although he argues dialectical thinking is important to challenge capitalist positivism, he recognizes dialectical thinking alone “cannot offer the remedy,” it knows on empirical and conceptual grounds “its own hopelessness,” i.e., it knows “contradictions do not explode by themselves,” that human agency through an “essentially new historical subject” is the only way out (HM, 253, 252). The contingency of this ‘chance’ is dependent on the contingency of the great encounter between the “most advanced consciousness of humanity” and the “most exploited force,” i.e., it is the ‘barbarians’ of the third world to whom this position of possible historical subjectivity is ascribed to (HM, 257). Nonetheless, Marcuse is doing a theoretical diagnosis, not giving us a prescriptive normative approach. The slight moment where a glimpse of prescriptive normativity is invoked, he encourages the continual struggle for the great refusal. This is how I read the final reference to Walter Benjamin, “[critical theory] wants to remain loyal to those who, without hope, have given and give their life to the Great Refusal” (Ibid.). Even if we are hopeless, we must give our life to the great refusal. We must be committed, in Huey Newton’s terms, to “revolutionary suicide”, to foolishly struggling even when no glimpse of hope is to be found, for only in struggling when there is no hope, can the conditions for the possibility of hope arise. AnalysisThere are very few observations in this text to which we can point to as relevant in our context. The central thesis of a comfortable ‘happy consciousness’ which commensurates all classes under a common consumerist culture is a hard sell in a world in which labor has seen its century long fought for gains drawn back over the last 50 years.[ii] Neoliberalism has effectively normalized what William L. Robinson calls the “Wal-Martization of labor,”[iii] i.e., conditions in which work is less unionized, less secure, lower paid, and given less benefits. These conditions, along with the growing polarization of wealth and income, render Marcuse’s analysis of the post-WW2 welfare state impertinent. I lament to say that the most valuable take-away of ODM for revolutionaries today is where it failed, for this failure continues to be quite prevalent amongst many self-proclaimed socialist in the west. This failure, I argue, consist of Marcuse’s equating of capitalist states with socialist experiments. Marcuse’s ODM unites the socialist and capitalist parts of the world as two interdependent systems existing within the one-dimensional logic that prioritizes “the means over the end” (HM, 53). For Marcuse, the socialist part of the world has been unable to administer in praxis what it claims to be in theory; there is effectively a “contradiction between theory and facts” (HM, 189). Although this contradiction does not, according to him, “falsify the former,” it nonetheless creates the conditions for a socialism that is not qualitatively different to capitalism (Ibid.). The socialist camp, like capitalism, “exploits the productivity of labor and capital without structural resistance, while considerably reducing working hours and augmenting the comforts of life” (HM, 43). In essence, his argument boils down to 20th century socialism being unable to create a qualitatively new alternative to capitalism, and in this failure, it has replicated, sometimes in forms unique to it, the mechanisms of exploitation and opposition-absorption (through happy consciousness, false needs, military resistance, etc.), that are prevalent in the capitalist system. There are a few fundamental problems in Marcuse’s equalization, which all stem, I will argue, from his inability to carry dialectical thinking onto his analysis of the socialist camp. In not doing so, Marcuse himself reproduces the positivistic forms of thought which dismember “facts” from the factors which brought them about. Because of this, even if the ‘facts’ in both camps appear the same, claiming that they are so ignores the contextual and historical relations that led to those ‘facts’ appearing similar. For Marcuse to say that the socialist camp, like the capitalist, was able to recreate the distractingly comfortable forms of life that make for a smoother exploitation of workers, he must ignore the conditions, both present and historical, that allowed this fact to arise. Capitalism was able to achieve this ‘comfortable’ life for its working masses because it spent the last three centuries colonizing the world to ensure that the resources of foreign lands would be disposable to western capital. This process of western capitalist enrichment required the genocide of the native (for its lands), and the enslavement of the African (for its labor) and created the conditions for the 20th century struggle between western capital for dividing up the conquered lands and bodies of the third world. But even with this historical and contextual process of expropriation and exploitation, the fruits of this were not going to the working classes of the western nations because of the generosity of the owning class, regardless of how much they benefited from creating this ‘labor aristocracy.’ Rather, the only reason why this process slightly came to benefit the popular classes in the US was a result of century long labor struggles in the country, most frequently led by communists, socialists, and anarchist within labor unions. The socialist camp, on the other hand, industrialized their backwards countries in a fraction of the time it took the west, without having to colonize lands, genocide natives, or enslave blacks. On the contrary, regardless of the mistakes that were made, and the unfortunate effects of these, the industrialization process in the socialist camp was inextricably linked to the empowering of the peripheral subjects, whether African, Asian, Middle-Eastern, or Indo-American, that had been under the boot of western colonialism and imperialism for centuries. The ‘third-world’ Marcuse leaves the potential role of historical subjectivity to, was only able to sustain autonomy because of the solidarity and aid – political, military, or economic in kind, it received from the socialist camp. Those who were unable, for various reasons, to establish relations with the socialist camp, replicated, in a neo-colonial fashion, the relations they had with their ‘previous’ metropoles. In fact, history showed that the ‘fall’ of this camp led the countries in the third world that sustained an autonomous position (thanks to the comradely relations they established with the socialist world), to be quickly overturned into subjected servitude to western capital. By stating that the socialist camp was unable to affect a materialization in praxis of its theory, and as such, that it was not qualitatively different from capitalism (making the equating of the two possible), Marcuse effectively demonstrates his ignorance, willful or not, of the geopolitical situation of the time. Socialism in the 20th century could not create its ideal qualitatively new society while simultaneously defending its revolution from military, economic, and biowarfare attacks coming from the largest imperial powers in the history of humanity. Liberation cannot fully express itself under these conditions, for, the liberation of one is connected to the liberation of all. The communist ideal whereby human relations are based “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” is only realizable under the global totalizing disappearance of all forms of exploitation and oppression. It is idealist and infantile to expect this reality to arise in a world where capitalism exists even at the farthest corner of the earth, even less in a world where the hegemonized form of global relations is capitalistic. Nonetheless, even Marcuse is forced to admit that the socialist camp was able to create a comfortable life for its working masses. But, unlike Marcuse argues, this comfort in the socialist camp cannot be equated with comfort in the capitalist camp. Not only are the conditions that led to the comfort in each fundamentally different (as just previously examined), but the comfort itself, as a fact, was also radically different. In terms of job security, housing, healthcare, education, childcare, and other forms of government provided social securities, the comfort in the socialist camp was significantly higher than the comfort experienced by the working masses in the welfare social democracies in Europe, and tenfold that of the comfort experienced by the working masses in the US. When to this you add the ability for political participation through worker councils and the party, the prevalent spirit of solidarity that reigned, and the general absence of racism and crime, the foolishness of the equalization is further highlighted. Nonetheless, the comparison must not be made just between the capitalist and socialist camp, but between the conditions before and after the socialist camp achieved socialism. Doing so allows one to historically contextualize the achievements of the socialist camp in terms of creating dignified and freer lives for hundreds of millions of people. For these people, Marcuse’s comments are somewhere between laughable and symbolic of the usual disrespect of western intelligentsia. Although Marcuse was unable to live long enough to see this, the fall of the socialist camp, and the subsequent ‘shock therapy’ that went with it, not only devastated the countries of the previous socialist camp – drastically rising the rates of poverty, crime, prostitution, inequality, while lowering the standard of living, life expectancy, and the opportunities for political participation – but also the countries of the third world and those of the capitalist camp themselves! With the threat of communism gone, the third world was up for grabs again, and the first world, no longer under the pressure of the alternative that a comfortable working mass in the socialist camp presented, was free to extend the wrath of capital back into its own national popular classes, eroding century long victories in the labor movement and creating the conditions for precarious, unregulated, and more exploitative work. Works like One-Dimensional Man, which take upon the task of criticizing and equating ‘both sides,’ do the work of one side, i.e., of capitalism, in creating a ‘left’ campaign of de-legitimizing socialist experiments. This process of creating a ‘left’ de-legitimation campaign is central for the legitimation of capital. This text (ODM) is the quintessential example of one of the ways capitalism absorbs its opposition by placing it as a midpoint between it and the real threat of a truly socialist alternative. It is because the idealistic and non-dialectical logic of capital infiltrates these ‘left’ anti-communist theorists that they can condemn and equate socialist experiments with capitalism. If there is a central takeaway from Marcuse’s text, it is to guard ourselves against participating in this left-anticommunism theorizing that prostitutes itself for capital to create the conditions whereby the accidental ‘faults’ of pressured socialist experiments are equated with the systematic contradictions in capitalist countries. In a world racing towards a new cold war, it is the task of socialists in the heart of the empire to fiercely reject and deconstruct the state-department narratives of socialist and non-socialist experiments attempting to establish themselves autonomously outside of the dominion of US imperialism. Acknowledging how Marcuse failed to do this in ODM helps us prevent his mistake. Notes [i] Reference will be to the following edition: Marcuse, Herbert. One-Dimensional Man. (Beacon Press, 1966). [ii] Perhaps even longer, for The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 had already began these drawbacks. Nonetheless, 1964 is a bit too early to begin to see its effects, especially for an academic observing from outside the labor movement. [iii] Robinson, L. William. Latin America and Global Capitalism. (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008)., p. 23. AuthorCarlos L. Garrido is a philosophy graduate student and assistant at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. His specialization is in Marxist philosophy and the history of American socialist thought (esp. early 19th century). He is an editorial board member and co-founder of Midwestern Marx and the Journal of American Socialist Studies. Archives May 2021 5/25/2021 Book Review: Slavoj Zizek and Perverse Christianity (2003). Reviewed By: Thomas RigginsRead NowIn his book, “The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity” the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek puts forth the view that Marxists can no longer make a frontal attack on the institutions of imperialism, thus a feint under the cover of Christianity is necessary. Zizek calls himself "a materialist through and through" and believes that Christianity has a "subversive kernel" which can only be demonstrated by a materialist analysis. But he also holds that the relationship is so intimate that "to become a true dialectical materialist, one should go through the Christian experience." Zizek maintains that for "intelligent Marxists" the most interesting questions are not those about change and development – but about permanence and stability. Why has Christianity persevered from ancient times? We "find it in feudalism, capitalism, socialism..." etc. The clue is to be found in the writings of the Catholic writer G.K. Chesterton who wrote that despite the rigid ethical and moral demands of the Church and its priests, an inhuman "outer ring" it actually protected the masses of people where one would find "the old human life dancing like children and drinking wine like men; for Christianity is the only frame for pagan freedom." Pagan freedom is another term for joy in living. This may explain the persistence of Christianity, but why must Marxists have the Christian experience? This is too unrealistic a claim. Do Asian Marxists from non-Christian cultural backgrounds have to convert to Christianity in order to have the "Christian experience" before fully understanding dialectical materialism? Other religions have also been persistent. Hinduism, for example, is older than Christianity, as is Buddhism, and has adapted to the modern world. Zizek does discuss some of these other religions but is on shaky ground. He seems to think, for instance, that Bodhisattva is the name of a person rather than being a title used to describe Mahayana Buddhist “deities”. Zizek’s "materialism" or at least his "Marxism" is also all mixed up with categories borrowed from Lacanian psychoanalysis. And here is a digression based on W.L.Reese’s work Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion: Eastern and Western Thought: Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) was a French psychoanalyst who thought the unconscious Id expresses itself in language because it is structured like a language. The Ego should recognize the depth and plurality of meanings of the Id. This is hard to do as the Ego = our personal identity, our conscious self which is only composed of the info allowed through by the Censor. Lacan wants to subvert not strengthen the Ego. The Ego is a mess due to problems in infancy and it is this screwed up infantile Ego, surviving into adulthood, that must be subverted by the usual psychoanalytic methods. Using this Lacanian world view plus "Marxism," Zizek decides that by using a "perverse" version of Christianity leftists can smuggle in, as it were, progressive ideas and put them into play in our society. Having concluded that Marxism cannot get a hearing in our culture this is really the only way that we can advance the revolutionary cause. Marxists in Christian clothing. No doubt that because Christianity originated among oppressed national minorities and slaves there are many features of progressive social justice that can be deduced from it. The battle against the Christian right could be more easily waged by showing that its political and social formulations are contrary to Christian teachings and the logic of Christianity. In this respect Zizek has a point. But it is not necessary for Marxists to go through a Christian moment themselves. By the way, the "puppet" in the book’s title is Christian theology – we (the “dwarf”) will use theology to forward our secular ends – the dwarf will use the puppet. People interested in philosophy and religion may want to read this book. I have only scratched the surface in this brief article. At the end, Zizek says the point of his book is to show that Christianity at its core reveals the secret of the passion of the Christ (one that Mel Gibson missed). When Christ dies after asking his Heavenly Father why He has abandoned him, the historical secret is that there is no Heavenly Father. So is “Christ” just hallucinating? There is no "Other" to judge us. We are responsible. This is the perverse core of Christianity and Zizek takes us on an interesting tour of the history of Western thought to get there. You might not like all of the stops along the way, or even the final destination, but you may well enjoy the trip. Nevertheless, I don’t think we will ever start preaching Marxism-Leninism-Jesus Christ Thought. AuthorThomas Riggins is a retired philosophy teacher (NYU, The New School of Social Research, among others) who received a PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center (1983). He has been active in the civil rights and peace movements since the 1960s when he was chairman of the Young People's Socialist League at Florida State University and also worked for CORE in voter registration in north Florida (Leon County). He has written for many online publications such as People's World and Political Affairs where he was an associate editor. He also served on the board of the Bertrand Russell Society and was president of the Corliss Lamont chapter in New York City of the American Humanist Association. Archives May 2021 5/11/2021 Book Review: Socialism Betrayed - By Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenney (2004). Reviewed By: Thomas RigginsRead NowIn Socialism Betrayed, Keeran and Kenny discuss the collapse of the Soviet Union (SU). While I think they fail to accomplish their aim they have produced a narrative history of the last years of the SU. Their thesis is, the SU collapsed "because of the policies that Mikhail Gorbachev pursued after 1986." This is reminiscent of the Great Man Theory of history put to rest by Plekhanov’s "The Role of the Individual in History." The book relates the Byzantine intrigues of the Politburo and a dozen or so men in the leadership. The authors’ heroes are Stalin (some qualifications are offered for his darker policies), Molotov, Malenkov and the early Brezhnev (who in his last five years "played no active part in state or Party life") and Andropov and finally Yegor Ligachev. The "axis of evil" that betrayed the SU runs from Bukharin through Khrushchev to Gorbachev. These two trends were representative of two trends in the economy. The authors’ heroes represented the first economy – i.e., the state-controlled industrial economy. The "axis of evil" represented the illegal second economy, which was a black market in consumer goods: articles of clothing, household articles, sunglasses, rip-offs of Western "pop music" and knickknacks. How the knickknack market found representatives on the Politburo and was able to overcome the socialized industrial sector makes up a large part of the book. This struggle is reduced to rivalries among the Soviet elite. The working class is barely mentioned in the recounting of events. Why does this emphasis on individuals rather than historic forces always take a back seat to great personalities? Why hasn’t the Soviet working class more voice or participation in this book? Economic problems, political and ideological stagnation and imperialist pressure did not cause the collapse, the authors say. That was the result of "the specific reform policies of Gorbachev and his allies" (as if the problems and stagnation were not the cause of the reform policies). They hold this view because they believe "the subjective factor is vastly more important in socialism than in capitalism." Elsewhere in discussing the economic problems of the Brezhnev era they write: "Even more important than the objective problems were the subjective ones: the problems of policy...." But policy is a reflection of objective reality. Policies are the result of objective circumstances and can never be "more important." In fact, "wrong" policies themselves have an objective basis. The authors end by discussing six alternative explanations of the collapse and then their own. The six explanations they reject are 1) flaws of socialism, 2) popular opposition, 3) external factors, 4) bureaucratic counter-revolution, 5) lack of democracy and over-centralization, and 6) the Gorbachev factor. Most agree that one and two were not factors. The remaining four, I think, should not be approached as independent categories. All four of these explanations should be seen as a dialectical unity. The external factors (imperialist pressure) plus the backward initial economic conditions led to a lack of democracy and over-centralization which resulted in an isolated Party leadership: a leadership that became bureaucratic and ultimately counter-revolutionary. The seeds of the collapse do not just go back to the Khrushchev era (or to Bukharin), but are to be traced back at least to 1919 and the failure of the revolutions in the West. The authors maintain they have a different explanation. But the thrust of the book places it in category six – the Gorbachev factor. They write: "What caused the Soviet collapse? Our thesis is that the economic problems, external pressures, and political and ideological stagnation challenging the Soviet Union in the early 1980s, alone or together, did not produce the Soviet collapse. Instead it was triggered by the specific reform policies of Gorbachev and his allies." The last pages of this book reveal a deeper cause in the bureaucratic counter-revolution theory. The authors maintain the collapse was not inevitable but was the result "of a triumph of a certain tendency within the revolution itself. It was a tendency rooted at first in the peasant nature of the country and later in a second economy, a sector that flourished because of consumer demands unsatisfied by the first economy and because of the failure of authorities to appreciate the danger it represented and to enforce the law against it." They end where one must actually begin. Why couldn’t the first economy satisfy the need for consumer goods, why did the bureaucracy foment counter-revolution? These are the important unanswered questions the international movement is still grappling with. I would also add that one of the weaknesses of this book is that there is no reference to the views of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. In any event the discussion of why the SU collapsed has not been put to rest by this book. Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union. By Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny New York, International Publishers, 2004. AuthorThomas Riggins is a retired philosophy teacher (NYU, The New School of Social Research, among others) who received a PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center (1983). He has been active in the civil rights and peace movements since the 1960s when he was chairman of the Young People's Socialist League at Florida State University and also worked for CORE in voter registration in north Florida (Leon County). He has written for many online publications such as People's World and Political Affairs where he was an associate editor. He also served on the board of the Bertrand Russell Society and was president of the Corliss Lamont chapter in New York City of the American Humanist Association. Archives May 2021 5/7/2021 Book Review: Washington Bullets - Vijay Prashad (2020). Reviewed By: Edward L. SmithRead NowA common line of argument from the contemporary American left is that “socialism has never been tried.” It’s understandable that Western socialists would make this argument to members of the US proletariat, who have been deeply affected by years of red scare propaganda. This argument however, ignores the millions who have struggled and died in an effort to move beyond the contradictions of capitalism. It diminishes the herculean effort which was needed to transform Cuba from an agrarian society, managed by Western multinationals and their dictator Batista, into its current form, a Nation who recently sent an army of doctors all around the globe to fight Covid. Most importantly, this argument that socialism has never been tried, ignores the role played by Western imperialism in destroying, or attempting to destroy, any and all attempts at building an alternative economic system to capitalism. What Vijay Prashad does in Washington Bullets, is concisely detail just how the US and their allies go about crushing economic and political enemies. The book serves as a guide for a younger generation of socialists to understanding the tools and techniques of the imperialists, which have for years been used to maintain what US officials have called ‘Preponderant Power’, or in other words, economic, political, and military domination of the entire planet. As Karl Marx wrote his theories on capitalism in the 19th century, he predicted that capitalism would take hold globally, the productive forces of Nations would increase, and eventually workers revolutions would sweep the old system aside, replacing it with communism. While Marx was not dogmatic in this view, and became more critical of colonialism and imperialism later in life, it is safe to say he did not predict the level of capitalist imperialism which would emerge, and be analyzed by Vladimir Lenin in the early 20th century. Rather than the productive forces of all nations increasing as capitalism developed, Lenin found that Imperialist Nations actively halt the development of productive forces in the country's they exploit. Take for example Venezuela, who for years saw their most abundant natural resource, oil, extracted by British Dutch Shell and Rockefeller Standard Oil. The profits from this oil flowed to Western Private interests, while Venezuela was left with underdeveloped industry, and an entirely oil dependent economy. It was in this context that Venezuela sought to build socialism through reclaiming their natural resources, while simultaneously facing an all out assault of sanctions and coup attempts from the US. The role imperialism plays in the present struggle for socialism is immense. Prahsad’s book analyzes both the impact of imperialism, as well as its changing forms, with the explicit goal of giving socialists a better idea of how to combat it. In Part One of Three, Prashad talks of Imperialism’s change of form, which was seen after World War II. Following the war, national liberation movements swept across the global south, primarily in Africa and Southern Asia. The Japanese empire and European powers, weakened from the destruction of the Second World War, began losing their grip on their liberation minded colonies. Vietnam, Korea, Syria, Algeria and many more would declare independence following the war, with most only doing so after years of organized struggle. These national liberation movements created a shift from traditional colonialism, to what is usually called neocolonialism. Many nations did achieve their national independence and legal recognition as a nation, what Prashad calls ‘flag independence’. However, the economic and political systems of these nations remain largely under the control of Western private interests. The events of the war, and the National liberation movements, forced a change in form of Western Imperialism. The United States was now the dominant empire, and their primary goal was ‘preponderant power’. A phrase Prashad takes directly from State Department documents, which essentially means the US will seek to be the world’s sole superpower, and enforce their own preferred political and economic systems wherever is seen fit. The United Nations was created following the war in 1945, with the publicly stated goal of maintaining world peace, and preventing any one nation from acting belligerently. However, in the founding charters of the UN, Prashad finds Western Nations had already crafted the legal framework to justify imperialist aggression. Article 41 allows for sanctions and economic disruption by UN member states, and Article 42 explicitly allows for the use of armed force against sovereign nations. Despite this, the UN security council, made up of France, UK, China, USSR, and the US, held the power to veto acts of unwarranted aggression by fellow member states. The first 56 vetoes were made by the USSR in an effort to protect liberation movements, which often had socialist tendencies, from Western aggression. Later in the book, Prashad describes how Saddam Huessein wondered why the USSR hadn’t come to his aid as the US bombed Iraq to a pre-industrial state in 1990. He was unaware that the USSR had already begun its collapse, and smaller nations like Iraq would no longer have a shield from Washington’s aggression. Part Two of Washington Bullets begins with a nine point manual on how the US goes about enacting regime change against those who defy their interests. Prashad uses the events of the 1954 CIA backed coup of Jocobo Arbenz in Guatemala, and a myriad of other examples, to describe the repeated strategies used by the CIA, and other regime change arms of the US State Department. There are patterns of imperialism which play out again and again. Understanding these patterns is vital when analyzing what the State Department is currently looking to do to their enemies such as China, Venezuela, and Iran. The first step in any US regime change effort is to manufacture public support for intervention. This involves a propaganda campaign not just at home, but also within the target Nation. Prior to the coup in Guatemala, journalists from NYT, Chicago Tribune, and TIME all received payments from the United Fruit, the multinational company which dominated Guatemala. In reality Arbenz was a popular leader who sought to enact minor land reforms. In the media he was portrayed as a dangerous communist, drunk with power. As the US corporate media fell in line, the CIA filled the streets of Guatemala with anti-Arbenz propaganda. This strategy of propagandizing both the American Public, and the people of whatever country the US is targeting, has been repeated again and again. Libya, Syria, and Venezuela have all seen money from the West used to bolster right wing media campaigns inside their borders. Control of public opinion has been one of the most vital components to US regime change efforts from the beginning. Step four in Prashad’s manual of regime change is to “Make the Economy Scream.” A reference to directions given by Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon to the CIA in 1970, as the US looked to overthrow the Democratically elected Salvadore Allende in Chile. Here we see a vital component of what Prashad calls ‘hybrid war.’ Isolating from the world those Nations who seek to develop themselves, and reclaim their own natural resources. Sanctions and blockades are used to starve smaller nations of financing and trade, as corporate media outlets point and say “look. Don’t you see socialism clearly doesn’t work?” US sanctions recently led to many deaths in Venezuela and Iran during the Covid-19 pandemic, as the US has continued their murderous regime change efforts, with techniques they designed almost 70 years ago. All these strategies of the empire, which Prashad lays in the manual for regime change, have the shared goal of destabilizing target nations. If the State Department thinks that starving Venezuelan civilians via sanctions will increase political unrest, they will not think twice about enacting those sanctions. There is no consideration given to human rights, democracy, or whatever it is that corporate media claims to be the goal of US foreign policy. The true goal is destabilization of the target Nation, and the replacement of their government, with one which will favor the interests of Western multinational corporations. Prashad uses the term ‘hybrid wars’ to describe the sustained regime change efforts enacted by the US around the world to achieve these goals. In Part Three Professor Prashad gives a short history of imperialism’s change in form following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and some analysis of US regime change efforts since that time. Without the Soviet umbrella of protection, Prashad says “interventions from the west came like a tsunami.” He writes of the aforementioned bombing campaign against Iraq, which would have previously been strongly opposed by the USSR. Following their ruthless bombing of Iraq, the US went on to sanction the country for 13 years, before launching a full scale invasion, killing millions of people, before occupying the country where they remain today. The collapse of the Soviet Union increased the US capacity for achieving Preponderant Power. By the early 2000s Western Propagandists had coined the term “war on terror” which took the place of the “cold war” as the justification for invading a smaller country, and killing hundreds of their people. In this section Prashad also covers the current global financial system, which was essentially hand crafted by the US, and Western private entities. Global financial organizations, such as the IMF and World Bank largely control which countries will receive financing. IMF financing to Chile was halted after Allende’s rise to power, only to be increased again when the despotic dictator Agusto Pinochet seized control of the country with a great deal of help from the CIA. In addition, the financial institutions have become notorious for their structural adjustment programs. Promising to finance only Nations who promise to cut social spending, and implement other neoliberal economic reforms. Countries who accept these deals often see the interest on their loans hiked to absurd levels, leaving them trapped in debt, and at the mercy of the Western dominated global financial system. This debt trapping technique is one of the many issues socialist leader Thomas Sankara railed against as President of Burkina Faso, prior to his being murdered by French backed forces in 1987. Given the level of corporate dominance in the global economic and political systems, Western interests have developed more covert methods of regime change, which they employ when possible. Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) have long played a role in regime change efforts, posing as unbiased observers, while doing all they can to destabilize target Nations and promote Western media narratives. Prashad focuses on Haiti, who have more NGOs than any country on Earth. When priest and socialist Jean Bertrand-Aristide became the first democratically elected Haitian leader in history, he was quickly ousted by what essentially amounted to a coup by NGO. After a struggle for power, and a second coup of Aristide in 2004, Haiti became a “republic of NGOs.” A country with no real state, essentially being directly governed by Western Interests. To this day Haiti remains one of the poorest countries in the world. In addition to coup by NGO, Prashad touches on what he calls ‘lawfare’ or the use of the legal system to dismantle left wing movements. For US based socialists the FBI and Police crackdown on the Black Panther party should come to mind. Intellectual leaders such as Fred Hampton were murdered, while many others were sent to jail on trumped up charges. Prashad uses the example of Brazil, where the left wing Lula da Silva was put in jail on charges of corruption by a judge who would later be a member of the far right Bolsonaro Government, who took power in Lula’s absence. Under Bolsonaro’s Western backed leadership, multinationals have been given free reign to pillage the Amazon rainforest of resources. Professor Vijay Prashad is one of the most well read Marxist intellectuals alive today. The fact that his books are published in english should be considered a gift to those of us living in the heart of the US empire. In a country where we find ourselves surrounded by imperialist and anti-communist propaganda, a book like Washington Bullets cuts directly through the bullshit. Prashad often says that he writes not to simply explain history, but to discover how it can be changed. This book is a concise history of US imperialism and regime change since the second world war, and paints a clear picture of how these things are carried out. American socialists who read this book should keep in mind the recent actions of the State Department, and look for patterns in their actions. My upcoming essay on US imperialism in 2021 seeks to identify the current targets of regime change, and the specific strategies being used against them. To recognize the patterns of imperialism which we’ve seen time and time again. US State Department representatives now tell us Iran seeks to proliferate nuclear weapons, as they wrongfully accused Iraq of doing before launching a murderous invasion that costs trillions of dollars. Blurry satellite images of human rights abuses in China are being used to call for increased sanctions and military presence. How quickly we have forgotten the fake satellite images used to justify bombing Iraq to a pre-industrial state in 1990. Western backed NGOs in Venezuela cry fraudulent elections, and beg the US to restore Democracy, as the US crushes the country under embargo, and launches coup attempts through Colombia. Each of these situations echo the past regime change efforts carried out by the Western imperialist powers. Washington Bullets is a book that every US socialist should read carefully. It is high time we recognize the lies of our ruling class, and refuse to send any more of our children to fight and die in their wars for profit. To do this we must understand the tools and tactics of the deceitful imperialists, so that we may know how to fight them. Vijay Prashad’s Washington Bullets is a wonderful tool for doing just that! AuthorEdward is from Sauk City, Wisconsin and received his B.A. in Political Science from Loras College, where he was a former NCAA wrestling All-American, and an active wrestling coach. His main interest are in Geopolitics and the role of American imperialism with relation to socialist states, specifically China and Venezuela. He also worked for Bernie Sanders' campaign in 2020. |
Details
Archives
April 2024
Categories
All
|