Sunday blogging notes
Posted on Sunday 16 September, 2007
Filed Under Blogging
(1) I’m just back from Islington’s Little Angel puppet theatre, to which Daddy’s Little Princesses and a bunch of other well-bred middle-class Stokie love children were taken as a birthday treat for DLP Senior.
It was only after sitting through the show that I found out it was written by Michael Rosen, a longstanding member (or is he just a particularly close fellow traveller?) of the Socialist Workers’ Party and Respect. Bloody Trots get everywhere.
However, I am shocked – shocked! – to have to report that the state of Israel was not denounced once – not once! – throughout the entire performance. There was, however, the obligatory puerile fart joke that the assembled six and seven years old found hugely entertaining.
(2) The organisers of the Feminist Fightback 2007 conference have emailed to ask for a plug, and I’m happy to oblige. The event takes place on October 20 at the University of East London and you can read all about it here. The event is free, and blokes are allowed in.
(3) As part of my continuing efforts to come up to speed with more recent philosophy, most of my reading time this weekend has been taken up with leafing through a beginner’s guide to critical theory, the brand of post-modernist thinking that currently dominates radical academia.
I am not dogmatic enough to argue to adherence to dialectical materialism should be an absolute precondition for membership of a revolutionary socialist organisation
But as I understand it, a number of middle-ranking SWP cadre – especially those with teaching jobs in universities – openly advocate stances derived from CT over traditional Marxist ideas. And surely, for Marxists, belief in Marxism kinda goes with the territory?
My bluffer’s guide has alerted me to the critique advanced by Frederic Jameson, who argues that postmodernism is actually an obfuscatory set of ideas that suits the bourgeoisie just fine.
If both capitalism and socialism can be dismissed equally as irrelevant ‘grand narratives’, the status quo prevails. The outcome? An inability to challenge the bourgeois belief system at the level of theory.
That sounds about on the money. After all, if you can keep a straight face while maintaining that the 1991 Gulf War ‘did not take place’, it undermines your arguments for opposing the conflict in the first place.
<<Go back
Comments
13 Responses to “Sunday blogging notes”
My understanding is that Critical Theory is what ‘Western Marxists’ (cf Perry Anderson, Considerations on Western Marxism) called their interpretation of Marxism.
So to rule out the insights of critical theory for some ill-defined ‘dialectical materialism’ or ‘traditional Marxism’ would seem to me to be as silly as abandoning Marxism for postmodernism.
Which middle ranking SWP cadre did you have in mind? I can’t think of anyone who has abandoned classical Marxism (ie the political thought of Marx, Engels, the young Kautsky, Lenin, Trotsky, Lukacs etc) for postmodernism.
as I understand it, Mike Rosen is not an SWP member (or so he said once, if my memory serves), he has been very close to them but more recently seems to have had a bust up over SWP’s constant invites to Gilad Atzmon
Mike Rosen is a talented artist and his stuff on radio 4 is good.
As the Bill Hicks line goes: “There wasn’t a war. A war is when TWO armies fight each other.”
It may be worth remembering that today is the anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacres.
The 25th anniversary no less.
Well, Critical Theory did begin within Marxism (the Frankfurt School specifically) but these days it’s more commonly associated with post-modernist and deconstructionist theorists. Christopher Norris is an interesting case in this respect – starting from a solidly Marxist (and Kantian) perspective, he’s denounced the postmodernists as uncritical theorists, but at the same time embraced Derrida’s deconstructionist work.
Personally I think there’s more mileage in Critical Realism (Bhaskar, Collier et al), preferably cut with a bit of phenomenology.
Michael Rosen is indeed associated with, rather than a member of the SWP. I made this false assumption while editing his Wikipedia article, at the time of his letter on Atzmon in “Socialist Worker” on the basis of a posting at “Harry’s Place”, and “-M.R.” modified my addition.
Post-modernism is indeed a load of apolitical and often anti-Marxist relativist shite.
I came to this conclusion after having it shoved down my throat for four years at university.
When Baudrillard said that the Gulf War “didn’t happen” he meant that the media (particularly the fledgling CNN, who wanted to build their reputation) manipulated public feeling by generating an event that would fit people’s preconceived ideas of what a “war” should be like, when in fact it was a ridiculous one-sided, sledgehammer and nut scenario, not a real “war” as anyone would understand it (see the Bill Hicks quote above) and bore no relation to WWII or other historical conflicts. I fail to see what’s so controversial about this. It’s a metaphor. When a commentator says “Arsenal’s defence was non-existent”, he doesn’t mean the players didn’t show up.
The reaction from some (like in this thread) to the mere mention of the *word* ‘Postmodernist’ only highlights that the Left can be as dogmatic and conservative as the Right. I’ve no interest in people who take Marx as gospel any more than people who believe every word of the Bible.
The reason postmodernists attract the ire of Marxists is that, being almost universally Marx-influenced, they carry on the tradition of rational questioning and skepticism – it’s just that they apply it to the likes of science, culture and epistemology – taboo for anyone who treats Marx’s writings like holy texts. Karl Marx had as much of a blind spot about science as Karl Popper.
Dave adherence to what you misname dialectical materialism was never a precondition for membership in a revolutionary socialist organisation. Acceptance of the organisations program was the prime criteria rather than adherence to any given mode of thought as such.
Mike Rosen has had a chequered relationship with the BBC and cultural establishment as much as with the SWP. He was blacklisted and fired from the Beeb (or rather they said he should go freelance -such a nice genteel English way of doing things)at an early stage in his career. Now he is on the air regularly and has also been named Children’s Laureate.
Mike’s letter to Socialist Worker about Atzmon did bring some ignorant and nasty creatures out of their woodwork, but you can read his considered and measured views on the subject in the current issue of Jewish Socialist(No.53), Spring 2007, still available at all good bookshops and demonstrations, to you only £2 and believe me, it’s a bargain!
Snowball:
So to rule out the insights of critical theory for some ill-defined ‘dialectical materialism’ or ‘traditional Marxism’ would seem to me to be as silly as abandoning Marxism for postmodernism.
Which middle ranking SWP cadre did you have in mind? I can’t think of anyone who has abandoned classical Marxism (ie the political thought of Marx, Engels, the young Kautsky, Lenin, Trotsky, Lukacs etc) for postmodernism.
I assume that dave is referring to Richeard Seymour who argued at lenegth in comments to this blog (at its old home) that for example atoms and molecules do not exist, and “lenin” launched a pretty sustained attack not on only dialectical materialism (as we should properly call it Mike) but also the mainstream philosphical school of scientific realism.
Andy why should we use the term dialectical materialism? After all it was a term unknown to Marx and Engels. If only because they were clear that their project was opposed to the creation of a school of philosophy which is what the proponents of dialectical materialism implicitly to adhere to.