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361 [lbo-talk] My Ayn Randian, libertarian loving relatives aargh ! -- rank: 1000

There are both traditionalist and revolutionary elements in Fascism. It was a revolution against democracy, and it appealed to traditional themes. (That those traditional themes are mostly invented traditions is not exceptional.) When Hitler tied the mark to 'the soil' he was making a pointed appeal to tradition. Party propaganda made much of the peasant back-bone of Germany (and the peasantry were an important electoral base) - but as Alfred Sohn-Rethel explains in his book on Fascism, at the s ...

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Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Jan 7 02:13:04 PST 2010

362 [lbo-talk] My Ayn Randian, libertarian loving relatives....argh... !!! -- rank: 1000

Shane Mage wrote: >Rand an "Aristotelian?" The only thing that she got from Aristotle is the notion(?) "A=A", Yes, on which Steve 'Spiderman' Ditko based his rather marvellously deluded comic book character, 'Mr A' http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/29/Witzend_MrA_ByDitko.jpg

Document Size:	5130
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Jan 4 12:56:39 PST 2010

363 [lbo-talk] Althusser, NLR and the meaning of 'Stalinism' -- rank: 1000

CB writes CB: 'Thugs ? You mean like they killed people ?' Well, we were talking about Althusser, who was not above strangling his most strident critic. But, yes, violence was part of the West European Communist Parties' culture. Right up to the 1980s they used to taunt radicals with Trotsky's assassination. The Irish 'Workers Party' assassinated Seamus Costello, and many other Irish Republicans. The British Communist Party beat and kicked rank and file members trying to speak at the Liason Comm ...

Document Size:	6849
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Feb 24 10:28:52 PST 2010

364 [lbo-talk] Althusser, NLR and the meaning of 'Stalinism' -- rank: 1000

'You have yet to present an argument that the determination of activity by "self-conscious reason" even exists'. 'Happens' would be better than 'exists', but more to the point, just asking the question is itself a riot of 'self-conscious reason' - yes, even in your case, Chris, base creature of appetites that you are. Hegel doesn't say that reason is everywhere self-conscious, though, it is one end on a continuum between reason and unreason. Self-consciousness is a goal, one that some, ...

Document Size:	5201
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Feb 23 11:17:09 PST 2010

365 [lbo-talk] Althusser, NLR and the meaning of 'Stalinism' -- rank: 1000

Mike, recounting Althusser's argument: 'to emphasise that subjectivity itself is socially constructed. That is, not only do we make history in circumstances not of our own choosing, but we interpret society with frames of reference not of our own choosing. Structures are reproduced through human activity, but often not as the intended consequences of human agency, and society is riven by structural contradictions that do not necessarily align with individuals' conceptions.' Or, to put it another ...

Document Size:	5362
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Feb 23 08:40:02 PST 2010

366 [lbo-talk] Althusser, NLR and the meaning of 'Stalinism' -- rank: 1000

Sean berates me 'now I see that it's your way or the highway.' Sorry to be so dogmatic - perhaps I was influenced too much by Althusser: 'A single word sums up the master function of philosophical practice: "to draw a dividing line between the true ideas and the false ideas" ' Althusser, Philosophie, 'Comme arme de revolution' in Sunil Khalil, Arguing Revolution, p114 You asked 'how is he any worse than Marcuse'. Well, there is lots wrong with Marcuse (he was, as the Maoists say, an ag ...

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Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Feb 22 22:50:04 PST 2010

367 [lbo-talk] Althusser, NLR and the meaning of 'Stalinism' -- rank: 1000

Mike Beggs wrote: 'Perry Anderson ... Althusser ...EP Thompson'. It would be interesting to go forward fifty years from now and ask the question which of these three would have the stronger reputation. E. P. Thompson, I would have said, because his histories are that much more interesting. Though thinking about it, Anderson maybe has created more of an organisation to carry on his good works, but maybe less of a coherent idea of what those good works are. Althusser will always be disliked, I gue ...

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Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Feb 22 15:53:00 PST 2010

368 [lbo-talk] Althusser, NLR and the meaning of 'Stalinism' -- rank: 1000

'It is precisely at this point [i.e. post-1968] that structuralism became the dominant fashion. An era of inanities on the death of man, of the subject, of history etc.; of empty discourses on "scientificity" and "the economy" (without Marxo-Althusserian "science" ever producing a single statement saying something about the actual economy); of the denunciation of the idea of alienation as "Hegelian"; of the continued cover-up of the bureaucracy and of Stal ...

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Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Feb 22 12:10:12 PST 2010

369 [lbo-talk] Althusser, NLR and the meaning of 'Stalinism' -- rank: 1000

It is a shabby defence of Althusser to cherry pick his writings to cite only those you agree with and ignore those you don't. I could say just as well that 'The Future Lasts a long Time' is a rare moment of lucidity after years of obscurantism. 'Only Hélène asked me what the hell I was doing in a Party which betrayed the working class in '68 and she was quite right,' Louis Althusser, The Future Lasts a Long Time, p254

Document Size:	5134
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Feb 22 12:02:00 PST 2010

370 [lbo-talk] Althusser, NLR and the meaning of 'Stalinism' -- rank: 1000

Sean, I don't really care that Althusser strangled his wife. Maybe if I had known her I would have felt differently. What sums the guy up for me is that he voted to have his wife thrown out of the party, and endorsed the slander campaign against her, that she was a Gestapo agent (which she plainly wasn't). The fact that she was his wife adds piquancy to the tale, but it is not what is so destructive. It is Althusser's support for the reactionary political movement called the PCF that really damn ...

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Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Feb 22 09:00:48 PST 2010

371 [lbo-talk] Cockburn cut back at Nation -- rank: 1000

On Anderson, I thought his 1964 essay Origins of the Current Crisis (?) was very good on Britain's intellectual culture. The later considerations on western marxism was definitely obligatory reading, but I don't know if its judgements were always that good. Origins of Postmodernism was, I thought, quite good. The Nairn-Anderson thesis was a thorough waste of time, being in fact just a fancy version of Harold Wilson's sleight-of-hand trick when he distracted the left from the case for socialism b ...

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Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Feb 22 08:01:54 PST 2010

372 [lbo-talk] Althusser, NLR and the meaning of 'Stalinism' -- rank: 1000

Chris: 'You say yourself here that the reasons he may have made the propositions don't affect whether they are true or not.' Yup. That's what I said. The essential proposition is false, by the way. History is a process with a subject (many, in fact). And there is a relationship between his beliefs, and his practise: His theory was an otiose aplogetic for Stalinism, and a polemic against human agency. But no, in itself, the fact that he was a shit, does not itself prove the theory shitty. But it ...

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Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Feb 22 06:49:17 PST 2010

373 [lbo-talk] Althusser, NLR and the meaning of 'Stalinism' -- rank: 1000

Matthias writes: 'I don't think it would be a very ambitious claim to say that Althusser was not a particularly good person. (This has nothing to do with whether his social theories are true or useful, of course)'. I don't agree. I would accept his own behaviour could not stand in for an argument against his various propositions. But there is indeed a relationship between his supine toadying to the officials of the PCF, and his social theory, whose essential component is the evacuation of subjec ...

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Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Feb 22 06:13:00 PST 2010

374 [lbo-talk] Althusser, NLR and the meaning of 'Stalinism' -- rank: 1000

Sorry, I misled. I didn't mean that Anderson was right that Althusser was a Stalinist, I mean that Hitchens was right that Althusser was a Stalinist. As for 'repulsive shit' that's my view, but I don't know what else you would call someone who, in his capacity as a member of his PCF branch committee not only allowed his resistance-hero wife to be falsely traduced as a Gestapo agent, and even voted for her to be expelled from the party on these grounds (See The Future Lasts a Long Time). At the b ...

Document Size:	5309
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Feb 22 02:45:47 PST 2010

375 [lbo-talk] Althusser, NLR and the meaning of 'Stalinism' -- rank: 1000

'Althusser saw his work as an attack on Stalinism with the PCF and associated 'marxist humanism' ' This doesn't quite get the measure of Althusser's relation to the PCF leadership. On a largely philosophical plain he did challenge the extant party philosophy which did claim to be 'marxist humanist'. He argued that this 'Marxist humanism' was coeval with an accomodation to bourgeois intellectuals ('you're humanists, we're Marxist humanists, sign our petition against nuclear war'). But Althusser's ...

Document Size:	7956
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Feb 22 01:16:39 PST 2010