[MiM]: "Proletariat-free sociology"

Pragmatism incompatible with peace:

Obamauton Kennedy spouts more biography driven po-mo

Randall Kennedy
Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal
NY: Pantheon Books, 2008

Reviewed November 7 2010

My copy of this book says it went to the store in November 2009 at a remainder rate, so perhaps the book jacket is correct that it came out in January 2008. However, I did not read the book till now.

Points of unity

To some extent, Kennedy shows a perception of the world similar to mine. It's tempting to say that he and similar thinkers are on a different planet; however, it just seems that way because of the deep gulf created by class.

Kennedy's discussion of "nigg**" is much ado about nothing. I've been called "Chink" and "Jap" and the fact that the racists can't even get their insults right is important. I've also been called other ethnicities. Information can come out that way and it's important to writers. I'm much more concerned that this discussion is somehow crony capitalist, that people fake a debate to make someone famous or sell something.

Regarding W.E.B. DuBois, we agree that he has a claim as the greatest Black intellectual. We also agree on the problem of looking for a job and covering for an imperialist war as a result.

Varying the zombie formula partly to downplay the oppressed nations struggle, Kennedy attacks anti-LGBT bias with vigor. We do not agree with his formulation of racism relative to homophobia, but agree with most of what he says about LGBT issues.

How to appear to discuss race without ever discussing it

Midway through reading this book, I predicted that Kennedy never discussed Africa despite writing a whole book about the Black race. I turned out right. At the same time, I predicted that this book would change my ethnicity to French.

I was able to make the prediction because from the beginning of the book it followed the trite formula of the CIA in government and zombies in politics. The CIA is the zombies in government and the zombies are the politics of the CIA. As such they have a predictable pragmato-individualist formula which is to review ideas as a history of egos, not large groups of people and historical averages.

The resulting mish mash is a description of a variety of leaders and various fabrications taken as a matter of course within what is now a post-modernist culture. The underlying glue is crony capitalism. Career-wielder pushes this or that way and robot student scampers this way or that way is the paradigm.

The first footnote in the book is a reference to introductory teaching in the "social-mobilization" school of vulgar sociology prominent at CIA-run universities in the United $tates. The problem with these professors is that they are inclined to opposition to the status quo, but they do not have a proletariat to create the changes they would like to see. They can't undertake the class struggle even if it were just a matter of throwing a softball to hit a barn. So the professors come up with Mayer Zald's ideology of crony capitalism to seize the resources and figure out grievances afterwards. They thus escape the question of the trajectory of various social groups.

Others in proletariat-free sociology chime in on the wonders of being ward bosses or other figures of organized crime, again, because these professors can't find a proletariat. On the side, students of vulgar sociology can learn the virtues of "self-esteem" in psychology and other courses focussed on the virtues of ego. They are then ready for Bill Ayers's approach to "personalism," which is again nothing but crony capitalism, already described by previous communists as the economic basis of fascism. Today's professors simply mask the fascism with new words, old wine in new bottles.

When you only know about your individual career horizons it is possible to miss that the UN says there are a billion people in Africa while there are only 41 million U.$. Blacks. In other words, Blacks of Amerika are the 4% elite and Kennedy proposes to tell us something about the Black race by splitting hairs between Clarence Thomas and Jesse Jackson. It's ridiculous.

Persynally I have doubts whether the UN is correct there are a billion people in Africa. However, even if the UN is off a couple hundred million there is no way that Amerikan Blacks are any more than a tiny elite of the Black race.

My French ethnicity

I had read Marx, Sartre and opponents in high school. I considered myself "internationalist" by the time of my first year in college in 1981. Later I took up "Asian-unAmerikkkan" to start putting words on a small ethnic group submerged in a sea of whiteness. With Kennedy's book, I realize that I am French.

I do not know if French youth show any sign of what I imagine as the Sartrean educational approach. I did not know that the opponents of Sartre I read were CIA sponsored when I was 17, but I knew that Sartre had won me over with the idea that there is no importance of intentions and subjective mind state as opposed to actions. It's no good to think "I am" this or that and then not act. He acted as an anarchist individualist, I as a persyn subordinate to the international proletariat.

For me, Sartre was a matter of becoming adult. This turned out to be incorrect. Many people have adult responsibilities in life and follow a different approach, namely pragmatism. Ultimately the reason Kennedy did not write about race at all is that the settler political economy of certain countries including the United $tates forbids it. MIM work can be copied and addressed metaphorically. It cannot be published; although it is clearly vastly superior to what publishers publish.

In a pragmatist-individualist approach to education students can focus on their individual egos and avoid deep investigation of larger historical forces and social averages. That's why Kennedy can pretend to write about race and yet even regarding the tiny minority of the Black race in Amerika, Kennedy no where discusses that Amerikan Blacks are among the most highly imprisoned peoples in the world. Doing so would require a comparative approach, which is out for pragmato-individualists, which are usually fanatic Amerikans who guise their Amerikan nationalism as pseudo-feminism, Democratic Party politics or watery civil rights activism.

It's different in France, because the educational approach, at least at one time, must have favored that students take a stand on the general trend of history and that required in-depth investigation. It was Charles Bettelheim and Arghiri Emmanuel who debated international exploitation. Amerikans though more numerous could not handle it--too much math, not enough jobs doing the necessary calculations and the possibility of delivering a blow to self-esteem for those who imagine they are not exploiters.

Once one fouls up the international class question, one fouls up race. So continuing in zombie vein, Kennedy raises the ideas of Huey Newton only to raise the idea that maybe the Black Panthers should be suppressed to handle the lumpen.(p. 57) Just like the zombies could not make up their mind to support Huey Newton and eventually decided to kill him, spies have the same routine. Kennedy does not handle the international class question and unlike Newton does not see the role of the lumpen.

On the question of bad-jacketing,(p. 53) again it is a demographic question. No where does Kennedy give people an idea of the numbers involved. At the time of the original Black Panthers, there really were millions of revolutionaries. And the Black Panthers might have gotten into shoot-outs.

Now spies outnumber revolutionaries more than 100 to 1. Zombies can't get their head around the fact that a change in demographic conditions (reality) leads to a change in strategy. They think one set of words is good for all situations.

Sartre vs. Goffman

What the KKK, the CIA and the CIA-run universities teach is the same thing--Erving Goffman and the usefulness of masks. When one uses a mask one need not take a forthright stand after in-depth research. One merely ventures this or that rumor or quarter-truth and then sees what the reaction is in the real world of careers. Then one alters one's mask according to whatever shred of reaction one gets on an individual basis.

The use of masks thus leads to pragmatism, a directionless approach without vision and intentionally ignorant of larger social forces and historical averages. Here I am not saying that when standing in the bread lines one must spout on the historical mission of the proletariat. I'm sure I am among those glazed over while standing in the grocery checkout. The question is what one does in political or social truth related endeavors.

Kennedy's book could have been excused as a lawyerly exercise. He could have said he does not know about African law. Yet he chose his provocative title and did not deliver. The really sad part is that thanks to career network placed blinders, most Amerikans reading the book will really believe he did deliver on race. Had Kennedy written a book on U.$. Blacks and the law, I would not have chided him for the use of masks. What he did was enter onto the international turf of the Black race and racism generally. Then he made pragmato-individualist statements.

Behaviorism

Sartre's emphasis on action as the core of persynality fits in well with the Marxist-sanctioned behaviorism school of thought.

Behaviorism helps with understanding the Clarence Thomas case MIM covered in MT2/3. If the question were one between a communist judge and Thomas, there might have been an issue. However, MIM found little use in public discussions of Thomas's policies. Instead we put the focus on what the furor was attempting to reward or punish at the margin.

It's doubtful given the Constitution and lack of proletariat that there could really be a communist judge anyway. That was not the question. In all likelihood anyone available would represent the exploiter class. MIM sees most of the furor against Thomas as Democratic pundit hysteria.

Nonetheless, we still had the principal contradiction of oppressor nations verus imperialism. Anita Hill did not bring her charge in a Black court in a Black nation, but an integrated court with historical standards.

The Liberals said Anita Hill could not be be racist because she was Black herself. Liberals say that people like the system and express themselves well; whereas, we Marxists say people are brainwashed sometimes into liking a system. There we disagree with Kennedy. Anita Hill was a sell-out, and worse, it was a rewarded sell-out with book and job deals aftewards for spouting pornography. To this day, people are still making money off Clarence Thomas-related pornography and that is anti-feminist as well, and Anita Hill's fault.

We apply the same behaviorist standards regardless of Thomas's policies. The fact that Thomas disagrees with MIM on affirmative action and other topics in fact draws out the power of the behaviorist approach consistently applied.

Behaviorism is also relevant to the far more serious issue of trigger actions charging rape for the benefit of someone's career in subsequent years. Here we take a cue from Sartre. One can say that one intended to make the falsely accused a great career as well. That would be the intention. Sartre and behaviorism say to look at the action and what gets rewarded--regardless of intentions.

Context also matters. At a point in history where racial lynching was widely accepted, a false rape accusation to create a career would still be racist but not extremist. Civility is not due to racist extremism.

Aesopian class and the Cultural Revolution

Mao started the whole Cultural Revolution over the Aesopian class and Mao was right to do so. Ironically just as Mao and allies were battling in Shanghai over Aesopian communications, the United $tates was having its last tree-style lynching and enforcing voting rights ideas for the first time since the Radical Republican phase after the Civil War.

The proletariat has no interest in shrouded means of communication like what the KKK does behind white sheets and the proletariat would rather have things out in the open. It is elites seeking to rule through fabrications, story-telling and intellectual sophistry. They can never win open arguments about social averages regarding prison, healthcare and exploitation, not to mention war. That's why they require metaphorical communication and slink about as they carry out their racist deeds.

The average trajectory of Aesopian discussion is inherently petty-bourgeois. The reason is that fabricators engender fabricators. On average the opposing stories cancel out and end up in nothing by wild vacillations. In a country like the United $tates where there is a petty-bourgeois majority, political fabrication and counter-fabrication is conservative.

Pragmatism and war

Pragmatism is not compatible with peace. If all countries were of a similar economics as the United $tates, then possibly the post-modernists or pragmatists could work something out. There might be only a class war in such a situation.

In actual fact there is a huge class gap in perceptions among countries. Even the petty-bourgeoisie of different countries is different than the petty-bourgeoisie of the rich countries. The petty-bourgeoisie of the Third World is under more direct pressure from the exploited. Socializing is also a different matter in such countries.

Copying Amerikan post-modernism, pragmatism and other means of petty-bourgeois vacillation is not in the interests of the Third World not in possession of such a petty-bourgeoisie. Wars come to conclusions because of historical balance of forces questions, not because of fabrication strategies. When it comes time to make a peace in a stalemate situation, fabrications do not help.

The developed world petty-bourgeois majority does not have false consciousness covering up proletarian thrust. The petty-bourgeoisie is the class most likely to want to "have it both ways," whether on Huey Newton, MIM or war itself. The petty-bourgeoisie fancies itself as between the capitalists and proletariat. In the United $tates, we have the adversarial legal system where defense lawyers and prosecution lawyers get paid after a trial regardless of results. That's a good "have it both ways," because otherwise Amerika would just lynch people. The sociological problem is that the adversarial court system approach has carried over into culture at large, so that both Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill received rewards for a pornographic spectacle. What we really need to defeat racism and pornography is standards and punishment. One or the other of Thomas and Hill could be right, but not both. The adversarial court system should not be the model for all morality, ideology, religion and the superstructure generally. Anita Hill may have seen herself as part of a Democratic Party "team" to defeat Thomas or she may have seen herself as part of a huge crony capitalist scam. Regardless if she had been punished, there would have been less public pornography in the future (as opposed to men masturbating at home with pictures). If we can get around that social group, the petty-bourgeoisie, that is the best chance for peace. It's not possible to "have it both ways" to get out of the international war problems we have. In a lop-sided situation, if we do not want the developing world to distrust a peace offer, then we must part with story-telling and stick with realities. If we in the imperialist countries give the impression we would trade race or international questions for political popularity, we cut off any possibility for reaching an agreement on difficult questions. We should give our domestic petty-bourgeoisie concessions in other areas that will not leave a bad taste in international mouths.

Notes:
1. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8366591.stm