Disorder in the Real [and the real]

The real in the 21st century

Presentation of the Theme of the IXth Congress of the World Association of Psychoanalysis
Jacques-Alain Miller
Buenos Aires, 27th April 2012

I will not make you wait very long for the theme of the next Congress.

A new series of three themes has begun with this Congress on the Symbolic Order in the 21st Century. It will be a series specifically dedicated to the 'aggiornamento' – as one says in Italian – to the bringing up to date of our analytic practice, its context, its conditions, its novel co-ordinates in the 21st Century, with the growth of what Freud called the discontents, and which Lacan deciphered as the impasses, the dead-ends, of civilization.

For us it is a question of leaving behind the 20th Century, leaving it behind us, and renewing our practice in a world itself amply restructured by two historical factors, two discourses: the discourse of science and the discourse of capitalism. These are the two prevalent discourses of modernity which, since their respective appearances, have begun to destroy the traditional structure of human experience. The combined domination of these two discourses, one supporting the other, has grown to such an extent that this domination has succeeded in diluting, perhaps even breaking, this tradition in its deepest foundations. In this way we have seen the tremendous change in the symbolic order, whose corner-stone has been fractured: that is, the corner-stone – the Name of the Father – which is, as Lacan says with extreme precision, the Name of the Father according to tradition. The Name of the Father according to tradition has been touched, has been devalued by the combination of the two discourses of science and capitalism.

The Name of the Father, this famous key function of Lacan's first teaching, is, one could say, a function now recognised across the entire analytic field, whether Lacanian or not. This key function, the Name of the Father, has been discounted by Lacan himself, depreciated in the course of his teaching, ending up being no more than a sinthome, that is, a supplement for a hole. One could say in this ambit, in this assembly, one could say as a short cut that this hole filled by the symptom name of the father is the non-existence of the sexual proportion in the human species, the species of living beings that speak. And the depreciation of the name of the name of the father in the clinic introduces an unprecedented perspective, which Lacan expresses by saying everyone is mad, delusional. This is not a joke, it translates the extension of the category of madness to everyone who speaks; that everyone suffers from the same lack of knowing what to do about sexuality. This phrase, this aphorism, indicates that which the so-called clinical structures have in common: neurosis, psychosis, perversion. And of course it shakes, undermines, the difference between neurosis and psychosis, which has until now been the basis of psychoanalytic diagnosis and an inexhaustible theme of the teachings.

For the next Congress I propose entering further into the consequences of this perspective, studying the real in the 21st Century. This word 'the real', Lacan makes a use of it that is his own, that was not always the same, which we need to clarify for ourselves. But I believe there is a way of saying it that has a sort of intuitive evidence. For anyone – it is already a lot to say this – for anyone who lives in the 21st Century, beyond us Lacanians, there is at least a sort of evidence for those who have been formed in the 20th Century, and who now for a certain time belong to the 21stCentury. There is a great disorder in the real. Well, this is the very formula that I propose for the Congress in Paris in 2014: A Great Disorder of the Real, in the 21st Century.

I wish to now communicate to you the first thoughts that this formula has provoked in me, this title whose formulation I came across two days ago. They are suggestive thoughts framed to launch our discussion in the School One which will last for two years, and not of course to settle this discussion.

The first thought that occurred to me in this respect, which I have accepted as it came, is the following: previously the real was called nature. Nature was the name of the real when there was no disorder in the real. When nature was the name of the real you could say, as Lacan did, that the real always returns to the same place. Only in this epoch, in this epoch in which the real disguised itself as nature, the real appeared as the most evident, the most elevated, manifestation of the very concept of order. The return of the real in the same place is of course opposed to the signifier, in as much as what characterises the signifier is displacement, Entstellung, as Freud says. The signifier is connected, is substituted in a metaphorical or a metonymic mode, and always returns in unexpected, surprising places. By contrast, the real, in this epoch where it was confused with nature, was characterised by not surprising, one could calmly await its appearance in the same place, on the same date.

This is something indicated by Lacan's examples to illustrate the return of the real in the same place. His examples are the annual return of the seasons, the spectacle of the skies and the heavenly bodies. You could say… based on examples from all antiquity: Chinese rituals of course used mathematical calculations of the position of the heavenly bodies, etc. You could say that in this epoch the real as nature had the function of the Other of the Other, that is, that the real was itself the guarantee of the symbolic order. The agitation, the rhetorical agitation of the signifier in human speech was framed by a weft of signifiers fixed like the heavenly bodies. Nature – this is its very definition – is defined by being ordered, that is, by the conduct of the symbolic and the real, to such an extent that according to the most ancient traditions all human order should imitate natural order. And it is well known, for example, that the family as natural formation served as the model for putting human groupings in order and the Name of the Father was the key to the symbolised real.

There is no shortage of examples in the history of ideas of this role of nature. There is such an abundance and so little time that I will not take up these themes today. The history of the idea of nature needs to be investigated, with the formula that nature was the real, that it was order. For example, the world in Aristotelian physics was ordered in two invariable dimensions: the world above separated from the sublunary world, as one says, and each being seeks its proper place. It is in this way that this physics functions, it is a topography, that is to say, a set of well fixed places.

With the entrance of the God of creation – let us say the Christian God – this order remains valid, in as much as the nature created by God answers to his will: there is the divine order, even though there is no longer a separation of the Aristotelian worlds, the divine order which is like a law promulgated by God and incarnated in nature. This gives rise to the concept of natural law, and one has to view things a little from the side of Saint Thomas Aquinas' definition of natural law which gives place to a sort of imperative. A noli tangere, to say it in Latin, a 'do not mess with nature', because there was the sentiment that you could mess with nature, that there are human acts that go against natural law, acts of bestiality in particular, and against this do not mess with nature. And I have to say, even though it is not perhaps the sentiment of the majority here, that I consider it admirable how even today the Catholic Church fights to protect the real, the natural order of the real, in matters of reproduction, sexuality, the family etc. It is as if… of course they are anachronistic elements but they testify to the presence, the duration, the solidity of this ancient discourse. You could say that it is admirable as a lost cause, because everyone feels that the real has broken free from nature. From the beginning the Church perceived that the discourse of science was going to mess with the real that it was protecting as nature, but it was not enough to imprison Galileo to halt the irresistible scientific dynamic. Just as it is not enough to halt the dynamic of capitalism by qualifying it as torpitudo in Latin, the thirst for profit, for gain – it is Saint Thomas who uses the Latin word torpitudo for profit.

Lost cause, but Lacan also said that the cause of the Church perhaps announces a triumph. And why? Because the real emancipated from nature is so much worse that it becomes more and more unbearable; there is something like a nostalgia for the lost order and even though it cannot be recuperated it remains in force as illusion. Before the actual appearance of the discourse of science the emergence of a desire to touch the real was apparent under the form of acting on nature, making it obey, mobilising and utilising its power. How? Before science, and let us say a century before the appearance of the scientific discourse, this desire was manifested in what was called magic. Magic is something different from the conjuring tricks that we use to entertain children. Lacan considered it so important that in the last text of his Ecrits, 'Science and Truth', he inscribes magic as one of the four fundamental positions of truth: magic, religion, science, psychoanalysis. Four terms that anticipate something of the famous four discourses. He defines magic as the direct summons of the signifier that is in nature on the basis of the signifier of incantation. One speaks – one, that is, the magician – in order to make nature speak, in order to disturb it, and this already infringes on the divine order of the real, in such a way that magicians were persecuted in so far as magic was a form of witchcraft. But this magic, the craze for magic, was like an expression of a longing for the scientific discourse. This was the thesis of the erudite Francis Yates, who considers that hermeticism prepared the way for the scientific discourse. And it is a historical fact that Newton himself was a distinguished alchemist. The economist Keynes wrote about this, saying that Newton devoted more years to alchemy than he did to the laws of gravitation… I mention this as subjects for research, this branch of the history of science. But we would do better to follow Alexandre Koyré, who insisted on the difference: magic makes nature speak where science makes it shut up. Magic is rhetorical incantation or purgation. With science speech becomes writing. As Galileo said: nature is written in the language of mathematics. We have to remember that at the extreme end of his teaching Lacan was not afraid to ask – when he no longer had the ambition to make psychoanalysis scientific – whether psychoanalysis was not a sort of magic. He only said it once, but it is an echo to consider. Of course with this begins a mutation of nature which we could express with the aphorism of Lacan: 'there is knowledge in the real'. This is the novelty, something is written within nature.

One went on speaking of God and of nature, but God was no more than a subject supposed to know, a subject supposed to know in the real. The metaphysics of the 17th Century described a God of knowledge who calculates, according to Leibniz, or who is mistaken for this calculus, according to Spinoza. In any case it was a question of a mathematized God. I would say that it was the reference to God, veiling the old illusion of god, that permitted the passage from the finite cosmos to the infinite universe. With the infinite universe of mathematical physics nature disappears; it becomes solely a moral instance. With the philosophers of the 18thCentury, with the infinite universe nature disappears and the real begins to be unveiled.

Fine, but I have been asking myself about the formula there is a knowledge in the real. It would be a temptation to say that the unconscious is at this level. On the contrary, the supposition of a knowledge in the real appears to me to be an ultimate veil that needs to be lifted. If there is a knowledge in the real there is a regularity, and scientific knowledge allows prediction, it is so proud of prediction, in so far as this demonstrates the existence of laws. And it does not require a divine utterance of these laws for them to remain valid. It is by way of this idea of laws that the old idea of nature has been preserved in the very expression the laws of nature.

Einstein, as Lacan remarked, referred to an honest god who rejected all chance. It was his way of opposing the consequences of Max Planck's quantum physics; it was, for Einstein, an attempt to restrain the discourse of science and the revelation of the real. Little by little physics has had to make room for 'uncertainty' – between commas – as for chance; that is to say rather a set of notions that threaten the supposed subject of knowledge. Nor has it been able to make the real and the material equivalent; with subatomic physics the levels of matter have multiplied and, let us say, the 'the' of matter, like the 'the' of the woman, disappears. Perhaps I can hazard a short cut here: with respect to the importance of the laws of nature one grasps the tremendous echo that Lacan's aphorism 'the real is without law' ought to have. This is the formula that testifies to a complete rupture between nature and real. It is a formula that decidedly severs the connection between nature and the real. It targets the inclusion of knowledge in the real that maintains the subordination of the subject supposed to know. In psychoanalysis there is no knowledge in the real, knowledge is an elucubration about the real, a real stripped of all supposed knowledge. At least this is what Lacan invented with his notion of the real, to the point of asking himself if this was not his symptom, if this was not the cornerstone that held together, that maintained the coherence of, his teaching. The real without law appears unthinkable, it is a limit idea. I would like, first, to say that the real is without natural law; everything, for example, that has belonged to the immutable of reproduction is in motion, in transformation. Whether at the level of sexuality, or of the constitution of the living human being, with all the perspectives that are appearing now, in the 21st Century, to improve the biology of the species. The 21st Century announces itself as the great century of bioengineering1, which will give rise to all the temptations of eugenics. And the best description of what we are plainly experiencing now, remains the one that Karl Marx gave in his Communist Manifesto of the revolutionary effects of the discourse of capitalism – revolutionary effects on civilizations. I would like to read some phrases of Marx that assist a reflection on the real:

"The bourgeoisie cannot exist without the condition of incessant revolution of the instruments of production, and thereby of the relations of production, and with them all social relations. [...] There is an incessant disturbance of all social conditions, constant uncertainty and agitation. [...] All fixed and ossified relations with their train of beliefs and ideas venerated for centuries are swept away…" – the clearest expression of the break with tradition. "All that is solid vanishes into the air, everything sacred is profaned." 2

I would say that capitalism and science combine, they have combined, to make nature disappear. And what is left by the vanishing of nature, what is left is that which we call the real, that is, a remainder. And, by structure, disordered. The real is touched on all sides by the advances of the binary capitalism-science, in a disordered way, randomly, without being able to recuperate any idea of harmony.

There was a time, when Lacan taught the unconscious as a knowledge in the real, when he said structured like a language. And in that epoch he sought laws, the laws of speech on the basis of the structure of recognition in Hegel – 'recognise in order to be recognised' – the laws of the signifier, the relation of cause and effect between signifier and signified, in metaphor and metonymy. He also presented, ordered, this knowledge in graphs, under the pre-eminence of the Name of the Father in the clinic and the phallic ordering of the libido. But he already opened up another dimension with lalangue, in as much as there are laws of language but no law of the dispersion and diversity of languages. Each language is formed by contingency, by chance. In this dimension, the traditional unconscious – for us, the Freudian unconscious – appears to us as an elucubration of knowledge about a real. Let us say a transferential elucubration of knowledge, when one superimposes on this real the function of the subject supposed to know, which another living being consents to incarnate. Yes, the unconscious can be ordered, in as much as it is discourse, but only in the analytic experience. I would say that the transferential elucubration consists in giving meaning to the libido, which is the condition for the unconscious to be interpretable. This supposes a previous interpretation, that is, that the unconscious itself interprets, as I have developed previously.

What does the unconscious interpret?

In order to be able to give an answer to this question one has to introduce a term, a word, and this word is the real. In the transference one introduces the subject supposed to know in order to interpret the real. On this basis one constitutes a knowledge not in the real but about the real. Here we locate the aphorism 'the real has no meaning', not having meaning is a criterion of the real, in as much as it is when one has arrived at the outside meaning that one can think that one has emerged from the fictions produced by a want to say 3. The real has no meaning is equivalent to the real does not answer to any wanting to say; one gives it meaning, there is a donation of meaning by way of a fantasmatic elucubration. The testimonies of the pass, these jewels of our Congresses, are accounts of one's fantasmatic elucubration, of how it is expressed and dissolved in the analytic experience in order to be reduced to a nucleus, to an impoverished real which is sketched as the pure encounter with lalangue and its effects of jouissance in the body. It is sketched as a pure shock of the drive. The real, understood in this way, is neither a cosmos nor a world, it is also not an order: it is a piece, an a-systematic fragment, separated from the fictional knowledge that was produced from this encounter. And this encounter of lalangue and the body does not respond to any prior law, it is contingent and always appears perverse – this encounter and its consequences – because this encounter is translated by a deviation of jouissance with respect to that which jouissance ought to be, which remains in force as a dream.

The real invented by Lacan is not the real of science, it is a contingent real, random, in as much as the natural law of the relation between the sexes is lacking. It is a hole in the knowledge included in the real. Lacan made use of the language of mathematics – the best support for science. In the formulas of sexuation, for example, he tried to grasp the dead-ends of sexuality in a weft of mathematical logic. This was like a heroic attempt to make psychoanalysis into a science of the real in the way that logic is. But that can't be done without imprisoning jouissance in the phallic function, in a symbol; it implies a symbolisation of the real, it implies referring to the binary man-woman as if living beings could be partitioned so neatly, when we already see in the real of the 21st Century a growing disorder of sexuation. This is already a secondary construction that intervenes after the initial impact of the body and lalangue, which constitutes a real without law, without logical rule. Logic is only introduced afterwards, with the elucubration, the fantasy, the subject supposed to know, and with psychoanalysis.

Until now, under the inspiration of the 20th Century, our clinical cases as we recount them have been logical-clinical constructions under transference. But the cause-effect relation is a scientific prejudice supported by the subject supposed to know. The cause-effect relation is not valid at the level of the real without law, it is not valid except with a rupture between cause and effect. Lacan said it as a joke: if one understands how an interpretation works, it is not an analytic interpretation. In psychoanalysis as Lacan invites us to practice it, we experience the rupture of the cause-effect link, the opacity of the link, and this is why we speak of the unconscious. I am going to say it in another way: psychoanalysis takes place at the level of the repressed and of the interpretation of the repressed thanks to the subject supposed to know.

But in the 21st Century it is a question of psychoanalysis exploring another dimension, that of the defence against the real without law and without meaning. Lacan indicates this direction with his notion of the real, as Freud does with his mythological concept of the drive. The Lacanian unconscious, that of the latest Lacan, is at the level of the real, let us say for convenience, below the Freudian unconscious. Therefore, in order to enter into the 21st Century, our clinic will have to be centred on dismantling the defence, disordering the defence against the real. The transferential unconscious in analysis is already a defence against the real. And in the transferential unconscious there is still an intention, a wanting to say, a wanting you to tell me. When in fact the real unconscious is not intentional: it is encountered under the modality of 'that's it', which you could say is like our 'amen'.

Various questions will be opened up for us at the next Congress: the redefinition of the desire of the analyst, which is not a pure desire, as Lacan says, not a pure infinity of metonymy but – this is how it appears to us- the desire to reach the real, to reduce the other to its real, and to liberate it of meaning. I would add that Lacan invented a way of representing the real with the Borromean knot. We will ask ourselves how valid this representation is, of what use it is to us now. Lacan made use of the knot to arrive at this irremediable zone of existence where one can go no further with two. The passion for the Borromean knot led Lacan to the same zone as Oedipus at Colonus, where one finds the absolute absence of charity, of fraternity, of any human sentiment: this is where the search for the real stripped of meaning leads us.

Thank you.

_____________________

[1] In English in the original [TN]
2 Translated from the Spanish [TN]
3 "Querer decir": 'to mean' and also 'to want to say'.[TN]

Translated from the Spanish by Roger Litten

http://www.lacan.com/thesymptom/?page_id=2004

Whither Europe? Whither the EU?

Greek crisis lays bare illusions of EU project
 
BY LOUIS MARTIN 
The deepening crisis shaking Greece has put into sharp focus the unfolding and intractable crisis of the European Union—a political and trade alliance of 27 countries dominated by German imperialism—and of the eurozone, the monetary pact of the 17 among them who share the euro currency.

The financial meltdown is rooted in a deep contraction of world capitalist production and trade.

Thus far the capitalist rulers of Europe and beyond have pumped massive loans to postpone the impending bankruptcy of the Greek government and the consequences this would have for the European Union, as well as world capitalist finance.

But the underlying problem of slowing production and trade remains unaffected, barring any way out of further financial and economic crises.

Under these conditions, increasingly divergent interests within the EU are brought to the fore. The disintegration of this utopian union among competing bourgeois nations becomes increasingly inevitable. The forms and time frame remain unpredictable. But what will be left is what was there before and during the EU's existence: separate and sovereign capitalist governments.

The EU was put together in the 1990s by Berlin, with the support of Paris, as a counterweight to the common market between the U.S., Canada and Mexico established in 1994 by Washington. What worked well at first only built up contradictions of a union between countries with sharply different levels of productivity and development.

These differentials appeared to be mitigated as the less developed economies such as Ireland, Portugal, Greece and Spain benefited from massive low-interest loans—promoted by Berlin and Paris in order to expand markets for their goods and capital.

A decade later the former are massively indebted, their economies contracting and left without the option of devaluing their currency. The latter are holding bad debt and facing shrinking markets.

Bourgeois politicians in Europe, the U.S. and other imperialist countries are debating ways of slowing down Greece from leaving the euro, in fear that a disorderly "grexit" could trigger bank runs, financial panics, political instability and social unrest.

This is the overall meaning behind so-called growth proposals promoted by newly elected French President François Hollande, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti and others, with the support of President Barack Obama.

The "growth" track is ostensibly counterposed to "austerity"— the slashing of social services and government jobs, along with tax raises. This approach has accelerated the economic contraction of several countries, while sparking social unrest among working people and others.

But the actual content of so-called growth policies amounts to no more than what the Financial Times calls "some magical mix of stimulus and austerity that restores both budgetary balance and growth." This translates to more loans, some currency devaluation (inflation), tax breaks to businesses and other "stimulus" measures, while continuing to try to crank up labor "productivity," press down wages and slash government expenses.

What Greek workers face
Meanwhile, in Greece the economic and financial crisis has precipitated a political crisis.

In the recent May 6 elections, New Democracy and the Socialist Party (PASOK), the two incumbents, were soundly defeated. With none of the main parties having enough votes to form a majority or coalition government, new elections have been set for June 17.

New Democracy and PASOK are campaigning on warnings of devastating consequences if the country leaves the eurozone—which they say is unavoidable without further austerity.

According to recent polls, the Coalition of the Radical Left, or Syriza, is projected to get more than 20 percent of the vote, bringing it neck and neck with New Democracy. While supporting Greece's EU membership, Syriza campaigns for a three-year suspension of loan payments; nationalizations of banks; and the reversal of wage cuts, public workers' layoffs and the voiding of collective bargaining agreements.

The Communist Party of Greece (KKE) is campaigning for abstract slogans and reforms within the framework of capitalist rule. It demands Greece's withdrawal from the EU, the cancellation of its debt, "socialization of the wealth" and "workers' and people's control from the bottom up." The KKE got 8.5 percent of the vote in the May 6 election.

In the midst of a crisis that devastates the lives of millions of workers and middle class layers, the fascist-minded Golden Dawn got 7 percent of the vote in the May election with its anti-foreign bank demagogy and anti-immigrant thuggish violence. But contrary to what some liberal pundits say, fascism is not at the gate.

Fascism is a mass movement of desperate middle-class layers, demoralized workers and lumpen elements, mobilized in the streets to smash working-class organizations. Before this could happen, workers will have their own opportunity to take power.

What Golden Dawn is doing is exploiting the crisis to garner cadres for such a reactionary movement. 

http://www.themilitant.com/2012/7622/762201.html

IBT Local 1035 strikes against austerity

IAM at Caterpillar, now IBT at Coca-Cola!  On top of that, continued resistance by locked-out American Crystal Sugar workers in the Upper Midwest:  the dog days may be over for the rank-and-file!

[All proportions guarded, of course.]

'Company will lose–we are not giving in' Teamsters strike Coca-Cola in Connecticut
 
BY EMMA JOHNSON 
EAST HARTFORD, Conn., May 20—Striking drivers, warehouse and bottling workers, members of Teamsters Local 1035 at the Coca-Cola bottling plant here, have been walking the picket line since May 16. The 335 unionists struck over health care payments and plans to cut jobs.

The company wants employees to start paying for their health insurance. In 2005, the company presented a choice between a $2.65 per hour raise and new health care costs or no raise and the same health plan. The union chose to forgo the wage raise. Workers say they want to either maintain current health coverage with no premiums or get the $2.65 wage raise back.

The other main issue is elimination of drivers' jobs. The company is planning a new distribution system where Coca-Cola drivers would be replaced by workers from Coca-Cola's customers, who would make their own deliveries and stock supermarket shelves. The union wants guarantees against job losses.

"We've been working under the old contract since Dec. 3," Chris Roos, the local's secretary-treasurer, told the Militant. "We held talks with the company for months, but there was no give and take. It's been either their way or no way."

Coca-Cola has not responded to requests for comments from the Militant.

Cars passing by the picket line honk in support. Pickets try to persuade drivers in Coca-Cola delivery trucks not to cross the line.

Roos says limited production is being done by management.

"They will lose. We're not giving in," Jessica Welton, who works stocking shelves in grocery stores, told the Militant. "Everybody has a breaking point. They are making big profits and yet they come after our health care, a basic human need."

When Local 1035 members take off for a union meeting the line is staffed by members of the Teamster Horsemen, Chapter 10, a motorcycle association within the union.

"We've come from East Haven to hold the line," Mike DeCarlo, chapter vice president, told the Militant. "We raise strike funds and contribute to children's charities. When we were asked to come here we readily rolled in."

Roos said the union now has roving pickets: "Four or five guys get into a car and follow the delivery trucks. Then they picket their destinations. This is a way to spread the knowledge of our strike. We reach out all around Connecticut and Massachusetts."

http://www.themilitant.com/2012/7622/index.shtml

An Interview: Richard Pare photographer for Building the Revolution at M...

A left leviathan

Žižek Featured in The Onion —We Fill in the Blanks

By Ryan Healey Rebecca Nathanson / 25 May 2012

The Onion Weekender recently featured our in-house champion of castration anxiety: 

The answers are here. We interns scoured our Žižek backlist to uncover his hints for YOU. 

10. Build up anticipation before the night. From The Plague of Fantasies:

Let us consider virtual sex: when I play sex games with a partner on the screen, exchanging 'mere' written messages, it is not only that the games can really arouse me or my partner and provide us with a 'real' orgasmic experience; it is not only that, beyond mere sexual arousal, my partner and I can 'really' fall in love without meeting in RL. 

9. Kink. From Living in the End Times: 

The entanglement of lust (sin) and law resides not only in the fact that the prohibition of sexuality makes lust desirable; one should also add that the pain and guilt we feel when, against our will, we are dragged into sexual lust, are themselves sexualized. Not only do we feel pain and guilt at sexual enjoyment, we enjoy this very pain and guilt. 

8. Don't be intimidated by his past history.

"The Elvis of cultural theory"; "unafraid of confrontation"; "often breathtaking in his scope and acuity"; "master of counterintuitive observation"; "Žižek is consistently penetrating"; "never ceases to dazzle";  "To witness Žižek in full flight is a wonderful and at times alarming experience, part philosophical tightrope walk, part performance-art marathon, part intellectual roller-coaster ride." 

7. Cheer him up. From Keith Gessen: 

You know who else is from Slovenia? Slavoj Žižek, the philosopher, author most recently of a book on Hegel called Less than Nothing. This is Kopitar's philosophy, perhaps: He wants the other team to score less than nothing. The impossibility of this causes him to stay up nights, developing dark circles under his eyes, causing him to look depressed.

6. Get ahistorical. 

And, since the basic inconsistency constitutive of human being as such is the discord (the "impossibility") of the sexual relationship, no wonder that one of the key elements in our fascination with the animal kingdom is represented by its perfectly regulated mating rituals—animals do not need to worry themselves with all the complex fantsies and stimulants needed to sustain sexual lust, they are able to "have sex ahistorically." 

5. Be discreet, unlike flowers:

4. Fidelity is indispensable. Žižek in Occupy!: 

The only thing I'm afraid of is that we will someday just go home and then we will meet once a year, drinking beer and nostalgically remembering "what a nice time we had here." 

3. Get creative, as the bar is high:

What do we perceive today as possible? Just follow the media. On the one hand, in technology and sexuality, everything seems to be possible. 

2. Mix it up—the man likes variety. From The Plague of Fantasies:

In this precise sense, fist-fucking is Edenic; it is the closest we can get to what sex was like before the Fall: what enters me is not the phallus, but a pre-phallic partial object, a hand—we are back in a pre-lapsarian Edenic state. 

1. But still keep it simple—it's classic for a reason. From Less Than Nothing:

One can thus imagine a couple reducing their sexual activity to a minimal level, depriving it of all excess, only to find that the minimalism itself becomes invested with an excessive sexual jouissance (along the lines of those partners who, to spice up their sex life, treat it as a disciplinary measure, dress up in uniforms, follow strict rules, etc). 

Communist Explains Imperialism & Class Struggle

The Slovene Hegelo-Lacanian troika

What is your opinion of these articles?

http://marxistupdate.blogspot.com/2012/05/workers-world-newspaper-coverage-of.html

U.S. Communist Schools British Right-Winger

Against Marcuse

 

Herbert Marcuse: The Ideologue as Paid Agent of U.S. Imperialism

Eric Scheper

First Published: Literature & Ideology, No. 6, 1970.

 

Herbert Marcuse's reputation as a "revolutionary" rests primarily on two books: Eros and Civilization (1955; Vintage Books paperback, 1962) and One-Dimensional Man (1964) (a third one should also be mentioned: An Essay on Liberation [1969]). Since these books have had a minor influence on the American youth, especially in turning them from revolution to drugs, their basic arguments need to be exposed for their reactionary and pro-U.S. imperialist ideology. Marcuse spent about ten years in the 1940's in the Office of Strategic Services and in the Office of Intelligence Research, Department of State, after receiving his education in anti-communism in the Universities of Berlin and Freiburg as well as the notorious anti-communist Institute of Social Research, now in Frankfurt, West Germany.

There is nothing original or fresh about Marcuse's theories: they are the repetition of ideas which had been developed by various reactionaries in the twentieth century in response to the rise of revolutionary movements under the leadership of the working class and its ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought. The sole purpose of reactionary ideology now is to confuse people about the basis of change, development and motion, the role of consciousness in history, and the relation of the superstructure to its economic base. By using his pseudo-philosophical and shallow jargon. Marcuse strives in vain to convince people that there is no such thing as U. S. imperialism and that man's real problem is the repression of instincts imposed upon him by civilization itself. He relies heavily upon Freud's theories for his "revolutionary" insights.

Marcuse states his thesis in the opening paragraph of his introduction to Eros and Civilization:

Sigmund Freud's proposition that civilization is based on the permanent subjugation of the human instincts has been taken for granted. His question whether the suffering thereby inflicted upon individuals has been worth the benefits of culture has not been taken too seriously–the less so since Freud himself considered the process to be inevitable and irreversible. Free gratification of man's instinctual needs is incompatible with civilized society: renunciation and delay in satisfaction are the prerequisites of progress. "Happiness," said Freud, "is no cultural value." Happiness must be subordinated to the discipline of work as full-time occupation, to the discipline of monogamic reproduction, to the established system of law and order. The methodical sacrifice of libido, its rigidly enforced deflection to socially useful activities and expressions, is culture.

It follows from this critique that repression is an historical phenomenon and that man's struggle against repression is endless and futile:

The effective subjugation of the instincts to repressive controls is imposed not by nature but by man. The primal father, as the archetype of domination, initiates the chain reaction of enslavement, rebellion, and reinforced domination which marks the history of civilization. But ever since the first, prehistoric restoration of domination following the first rebellion, repression from without has been supported by repression from within: the unfree individual introjects his masters and their commands into his own mental apparatus. The struggle against freedom reproduces itself in the psyche of man as the self-repression of the repressed individual, and his self-repression in turn sustains his masters and their institutions. It is this mental dynamic which Freud unfolds as the dynamic of civilization.

Marcuse goes on to quote Freud's remark that society's, motive in enforcing the decisive modification of the instinctual structure is thus "economic; since it has not means enough to support life for its members without work on their part, it must see to it that the number of these members is restricted and their energies directed away from sexual activities on to their work."

These long passages from Eros and Civilization should make it clear why a paid agent of U.S. imperialism would find it worth his time and money to defend Freud and to offer an "instinctual" theory of man's repression. What is the basis of change, development and motion in history? It is the struggle between Eros and Civilization, according to Marcuse. It is class struggle, struggle for production and scientific experimentation, according to the revolutionary ideology of the working and oppressed people. "If absence from repression is the archetype of freedom, then civilization is the struggle against freedom," says Marcuse in Eros and Civilization. Man does not produce his consciousness in the course of producing his means of subsistence; the Freudian man resents having to engage in productive activities because they interfere with his instinctual desire for self-gratification. Freud had written in Civilization and Its Discontents:

It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built up upon a renunciation of instinct, how much it presupposed precisely the non-satisfaction (by suppression, repression or some other means?) of powerful instincts. This cultural "frustration" dominates the large field of social relationships between human beings. As we already know, it is the cause of the hostility against which all civilizations have to struggle.

The political ambition which emerges out of this analysis is that man should employ automation to bring into being a non-repressive society. In his "Preface to the Vintage Edition" of Eros and Civilization, Marcuse explicitly states the reactionary outlook of a Freudian like himself:

I emphasized from the beginning of my book that, in the contemporary period, psychological categories become political categories to the degree to which the private, individual psyche becomes the more or less willing receptacle of socially desirable and socially necessary aspirations, feelings, drives, and satisfactions. The individual, and with him the rights and liberties of the individual, is something that has still to be created, and that can be created only through the development of qualitatively different social relations and institutions.

What is the political significance of this Freudian analysis of history put forward by a paid agent of U. S. imperialism? First of all, it denies the very existence of U.S. imperialism. If there is no U.S. imperialism, what can the working and oppressed people be fighting against? Ergo, all revolutionaries all over the world must be agents of some communist conspiracy. If there is anything wrong with American society, it is this: "The conflict between this society's great technical instruments and scientific resources on the one hand and the waste and destructiveness on the other just cannot go on." Marcuse here is one of the early "prophets" of ecology. Another outstanding characteristic of Marcuse's Freudian interpretation is that it postulates a metaphysical or mystical "primal father" as "the archetype of domination." and this is supposed to be the historical beginning of oppression in the world. All reactionary idealists assume that man did not develop through a revolutionary process of "one splitting into two," and that man appeared on this planet complete with instincts, the pleasure principle and the misfortune of having to produce his own means of subsistence. The conflict between the instinctual struggle for freedom and the restraints of civilization takes the political form of a withdrawal from public life and a hope that machines will bring about the day when man will not have to work at all and will have the opportunity to exercise his desire for self-gratification. Marcuse appeals to those petty-bourgeois youth who do not want to change the world and who want to believe that there are no possibilities of changing the situation at present or in the future.

In his One-Dimensional Man, Marcuse announces that U.S. imperialism is a society without opposition or internal contradiction. This discovery of Marcuse's that there is no internal contradiction in American society is supposed to be a "revolutionary" and earth-shaking one. Marcuse notes the disappearance of contradiction between classes in this passage:

At its origins in the first half of the nineteenth century, when it elaborated the first concepts of the alternatives, the critique of industrial society attained concreteness in a historical mediation between theory and practice, values and facts, needs and goals. This historical mediation occurred in the consciousness and in the political action of the two great classes which faced each other in the society: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. In the capitalist world, they are still the basic classes. However, the capitalist development has altered the structure and function of these two classes in such a way that they no longer appear to be agents of historical transformation. An overriding interest in the preservation and improvement of the institutional status quo unites the former antagonists in the most advanced areas of contemporary society. And to the degree to which technical progress assures the growth and cohesion of communist society, the very idea of qualitative change recedes before the realistic notions of a non-explosive evolution.

The simplest way to defend a repressive and decadent system is to argue that it does not exist. "A non-explosive evolution" is being wished for and insisted upon by every kind of reactionary. If there is no antagonistic contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, there can be no possibility of change and development.

Marcuse's method of analysis belongs to the ancient and well-tested tradition of obscurantist and fascist logic. He fabricates facts to "validate" a pro-U.S. imperialist theory. The immediate needs of class struggle demand that U.S. imperialists parade a variety of "experts" in magazines and books, who wear a mask of concern for the disintegration taking place in imperialist society and also predict on the basis of their professorial authority that no disintegration is in fact taking place. Marcuse remarks about the possibilities of change:

Perhaps an accident may alter the situation, but unless the recognition of what is being done and what is being prevented subverts the consciousness and the behavior of man, not even a catastrophe will bring about change.

Close attention should be paid here to "what is being done" and "what is being prevented." The possibility of this consciousness bringing about the downfall of imperialism is nil, as Marcuse points out:

In the medium of technology, culture, politics, and the economy merge into an omnipresent system which swallows up or repulses all alternatives. The productivity and growth potential of this system stabilize the society and contain technical progress within the framework of domination. Technological rationality has become political rationality.

This means that U.S. imperialism is indestructible and invincible.

Marcuse's principal thesis in One-Dimensional Man is that the real source of anguish, misery and suffering in imperialist society is man's insatiable desire for self-gratification as well as the disappearance of what he calls a "two-dimensional" culture:

Today's novel feature is the flattening out of the antagonism between culture and social reality through the obliteration of the oppositional, alien, and transcendent elements in the higher culture by virtue of which it constituted another dimension of reality. This liquidation of two-dimensional culture takes place not through the denial and rejection of the "cultural values," but through their wholesale incorporation into the established order, through their reproduction and display on a massive scale.

This passage cannot be understood without some grasp of Marcuse's reactionary and idealistic theory of culture.

First of all, it should not be forgotten that Marcuse is an idealist of the eclectic type who is anxious to catch at any philosophical straw which would prolong the life of U.S. imperialism. In fact, nobody can be both an agent of U.S. imperialists as well as a follower of materialist philosophy; in Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory (1941). Marcuse accuses the fascist Gentile of not being an idealist:

Gentile discards the fundamental principle of all idealism, namely, that there is an antagonism and strain between truth and fact, between thought or mind and reality. His whole theory is based upon the immediate identity of these polar elements, whereas Hegel's point had been that there is no such immediate identity but only the dialectical process of achieving it.

This shows that Marcuse's reactionary theories have their origin in reactionary idealism which postulates that man's social being is determined by his thinking and that mind is primary and matter secondary.

According to Marcuse, culture does not belong to the superstructure of an economic base and does not serve and protect that base. Culture is rather a repository of ideal and transcendent values and acts as an agent of social change and development. Culture in this sense forms a second and higher dimension of social reality and is therefore something superior to that reality. A society in which culture is allowed to stand in an antagonistic or idealistic relationship to social reality is a two-dimensional society, and a society in which culture gets incorporated into the established order is a one-dimensional society. Marcuse criticizes U.S. imperialist society for being a one-dimensional society without any possibilities of change.

The political usefulness of this theory for U.S. imperialism is immense. It does away with the materiality of the phenomena of social change and development (Marcuse's transcendent culture is in some mysterious sense innate as well as a gift of God). This theory recognizes the basis of change and development not in the contradiction inherent in a society but in an external cause. Culture as an external cause of social change and development is innate and God-given. This means that no revolution can be possible in the United States because there is no transcendent culture, and anyone who calls for a revolution must be an agent of a foreign power. Marcuse's argument is a mystical and obscurantist one in that he finds it favourable to U.S. imperialism not to specify what his "transcendent culture" is. The political function of books like One-Dimensional Man is to assure the U.S. monopoly capitalist class that their system is the best one in the world, even if it does not and cannot ensure self-gratification. "If somebody really believes that my opinions can seriously endanger society," Marcuse has justly demand acceptance of its principles and institutions, and reduce the opposition to the discussion and promotion of alternative policies within the status quo. In this respect, it seems to make little difference whether the increasing satisfaction of needs is accomplished by an authoritarian or a non-authoritarian system. Under the conditions of a rising standard of living, non-conformity with the system itself appears to be socially useless, and the more so when it entails tangible economic and political disadvantages and threatens the smooth operation of the whole. Indeed, at least in so far as the necessities of life are involved, there seems to be no reason why the production and distribution of goods and services should proceed through the competitive concurrence of individual liberties.

This passage is a U.S. monopoly capitalist's dream of the future and prepares the material conditions for the widespread oppression of any opposition to U.S. imperialism internally or externally. Marcuse's society without opposition is an ideological argument for a society without a revolutionary communist movement in the United States under the guidance of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought. The U.S. imperialist ideologues theorize that "a state of lower productivity" which was the basis for revolutionary movements has been brought to an end by the "technological revolution"; therefore U.S. monopoly capitalists cannot allow anybody to talk about the seizure of state power by the proletariat. Marcuse's theory calls for total repression of individual liberties, for he thinks that "independence of thought, autonomy, and the right to political opposition" are redundant in an advanced industrial society; this argument exonerates fascist atrocities in U.S.A. Marcuse holds that the loss of rights and liberties in advanced industrial nations points to "a higher stage of this society," a stage during which nobody needs any liberties or rights.

To make sure that nobody misunderstands Marcuse's counter-revolutionary analysis of social, cultural and political problems, he stresses that no good can come from any opposition to U.S. imperialism by what he calls the "substratum of the outcasts and outsiders, the exploited and persecuted of other races and other colors, the unemployed and the unemployable." He continues:

Nothing indicates that it will be a good end. The economic and technical capabilities of the established societies are sufficiently vast to allow for adjustments and concessions to the underdog, and their armed forces sufficiently trained and equipped to take care of emergency situations. However, the spectre is there again, inside and outside the frontiers of the advanced societies. The facile historical parallel with the barbarians threatening the empire of civilization prejudges the issue; the second period of barbarism may well be the continued empire of civilization itself.

The reactionary role of Freudian theories of this type is to create the irrational and non-historical fear among people that their greatest enemy is civilization and that it would be beneficial to mankind if they were to return to some kind of "global" tribalism which would permit the U.S. imperialists to rule the world. Once one conceives of civilization itself as "barbarism," one may tend to lose any fear of the fascist hordes in the U.S. imperialist-controlled states.

A fascist repression of any kind of political opposition to U.S. imperialism is the primary result of Marcuse's ideological argument. Another consequence of his analysis is that people should avail themselves of the benefits of a corporate-sensate culture which caters to the individual's desire for self-gratification, instead of opposing it. Then he warns his readers that what is wrong with industrial society is something that cannot be corrected at all:

Institutionalized desublimation thus appears to be an aspect of the "conquest of transcendence" achieved by the one-dimensional society. Just as this society tends to reduce, and even absorb opposition (the qualitative difference!) in the realm of politics and higher culture, so it does in the instinctual sphere. The result is the atrophy of the mental organs for grasping the contradictions and the alternatives and, in the one remaining dimension of technological rationality, the Happy Consciousness comes to prevail.

Marcuse provides the ideological premise for this type of life in Eros and Civilization:

Men do not live their own lives, but perform pre-established functions. While they work, they do not fulfill their own needs and faculties but work in alienation. Work has now become general, and so have the restrictions placed upon the libido: labor time, which is the largest part of the individual's life time, is painful time, for alienated labor is absence of [erotic] gratification, negation of the pleasure principle. Libido is diverted for socially useful performances in which the individual works for himself only insofar as he works for the apparatus engaged in activities that mostly do not coincide with his own faculties and desires.

This passage appeals to some reactionary petty-bourgeois individuals who do not want to betray their class background and who do not wish to see that the internal contradictions of their own lives cannot be resolved without the destruction of U.S. imperialism.

In order to attract these petty-bourgeois individuals to the cause of counter-revolution, Marcuse has developed a theory of the "liberation of man," a theory which directly serves the interests of U.S. imperialism. He labels it "the Great Refusal" in An Essay on Liberation:

This alternative is not so much a different road to socialism as an emergence of different goals and values, different aspirations in the men and women who resist and deny the massive exploitative power of corporate capitalism even in its most comfortable and liberal realizations.

"An emergence of different goals and values": where do these goals and values emerge from? Marcuse locates the origin of these goals and values in "the demands of the life instincts" in the same essay:

For freedom indeed depends largely on technical progress, on the advancement of science. But this fact easily obscures the essential precondition: in order to become vehicles of freedom, science and technology would have to change their present direction and goals; they would have to be reconstructed in accord with a new sensibility–the demands of the life instincts. Then one could speak of a technology of liberation, product of a scientific imagination free to project and design the forms of a human universe without exploitation and toil.

Marcuse's new man is considered by him to be equipped with "a different sensitivity as well as consciousness; men who would speak a different language, have different gestures, follow different impulses. ..."

What view of change, development and motion in history does one get from "the demands of the life instincts"? After acknowledging that instincts give "the life processes a definite 'direction' (Richtung), in terms of 'life-principles,'" Marcuse notes in Eros and Civilization the following characteristic features of change and development in advanced industrial societies:

(1) The very progress of civilization under the performance principle has attained a level of productivity at which the social demands upon instinctual energy to be spent in alienated labor could be consistently reduced. Consequently, the continued repressive organization of the instincts seems to be necessitated less by the "struggle for existence" than by the interest in prolonging this struggle–by the interest in domination.

(2) The representative philosophy of Western civilization has developed a concept of reason which contains the domineering features of the performance principle. However, the same philosophy ends in the vision of a higher form of reason which is the very negation of these features–namely, receptivity, contemplation, enjoyment. Behind the definition of the subject in terms of the ever transcending and productive activity of the ego lies the image of the redemption of the ego: the coming to rest of all transcendence in a mode of being that has absorbed all becoming, that is for and with-itself in all otherness.

It is true that both of these points are wrong but they have been concocted for a political purpose. Hence the important thing is not to expose Marcuse for his "intellectual errors" but to condemn and repudiate the political role of these reactionary formulations of his.

What can a bourgeois intellectual do to serve U.S. imperialism? He employs his "academic expertism" to manufacture theories which try to explain political and social features of class struggle between U.S. imperialism and the working and oppressed people in such a way as to argue that the basis of change and development in society is not class struggle, that man's life is guided by the "demands of the life instincts." that the productive machinery of U.S. imperialism promises to deliver everybody from the curse of work, and that "the higher historical truth would pertain to the system which offers the greater chance of pacification" (One-Dimensional Man). Marcuse touches upon every aspect of class struggle in order to "prove" that the problems of the decadent and parasitic U.S. imperialism do not originate from the contradictions inherent within the system. It is for this reason that periodicals like the Guardian, which serve U.S. imperialism, also praise and idolize paid agents of U.S. imperialism (in an article published on June 8, 1968):

[Marcuse's] penetrating analysis of the relationship between erotic repression and the nature of all dominating repressive civilization is key to understanding the broad range and profound depth of the new revolt. His 'One-Dimensional Man' is the most sophisticated analysis of oppression in advanced capitalism thus far produced.

The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work

An excerpt and discussion of Belén Fernández's The Imperial Messenger

from Versobooks.com by Ryan Healey

 

Belén Fernández will respond today to reader comments and questions on Gawker about her new book out from Verso, The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work. An excerpt from her polemical dissection of Thomas Friedman's body of work will be up at 1 PM. 

Victory of the working class depends on leadership and organization

Workers need conscious leadership

(editorial)

  

The working class on a world scale is confronted with a relentless assault by the propertied rulers who are driven by the crisis of their profit system to go after our wages and ramp up "productivity."

The bosses' assaults have already been met with some resistance by workers looking to defend not only their own wages and working conditions but also those of future generations, drawing and extending solidarity to others facing similar attacks.

This historic crisis, still in its initial stages, is not one of banking and finance, but is rooted in a slowdown of production and trade. Its features are endemic to the capitalist system and cannot be "fixed" by reforms, regulations or government policies. Going after the working class is ultimately the only option the owners of capital have within the framework of maintaining their property, prerogatives and political power.

Under these conditions the normal tendencies inherent in the capitalist system assert themselves in a way not seen for many decades. This includes the expansion of layers of long-term unemployed, which the rulers use as a bludgeon to drive down the price of labor power and ultimately the more permanent and accepted living standards of working people—to drive back what we've conquered in struggle over decades.

Workers' resistance will go up and down, but in the long run will grow to meet the propertied rulers' ever deeper assaults. These battles raise broader questions—how the attacks are a necessary product of the lawful workings of the capitalist system itself, how fighting them will require an expanding alliance of workers, across industries and borders, and ultimately pose the question of which class should rule. The better we understand what is unfolding, the more effective we can choose our battles and conduct them as effectively as possible, coming out stronger in the process.

At some point revolutionary struggles become inevitable. But the victory of the working class will depend on leadership and organization. As we fight, an essential question becomes the construction of a politically conscious vanguard and a revolutionary workers party that can lead working people and our allies in the contest for political power on a world scale.

http://www.themilitant.com/2012/7621/762120.html

Workers in struggle praise "The Militant"

Working-class fighters speak on, help raise money for, the 'Militant'

  

BY LEA SHERMAN 

 

Successful Militant Fighting Fund meetings last weekend boosted the campaign to raise $120,000 for the working-class newsweekly. Twin Cities sent in $4,479 from their fund meeting and raised their local quota from $6,500 to $7,200. More than $5,300 was collected at a meeting of 60 in Seattle. Meetings were also held in New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

On the speakers panel in Seattle May 12 were James Harris, Socialist Workers candidate for U.S. Senate in California; and Dan Coffman, president of International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 21 in Longview, Wash.; and Ralph Rider, an executive board member of Local 21. Mary Martin, SWP candidate for governor of Washington, chaired the meeting.

Coffman talked about his union's two-year struggle against EGT Development's attempt to shut the ILWU out of its grain terminal at the Port of Longview. Union members are now working in the terminal from where their fight continues.

"Thanks to the Militant people for coming to Longview every Saturday and not only telling the truth in the paper but participating in the picket lines and canvassing neighborhoods in the community," Coffman said.

Harris talked about the worldwide capitalist economic crisis and the importance of workers' struggles today, from the ILWU's fight in Longview to port truck drivers in Los Angeles who recently won a union. "This increases the confidence of workers, which is necessary along the road toward workers wresting power from the capitalist class. Workers need our own revolutionary party to help lead our class and its allies in this direction."

A lively discussion ensued on questions ranging from the energy policy of the proletariat and nuclear power to the Occupy movement.

"This meeting and the Militant help further my knowledge of struggles of the working class," said Nathan Clifton, a warehouse worker who bought a subscription at a May Day action.

Sharing the platform at the May 11 fund event in the Twin Cities were John Hawkins, Socialist Workers candidate in the 1st Congressional District in Illinois, and Becki Jacobson and Scott Ripplinger, two workers fighting the ongoing lockout by American Crystal Sugar.

"We are always much better off fighting," said Hawkins who described several struggles, including the recent walkout by Caterpillar workers in Joliet, Ill.; the fight of uranium workers at Honeywell in Metropolis, Ill.; and the fight by 1,300 sugar workers locked out by American Crystal in Minnesota and North Dakota since Aug. 1. "The rulers are determined to drive us down. By putting up a fight, we come out stronger and more ready for the next struggle."

"The Militant is an awesome paper," Jacobson said. "It doesn't depress us like the Fargo Forum, which paints us as no good, lazy union workers."

Ripplinger described the impact of the struggle on the locked-out workers as a social awakening. "Many of us are different people," he said.

"I have subscribed to the Militant for many months now," added Ripplinger. "It is a good paper that lifts our spirits because it puts our fight in the forefront. It makes us feel less alone by connecting us to other struggles." Ripplinger said he often brings the paper to the picket lines for others to read.

Socialist workers have been getting contributions to the fund while distributing the paper. For example, during door-to-door sales last week in Atlanta, a nurse contributed $23 after purchasing Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power with an introductory subscription, reported Jacob Perasso.

At the fund event in Houston, factory worker Antonio Jimenez made a first-time pledge to the fund of $50. "I looked at the chart on the wall with the goal of $4,000 and I wanted to do something to keep the Militant coming out. I wanted to help raise this money because the Militant keeps me informed."

Buddy Howard, a leader of the 10-month fight against a lockout last year by Roquette America in Keokuk, Iowa, recently sent in $50 to the fund on behalf of himself and two other Roquette workers. Unable to attend, he sent a message to the fundraising meeting in Des Moines:

"As you know, we have accepted a lousy contract with a few gains from an earlier lousier contract to continue our fight inside. We have ex-scabs joining the union as they find out we were actually holding out to better their wages and benefits. Many of them have found out what kind of company they work for and what being in a union means.

"Our struggle opened many of my comrades' eyes so that we can see other struggles that were/are going on. We now keep in contact with groups like Northern Illinois Jobs with Justice, the USW 7-669 workers, the BCTGM workers locked out by Crystal Sugar, the Teamsters in Henry, Ill., the UFCW workers in Muscatine, Iowa, going on four years of being locked out by GPC.

"I talked to AFSCME Red Cross workers who became AFSCME five years ago and are still waiting for their first contract. This should tell people that we need our own workers party.

"Thanks to the Militant and the SWP for all the support you give workers. I'll never forget all you did for us in our struggle. In SOLIDARITY. And now we continue the fight, don't we."

To contribute, contact distributors listed on page 8, or send a check made out to the Militant to: The Militant, 306 W. 37th St., 10th floor, New York, NY 10018.

Edwin Fruit in Seattle and Frank Forrestal in Minneapolis contributed to this article.

http://www.themilitant.com/2012/7621/762104.html

Report on anti-NATO protests

Email I got today from Mike Gimbel

Hi All,

  

Below is a copy of a message that I received this morning.  The big business news media has purposely distorted what took place in Chicago at the anti-NATO demonstrations. One of the participants, Sara Flounders, from the International Action Center, has sent this message forward to CANG8 and I have taken this opportunity to forward it to all of you.

  

--Mike Gimbel

_____________________

  

Congratulations! Congratulations to CANG8 for a well-organized, powerful united mass rally with a focused message against NATO, NATO's wars, growing repression and the disasterous cuts in every social program. May 20 was, despite all the threats and violence baiting, the largest antiwar demonstration in many years.

 

The march looked tremendous!! The important participation of the veterans, and the image of returning their medals, combined with the contingent against political repression, united with Palestinians, Philippine activists, the many signs of No war on Iran and troops out of Afghanistan, stop drone attacks, the signs for Bradely Manning and against cutbacks and racism, along with the union participation - it all showed a powerful level of developing unity with the struggle here and around the world. These are images that NATO generals and the whole corporate and military establishment want to totally bury.

  

This whole week of activity has taken the movement to a new level and nationally helped the young Occupy movement understand NATO as an enemy of humanity.

We shouldn't be surprised at the corporate media's focus on the fabricated violence of demonstrators. They have to hide any understanding of NATO as a criminal conspiracy, committed to violence, corporate domination and human degradation.

 

But the overwhelming numbers of police, the threatening equipment and tactics of the state's repressive apparatus and then the level of police violence in Chicago was so outrageous that it fully exposed the violence of NATO, more clearly than words and signs could ever do.

  

It's clear once again NATO rules through fear. In this period of unsolvable capitalist crisis this is their only weapon. The police, the city officials, the compliant media did everything to terrorize the population of Chicago and the region from even coming downtown on Sunday. The media gave endless coverage of danger, threats, violence, along with road closings, searches etc. All of this was meant to undermine support for the demonstration. And to demonize and criminalize our youth as the supposed source of violence. It makes the turn-out an even greater accomplishement.

  

We should take note of the police interference in Internet, GPS, text messaging throughout the day. US officials denounce and lecture other countries around the world when they do this, but in the face of one demonstration, they have done the same.

  

I'm so glad to Joe Lombardo of UNAC actually took the time to watch the whole march go while consciously doing a count of the marchers. Joe said he's quite confident that there were over 15,000 on the march and many more, if counting the streets around and the people who merged after the demonstration began.

Of course the media will attempt to undercut our numbers, shrink them completely and also take the focus off of NATO by talking about violence of the youth. We can't allow either thing to happen.

When returning home on Tuesday I feel we can't forget the youth rounded up in Chicago and facing outrageous charges of terrorism, conspiracy, enormous bails and possibly long trials. We don't yet know the charges of those arrested on Sunday but we must make the police-state tactics a national issue. I hope very much that UNAC and every organization within UNAC Coalition can contribute to making these criminal raids and police attacks a national issue.

  

We need to get out far and wide with this message of what we accomplished and what the city officials and police did to our youth, in their efforts to shut us down.

  

Thanks again to everyone in CANG8 who worked together for many months to insure today's success.

  

Solidarity,

Sara Flounders

International Action Center

UNAC AC

  

__________

  

The stupidities and absurdities by which mathematicians have rather excused than explained their mode of procedure, which remarkably enough always lead to correct results, exceed the worst and real fantasies of the Hegelian philosophy of nature.

  

                                                                  --Frederick Engels

  

Good physics is the study of three-dimensional matter in motion. Good mathematics involves unlimited dimensions, from utilization of just one dimension, two dimensions, four dimensions or as many dimensions as can be imagined. This is bad physics, however. Matter has only three dimensions: Length, Width & Height.

  

Physics has been in crisis for a century due to the intrusion of the field of mathematics. String Theory is the ultimate result of this nonsensical mathematical intrusion into physics.

  

Please read my book! You can get it on Amazon.com at: http://www.amazon.com/Dialectical-Materialism-vs-The-Physics/dp/0984677801

 

Japan: Suicides by those under 30 stay high amid dismal job market

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/rss/nn20120514b2.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+japantimes_news+%28The+Japan+Times+Headline+News+-+News+%26+Business%29

The road to workers power starts with a revolutionary party

Excellent editorial from this week's issue of The Militant

Workers need own revolutionary party

The election results in France and Greece highlight the depth of the crisis in Europe, which has only just begun, as well as the need for workers to have our own revolutionary party with a fighting course. The capitalist rulers, with their political parties from the left to the right, are united in their aim to target the living standards and rights of working people in an attempt to solve the crisis of their system. They differ only in how to approach their problem.

The electoral showing of the Golden Dawn in Greece—with 7 percent of the vote—is a reminder that fascist organizations rise in times of deep economic and social crisis by using radical anti-capitalist demagogy, speaking for the "little man" against bankers and financiers, and by inventing scapegoats from immigrants to Jews.

In the absence of a revolutionary workers movement, some who look for radical solutions are attracted to demagogic nostrums of the ultraright.

The one example of a capitalist state reconquering profitability and competitiveness after being devastated by economic crisis and foreign intervention is that of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Because of the lack of a mass revolutionary working-class party after Germany's crushing defeat in World War I and the ensuing decade of deepening economic crisis, the capitalist rulers there backed the fascist Hitler regime to crush working-class resistance and obliterate political rights. On that basis they cranked up their war machine and challenged their imperialist rivals on a world scale.

Well before fascist rule can be posed, the working class will have its chance to wrest political power from the exploiters and put an end to the crisis of capitalism once and for all.

To accomplish this, workers need a revolutionary party—like the Bolshevik Party that led the mighty 1917 Russian Revolution and the movement in Cuba led by Fidel Castro that overthrew the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship in 1959 and established a government of workers and farmers.

Today there are no revolutionary workers parties in Europe. The Communist and Socialist parties urge reforms to shore up capitalist rule. They no longer even maintain the pretense of a revolutionary perspective or speak about politics from a Marxist framework. "I'm not dangerous," the SP's François Hollande assured London investors before winning the election.

Nor do the "far left" candidates in the recent elections have a program to strengthen the unity, organization and fighting capacity of working people, much less a perspective for fighting for political power. In fact, their nationalist, anti-banker rhetoric mirrors the radical demagoguery of the ultraright.

Out of the resistance to the spreading attacks by the bosses and their governments, from Greece to the U.S., workers need to build a fighting proletarian party, a party that is steeped in the continuity of the past battles of our class with an international outlook and a nose for power.

http://www.themilitant.com/2012/7620/762020.html

Marxism and culture

Stagnation and Progress of Marxism

Rosa Luxemburg

[1903]

In his shallow but at time interesting causerie entitled Die soziale Bewegung in Frankreich und Belgien (The Socialist Movement in France and Belgium), Karl Grün remarks, aptly enough, that Fourier's and Saint-Simon's theories had very different effects upon their respective adherents. Saint-Simon was the spiritual ancestor of a whole generation of brilliant investigators and writers in various field of intellectual activity; but Fourier's followers were, with few exceptions, persons who blindly parroted their master's words, and were incapable of making any advance upon his teaching. Grün's explanation of this difference is that Fourier presented the world with a finished system, elaborated in all its details; whereas Saint-Simon merely tossed his disciples a loose bundle of great thoughts. Although it seems to me that Grün pays too little attention to the inner, the essential, difference between the theories of these two classical authorities in the domain of utopian socialism, I feel that on the whole is observation is sound. Beyond question, a system of ideas which is merely sketched in broad outline proves far more stimulating than a finished and symmetrical structure which leaves nothing to be added and offers no scope for the independent effort of an active mind.

Does this account for the stagnation in Marxism doctrine which has been noticeable for a good many years? The actual fact is that – apart for one or two independent contributions which mark a theoretician advance – since the publication of the last volume of Capital and of the last of Engels's writings there have appeared nothing more than a few excellent popularizations and expositions of Marxist theory. The substance of that theory remains just where the two founders of scientific socialism left it.

Is this because the Marxist system has imposed too rigid a framework upon the independent activities of the mind? It is undeniable that Marx has had a somewhat restrictive influence upon the free development of theory in the case of many of his pupils. Both Marx and Engels found it necessary to disclaim responsibility for the utterances of many who chose to call themselves Marxists! The scrupulous endeavor to keep "within the bounds of Marxism" may at times have been just as disastrous to the integrity of the thought process as has been the other extreme – the complete repudiation of the Marxist outlook, and the determination to manifest "independence of thought" at all hazards.

Still, it is only where economic matters are concerned that we are entitled to speak of a more or less completely elaborated body of doctrines bequeathed us by Marx. The most valuable of all his teachings, the materialist-dialectical conception of history, presents itself to us as nothing more than a method of investigation, as a few inspired leading thoughts, which offer us glimpses into the entirely new world, which open us to endless perspectives of independent activity, which wing our spirit for bold flights into unexplored regions.

Nevertheless, even in this domain, with few exceptions the Marxist heritage lies shallow. The splendid new weapon rusts unused; and the theory of historical materialism remains as unelaborated and sketchy as was when first formulated by its creators.

It cannot be said, then, that the rigidity and completeness of the Marxist edifice are the explanation of the failure of Marx's successors to go on with the building.

We are often told that our movement lacks the persons of talent who might be capable of further elaborating Marx's theories. Such a lack is, indeed, of long standing; but the lack itself demands an explanation, and cannot be put forward to answer the primary question. We must remember that each epoch forms its own human material; that if in any period there is a genuine need for theoretical exponents, the period will create the forces requisite for the satisfaction of that need.

But is there a genuine need, an effective demand, for the further development of Marxist theory?

In an article upon the controversy between the Marxist and the Jevonsian Schools in England, Bernard Shaw, the talented exponent of Fabian semi-socialism, derides Hyndman for having said that the first volume of Capital had given him a complete understanding of Marx, and that there were no gaps in Marxist theory – although Friedrich Engels, in the preface of the second volume of Capital, subsequently declared that the first volume with its theory of value, had left unsolved a fundamental economic problem, whose solution would not be furnished until the third volume was published. Shaw certainly succeeded here in making Hyndman's position seem a trifle ridiculous, though Hyndman might well derive consolation from the fact that practically the whole socialist world was in the same boat!

The third volume of Capital, with its solution of the problem of the rate of profit (the basic problem of Marxist economics), did not appear till 1894. But in Germany, as in all other lands, agitation had been carried on with the aid of the unfinished material contained in the first volume; the Marxist doctrine had been popularized and had found acceptance upon the basis of this first volume alone; the success of the incomplete Marxist theory had been phenomenal; and no one had been aware that there was any gap in the teaching.

Furthermore, when the third volume finally saw the light, whilst to begin with it attracted some attention in the restricted circles of the experts, and aroused here a certain amount of comment – as far as the socialist movement as a whole was concerned, the new volume made practically no impression in the wide regions where the ideas expounded in the original book had become dominant. The theoretical conclusion of volume 3 have not hitherto evoked any attempt at popularization, nor have they secured wide diffusion. On the contrary, even among the social democrats we sometimes hear, nowadays, reechoes of the "disappointment" with the third volume of Capital which is so frequently voiced by bourgeois economists – and thus the social democrats merely show how fully they had accepted the "incomplete" exposition of the theory of value presented in the first volume.

How can we account for so remarkable a phenomenon?

Shaw, who (to quote his own expression) is fond of "sniggering" at others, may have good reasons here, for making fun of the whole socialist movement, insofar as it is grounded upon Marx! But if he were to do this, he would be "sniggering" at a very serious manifestation of our social life. The strange fate of the second and third volumes of Capital is conclusive evidence as to the general destiny of theoretical research in our movement.

From the scientific standpoint, the third volume of Capital must, no doubt, be primarily regarded as the completion of Marx's critic of capitalism. Without this third volume, we cannot understand, either the actually dominant law of the rate of profit; or the splitting up of surplus value into profit, interest, and rent; or the working of the law of value within the field of competition. But, and this is the main point, all these problems, however important from the outlook of the pure theory, are comparatively unimportant from the practical outlook of the class war. As far as the class war is concerned, the fundamental theoretical problem is the origin of surplus value, that is, the scientific explanation of exploitation; together with the elucidation of the tendencies toward the socialization of the process of production, that is, the scientific explanation of the objective groundwork of the socialist revolution.

Both these problems are solved in the first volume of Capital, which deduces the "expropriation of the expropriators" as the inevitable and ultimate result of the production of surplus value and of the progressive concentration of capital. Therewith, as far as theory is concerned, the essential need of the labor movement is satisfied. The workers, being actively engaged in the class war, have no direct interest in the question how surplus value is distributed among the respective groups of exploiters; or in the question how, in the course of this distribution, competition brings about rearrangements of production.

That is why, for socialists in general, the third volume of Capital remain an unread book.

But, in our movement, what applies to Marx's economic doctrines applies to theoretical research in general. It is pure illusion to suppose that the working class, in its upward striving, can of its own accord become immeasurably creative in the theoretical domain. True that, as Engels said, the working class alone has today preserved an understanding of and interest in theory. The workers' craving for knowledge is one of the most noteworthy cultural manifestation of our day. Morally, too, the working-class struggle denotes the cultural renovation of society. But active participation of the workers in the march of science is subject to fulfillment of very definite social conditions.

In every class society, intellectual culture (science and art) is created by the ruling class; and the aim of this culture is in part to ensure the direct satisfaction of the needs of the social process, and in part to satisfy the mental needs of the members of the governing class.

In the history of earlier class struggles, aspiring classes (like the Third Estate in recent days) could anticipate political dominion by establishing an intellectual dominance, inasmuch as, while they were still subjugated classes, they could set up a new science and a new art against obsolete culture of the decadent period.

The proletariat is in a very different position. As a nonpossessing class, it cannot in the course of its struggle upwards spontaneously create a mental culture of its own while it remains in the framework of bourgeois society. Within that society, and so long as its economic foundations persist, there can be no other culture than a bourgeois culture. Although certain "socialist" professors may acclaim the wearing of neckties, the use of visiting cards, and the riding of bicycles by proletarians as notable instances of participation in cultural progress, the working class as such remains outside contemporary culture. Notwithstanding the fact that the workers create with their own hands the whole social substratum of this culture, they are only admitted to its enjoyment insofar as such admission is requisite to the satisfactory performance of their functions in the economic and social process of capitalist society.

The working class will not be in a position to create a science and an art of its own until it has been fully emancipated from its present class position.

The utmost it can do today is to safeguard bourgeois culture from the vandalism of the bourgeois reaction, and create the social conditions requisite for a free cultural development. Even along these lines, the workers, within the extant form of society, can only advance insofar as they can create for themselves the intellectual weapons needed in their struggle for liberation.

But this reservation imposes upon the working class (that is to say, upon the workers' intellectual leaders) very narrow limits in the field of intellectual activities. The domain of their creative energy is confined to one specific department of science, namely social science. For, inasmuch as "thanks to the peculiar connection of the idea of the Fourth Estate with our historical epoch", enlightenment concerning the laws of social development has become essential to the workers in the class struggle, this connection has borne good fruit in social science, and the monument of the proletarian culture of our days is – Marxist doctrine.

But Marx's creation, which as a scientific achievement is a titanic whole, transcends the plain demands of the proletarian class struggle for whose purposes it was created. Both in his detailed and comprehensive analysis of capitalist economy, and in his method of historical research with its immeasurable field of application, Marx has offered much more than was directly essential for the practical conduct of the class war.

Only in proportion as our movement progresses, and demands the solution of new practical problems do we dip once more into the treasury of Marx's thought, in order to extract therefrom and to utilize new fragments of his doctrine. But since our movement, like all the campaigns of practical life, inclines to go on working in old ruts of thought, and to cling to principles after they have ceased to be valid, the theoretical utilization of the Marxist system proceed very slowly.

If, then, today we detect a stagnation in our movement as far as these theoretical matters are concerned, this is not because the Marxist theory upon which we are nourished is incapable of development or has become out-of-date. On the contrary, it is because we have not yet learned how to make an adequate use of the most important mental weapons which we had taken out of the Marxist arsenal on account of our urgent need for them in the early stages of our struggle. It is not true that, as far as practical struggle is concerned, Marx is out-of-date, that we had superseded Marx. On the contrary, Marx, in his scientific creation, has outstripped us as a party of practical fighters. It is not true that Marx no longer suffices for our needs. On the contrary, our needs are not yet adequate for the utilization of Marx's ideas.

Thus do the social conditions of proletarian existence in contemporary society, conditions first elucidated by Marxist theory, take vengeance by the fate they impose upon Marxist theory itself. Though that theory is an incomparable instrument of intellectual culture, it remains unused because, while t is inapplicable to bourgeois class culture, it greatly transcends the needs of the working class in the matter of weapons for the daily struggle. Not until the working class has been liberated from its present conditions of existence will the Marxist method of research be socialized in conjunction with the other means of production, so that it can be fully utilized for the benefit of humanity at large, and so that it can be developed to the full measure of its functional capacity.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1903/misc/stagnation.htm