Class struggle turkeys

For all those disappointed to be missing the Historical Materialism conference in London this weekend, we are happy to reprint Principia Dialectica's intervention.
Warning: class warriors may wish to avoid it, as the unpalatable truth can lead to heart burn...

Comments on Aufheben No. 15 (October 2006) article on Moishe Postone’s book Time, Labor and Social Domination (1993, reprinted 1996.)

The only good thing about this lengthy 20 pages of A4 in Aufheben no.15 is the title: Capital Beyond class struggle? They should have dropped the question mark though. In the rest of the article The Aufhebeners do not attempt to come to terms with the new conditions of the capitalist mode of production/distribution in 2006.
They are quite happy to churn out their fetishistic ultimate belief in the working class and proletariat as if nothing had changed in the world and starting here in Britain. Some people are incredibly blinded by ideology, for sometimes you have to face the facts soberly, and not get drunk on class struggle antiquated scenarii.
But to be fair Aufheben are not alone on that route to nowhere. The entire left, including the anarchists, all subscribe to this old critque straight out of The Communist Manifesto. Ortho-Marxism is a real barrier to change. Many people think they have updated their theory by adding a Situationist ideological input. But it is all to no avail. Because the S.I. and Debord in particular were, to the end, into the class struggle framework. Debord never attempted to tackle new developments - it would take Anselm Jappe to get to grips with this rusty class/proletariat hulk. Debord died without being able to solve the riddle of the new conditions of production after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Instead he plunged into the Conspiracy Theory of History quagmire. A sort of easy way out. The result was a disaster. His Commentaries on The Society of the Spectacle is a miserable book. Only deluded robots will be taken in by it. His Panégyrique’s I and II are even worse. His Bad Reputation tome does not add anything new. The only thing that saves him is the style; unlike many writers on the left, Debord was at least poetic. He had never forgotten the classics by those such as François Villon and Arthur Rimbaud. What is left to be desired in Debord’s later work is the content…History can judge an author just as it can judge an epoch, especially when it is left wanting…
The Aufheben business is both quite simple and complicated at the same time. The Aufhebeners do not accept that today the subject is capital and not the working class or the proletariat. If only it wasn’t so! But we have to confront this harsh reality in order to do something about it. The Aufheben crew ought to walk down Oxford Street at Xmas, they might see the reification avenue all lit up; the results of commodity fetishism and the automaton subject at work, i.e., value constantly valorizing itself. And this is not only in Oxford St. but all over the World. Aufheben and Historical Materialism dare not face the facts. The HM conference will go round and round in circles and be devoured by rhetorical speeches. Hardly any new ideas will emerge. Yes my dear fellows, “the result is a theory in which capital is a cross-class enemy, a ‘matrix of social domination’ that rules on all producers and exchangers.”
Aufheben fail to understand that value is the social reality that keeps the system going. Even the capitalist feels the weight of capital! The Queen even had to open Buckingham Palace as a kind of Disneyland in order to pay for the upkeep of the place, and to pay for the ongoing costs of the Windsor Window Display. The Treasury could not be seen to dish out money for the Windsor fire, because the public would not have bought the idea. The Queen, by opening Buck Palace to the people made amends by not demanding public funds from the tax-payers. And like everyone else she joined the value-for-money syndrome. Royalty as shop-keepers. The end is nigh! (Don’t despair Tony Benn!)
To return to the Aufheben mess, we have to point out to them that Postone did not “sneak in the assumption that we act as automatons of capital” as they assert. Postone is only guilty of observing what is taking place. It is somewhat nasty of the Aufhebeners to put forward this ‘sneaking’ business. In fact it is the stupidity of the editors of that mag who can’t get out of their hard-line class struggle suit of armour. It keeps them in a state of stupor. As Nietzsche once said: ‘Those you can’t teach to fly, help them to fall faster!” Aufheben are accomplishing the second phase themselves without our help. Ideology is heavy. You can’t take off with surplus baggage – especially in these days of terror. We ourselves had to abandon the Situationist battlefield and leave the rusty weaponry in situ. Strangely enough many picked up the worn-out stuff left behind. Many were eager to flog the morsels left to rot. The leading left publisher, Verso/New Left Review were keen to ‘update’ their booksales but only after combatting the Situationist International for more than 30 years! It is tragic-comic to hear Tariq Ali praising the S.I. and Guy Debord.
Others, like Peter Hudis, an editor of the Raya Dunayevskay’ist News and Letters Collective in the USA cannot swallow the death of the subject. For him the workers and the proletariat are everywhere on the march. But in fact even when they fight back they often do so on the terrain of the system and are easily co-opted back into the capitalist maze. Maybe Hudis ought to have a look again at Postone’s Time Labor and Social Domination, or watch the series of films known as The Prisoner! Many still make a fetish out of this working class/proletariat. Such positivity! And many claim they are into the dialectics of negation. Hudis like many CLASS STRUGGLERS do not help a new movement to emerge. For before you can do something about it, you need to understand the modern system that enslaves us all in more than one way - climate change being one tentacle of the value system!
Aufheben complain that Postone does not say What Is To Be Done against capital This is not true. Postone, in a negative way, criticizes what this society is all about. Those who defend the old fetishist class struggle positions cannot see the wood for the trees – that is the truth of that organic theory. You have to move out of the simplistic worship of the working class and proletariat to be able to understand modern capital and to be able to tackle the capitalist mode of production in 2006. Unless you do that you remain in the cold, muddy trenches alongside Aufheben and Historical Materialism. A sort of self-congratulatory society where everything remains static and boring
A final word on Aufheben: The attack in No.15 against Postone masked a split. It had to do with the support for a French swamp called Theorie Communist. Ironically, these two groupusclues are very much akin on many points. It seems to us that the Aufhebeners are a bit more flexible that TC – at least they acknowledge some critical points in Moishe Postone. TC, on the other hand, mix a rigid class analysis and a critique of value.
Meanwhile, down in Oxford St. the lonely crowds shop until they drop. The S ‘n’ F blues all over. Where is the loving in all of this? Where is the critique? Only a brutal mince machine that mangles the buyer and the seller in a vast orgy of non-communication.
Sorry folks, sorry if we have spolit your Xmas HM conference.
Someone had to do it.

9 November 2006,London by The Reception Committee for the critical
re-appraisal of Karl Marx and the practical support of Moishe Postone.

P.S. We have to point out to the less ingenious spectators at the Historical Materialism jamboree that this does not mean that classes and struggles do not exist in 2006. They do, but they are harnessed to capital through the value threads. All this shows you the complexity of conditions on Earth in 2006. As for the conditions of production on other planets ,we leave it to Aufheben to speculate on that matter.

P.P.S. We find the Communist Manifesto to be simplistic and more or less useless in 2006. However, Marx’s Capital is a deeper work that still makes a good stocking filler for anyone you love this Xmas. Also see: Marx 2000 by Robert Kurz, Contributions to the critique of Commodity Society (essays by Robert Kurz and Norbert Trenkle); Anti-Semitism and National Socialism by Moishe Postone. All available from Chronos Publications.

For more details see Principia Dialectica No.2 with articles by Moishe Postone and Norbert Trenkle. Available from many bookshops, but not Bookmarks. They refused to handle it – not orthodox enough.
BM Chronos
London WC2N 3XX
www.principiadialectica.co.uk
theeditors@principiadialectica.co.uk