Principia Dialectica Gets It Wrong

I think some critical rationalism applies. Whilst traditional marxism (with labour as the subject) may point to forms of action other than 'total revolution' or 'reform', if it is judged not to be adequate for overcoming capitalism, then whether a potentially better alternative immediately (or ever) points to any forms of action is not a valid criterion for rejecting it.

Class relations is not the fundamental driver of social domination in capitalism - it's the actions of capital - so class struggle does not attack the totality - leading to reform. I think their is an element of theoretical catch-up going on, caused by the increasing scarcity of the producer for the traditional marxist economy - the industrial worker - rather than an entirely non-materialist revelation.

and capital is... a social relation; a class relation. and the ontological inversion by which it aquires its 'subjecthood' is completely bound up with class society.

everything short of social revolution is a reform, so this doesn't seem any different to the banal conservative observation that revolution hasn't happened yet, so it can't.

i don't know anyone here preoccupied with industrial workers, nor am i sure what's to gain from equating all class struggle politics with a caricatured stalinist deification of industrial workers. the proletariat is the class of dispossession rather than the class of production; those with nothing to sell but their labour power rather than those who incidentally sell it to a buyer who sets it to work producing more value.

If my "adult" friend is unable to spot an analogy, I don't feel obliged to point it out to him.

It's likely true that I don't have the same disagreement with Postone's essay as you but bullshit on points two and three - I read the damn thing and I'd say in any reasonable reading of it, the uniqueness of the holocaust is one of its claims: Ex:"The Holocaust, however, cannot be understood so long as anti‑Semitism is viewed as an example of racism in general ...No functionalist explanation of the Holocaust and no scapegoat theory of anti‑Semitism can even begin to explain why, in the last years of the war, when the German forces were being crushed by the Red Army, a significant proportion of vehicles was deflected from logistical support and used to transport Jews to the gas chambers." Blah, blah, blah... I'm sure you can dice up some distinction to "prove" that Postone isn't writing about the uniqueness of the National Socialist's actions when these actions supposedly cannot be understood as example broader categories (Postone states that Holocaust is uniqueness but he's not "really concerned" with this uniqueness perhaps? sheesh!). Don't feel obligated.

Actually, I think a whole "peanut gallery" full of folks who aren't "published Marxists" think there ought to be some connection between theory and practice. In reality, Postone's Holocaust essay is the only thing by the fucker I have read. After that, any recommendation for his Time, Labor and What-all seemed distinctly uninteresting.

Perhaps I'm missing the 5th degree partial differential equation that's the key to overthrowing capitalism but I doubt it.

It seems obvious to me that any "revolutionary theory" that presents itself as requiring something like a Phd to even discuss, much less grasp, well, isn't going to happen in a world full of people without Phds - or is revolutionary theory not something that who make revolution are expected to grasp?

Also the way that I don't find anything interesting or liberatory in the arguments of those who love Postone doesn't help my motivation either.

Uh, and this is not "anti-intellectualism" by any means. I think that a revolutionary movement will involve points that are complex and subtle - but part of the advance of such a movement involves developing ways in which these subtle points can simultaneously be expressed clearly and directly - almost as if ideas like alienation, exploitation and commodity fetishism were relevant to people's daily lives. It seems clear to me those going on about their "deep, deep, deep" understanding of Marx are going in the opposite direction from this.

"Interesting". So the idea that theory needs to be engaged with activity is so much hogwash to you?

Oddly, I'd say that if abstract theory itself has any use, it is in understanding the need for engagement - cf Chapter 4 of Society Of The Spectacle. But I forget that all you advanced thinkers have gone far beyond this...

Cheap straw man arguments?

seriously, why this "more proletarian than thou" knee-jerk reaction? Is someone with a PhD really that evil?

I don't see how thinking that theory might be a guide to action equates to religion. Actually this contemplative, passive theory that only increases understanding (when "the point is to change" the world) seems more like religion.

Vlad - on your earlier point, yes, grad students are workers, but the problem is they don't come up with theory as a result of their struggle, they come up with it as a requirement of their job. Also, politics shouldn't be a specialised field, but a necessity for every person to understand.

I appreciate the reply 888, but what you're saying sounds like a workerist clichee imo. Grad students are workers but they don't come up with theory as a result of struggle? Why? Are they not also involved in struggle? I'm a grad student and part of my local TA union; last time we got fucked over by the school administration and went on strike, my first thought wasn't "time to bring the obscure Marxist hermeneutics out of the closet" it was "how do we organize efficiently to get our demands?". I don't see absolutely any basis for assuming that grad students as workers who are involved in class struggle, are nevertheless inexplicably detached from relevant material realities and always dreaming up some bullshit theory that only they can understand (same goes for more advanced academics obviously).
I think it's important to recognize that there are at least two types of theory, one that is indeed born out of the immediate and material challenges that workers are faced with in their everyday struggle, and another that is born out of more meticulous observation of the wider forces that are at work shaping the nature of the working class' struggle. Both are equally valuable; after all wasn't Marx nothing but a young academic upstart when he wrote some of his best material? Should we ignore it because it wasn't born out of struggle? Are all the cultural critiques of people like Foucault, the Frankfurt School, the Situs, Gramsci etc. simply irrelevant to class struggle? I certainly don't think so.

I think your missing the point of what he was saying. Theirs nothing wrong with theory at all, but critical theory produced in an academic environment has severe drawbacks because that theory is produced as part of a job or to sell books. The end result of this is the same as the end result of any market; You always need to be producing something new, to effectively re-invent the wheel in ever more convoluted and pointless tracts in order to stay ahead of the competition and get the next book published or get the next research grant and/or paycheque.
The idea that academia can somehow stay aloof of the market is a decidedly reactionary one.

Now obviously we don;t all have a nice factory owner like mr engels to buy us drinks and a jobs a job. So theres nothing at all wrong with being a post grad, its a pretty good way of avoiding other more unpleasant labour markets. Certainly i have quite a few mates who've gone down that route and most of them are quite honest about the fact that a lot of the time they're paid to write crap. While there may be some real gems among that crap that are genuinely interesting it would be foolish to assume that an academic approach is going to produce that much thats of interest from a broadly revolutioanry perspective..

Also despite their assocation with student rebellion its fair to say that the situs hated academia. On the poverty of student life beinga good example of that. They would have seen academia, like work, as a category to be abolished.

True - someone who has worked in publishing for decades told me how she'd noticed the quality of academic writing progressively decline (most of it was never that good anyway); people writing books regardless of whether they have anything to say. She accounted for it by the fact that for sometime now it is necessary to be published in order to maintain and advance an academic career and 'reputation'.
As Sorel said; 'an intellectual is not, as is commonly understood, someone who thinks, but someone who is paid to think.' Neatly giving a nod to the difference between subversive theorising and the production of ideology/intellectual product within the capitalist division of labour.

And I agree with that. Equally politics shouldn't be a field at all. I also agree that "intellectuals" write a lot of shit just to pay the bills (or just to get ahead into a position where they can actually make a living by writing shit), and it's not like other workers are immune to this condition. As you point out, we all make useless crap to stay alive; it's called having a job.

What I don't agree with is the idea that academics as workers are inevitably too trapped in their own bourgeois mazes of bullshit philosophy and scholarly infighting to produce any theory that is actually useful to revolutionary struggle; this is how I understood 888's remark that "grad students" don't come up with theory because they're struggling as workers, but because they need to cook up some crapola, because that's what their job requires (I wish that's all it required).
You acknowledge the existence of "some gems," but how do these gems come to be produced? In an ivory tower or through struggle?
I think it's important not to confuse the scholastic obscurantism of some "marxist intellectuals" with intellectual activity itself or with any attempt at theorizing in support of revolutionary struggle. That would be counterproductive imo.

Just to make things clear, I was not advancing any such idea.

The odd door to door salesman might be selling something of interest or maybe you can invite them in for a cup of tea or a smoke, but just because this is the case doesn;t mean that theres anything terribly wrong with generalising door to door sales people as people whose job, unfortunately for them and you, primarily involves selling you useless crap.
Same as when i worked in telesales, it would be silly to think it was terribly wrong for people to feel a bit peeved about telesales people when i phoned them at 10am saturday morning trying to flog them an entirely useless warranty
Likewise given that academia mostly produces a mountain of pointless crap with what feels like an increasingly in-built shelf life its hardly surprising tha people make generalising and disparaging remarks about post-grads. As long as people don;t try and construct it into some crude prolier than thou anti-intellectualism, but i don't think anyone on here does that really.

To what end? What use/application then has this understanding, beyond your mind?

From where I'm standing in class society - if what presents itself as "a potentially better alternative" doesn't "point to any form of action" it has no "potential" for abolishing class society - unless one wants to be content with the "potential" of appreciating ideas in themselves, their cleverness, aesthetic presentation etc. If one seeks clarification, understanding of capital's domination - I presume it's not for mere intellectual entertainment, but because capital's domination is unacceptable and one sees a back and forth link between reflection, understanding and practice? If not, then one's interest is of the detached, 'impartial' sociological type.

If one concludes that class struggle 'only leads to reform' - one would even more emphatically have to conclude the same about academic, intellectual and contemplative marxism - and that it has in fact sometimes been part of the process of capitalism reforming itself.

There seems to be a static conclusive view of class struggle as locked into an endlessly reciprocal relationship between capital and proletariat. But even if one believes that class struggle could never never lead to abolition of class society, one would need to situate any alternative strategy within a practice beyond mere theorising - which I have yet to see described. There appears to be a forgetting of the necessary relationship between the development of radical theory and material conditions - ie, any subversive theory must be based on the struggle against existing conditions - and so theorising is removed to the realm of ideological specialists. The disillusionment of past defeats turns toward an idealist evaluation and idealist programme - ie, intellectual revelation via receipt of 'correct ideas'; so removing ideas from the process of development within struggle. While criticising workers for being locked into accepting the bourgeois division of labour in their workplace it glorifies the same division of labour in academia and even seeks to purify it further by detaching it wholly from seeking any realisation in practice. 'Only interpreting the world rather than changing it', as 888 pointed out. As I said, judging by your own suggested criteria of 'challenging their role as abstract labour' ; Bangladeshi workers have burnt down hundreds more workplaces in recent years than marxist professors ever have.

So please clarify - I repeat a request for a response;
As far as I can understand, the view cited here is that class struggle can't become a struggle for abolition of class relations - supposedly proved cos it failed to do so in the past; and that only some intellectual revelation - ie, acceptance of the truth of certain German theorists - can make this happen. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) So who then, if anyone, is the revolutionary subject if not the exploited in struggle? The idealistically 'enlightened'? By what process of development, if not class struggle to abolish class society, is classless society achieved?

Bit of an overreaction from you, Angelus - there was nothing dishonest or intentionally offensive in my question; but your views do seem to me similar and, seem to me to beg the same question. In any case, "the view cited here" quote is from an earlier post, which I repeated above - because those who, IMO, appear to share those views always seem to go silent and/or evasive when asked those questions. I'm not drawing any artificial lines, merely asking an obvious question that arises from the views you've stated. So I'd genuinely appreciate it if you'd help me get a clearer view by answering.

I already asked you one question - that I think is related to the other questions below - that awaits an answer;

And yes, I've read all this thread and I don't think any of it, or what you've said prior to this, invalidates my questions or makes them unreasonable. Btw, my impressions of your views are as much informed by, eg, this thread - http://libcom.org/forums/theory/designer-hard-hats-self-promotion-system-immanent-struggle-21102008 - where you seemed to go no further at the point in the dialogue where it required you to be explicit about the question I'm asking here. No shame in being unsure of answers, if that's the case, but if one is to imply that the proletariat will not be a revolutionary subject, it does then suggest the question I'm asking. As far as I can understand you see class struggle as useful for defence of working class interests, but possibly no more than that (correct me if I'm wrong). You ask me to relate it to what you've said; well, this thread began by debating interpretations of the role of class in Marx's thinking; you appear to have some sympathy with a particular view of the limits of class struggle - on the hard hats thread you said; "For me, class struggle always has a system-immanent character. That does not mean that it should not be supported; I also believe in struggling for better wages, improved dole benefits, etc. But that is qualitatively different from a struggle against work, and I long ago stopped believing in the idea that the former somehow just grown into the latter. The latter only comes about as a result of a critical analysis of the system, not spontaneously."

I'm not sure if this means the proletariat can develop this "critical analysis", or who else. So, I'd like to know "who then, if anyone, is the revolutionary subject if not the exploited in struggle? ... By what process of development, if not class struggle to abolish class society, is classless society achieved?" I've already asked twice quite clearly; if my understanding is wrong you could simply correct it and state what your views are on the subject.

Your wasting your Stalinist breath Ret ( well fingers) he will just talk around your questions, whilst displaying his supposely erudite understanding of Marx, Postone, Krisis etc.

That's what I thought you might think, that's why I asked the question in the way I did. But to ask who, if anyone, will be the living human agent of any possible (not inevitable) anti-capitalist revolution is surely not unreasonable or necessarily Hegelian/Lukacsian.

But revolution can come out of a process of development that doesn't begin as a conscious decision to make revolution.

I don't think many people, if any, argue that here. But, then, neither does a mere theoretical understanding of capitalism or "how things work" "automatically grow" into anything.

Ret Marut:
If you believe that capital, and not labour, is the historical subject - but are frustrated that this leaves you without a clear idea of what to do in helping the struggle against capitalism in the real world - then do something about it! There's no point waiting around for a bunch of academic specialists to hand down a ready made plan. Incoherent and abstract as they may sometimes appear, I think, that propagandising these ideas to help with real world struggle is one of PD's main objectives.

Agreed but that doesn't mean that armchair theorists are necessarily wrong about everything all of the time.

IMO (I can't speak for PD, the German theorists or Postone (who's American) the argument goes beyond inducing that class struggle doesn't work because of 'real existing socialism'. For instance, Postone's book (Time, Labor and Social Domination) is a detailed examination of capitalism's categories. Just one of its conclusions being that labour is an aspect of capital relations and not something transhistorical that the removal of the bourgeoisie will allow it to fulfill historical role etc. Broadly, he seems to be saying that it is totality of social relations caused by the central role of capital, e.g. abstract work, commodity consumption, that maintain capitalism.

I don't think anyone is arguing against workers struggling against their conditions. What's at issue is that this shouldn't be understood to be the 'be all and end all' of revolutionary activity because, for one thing, it doesn't adequately address one of the main aspects of capital relations - abstract labour. And another, it tends to promote an over-simplified view of the cause of social domination, i.e. it's the 'bosses' who are oppressing 'workers' when in fact it is the logic of capital that is the underlying cause.

If one considers capital to be the historical subject then that allows for a more realistic view of the class structure of society. In Bangladesh the situation is probably still pretty close the the C19th but in the UK only 2% of people are classical bourgeois and the majority of capital is owned by other companies and institutions (including worker's pension funds). 'Bosses' are wage-earners who ultimately have to answer to the needs of shareholders make a profit. Also, with a 75% service economy most worker's bosses are other fairly low paid workers meaning that many workers also act as bosses. This is not to argue that huge disparities in wealth and living conditions don't exist and that they shouldn't be fought against but, from the perspective of an ex-workerist, it does often seem that the complexities of real life are shoe-horned into a workers versus the bosses dichotomy.

For my part, I haven't found Postone or Krisis a "revelation", but rather, they addressed existing doubts I had about 'workerism'. Postone also helped me gain a more cohesive understanding of capitalism.

Na capitalism serves the interests of the bourgeoisie. It would be logical to assume that self mamanged capitalism doesn't really serve anyones interest and only thrives today because working for a boss is a lot worse. If a society is self managed and is not economically forced to see capitalist co-operatives as the lesser of two evils then one would hope it would decide democratically within its workpalces and communities (over time obviously) to get rid of the ''logic of capital'' alltogether.
Its foolish to assume this process will happen as some sort of inevitable ''historic'' progression hence why most people on the forum are politically active communists who see it as neccesary to make arguements for communist theory and praxis, rather than just espousing some weird abstract version of evolutionary marxism and hoping it all comes good in the end.
Anyways to put it bluntly you don't expropriate the bourgeoisie and remove their power over workplaces and communities then no ones going to be building communism any time soon are they? Communism is a society based on workplaces democratically managing production and distribution so that labour is shared equally and so that society produces for human needs and desires, how exactly do you imagine your going to end at this situation without class struggle?
How for example can you turn a supermarket chain into a network of communist depots and distribution centres without class struggle to firstly remove its previous borugeois owners and secondly to transform social relations within the workplaces involved and to produce for human need rather than profit?

You are describing Lukacs' notion of the the proletariat as the identical subject-object of history. This is the wording he used. I am not aware of Lukacs ever using the term "revolutionary subject." It is possible to see how someone who likes Postone could equate the two terms, given Postone's use of the word "Subject" standing alone and Postone's polemical aims, but such an equation would seem strange to others.

To be sure, claiming that the proletariat is the subject-object of "history" (?!) is far sillier than claiming it's the "revolutionary subject"!

I think "revolutionary subject" is just a term that arose in the process of discussing different revolutionary ideas, usually various versions of Marxism and anarchism. It seems to be used as just a broad label for what group or class has revolutionary potential.

Marx did describe the proletariat as a "revolutionary class" (he described the bourgeois as a revolutionary class but it is one whose revolution has now already occurred).

True but removing the bourgeoisie doesn't remove capitalism another group can supplant the role of the bourgeoisie.

What is 'self managed' capitalism? The logic of capital doesn't allow for workers, or the workers who also have the role of bosses, to make a working environment better than that managed directly by 'a boss' by which presumably you mean a bourgeois?

Yes is would it would be foolish which is why I, and I don't think anyone else on this thread, has suggested anything of the sort.

You need to expropriate the bourgeoisie but that won't end capitalism of itself.

From your above comments it seems that 'class struggle' means expropriating the bourgeoisie. In the UK, the bourgeoisie represent 2% of the population and owns a minority of the country's capital. Sure, historically they founded capitalism (and still benefit from it), but capital's domination of social relations has spread well beyond their immediate control. How can class struggle, in these terms, adequately overcome capitalism?

The Co-op doesn't have any bourgeois owners but it's not "a network of communist depots and distribution centres" so according to your argument (and I would agree) it is about the need "to transform social relations within the workplaces involved and to produce for human need rather than profit"

I know dude, like that shit happens every day! What are they complaining about!

Amazing how much you like to comment on the holocaust considering that up until a couple months ago you were hosting a fucking holocaust denier on your servers.

I know dude, like that shit happens every day! What are they complaining about!

Amazing how much you like to comment on the holocaust considering that up until a couple months ago you were hosting a fucking holocaust denier on your site.

Yes thats why we're anarchists not leninists or evolutionary marxists.

A monetary economy solely consisting of co-operatives run on a directly democratic basis would be ''self managed capitalism'', loosely speaking.

Ah come off it you and angelus are constantly presenting this as a stawman arguement that we're all supposed to beleive.

Nope industries and services are run by the bourgeoisie or by a managerial/executive sub-strata who either own a large share in their company or who control it, by the state or sometimes by the remnants of the petit bourgeoisie. Seriously don't give me some toryboy crap about how ''we're all shareholders'', the majority of peoples assets are tied down in mortgages and other debts and that just britain, we'rve not even started talking about the rest of the world.
Even if we were to look at those crude sociologist wet dream ''percentage of the wealth'' type graphs that your probably referring to, the wealthiest 1% of the population (in britain that is) own 25% of personal wealth, whereas the bottom 50% own a meagre 5% .

No it has chief executives like most companies.

So again how exactly do you imagine this is going to happen without the proletariat actively struggling against capitalist managerial systems in their workplaces (including the fucking co-op) and then taking over those workplaces and running them themselves. Likewise for people taking over their communities and other services.
Give me another way in which a communist economy can be built,?