Principia Dialectica Gets It Wrong

SotS contains stuff like this: "revolutionary organisation is the coherent expression of a theory of praxis entering into a two-way communication with practical struggles, in the process of becoming practical theory", which is about as far away as you can get from the radical book club stylings of PD and the idea that revolution is made (if it can be made) through academic reading lists.

SotS is an interesting book, and has a lot of useful stuff to say, even if it does have problems. But its a world away from these lot - all this stuff about workers councils as the apogee of the workers movement, proletariat as revolutionary subject etc makes that pretty obvious.

Most Situ fanboys however would rather wave the Revolution of Everyday Life - the most pretentious thing I have ever read - around and look really cool at houseparties. Or go on 'drifting' expeditions (lol).

Or, as Sean68 has in the past, make hilarious claims about the Situs being responsible for May 68.

I think the Situationists came into this due to post #80 (see point 2).

As an aside, one of the PD people used to translate a lot of situationist texts (I won't say his name, but he did Chronos publications). He also knew Guy Debord, I think. I even remember him having some silly feud with Ken Knabb...

Anyway, just wanted to point out that the SI wasn't brought into this discussion at random.

I was aware of the above situationist association with Principia (I keep thinking Principia Discordia, something completely different), which was why I was mulling over posting the suggestion that Principia Dialectica is the post situationist equivalent of Living Marxism. Granted, the RCP were part of the left of capital, but the abandonment of even the appearance of standing for proletarian combativity parallels, I think, in some way the abandonment of class politics by (ex)situ participants in PD. Still mulling over the validity of the comparison, though...

I think you missed a page of posts before you swung in there.

I hadn't, but I thought I'd 'swing in' with that low-grade analogy anyway. Who's the Frank Furedi of Wertkritikism ?

Django was addressing Angelus Novus.

Whoops!

Angelus Novus wrote:

Interesting...Thanks for that.

Well, I am both too poor and too uninterested to invest time and money in Postone's huge book. But I found this video:

In the video, P-man starts out, in a somewhat braying tone of voice, giving a fairly clear, systematic development of Marx's dialectical approach starting from the Theses On Feuerbach onward. Still, I don't think that this initial development gives tremendous insights compared to works by Dauve, Debord or the early Negri. It is less accessible though perhaps more closely argued.

Unlike Dauve or Debord, However, Postone derails this basic argument toward the middle to arrive at a position that Marx's approach is simply a new form of social theory rather than a theory informing revolutionists (despite starting with Marx's quote about the need to change the world!). As far as I can tell, his detour involves more or less the sleight-of-mouth that since various narrowing defined apparent oppositions within capitalist society are indeed actually part and parcel of capitalist relations, all critical opposition to capitalist society is impossible.

As he's rounding this up, he says something like "Marx's theory is more like postmodernism than like a Second International Marxism". Buzz! Ding! Problems: this might be true but only in so far as Marx's approach resembles neither.

Dauve and Debord, at least, develop the same concepts as standing on their own merits rather than as position growing out of the great genius Karl Marx. If you wanted to skip twenty minutes of video, you could take Postone's Marx-o-mania are your cue to close the page.

Anyway, it is certainly true that if you call the proletariat those who labor under capitalism, this group will not be realized but abolished by any communist revolution. Just as much, the idea that the working class is the "active subject of history" is illusory. The positive force in social existence today is capital (that why PD is always trying to get invited to capitalist dinner parties). The revolutionary subject is negative - ie, it realizes itself by destroying capitalism (and only appears in fits and starts).

The distinction I have used for years is from Dauve; Proletarian versus working class. The working class is the apparently active creator of labor power while the proletariat is the negative group "those who have nothing to lose from this society and know it". In this sense, the proletariat is the negative subject of history while the working class is just part of capitalist society which needs to be abolished.

To my mind, there isn't anything that novel about a sophisticated interpreter of Marx making a wrong-turn within a complex argument and coming back to a purely static view of capitalist society as an unopposable total system. Adorno and company and the later Negri seem like examples of this from what little I know about them. I do know that Adorno makes a different turn than Postone but so-what? They all wind-up in the same static position: "nothing can be done, capitalist totalitarianism controls all, I will continue my research and speak to other academics...".

People's final positions relate strongly with their overall material conditions and not simply with their "genius". Before he goes off the rails, Postone makes the argument for exactly this. But describing a trap does not prove someone will not fall into it.

I guess all these folks could be interesting to "polish your chops" with, just as I find academic Marxist economists like David Laibman or Meghnad Desai to be informative to read despite their effectively anti-revolutionary politics. But hey, I wouldn't defend them as anything but this.

So, summary, with slightly more research, I find Aufheben is was right - not worth the bother unless "you're into that kind of thing" and then ultimately wrong in a very clever sort-of way.

Which were clearly in response to Sean68's original protracted "brain-fart" about the Situationist International (#80), as has already been pointed out by someone else. It has nothing to do with my knowledge of "workkritik" which I didn't refer to.

Though if you are referring to the "crypto-lifestylist" comment, thats pretty clearly a reference to the fact that Sean68s posts are usually of the quality of your typical Crimethincer* with some academic celebrities as the scene authorities rather than shitty hardcore bands.

*ie - if you think that class analysis is useful, you are "deifying" some stereotypical vietnam war-supporting blue collar American worker, and thinking there is any potential in class conflict is stupid because working class people are all just like bargain hunting sheeple.

While crimethincers are often idiots, I don't think they kowtow to any personal authority in the way those within an academic circles grovel.

The closest that a crimethincer would come to Sean68's "you aren't a published Marxist" remark would be with their deference to moral authority. Published or not, if you hurt the cute bunnies or exploit your white male privilege, beware.

Uh, I mean "social theory" in the purely academic sense just Postone clearly does. It seems rather clear that Postone means social theory divorced from practice when he compares Marx to the Postmoderns, something this fellow Marx seemed to deride... but this is naturally absurd.

"Lol" all you want. Saying that I agree with someone is hardly groveling. I listed a variety of folks specifically to note that Postone's ideas weren't terribly unique. Indeed, I agree with the first fifteen minutes of Postone's video, as I already made clear.

Sean68 defined groveling well by example - "who are you, what have you published (in what academic journal)". You can notice that I make no reference to "Dauve's deep critique", to "those who truly understand Debord", "truly understand Marx" etc.

It's because of this that the division of the working class and the intelligentsia is so apparent. Haven't you realised that all revolutions took place through careful direction of intellectuals? Lenin and Trotsky were among the biggest within the Russian revolution. Plus, Engels and Marx were the intellectual founders of communism. Not workers.. So i'm afraid if revolution is to be the method to which we secure our deliverance we will need a literate, knowledgeable groundforce capable of critical thought. Without which we are doomed to fail.

All hope lies within the proles.