Ruthless Criticism website

Thanks for this, Angelus. Now if only there were a Japanese translation I could hand out at anti-g8 meetings...

Who is gegenstandpunkt? I know nothing about them but I am enjoying ruthlesscriticism.com and http://www.gegenstandpunkt.com/english/en_index.html.

Thanks,
Chris

I had a long debate with the Ruthless Criticism folks here.

Yes, frankly, I could have done a much better job translating those articles, but I assume that the sect-like organization of the GSP precludes outsiders from doing something like that. And the GSPlers that I have encountered are not very fond of me.

I read the original article that appeared in GSP, and I thought it was relatively straightforward. Chavez is a bourgeois nationalist who takes bourgeois democratic ideals seriously, and seeks to use the considerable oil wealth of Venezuela for internal national development. They certainly don't regard Chavez as a communist, but they also criticize the external European perception of Chavez, either as demonization or glorification.

They are neither being ironic nor mocking Chavez.

Having just read the article it seems like a very systematic, cogent analysis of the Chavez regime, its relationship to other states and to the current global organization. It lacks bombast, useless verbiage, buzz words, and instead has a very sober analysis.

In agreement with Angelus, I do not think that at any point they actually believe that Chavez is to be supported by communists, and their ending clearly indicates a hostility to making him into the new savior. At the same time, they want to pull apart the charges made by imperial chauvinism, including that Chavez is some kind of communist threat.

I actually think this is one of the better articles on Chavez I have seen, at least for what it aims to do.

Chris

The article is entirely, as I see it, an attempt to understand Chavez in relation to global developments and within the ruling class in Venezuela. It is not an attempt to judge in detail the relative success or failure of the Bolivarist project on its own terms internally or externally, but to try and state what those terms might be without Leftist fawning or imperialist hysteria.

I don't see anything that cheerleads for Chavez, nor do i see anything that demonizes him. It rather situates Chavez as a populist and nationalist who wants to bring Venezuela up in the international order on national terms, and within the constraints of the world market, but against the current global order of that market. The last several paragraphs deal with the contradictions of that, briefly, but their focus, it seems to me, is first and foremost to clarify who and what Chavez is and what he represents politically in terms of capital.

Now, you may not agree with that approach, but it is by no means a positive appraisal of Chavez if you are familiar with their other writings, which I took the time to read through a lot of. It simply does not start from the point of view of support/condemn and is primarily aimed at the bourgeois-democratic (in fact imperial) criticism of Chavez and also the leftist cheerleaders. Hence the reason it ends with

Not very heartwarming as an appraisal of Chavez's regime.

If what you are looking for is a rousing condemnation of Chavez, to me that is neither the point of the article, and entirely too easy without grasping in detail the exact limits of Chavez's policies on a global scale, which this article does with commendable detail.

Now, if you want to further go on and detail, in another article, the internal failure of Chavez, that would be good. but it would be a different article. I personally think it is worth doing and I have some such materials myself from other people, but it does not undercut the value of this analysis.

Cheers,
Chris

Newly uploaded to the GegenStandpunkt website:

From 1917 to Perestroika:
The Victory of Morality over Socialism

http://www.gegenstandpunkt.com/english/USSR/USSR-contents.html

Well, count me among the "literalist Marxists" then. Or as you put it on the other thread, "Capital-Marxist".

I think clarity and rigorous argument are intellectual virtues, not moral failures. I think more communists would benefit from trying to understand Marx's categorical critique of capitalism and then understand the contemporary world in those terms, rather than engaging in outraged moral posturing, or taking "positions" on current events like the worst Trotskyite and Maoist sectlets.

There is nothing more irritating than quoting the 11th Feuerbach Thesis like scripture. The German Ideology and the Feuerbach Theses we written within the context of a very specific debate with very specific philosophical schools and figures, and are not a rosetta stone or a general orientation for life (i.e. a self-help manual for communists). Marx and Engels did not publish these works in their lifetimes, that is worth keeping in mind.

Pure moralism.

I wouldn't mind doing an online reading group. I also don't think the English translation is too hot, but it isn't terrible.

Coincidentally, my main reservation about the GSP's theory is how the state functions as a deus ex machina within their whole worldview, and every social phenomenon in the modern world can be ultimately derived from the functioning of the state. That seems like far too reductionist an analysis for me (and here, a GSPler would shout, "but where is your argument?!")

I am not against rigor. I believe I at least plausibly showed that the Ruthless Criticism folks were engaging in apologetics by omission in their "analysis" of the Soviet Union. Calling Auschwitz only a "large industrial project" might be rather morally outrageous but more importantly it would be a simple falsification of Auschwitz's significance in history even if moral considerations and outrage were removed. Describing the origins of the Soviet Union with only "The idea of setting up socialism came to the founders of the Eastern Bloc states due to their criticism of capitalism" is just as much of a falsification through omission.

So I have actually backed up my charges. That might be considered some level of rigor. Your language accuses someone, perhaps me, of "taking 'positions' on current events like the worst Trotskyite and Maoist sectlets" yet you don't back that charge up with any details whatsoever. That might be considered lack of rigor.

I don't know whether "Marx's categorical critique of capitalism" is the same as the critique of capitalism that I get from Marx. My perspective certainly is that Marx was part of the historical communist current rather than someone who's positions should be taken as the last word on theory. As some know, I think that Debord does a good job of updating some Marxian positions (without being perfect or complete of course). However, my position on this is a detail compared to the overall point that revolutionaries should be testing and adjusting their view of the world as it changes. Thus I have some sympathies with the ICC, not necessarily for the particularities of their decadence theory but for their effort to look at how the capitalism of today is different from the capitalism of 1850's. And of course, I saying that some ideas need updating doesn't mean that I want to take a mindless postmodern position of throwing out all previous theory.

Uh, Can you back that up with any logical argument? Revolutionaries aim to produce ... revolution. Criticism by itself may not be sufficient to accomplish that goal. If anything, it seems to me that talking about criticism as an end in itself is moralism. I am aiming at lucidity when I talking about how our immediate activity needs to be coordinated with our overall goal.

One assumption I would operate from is that revolutionaries need to have a strategy for achieving revolution. They need to be conscious of that strategy and be aware how closely it fits the reality they are facing. Just figuring out what Marx or Engels intended is insufficient. The point that we want change to the world rather than only philosophize about it is valid whether Marx published Theses On Feuerbach or not, for example.

I do appreciate the critique of bourgeois democracy and rights which RC puts out. But what seems to me to be their fixation with only putting out this particular critique disconnects them from the challenge of openly discussing the direction in which revolutionaries need to go in the present era.

Red

Do you have anything substantive to say, Mike?

Erm,
I think he's criticizing them for not criticizing enough.

Oliver is correct. On this thread, I criticize Ruthless Criticism's various articles on the Soviet Union for not recognizing the role of Stalinism either in the USSR or outside. That's a pretty big problem given the history of the left.

It is true that on the anti-politics thread I link to above, I criticize Wrong Hopes For A Better World for only critiquing the stated ideas of the anti-globalization movement and for not looking at the over-all dynamic of the movement. In Wrong Hopes RC criticizes the anti-globalization movement for implicitly expecting capitalist rulers to change their ideas and thus their policies - indeed a fantasy. However, I point out that RC is just as much implicitly expecting the anti-globalization movement to change its idea. Such a wholesale change is not much more likely to happen than a change in ideas of the capitalist rulers. Sure, there is a "pot and kettle" situation but I would say that it is RC and the anti-globlization movement.

Of course, my argument against Wrong Hopes For A Better World is logically separate from my argument against RC's various articles on the USSR. Mikus seems to be mixing together these distinct arguments in his post.

Red