• plinky [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    9·
    25 days ago

    Does theoretical pluralism mean “anything goes”? Is this not the intellectual “anarchism” that Kautsky feared so much in party life? Let us not forget that Kautsky also saw as his ideal for the future society “communism in material production, anarchism in intellectual”. Perhaps as a transitional phase, rather than anarchism in intellectual life, we can have democratic-republicanism: not freedom from interference, but freedom from arbitrary domination. The Marxist intellectual should not be free to join with the CIA, to join with the bourgeoisie, and do propaganda for the class enemy, to become a useful idiot. Yet they should be free to pursue their work regardless of whether the party at any given moment finds it convenient for its tactical maneuvers. There shall be duties, but there shall also be rights, and the right to disagree and to question must be protected.

    i would counterpose to this: either a marxist theorist is a worker and not in academy (l’intellectual organique) or they can instantly tell you the rate of exploitation in any broad industry (so an accountant, not sociologist) in their country. the rest will evolve into cultural circlejerk anyways.

    Incidentally i think rockwell thesis (basically fruit of poisoned tree, eg getting cia money sometime somewhere as academic) is not good, but not in dismissive way, but rather that of course cia/ngos will find intellectuals that are compatible or obfuscatory, that’s their job as arm of capitalism. thus for me rather simple cleavage is: have opinions about culture - irrelevant pontification, talks about ownership, money and goods flows and production - worth engaging in, even if they surface skimming. marxist history is wonderful to read, because it just makes sense to me, and they are usually unburdened by high sociology studies and have to resort to plebeian grain prices, iron prices and means of production.

    free marketplace of ideas is rather apt descriptor, intellectuals are shopping their wares to willing buyers (capitalists), and if there is no capitalist buyer for marxist theorist - too fucking bad huh.

    • quarrk [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      8·
      25 days ago

      of course cia/ngos will find intellectuals that are compatible or obfuscatory, that’s their job as arm of capitalism.

      I haven’t read Rockhill’s book yet, but I’ve watched several of his interviews discussing the book. I think that’s basically the point he’s making. The focus is not so much on individuals but on the roles that they assume, roles that exist independently of them — a familiar concept to Marxists. Of course, the degree of individual culpability varies with the individual… some people were/are unashamed bastards (see Žižek) and some were more well-meaning but misguided.

      • plinky [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        91·
        25 days ago

        but the fact they are finding and funding them doesn’t make the theory wrong in itself, just more likely to be useless. plus, maybe i’ve gotten the wrong impression, but i think he treats their disciples as guilty by association. marcuse and his ilk are shit marxists not because he sometime was oss-funded, he was oss funded cause he is a shit marxist (well not oss in his case, his work was later anyway) if that makes sense. zizek is a cultural influencer and thus not a marxist is very simple, zizek is funded by 50 ngos with some shaddy ties and thus not a marxist is very unclear lense. some marxists could receive funding incidentally (especially in academia, good luck avoiding rockafeller/ford/soros foundations somewhere)

        trusting in cia funding as an indicator of shittiness rather than using your own eyes and mind is not a good recipe for rescuing marxism from sociology.

        • ComradeRat [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          8·
          24 days ago

          Theres an annoying tendency in leftist circles to instead of reading a book and examining it themselves while being aware of the biases the author may has had, to instead go use whatever a google search has turned up as an excuse not to read. Investigation seems often limited to finding reasons not to investigate further

            • ComradeRat [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
              6·
              24 days ago

              I agree most stuff is slop (as with most of the media produced in bourgeois society)

              The issue i’m talking about is when instead of investigating the slop, its claims, criticising it, etc (as past marxists have), many online leftists beeline to google a reason not to do this work. “My google search said the author is a liberal bourgeois academic” should be the starting point of the investigation, but too often this is where peoples investigation ends, with an excuse not to read or criticise.

              I will admit some people go after reading a bit “ok its definitely slop, i’ll read something else instead” and this is fine, but ime the vast majority go “the thought leader said its slop, i dont have to read it” and go back on youtube or tiktok.

              I slightly disagree on all history being entertainment, at least of some aspects of the 20th and maybe 19th centuries. Before then I agree that reading about it is generally for entertainment with no real applicability to the struggle.

              But the 19th and 20th centuries laid the whole foundations for where we find ourselves today, which I find useful in agitation, particularly around the imperialist nature of NATO and the origins of world economy. Also the 1848 revolutions, paris commune, russian revolution and soviet project, chinese revolution and their projects, socialist revolutions and experiements’ histories in general, are extremely useful and relevant to us as we look to replicate their successes and avoid their failures.

              That isnt to say i think all histories of the 19th and 20th centuries are useful for the struggle; a lotta it is still entertainment stuff. But unlike the previous centuries, imo theres stuff in the 19th and 20th we still really gotta understand today to be effective revolutionaries

        • quarrk [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          2·
          21 days ago

          but the fact they are finding and funding them doesn’t make the theory wrong in itself, just more likely to be useless.

          This is precisely what Rockhill says in the video I posted yesterday: https://hexbear.net/post/8857126. His elevator pitch starts at 7:07.

          My approach is always to situate the production of ideas within production more generally, and that implies at least two fundamental principles.

          One is that intellectual production is never done in isolation. It is done in a material system of production. Therefore, if we want to understand the intellectual production of any individual (Deleuze, Derrida, Lacan, etc.) it is imperative on us to situate that individual production within the overall system that produced both the thinker in question and the work that they produced.

          Second is that any intellectual production is the result of a theoretical practice, and we need to analyze that theoretical practice, see how it operates and what it is its fundamental goals are. In the case of French theory, what you have, if we look at it from a larger historical perspective, is that these thinkers became prominent within the imperial core because it was largely driven by the theory industry that developed within the United States in the wake of World War II.

          So the fact that people today read Lacan, you know, people like Baudrillard, Derrida, Deleuze, etc. isn’t because these people are, organically, on their own, individually finding these authors and becoming bewildered at how brilliant they are. It’s because there is an entire system of intellectual production, distribution, and consumption, that has promoted these thinkers as the most important in the world. Given that this system of intellectual production itself is situated within the larger social relations of production, it is necessary, then, to recognize that this is part of an outgrowth of the broader capitalist system.

          Rockhill makes a careful and dialectical analysis. It’s kind of like saying pop music is not inherently bad, but it’s not as good as its popularity implies either. You have to account for the record labels, advertising, celebrity cliques, etc.