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Rethinking Marxism 20 Years After the Berlin Wall
By Chris Spannos at Nov 10, 2009 |
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While a simple conference can't be held accountable for our need to find alternatives to all past and present problems, we should be able to form some opinion about the usefulness of conferences held at universities where hundreds of people attended, many flying in from all over the U.S. and perhaps some internationally, many of them the presenters themselves, and offering concurrent sessions for three full days, and with perhaps many thousands of dollars and considerable university resources employed to bring it all together, along with tens of book and magazine publishers and tables who all flew and shipped their stuff in, before everyone goes their separate ways back to their lives.
How were things rethought?
Well, many papers were presented, sometimes as many as six or more on a single panel. Papers were delivered, mostly, with few exceptions, by the presenter reading them. Once the ideas of one paper were conveyed, it was on to the next presenter. And on and on till all the presenters were done. Some panels had so many presenters that there was very little time for comments and questions between panelists or session attendants. Other panels had only a few of the presenters scheduled in the program so had much time afterward. And still more panels had to compete with others happening at the same time, as is common among conferences, but had very few attendants and so a smaller set of ears to listen to the presentations.
Overall, very few panels were organized or designed to facilitate an interactive exchange of ideas between all attendants. One such panel that had a promising format was organized around Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's latest book Commonwealth where Hardt presented a few core ideas in a short period, and two respondents replied, and then Hardt reacted to them, and then it was open to the audience to ask whatever questions they wanted to whoever they wanted. Hardt delivered his ideas very clearly, and even though I disagree with him, he presented his logic and it was easy to follow. The two respondents ranged from clear and easy to digest at first to totally incomprehensible academia in the end. During the presentation, as I do at most conferences and events, I often try to pay as much attention to the audience as I do to the ideas being presented. This audience, probably well over a hundred people, was listening very attentively and I could see many scribbling away on their notepads for the first five to ten minutes of each presenter's talk. Many others, not writing frantically, had voice recorders held in their hands to catch the audio. However, soon after momentum built I scanned the audience and saw more than a few eyes glazed over and some closed, heads down, limp wrists with recorders propped up on elbows and laps, and pencils and pens no longer scribbling away but dangling loose between fingers. And suddenly, when the speaker concluded, the audience would snap back to life and applaud appreciatively without missing a beat.
I had to wonder if people were really paying attention or if they just wanted to pay attention so bad that they were able to convince themselves and others that what was being presented was worthy of their attention even if it was beyond them or bored them. Of course, it is also very possible that it was just me that didn't get it yet I asked some friends afterward and they had a similar reaction explaining "I didn't understand a single word that woman said." And "I didn't understand word one of that guy's presentation."
Likewise, I experienced this same affect at other panels, for example one organized by the International Gramsci Society on "Gramsci: History, Biopolitics, and Literature." I sat through the first presentation on Gramsci's biopolitics knowing I was likely in for a doozy while expecting the one to follow, "From Theatre Criticism to the Prison Notebooks," to be potentially useful. The first presenter read his paper verbatim, launching words, that when combined turned into un-digestable bricks, across the room while attendants moved quickly to catch and decipher them on their notepads. But I have to say, I don't believe more than a tiny fraction of those there followed it, could repeat it, or even explain its meaning. I know I couldn't. So either I am a moron, or the message was, rethinking is not for people like me.
This effort to decipher and take notes typically lasted for a few minutes until either exhaustion or the impossibility of the task set in. Then everyone, even those who initially appeared to be trying to get something out of it, sat silent for the next 15 minutes with looks on their faces that could have either indicated a coma or hypnosis. Honestly, I know it may seem like I am exaggerating for effect, but, really, I'm not. That's what I saw. I can't manufacture this stuff - it was there. In any event, at each panel, as soon as the verbal hieroglyphics ended the crowd would, to my amazement, clap approvingly. This is a phenomena that I think should be thought about and changed. Although it does not pertain only to this conference, but I think also to much academia, I think a Left conference such as this should be ashamed to allow these types of interactions to occur. At any rate, I stayed about 5 minutes into the next presentation only to realize it was more of the same, just not as bad, before leaving. I have to wonder what Antonio Gramsci would have thought were he in the room.
What was rethought?
Many workshops and panels focused explicitly on the Economic Crisis examining clearly the decline of manufacturing and rise of debt from last century to today, as Rick Wolff did, as he always does, clearly and compellingly. Other's focused less clearly on the creation of surplus and where the point of appropriation took place, and still others, as mentioned above, on the "biopolitics" of this or that thinker. I gave a presentation delivering a non-Marxist explanation of exploitation and offered an alternative for a classless society ala participatory economics.
Overall, I felt that the real economic crisis, the one affecting the working class in their everyday lives, the one where the vast majority of people have no control over where or how they work or over the productive process, was obfuscated easily as much or even more than it was explained. I got an early taste of this the night of the opening plenary when a slide show with illustrations of graphs and curves offered with narration a psychoanalytic understanding of economic production and consumption complete with naked butts superimposed on the graphs and fitting the curves. I had to wonder if the producers of this show were serious or joking and came sadly to the conclusion that it was likely more the former and less the latter.
Please understand, the problem wasn't that people were too intellectual, were thinking too much, were too radical, etc. etc. The problem was, people weren't thinking at all, nor intellectual in the positive sense of trying to explain and explore real ideas in a manner that communicates to others, nor radical in the sense of trying to pose alternatives and means of attaining them.
After the opening plenary, many in the audience urged an explicit discussion of the need for revolution in the U.S. and wanted to know what workplace democracy could look like after capitalism. I thought this was very promising and indicative of what I might expect for the rest of the weekend. However, there were very few panels that spoke of revolution or the strategy to get there, with exception of the Bring the Ruckus panel which was one of the clearest ones I heard.
The other panel that I attended that was pretty good was on the Marxism of C.L.R James.
However, I must say that the timing of this conference, coinciding with world historic events 20 years ago such as the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, State Socialism, and the Cold War offered a fine opportunity to have a frank discussion about what we want beyond both capitalism (neoliberal and otherwise) and 20th Century Central Planning as characterized by the Soviet Union. There could have been much more focused discussion -- serious discussion, innovative discussion, committed discussion -- not on currencies or more ethical business or market socialism, but on replacing corporate hierarchies, markets and central planning, as well as state or privately owned productive assets, with better alternatives addressing not only economy but race, community, gender, sex and politics. I think the opportunity was unfortunately missed.
Academic "Marxism"?
By Street, Paul at Nov 10, 2009 20:45 PM
Chris, a question: would you say that most of the speakers/presenters were academics (current or aspiring)? That might be relevant because the problem may be as much about the frankly often ridiculous and incestous, needlessly abstract and theoretical culture and discourse of "higher education" as Marxism per se if that make any sense. I read good Marxist arguments that make a lot sense and resonate with my take on past and present in venues like Monthly Review, International Socialist Review, Socialist Worker, Left Business Observer (Doug Henwood) and other places, but academic "Marxism" can get pretty pointless and, well, acadermic --- frankly not worth taking notes on and often more about careers than about anything related to actual understanding of (much less popular struggle against) the profits system. You mention a university setting and publishers and so I assume that's part of why this gathering was irritating.
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Re: Academic "Marxism"?
By Spannos, Chris at Nov 11, 2009 13:31 PM
Hi Paul, I would answer yes to your question. And I also agree that there is much of use in Marxist analysis when made understandable and that can be very insightful, which we try to publish here on Z when sent to us (but unfortunately I don't see an equal opening to run our commentary or analysis on various Marxist sites...). But even if it is academic, I think the desire for a new world including workers control, and everyone having control over the things that affect them, would at least temper the over-the-top character of some of these conferences. In other words, to paraphrase Marx, the point of understanding the world should be to change it. I did not get the feeling that I, or people like me, could participate in that or that we're "smart enough" to. And that is a shame...
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Re: Re: Academic "Marxism"?
By D'Arcy, Steve at Nov 11, 2009 15:55 PM
I think it would be wrong, first of all, to think that people who associate themselves to some extent with marxism in an academic context are necessarily socialists. In academic contexts, many people view marxism, not as a political current or a 'type of socialism,' nor even as having any definite political implications. Instead, they view marxism as a "theoretical perspective," alongside "structural functionalism," "behaviorism," "sociobiology," etc. I have met many "marxists" in academia who are quite explicit that they are liberals who reject socialism. It is not at all unusual. Many of them would never dream of going to a demonstration or visiting a picket line, much less joining a revolutionary organization.
So, the issue of obsure writing styles is just an issue about academic writing in general. I don't think marxism enters into it. Obscurity usually occurs in academic writing for one of two reasons. The first reason is that the author is only addressing a specialist audience about an issue that is only of any interest to specialists anyway. Sometimes academics write entire papers which only address the difference between the placement of commas in two early printings of 'Ode to the West Wind.' They may use specialist jargon (typographical or literary); it will almost certainly be of interest to fewer than 30 or 40 people in the entire world; and most of us would be bored to tears if we had to listen to it. But still, they write it, and deliver it at a conference. There are papers like that (i.e., addressed only to specialists) produced in every discipline, not excluding either the humanities, the social sciences or the natural sciences, or anything else taught in universities. Personally, I regard this as harmless, very much like when "Trekkies" hold conventions and talk about things that would not be of interest to most people and they share certain reference points that are "over the heads" of other people. Trekkies do that. So do psychoanalytic theorists. So do chemists and evolutionary biologists. As long as they don't lure unsuspecting outsiders into their conferences with false promises that something important or interesting to non-specialists will be discussed, then there is really no harm done by this practice.
Here's an example of this kind of obscurity: "We take L to be a generative procedure that constructs pairs that are interpeted at the articulatory-perceptual and conceptual-inentional interfaces, respectively, as 'instructions' to the performance systems" (Chomsky, Noam. The Minimalist Program, p. 218). I have actually read a fair bit of linguistics, but at best I can say that I know generally the sort of thing that he is discussing. I certainly wouldn't say that I understand that sentence.
The second reason that obscurity finds its way into academic writing is as a rhetorical device, not unlike WHEN PEOPLE WRITE BLOG COMMENTS IN UPPERCASE LETTERS. They do it because they think it gives them a more authoritative voice: that people will listen to them more intently and ascribe to them a higher level of expertise because they can demonstrate mastery of a sophisticated system of jargon. This is probably more disreputable than the first reason for writing in an inaccessible way. Chomsky, for one, denounces people who write obscurely for this reason, but does not denounce linguists (like himself) who avail themselves of the (to most of us) obscure jargon of linguistics. Still, though, it is almost certainly true that, when a writer adopts this particular rhetorical device, he or she almost never aims to have his or her work taken seriously by non-specialists. So, once again, it is not entirely unlike the Trekkie case: they just aren't addressing the general public. If they were, they would almost certainly adopt a very different rhetorical strategy. Again, what should be happening is that this discourse -- aimed solely at a relatively small group of other academics -- should be held somewhere out of public view, so that people don't confuse it with a poltical conference or a conference in which important matters affecting everyone will be taken up and discussed in a serious way. As long as there is no false advertising (and I do indeed think that "RETHINKING MARXISM" does constitute false advertising), it is a harmless thing for people to do. Not everything that everyone does has to be interesting to others or important to the world. Sometimes people collect stamps, or offer novel interpretations of Cicero's view of pride, or memorize, in alphabetical order, all the planets visited by the Starship Enterprise.
If marxist academics, like Angela Davis, or John Bellamy Foster, or Mike Davis, or Robert Brenner, want to address a broader public, they will not elect to do so in the context of an academic conference. They will attend a political conference, which is a very, very different sort of thing.
The lesson of all this is: don't go to academic conferences, unless you have to because of your job!
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Re: Academic "Marxism"?
By McGehee, Michael at Nov 11, 2009 14:12 PM
paul, you ever read graeber's essay twilight of vanguardism?
my favorite part:
Marxism has always had an affinity with the academy that anarchism never will. It was, after all was invented by a Ph.D. ; and there’s always been something about its spirit which fits that of the academy. [...] One need only compare the historical schools of Marxism, and anarchism, then, to see we are dealing with a fundamentally different sort of thing. Marxist schools have authors. Just as Marxism sprang from the mind of Marx, so we have Leninists, Maoists, Trotksyites, Gramscians, Althusserians... Note how the list starts with heads of state and grades almost seamlessly into French professors. [...] Schools of anarchism, in contrast, emerge from some kind of organizational principle or form of practice : Anarcho-Syndicalists and Anarcho-Communists, Insurrectionists and Platformists, Cooperativists, Individualists, and so on. (Significantly, those few Marxist tendencies which are not named after individuals, like Autonomism or Council Communism, are themselves the closest to anarchism.) [...] One might sum it up like this :
1. Marxism has tended to be a theoretical or analytical discourse about revolutionary strategy.
2. Anarchism has tended to be an ethical discourse about revolutionary practice.
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Re: Re: Academic "Marxism"?
By D'Arcy, Steve at Nov 11, 2009 16:03 PM
On the claims about the differences between anarchism and marxism (which Michael attributes to 'Graeber): I have always thought that it was a truism that the leading strands of Anarchism emerged in the 19th century from the aristocracy (notably, Bakunin and Kropotkin) and the intelligentsia (notably, Godwin, Stirner), whereas marxism emerged from the workers' movement, but I guess it depends who you ask. In any case, anarchism has long had more influence on artists and intellectuals and much less influence on workers' movements than marxism, and that remains true today, I believe. (I obviously know that at times some variants of anarchism, or rather one variant -- syndicalism -- has had influence on workers' movements, but I am making what I think is a correct generalization).
I also thought it was odd to say that marxism has "tended to be a theoretical or analytical discourse about revolutionary strategy," which I assume is a reference to people like Luxemburg, Lenin and Gramsci, whereas "anarchism has tended to be an ethical disccourse about revolutionary practice." It is true, certainly, that marxism and anarchism differ in that marxism is more focused on strategy and anarchism is more focused on morality. That remains true today, among activists, I would say. However, the odd part of this contrast is the apparent contrast between "revolutionary strategy" and "revolutionary practice." In what sense are Luxemburg's, Lenin's or Gramsci's reflections on strategy (which are indeed "theoretical or analytical") not at the same time, and in the very same way, a "discourse about revolutionary practice"? Who could be more practical than these three, especially Gramsci and Lenin (since Luxemburg spent most of her time as a paid writer for a political party, rather than an organizer like Lenin and Gramsci, although in the end she was murdered for her organizing)?
Maybe if I read the rest of the essay from which you're quoting, it wouldn't seem so wrong-headed, but I tend to doubt it.
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too bad
By McGehee, Michael at Nov 10, 2009 12:05 PM
but at least you offered something to chew on
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