Kasama at the Rethinking Marxism Conference (Nov. 5-8)
Posted by Mike E on September 24, 2009
There are many reasons to attend the Rethinking Marxism 7th International Conference — to be held at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst).
For just a quick sense of the action, check out the Conference program — which includes presentations on dozens of important topics spread over four days. We can’t possibly summarize or do it justice here.
Kasama will be attending the conference and participating in some of the panels. We are hoping to be able to hold a social gathering too — to meet and discuss — and perhaps chance to discuss our Kasama Project with those interested.
If you are planning to attend, please be in touch with us
email: kasamasite (at) yahoo.com
Four panels worth mentioning now:
Maoism, Badiou, and the Renewal of the Communist Project (F12 – 803)
Saturday morning (10:30-12)
Mike Ely (Kasama Project) Maoist Conjuncture and Badiou’s Event
John Stevenson (Columbia College of Chicago) Maoist ’Voluntarism’ and Badiou’s Onto-political Thinking
Bill Martin (DePaul University of Chicago) Badiou and Post-Maoism
Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation by Bill Martin (B15 162-1750)
Friday Morning (10:30-12)
Richard A. Lee ( DePaul University of Chicago) Philosophy is not for
babies
Joseph Walsh (Stockton College) The ethical moment in politics and
the question of violence
Bill Martin (DePaul University of Chicago) Kant for communists: the
status of the universal in ethics, politics, and ontology
* * * * * *
Specters Old and New: Confronting Communism and Anti-Communism in Contemporary History, Theory, and Political Rhetoric (Sponsored by Cultural Logic)
SATURDAY 9:00-10:20 AM, Session E3 [174]
Joe Ramsey (Cultural Logic) Organizer and Chair
Grover Furr (Montclair State University) Revolution in Soviet History -”The Soviet Archives ‘Speak’”
Joe Ramsey (Cultural Logic) “How Real is Zizek’s (Re)Turn to Revolutionary Communism?”
Barbara Foley (Rutgers University) “Confronting Covert Anticommunism in the Rhetoric of President Barack Obama”
* * * * * * * *
Cultural Re-Intervention: The “New” Imperialism, Postcolonality, and the Crisis of “Resistance Literature
FRIDAY 10:30-12 Noon, B8 [805-809]
John W. Maerhofer (City University of New York) Chair
Joseph Ramsey (Quincy College) From Resistance to Revolution: The ”Lost” Literary Radicalism of Guy Endore’s Babouk
Jennifer Wenzel (University of Michigan) Green as the New Red: A Subterranean History of Environmental Resistance
Arun Kumar Pokhrel (University of Florida) End or Beyond Postcolonial Theory? Postcolonial Empires, New Imperialism, and ”Accumulation by Dispossession”
John W. Maerhofer (City University of New York) Political Commitment in the Era of ”Crisis Capitalism”
Selucha said
This is awesome… I’d like to come to this if possible. Does the conference have anything set up for low-cost housing? What’s the hotel situation like in Amherst?
Jani said
Q: How many proletarians will be attending this?
A: None.
I went to UMASS Amherst and studied under some of the people. I also attended past New Marxian Times conferences. This is nothing more than another intellectual circle jerk. It’s full of Marxian professors and pontificators who can recite obscure Marxist texts while at the same time ignoring the repeated statements of Marx himself that communism is not an idea to be perfected and then put into practice but rather the result of the evolution of the real and existing conditions (class struggle).
Selucha: Amherst is a very small town. There are hotels but don’t expect anything cheap.
Mike E said
Selucha: we are working on arranging housing. Send an email about it, and we will forward it to folks investigating that.
As for Jani’s other remark:
Personally, I would love to help organize a scene where high level exploration of revolutionary theory fuses with working class people. It doesn’t currently exist — it has to be actively created (both by conscious work, and by major changes in the objective situation).
But I see no reason to leap from that to any blanket dismissal of the current work by Marxist intellectuals…. Just look over the program, anyone with a respect for the importance of theory can see quite a bit of real value and promise.
josetheredfox said
“Once the inner connection is grasped, all theoretical belief in the permanent necessity of existing conditions collapses before their collapse in practice”
–Marx in a letter to Ludwig Kugelmann (July 11, 1868).
Patient Persuasion said
I can’t go to this, but it’d be good for a public RCP versus Kasama debate to be filmed . . . since Ray Lotta will be there smashing on Badiou.
Selucha said
Patient Persuasion, I think that would be a little bit of beating a dead horse, no? I have yet to really meet anybody, other than those affiliated with the RCP, that think the RCP has “won” the debate. The audience that would potentially need to hear such a debate will not be present at this event (proletarians), so I think doing so would just be falling into repetitive polemics to a crowd that I think will, largely, vibe with us more anyway. I think the war of words has been waged, and we shouldn’t narrow ourselves to arguing with an increasingly irrelevant clique when we can set our sights higher. Let’s focus more of our energy on building and creating ties, and developing a collective revolutionary theory, not dropping bombs in a crater.
That being said, if for some reason the RCP requested a public debate with us I don’t think we should back down or avoid it, but they’ll never go there. They’ve refused to deal directly with us in a principled fashion or give their followers a balanced view of the situation, why would they even agree to such a debate if we were to propose it?
That would be pretty cool to see though :-)
Selucha said
If I can address Jani for a moment, I definitely see where you’re at. I also think there’s an academic Marxism that is completely divorced from the streets and the people. It is, often, an intellectual circle-jerk, and a lot of academics simply peruse Marxism and other critical theories so they have something to do.
The role Kasama can play here is trying to bring these academics and intellectuals into the actual struggle. Just today, the University of California system had a faculty + student walkout that rocked the system. If we can get Marxist professors to step up their game and help to guide the politics of these movements, that would be of great advantage to the people as a whole. We need to straddle the two worlds, in a sense… We can’t negate academia or ignore them, nor can we simply be another group of people in the intellectual circle jerk. We’ve got to call out academics on their shit when they sit around philosophizing dialectical materialism and don’t actually get involved in the struggles. I see Kasama playing an important role, with some of our comrades really bringing a lot of this intellectualism out of the clouds and back on its feet.
Keith said
I went to this conference two years ago and had a great time. Amherst is a private college so it has real nice facilities. They actually have a hotel built into the campus. We packed four or five into a room so it was about $20 a night each if I remember right (of course you cant tell the hotel management that you have five people in a room). There is a cafeteria…eating in town is not cheap. Amherst is a quaint new england town.
you wont find too many people there thinking about practice or organizing, and not many “proletarians” (especially if you are thinking of factory workers). There are plently of jokers there but you will also find plenty of people who have read a lot of Marx and have thought about it. I would suggest that if you want to get something out of the conference have a slice of humble pie first. Instead of thinking about lecturing the intellectuals about there lack of practice you might actually listen to what they are saying and you might actually learn alot about Marxism.
the meeting of Marxists academics/intellectuals and Marxists activists/organizers will only work if there is mutual respect for each others work. In my experience intellectuals and academics have a lot of respect for the work of activists and organizers. But many activists (as some of the above comments make clear)dont have much respect for intellectual work.
If we are serious about making an international revolution against capital then we will need to be conversant with Marx’s critique of capitalism (Das Kapital). Not too many activists have read Marx much less mastered his theory. We should not ask academics too get into the street, we should ask that there work be accessible and relevant to organizers.
2mv said
I’ll be attending for Saturday. Mike, do you have slides of your speech prepared or slides of the other presentations? I’d like to read them over.
Radical-Eyes said
From my experiences at Rethinking Marxism–I have attended two past conferences, one as a participant–I would say that there is a great deal of variety both as to the quality of the presentations, and as to the level of political radicalism and commitment on the part of the participants. I have sat in on some stinker plenary sessions for sure. But I have also sat in on–and been involved in–some terrific panel discussions and roundtables, several of which have had a clear relationship to questions of what it means or could mean to do revolutionary theory and practice in the US today,in and around the US college and university system, or elsewhere. Also, perhaps this is just the gang I tend to run with, but I would say that for every academic “circle jerker,” at RM there is an academic or non-academic marxist there who is interested in moving the discussion towards a question of practice, and what is to be done. We may not agree as of yet as to how we answer this question, but at least there is a wide basis and for engagement and principled struggle. I think that anyone who looks through the conference program with an open eye will find many sessions that Kasama folk could benefit from and/or contribute to, via discussion.
I would also like to take this moment here to plug the two panels that I will be on this weekend. :) (Unfortunately, one of them goes up “against” Mike, John, and Bill’s panel in terms of time block!) Here they are:
SATURDAY 9:00-10:20 AM
Session E3 [174]
Specters Old and New: Confronting Communism and Anti-Communism in Contemporary History, Theory, and Political Rhetoric (Sponsored by Cultural Logic)
Featuring:
Joe Ramsey (Cultural Logic) Organizer and Chair
Grover Furr (Montclair State University) Revolution in Soviet History -”The Soviet Archives ‘Speak’”
Joe Ramsey (Cultural Logic) “How Real is Zizek’s (Re)Turn to Revolutionary Communism?”
Barbara Foley (Rutgers University) “Confronting Covert Anticommunism in the Rhetoric of President Barack Obama”
AND
FRIDAY 10:30-12 Noon
B8 [805-809] Cultural Re-Intervention: The “New” Imperialism, Postcolonality, and the Crisis of “Resistance Literature
John W. Maerhofer (City University of New York) Chair
Joseph Ramsey (Quincy College) From Resistance to Revolution: The ”Lost” Literary Radicalism of Guy Endore’s Babouk
Jennifer Wenzel (University of Michigan) Green as the New Red: A Subterranean History of Environmental Resistance
Arun Kumar Pokhrel (University of Florida) End or Beyond Postcolonial Theory? Postcolonial Empires, New Imperialism, and ”Accumulation by Dispossession”
John W. Maerhofer (City University of New York) Political Commitment in the Era of ”Crisis Capitalism”
Speaking for the colleagues that I am working with on these panels, I know them to be not only open to but actively engaged in radical political practice oriented towards what they conceive to be the goal of communism.
zerohour said
I have to disagree with Selucha, and by extension, Jani. I don’t think the main thing that needs to be done is to bring academics to the struggle. This negates the important role of intellectuals can play by actually doing their work, to uncover complexities, raise questions and point to possibilities.
I agree that intellectuals and masses must engage each other, but for radicals the impulse is to steer this towards proletarianizing the intellectual. That is important, but more importantly I think we have to raise the level of intellectual discourse among the masses – and that won’t happen just by struggling in the trenches and planning the next protest action. When one looks at the reversals of socialism that have occurred, it’s easy to focus on the role on bureaucrats and capitalist roaders, but we still need to ask why millions of people [the makers of revolution, right?] were not able to sort through the varied and difficult political lines that were being fought for, why they could not formulate a coherent program to consolidate and move socialism forward. It wasn’t that people didn’t know how to fight collectively, but critical analysis and long-term strategy do require people to have some facility with high levels of abstraction.
Given the last decade in which popular anti-intellectualism was being put forward so strongly by the right, why would we want to promote our own version of it? The problem for the left isn’t too much intellectualism, it’s that it’s not widespread enough. Even before the Bush years, anti-intellectualism was a predominant feature of popular US culture, and I argue, it’s part of the effectiveness of exploitation and oppression. On one level, people derive a sense of satisfaction from ridiculing “pointy-headed” intellectuals, leaving conservative intellectuals free to continue exerting political and cultural hegemony. At the same time, people deny themselves the very tools that would explain the contradictions they face, and help them build effective, radical solutions. Here is where revolutionaries need to step up and try to reshape political culture. We need to challenge the masses to see the relevance of sustained critical activity, and to challenge intellectuals to be an active part of communities of resistance where their ideas can be tested and contested but I am not arguing for a balance. Presently, I think the focus must be on transforming the people and only secondarily, intellectuals. I advocate a reciprocal process in which the striving for one goal helps advance the other.
As for this particular conference, I think intellectuals need some latitude to do their work and proper settings to exchange insights. There are distinct academic channels for this, but these conferences are a means to involve the broader public. At this point, I have only a couple of expectations from intellectuals: that they ask good questions, and pose fruitful, or at least interesting avenues for exploration. While I would encourage them to directly participate in struggles as much as they can, I don’t think this can or should be their main role. There is one other thing I think we should put forward, and that’s the accountability of intellectuals to those they claim to advocate for. That is something that would arise from popular struggle and not out of a conference. What keeps a conference from presently being an arena of accountability is the anti-intellectualism I mentioned above. Even where intellectuals show up, the proletariat, left to their own devices, will mostly not. Why should they? There is no sustainable mass movement worthy of the designation yet, so there is nothing to be accountable to either.
Jani’s points above carry some problematic assumptions. Why is intellectual activity a circle jerk, but routine protests aren’t? There are militant outbreaks of activity all the time in the US, but they don’t crystallize into larger movements. Part of the reason is that people are stuck repeating the forms of the past [like the 60s] when they are no longer appropriate. In the absence of ideas that can galvanize people in our present context, we often have rely on defaults. Are we to break out of this by just doing it over and over again? Should we not demand deeper reflection of our assumptions, take a clear look at the traditions we’ve inherited, and be willing to take on new concepts necessary to comprehend the rapid changes in the world? This can’t take place on a picket line or in a planning meeting. It is a necessary and demanding task and requires some degree of separation from practical demands.
I think it’s obvious that more people would attend a sporting event than Rethinking Marsixm, but of those who do attend, how does Jani know how many are not proletarian? Does this not assume something about the extent of proletarian inclination, if not capability? I’m not going to reveal personal details about myself, but it’s pure nonsense. Proletarians will be there, unless one assumes that proletarians by definition can’t read Althusser or Badiou.
Radical-Eyes said
Well said, Zerohour.
I wonder if you, or someone else with Kasama, might put together a sort of leaflet or pamphlet that develops zerohour’s line of thought about the proper dialectical understanding of the relationship between intellectuals and the broader masses…I would certainly like to see something like this, and to have it to point to and to disseminate…at the conference and at other similar gatherings.
That said: Are there plans in the works for any sort of Kasama tabling or literature distribution at this Rethinking Marxism conference?
josetheredfox said
Zerohour said:
“Given the last decade in which popular anti-intellectualism was being put forward so strongly by the right, why would we want to promote our own version of it? ”
I once lived in a co-op of students of color when I attended university many years ago. Most of the students in the house came from proletarian backgrounds, many of us got there on scholarships or crazy loans. It was a house where there was much political activity and organizing (mostly revolutionary nationalist folk). (Lots of parties too).
What struck me the most while living there was the anti-intellectualism that was put forth by some of the comrades there. To be more down and revolutionary was to be out doing shit on campus, getting involved in the current thing on campus, being always on the move. Of course, there is nothing wrong with this. What “being on the move and active” meant in our context though was that there wasn’t much time for reflection. To think, to listen to one another, to reflect about about the connections of our past to the present and to the future possibilities.
There was a lot of mobilization but not enough time for political development: For example, how are our current struggles at the university connected to the places where we came from, to our families and beyond, to the oppressed nations in the belly of the global beast?
I tried to start a study group on imperialist globalization where we would read Lenin, Luxemberg, Bukharin, Prebisch and Wallerstein. It was good for a moment but then the “more important” thing/event came and the small group focused its energies on that. What I tried to stress was that being involved in the struggle while also leaving time for study and political development should not be seen as contradictory things. This was hard for many reasons, one that I felt was somehow connected to our internalized racism that, we as students of color, as students from proletarian families cannot and should not be at an elite university like we were in, let alone engage in Marxist epistemology etc. The colonizer was not just “out there” but also within.
Zerohour, I too cringe when I hear folks make assumptions that proletarians are not interested or cannot engage in questions that relate to their/our lives. I remember once when in one of our study groups (at university) while we were reading Wallerstein, one comrade talked about how she was transformed by the experience of the study group. Her uncle had died a few years before while attempting to cross the u.s.-mexico border. It wasn’t just that the IMF/WB was invading her country and setting up shop in there, her country was in fact inside the belly of the capitalist world-system. It would take more than attempting to “delink” with some national liberation struggle. Global problems require global solutions (revolution to do away with imperialist globalization). Many experiences like this took place in our short, but lively study group. We also had to read a lot of “For Beginners” books!
Zerohour said:
“There is one other thing I think we should put forward, and that’s the accountability of intellectuals to those they claim to advocate for. That is something that would arise from popular struggle and not out of a conference.”
Obviously, the situation I discussed above is different than what is being discussed here (i.e., RM conference). I do feel like there is some connection but I can’t put my finger on it. I guess I just wanted to thank you for writing what you wrote above and say that you my respect.
palante, JP.
Otto said
I’m thinking of going to this. I live in Kansas and Marxists are few and far between. But we are here. We need to get out of the conservative muck and meets some real lefties for a change. Maybe I can find some locals to share the cost.
Jani said
For those who responded to me: it’s not a question of whether or not the intellectuals are “active” or different from “activists,” it’s a question of class.
College professors don’t belong to the working class. Neither do most student activists.
And no, proletarians don’t only exist in the factories. No Marxist, let alone Marx, has ever claimed that. By raising that accusation you are simply helping the ruling class to obscure class and class divisions, which helps them objectively by painting the picture of a classless “people” or people of different classes who are able and willing to simply join the struggles of other classes for moral reasons.
josetheredfox said
Jani:
You didn’t respond to my posting but I will respond to yours.
At best, your comment about college professors and student activists not belonging to the working class does not take into account the discussions we have been having above (e.g., the role of radical organic intellectuals etc). At worst, it is ignorant and exemplary of the economically and class reductionism of cults like the RCP.
You have absolutely no clue about what you are talking about when you make generalizations of ALL college professors and student activists. Thats what happens when you base all of your analysis on class and miss the intersectionalities of the ways in which race and gender come into this discussion.
I spoke about my particular situation (No. 13) coming from a proletarian background and as someone who was not born in this country going to an ivy league university… By your reductionist analysis, folks of color and women who wanted to get a position at a university or get into a good school under this system–a whole other discussion–would have had no chance, specially as you say, if its ALL a question about class.
Think about it homie. JP.
Jani said
class reductionism of cults like the RCP
Or the First International: “The liberation of the working class must be the work of the workers themselves.”
Marx fought for a rule requiring the American section of the International to have a membership at least 2/3 workers (successfully).
Marx also refused to be a delegate to the Geneva Congress or to speak “on behalf of the German workers” because he was not a worker.
Engels wrote that the petty-bourgeois should be allowed in working class parties only when necessary and even then should be restricted from leadership of any kind.
BTW, the RCP is about as far from this class approach as you are.
You have absolutely no clue about what you are talking about when you make generalizations of ALL college professors and student activists.
I know that college professors don’t belong to the working class as they are not exploited for surplus labor.
About student activists, I never said anything about “ALL” of them. If you’ll go back and read what I wrote, you’ll see that I said “most.”
Thats what happens when you base all of your analysis on class and miss the intersectionalities of the ways in which race and gender come into this discussion.
Race and gender discrimination are rooted in the class system. They are secondary, not primary.
I am a working class female Asian immigrant. I have no shared interests with Asian capitalists, female cops or billionaire immigrants.
My interests lie with my class.
Mike E said
I think that Jani really posts the same thought over and over again. I feel it brings our discussion down… in a way that almost obstructs the kinds of issues we need to engage.
Class reductionism is not that interesting, though I imagine we do need to refute it once or twice in public.
But when an exciting event like this RM conference is coming, don’t we have a lot more to discuss?
Jani, my thought to you is: please add something more about your views of substance and interest, and quit posting the same obsessive apriori (and tired) thought over and over and over again (in different threads under different names).
Radical-Eyes said
Wrt Jani; Obviously the class reductionist perspective here is the more fundamental issue; nonetheless I must correct a mistaken assertion.
Jani writes: “I know that college professors don’t belong to the working class as they are not exploited for surplus labor.”
Putting aside for the moment the technical question of exactly if and how professors in higher education are exploited, this above assertion implies a deeply misguided (if widely held) view of the actually existing working conditions faced by the majority of higher education teachers today.
I do not have the relvant research studies in front of me at the moment (there are a number of them!), but last time I checked, something like 60-70% of actual teaching hours in US colleges and universities are being provided by non-tenure track, non “full-time,” unerpaid, increasingly vulnerable, insecure, and “expendable,” that is, increasingly proletarianized adjunct instructors. (Many of whom are carrying $50-100,000 debt burdens from their graduate education.) Among these folks it is not uncommon to have to carry 5 to 7 courses per semester (at between $2-3,000 a pop), often at two or three different institutions simultaneously, in order to make ends meet. At community colleges and many state schools, and even some private schools, the workload is not much easier. (Where I teach we carry five courses per semester, plus administrative, advising, and mentoring responsibilities.)
At many institutions across the US, it is an increasingly clear and well documented fact that the exploitation of adjunct faculty is being used as a source of generating surplus to fund other departments, programs, and developments (like rising admin salaries for example). And also as a means of exerting adminstrative control over faculty in terms of institutional governance. The class struggle is at work in the halls of higher ed as well….
One great website to read up about the realities of academic labor today is Workplace : A Journal of Academic Labo.r http://m1.cust.educ.ubc.ca/journal/index.php/workplace/index
Those interested in the realities of labor conditions and class struggles on university campuses might check out Marc Bousquet’s recent work, HOW THE UNIVERSITY WORKS.
To bring things back to Mike’s point about not getting bogged down with Jani’s class reductionism: in my view, the increasing proletarianization of both the teachers and the students (more and more of whom are working half to full time while attending classes) in higher education, is creating the conditions for greater politicization and radicalization amongst the so-called “intelligentsia.” This methinks, adds another element that Zerohour’s insightful above post needs to incorporate.
That is: what is the significance, and what are the radical opportunities that may result from the increasing proletarianization of–a large sector of–the professionall trained intellectuals in this country?
land said
I am looking forward to this conference.
Will write more but I kind of smiled when I read this by Zero:
“I don’t think the main thing that needs to be done is to bring academics to the struggle. (I agree) This negates the important role intellectuals can play by actually doing their work, to uncover complexities, raise questions and point to possibilities.”
Does this mean that if you are not an intellectual you cannot uncover complexities, raise questions and point to possibilities.”
I mainly agree with you. I think I might have taken this out of context.
Tell No Lies said
Gramsci is helpful here. He notes that while everybody engages to some degree or another in intellectual work and is therefore in some sense an intellectual, that it is also important to deal with the more particular phenomena of those who do it for a living: priests, journalists, academics, etc… and this is who he designates as “intellectuals.” Obviously everybody has a capacity to “uncover complexities, raise questions and point to possibilities,” but in a society where mental and manual labor are separated the revolutionary movement as much as the system itself is confronted with the need for specialists even if their ultimate task is precisely to break down that division of labor. It is critical to understanding Gramsci’s theorizing on the role of intellectuals in class society to recognize that he is grappling with specifying the tasks of a revolutionary party. (This is sometimes obscured by Gramsci’s own use of specialized language to deal with writing under conditions of fascist prison censorship.)
Jan Makandal said
Proletarian theory, including Marxism, is a guide for the revolutionary practice of the proletariat.
Proletarian theory are not commentaries, philosophical interpretations to express the view point of some tendencies or some school of taught but rather the principal lessons appropriated to guide praxis. We need to differentiate intellectual work indispensable in guiding our revolutionary work from intellectualism [theory for the sake of theory, deprive of the dialectical relation of theory and practice and practice as the determining factor]. Proletarian theory, Marxist included, is basically the proletariat affronting today the problematic of its revolution. We should not denied valuable contributions of revolutionaries intellectuals to proletarians theory but at the same time recognizes their limitations if they are not integrated in proletarians struggle. No proletarian theory can’t be studied independently of the history of workers movement in which all of the stages determine, its problems, the way its concepts are constituted and more importantly its inescapable rectifications. The study of historical materialism is the respectively collective task of the international proletariat. The study of historical materialism is the struggle against its rethinking, its revisions, its deviations… CONCRETE ANALYSIS OF A CONCRETE COMPLEX REALITY
land said
Thanks TNL:
Readings on Gramsci?
Tell No Lies said
I read Carl Boggs, “The Two Revolutions: Gramsci and the Dilemmas of Western Marxism” before attempting any serious reading of Gramsci on my own and found it very helpful. There may be better Intros to Gramsci, but thumbing through it, it still seems good.
Here it is on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Two-Revolutions-Gramsci-Dilemmas-Western/dp/0896082253/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1
Gramsci’s earlier political writings are very interesting, but his most important work was the “Prison Notebooks.” International Publishers “Selections from the Prison Notebooks” is still generally regarded as a very good single volume and the introduction is helpful. A good piece to start with from the Prison Notebooks is “The Modern Prince” which International publishers has also put out on its own.
Another useful piece is the “Lyons Theses” co-written with Togliatti. Its available online here: http://www.ucc.ie/acad/appsoc/tmp_store/mia/Library/archive/gramsci/works/1926/01/lyon_congress/lyon_thesis.htm
critical sociologist said
Newly aware of this forum, I have read these exchanges with great interest…as a working class immigrant, a product of public education (free or reasonably priced–we are talking pre-fiscal crisis 60s), a late arrival to the professorial ranks after almost a decade of labor…enough lunch pail on the counter! What strikes me is several amazing comments–given all that has been said, done and written for the last 50 years. Let me summarize at the risk of over simplifying:
1) Race and gender are not subsumed under class…an end to class oppression does nothing more than shift the nature of race and gender oppression (we might add other structural lines of oppression). It is perhaps the highest form of self-delusion to confuse a particular form of surplus appropriation through economic actions (capitalism) and all forms of surplus appropriation (for example, the family! how does the fall of capitalism necessarily destroy the family?). Someone on this list has pointed out the need to understand the intersectionalities in society, and indeed also to consider the varieties of capitalism to understand different social outcomes.
2) To state that anyone in any university–either as a student or teacher–is necessarily disconnected from proletarian understanding and interests is the height of self-indulgence! Tell that to graduate assistants (at most universities accounting for upwards of 60-75% of the contact hours with students and yet getting at best 10% of the academic budget) and the modern road warriors (teaching on a per course basis, cobbling together 8 or 10 courses across 3 or 4 universities, trying to earn a living). Tell them they do not understand surplus appropriation and wage slavery simply because they are in institutions of higher learning, reflecting dominant class interests. It is not good analysis or good politics to confuse the people at privileged institutions with the privilege of the institution!
3) The Rethinking Marxism conference (every 3 years) is at UMASS Amherst, not a private school but a public institution! What seems lost for many on this list is that I defy anyone to name 10 other such schools in the country with the political and institutional space to hold such a conference, to have enough faculty to support the students working to put on this conference, to provide such a wide open arena that embraces almost any form of critical analysis and radical thought–however and whatever text of Marx or others one uses to inform their analysis and practice. Events like this happen in spite of the institution, here it is within the institution.
I will be there, having organized several panels. I have been there in the past and find it a very good venue to engage in dialogue and disagreement with people who–when all is said and done–are closer to me than different. It is one of the few places where someone can engage, argue with, and in the end never be convinced by so many threads and tendencies in Marxist, neo-Marxist, post-Marxist and competing Marxist traditions. The key word is Marx, the key mode is engaged interaction for the purpose of sharper analysis and the hope of social and political action. If not here, then go to similar venues. Or, you can stay home, which your HBO, and pretend you are fighting for the interests of the proletariat!
John Steele said
Critical Sociologist – Well put. Thank you -
land said
Thanks for the Gramsci references. Will look them up.
Mario said
I’d rather see Raymond Lotta…
Mike E said
Mario writes:
Heh. It’s hardly an either/or thing. There are lots of folks and ideas to check out, brother. See you there.
CPSA said
Question to Mike and other Kasama people, is there a chance you guys could do something in the Spring at the Left Forum (or at the Brecht for that matter)? Not to be “partisan,” but while I know the RCP likes to come out in force and (in my opinion) can at times be a bit disruptive of workshops/panels, I really think you guys need to be a bit more visible at major events like that (at least maybe a few times/year). And frankly, it’s inspiring to see you here in NY, though I honestly haven’t seen your presence at a major event in the city since Prachanda spoke at the New School 14 events months ago (probably b/c I’m out of the loop). The South Asia panels at this year’s Left Forum (especially the Sanhati one) were among the best at the conference and with so much going on in that region, for example, I think it’s to your advantage to organize something (if you can swing it, perhaps even one panel on S. Asia and another more theoretical, or America/Kasama-focused one). How did the UMass event go btw?