Wrestling with Marx- Negations, Continuity and change- Help!
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Robbo – I agree but the inability to distinguish jargon from ideas that reflect the complexity of experience is a problem here. The need for a ‘ready-meal’ of simplicity reflects the consumerism of our society – some things cannot be communicated without the recipients desire to work on his or her capacity to understand.
MS – ‘Again, you are missing the point I am talking about attracting future members to the socialist party…’
Does this imply that you believe the use of the dialectic inhibits people from joining the Party? I don’t believe this to be the case – certainly not with myself as I found it an inspiring intellectual journey. Ironically (from your perspective) it was the ‘philosophical’ work of the Frankfurt School that discovered one of the main reasons for the rejection of socialism – the ‘authoritarian personality’. The conditioned need for leaders and authoritarian social structure is our main enemy.
Wez
Again, you are missing the point. I am talking about an international approach, I am not talking about accepting or not accepting dialectic, most peoples from other organization are dialecticians. The biggest rejection that I have found is that we are anti-Leninist and we do not support state capitalism. What I said is that many peoples outside of the Socialist Party have rejected dialectic, and you do not to be a dialectician to be a socialist or a Marxist, as well you do not have to accept everything about Marx to be a socialist
There were several dialecticians and members of the Frankfurt School who tried to combine Freud, dialectic, and Marxism, such as Eric Fromm and Marcuse, but the hybrid did not work out.
The Frankfurt school created many wrong conceptions and of them was cultural marxism, concept which is being used by the right-winger to attack Karl Marx.
Most dialecticians are intellectual and academic and they use a very complicated language or terminologies which is very difficult for a simple worker to understand, and one of the beauties of the Socialist Party is that complicated concepts have been transformed into understandable concepts, and those peoples are saying that we are simplistic.
Most hardcore dialecticians are ex Trotskyists who have not rejected Trotskyism completely, they have rejected the vanguard party to lead, but they have not rejected Leninism completely either, on the contrary, they are saying that dialectic transformed Lenin, and one of them rejected the vanguard party and dialectic but he did not reject Leninism
“the dialectical relationship between Eros & Thanatos which was later taken up by the Frankfurt School to great effect.”
I am afraid that the temptation to pursue this is too much ! This is an example of what I meant of trying to introduce the dialectic into “Nature”. While it could be said that there is a “life wish” amongst humans (indeed amongst all life-forms) as a “wish” to survive (though this is not just about sex, more about food I would have thought), I can’t see that there is any evidence for the existence of a “death wish”. That does not fit in with what we know about human and other life-form behaviour. It seems to have been introduced just to demonstrate a internal dialectical contradiction in humans. No wonder the Frankfurt School liked Hegel.
The Frankfurt School had some good ideas, as putting the emphasis on criticising capitalism as a “civilisation” rather than just an economic system, but I think they were wrong here. In fact, their theory that capitalism has manipulated the psychology of the working class to make them want capitalism raises the question of how this can be undone or whether in fact it could be. The theory risks proving too much and making a mass socialist consciousness impossible under capitalism. No wonder Marcuse thought that the only way out would be for some minority to seize power and unbrainwash the majority.
It is an elitist conception similar to the vanguard party, Fran Fannon had the same conception, he visualized slavery and capitalism by using psychology and thru psychiatry, for him, the slaves and workers have been psychologically brainwashed by the rulers,
The writer Lewis ( La Vida ) considered that poverty was a subculture and that Puerto Ricans in New York created a subculture and they were brainwashed by the capitalist to stay in poverty, and that they wanted to be poor, similar to the conception of the capitalists who have said that poor peoples want to be poor instead of being rich like them.
The book the Power Brokers shows the reality that New York was divided into ethnic neighbourhoods in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Jamaica, and most rich peoples moved to upstate New York, and Long Island and poor were not allowed to live in those neighbourhoods, and most textile workers came from poor countries carrying their own cultural background, psychology can not be applied to the actual economic situation of the peoples, none of them created a subculture
‘Marcuse thought that the only way out would be for some minority to seize power and unbrainwash the majority.’
I’m surprised he came to that conclusion – where does he say that?
The transformation of a highly cultivated society like Germany in the 1930s into a murderous death cult provides all the evidence we need for the existence of the ‘death instinct’.
MS – ‘The biggest rejection that I have found is that we are anti-Leninist and we do not support state capitalism. What I said is that many peoples outside of the Socialist Party have rejected dialectic, and you do not to be a dialectician to be a socialist or a Marxist, as well you do not have to accept everything about Marx to be a socialist.’
Finally something I can agree with you about – the Left love the authoritarianism found in Bolshevism and its leader cults. Many have rejected the dialectic without understanding it in the same way they have rejected socialism. Understanding Marx’s methodology (the dialectic) makes his work infinitely more accessible.
Here’s two passages quoted in this article from the Socialist Standard, in which Marcuse contemplates a minority dictatorship to unbrainwash the majority:
In An Essay on Liberation (1969) he writes:
“True, such government, initially, would not have the endorsement of the majority ‘inherited’ from the previous government—but once the chain of the past governments is broken, the majority would be in a state of flux and, released from the past management, free to judge the new government in terms of the new common interest.”
and, in a talk given to Berlin students in 1967 (published in Five Lectures):
“You can of course say, and I say it to myself often enough, if this is all true, how can we imagine these new concepts even arising here and now in living human beings if the entire society is against such an emergence of new needs. This is the question with which we have to deal. At the same time it amounts to the question of whether the emergence of these new needs can be conceived at all as a radical development out of existing ones, or whether instead, in order to set free these needs, a dictatorship appears necessary, which in any case would be very different from the Marxian dictatorship of the proletariat: namely, a dictatorship, a counter administration, that eliminates the horrors spread by the established administration. This is one of the things that most disquiets me and that we should seriously discuss.”
“The transformation of a highly cultivated society like Germany in the 1930s into a murderous death cult provides all the evidence we need for the existence of the ‘death instinct’.”
No it doesn’t. It is possible to give a more rational account of the rise of fascism in Germany in terms of economic, social and historical circumstances.
In any event, to prove the existence of a “death instinct” you need to show that this exists in every individual human. Which, quite apart from other considerations, what happened then in Germany does not provide.
There is simply no such thing as a “death instinct” in humans.
ALB – at least these elitist thoughts ‘disquiet’ him! He’s suffering from the syndrome you mention in your earlier post – the total triumph of consumerism seems to give us no way out. Unfortunately this seems to be the case in reality and the success of his analysis leads him to despair. All we can say in response is that how ever miniscule our movement is we have escaped to conceive an alternative. We can only hope that this is not because we are exceptional in some way – but the evidence is sadly there to support such a contention.
‘Marcuse thought that the only way out would be for some minority to seize power and unbrainwash the majority.’
I’m surprised he came to that conclusion – where does he say that?
The transformation of a highly cultivated society like Germany in the 1930s into a murderous death cult provides all the evidence we need for the existence of the ‘death instinct’.
Read his books and you will find that conception. Studying literature at the university I learned that within the writer book, you will find his ideas spread in the book which you must unify to come to a single conclusion
ALB – There is nothing remotely ‘rational’ about the rise of Nazism – indeed that’s the whole point of Fascism. I’ve found my explanation, which you may remember from many years ago, of the Death Instinct’ here: http://wezselecta.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-death-instinct.html
MS – ‘The biggest rejection that I have found is that we are anti-Leninist and we do not support state capitalism. What I said is that many peoples outside of the Socialist Party have rejected dialectic, and you do not to be a dialectician to be a socialist or a Marxist, as well you do not have to accept everything about Marx to be a socialist.’
Finally, something I can agree with you about – the Left loves the authoritarianism found in Bolshevism and its leader cults. Many have rejected the dialectic without understanding it in the same way they have rejected socialism. Understanding Marx’s methodology (the dialectic) makes his work infinitely more accessible.
It would be like saying that the followers of Trump they are all fascists as the left are saying, Most leftist groups are dialecticians. You must get in contact with them a little more to understand their world. Anarchists ( there are many tendencies and groups ) are not Bolsheviks, and Marxists and they are not dialecticians, and Bolsheviks were the ex-member of the RSD. Marx was also an Anarchist
This article confirms everything that we have said about Herbert Marcuse, we have the disagreement between two dialecticians and the recognition that Marcuse became an elitist similar to the supporter of the vanguard party, even more, they said that he became a pessimist which do not believe that the working was able to free themselves, it sounds like the vanguard party to lead, or the concept of the guerrilla fighter, or the french ideologists of the guerrillas known as Debray
“The transformation of a highly cultivated society like Germany in the 1930s into a murderous death cult provides all the evidence we need for the existence of the ‘death instinct’.”
No, it doesn’t. It is possible to give a more rational account of the rise of fascism in Germany in terms of economic, social and historical circumstances.
In any event, to prove the existence of a “death instinct” you need to show that this exists in every individual human. Which, quite apart from other considerations, what happened then in Germany does not provide.
There is simply no such thing as a “death instinct” in humans.
Something similar to the concept of Mens Rea of the criminal legal system,( or Criminal Law ) or guilty mind, it is a concept learned by all law students, therefore every human being is potentially criminal and tends to be a criminal. Human beings do not have an instinct
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