From: "Greg Schofield" <g_schofield-AT-dingoblue.net.au>
Subject: Re: AUT: Historical as against ideological analysis
Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2002 16:39:01 +0800


Thaigo thank you for your replky and I will make my best of it.

--- Message Received ---
From: Thiago Oppermann <topp8564-AT-mail.usyd.edu.au>
To: aut op sy <aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2002 18:02:12 +1100
Subject: Re: AUT: Historical as against ideological analysis
Greg:
> In several threads on this list I have raise the historical tendency in the
> 20th century for the traditional petit bourgeoisie (small property owners) to
> transform themselves into a large managerial bureacratic "middle class". I
> have tried to argue that for much of the last century this has been achieved
> by a radical alliance as can be seen within the history of the communist
> movement but can also be seen reflected in another radical alliance in
> fascism.
> 
> I have tried to point out that socilly the USSR seems to have prefigured much
> which now exists in multinational corporate capitalism (large bureacracies,
> bureacratic planning and a strong tendency towards totalitarianism - to give
> examples).

Thiago:
Well, I don't find this to be a very useful observation. Was the USSR
tyranical? Yes. Are corporations often tyranical? Bingo again. So what? The
social systems are in so many ways radically different, the burden of
argument really is on you to show that there are similarities beyond them
both being objectionable.

Greg:
Tyranny is niether here nor there, it is not this that effects us today. However, on the list where by so much is put at the feat of the ideology of "Leninism" I am trying to argue that this is an illusion. A vast area of society has in the 20th century transformed itself - that was my point. We now have a society where the middle class are not small property owners, but managers and bureacrats. This transformation did not come about without struggle, however blind that struggle has been.

What is being criticisied in the Soviet experience - "leninism" whatever that might be when it is at home, or the class of bureacrats who rose to dominance. This is the primary, source, not ideology a general move towards bureacrtisation.

Previous political organisations always suffered from this duality of purpose, whereby working class interests were side-tracked and made subordinate to bureacratic deals and one-up-manship (in the older social democratic form this was manifest in a direct selling out the gaining of money, position and power on the backs of working class struggle - the next phase was more radical but no less reactionary - the social provision of vast new fields for bureacatic careers).

Now it is all a pitiful mess, the irony is in terms of communicatiomns it has never been so good, it has never been easier to sidestep the bureacratic type political organisation. It has never been more obvious that struggle can be organisied multi-laterally and working class activists can dispose of reliance on hierachical parties etc. But what is being done?  Nothing - a few lists and a lot of talk.

If you can view the ideological differences as superficial and part of the problem, and then view these new means of communication as having promise in direct struggle, then we are talking about something practical and can begin doing it.

However, if you view ideological questions as parmount and can see no other explaination of the fix we are in then people having "wrong" ideas all you can practically do is talk. So it is just logical that we eaither find a historical reason for the pitiful position of the left historically or we continue to bump heads as sect members.

Putting forward a class reason within a historical context is thus fundemental to any resorting. But the very fact you read the above too paragraphs, missed this class aspect altogether and saw only that some comparison was being made between the USSR and corporations shows the depth of the problem I was talking about.

In just two paragraphs you got cause and effect mixed up. It was the cause I was drawing attention to not the effects which merely illustrated its presents - you look at the effects and say so what - well so would I if that was what was really being said.

So what is going on here Thiago, you do not strike me as someone deliberately distorting what you are reading, but you have missed the point rather fully. What explaination do you give?  I mean this seriously and not as a dig either read over my original statement and your response - it is uncanny how you pick up just on what I was not saying.

So now we go full circle again. How do we break out of this. If this is unproductive how can any discussion be productive. Again a serious point. I am saying that ideology is not a proper point of discussion, that we must begin to understand the historical basis of our sectarianism, then we can go on from there.

Can you imagine another way forward?

Greg:
> I have then tried to reflect this back on the sectarian differences of the
> present left, the pre-occupation with ideological differences and "branding"
> (if you like this better) and a general utopianism in terms of action.
> 
> I am putting forward two things here.
> 
> 1) there are class historical reasons why the left is fragment and the process
> of middle class transformation is still going on - now with the belessings of
> largely socialiosied capital.
>
> 2)the pointless nees of arguing by proxy on the basis that the labels within
> the left mean anything much at all.

Thiago:
I don't necessarily disagree with you, it's just that I don't see any hope
of moving away from such fruitless arguments merely by pointing out that
they are fruitless. I was serious: lead us by example.


Greg:
Accord is good, but the example by me or anyone else will take time. We cannot expect anywhere some shattering revelation of the truth one way or another, but we can even a small minority jump on bad behaviour and restrain ourselves from it. Most importantly we need to read what we are saying carefully and be prepared to point out good argument even when we disagree with it and bad forms even when we agree viewpoint. 

Now for instance I read your statements as more pointed then you intended. Now also I realise that there are significant gaps in what I said which at the time appeared robust and well stated. I think we should be much more agressive in pointing out that arguments by association are unacceptable - for in truth there is no defense to be being lumped with views which you have not expressed - the problem is that often they touch on things which you do have opinions on - responding to such a style of argument is just as deadly as making it - they together obscure whatever was actually being discussed.

Years spent in a hopeless organisation with an unscruplious and duplicitious leadership has made me keenly aware of the tricks of the trade (not unremoved from the managerial classes which I frame as part of the historical problem which plagues us), guilt by associations, attributions of motives, straw-man arguments, adopting the very point of contension as if the other party has been arguing against it, answering a non-existent argument, simple labeling, using ad hoc historical illustrations as proofs (history is not so easily packaged) and finally the simple statement of something outrageously false as if no one in the world had ever doubted it.

All of these and more have become part of our common heritage of polemics. I am not accusing people who fall into these modes of operation of being necessarily of bad will, but they contaminate debates and more then a few of these techniques have been used on this list. These approaches always sustain themselves by the single argument of doing ideological warfare, that politics is reduced to a contension between ideologies and that ideology is what we are actually about.

This I deny.


Greg:
> To this there are a number of things which directly stem from this, albeit
> practical on a very small scale.
> 
> 1) The need to hieghten the content of debates by paying close attention to
> the ideas being expressed rather than either the mode of expression or the
> professed "ideology".
> 
> 2) Find some common ground not based on contending bodies of theory but in
> their application. And in terms of my personal practice:

Thiago:
How about talking about some concrete stuff for a change? And I don't mean
talking about talking about concrete stuff.

Greg:
OK, it is jumping the gun a bit, but here goes. If we are to use these means of communications to further struggle in a practical way, aside from some criticially important technical matters, we have to also adopt a means of debate which does not freeze out newcommers, which is a model of clarity and a vastly superior excperience then the PR type "debates" hosted by the bourgeoisie.

A parctical problem is getting ourselves up to scratch via self-discipline so that our presence on the net is a qualitatively higher experience then any other form of debate. In this our lists, our sites, our mode of communication between ourselves and the rest of the world has to break from the past, disavow polemics, embrace a dedication to clarity and comradliness.

Unfortunately none of this makes real sense outside the context of "some criticially important technical matters". But suffice it to say, that as a means of communication, by the very fact that we are currently engaged withit, makes the means of communication itself an arena for political struggle. Rather, than concentrate on fixing the world "out-there" lets see about fixing the little bit here where we come together and transform it into something more political effective then it is at present.

Why should we be satisified with a list, or a number of them, why cannot this become a center for active regroupment.

But as I said this is just a tiny part of something that is poetentially much bigger.

Greg:
> A)For instance, I personally and theoretically dislike anarchism, but a debate
> on anarchism is a waste of time and a diversion - this comrade is putting
> something into practice, even if that practice is restraint. By the way my
> list of my dislikes is extensive but pratting on about them is
> counter-productive, I wish more comrades writing to this list kept in mind
> that taking cheap shots at contending views is not at all hard and the fact
> that everyone does not do it is a monument to such restraint (unseen as it
> is).

Thiago:
Well, how is this for taking a pot shot: 'I personally don't like x
doctrine...a debate on x doctrine is a waste of time and diversion'

Greg:
I may be misreading you here. I was asked for an illustration, the obvious contradiction is once having mentioned it it was already being contradicted.

Greg:
> B) I have not in any of these posts disparaged anyone for their claimed or
> attributed "ideological" beliefs, and while I have been less then evenly
> tempered in many of my remarks I would say in my own defense that arguing by
> association is common in this list and in my book, at least, it is one of the
> lowest forms of argument and the least acceptable.

Thiago:
I am not suggesting that you are rude, only that this debate is barren. On
this note, by the way, I'll shut up...

Greg:
There was no personal reference in this Thiago so I hope this is not how you read it. Argument by association is a curse and I am affariad particularily pronounced on this list - but it is common enough elsewhere. Now obviously it is up to you to decide what is barren or not, I am far from sure it is the correct way to proceed myself. It is a defacto thread produced by rapidly being buffered in a number of other threads and trying to find a way out of what I saw as a hopeless circularity.

Ironically I have probably made the very problem worse by my interventions - nothing you have said is without logic, and I am not even sure I am properly answering you, it may well be that the position I have adopted here is untendable. I am open to any suggestion as to a resolution every list I have been on has bulked at drawing practical conclusions from its own debates, I would like to find a way to break the cycle.

Greg

Thiago



Greg Schofield
Perth Australia
g_schofield-AT-dingoblue.net.au
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