Date: Sat, 15 Apr 1995 01:36:28 -0400 (EDT)
From: Alex Trotter <uburoi-AT-panix.com>
Subject: avant-garde today?



It was interesting of Alistair Dickson to bring up Jacques Camatte's 
ideas in connection with the theory of avant-gardes. They seem to make 
quite a contrast to those of the Situationists. The latter were still 
marxists and much more sanguine about the positive uses that could be 
made of technology. And I believe they did proclaim themselves to be the 
avant-garde even while pronouncing the death of avant-gardes. Their 
theory of the "spectacle" covered some but not all of the same ground as 
Camatte's reworking of Marx's themes of real and formal domination of 
capital. For the sits the proletariat was still the revolutionary class; 
for Camatte the downfall of capital will result from a communitarian 
rather than a class movement. As far as he's concerned, either everyone 
(i.e., the human species) is now a proletarian or no one is. 
	From his essay titled "Communism and Community in Russia" it can 
be seen that Camatte (like Marx himself) prefers the Populists to the 
marxists. He points to the continued survival of communitarian phenomena 
such as the *obshchina*, or rural village commune, in Russia as obstacles 
to the expansion of the capitalist mode of production. What he calls the 
"real domination of capital" still does not exist, although it 
increasingly encroaches, in many parts of the world. For him the 
realization of the human community comes about through the blockade and 
even reversal of the development of economic productive forces. In other 
words, a defense and/or reconstitution of the commons. 
	But most examples of this kind of community come from less 
developed parts of the world under formal domination (the "third world" 
or "periphery" or whatever you want to call it). The concept of 
avant-garde doesn't apply there. If you have a real community, then art is 
not a separated category, but is rather dissolved into everyday life and 
everyone is an "artist." Here and now, in the Western world of real 
domination, where there is no longer a surviving alternative or rival to 
capitalist social relations, those who consider themselves avant-garde 
tend to be, as Dickson suggested, metropolitans cut off from community 
(ruthless cosmopolitans). Implied in Camatte's rejection of marxism and 
its optimism about technology and development is a rejection of the 
notion of progress. And that to me seems like a repudiation of the 
concept of avant-garde, since the two concepts do seem to be linked. 
Camatte tends to be vague about his scenario of how the human community 
is now to be realized (partly because he does not want to be a 'utopian' 
and devise blueprints, partly because he wants to avoid the "dictatorship 
of a theory") but the currents he points to (or did in the 1970s at any 
rate) as desirable in some way do not include anything from the various art 
scenes. He mentions hippies and other countercultural movements, organic 
farming, vegetarianism, and the like.
	While people talk of modernism vs. postmodernism, it seems that 
the specter of *Romanticism* still haunts the world. There's a dose of 
that in Camatte's worldview. And even of certain aspects of fascism or 
protofascism as well, which he acknowledges. The rebellion against 
modernity and capitalism takes on a folkish expression (remember, there 
are "left" as well as "right" folkish movement). Isn't this what is 
really meant by community? Community is an interesting and a slippery 
word. Camatte uses it in the marxian sense, as "species-being" or (the 
term he uses) *Gemeinwesen*. Some of the ideas that Camatte 
espouses appear similar to those of Alain de Benoist and the European New 
Right. The crucial difference is that Camatte envisions a community 
embracing the entire human species (which makes him still a communist) 
whereas the Nouvelle Droite's vision of community embraces only Europe. 
	I've maybe been rambling. I'll try to wrap it up now: it may be 
true to point out that the artist in Western society is isolated, 
useless, individualistic, etc. And the ultimate goal of any avant-garde 
(if that's what it is) worth its salt is its own dissolution in a genuine 
community. But the word *community* can become a weapon used by our worst 
enemies if it means an abstract entity that must be served and in whose 
name individuality and subjectivity must be squelched.

--AT

p.s.--When is there going to be anther art strike? What about making it 
permanent this time?



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