Subject: Re: HAB: Left in division (does Habermas have a solution?)
Date: Sat, 9 Mar 2002 22:32:01 -0500


Ali, thanks for this post...your two points, jesus & marx, and
faker-pluralism, are acute indeed....how absurd, a "multi-culturalism" in a
culturally neutered, one-dimensional man,
society, eh?  nowhere is the tyranny ("control' theme) of
ideological/cultural
conformity so absolute as here.  Here the ideological brainwashing
pre-condition, identity erasure, is self-performed by the victim.  And
historically the left has embraced the bourgeois ethos of cultural
emasculation (secularism, scientism, economism,
consumerism, ...liberalism) with a will even surpassing their class
antagonist, ...craven immigrant culture ashamed and desparate to "forget
where it came from" and ape its "betters",...a perpetual adolescent,
latest-fad, ethos, ...spiritually deracinated, auto-emasculated society
sustained on mass produced oral pop cult pap, easily assuming any
(pseudo)moral - (moralisation)- posture dished it by the "approved"
propaganda apparatus... a california.  And
this (anti)culture, perfectly epitomized in its leadership, Clinton
(narcissism)-Bush (know-nothing-ism), controls and dispenses an apocalyptic
military/economic capability....alas, the apoplectic seriousness behind your
60's existentialism parody, eh?

...anyway, have you seen the "open letter from the american
intelligentsia to the world" referenced in prof said's latest article?...its
complacent sweet reasonableness near psychotic in its
unrelatedness....in its way, like your's on existentialism, tho unconscious,
a modernist parody, eh?

bob







----- Original Message -----
From: Ali Rizvi <ali_m_rizvi-AT-hotmail.com>
To: <habermas-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Saturday, March 09, 2002 8:48 AM
Subject: Re: HAB: Left in division (does Habermas have a solution?)


> Dear Thomas
>
> You have articulated your concerns very well. I appreciate your opposition
> to capitalism and your concern for evolving a unified strategy against it.
I
> also agree with you that we need both Marx and Jesus. Jesus because His
> life, His ethos is the denial of Capitalist ethos. Without this ethos we
can
> not pose any real challange to capitalism. In my view the greatest failure
> of communism was that they lacked Jesus. They lacked the real and concrete
> vision of a non capitalist way of life. Therefore it could not pose any
real
> challange to capitalism in the long run because the yearnings and longings
> of people were not changed, they remained the same as those in capitalist
> countries. And if those longings and yearnings are better catered to by
> capitalism people would have no reason not to return to it. A friend of
mine
> who witnessed the fall of Berlin wall told me how people coming from the
> east were flocking onto bananas like dying person because presumably they
> did not have banana for those long years! If you can not overcome 'banana'
> forget about overcoming capitalism!
>
> But Jesus is not enough! We need Marx, because Marx draws our attention to
> the phenomenon of state and power in capitalism. The capitalist system,
more
> than any known system in history (may be with the exception of Gupta
India),
> has concentrated power to such a formidable extent that to defeat it a
> parallel concentration of counter power is needed, without that, one can
not
> imagine to overcome capitalism and its ruthless hegemony through mere
> moralisation.
>
> In this sense I conceive myself as both leftist and rightist. I want to be
> left of Marx and right of Jesus!
>
> Having said that, I would like to problematise the conception of pluralism
> itself. I find it to be the heart of the logic of (especially) late
> capitalism. Capitalism consists of worst and most ruthless kind of
> singularity (i.e that singularity of accumulation for the sake of
> accumulation)  but its logic needs this singularity to emerge out of ever
> growing diversity. Due to this dual demand of its logic capitalism
actually
> requires management of everything, control of each moment of and each
> stratum of the life of society and individuals. Ever growing control, and
> oppression is not contingent to capitalism, it can not help it, it must
> control ruthlessly and oppressively if it is to survive. In this sense
there
> is no human face of capitalism, no better or good capitalism. And
pluralism
> is the heart of this dual logic of freedom, diversity on the one hand and
> control, oppression and strict imposition of singularity on the other.
> Singularity less pluralism is a myth. The neutrality of liberal state is a
> chimera because it is committed to the singularity of accumulation for the
> sake of accumulation. Therefore capitalism's relation with liberalism is
> necessary but on the other hand its relation with democracy is contingent.
> Only liberal sort of democracies (i.e diversity that is convergable to the
> singularity of capitalism) are allowed, and constitution makes this sure
> that no demos ever rule but only the Capital. Rallying people for
pluralism
> is to play in the hand of capitalism and nothing else. We need to rally
> people around non capitalist singularity and we need to expose the
blackmail
> of pluralism.
>
> Now I am not sure what role Habermas can play in this context. Over the
> years, I have sadly watched, his drift towards conservatism. Americans
have
> been able to incorporate him in the way in which they were never able to
> incorporate Foucault. Hence he remains a dangerous philosopher while
> Habermas has increasingly become a ploy in the hand of capitalists.
Although
> this does not affect in any way the worth of his work, from the level of
> activism it is  a sad scenario.
> thats it for now.
>
> best regards
> ali
>
> "We do not lack communication, on the contrary we have too much of it. We
> lack creation. We lack resistence to the present.
>
>     Deleuze and Guattari
>
> The final word on power is that resistence comes first.
>
> Deleuze





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