Date: Sat, 10 Jul 1999 11:07:27 -0700
From: hugh bone <hughbone-AT-worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Re: Das Capital


Mary Murphy&Salstrand wrote:
> 
> maiantwo wrote:
> >
> > Lyotard suggests that capitalism has "won" because of the openness of the
> > systems that employ it. It allows socialized and cooperative enterprises to
> > coexist with the privitization of enterprise as well as being more
> > "naturally" responsive than other economic systems. I would argue that
> > capitalism succeeds because it operates within societies that are open to
> > variations in regulation of activities of it's participatory governments.
> > Capitalism (in its pure definition) has not won--capitalism as part of an
> > open, responsive government has won. Without the temperance of responsive
> > governments (that embrace minorities as well as majorities), capitalism is
> > doomed also.
> 
> This view sounds more like Karl Popper in The Open Society and its
> Enemies than anything espoused by Lyotard.  Lyotard, in my reading, is
> certainly no fan of capitalism.  If he acknowledges that capitalism has
> triumphed, it is not because it is a more open, benign or democratic
> system, but simply because it is so ruthlessly efficient.  In a kind of
> Darwinian survival of the fittest, capitalism has supplanted fascism,
> communism and traditionalism because its protean nature allows it to
> adapt unceasingly to ever changing situations.  In short, capitalism is
> the totalitarianism that works.
> 
> To understand Lyotard's relationship to capitalism, we need to
> appreciate his long involvement with the Socialism ou Barbarie group.
> As Lyotard points out in A Memorial to Marxism, there was a schism in
> the movement in 1964 which resulted from a "tendency" noted by
> Castoriadis concerning the changing role of capitalism in the postwar
> era.  In a number of theses he argued that workers and economic issues
> no longer appeared to have revolutionary force, due to the ability of
> capitalism to absorb their demands into the status quo and thereby
> dilute their radical force. There no longer seemed to be an objectivity
> leading to the ruin of capitalism as Marx had argued; the problem of the
> revolution instead became one of critical subjectivity. In the United
> States, Herbert Marcuse made the closest parallel to this argument in
> his book One Dimensional Man. There, Marcuse described the alignment of
> philosophy, politics and media under capitalism to create a positivist
> culture capable of co-opting all desires into a banal status quo.
> 
> What is surprising is that Lyotard initially opposed this "tendency"
> despite his obvious sympathy for it. He continued for a time to advocate
> the more traditional role of the proletariat espoused by Marx.  When he
> did break with Marxism, however, it was not because he had become
> somehow reconciled to capitalism, it was simply that he no longer could
> accept its utopian scheme.  Even under socialism, there is something
> that is oppresses, a voice that cannot speak.  The differend  still
> abides.  In the name of the differend, Lyotard renounced Marxism. He did
> not embrace Hayek, Friedman and Ayn Rand.
> 
> A discussion of Lyotard's views on capitalism would have to consider the
> following texts at a minimum.
> 
> The chapters The Desire Called Marx and Capital in Libidinal Economy
> The essay - What is Postmodernism?
> A Memorial of Marxism in Peregrinations
> The chaper The Sign of History in The Differend
> The chapter Time Today in The Inhuman
> 
> My short definition of capitalism, as Lyotard describes it in these
> writings, is that it is not merely an economic and social phenonemon.
> It is nothing less than instrumental rationality applied to time; a
> diachronic relationship that tends to subsume all things into its mode.
> As such it is totalitarian in its nature, a regime of terror.  Lyotard
> also describes it as a Monad, a quasi-organism whose nature it is to
> bring about complexity and which has its own agenda, in relation to
> which humanity is subservient, marginalized and perhaps even obsolete.
> The political question in the face of this is measured in the differend
> between our own inhuman desires and those of capitalist reason.
> 
> As Lyotard himself says in The Postmodern Explained (p.73).  "My
> irrationalism.  Imagine…I've struggled in different ways against
> capitalism's regime of pseudorationality and performativity.  I've
> emphasized the importance of dissent in the process of constructing
> knowledge, lying at the heart of the community of knowledge….People who
> invoke "Reason" perpetuate the confusion."
> 
> Others have argued here that Wittgenstein and Austin have relevance to
> the study of Lyotard.  I would agree (and perhaps add the name of Cavell
> to this list.)  However, the twist that Lyotard gives to language games
> and speech acts is to politicize them and place them under the rubric of
> capitalism. 

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I don't understand the last sentence.

Could some of our participants explain their own, personal,
understanding of "agonistics" and "paralogy" (without reference to other
persons).

Thanks,
Hugh

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This does not necessarily mean that the paralogical must be
> reduced to the agonistic, but it does mean we cannot leave the agonistic
> and hence the political out.
> 
> Beyond innovation and the smashing new moves, the beautiful gambits
> there remains the question of justice.  It can never be answered merely
> with words, but only by the further question which we ourselves must
> make with our bodies and our lives - Is it happening?
> 
> Otherwise capitalism shall bury us all.
> 
> Signed, Eric