Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 19:47:53 +0100
From: "steve.devos" <steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Marx's critique




Early in his Career Lyotard accepted and argued that the notion of 
'Critique' implied that the critic was unable to leave the ground 
established by the adversary's domain. By implication, given that 
marxism is a critique of capitalism it follows that Lyotard would at 
some stage argue that marxism cannot leave the ground on  which capital 
stands.   The question is whether in 2003 the sentence means the same 
thing that it did in 1979 - plainly for the majority of postmodernists 
the sentence must be meaningless as the dream of socialism and communism 
is defined as over. 

In his review of Anti-Oedipus he states this very clearly: "In spite of 
its title, Anti-Oedipus is not a critical book. Rather, like the 
Anti-Christ, it is a positive, assertive book, an energetic position 
inscribed in discourse, the negation of the adversary happening not by 
Aufhebung, but by forgetting. Just as atheism is religion extended into 
its negative form--is even the modern form of religion, the only one in 
which modernity could continue to be religious--so does the critique 
make itself the object of its object and settle down into the field of 
the other, accepting the latter's dimensions, directions and space at 
the very moment that it contests them. In Deleuze and Guattari's book 
you will see everywhere their utter contempt for  the  category  of  
transgression  (implicitly  then  for  the  whole  of Bataille): either 
you leave immediately  without wasting time  in critique, simply because 
you find yourself to be elsewhere than in the adversary's domain; or 
else you critique, keeping one foot in and one out, positivity of  the 
negative, but in fact nothingness of the positivity. And this is the 
critical  non-potence one finds in Feuerbach and Adorho. Marx said in 
l844 that  socialism doesn't need atheism because the question of 
atheism is positionally  that of religion; it remains a critique. What 
is important in the  question is not its negativity, but its position 
(the position of the problem)...."

regards
steve

Lois Shawver wrote:

>Anyone feel inspired to comment on this passage from Lyotard?
>
>"Everywhere, the Critique of political economy (the subtitle of Marx's
>Capital) and its correlate, the critique of alienated society, are used in
>one way or another as aids in programming the system."  PMC, p.13
>
>..Lois Shawver
>
>  
>

HTML VERSION:

Anyone feel inspired to comment on this passage from Lyotard?

"Everywhere, the Critique of political economy (the subtitle of Marx's
Capital) and its correlate, the critique of alienated society, are used in
one way or another as aids in programming the system."  PMC, p.13

..Lois Shawver