Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 22:37:19 -0400
From: hbone <hbone-AT-optonline.net>
Subject: Re: Marx's critique


Lois wrote:

Here is the Lyotard sentence Steve and I were talking about:

"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

I like your answer.  As you suggested, then, the critique remains within the
language game of the original ideology.  It simply negates the key phrases,
leaving all the linkages intact.  In other words, the critique has not yet
invented a new language game in which can emerge a new form of life, a new
way to live.

So, is it in this way, in keeping us within the conceptual circles
established by the language of the old ideology that the critiques aids the
programming of the existing system?  I think it can also be read that the
critique prepares the ground for the new system to emerge.  What does he
mean by "the system"?  The old system or the new?

~~~~~~~~~

By starting with "everywhere", Lyotard seemed to imply the "system" at the
time he was
writing (1979).  Marx wanted a new system when he was writing Das Capital.
The Russian and Chinese, and other systems were probably not what Marx had
in mind.

Others may have attempted to co-opt the "alienated" theme as part of the
ideology that a modern system of capitalism would benefit the alienated when
it  took
over the Third World.

regards,
Hugh



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
[mailto:owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu]On Behalf Of steve.devos
Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2003 11:48 AM
To: lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Subject: Re: Marx's critiqu


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