File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1997/97-04-15.135, message 16


Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 13:19:17 -0500 (EST)
From: Brian M Ganter <bmganter-AT-acsu.buffalo.edu>
Subject: M-TH: PANIC LEFT: TAKE THREE







PANIC LEFT: TAKE THREE

Carrol Cox's most recent text, we believe, displays with a great deal of
clarity the place of the panic left and its fascist practices
in "history."  "History" it should be recalled is that which Cox insists
cannot and will not be grasped by the "dilettantes" of Red Critique.
"History" (of the academy, of the M-i list, of ideology...etc and all of
the other terms invoked ad infinitum in her short panicky narrative) is
simply beyond the ken of the RMC/Buffalo, Brad Rothrock and all others in
solidarity with their positions...  Although we will deal with more
general issues and (yes) the history of the panic left below below we want
to deal briefly first with Cox's narrative, a familiar story of the
petty-bourgeois in a time of crisis: s/he reasserts the same reactionary
practices under the cover of the new "reasonability" and "reinvention" of
the center.  One of the main moves of her text then is seperating the
"serious" left from the "cuckoo" left (Proyect/Dubain) in order to
reconstruct the "reasonable" center..  Of course this centrist trajectory 
of reinvention and renewal is simultaneously being deployed by others to
cover over their evident bankruptcy as radicals and theorists--"cuckoos"
and "serious" alike (see below).  After the earthquake of Red Critique
this is the  very historical "alliance" that the Coxs , the Proyects, the
Henwoods and their supporters do not want to hear read back to them.  Thus
the  rear guard of this group--Malecki--is now also attempting to 
"reinvent"  history by his feigned amnesia ["perhaps I have missed
something" he bursts out]--he, like them, caught up in the nightmare of
history just wants to "go back" (renew and reinvent) and in doing so start
all over again contradiction-free! 
We do not believe that jokes, grammar lessons, "deep thinking" or
"allusions" to the "deep" left experience (those untheorizable
"intensities" that have always been put forward as the source of wisdom
and authenticity in the fascist imaginary ) should dictate the terms of
this space or for that matter what passes for historical analysis (Cox's
"serious" text, Proyect's cynicism, Malecki's amnesia..).  We have worked
to make this space a critque-al space for sustained materialist analysis
of capitalism, particularly of emerging forms of fascism (see Zavarzadeh's
analysis of postmodern fascism in our last post for instance, PANIC LEFT,
Pt. 2).  The panicky lefts' implication--however marked by retreats and
flutters of panic--in the reemergence of fascism in the moment of late
capitalism is our focus here. 


I. Allusion and the "Deep" Left Experience


Cox's text ("Playing Word Games") calls above all for attention to
"history" (we admit first off that the fleeting  traces of concepts in her
texts set  her apart from her accomplices--but not far enough apart). The
violent underside of Cox's distorted version of "history" is that those 
who don't get it simply need to "shut up"; they are in her words in "no
position to... understand" even the simplest goings on in the world today.   
Cox's pseudo-"history" in short, is one of the fascist devices
deployed by the panicky leftist for shutting up some "presumptious"
revolutionaries. Take her rebuttal to Mr. Rothrock that one cannot even
speak of "ideology" in polemics without "confronting its varied history".
How then, we want to know, can she mark Mr. Rothrock's deployment of
ideology as mistaken and wrong?  How can Cox after first declaring the
need for more analysis before one (Rothrock) speaks at all, then proceed
to announce what "ideology" is and is "not" ("Ideas are precisely what an
ideology is NOT" she says)?  These are not trivial  details of "clarity"
and "style" but are part of the alibis through which the left as a whole
marginalizes critiques of its complicity with capitalism: through its
intellectual emptiness it performs the rule of ignorance and defends the
poverty of left philosophy at large.
Cox's deployment of something she calls "history" finally then shows the
complicity of the "serious" left and the "cuckoo" left.  It is no surprise
that Cox's violent silencing of Red Critique with ALLUSIONS, EMPTY
CONCEPTS ("history") and SPECTRAL ANALYSES (which are alluded to again and
again but never make an appearance) echoes that of the very "cuckoos" she
calls on to clean up their act (Proyect/Dumain)--so that they can all
stand tall and proud in the absolutely new and improved "center". Cox
echoes Proyect who has  mocked and aggressively opposed Red Critique for
several days (at least) and only now finally stops to wonder what its
really all about after all! Instead of cynicisms he now writes with all
seriousness "tell us exactly what you have to offer"!  What has he been
opposing up until now??!  Cox also embraces the postepistemological
strategies of Dumain/Couch: Cox like Dumain only has to "allude" (no
presentation of argument is necessary).  Dumain embraces "allusion" as a
form of psuedo-argument, and in doing so reifies expereince (the fascist 
mysticism of the self-evident experience) as the authentic source of
knowing.  He thus only needs to ALLUDE to his definitive study in the
register of the Crouch/Dumain bureaucrat "I'm not going to recapitulate
the detailed study I gave to the [Alternative Orange] just for your
benefit"!. Like Proyect then Cox shuts up those she doesn't comprehend
and like Dumain she points and alludes to her absent arguments and
spectral analyses (ultimately her"deep experience" as a person of the left) 
as the justification for her fascist attacks and silencings . Why
shouldn't Dumain post his "detailed study"? WHy is Cox "suddenly" running
out of time and space when it comes time for analysis  ("Perhaps another
time" she writes). WHY NOT ANALYZE  OUR CRITIQUES HERE AND NOW?  What
is this space for if not analysis and theorization for social change?
With Cox's/Proyect's/Dumain's endless fetishization of the "deep" left
"experience" this is perhaps the point to move on to ....

II. The Death of Intelligence in the Left Mafia


We will turn now to the history of the panic left--a tumultuous series of
reversals and shufflings that have attempted to construct some sembleance
of radical thinking.  In doing so this left  falls back on the cliches of
history. The panic left has been using "Stalinism" to represent its foes
as "gang" of uniform thinkers and itself as independent thinkers who act
individually, write individually... This use of "Stalinism"--as we have
already indicated--is simply a cover up for an underlying fascism. It is
mark of this fascism that the panic left on the net is now acting like a
mafia: defending each other (C. Cox annotating Louis Proyect., Henwood's
coming to Cox's rescue by announcing that STYLE is the lynch pin of
ideological struggle.....Henwood and Scott McLemee rushing to rescue what
is left of Dumain/Proyect...Proyect's glee towards Andy Austin: "He's
one of us!"...Dumain's defense of Henwood and Proyect and his summing
it all up in the networking slogan of the new left mafia : "socialism is
who you know").  The members of the "reinvented" center--the left
mafia--we are finding are getting to "know" one another better and
better.
     The primary issue that unites this mafia is its fear and loathing
of intellectauls. Scott McLemee after some delay and lingering in the
editors's lounge of *LINGUA FRANCA* finally confeses to
his disgust of intelligence. He, however, like all those who get nervous
around smart guys, cloaks his fear in jokes ("gas bag"..."red
scientology" etc.).  The joke is the last resort of the embarrassed petty
bourgeois who has nothing to utter  but a nervous laughter. And this is,
of course, typical of the panic left (e.g. Louis Proyect's laughter on
being told that he has to READ Engels...he does not get the point but
laughs at the suggestion anyway...it at least covers his ignorance...). 
	It is scandalous that in the last several days during which
members of the mafia have all announced and re-announced their "opinions"
on our text, none (not a single one) has actually ANALYZED it--not one has
discussed/critiqued its ideas...all we have is "opinion" (as a device for
protecting the holder of opinion from thinking) and the shield of
"style"--to divert attention from dense theoretical issues to matter of
rhetoric.  This is the scandal of this mafia left; it is so
intellectually insecure that does not know what to think of what it
reads.  Until her last post, Carrol Cox was convinced that TRANSFORMATION
was quite a "good" thing...now she is not so sure anymore.   Soon,
undoubtedly Henwood will change his view on LUDIC FEMINISM, Cox will
perform (as all performative leftists do) an interpretive acrobatics and
change her mind aboout the book.  
	This is simply what happens when the panic left becomes the last
bastion of anti-intellectualism. Thus its relentless attack on the
academy--which is in a sense another mark of its self-loathing and
insecurity in the presence of ideas.  It is a symptom of this
embarrassment and the intellectual insecurity and impatience with complex
thinking that Louis Proyect declares: "do the rest of us a favor and tell
us exactly what you have to offer."  Of course, the very same person who
says HOW you say (STYLE) is the most important element in communication,
now has changed his mind--he no longer cares about HOW it said--he wants
to know the WHAT of it--like all petty bourgeois readers he has no time to
think through things (like Cox he cannot "afford" the time--"Perhaps some
other time"). He  wants a "summary"--a READERS DIGEST OF THE LEFT...well,
we are not writing for READERS DIGEST...for paraphrase and summaries read
Scott McLemee's luminous texts in *LINGUA FRANCA*...













































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