Date: Tue, 02 Dec 1997 19:45:52 +0000
From: Fergal Finnegan <fergalf-AT-meta.dublin.iona.ie>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Class consciousness, TV and tatty leaflets




In my opinion, one point which cannot be overemphasised,
is the struggle to overthrow capital,
is above all a strategic battle. If someone is suggesting, and I
am not sure anyone has, that using TV as a medium is anti-
Marxist or is inherently counter revolutionary then they are
obviously talking rubbish. Bolshevik agit-prop and Piscator's
and Brecht's epic theatre used whatever medium of communication
modern technology could offer. There are arguements to be made
about the institutional limitations of TV programming  or perhaps the
facts presented about global warming in this specific programme
but that is a subject for better informed people than myself.


I also want to address a couple of things which have been said by James
Heartfield. I broadly agree that  the strange form of Revolutionary nostalgia
which is so prevalent on the spoons Marxism lists is either counter-productive
or irrelevant. That is not to say that I do not think there is anything
positive
to be learnt from analysing revolutionary history but I suspect that studying
the minutae of 1917,  no I mean 1923, no I mean 1936, no sorry I mean blessed
1953 for the purposes of exegesis is pointless. Most people regard wittering
on about the transitional programme and vexed arguements about splits in the
international and Trotsky's trialectics as occupations for  bewildered and
calcified
minds. Sort of trainspotters with delusions of grandeur. Look Ma ....me and
my mates are the angels of history. Nostalgia is our enemy. The class struggle
continues, albeit in a fractured manner, and it is not up to the working
class to
justify themselves according to our programmes but for us to devise
strategies
and demands which further undermine capital and enhance the confidence of
people in their ability to determine their own fate. Does the quote "our
doctrine
is not a dogma but a guide to action" ring any bells ?.

I understand why James Heartfield is engaged in trying to find some new
coordinates for radical thought. Christ knows we all need to do this.There
might be
some value in questioning the culture of constraint concerned as it is with
the shibboleths of enviroment and healthy living. Living Marxism asks why
if we are fitter and healthier are
we not happier. Fair enough, (please don't point out this is all very well
in Europe but...)
the critique of everyday life and hegemonic ideologies is an important part
of politics.

This sort of approach has a similar clarity to a lot of ultra-leftist
thought as well as some
of it's disadvantages. The generalities are engaging but it is a bit weak
for dealing
with a specific historical conjucture. After all questioning the treatment
of the Ogoni
people and their enviroment is not to question progress per se just a
certain manifestation of capitalist "progress" ( I am relying on Louis
Proyect's mail on this). The disgusting treatment
of people in Belarus and the Ukraine by the "Soviet" government following
Chernobyl
is for me an example how the ruling class' disrespect for  the enviroment
is quite
directly an attack on the working class.

Furthermore, I do not understand why James Heartfield's search for new
coordinates
has to mean that we abandon the traditional demands for job security and
peoples
right not to be treated like shit. What are the Liverpool dockers suppossed
to have
done in their position ?. They are not martyrs but people who heroically,
and I do
not see any problem in putting it in that way, are resisting being pricked
around by
their bosses. We have suffered defeats but we are not defeated. The UPS strike
was a success and 	Koreans do not seem to be totally cowed either. James is
as
aware as anyone else that the class struggle is fraught with difficulties
and is
discontinous.  I know that several large strikes doesn't mean that the
"final battle"
( lovely theological overtones) is on it's way or that it is inevitable. A
canny use
of the media doesn't mean that capital is going to disintegrate either.The
fact is
grimy halls and tatty leaflets are sometimes the only means we have at our
disposal.
It doesn't mean that we have become professional miserablists.
If there is an opportunity to use the machinery of the spectacle to our
ends then
-well great but I can't for the life of me imagine why it should be an
either/or
situation.

All the best,

Fergal






. Fuck the professional miserablists
Dockers UPS 
culture of constraint, shibboleths of enviroment and healthy living
thre



At 11:28 02/12/97 +0000, you wrote:
>Both rebecca and Hugh recoil in horror at the suggestion that television
>might be a medium for Marxist politics. Hugh seems to think that I was
>advocating that Marxists should sit at home watching TV all the time. I
>wasa arguing that Marxists should be making TV programmes. I should
>explain that my wife, Eve, is assistant producer on the Channel 4 series
>Against Nature. Next week's episode is a critique of population control,
>that argues it is a cover for a racial policy to hold back the third
>world. 'What a sell out!' I hear Hugh cry.
>
>Of course it is so much more authentic to address an audience of fifteen
>people in a darkened community hall, or to distribute a hundred grimy,
>photocopied leaflets, than to address an audience of some three or four
>million. That is the small-group mentality that I am talking about.
>
>In message <l03020900b0a8c52e2488-AT-[130.244.72.69]>, Hugh Rodwell <m-
>14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se> writes
>
>> Not only have the dockers and their
>>families and community fought a heroic action for longer than the great
>>miners' strike of 1984-85, they have taken the battle to their union the
>>TGW, the biggest in Britain, and shaken its leadership thoroughly. At its
>>congress they overturned some treacherous manoeuvering from the platform
>>and roundly defeated an anti-docker motion favoured by the executive. They
>>would never have done this if they hadn't won support from the mass of the
>>workers in the union, the biggest in Britain, and the workers hadn't
>>pressured their representatives at the Congress to support the dockers
>>there.
>
>More than a year on strike and what have the dockers won? A motion at
>the Transport and General Workers Union general meeting! And what is the
>practical consequence of this motion? Sweet FA. Passing motions of
>support is what British trade unions do instead of taking action. So
>what tangible goal should they be praised for '
>
>>the dockers and their
>>families and community fought a heroic action for longer than the great
>>miners' strike of 1984-85
>
>Another heroic defeat chalked up for the trade union movement. Maybe you
>did not notice but the miners lost the strike of 1984-5. The pits have
>closed. But Hugh's lowered horizons do not include victory. No. We
>should praise people for the longevity of their 'heroic action'.
>Suffering and endurance not victory is what Hugh finds praiseworthy in
>the actions of workers.
>>
>>When Belgium is mentioned all James can think about is the media drooling
>>about perversion and murder.
>
>The media? Millions of people were mobilised in Belgium around the child
>murder panic. In Britain more workers came out for Princess Diana's
>funeral than took action in support of the dock-workers. But not to
>worry because class is an objective thing that exists independently of
>any real appreciation of what is going on.
>>
>>The Wiedemeyer letter is irrelevant to James's point. It shows how
>>despicably low bourgeois social science has fallen, but in no way detracts
>>from Marx's view in the Manifesto that history (since the origin of class
>>society) is the history of class struggle. Period. All the time. No let up.
>>No mercy.
>
>
>It is remarkable that anyone who knows anything of Marx could really
>believe that Marx viewed the class struggle as something independent of
>historical specificity.
>
>> The "only" relating to "particular historical phases in the
>>development of production" only relates to all history since the origin of
>>class society!!
>
>Particular historical phases means ... all history! Why not just look at
>the world instead of inventing a dogmatic Marxism that Marx would never
>have recognised. Working class organisations, indeed all mass popular
>organisations are in secular decline. The British trade union movement
>has reduced from its 1979 peak of 13 million to under seven million in
>1996. The British Labour party after thirty years of falling membership
>claimed a modest rise since Tony Blair's election: but a majority of its
>members earn more than =A320 000 pa, making it more middle class in its
>social composition than the Conservative Party.
>>
>>Marx made clear distinctions between classes in themselves and classes for
>>themselves. Draper, if he says what James claims he does, is whistling in
>>the wind.
>
>Not Draper. Marx.
>
>> For Marx, class was an *objective* social relationship
>>determined by the relationship between individuals and groups of
>>individuals to the means of production. It didn't come and go according the
>>subjective awareness of these individuals and groups of their class
>>character. The irony is that when the majority of workers become class
>>conscious in a Marxist sense it will be after the revolution has taken
>>place.
>
>This is a triumph of formalistic reasoning. The only class consciousness
>that Hugh is prepared to countenance is membership of his own party. But
>for much of the twentieth century, the working class was, without
>holding to a revolutionary consciousness, active in its own trade union
>organisations. That trade union consciousness it is what has been
>undermined, by its own limitations, and by the ruling class actioons
>against it. Today those unions are an empty shell that do not touch the
>lives of the vast majority of working people. But not to worry because
>the class struggle is eternal, it never lets up, ever. Even when the
>working class plays no part in it.
>
>Fraternally
>--
>James Heartfield
>
>
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>
>


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