From: SUBTILE-AT-aol.com Date: Sun, 07 Aug 94 01:26:54 EDT Subject: Re: marxism-leninism/stalinism This post is a response to Phil Goldstein who suggested that Marx is complicit in Stalinism, and Jukka Laari who suggested that the Frankfurt School has dissociated marxism from Stalinism. Jukka Laari mentioned the Frankfurt School without explaining what makes Frankfurt marxism different. 1) The Frankfurt School loses any connection with Leninism/ Stalinism through its rejection of the marxist teleological emphasis upon proletarian revolution culminating in communism. Max Horkheimer's main theoretical project, the "Institute for Social Research," was dedicated to a nonsoviet continuation of marxist analysis through a reliance upon dialectics that was to explicitly reject Russian forms of economic determinism. A short quote from Horkheimer's opening speech: Or one believes, contrariwise, that the economy as material being is the only true reality; the psyche of human beings, personality as well as law, art and philosophy, are to be completely derived from the economy, or mere reflections of the economy. This would be an abstractly and thus badly understood Marx. Such notions naively presuppose an uncritical, obsolete, and highly problematic divorce between Spirit and reality which fails to synthesize them dialectically. (p. 12 of BETWEEN PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL SCIENCE) On the other hand, Stalin used the theories of economic determinism and the theory of the primacy of class struggle to justify genocide, arguing that the class struggle was to heighten in the phase of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Horkheimer and Adorno (DIALECTIC OF ENLIGHTENMENT, 1944) had a theory of the CULTURE INDUSTRY that explained the longevity of capitalism and its possible triumph over any social impulse that would destabilize the social order. Gramsci calls the net result of the culture industry "the war of position"; whether you use Gramsci or Adorno to analyze culture probably depends on what cultural effect you want to look at. Enrico Augelli and Joseph Collins have adopted Gramsci to a great analysis of the success of Reaganism in a book whose name escapes me now. At any rate I would assert that real phenomena can be attributed to the effects of the culture industry. The thesis of the culture industry looks especially viable here in the US in the context of the domination of American politics by the oligopolies of the news media, who ceaselessly manufacture a right-of-center "middle class perspective" which leaves critical political issues unexamined. Other cultural effects, such as the domination of American culture by "technical reason" (Marcuse, from Lukacs) and the reification of the culture (Lukacs), which we see in the application of demographics in the business world and in the culture produced by public schooling help solidify the mass inability to imagine an alternative to the present society. Marcuse, Lukacs, Adorno, Horkheimer, all take their cue from the analysis of commodity fetishism presented at the beginning of Volume 1 of CAPITAL. The universal acceptance of the daily routine of consumerism (or the even more authoritarian cultural alternatives of religious lifestyles) in America leaves marxists with the question: where is the possibility of proletarian revolution if the proletariat has been convinced by the system that it is the middle class? The universal impoverishment of the working class does not necessarily insure its solidarity because of the increasing differentiation of labor under late capitalism (we have all become "specialists" even if work is still shit) and because of the multicultural and transnational nature of the work force, but still these are things that marxist analysis can account for and marxist organizing can overcome. But what does one do about the spells ceaselessly cast by advertising, which has become the dominant method of social integration and social identification in America? (Well, I have my own answer to this question, but it is not a comprehensive one) 2) Jurgen Habermas, currently the "heir" of the Frankfurt School, has a useful explanation for the insufficiency of the theory of proletarian revolution in achieving the goals of the principled utopianism of Marx. (I don't mean this in a derogatory sense; when I describe marxism as a utopianism I don't mean to put it down but rather to contextualize it amidst 19th century schemes for the improvement of society.) I will quote Habermas's explanation (from p. 340 of part 2 of the THEORY OF COMMUNICATIVE ACTION) here: System and lifeworld appear in Marx under the metaphors of the "realm of necessity" and the "realm of freedom." The socialist revolution is to free the latter from the dictates of the former. It seems as of theoretical critique has only to lift the spell cast by abstract labor (subsumed under the commodity form). The intersubjectivity of workers associated in large industries is crippled under the self-movement of capital; theoretical critique has only to free it of its stiffness (all the problems I mentioned above- sdf) for an avant-garde (marxists -sdf) to mobilize living -- critically enlivened -- labor against dead labor and to lead it to the triumph of the lifeworld (the revolution -sdf) over the system of deworlded labor power . As against these revolutionary expectations, Weber's prognosis has proven correct: the abolition of private capitalism would not at all mean the destruction of the iron cage of modern industrial labor. Thusly, I would argue, the application of marxism on planet earth became the creation of the iron cage of Stalinist Russia. Habermas presents a framework of "system" and "lifeworld" to replace the marxist framework of capital's subsumption of labor. The "system" is conceptualized (if I may oversimplify) in terms of the coordination of social action by the steering systems of money and power. The "lifeworld" (a concept Habermas borrowed from the phenomenologist Husserl) is conceptualized as our concept of the world as we would take it for granted. The two opposing forces within Habermas's world are what he calls a) the "colonization of the lifeworld," which is the invasion of our everyday lives by the imperatives of money and power, and the "rationalization of the lifeworld," which is the coordination of social action through rational argument oriented ideally toward the formation of unconstrained consensus. Through the concept of the "rationalization of the lifeworld" Habermas has fashioned a Marx-inspired social theory that is immune from the imputation of complicity of authoritarian marxist schemes. It is really tough to call Habermas an outright marxist because the theory of communicative action has obscured one of the main goals of marxism -- as the quote above shows, Habermas does not believe that a perfect revolution is possible. The "triumph of the lifeworld over the system of deworlded labor power" cannot happen, according to the THEORY OF COMMUNICATIVE ACTION; at best the marxist champions of the rationalization of the lifeworld can contain the effects of the system, for we will always need money and power (the essence of the system) to get things done. Unfortunately, as Axel Honneth points out in his book THE CRITIQUE OF POWER, Habermas does not explain in the THEORY OF COMMUNICATIVE ACTION how the class struggle can accomplish anything in the world. Critical theorists like myself believe that the invention of such an explanation in marxist/Habermasia n terms is the big work to be done with Habermas' comprehensive sense of theory. 3) I will explain why I think Lenin might be complicit in Stalinism (and why I think Marx isn't) later. 4) Does anyone know where I can get Axel Honneth in German? -Samuel Day Fassbinder ------------------
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