Date: Wed, 28 Dec 94 3:52:51 EST From: boddhisatva <foucault-AT-eden.rutgers.edu> Subject: Re: Re: autonomist marxism Mr Wolff, Well, you jump in to the water, and you sometimes find it cold. Nonetheless, I ask you to try and strain what you may be able to from my original letter on the very point you discuss. I have a learned advisor ready to give me the low-down on Althusser for a couple Scotches and a few bucks, so I'll be ready to confront specific points later. However, I still posit the exploitation inherent in capitalistic structures for control of capital as the only true unifying concept for the left on the basis of my previous (if ill expressed) arguments. Capitalism is defined by the myths of scarcity and meritocracy. They are the twin myths that create the fantasy world where competition outside the rule of decency is valid. They cannot be challenged on their own terms. They have to be challenged by the demonstration of the fact and the dedication to the principle, that, the power of money-capital in capitalism is inherently unsound, unfair, and most of all, unnecessary. If the disparate interests of the left are at least agreed on that point, then workers uniting to destroy the market value of exploitative enterprises can create socialist enterprises in their place. THese enterprises, however they are consituted, will have to have been formed on the basis of a logic which defeats the notions which ALL present forms of human cruelty are based on. Democracy is the simplest logic of this kind. How can any chauvinism or bigotry be fought if there exists a consensus (fundamental to the production that sustains the race) that isomorphic ideologies are necessary and legitimate ? The New Testament informs us that we will always have the poor with us. In fact, in the west, we do not - not in the material terms of that age. What we may very well always have with us are the despised. In these terms it is no blasphemy to preach the complete destruction of economic exploitation and alienation. It is likewise no surrender to accept some measure of chauvinism as inherent in all but an end-state society. The liberal movements (feminism, anti-racism, etc.) have succeeded, than lost their vigor because they cold only conquer the part of the social order that was democratic - the contitutional democracy of government. Radical aims have failed because they require the whole of society (not just those democratic institutions created by the bourgeoisie) to be democratic. In a post-capitalist world where economic sovereignty is on a par with legal sovereignty, the bigot rats will be easier to sniff out. A power-mad capitalist still hates a trust because the possibility to harness the flow of economic power is diminished. A socialist hates a clique for the same reason. This is because it is a socialist world that recognizes human effort as the true coin. Classic cuisine tells us that a scare egg cannot be skewered and a blue-blooded bird cannot be whipped into an omlette. A liberal chef might water both down and boil them to tastelessness, but they are unlikely to be consumed. A socialist cooks them without contrived vessels in a Nouvelle Cuisine and throws them right into the flame, deriving nourishment from the flesh and leaving the charred trappings to be consumed. In the words of the old Negro spiritual "the fire next time". paix, et Bon Appetit ------------------
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