Date: Sun, 31 Jul 1994 23:37:34 -0400 (EDT)
From: Alex Trotter <uburoi-AT-panix.com>
Subject: decadence



In a recent post, Donna Jones approvingly cited Lukacs's description of 
Nietzsche as the originator of imperialist vitalism and then went on to 
characterize this trend of thought as "decadent." A strange and slippery 
word, this. It seems difficult to separate it from a moral context. As 
far as I know, Marx never talked about decadence, although plenty of 
Marx-ists have. Rosa Luxemburg used it to describe capitalism as a 
historically decadent mode of production (i.e., no longer capable of 
developing the productive forces, or something like that). And, following 
her, that's how the ICC today uses the term. But I mostly think of it as 
a Leninist and (especially) a Stalinist epithet--you know, no public 
statement by the Soviet or Chinese bureaucrats was ever complete without 
a reference to "bourgeois decadence" or "Western decadence." Anything the 
bureaucrats didn't like--modern art, liberated cultural or sexual 
mores--was labeled "decadent." And Lukacs, who was fond of the term,
was certainly willing to toe the Stalinist line, even to the point of 
extreme self-abasement. So this term "decadence" doesn't really sit well 
with me. I don't trust it. The notion that capitalism is decadent in the 
20th century seems to me as questionable as the notion that it was 
progressive in the 19th century.

--Alex Trotter