From: "Steve Armstrong" <wegway-AT-sympatico.ca>
Subject: Re: questions from a simple-minded student
Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2002 17:31:23 -0400


Hello Ruth Chandler,

I find what you say very agreeable but I would like to nit-pick at one
thing. I don't think Nietzsche moved away from dilectical thinking - it was
probably more of a non-starter for him. Hegel was much too absurd for
Nietzsche to seriously consider. I see the line of thought moving from Kant
through Schopenhauer (who made some very funny comments about Hegel) to
Nietzsche. I think dialectical thinking was irrelevant to Nietzsche.

Steve Armstrong
Publisher
Wegway
P. O. Box 157
Station A
Toronto, Ontario
Canada
M5W 1B2

416 712 2716

s.armstrong-AT-utoronto.ca
http://www.wegway.com (will be updated soon)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ruth Chandler" <R.Chandler-AT-ucc.ac.uk>
To: <nietzsche-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Friday, October 11, 2002 11:46 AM
Subject: Re: questions from a simple-minded student


> hi donald-
>
> Deleuze reads Nietzsche from  a stance that rejects the vertical lines
> of aristocratic individualism, while retaining most of what is powerful
> about N within a nomadic distribution, anarchy crowned. the idea
> being,crudely put, that Nietzsche's though is a movement away from
> dialectical thinking withoout a discernible destination. Deleuze
> retaines a notion of the machinic unconscious as a production factory
> that is not incompatible with Marxist though ( minus the conflation of
> unalienated labour with time).
>
> there have been countless attempts to recuperate N to dialectical
> reasoning, an issue that might be pertinent to reading through the
> 'leftist' agenda you describe.However, models tend to come unstuck with
> N-at the very least you need to ask what does my agenda really want?
> what kinds of ascetic ideals are implict in the methods i habitually
> use-what is it that i'm doing when i'm doing that?-what are mye causal
> tropes ( i.e labour theory of use and surplus value). what kind of doer
> behind the deed do i presuppose ( production)
>
> i have struggled with N's elitism myself ( my own project involves the
> potentials of a Nietzscheam feminism that both draws startegies from
> Nietzsche's texts and texts them as exemplary of the problems i am
> working with) i don't pretend to be able to answe the questions i have
> raised. However, N does contain a very trenchant critique of
> contemprary consumer society, ( see Daybreak) as  the land of the
> cannibals even if he goes on to advocate the machining of the masses
> into specialised utilities as ameans of providing a noble movement away
> from. Deleuze and Guattari's texts ( Anto-Oedipus and A Thousand
> Plateaux are about the best revisions of this political problem that I
> know.
>
> Ruth.C
> donald jackson wrote:
>
>
> >So I dig Nietzsche and am a leftist, and hence have
> >some of the same desires to twist nietzsche into some
> >sort of radical democratic project as other leftists.
> >So are the following justifications feasible, and who
> >has dealt with them in writing before? Also, I'm sure
> >many cleverer people than i have pointed out positive
> >uses of nietzsche for the left, so any good reading
> >suggestions?
> >(the tone is informal, not trying to publish or turn
> >this in or anything, so just be chill and see what you
> >think)
> >It seems that if one abandons the old liberal trope of
> >a universalist politics in favor of a view of very
> >particularized classes emanating their collective
> >frameworks of organization (does hardt talk about this
> >in his spinozist writings on the multitude?) you can
> >find the first ground of such an argument. Gramscian
> >hegemony, althusserian ideology, even some
> >"mainstream" marxist notions of class struggle and
> >ideology as the collective intellectual perception of
> >competing classes (like that foucault piece where he
> >argues with the maoists or his chomsky arguments, both
> >discussing the foundation of "justice" in a culturally
> >specific way that supports class identities-just a
> >refined marxism i think), all these seem to gel with
> >nietzschean epistemology quite well. Not surprising
> >since most of em read and dug nietzsche, so we have a
> >simple sort of common ground from which to build
> >(don't deconstruct that please, it's just a
> >provisional sort of statement).
> >Now of course the problematic area is the whole
> >noble/slave, active/reactive thing. And how he hated
> >socialists who pushed for equality and such, for
> >reasons pretty obvious given the rest of his
> >philosophy. This seems similar to some theoretical
> >critiques hayek has of socialism, rational planning,
> >etc. But here's the thang, as made very clear in an
> >essay on worker control in the Postmarxist Reader
> >(can't recall the author's name at the moment): worker
> >control doesn't tell you one dingo's kidney about the
> >final distribution of materials, or whatever.
> >Redistribution of final consumed products and such is
> >totally secondary to a thorough-going marxist/radical
> >project, based primarily in the relationships of
> >production and a critique of the various forms of
> >alienation under capitalist work. I mean, I know marx
> >promotes state centralization and nationalization of
> >capital in the Manifesto, but fuck it, I don't think
> >that's fundamental to all of his project, i think it's
> >what he suggested as a realistic platform for a
> >revolutionary movement rooted in that time. I think
> >you can work on alienation and elimination of worker
> >exploitation (in the marxist sense) without even
> >getting to final redistribution, which I really think
> >belongs to a socialist order rooted in utopianism and
> >liberal paternalism/technocratism (though equality of
> >wages is different, I think...). So "equality" in the
> >sense of final conditions of consumption is not
> >necessarily the focus of a thorough-going radical
> >communism/whatever, since the primary focus their is
> >the initial organization of creation at an atomic
> >level of political economy.
> >So real communism is about worker control, not about
> >some fluffy equality. That one would necessarily cause
> >the other is, I think, debatable; point is still that
> >equality in that sense is still secondary to worker
> >control.
> >Ok, so far I've just kindof expressed my impressions
> >as to how nietzscheanism can allow for "leftism." So
> >here's the beginning of why I think it might actually
> >promote it. First, nietzsche, when he condemns the
> >masses, seems often to condemn them more for being
> >duped by platonists and socratic cleverness. And if
> >you take a sort of anti-transcendental stance, as he
> >does, and you start to promote "earthiness," it seems
> >to me that you're going to start developing this idea
> >that any higher human achievement isn't separated in
> >kind from the "base activities of the herd" so to
> >speak, and is just an intensification of what the
> >fluxing members of that base herd do: drink, fuck,
> >build, talk, etc. Now that's saying quite a lot, in
> >comparison to traditional and still popular
> >aristocratic sentiments, which hold for instance that
> >elites are elite by virtue of the divine (god,
> >genetically predisposed intelligence, etc) or that
> >their strength in intellectual/whatever matters is
> >different in kind than that of the multitude. You
> >know, plato, philosopher kings separate from the
> >people, preternatural perception of preternatural and
> >eternal forms, etc. [i'm not arguing this point well,
> >so just keep the thought in mind, that traditional
> >elitism/meritocracy tends to support differences in
> >kind between elite behaviors and vulgar masses
> >behaviors, which isn't quite the same thing as noble
> >vs. slave morality; better example maybe, how in
> >History of Sexuality VI, Foucault points out that the
> >anti-sensual tendencies of the bourgeoisie filtered
> >into the working classes only after much effort, very
> >slowly, and more or less by medical and police force,
> >since the working classes, regardless of an assumed
> >2000 years of life-denying religion, thought
> >hanky-panky was fun and natural enough).
> >{To make a snide anecdotal aside, it generally seems
> >that lower and worker classes generally weren't nearly
> >as affected by the life-denying aspects of platonic
> >christianity as were the bourgeoisie or intelligensia,
> >historically. The folks generally don't want you to
> >fool around less because of some absolute moralism and
> >more because they don't want you to knock somebody
> >up/get knocked up at 15. But whatever, I don't have
> >the resources to argue this at the moment besides the
> >foucault}
> >So that's one claim. The lower classes are generally
> >pretty damned earthy in comparison to the bourgeoisie,
> >and hence "noble" intensities just seem a
> >concentration of that very plebeian earthiness. (And
> >yes, I consider myself among the hoi-polloi, actually
> >just a shy redneck who has had the luck of good
> >teachers. So no barbs on that account)
> >Now, that really just sets a tone, doesn't provide
> >much of an argument that leftism is conducive to
> >nietzscheanism.
> >So i'm going to take the example of the tragic chorus
> >from the Birth of Tragedy. What we have here is the
> >martialing of those earthy, feisty, dionysian forces
> >writ through apollonian styles to make the intensity
> >of existence palatable. We have the scene as a
> >emanation of the collective production of earthy
> >satyrs. See where I'm going with this? This edifice,
> >this ritual of a healthy tragic society for nietzsche,
> >seems to include a dose of democracy. Difference is
> >it's not the stale democracy of legalism, it's the
> >imemdiate, unequal, immeasurable democracy of
> >production and creation. In it, there's no such thing
> >as equal roles, because the term is meaningless. In
> >the act of collective production, individualistic
> >identity dissolves. There is no equality then, just a
> >web of interacting forces that produce something. So,
> >here's the question: is nietzsche's characterization
> >of tragic production here, or even of creation itself
> >as can be writ through decentered collections of
> >forces that interact and infect one another to produce
> >or sustain and go beyond themselves, or play, is this
> >comparable to unalienated production in Marx, perhaps
> >the younger marx, but marx nonetheless? When marx
> >discusses consciousness, it's based on production, on
> >creation, and is a reflection on the object and
> >process of creation. This seems like it might be
> >palatable, in some way, to old freddie.
> >
> >Ok, that was my barely coherent rant, ignore or
> >respond as you wish. -dj
> >
> >__________________________________________________
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> >
> >
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> >
> >
>
>
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