Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 17:44:12 -0600 (CST)
From: =?iso-8859-1?q?eduardo=20enriquez?= <eduardofenriquez-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [postanarchism] re: Ebert: "The Knowable Good"


 --- "J.M. Adams" <ringfingers-AT-yahoo.com> escribió: > 



Ebert also reveals herself to be an unapologetically
> statist and more generally authoritarian Marxist,
> when
> she states:
> 
> 
> "We see the anarchism of post-al politics perhaps
> most
> clearly expressed in the claims being made for
> “radical democracy” by ludic leftists. Stanley
> Aronowitz, for instance, rejects socialism and the
> “old” left, in large part, for their “sexism” and
> substitutes radical democracy as an effective
> politics
> of liberation...

and indeed what does "radical democracy" mean. well
pretty much staying withing the boundaries of
bourgoise capitalist institutionality such as the
market, the bourgoise nation -state and "civil
society" of one issue campaigns. pretty much the stuff
of laclau and mouffe, touraine, rorty and habermas. so
when they reject socialism that should also mean they
reject any perspective of systemic transformation. as
far as sexism within past anarchist and socialist
movements theres no doubt that that existed and it was
a good thing that the feminist criticism of this rose
up. nevertheless to leave anti-capitalism just because
of sexism within it is to enter inside the more
profound sexism of the rest of society as it is
divided in clases and hierarchies and thus reaffirms
it by not denouncing they way it organized in
hirarchies, classes and roles. so indeed in the
spanish anarchist movement in the thirties women
anarchists formed "mujeres libres" to tacle the women
question within an anarchist perspective and the
anarchist moevement as to how it should respond to the
question of women. 
it is thus later on that ebert comes to point out that
ignoring socio-economic theory and analysis for
lifestyle libertarianism is just the behavior of
petty-bourgoise who have confortable lives who decided
to live whitin their specific class spaces and
uninterested about systemic understanding of society
and of course also uninterested about systemic change
which means rejection of both capital and state.

This in
> turn becomes one of the main alibis for dismissing
> socialism because of its “authoritarian political
> legacy." But this simplistic ludic opposition of
> emancipation and authority completely rejects the
> revolutionary necessity of appropriating the power
> and
> authority of the state (the executive committee of
> the
> owners of the means of production) for social
> transformation. 

well indeed this sounds statist, leninist even.
nevertheless on the issue of "simplistic ludic
opposition" i tend to agree. but indeed lets put some
context here. this were the years just out of the fall
of the berlin wall where not just leninism-stalinism
but any politics of systemic change was dissmissed
very quickly no matter how libertarian they were and
the "end of history" with the eternal triumph of
capitalism and bourgoise nation state "democracy" was
supposed to have happened. so psot-structuralism ended
up being used for libertarian lifestyle politics which
is something very limited and restricted within a
liberal bourgoise perspective.

It so focuses on the (bourgeois)
> priority of individual freedom from any constraints
> on
> desires and differences, that it denies the
> revolutionary necessity of appropriating power to
> end
> the ways in which the individual desires and
> differences of the few are used to exploit the many.

on whether to take power or not to take power, which
doesnt mean nessesarly to take over the state or not
take over the state its nessesary seems to me to
understand that any process of collective organization
nessesarly requires instituing a power over
individuals. indeed this power can mean democracy or
it can also mean personalist rule. nevertheless
democracy remains instituing a power over individuals.
so indeed the zapatistas institute village councils to
decide where to take action or we have the old calls
for factory councils from anarcho-syndicalism, council
marxism or gramsci. for more on this issue check john
holloway discussing with marxist michael
lowy:http://www.endpage.com/Archives/Subversive_Texts/Holloway/Michael_Lowy_review.htm
http://www.endpage.com/Archives/Subversive_Texts/Holloway/Reply_to_Lowry.htm

> Let us not forget the revolutionary uses of state
> authority, for example, in the People's Republic of
> China, to (until recently) successfully eliminate
> the
> most severe socio-economic exploitation of
> women--including female infanticide, indenture,
> sexual
> slavery and prostitution--and provide women with
> extensive health care, education and economic
> opportunities."
> 

indeed one can critizise statism but nevertheless i
bet so many women living inside capitalism will love
to have the benefits of healthcare and education and
be able to earn a living without have to sell ones
body to strangers. now after deng xiaopings neoliberal
regime in china this has been cut that for sure in
order to levae people unprotected inside the cruel
market rules. a non statist community indeed must have
to provide this security to everyone.

> What is interesting about this article though is
> that
> she sees poststructuralist critics as threatening to
> the "transformative" socialist project because of
> their skepticism and lack of faith in the State a
> viable instrument of revolution, in other words, and
> as she explicitly states, for their similarities to
> *anarchism*! This is like the negative authoritarian
> Marxist inversion of the work of Todd May, Saul
> Newman
> and Andrew Koch, in a way :)
> 
> Jason
> 
well indeed they might have "scepticism" about the
state. but indeed what they also have scepticism about
is "revolution". thats why post-structuralism ended up
being mostly used in the 80s and 90s by people whose
activism stayed within single issue campaings.
personally it came to the point where i could only
distance myself and even only attack so much
post-structuralism and post-modernism for pushing for
bourgoise apathy and individualism. the times in the
nineties were those of "postmodern scepticism" after
all. it was definitely very refreshing to see the
"empire" book by negri and hardt get so famous. so
indeed this "Stanley
> Aronowitz," who "for instance, rejects socialism and
the
> “old” left, in large part, for their “sexism” and
> substitutes radical democracy as an effective
> politics
> of liberation..."  definitely smell too much of
eighties and nineties reformism. 

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