Reviews for Counterrevolution and revolt

The average rating for Counterrevolution and revolt based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-04-14 00:00:00 Jocelyn Gagnon Begins by noting that capitalism has developed to the point of needing “the organization of a counterrevolution” for its defense, which includes not only “wholesale massacres in Indochina, Indonesia, the Congo, Nigeria, Pakistan, and the Sudan” of the left, but also in its extreme moment, the Third Reich (1). Radical students are shot (Kent State, Jackson State); African American leaders are shot (MLK, X, the Panthers); liberal presidents are shot. Enjoins that socialism must not only “augment the quantity of goods and services in order to abolish all poverty,” but also “must change the quality of existence” regarding the needs to be satisfied and the quantum requisite for satisfaction (3). Axiomatic that “revolutionary consciousness has always expressed itself only in revolutionary situations,” but now “the condition of the working class in society at large militates against the development of such consciousness”—a standard Frankfurt position (6). Rather, “benefits accorded to the metropolitan working class thanks to surplus profits, neocolonial exploitation, the military budget, and gigantic government subventions” constitute an infrastructural integration of the proletariat into the system that Marxism asks it to overthrow—the class i.e., “has much more to lose than its chains” (id.). This integration at the level of infrastructure is as yet a “surface phenomenon” insofar as “it hides the disintegrating, centrifugal tendencies of which it is itself an expression” (id.): “the monopolistic economy creates conditions and generates needs which threaten to explode the capitalist framework” (id.); “it is the overwhelming wealth of capitalism which will bring about its collapse” (7)—which is a bit more of an orthodox position. The rationale here is that “the established system preserves itself only through the global destruction of resources, of nature, of human life, and the objective conditions for making an end to it prevail” (7)—which reminds one of Dutt’s prediction in Fascism and Social Revolution about the Third Reich. The ‘objective conditions’ are fairly obvious: “a social wealth sufficient to abolish poverty; the technical know-how to develop the available resources systematically toward this goal; a ruling class which wastes, arrests, and annihilates the productive forces; the growth of anticapitalist forces which reduce the reservoir of exploitation; and a vast working class” (id.). The significance of ‘working class’ is to be expanded: quoting Capital, Marcuse notes that “’the concept of productive labor is necessarily enlarged,’ and with it the concept of the productive worker […] The change is not merely quantitative” (13)—“the enlarged universe of exploitation is a totality of machines—human, economic, political, military, educational [shades of D&G’s ‘machinic assemblages’ there?]. It is controlled by a hierarchy of ever more specialized ‘professional’ managers, politicians, generals” (id.). We see Neumann’s thesis from the Behemoth that “at the base of the pyramid atomization prevails” (14). We also see shades of Foucauldian biopolitics with statements such as “Capital now produces, for the majority of the population in the metropoles, not so much material privation as steered satisfaction of needs, while making the entire human being—intelligence and senses—into an object of administration [NB: the agambenian language from HS V], geared to produce and reproduce not only the goods but also the values and promises of the system” (14). It is all false consciousness (or Sloterdijk’s enlightened false consciousness, perhaps): “behind the technological veil, behind the political veil of democracy, appears the reality [still as yet dialectical unmasking], the universal servitude, the loss of human dignity in a prefabricated freedom of choice [cf. Agamben on dignity, and on Kant, of course]” (id.). Regarding the ‘veil of democracy,’ “a president is sold like an automobile, and it seems hopelessly old-fashioned to judge his political statements in terms of their truth or falsehood—what validates them is their vote-keeping or vote-getting quality” (15)—which seems perfectly descriptive of the 2016 election. Regarding the wealth of capitalism as its gravedigger, we find that “the emergence of transcendent needs operate behind the back of the capitalist managers, and they are generated by the mode of production itself” to the extent that the “growing productivity of labor, accompanied by a declining use of human labor power” necessitates the internal expansion of the market, the counterpart to external imperialism” (18-19). That is, as productivity increases but the workforce decreases, who the fuck is buying all the crap churned out by robot factories? The argument walks through the now familiar critiques of the system (declining real wages, consumerism, and so on). However: “’consumer society’ is a misnomer of the first order, for rarely has a society so systematically been organized in the interests which control production” (23). This is not fascism, and, even if it were, “history does not repeat itself exactly, and a higher stage of capitalistic development in the United States would call for a higher stage of fascism” (25). That said, “the potential mass base for social change may well become the mass base for fascism,” quoting a journalist thereafter for the now very fucking reasonable proposition that “we may well be the first people to go Fascist by the democratic vote” (id.). Liberalism and fascism are related via the conjunction “liberal democracy is the face of the propertied classes when they are not afraid, fascism when they are afraid” (id.). On this basis, author diagnoses a “proto-fascist syndrome,” which includes the things already mentioned, but also an anecdote about some Darwin Award winning parent who believed that the Kent State kids deserved to be shot, even if her own son were there (27): “we’ve got to clean up this nation And we’ll start with the long-hairs.” Prisons, the normalization of war and war crimes, and so on are “a frightening reservoir of violence in everyday life” and “indicates a proto-fascist potential” (28). Some salient internal critique of the left here, such as “petrified rhetoric” as “false consciousness” (29) and the “Falsification of Marxian theory through its ritualization” (33). Also, the left has always been divided as a matter of structural necessity, whereas “the defenders of the status quo” have a tangible interest compelling their unity (36). The left might on occasion enact a “fetishism of labor” (38). AS far as the old orthodox position goes, if the working class no is no longer this ‘absolute negation’ of the existing society, if it has become a class in this society, sharing its needs and aspirations, then the transfer of power to the working class alone (no matter in what form) does not assure the transition to socialism as a qualitatively different society. The working class itself must change if it is to become the power that effects this transition. (39) Otherwise, author recommends against ‘seizure of power’ as a radical goal in the advanced cappie states, mostly because “concentration of overwhelming military and police power” and the “reformist consciousness among the working classes” (43). Regards direct democracy as “an essential demand of leftist strategy” (45), which is cool. Also wants to “eliminate the need for production of waste and planned obsolescence” (46). Critiques of “the new individualism” (“private rebellion”) (48) and “objective ambivalence” (49). The second chapter concerns some ecological argument, with which I am somewhat enervated. Some Kantian arguments here (66 ff). Third chapter concerns ‘art and revolution’ (79 ff), with which I am in partial disagreement, such as his notion that the continued relevance of ancient and medieval texts testifies to their revelation of the “human condition” as well as their responsiveness to certain “constant qualities” (87)—whereas my position is that the texts produce the consciousness in their readers requisite for their own reception: the text is a product that nevertheless labors upon the mind. Anyway, “permanent aesthetic subversion—this is the way of art” (107). Recommended for those who fight against pollution as a way of life, harbingers of a fully developed fascist system, and readers who confuse the psychological and ontological realm.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-03-26 00:00:00 Chris Paxton First off the description of "Dialectal stories and poems by New York City black and Spanish-speaking children edited from tape recordings taken in the classroom" is incorrect. This is a book examining the necessarily counter-revolutionary aspect of economic systems--though it seems to consider capitalism the evil and leaves socialism unexamined perhaps stemming from an immediacy of writing within a capitalism-associating society. It examines art as a possibility of revolt so long as the issue isn't confused by attempting an affirmative art ("proletarian art" as well as "commodity (bourgeois) art" are defined as propaganda, which I think is a fair assessment in terms of the argument). Following this, Art negates; refusing the immediate, the society form which it sprang, by transforming characters, attributes, whatever to universals. This transcendent character makes Art incapable of affirming a society, excepting the possibility of a transcendent (classless?) future society, though it is firmly between the lines that this potential society will remain only potential. I think the most interesting parts for me were the occasional discussion of the re-appropriation of the offensive, of the subcultural as marketable and thus affirming the structures they would seem to protest. I'm not done chewing on that, but I think it's a worthwhile assertion, and a challenge: How does one create something to combat or make impossible this appropriation?