“And if you’re a man, your penis is prehensile”
> Nietzsche’s aristocratism; Blanchot’s, Gadamer’s, Schmitt’s, and Heidegger’s Naziphilia; Bataille’s dark mysticism and fascistic leanings; Guattari’s, Deleuze’s, and Lacan’s loathing of science while saturating their writings with puns, portmanteau words, and neologisms based on scientific terms; Foucault’s, Negri’s, and Tronti’s ultra-leftism that in fact aspires to a perpetuation of capitalism; and Althusser’s strive to defend both the Stalinist bureaucracy and the capitalist regime worldwide — all this and more have been and still are among the most effective ideological weapons that the ruling classes have used to keep one generation after another of young students away from the knowledge that may lead them to join the emancipation struggle of working-class populations.
Apologies for the rather incoherent nature of my last post; I had various ideas which seemed tantalisingly close to fitting together, but didn’t quite resolve. A few links, anyway:
* One of my occassional forays into coherence: a paper I’ve for various reasons re-read lately, about Aristotle and Hobbes. I think it’s quite good, but I was criticised for my ‘unjustified Heideggerianism’
* A fantastic explication of Lenin; reminded me why I like the bugger.
* And a humorous cod-Lenininist critque of Hardt and Negri; reminded me why I like the buggers.
* More splendidness from Shannon/AnimeG (particularly, the last paragraph raises a very good point about the way contemporary power structures love structural arguments _unless they’re directed against them_).
* Grime MCs over the beats from ‘Toxic’. Yeah, you heard me.
More of a less coherent sort shortly, I hope, in the form of posts on why I’m in favour of eight-year-olds dressing like tarts and why people downloading MP3s are accidentally marxists.
10 comments
Leave a comment
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Ok Tim, looking forward to why sexualising children is a good thing. That aside, I have one question. It is genuine, though may not seem so… Ok… so everything else aside…
What’s so great about the working class?
Actually, another one. Who is working class anyway? Those with salaries? Those who don’t have any stake in capital? Those with funny accents/dirty hands? Enlighten me.
NB This comment is “4 Real”.
Comment by Alistair @ 11/25/2004 11:16 pm
And also: even with your new posters, you still the man, and I ain’t buggin’. Sarah is second.
Comment by Alistair @ 11/25/2004 11:17 pm
“why I’m in favour of eight-year-olds dressing like tarts”
Tim, do you actually just say this stuff to annoy me? if so it works.
Comment by rachel @ 11/26/2004 12:27 am
nice paper. what did you do it for? i see you did your own translations? was this from the ancient greek? also, you cite M. Hardt in Qui Parle? - what was the article on? Qui Parle?, as you may know, is Critical Sense’s nemesis. They’re based in Rhetoric and quite snooty. They ask us things like what subscription software we use, just to sound important. fuckers.
i’m looking forward to your argument about “tarts”, tho i might disagree. i often make nasty comments when confronted with such a spectacle, but then immediately feel conservative for having done so. i’m sure that this has something to do with our shared philosophical committments…
Comment by geo @ 11/26/2004 5:31 am
Alistair: the working class, I would say, is the class that does not own the means of production. The definition is, in the first instance, of the class, and so how individuals fit into that is not generally clear-cut. For example, I own a computer which I use for work, which is a means of production (probably); however, I don’t own enough means of production to survive without getting access to the means of production owned by some capitalist or other, and so my class position is working class.
As for why the working class is so great, I think the main point is that the working class is my side. I benefit from working-class victories in the class struggle, particularly in the long-run. There doesn’t need to be any particular moral or any other greatness about them/us.
Comment by Tim @ 11/26/2004 1:24 pm
I would suggest that the working class as defined by those who do not own the factors of production is tiny (if growing). The unemployed, temps, those on part-time or short-term contracts… If you have a bank account, an ISA, a pension scheme, a mortgage, then you own some of the factors of production.
So your support of the working class is just a cheering your team on kind of a thing? If you earned more money, or someone gave you enough capital to survive on your own, then you would no longer be working class, your side would change and you would no longer be “for” the revolution as it would damage you? Essentially, your politics is motivated by self-interest? You are a child of Smith and Friedman, my friend. I look forward to your political evolution with great anticipation.
Comment by Alistair @ 11/26/2004 1:48 pm
Rachel: you’ve sussed me out. My pro-S Club Juniors argument will probably throw light on my pro-Britney position, too.
geo: it was one of my coursework essays for the MPhil (based on the classes with Skinner). The translations from Greek are my word-by-word-with-a-dictionary ones, but they were made easier by having read the books in english first. I can’t really remember the Hardt article, but I think it’s about liberalism. And I didn’t know that about Qui Parle? - I wouldn’t have dreamed of quoting them if I had known they were such bastards. And you can’t get their back-issues on the internet, either.
Comment by Tim @ 11/26/2004 2:02 pm
The working class as a class owns none of the means of production - but individuals are members of the working class to the extent that they own none of the means of production. Most people’s savings accounts and pensions don’t give them enough control over enough means of production that they don’t have to work, so most people’s interests put them on the side of the working class, rather than the capitalists.
I don’t think my agent-centered ethics makes me like Smith and Friedman because a) egoism in a sufficiently general sense is probably a tautology, b) me and the (neo-)Classicals are on different sides, theoretical similarities notwithstanding and c) the problem with Smith and Friedman is that they try and universalise their interests via either determinism (i.e., all rational economic actors behave in such-and-such a way, and you can’t change that) or moralism (i.e., we must have private property rights).
Comment by Tim @ 11/26/2004 3:43 pm
1) Who can afford not to work? Half a dozen people. The rest of us are working class then.
2) Just wanted to clarify that your politics come from self-interest (it’s not fair, I should have more etc) rather than a moral position of altruism or enlightened disinterest or whatever.
Comment by Alistair @ 11/26/2004 4:49 pm
1) I’m pretty sure there are more than half a dozen people who are rich enough as to not to need to work, but that isn’t really important (note that the very rich who work because they choose to, because they enjoy their work or want to become even richer, are still capitalists). It may be that we’re all working class - the problem isn’t capitalists, it’s capitalism, which could still exist without individual capitalists.
2) ‘It’s not fair’ and ‘I should have more’ are moral positions. ‘I want more’ isn’t, and that’s closer to my politics.
Comment by Tim @ 11/26/2004 5:04 pm