The dangers of reading too much Chomsky
I find myself at Le Colonel Chabert’s site every now and then by following links from various people I like, but I’m always disatisfied with the analyses she offers, and I think k-punk articulates why with his snappy phrase, “moralizing liberal socialism.” I’m not sure k-punk’s ad hominems are necessary or indeed accurate, though. Surely the problem with LCC’s moralizing of capital isn’t that it allows her to position herself as a good capitalist; indeed, she tends towards the opposite, seeming to get a certain enjoyment out of her ability to assert her complicity with capitalism. Rather, the problem with construing capital in individual, moral terms is that it underestimates the difficulty not just of attacking capitalism but of even understanding it.
Moralizing critique goes hand-in-hand with Chomsky’s understanding of ideology as propoganga, in which “the facts” are simply knowable, and the role of criticism is to simply make them known against the distortions of the media. But, contra Chomsky and Chabert, ideology is not simple lies, rather it is ideology precisely because it has the power to dictate and create the facts. Chabert’s idea of keeping ones distance from ideology in order to study its distortions from a position of relative exteriority, then, is hopelessly optimistic.
Which brings me to the main thrust of k-punk’s post, which is a discussion of the Marxist understanding of the critique of religion. I mostly agree with what Mark says, but I’m not sure he pushes this far enough. He quotes Karatani, “Whether or not we believe in religion in the narrow sense, real capitalism puts us in a structure similar to that of the religious world,” but doesn’t explicitly draw what I think is the necessary conclusion: for Marx, the critique of religion (as of ideology more generally) is not premised on the belief that religion is false. This is precisely the idealist critique he attacks, and I worry that calling for “a ruthless demolition of commodity-theology” does not clearly distinguish idealist refutation from materialist critique.
The materialist critique does not assert that religion is false; indeed, it would be almost more accurate to say that the materialist critique shows that religion is true or, better, it shows in what sense religion is true, how religion arises from and so reflects material conditions. So a communist engagement with Islam would not reject Islam, but would involve figuring out how an Islamic vocabulary can articulate communist projects (and if this is not going to just be bad faith, we shouldn’t expect our own communism to come out of the encounter unchanged).
This is where we should locate a criticism of the SWP’s current engagement with Islam (and, before we begin to criticize, we need to remember that the SWP are one of the only left groups who even have a position here worth critcizing). If engagement with Muslims remains a matter of formal alliances between pre-constituted blocks (the Muslims here, the socialists there), there remains no position from which we could engage in a genuine critique of Islam. The choices in this case remain quietist endorsement or moralistic rejection of Islam, and neither is sufficient.
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But the SWP (with its ‘Respect’ trousers on) has a much more, ahem, ‘pragmatic’ attitude than that. Where, for example, was its support for gay rights, abortion rights, etc, during the 2005 general election campaign? Let’s not do anything that might scare off the Muslims, guys…
Incidentally, the secular power of imams and other leaders within Muslim communities (essentially, politicians have to win the leaders round, and the leaders then instruct the faithful how to vote) rather reminds me of the position of local Party bosses in the old CCCP. Or, indeed, union bosses in the States before Hoffa went down.
Comment by Tim Footman @ 3/20/2006 5:42 pm
hi Tim,
I’m in complete disagreement, except for the part about figuring out how an Islamic vocabulary could articulate communist projects. That was my response to the Zizek atheism thing, except re: Christian fundamentalism, I’d love to see a revival of leftist millenarian fundamentalism vs the currently prevailing rightwing variety. (Though I think there’s here a risk of implying that folks with Islamic or Christian vocabularies can only think using those vocabularies.) I’m working on a post at mine to get clear on this - I started a comment and it got too long. I’ll trackback it when it’s done. I hope you’re well.
best,
Nate
Comment by Nate @ 3/21/2006 7:21 am
“ideology is not simple lies, rather it is ideology precisely because it has the power to dictate and create the facts. ”
Mn, I don’t see why attribute to me a notion that ideology is ’simple lies’ rather than the elaborate and multifaceted kind which have the power to create facts. My blog is primarily about ideology’s role in creating facts - Europe, Money, Women, Time, ethnicities, values, institutions - especially in the 18th century. But the interesting thing here is the position from which you speak, able not only to indentify both ’simple lies’ and ‘ideology’ but to see without effort the difference between them. Is this a special gift of yours, or might others do it too? Might not everyone achieve this clarity vis a vis ideology which you have? What kind of people can’t? Is it not possible that lots of people are as gifted in this vein as yourself? How do you know what ‘ideology’ is, how can you see the process of its fact-creation, and why can’t others use the same method to recognize and see what you recognize and see?
Comment by chabert @ 3/21/2006 8:39 am
Also, there should be distinctions acknowledged between instances of ideological fact production: ideology contributes to the creation of ‘banks’, say, in a crucial but not dominant role in which the ideological component remains highly rigid, but it has a larger, dominant, very flexible role, in creating ‘races’. And ‘races’ are ‘facts’ of a different and less substantial, less material order than ‘banks’. Ideology doesn’t reconstitute ‘banks’ frequently, but ideology constantly reforms ‘races’. To ignore this distinction between ideology’s various functions in fact-production, and the different orders of facts it is involed in producing, is a very pernicious kind of mystification.
Comment by chabert @ 3/21/2006 9:00 am
tim,
good post. i think a lot of these critiques of religion that pose as marxist are really just left-hegelian, a la bruno bauer….
Comment by geo @ 3/21/2006 9:02 am
I’d like to hear you say more on the critique of religion, and on what you mean by materialism.
If the Marxist critique of religion is not premised on its falsity, it certainly assumes that falsity. The falsity of religion consists precisely in its denial of the claim that it arises from specific material conditions, surely. If religion is in some sense true in Marxist terms (materially effective), it is false in its own terms (there is no supernatural). The question, then, is how far religion can possibly accommodate that Marxist ‘materialization’ while still being ‘religion’. The point being that a Communist ‘engagement’ with Islam on the terms of Communism is ALREADY a rejection of Islam on Islam’s terms.
The ‘ruthless demolition of commodity-theology’ would take place through behavioural reprogramming, not through ‘critique’ alone. It is only when behaviour changes that idealist refutation is surpassed, i.e. there is no point denouncing the falsity of religion while complying with commodity theology in your actions. That is to say, the materialist critique is only achieved when it is lived, not merely thought. This is how I would uh cash out the opposition between idealist refutation and materialist critique, whereas what you are saying, Tim, sounds to me as if it is in danger of implying that the opposition is between idealism and a kind of political pragmatism (if it works, do it). Capitalism is a set of rituals, rituals which determine beliefs. ‘Economics are the method, the object is to change the soul,’ as someone once said.
Comment by mark k-p @ 3/21/2006 2:31 pm
Agreed on Chomsky, naturally.
Comment by Matt @ 3/21/2006 9:49 pm
Tim, I think that’s the sort of problem I was thinking of with formal coalitions or alliances (although, to be fair to Respect, they do have explicit commitments to gay and women’s rights, and didn’t Galloway go on some radio shows arguing in favor of gay rights? Maybe that was after the election).
Chabert, I’m not sure I understand what you say about distinguishing between lies and ideology. If you mean that we may not be able to distinguish in specific instances, I think I agree with you. But I don’t think that that means we can’t make the conceptual distinction, which would then inform how we go about looking at the (supposed) facts. As for the distinction between banks and race, is this a difference of kind? A bank is an identifiable material object in a way race isn’t, but isn’t this just a difference in the degree of abstraction? I’m not sure there’s a difference between, say, the financial system and race.
Nate, I’ve replied to your post over at your blog.
Mark, could you say more about how you think I’m endorsing political pragmatism? I’ll try and reply to your points when I have more time.
Comment by tim @ 3/21/2006 9:51 pm
“I’m not sure I understand what you say about distinguishing between lies and ideology. ”
You made the distinction; I was asking how you made the distinction between “simple lies” and “ideology” to which you refer in this phrase:
“contra Chomsky and Chabert, ideology is not simple lies”
and why you would think other people are unable to do the same, to see ideology as ideology without supposing it to involve exclusively, or at all, “simple lies”.
You write “I don’t think that that means we can’t make the conceptual distinction”
Okay, explain the position from which you recognize both and make the distinction (I agree there is a distinction of importance, in fact that “simple lies” and “ideology” are distinct terms with distinct meanings, like say “slogans” and “media” are distinct terms). So the question is why are you able to discern this distinction? How can you ’see’ ideology? I am trying to get at how you think ideology creates facts, if its necessary for other people to have a blindness to it which you don’t have it, or something like this.
“I’m not sure there’s a difference between, say, the financial system and race.”
Okay, you mean no difference at all? Or not a difference of any importance? Are you saying these are products of both ideology and force working in the same balance and the same way? So say one could alter ‘race’ or abolish it in only the same way as one could alter or abolish the financial system?
What say would be the equivalent in “race” of debt? What’s the equivalent in “race” of the Argentine economic crisis? What’s the equivalent in “race” of a hedge fund? What would happen do you think if “race” crashed?
Comment by chabert @ 3/22/2006 8:40 am
Zizek’s atheism appears closer to orthodox marxism circa the German Ideology than to postmod., however much that might disturb the contemporary sorts of PC marxists. Materialism may show that religion has a political motive or cause, but the next step is demonstrating the deception of the churches and clerics, whether Catholic, prot., or Islam. While I would agree the Colonel has a harsh moralizing aspect (tho she’s occasionally somewhat accurate in regards to economic matters), to reject moralists should not mean dismissing all ethical
Comment by Perdido @ 3/23/2006 5:27 pm
to reject moralists should not mean dismissing all ethical
Comment by Perdido @ 3/23/2006 5:28 pm
,, yeah you’ve probably figured it out at this point tho’ comrades. but then anyone who takes Capital as dogma at this stage is as misguided as neo-conservatives or stalinists
Comment by Perdido @ 3/23/2006 5:31 pm
Ah right, I think I understand. I don’t think it’s necessary for people to have a blindness to ideology in order for it to function. Indeed, I’m not sure what a “blindness to ideology” would be. Doubtless people reflect more and less, and more and less accurately, about how the way they (and other people) think connects to our actions, but I wouldn’t want to construe that in terms of something beyond/outside ideology which we might fail to see.
On race compared to the financial system - obviously the mechanisms of both are very different (so there may not be direct parallels to any of the various things you mention), but in terms of them both being realities produced through processes with an ideological dimension, I don’t think the two have a different status.
Comment by tim @ 3/23/2006 5:46 pm
The Proletarian Cogito…
Tim raises a number of interesting questions over at The Wrong Side of Capitalism. The key passage is the following: ‘The materialist critique [of religion] does not assert that religion is false; indeed, it would be almost more accurate to……
Trackback by k-punk @ 3/29/2006 3:38 pm
Don’t know if this is a breach of blog-etiquette, but I wanted to ask questions here of k-punk’s post (no comments there), but indirectly as well of Tim. And beforehand, let me say these are both great posts.
(1) A quite specific question of clarification… k-punk says, “Ironically, it is now, when the idea of a proletariat is abandoned - in favour of the ‘multitude’ or the ‘people’ - that the concept [universality, i take it, in the sense of a universal proletarianization] starts to have an unprecedented purchase on social reality.” — But isn’t this universal proletarianization precisely what the ‘multitude’ is naming? Not that one has to agree with multitude, just wondering why it is taken as something other than this universalization…
(2) Is the problem with religion, most fundamentally, that of its tribalism/sectarianism? Couldn’t one say, at least as regards Christianity-Islam-Judaism, that, more basic than non-universalization, is the problem of the transcendent? If this is too strictly ontological, i suppose it could be brought in connection with subjectification. It seems not at all accidental that Althusser’s example of interpellation in ISAs was the notion of a single, unique Subject that can found an infinitude of obedient subjects.
(3) As for the task of a subjectification prior to, outside of, etc, identity, and its relation to a universality … is the difference between Badiou and Zizek of import here? I’m thinking of Zizek’s insistence on the undead, as opposed to a positive truth, and specifically, of Zizek’s suggestion that Badiou’s subject-event-truth connection basically repeats Althusser’s example. Obviously that’s a bit coarse, but nonetheless, there is the sense of subject being subjectivized by event, yet event being materialized by subject, etc.
Comment by Discard @ 3/29/2006 9:10 pm