Principia Dialectica Commits Collective Suicide

Actually, as it seems we are going to start walking down the theory/praxis worn out road, maybe you could also start a thread informing us of the recent struggles Principia Dialectica have been engaged in also?

Really? What about...

As you say...

For SolFed, it seems that praxis is the theory -- within the confines of the proletariat as subject. As discussed here:

http://www.principiadialectica.co.uk/blog/?p=256

There are two independent issues here, whether: (i) the proletariat is subject -- and the resulting untenable praxis of SolFed etc., (ii) value is the automaton subject, or such like. You can reject (i) without having to adopt (ii).

Are you really here just to prove you are smart and important (a "heavy lifter")? Seriously? If that's all you want, you'd do better by being silent. Honestly, the "heavy lifters" succeed at seeming smart and important by being silent and letting other people do publicity for them.

A few people, hopefully, are curious about ways to collectively overthrow capitalism. It might not make me a heavy lifter but I aim take whatever old or new tools are useful and available for this purpose.

Sorry B_Reasonable could you explicate the religiosity of that text? (and distinguish it from the religiosity of pawing over texts with a fine tooth comb perhaps?). The seeds of the future is pretty standard 19th century humanism, but its not religious, this is just mud slinging.

As for the PD text, yeah it makes some interesting points, but I don't think it anywhere near annihilates class based anarchism. It's based on a few loose quotes and a caricature straw man which is torn down with a conflated theory of 'post-fordism' and calls to 'everyday lives' (which, with only one example, the call centre, certainly doesnt chime with my working life) in the name of 'radical critique' (and of course, NO radical practice! that would be to below us to suggest anything like that!). Of course work has changed since the 1940s, I don't really think many people are saying it hasn't (much as your loath to read that of course ). The last point 'we jus dun wanna work' followed by a cheeky little quote from Marx (a pre 1940s writer I believe? catch phrases from a by gone era indeed!) really lets the whole thing down doesn't it? Completely abstract [sic] from anything like 'everyday lives' that you seemed to have had so much to say about before. Abstracted from anything like a re-imagining new social forms that might arise through different modes of organization. I guess post revolution decrepit grand-mas will be wiping their own arses will they? we will all becomes plumbers, electricians, doctors, nurses etc, etc. That my friend, is cheap sloganeering if ever i read any (funnily enough, i read it all the time).

So yeah, theory/praxis once again. Although I actually think its boring and unproductive [lulz] to sit here comparing SolFed with PD. As I said earlier, if you want to mud sling Solfed, open a new thread for it and give them the chance to respond .

Regarding 'the annihalation of class based anarchism' -- how can something be anihalated if it doesn't exist? In all honesty, there has never been a well rooted 'class based anarchism' in Western Europe except for the unique circumstances that gave rise to the Spanish revolution of 1936. Instead, what we are talking about is a sub cultural fad that appeals to a certain type of young person, and has been doing so since the late 1970s, and good on 'em, to a degree.

However, a 'working class anarchism' would necessitate cultural roots, the kind established as surely and filmly as the French communists were within working class districts both prior to and after World War II. You are a fantasist if you believe this has ever existed or ever will in the UK. Some honourable 'organic intellectuals' such as Vernon Richards and Colin Ward were cut from a far superior cloth that rejected the fetishism of contemporary 'class war anarchists'' - their vision was of a society beyond 'dictatorship of a proletariat.' You only have to read a fraction of their output to see a) they were products of a different epoch and b) their ideas were rooted in a reality a million miles away from hairbrained utopias involving some imaginary proletarian army, which has never existed in the form some people around here yearn for, in advanced Western capitalist society.

Perhaps the high point for an idiosyncratic 'British' anarchism was when the journal Black Flag was in rude health -- its stance on freedom for all prisoners was an honourable philosophical and political stance, grudgingly admired even by orthodox trotskysists in the post 1968 era, but of course that ended up imploding because, as usual, a few key characters had to shoulder the burden of responsibility.

I ask the question again, despite no one so far being prepared to take me up on it: where are the current anarchist 'organic intellectuals?' Who out there is able to work creatively with marxian and other relevant philosophical categories and produce a journal or media platform that commands respect and is able to punch above its weight in terms of influence? Now I do know some decent, gifted marxian intellectuals who could give substance to such a project, but they don't exist within the libcom milieu, because libcom is an embarrassment in terms of both form and content and they wouldn't touch it with a barge pole.

Because no one gives a shit about pointless idealistic wanking except you?

What is needed is a coherent organising practice, from which the new ideas will emerge, not getting the theory right in academic journals.

Sean68:

whose main gift is to develop useless "theory" (read: abstract ideology)

from other petrified intellectuals who never risk anything and remain, as always stuck in an intellect whose only practical consequences is a thesis or fifty and a lucrative career in AcademyLand.

What puerile rubbish. The truth is that some people are very good at comprehending and explaining complicated events, and can do so in clear, easy to understand language that people enjoy reading. The problem is people like you misunderstand or conflate your version of 'anarchism' with orthodox trotskyism. As far as you're concerned the current crisis boils down to one of leadership - if only the proletariat had a decent field staff, they wouldn't be constantly 'sold out' and their back bone for a fight against the class enemy would be strengthened. It is an analysis that is unable to comprehend the critique of value Marx bequeathed us, and instead you have distilled the worst aspects of 2nd international marxism, whatever claims you make to the contrary.

...if only the proletariat had a decent magazine to read...

While you're here to show us it instead boils down to a question of publicity...

Why you really are trying to move the left into the 21st century...

Ignore my comments above - AN's points are spot-on - of course, he is closer to whatever the PD aspires to be anyway.

Sean68

I haven't even slightly seen things like this for over 30 years, and even then I never called myself an anarchist; you just roll out convenient pre-prepared ideas as a blanket denunciation to compensate for your inability to deal with what is actually said. Your only will is the will to superiority, as a consolation for your evasion of the current urgent need to contribute to clarifying the enormity of the tasks of the confused class explosions happening in different forms more or less everywhere.

Anything teleological is "religion like", in my book. If your response is that much of the marxian theorising going around is either teleological, or at least couched in that language, then I would agree. Addressing that might be nice project for an ex-proletariat fetishist!

There is no strawman argument because all the points come directly from the SolFed document. The call centre example is followed because that is one, of the two, examples in the SolFed document. The SolFed argument is countered with independent research.

A retired (ex-boss) neighbour of mine has decided to become a pilot. Of course, after the revolution we'll all be proletarians, and there won't be any bosses to show us any different - decadent bastards! You won't want to let those those granny bum-wipers get pilot's licences, or you'll be on a bum-wiping rota. In the war, women quickly became plumbers, electricians, pilots etc. Why are there doctors AND nurses? The implicit assumptions due to abstract labour are insidious, but must be challenged.

You're now latching on to another capitalist trait - exchange value. How can one possibly compare SolFed and PD? Do you suggest a measure of agitational productivity?

That's been done, it went in the original Strategy & Struggle thread. Here at Feb 23 2009.

Oh, it's the 'PD is a kind of struggling wacky theory brand' tack, again. It's been a while, can't be bothered to see how long. However, I do remember that the overwhelming majority of PD related threads on Libcom have been started by you. So it's actually you who's doing the 'targeting'. Of course, you might also be stalking PD on a load of trot sites as well. Never had a look, but I kind of wouldn't be surprised if there was a "PD hasn't done their German homework" thread lurking out there somewhere...

Well, I was asking if you take a position on money as a commodity, from which, to quote Bellofiore (wordfile),

In Bellofiore's argument (completely absent in your 'homeboy' Stützle's essay btw) against it there's nothing about Bretton-Woods or gold-standard, and I think Heinrich's casual reference to it (Bretton et al.) is only that (Wolf notes this is also); we're rather facing a theoretical question. Gegenstandpunkt have analyses of the contemporary currency-exchange markets and bank money created ex nihilo, apparently without seeing a problem in still speaking of money as Geldware ( at least that's the word they use, so I surmise they, with Marx, insist on money as commodity).

How important is it to the theory of exploitation? I'm willing to root with Bellofiore (Heinrich and you?) that 'it doesn't matter', but unfortunately the majority probably thinks it does:

Lest we forget; PD derived from their fetish of abstract theory the following practice; eg, advocating voting for Ken Livingstone in the last London Mayoral election and advocating support for certain Middle Eastern secular bourgeois politicians. Whatever else is wrong with libcom (even when reduced by PD to a fictitious homogenous identity) it would never stoop that low into such liberal/leftist crap - while simultaneously boasting how far advanced it supposedly is in leaving the 'dinosaur class strugglers' behind. Duh...

Theory and theoretical deities become a fetish in PD's hands; their totem which, by possessing, magically invests in them supposedly superior knowledge. The resulting stance - as shown repeatedly by Sean68 here- consists in repeating mantras and denunciation;

Their strawman description of 'libcom views' only shows they fail to even grasp the content of what they criticise. (Eg, most libcom users aren't even SolFed members.) A quick site search would show that many people here have an understanding of the critique of political economy etc - but they don't merely fetishise that as a thing in itself to be religiously defended against what they see as rival churches and evangelised. Rather, they tend to try to use it as an aid to understanding and advancing common struggles. Which doesn't mean supporting bourgeois politicians whilst deluding yourselves of your 'superiority'.

Well Mr Marriot, as the great Oscar Wilde said, better to be talked about than not talked about at all.

I still maintain you're a bunch of crypto trotskyites with barely a fag paper's breadth between yourselves and the SWP.

admin: this is a non-flaming forum. keep it civil

Well Mr 68, you servile worshipper of marxoid intellectuals, sometimes it take a quote to catch a quoter. Wilde also said; "Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation." You would do well to begin to heed his advice; "Be yourself; everyone else is already taken."

Then "advocating voting for Ken Livingstone in the last London Mayoral election and advocating support for certain Middle Eastern secular bourgeois politicians" surely makes you crypto-liberals - and far closer to the SWP than anything tolerated on libcom.

As you were informed some time ago;

Yet your guru Mr Kurz has strangely escaped the denunciations of being a 'dinosaur who fetishises class struggle, the proletariat' etc ad nauseum. Try applying your 'critique' firstly closer to home.

PD liquidates itself, and though the message is carried on also by others like Jehu @pogo-chronicle, just at a moment like this there is most need for an 'anti-German' perspective, on the question of money in particular.

Anyone know why PD decided to call it quits? Not that I really care. PD was even shiter than it used to. At least a few years back they would occasionally put up something interesting, but lately (last year or so) it's just been utter crap.

Only now I begin to appreciate Baudrillard, when I read The end of production which seems close to Robert Kurz's thinking, specifically on the end of the gold standard Baudrillard is one of the few to ponder on this (he writes as much that post-modernism coincides with the end of the gold referent).

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1861/economic/ch18.htm