tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7038706923946698710.post143167848377466319..comments2023-11-05T03:05:16.380-08:00Comments on No Useless Leniency: Strategic Melancholia: an Ultra-Left Disorder?Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18237178500472453910noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7038706923946698710.post-9802300890339409272011-11-20T10:39:46.576-08:002011-11-20T10:39:46.576-08:00What we can see in Debord’s work is the replicatio...<b>What we can see in Debord’s work is the replication of the tension of the ultra-left position: between the risk of a slide into ‘full-blown’ melancholia, in which the only hope lies in the utter misery of capitalist ‘life’ that would lead to desperate revolt, and a strategic melancholia that might offer critical reflection on the experiences of defeat and the possibilities of recomposition. The tension lies between the analysis of capital as totalitarian dominance and the possibility of a strategic analysis of the actualities or rationalities that might be reworked from it.</b><br />This is somewhat close to the position that I attempt to stake out, and which is, moreover, also the concern of <a href="http://www.platypus1917.org" rel="nofollow">The Platypus Affiliated Society</a>. Besides Debord, the other major representative of this line of thought was, of course, Adorno (and his self-described "melancholy science" from <i>Minimal Moralia</i>. However, I'm not sure how fairly this can be characterized as "ultra-leftist."<br /><br />While one can easily become lost in melancholic contemplation of the past, the "working-through" of the Left's historic defeats is a crucial component of its practice and the only hope of its ultimate victory. As Marx put it in his <i>Class Struggles in France</i>:<br /><b>[T]he defeat of June divulged to the despotic powers of Europe the secret that France must maintain peace abroad at any price in order to be able to wage civil war at home. Thus the people's who had begun the fight for their national independence were abandoned to the superior power of Russia, Austria, and Prussian, but at the same time the fate of these national revolutions was made subject to the fate of the proletarian revolution, and they were robbed of their apparent autonomy, their independence of the great social revolution. The Hungarian shall not be free, nor the Pole, nor the Italian, as long as the worker remains a slave!<br /><br />Finally, with the victories of the Holy Alliance, Europe has taken on a form that makes every fresh proletarian upheaval in France directly coincide with <i>a world war</i>. The new French revolution is forced to leave its national soil forthwith and <i>conquer the European terrain</i>, on which alone the social revolution of the nineteenth century can be accomplished.<br /><br />Thus only the June defeat has created all the conditions under which France can seize the initiative of the European revolution. Only after being dipped in the blood of <i>the June insurgents</i> did the tricolor become the flag of the European revolution -– <i>the red flag!</i><br /><br />And we exclaim: <i>The revolution is dead! Long live the revolution!</i></b>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com