People Power

At the RP event yesterday, which was disappointing for a number of reasons. IT will no doubt be doing the uneviable task of posting up a report (now up), for which we should all be eternally grateful (for reasons which attendees will be all too aware of). She has also kindly posted Alberto's paper from the SR event as well.

On a personal note just to say thanks to all those who have expressed an interest in reading the book and Dominic in particular for already supplying comments and proofing corrections (invaluable for those of you familiar with academic publishing). The book will be a hideously expensive hardback, never to go to paperback I would guess. Eventually I'll probably be begging people to put in library orders. But in relation to IT's points about availability for this and any other works of mine you may be interested in just contact me. I don't have the facility to put up papers, except on the blog (which is painful to do), plus to me it seems to be a bit vain in relation to my own work.

Also thanks to everyone for a lovely evening after RP, nice to meet so many nice people.

Done (for now)

'Work ceases upon the picture or manuscript, not because it is finished, but because sending-in day is at hand, or because the printer is clamorous for copy, or because “I am sick of working at this thing” or “I can’t see what more I can do to it”’.
R G Collingwood, An Autobiography (1939)

The manuscript is done (for now) and if I haven't already victimised you and you are interested in providing comments / criticism please email me. The plan is to submit to EUP in September and it should be out next year.

The Death of the Novel

Q: Is the novel dead?

A: Oh yes. Very much so.

Q: What replaces it?

A: I should think that it is replaced by what existed before it was invented.

Q: The same thing?

A: The same sort of thing.

Q: Is the bicycle dead?

Donald Barthelme, 'The Explanation'

A Difficult Question

Is the proletariat crucial to capitalism? Yes, absolutely. It is actually more crucial to capitalism than the bourgeoisie. You can have capitalism without the bourgeoisie but you cannot have capitalism without the proletariat. Overcoming capitalism requires the self-abolition of the proletariat. This makes the question of left-wing politics extremely difficult. How can you talk about the self-abolition of the proletariat when working people are being pushed against the wall? I think it is very difficult to try to mediate the issue of defending the achievements of working class movements in a neo-liberal universe, and a position that avoids hypostatizing the working class as the bearer of the future. I don't claim to have any easy answers to that, but I do think the abolition of the working class is the key to the liberation of humanity. I agree
with Marx's formulation.

Moishe Postone, 'Rethinking the Critical Theory of Capitalism', Principia Dialectica
2 (2006), p.13

I have a lot of sympathy and agreement with value-form Marxism of the kind proposed by Postone, Finelli, the Krisis group, and Principia Dialectica. They argue that capital is the Hegelian subject that radically 'posits its presuppositions', i.e. constantly re-establishing itself through the value-form that absorbs all content, creating a totality through real subsumption and the process of real abstraction. In this situation they radically disagree with the Trontian (or more precisely Negrian) proposition that Labour is an alternative ontological creativity - rather labour is a category of capital / the value-form. In this situation labour has to be abolished, and the valorisation of the proletariat is a false hypostatisation leading to the defects of Statist socialism.


This is where Postone's question is crucial: in a neo-liberal capitalism devoted to dismantling workerist forms can we simply call for the abolition of labour without being complicit with these processes? Of course the value-form model argues for a continuing ruthless critique of labour, rather than any appeal to an entitlement to work, and is premised, I guess, on the future 'proper' crisis of the system that will lead to the abolition of the value-form. In this case defending the achievement of labour / social-democracy would be something of a Katechon, delaying the coming of the evil one, and so redemption.


I'm divided on this point, as a recent email debate I've had with SBA has proved; both attracted to the kind of Polanyian workerism that Kinkle and Toscano diagnose in The Wire, and in agreement with the critique / dissolution of labour thesis. As usual my 'compromise' is the defence / expansion of non-commodified forms (or the negation of the commodity by de-commodification), including labour. In fact Postone agrees that partial containment of the market by the state is necessary: 'The only way we could reach such a [pre-revolutionary] situation would be on a practical level, that is, through a series of reforms, some of which are more pressing than others.' (from this pdf) One of the most precise articulations, I think, of this type of strategy has been Owen's work, which combines the defence of the utopian elements of social-democratic coupled to the refusal of work thesis.


I still think, however, that the concept that some teleological capitalist dynamic of real subsumption right down into the neuro-biological will somehow destroy the human subject and so release a 'capitalism beyond capitalism' (cf Alex's comment), or some new communist forms ('install the Ho Chi Minh Chip'), is profoundly wrong.


Capitalist 'meat puppets' - a science-fictional 'absolute adequacy between capital and its agents' - would simply lead to fully-integrated agents of capital. I can't see how liberation from the humanist paradigm, or the human body itself, necessarily threatens capitalism. After all capitalism has no necessary requirement for the 'human person' - it is as happy with humanism or anti-humanism.


I notice that in Alastair Reynolds revelation space universe we still have unionised genetically enhanced monkey repairmen; perhaps they are a better future than the radically 'enhanced' 'diamond dogs'...

i.m. JGB

The simplest Surrealist act consists of dashing down into the street, pistol in hand, and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crowd. Anyone who, at least once in his life, has not dreamed of thus putting an end to the petty system of debasement and cretinization in effect has a well-defined place in that crowd, with his belly at barrel level.
André Breton

I wondered if you held up a sign with the word “Pistol” on it, would that constitute an offense? … Even the word might be offensive. Or a sign saying “Assassination.” Does the sign itself constitute an offensive act? It’s hard to say, because fantasy and reality are no longer separable, are they?...
JG Ballard

IT, with a JGB manifesto/tribute and my brief obituary at the Ballardian

An Intellectual Clown

My title comes, of course, from Philip Roth's description of Philippe Sollers, which was meant as a compliment. One could add that no doubt Franco 'Bifo' Berardi would also take it as a compliment. After writing two texts arguing that revolutionary subjectivation has failed, that we are due a 'wave of suicides' (at least an empirically testable assertion), re-evaluating Baudrillard contra Deleuze and Guattari, and hyming the 'the intellectual potency of depression' (Berardi 2008a; 2008b), Berardi now turns to the current financial crisis. Anyone expecting further hyper-pessimism will be surprised, that has now flipped over into a strange hyper-optimism. Contrary to the caveats and warnings of David Harvey, who warns that the current crisis is leading to a 'far greater consolidation of the capitalist class', Berardi concludes that 'the history of modern capitalism is over'.

In a remarkable gesture Berardi sets-up a schematic opposition between the 'net-economy', valorised as the site of the general intellect that 'is challenging the proprietary principle that has ruled Modern capitalist society', and 'criminal capitalism', associated with militarism and the abandonment of legal rule. In light of the fact that this 'split' exactly replicates the relative funding sources of the US Republicans and Democrats (cf. Davis 2009) it's unsurprising that Berardi embraces Obama as prophet of the general intellect:

Obama's victory in the US may be the opening of a new period in the evolution of mankind. This event has injected new hope in the peaceful army of the general intellect all over the world. The new President was voted in by cognitive labor, and his victory is the defeat of the criminal class represented by Cheney-Bush. But this victory marks only the beginning of the fight, that will be the fight of intellectual force against the brutal force of ignorance, violence and profit.

It may be the defeat of Cheney-Bush but as Mike Davis has repeatedly pointed out the 'new economy' base of the democrats is hardly congenial to any functioning left politics, and in fact might well be a purer neo-liberalism than the 'military Keynesianism' of Bush's neo-liberalism (although Keynesianism for the rich continues in the bank bail outs). In an utterly bizarre analysis Berardi argues that the media system (identified with criminal capitalism) has 'finally overwhelmed the productive cognitive class', when wasn't it this 'cognitive class' that backed Obama, and which is firmly based in the 'media system' - hence the Democrats wooing of Hollywood.

While I can certainly agree with Berardi's comments on the privatisation of experience, the shattering of social solidarity, and the pernicious effects of privatised car culture, the fact that computers has a great deal to do with these dynamics (and permitted the possibility of the complex financial products which helped produce the current crisis) is bypassed for a political fable of libertarian cyerculture tamed by 'the man' (it's as if The Baffler never happened...).

Berardi's solution is to conduct a kind of therapy on the desire for private property. His argument is that 'semiotic goods' are not annihilated through use (just like tables?) and so permit common use and collectivisation. Now we no longer have to look forward to a wave of suicides, but communism is back, surfing on the wave of commanlity of knowledge, the ideological crisis of private ownership, and the mandatory communilisation of need.

Of course this can't be the old communism of 'Will and voluntarism' (the entirely predictable targets), but 'A totally new brand of communism'.

Predictably the 'evil' background of this communism of Totality (capitalised of course...) was Hegelianism, forgetting the fact that Hegelian communism was largely the opposition to Stalinist state-capitalism. Nothing can get in the way of cliche, however. Now, via the general intellect, we have a communism of singularities and non-temporary autonomous zones: 'a sort of Revolution without a Subject' (i. e. no revolution at all).

Lacking necessity this process will be achieved by droppong out and creating new networks of service. i. e. further privatisation. Thankfully we can take heart from Berardi's announcement that we don't need industrial labour anymore, instead we'll find ourselves in a state of 'furgality and freedom' (which actually sounds quite good...) What will happen to computers and the net in the absence of industry is not vouchedsafe to us. In case you are feeling scared by this new singularised and chaotic post-growth economy, don't worry 'politics and therapy will be one and the same activity in the coming time.' Kindly Berardi and co. will be there to take care of my or your anxieties to allow 'a happy adaptation'.

At once banal, weird, and deeply creepy, perhaps I'm the fool for taking any of this seriously.

Bibliography

Berardi, Franco 'Bifo', '(T)error and Poetry', trans. Arianna Bove, Radical Philosophy 149 (May / June 2008a): 39-44.
___, 'Alterity and Desire', in Simon O’ Sullivan and Stephen Zepke (eds.), Deleuze, Guattari and the Production of the New (London: Continuum, 2008b), pp. 22-32.

___, 'Communism is back but we should call it the therapy of singularisation', Generation Online, 2009.

Davis, Mike, 'Obama at Manassas', New Left Review 56 (March - April 2009): 5-40.

Harvey, David, 'Their Crisis, Our Challenge', Red Pepper 2009.

Power to the People?

Courtesy of IT, the RP rival to the communism event at Birkbeck (this is my interpolation btw), and I can only hope it is better than the Birkbeck 'event'.

Power to the People?
`Power to the people!’ was once a revolutionary slogan, but reference to government by the people and for the people soon became an empty cliché of the post-revolutionary status quo (see above - Citizen Smith as commentary on fidelity?). The people has become a notoriously ambiguous and contested term, for which numerous alternatives have been proposed: the proletariat, the workers, the masses, the soviets, the nation, the community, the multitude, the commons… And now? How might we assess the different conceptions of political change embodied in these often conflicting ideas? What is the political and philosophical significance of `the people’ today?

Radical Philosophy Conference, Birkbeck College, Malet Street, London WC 1, 9 May 2009
9.30-10.00 Registration

10.00-10.15 Introduction (Peter Hallward, RP)

10.15-11.30 The General Will (chair: Peter Hallward, RP)
‘The General Will on the Street: Parisian Activism, Sovereignty and Power, 1789-93’ - David Andress (Portsmouth)
‘How Do the People Make Themselves Heard?’ - Sophie Wahnich (CNRS, Paris)

11.45-1.00 Class, Commons & Multitude (chair: Esther Leslie, RP)
‘Crisis, Tragedies and the Commons’ - Massimo De Angelis (UEL)
[second speaker tba]

1.00-2.00 Lunch Break

2.00-3.15 Urban Collectivities (chair: David Cunningham, RP)
‘Urban Intersections and the Politics of Anticipation’ - AbdouMaliq Simone (Goldsmiths)
`Urbanism and the Post-Political’ - Erik Swyngedouw (Manchester)

3.45-5.00 Population & Biopolitics (chair: Stuart Elden, Durham)
‘Biopolitics, Diasporas and (Neo)Liberal Political Economy’ - Couze Venn (Nottingham Trent)
‘Feminist Strategies Revisited – Sexopolitics, Multitude and Biopolitics’ - Encarnacion Gutierrez Rodriguez (Manchester)

5.00-6.00 Plenary: 'They, the People' (chair: Peter Osborne, RP)
Gayatri Spivak (Columbia University, NY)

Registration and further details: matt.charles@blueyonder.co.uk

£25/£10 unwaged

Cheques payable to `Radical Philosophy Ltd’ should be sent to: Radical Philosophy Conference, Peter Osborne, CRMEP, Middlesex University, Trent Park Campus, Bramley Rd, London N14 4YZ

Plus this, courtesy of Sebastian Budgen

IMMANENCE AND MATERIALISM CONFERENCE

DEPARTMENT OF POLITICS> QUEEN MARY, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

CALL FOR PAPERS

Date: 23 June 2009

Venue: Queen Mary, University of London

Call for papers deadline: 22 May 2009

All papers and enquiries to: s.j.choat@qmul.ac.uk

Keynote speakers:

Professor James Williams (University of Dundee)

Dr Ray Brassier (American University of Beirut)

Dr Alberto Toscano (Goldsmiths, University of London)

The concepts of immanence and materialism are becoming increasingly important in political philosophy. This conference seeks to analyse the connections between these two concepts and to examine the consequences for political thought. It is possible, as Giorgio Agamben has done, to make a distinction within modern philosophy between a line of transcendence (Kant, Husserl, Levinas, Derrida) and a line of immanence (Spinoza, Nietzsche, Deleuze, Foucault). If we follow this distinction, then 'the line of immanence' might include Spinozist interpretations of Marx, Althusser's aleatory materialism, and Deleuze's superior empiricism. But what is the value of this work and is it useful to distinguish it from 'transcendent' philosophies? Distinctions between materialism and idealism are equally complex: Derrida, for example, might as easily be classed a materialist as an idealist. And where can we place more recent work like the critiques of Deleuze by Badiou and Zizek, or Meillassoux's speculative materialism?

Papers may wish to consider the following questions:

-What is materialist philosophy? How can it be distinguished from idealist philosophy, and is it useful to do so? Are all philosophies of immanence necessarily materialist?

-Is it legitimate or useful to make a clear distinction between philosophies of immanence and philosophies of transcendence?

-How have the concepts of immanence and materialism traditionally been conceived within political philosophy?

-What, if any, are the political consequences of pursuing a philosophy of immanence?

Paper titles and a 300-word abstract should be sent by Friday 22 May 2009 to Simon Choat at s.j.choat@qmul.ac.uk, Department of Politics, Queen Mary. Graduate papers welcome.