As
a Marxist anarchists, I do believe that we should fight for the creation of an
alternative hominid ecology or social world. I think that the call to
commit and fight, to put alternatives on the table, has been one of the most
powerful contributions of thinkers like Zizek and Badiou. If we don’t
commit and fight for alternatives those alternatives will never appear in the
world. Nonetheless, we still have to grapple with the world we find
ourselves in. And it is here, in my encounters with some Militant
Marxists, that I sometimes find it difficult to avoid the conclusion that they
are unintentionally aiding and abetting the very things they
claim to be fighting.
In
their refusal to become impure, to work with situations or assemblages as we
find them, to sully their hands, they end up reproducing the very
system they wish to topple and change. Narcissistically they get to
sit there, smug in their superiority and purity, while everything continues as
it did before because they’ve refused to become politicians or engage in the
difficult concrete work of assembling human and nonhuman actors to render
another world possible. As a consequence, they occupy the position of
Hegel’s beautiful soul that denounces the horrors of the world, celebrate the
beauty of their soul, while depending on those horrors of the world to
sustain their own position.
To
engage in politics is to engage in networks or ecologies of relations between
humans and nonhumans. To engage in ecologies is to descend into networks
of causal relations and feedback loops that you cannot completely master and
that will modify your own commitments and actions. But there’s no other
way, there’s no way around this, and we do need to act now. Some Remarks on Ontology and Politics from Larval Subjects
Rather
than dismissing ontology because it doesn’t tell us which politics to derive, I
would instead prefer a more generous approach that makes room for ontological
meditations, that recognizes that not all questions are questions about
politics, and that makes room for normative meditations and considerations as
to how to respond to oppressive situations in the world and promote
emancipation.
On “commodity fetishism,” etc. from Object-Oriented Philosophy by doctorzamalek
(Graham Harman) Cosmos and History has an interesting new issue posted on the
theme of the future of philosophy. You can find it, free of charge, HERE. (It’s an open access journal.)
In
short, it’s one thing to make an economic argument about the source of value in
labor, but quite another to make an ontological argument that the source of all
reality lies in human activity. Marx himself would be very unlikely to go that
far, as his inversion of Hegel suggests. This leads Phillips not only into a
relational ontology, but into a full-blown idealist one. (I think Hallward has
the same problem with his relationism, and have told him so.)
The
rhetorical problem here is that Marx has such moral authority in some circles
that even misuses of his theories are often saluted as devastating blows. If
you want to accuse object-oriented philosophy of “commodity fetishism,” this means
that you’re not just taking an economic position (I’ve said nothing about
economics, after all), but that you’re claiming that not just all value, but
all reality is created by human labor. It’s a sort of
Berkeleyan Marxism that I wouldn’t advise as a promising avenue for the future
of the Left.
Hans-Hermann
Hoppe is calling for a “new class war” – between the producers and the parasites. Welfare
states are what are crashing all over the EU. Which is why I advised my readers
very recently to “jump off the airplane.” Hard money, self-help, a free
market, private property rights, political economy – these are the tried and trusted old ideas of
the Whigs and the classical liberals that Europe
as well as all the Anglo-American nations forgot. …
I
myself champion a “private law society” – on which I have a column here. It means the same as the common law of old: Property,
Contracts and Torts. Further, each dispute judged on its own merits with both
sides represented by their own lawyers, before an impartial judge. Such judges
can be available in the free market easily – and when both sides agree on a
judge, he will be surely be impartial. There are “Rent-a-Judge” companies in California
Private
law also solves the money and banking problem we currently face – for money is
then Property: coins of gold and silver. And free, competing private banking
can safely exist under the laws of Contract, whether these be “demand deposits”
or “time deposits,” or “loans.”
This
means Money & Banking Under Law – unlike a central bank issuing
monopolistic fiat paper money while also creating credit out of thin air that
has been established by legislation. These are not only fraud but also
inflationary. We can then have “prudent private banking” without any “lender of
last resort.” That is, no “moral hazard.”
There
is another essay on this important matter in my Natural Order book
on the right-hand bar. Chaos and confusion reign today – because of socialism
and its electoral as well as legislative politics. A completely free market,
fully competitive, without any political or bureaucratic controls, rules or
regulations, but under private law – this is what I believe in.
Creation: It Looked Good on Paper from One Cʘsmos by Gagdad
Bob
Quite
simply, war is not just inevitable but necessary, with roots extending deep
into the very structure of the cosmos. Conversely, it is pacifism that is not
only unnecessary but highly narcissary to boot; sanctimonious pacifists are
usually just people unaware of their viciousness and cruelty, like, say, Jimmy
Carter. Pacifism is essentially to surrender -- not just in war, but in the
struggle of existence itself. For as written in Exodus, The Lord is a
man of war; or in the words of Jesus: Think not that I am come to
send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword; or in the words
of Krishna : Nothing is higher for a
[member of the warrior caste] than a righteous war.
In
his introduction to the subject of Holy War, Perry cites Guenon, who wrote that
the essential reason for war -- legitimate war -- is "to end a dis-order
and re-establish order; in other words, it is the unification of a
multiplicity, by use of means which belong to the world of multiplicity
itself.... War understood in this way, and not limited in an exclusively human
sense, thus represents the cosmic process of the reintegration of the
manifested into the principial unity." This reintegration necessarily
involves destruction, as catabolism is to metabolism.
Guenon
continues: "The purpose of war is the establishment of peace, for even in
its most ordinary sense peace is really nothing else than order, equilibrium,
or harmony, these three terms being nearly synonymous and all designating under
slightly different aspects the reflection of unity in multiplicity itself....
Multiplicity is then in fact not really destroyed, but 'transformed'..."
In
another sense, legitimate war is none other than justice, being
that justice is really an "equilibrating function" which is
"directed against those who disturb order and [has] as its object the
restoration of order." The reason we catch and punish bad guys is
ultimately to restore order -- to the community, to the wronged individual,
within the disordered psyche of the perpetrator, and ultimately to the Cosmos
itself.
Fundamentalism’s two faces: the naïve and the power peddlers from auroleaks by auroleaks
Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is
purely coincidental. Or is it? Posted by Gautam Chikermane on Wednesday, May 9,
2012 at 8:36 pm at his
Hindustan Times blog: P.S. Gautam Chikermane can hardly be called a
Western supermacist (sic) or
chauvinist.
Recently Sraddhalu Ranade of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram was
prevented from engaging in open dialogue and debate with members of Auroville:
LINK ...
Mihir Jha @MihirKumarJha
7:05 PM - 10 May 12
Not
that Sri Aurobindo devotess
have no internet presence but then they are not keeping pace with changes.
Check this http://www.motherorissa.com/
Marxist Racism: in theory and practice from Centre Right India by Aravindan Neelakandan
That
both Marx and Engels were Euro-centric is well known. They were convinced that
non-European cultures could not possess anything of innate value. And whatever
of value non-European cultures might have had, they had been surpassed in the
march of history by Euro-American culture. However in the writings of Karl
Marx, one finds a soft corner for Indians when compared to what he thinks of
Slavs. The reason is not far to seek. Marx finds Indian communities to be
racially connected to dominant European nations…
Yet
paradoxically in the very same essay, Marx acknowledges that these very Indian
weavers living ‘undignified, stagnatory, and vegetative life’ had produced such
‘admirable textures ‘ and had sent them to Europe making Europe to send ‘in
return for them her precious metals’.[5]
In
other words the denunciation of Indian villages come from a civilizational bias
rather than from an objective analysis based on economic productivity.
Curiously, overlapping the period of observation made by Marx, in the span of
just ninety years -from 1765 to 1858- India, coming under the grip of East
India Company, had experienced twelve major famines and four ‘severe
scarcities’ and for the first time India started experiencing famines not limited
to small geographical regions but affecting a wider area and taking a heavy
toll of life.[6]
A Matter of Law from Centre Right India by Jaideep Prabhu
Contrary
to popular belief, restrictions on proselytisation placed by some state
governments in India is neither in violation of the freedom of religion nor is
it a departure from an international consensus.
The
final draft (of Article 25) entitled the citizens of India India India
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