The CPI(Maoist)'s polemic against Post-Modernism

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Since many of you have an axe to grind with Post-Modernism, and many of you are fond if not at least vaguely interested in the activities of the Naxalites. I thought that I would post this critique of Post Modernism that appeared in their theoretical journal. I think that it at the very least shows that the Maoists are philosophically and theoretically literate, more literate than half the western "Marxists" who dismiss them out of hand.

http://www.bannedthought.net/India/PeoplesMarch/PM1999-2006/publications/post-modernism/contents.htm

And for those of you who do not want to read it all, but get off on that Marxist polemic flair. Enjoy:


Post-modernism or post-structuralism, a powerful wave of anti-rational, anti-commonsensical, anti-Renaissance, anti-Marxist thoughts stormed into the academic, intellectual and political circles at the end of the last century. Emanating from Europe, it burgeoned into a devastating trend challenging the concept of truth, any scope of emancipation of mankind from the existing order and also the struggles of the dominated and the exploited towards a new order of things. The birth and growth of such benumbing thoughts worshipping passivity or at best small-scale protests coincided with the decay in the socialist states, frustration of the new generation, the retreat of the radical Left, and the theoretical puzzlement induced by brands of accommodative Marxism. The world capitalist system despite waves of crisis could menacingly appear internationally with the mantra of globalization. This objective situation also helped do the spadework for the rise of the new breed of intellectuals who preferred intellectual exercise in pessimism or exclusively narrow-based thinking like identity, politics, etc. instead of the consideration of a bouncing back with a global perspective for dislodging the international chains of the capitalist system. Such politics of this new trend against radical politics and philosophy obviously provides some soothing balm to the war-weary imperialists.

[Brutus]

I like post-modernism...

[o well this is ok I guess]

in his [Michel Foucault] view, people have no escape route from the multiple sources of power. He also dismisses the view of overhauling the system of domination. This isn't true at all. A cursory reading of any of his histories would prove this view to be untrue.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

This isn't true at all. A cursory reading of any of his histories would prove this view to be untrue.

You are correct, but it's important to note that while Folcaut's project was about exposing the eventualization of historic phenomena as a method of critique, fundamentally speaking, his critique focused on the idea of governance, the methods of governance and the limits of governance. To use his own definition critique is "the art of not being governed so much" (What is Critique, Foucault). However his project does not ask who is being governed, or to be more exact, it does not formulate a theory of governance within class society. Neither does it envision an alternative to the present state of things.

Personally, I agree it is wrong to reject Folcaut in such a manner, because personally I am fond of his work. After all, despite the fact that he was a reformist, his anti-liberalism makes him quite useful. Likewise, it is wrong to charctherize him as a post-modernist even though he is one of post-modernisms founding fathers. To quote him from an interview


"I think that three is a widespread and facile tendency, which one should combat, to designate that which has just occurred as the primary enemy, as if this were always the principle form of oppression from which one had to liberate oneself. Now, this simple attitude entails a number of dangerous consequences: first, an inclination to seek out some cheap form of archaism or some imaginary past forms of happiness that people did not, in fact have at all. For instance, in areas that interest me, it is very amusing to see how contemporary sexuality is described as something absolutely terrible. To think that it is only possible now to make love after turning off the television!and in mass produced beds! "no like that wonderful time when...." Well, what about those wonderful times when people worked eighteen hours a day and there were six people in a bed, if one was lucky enough to have a bed! There is in this hatred of the present or the immediate past a dangerous tendency to invoke a completely mythical past........ if it is extremely dangerous to say that reason is the enemy that should be eliminated, it is just as dangerous to say that any critical questioning of this rationality risks sending us into irrationality. One should not forget and I am saying this not in order to criticize rationality but to show how ambiguous thing are, it was on the basis of the flamboyant rationality of social Darwinism that racism was formulated, becoming one of the most enduring and powerful ingredients of Nazism. This was of course an irrationality, but an irrationality that was at the same time, after all, a certain form of rationality.


Still, I think it is important to realize that the claim being made in this work should be considered in context with this quote


In the crisis of the western world, Post-modernism is not a mere negative response, it is also a sort of distorted protest. It reflects the cynicism and frustration of the 1970s and 1980s and so it is easily accepted in the west. In Derrida’s thought, ‘power’ tends to be corrupt. He says that ‘power’ tries to unify everything by force and thus rejects differences. So reject power. The basic fact is, they say, that the tortured remains tortured because the entire system invariably generates the tortured. Whatever political system it may be, the final result is absence of freedom and presence of frustration. Such views gained further credibility due to the rise of bureaucratic revisionist regimes in Russia, East Europe and then China, after capitalist restoration. These views are easily accepted in the western world mired in chronic crisis. For freedom Derrida gave the call for Deconstruction.



So fundamentally speaking, if they offer a vision, it is not on a class basis. They still envision a society where the bourgeois controls the means of production.

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

I have never tried to analyze anything whatsoever from the point of view of politics, but always to ask politics what it had to say about the problems with which it was confronted. I question it about the positions it takes and the reasons it gives for this; I don't ask it to determine the theory of what I do. I am neither an adversary nor a partisan of Marxism; I question it about what it has to say about experiences that ask questions of it.

http://www.foucault.info/foucault/interview.html

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

http://www.foucault.info/foucault/interview.html

In general, I think it is fair to say that the Marxist framework would benefit from examining the work of Foucault, particularly his historical work, but that such an examination must be a critical one.

Though admittedly I am a bit bias towards him.

[Synthesis-]

Foucalt is the only one of the "post-modernist" school I can read the rest appear to be junk.

[savage anomaly]

In general, I think it is fair to say that the Marxist framework would benefit from examining the work of Foucault, particularly his historical work, but that such an examination must be a critical one.

Though admittedly I am a bit bias towards him.

Well, Foucault is also interested in overturning huge parts of the "Marxist framework" like the grand historical meta-narrative of class struggle along the metaphysics of the Hegelian dialectic, for one. A "Foucauldian" marxism would be so pregnant with Nietzsche that you probably couldn't even call it "Marxism" anymore, which I doubt Foucault would mind (or that we should, for that matter) anyway. Another reason why the left should look towards Spinoza instead of Hegel, in my opinion.

[MarxArchist]

A quick read.

http://links.org.au/node/32

[3dward]

I think that Foucault open a new perspective for the political theory with his analysis of the power. Marxism, at least for what I know, takes this into consideration. Is funny ´cause I had this philosophy teacher who used to say "The problem with Foucault is that he was crazy, just look at his face".
I like Derrida too, specially his concept of differance.