Kermit Snelson on Thu, 10 Jan 2002 09:31:07 +0100 (CET) |
[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]
RE: <nettime> The Flexible Personality, part I |
> The figure of the flexible personality can be publicly > ridiculed, satirized, its supporting institutions can > be attacked on political grounds, its traits can be > exposed in cultural and artistic productions [...] Brian Holmes proposes thus to revive Marcuse's critical theory by erecting a new "ideal type" for public ridicule, etc. Spontaneously, a new public community will emerge to fling the term "flexible personality" and other stinging epithets at the insensate brutes who comprise the "networked managerial class" at Dell Computer. This epoch-making alliance of academic name-calling and street theater will be carried out using the personal computers that Dell and the like have unwisely (yet profitably) sold to this new post-proletariat. And so will Empire fall and a just society finally emerge, thanks to a collective exercise of "negative critique" that is, in fact, so purely negative that it contains nothing that the ruling class may co-opt. I have my doubts. Marcuse-style "negative thinking" and scorn for "repressive tolerance" is hardly immune to co-optation, as shown by Marcuse's own ten-year career as an analyst in the US Office of Strategic Services (now called the CIA) and later as the US State Department's bureau chief for Central Europe. The reason is that Marcuse's opposition to liberalism, relativism, and the displacement of politics by technology was useful to those who also employed "conservative" courtiers like Samuel Huntington during the same period to propagate similar messages. An economic system dominated by transnational corporations requires a post-liberal legal system, and much of the ideological work of paid political theorists since 1905 or so, from left to right, has been concerned with establishing precisely that. This involves, in part, replacing a positive law system based on convention with a natural law system based on ethics and aesthetics. Marcuse and Huntington were used as means toward this end, both providing what amounts to a justification for natural law ideology but packaged differently for different economic classes, educational levels and psychological types. The irony is that as the uniformly anti-liberal 20th century drew to a close, the uniform anti-liberalism of professional intellectuals and activists is becoming obsolete. This may have been evident as early as 1975, upon the occasion of the Trilateral Commission report that Brian cites. Although progressives love to cite Samuel Huntington's fascist musings on the "governability of democracies," I've never seen anybody point out that in an appendix of that volume, the Trilateral Commission made it clear that several of its members thoroughly rejected Huntington's analysis. For example, from page 196-7: The Founding Fathers of the United States, one North American Commissioner stated, did not see their first problem as that of creating a _governable_ democracy. At least as important in their minds was the guaranteeing of the rights of citizens against the possible excesses of their governors [...] According to another North American Commissioner, who disagreed that the need is for "less democracy," the current relative deadlock in U.S. politics is not unique. Contrary to the pessimists, he feels recent developments indicate "triumph" and a "finest hour" for American democracy [...] A number of other Commissioners also associated themselves with the above points, arguing for "more democracy, not less" and expressing a concern for maintenance of "absolutely free media." [1] Sound familiar? Obviously, the Trilateral Commission was not exactly horrified by the street and cultural politics of the 60's and 70's. Huntington's "democratic distemper" theory was rejected by those in power in 1975, just as his "clash of civilizations" theory has been rejected by those in power now. Of course, this is not to say that the World Managers are on our side. Their loyalties are to shareholder value and the balance sheet, not to us. It is important for activists to understand this. Global corporations act against peace, justice, democracy and the environment when it is lucrative for them to do so. When it isn't, they don't. They most certainly don't do what they do because of "craziness," as stated in October by the absurd Munich Volksbad Declaration. [2] They have economic interests, and they build centrally-led institutions and organizations to defend them. We, who have competing interests, must do the same. Simply accusing our opponents of hating sex won't accomplish much. Let's allow Marcuse and the other Freudo-Marxists to rest in peace in the history books, for the only thing of lasting value they ever contributed was a classic example of projection. Kermit Snelson [1] _The Crisis of Democracy_, eds. Huntington, Crozier, Watanuki, pp 196-7 [2] http://slash.autonomedia.org/article.pl?sid=01/11/04/0356224 # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net