>Now, this banal, trite, vacuous, sterile politics would be fine as the
>conclusion of a first-year college textbook, and who could take exception to
>it on that level, indeed one would be gratified to see such breadth of vision
>in Social Studies 101. But that is not how Henwood represents himself, and
>those who lionise him as providing a "thoroughly comprehensive...prescription
>for market socialism in light of the notion that 'a future society has to
>emerge out of this one, on the basis of experimentation and struggle' are the
>ones who ought to hang their heads in shame.
>
>Mark
Although Yoshie seems to believe that discussing Doug falls in the realm of
a kind of Krafft-Ebbing obsession, it is no accident that his name keeps
cropping up on the leftwing of cyberspace where he is a ubiquitious
presence except on the paleo-leftist lists where Mark and I serve as
cerberos-like figures. "Abandon all reformism all ye who enter here."
Only 5 years ago or so I was defending Doug as the Lenin of today, a
compliment that Zizek alone feels capable of mustering today. After all, on
a certain level his trenchant analysis of the workings of late capital were
based on the same kind of deep research that went into something like
Lenin's study of the capitalist transformation of the Russian countryside.
Who could not be impressed with his mastery of statistics. Many regarded
him as the next Paul Sweezy.
I think two things account for his "turn". One was the success of "Wall
Street" itself, which elevated him into the kind of personality who feels
more comfortable with other Verso authors than the unwashed masses on
Marxism email lists. The other thing that was important was his exposure to
the Amherst school around Wolff and Resnick, whose neo-Althusserian cum
postmodernism fit him like a comfortable old shoe. At last he found people
who shared his enthusiasm for Freud and could quote Marx like the devil
quoting scripture.
Now that I look back in retrospect, I think that the final trajectory could
have been anticipated in "Wall Street" itself which I finally had occasion
to read last year. It is a curious sort of book written at least tacitly in
the name of Marxism. It is almost devoid of politics. Money has a life of
its own and the ability of working people to abolish the rule of capital
and set up their own rules hardly enters the picture. Basically there is
not that much difference between Doug and the laughable Chris Burford whose
endorsement of every little bit of "social control" of finance threatens to
require smelling salts.
The odd thing is that no matter how successful Doug is in the world of the
left glitterati, he has never been able to accept that among serious
Marxists he is viewed as something of a joke. A very intelligent joke, but
a joke nonetheless.
Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
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