"The Marxistsdont have a genuinely Marxist approach to these struggles."
Rather than treating the remark by Michael Lebowitz as 'ironic' or 'paradoxical', what if we once and for all simply recognized it as plain truth? People who base a creed on the genius (or virtuousity) of an historical individual simply cannot be faithful to the essence and scope of that genius. One could only ever be "genuinely Marxist" or, for that matter, "genuinely Christian" by being Marx or Christ. That is, as the subject X and not in relation to the object X. "What would Jesus do?" is not a cogent question for Jesus.
"You therefore can't segment and say that there is only one area of struggle that is important - the wage struggle, the struggle around the length of the working day or what ever."
Agreed. But only because the struggle "around" the length of the working day can never be simply a struggle "about" the length of the working day. It cannot itself be "one area of struggle" because it is always already many interdependent struggles: 1. a struggle about the length of the working day 2. a struggle about the length of the day not spent working 3. a struggle about the intensity of and control over the labour process 4. a struggle about the intensity of and control over life outsde the labour process 5 a struggle about wages. The struggle around the length of the working day crystalizes and encompasses all manifestation.
To use a Buckminster Fuller term, these various aspects comprise a structure of tensegrity. You can't change one without affecting all the others. And, practically, you can't change one UNLESS you change all the others, too.
Now, if Marx had anything valuable to say to us today, whatever he had to say must also be sayable without appeal to his authority. Without exegesis or dogmatics. Without even knowledge of Marx but only of the "material conditions" that exist regardless and even in spite of Marx. The only possible Marxism is a "Marxism without Marx" and thus a Marxism that it would be absurd to call Marxist.
What I have in mind might be illustrated with a "before Marx" (Dilke) and an "after Marx" (Chapman) that eludes (even as it alludes) the encounter with Marx, pre se. In place of "Marx" only a spectral resonance. In place of the programmatic, negative and labor-centric, proclamation:
"the limitation of the working-day is a preliminary condition without which all further attempts at improvement and emancipation must prove abortive" (Marx)
...I am suggesting that the positive, leisure-centric panegyric...
"After all their idle sophistry, there is, thank God! no means of adding to the wealth of a nation but by adding to the facilities of living: so that wealth is liberty -- liberty to seek recreation -- liberty to enjoy life -- liberty to improve the mind: it is disposable time, and nothing more..." (Dilke)
...and the fretful...
...amount to "the same thing" with the difference, however, that they don't depend on there being or having been Marx or Marxists (genuine or otherwise). Of course the process could always be extended to de-Chapmanification and de-Dilkefication if it were ever to become necessary, which is unlikely.
The Sandwichman
Rather than treating the remark by Michael Lebowitz as 'ironic' or 'paradoxical', what if we once and for all simply recognized it as plain truth? People who base a creed on the genius (or virtuousity) of an historical individual simply cannot be faithful to the essence and scope of that genius. One could only ever be "genuinely Marxist" or, for that matter, "genuinely Christian" by being Marx or Christ. That is, as the subject X and not in relation to the object X. "What would Jesus do?" is not a cogent question for Jesus.
"You therefore can't segment and say that there is only one area of struggle that is important - the wage struggle, the struggle around the length of the working day or what ever."
Agreed. But only because the struggle "around" the length of the working day can never be simply a struggle "about" the length of the working day. It cannot itself be "one area of struggle" because it is always already many interdependent struggles: 1. a struggle about the length of the working day 2. a struggle about the length of the day not spent working 3. a struggle about the intensity of and control over the labour process 4. a struggle about the intensity of and control over life outsde the labour process 5 a struggle about wages. The struggle around the length of the working day crystalizes and encompasses all manifestation.
To use a Buckminster Fuller term, these various aspects comprise a structure of tensegrity. You can't change one without affecting all the others. And, practically, you can't change one UNLESS you change all the others, too.
Now, if Marx had anything valuable to say to us today, whatever he had to say must also be sayable without appeal to his authority. Without exegesis or dogmatics. Without even knowledge of Marx but only of the "material conditions" that exist regardless and even in spite of Marx. The only possible Marxism is a "Marxism without Marx" and thus a Marxism that it would be absurd to call Marxist.
What I have in mind might be illustrated with a "before Marx" (Dilke) and an "after Marx" (Chapman) that eludes (even as it alludes) the encounter with Marx, pre se. In place of "Marx" only a spectral resonance. In place of the programmatic, negative and labor-centric, proclamation:
"the limitation of the working-day is a preliminary condition without which all further attempts at improvement and emancipation must prove abortive" (Marx)
...I am suggesting that the positive, leisure-centric panegyric...
"After all their idle sophistry, there is, thank God! no means of adding to the wealth of a nation but by adding to the facilities of living: so that wealth is liberty -- liberty to seek recreation -- liberty to enjoy life -- liberty to improve the mind: it is disposable time, and nothing more..." (Dilke)
...and the fretful...
"some of us who have an economic bent of mind get into the way... of thinking too much of the quantity of external wealth produced and too little of the balance between internal and external wealth. (Chapman)
...amount to "the same thing" with the difference, however, that they don't depend on there being or having been Marx or Marxists (genuine or otherwise). Of course the process could always be extended to de-Chapmanification and de-Dilkefication if it were ever to become necessary, which is unlikely.
The Sandwichman
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