We’ve all probably imbibed, in one form or another, a left-wing culture criticism that draws, in one way or another, on Adorno and Horkheimer’s analysis of the culture industry; even I find it difficult to like Paris Hilton sometimes. But their essay is more interesting than the reflexive anti-commodification that is now so common. As Owen pointed out when I mentioned this before, you can occasionally see a glimpse of utopian possibilities in popular culture in the Frankfurt School, and this strain is even more pronounced in Benjamin. I talked to our local Marxism reading group about this a couple of weeks ago; here’s what I said: Read more↴
Maybe it’s just distance giving me more perspective, but I don’t remember that Start The Week used to be quite so offensively gliberal. A friend pointed me to last week’s edition, in which Simon Sebag Montefiore and Robert Service discuss whether or not Stalin was literally a pirate, and all the most unthinking anti-communist cliches are wheeled out. Sebag Montefiore unveiled his exciting archival research that showed that Stalin used to rob banks for the Bolsheviks (research presumably carried out in a GCSE history text-book), while Service made the controversial claim that, if it hadn’t been for the outcome of the Second World War, Eastern Europe would not have become communist (yes, I think it’s fair to say communism would have done less well in Eastern Europe if the Nazis had won the war). Read more↴
I’ve been hanging out recently with a woman from the Revolutionary Communist Party, who has the endearing quality common to recent recruits to Leninist organizations – an enthusiasm born of half-digested Marxism and vaguely remembered liberal pieties. There’s a lot to like about the RCP’s theory: their recognition of the importance of Black liberation to revolutionary struggle in the US; the way they call any theoretical work “science” (presumably an indirect 5%-er influence); their emphasis on class struggle after the revolution; and Avakian writes quite well. Which makes their evident madness all the more strange, as what they do is so out of line with what they say. If they’re really interested in raising the consciousness and leadership of the masses, why are they so fixated on Chairman Bob? If they’re so interested in class struggle, why are they never involved in political confrontations? Read more↴
Is it? These Soviet space program matchboxes (linked to by owen) suggest not.
Good post by Moll on how the Internet has and hasn’t changed our lives. She’s particularly bang-on about Second Life. The odd thing about Second Life is how much effort has been put in to reproducing real life, but worse in every respect. Moving through physical space (but through the cumbersome mediation of a keyboard); judgments based on physical appearance (and, as Moll points out, usually the physical appearance of the banally human; to produce anything more imaginative, you have to work around the built-in “avatar” system); money (but only necessitated by the most immediately and transparently artificial scarcity).
One of the advantages of the Internet that Moll points out is that you no longer need to go shopping, something which Second Life has re-introduced, with all the “spending time wandering around trying to find what you want” that that entails; to the extent that people have now re-re-introduced Internet shopping, so you can go on the Internet to buy stuff for Second Life. That about sums up Second Life, I think; it’s a way of avoiding the Internet, the Internet for people who don’t get the Internet. It’s depressing that people are proposing Second Life as some kind of new stage of the Internet, when really it’s a gigantic step backwards: the virtual world of the Internet, with its at least implicit utopianism, sidestepped in favor of a bafflingly unnecessary realism.
I didn’t really think it would be possible to come up with a way to make the American healthcare system worse, but our fine Governor has managed it. Worried about a system that leaves six million people without health care? Well then, just make it obligatory to buy health insurance! Who knew universal healthcare was so easy?
Pleased to see I was criticizing the Obama healthcare proposals two-and-a-half years ago.