Ignore Sohn-Rethel at your peril! – public discussion reminder for January 09
31 Wednesday Dec 2008
Posted Uncategorized
in31 Wednesday Dec 2008
Posted Uncategorized
in31 Wednesday Dec 2008
Posted On Europe, Uncategorized
inPartly due to the mess overseen by the socialist prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsany, who was caught out on a radio broadcast admitting that ‘we’ve fucked it all up’, and ‘we lied from morning to night’ in order to win elections ‘in this fucking country’ some nasty characters are emerging from the woodwork in Budapest.
The right-wing Victor Orban is gaining ascendancy, and trying to exploit all the goulash is a certain Krisztina Morvai, the new star of the extreme-right in Hungary. She is the daughter of a top fashion model and an economist opposed to the communist dictatorship. She is a feminist and in favour of human rights, and a teacher at the University of Budapest. She has studied at King’s College, London and has worked in New York and Strasbourg. At present she is on tour with the Hungarian Guard – a paramilitary outfit whose members parade with drums and uniforms designed to evoke the memory of the Arrow Cross, the old Hungarian fascist party. ‘With the guard I feel secure’ says Krisztina Morvai. Gabor Vona accompanies her. He is at the same time president of a small extreme right-wing emergent party ‘the jobbik’ and captain of the Hungarian guard his ‘subsidiary company.’
The new Hungarian fascists deny their origins and programme. They are only ‘national radical’ they claim. The ‘movement for a better Hungary’ do not want labels that vex. They defend Christian, national and family values. They struggle against abortion rights, the demographic decline and the ‘gypsy criminality.’
‘The national identity and christianity are not concepts which can be separated’ explains their website. The party defends itself from accusations of being anti-Semitic: ‘the jobbik has it’s horizon not the state but the frontiers of the nation.’ In fact, the jobbik wants an appropriation of a ‘greater Hungary’ and of the ‘Hungarian minorities who, since the Treaty of Trianon in 1920, reside outside the frontiers.’
‘Krisztina Morvai made herself known during the demonstration of 2006 against the socialist prime minister Gyurscany, by defending the demonstrators, victims of police violence.’
‘Six months ago Captain Gabor Vona rang her. “He told me, ‘we appreciate what you are doing for the nation and the dignity of Hungarians.” The deal was concluded. She is now head of the jobbik list for the European elections of June 2009. It is the first time that this party, founded in 2003, will put itself forward in an election. It is credited with two percent in opinion polls, but it’s influence is increasing in a forest of extreme right wing movements, and analysts do not exclude the possibility that the candidate with a modernist and cosmopolitan outlook will get the five percent necessary for obtaining a seat in parliament.’
The credit crunch throws up all the sludge and filth untreated after the collapse of Hungarian Stalinism, and dormant anti-Semitism is handed a useful mask for now to help keep the waters muddy. The Left should avoid getting sucked into the trap of limiting criticism of the system to the domain of redistribution alone – the nature of the crisis, overlaid as it is by the (non) movement of fictitious capital is such that the contradictions of the system are starker than ever before, but the rise of these particular germ strains of Euro-fascism serve as a warning to those who think we can posit the redistribution of a phantom ‘wealth’ – if only things were that simple. Instead, the Left must avoid the danger of getting dragged into a particularly vicious and barbaric game, the object of which is to find the most socially acceptable scapegoat to serve as a focus for the true crisis – currently veiled – the inability of capital to valorise.
All quotes on Hungary from Le Monde, 10 December 2008.
25 Thursday Dec 2008
Posted Translations, Uncategorized
inVOUS QUI PENSEZ QUE L’AFFREUSE THEORIE CRITIQUE EST MORTE – ET QUI CHANTEZ PRESOMPTUEUSEMENT SA DISPARITION
VOUS QUI VOYEZ SOMBRER LA BELLE THEORIE CRITIQUE DU PASSE – ET QUI ASSISTEZ, IMPUISSANTS, A SON NAUFRAGE
IL EST PLUS QUE TEMPS DE REJOINDRE LE PRESENT CAR UNE NOUVELLE EPOQUE S’EST OUVERTE, ET ELLE SE FAIT SANS VOUS.
BIENTOT DANS VOS LIBRAIRIES,
“TEMPS, TRAVAIL ET DOMINATION SOCIALE”
PAR MOISHE POSTONE
(EDITIONS MILLE ET UNE NUITS, PARIS, JANVIER 2009).
DESASTRE ECOLOGIQUE MONDIAL, CRISES ECONOMIQUES A REPETITION, ABSURDITE DU TRAVAIL ET CHOMAGE DE MASSE, MOISHE POSTONE EXPLIQUE TOUS CES PHENOMENES EN LES RAMENANT DANS LEUR VRAI CADRE : LE CAPITALISME, UN SYSTEME FONDE SUR LE TRAVAIL ET LA RICHESSE DEVENUES UNE FIN EN SOI SOUS LA FORME DU “TRAVAIL ABSTRAIT” ET DE LA VALEUR, UN SYSTEME CREE PAR L’HOMME MAIS QUI S’EST AUTONOMISE ET A FAIT DE L’HOMME LA “RESSOURCE HUMAINE” DE SON AUTOREPRODUCTION INFINIE.
“TTDS” VOUS PERMETTRA DE DEJOUER CETTE PARADE SAUVAGE, C’EST-A-DIRE DE DOMINER LE TRAVAIL ET LA RICHESSE, PLUTOT QUE D’ETRE DOMINES PAR EUX.
A VOUS DE JOUER !
21 Sunday Dec 2008
Posted Uncategorized
inThe investor Warren Buffett recently put $230 million into the Chinese ‘Build Your Own Dreams’ car firm. Buffet has taken a ten percent share in that consortium. Two years ago, Buffett handed $37 billion over to Bill Gates’ charitable foundation.
On 13 December 2008, the US Senate failed to approve a fourteen billion dollar rescue plan to prop up General Motors, Chrysler and Ford. Six days later, the White House reluctantly decided to bail out America’s ailing motor industry, by providing $17.4 billion of emergency funds in order to avert a disastrous collapse of the American economy. Bush shored up the car giants in return for swingeing wage cuts among the workforce. Obama will have to pick up the tab, but in reality Warren Buffett’s behaviour signals the demise of the US car industry. The number of unsold cars are piling up. Some dealers are desperately selling two cars for the price of one. The American auto-industry can’t sell its old stock, and can’t promote a cheaper, more efficient one either.
The Bush bail-out helps ensure there will be no street riots in the USA this Christmas and New Year, and consumers can carry on shopping for now. Obama is going to have to pick up this economic bail-out tab as well as the mess in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East, Iran and climate change.
Warren Buffett’s investment decisions are the writing on the wall.
Buffett learnt the art of investing from Ben Graham as a graduate student at Columbia Business School in the 1950s, and later working at Graham Newman investments. In a number of classic works, including The Intelligent Investor, Graham shared some of his investment wisdom. He rejects a prevalent but mistaken mind-set that equates price with value. On the contrary, Graham held that price is what you pay and value is what you get. the two things are rarely identical, but most people rarely notice any difference.
One of Graham’s creations is a characters who lives on Wall Street, ‘Mr Market’. He is your hypothetical business partner who is daily willing to buy your interest in a business, or sell you his at prevailing market prices. Mr Market is moody, prone to manic swings from joy to despair. Sometimes he offers prices way higher than value, sometimes he offers prices way lower. The more manically depressed he is, the greater the spread between price and value, and therefore the greater the investment opportunities he offers. Buffett reintroduced this character Mr Market, emphasizing how valuable Graham’s allegory for the overall market is for disciplined investment – even though Mr Market would be unrecognizable to modern finance theorists.
Another leading prudential legacy from Graham is his ‘margin-of-safety’ principle. This holds that one should not make an investment in a security unless there is a sufficient basis for believing that the price being paid is substantially lower than the value being delivered. Buffett followed the principle devotedly, noting that Graham had said that ‘if forced to distill the secret of sound investment in three words, they would be: margin of safety.’
Over forty years after first reading that, Buffett still thinks this is right. While modern finance theory enthusiasts cite market efficiency to deny there is a difference between price (what you pay) and value (what you get), Buffett and Graham regard it as all the difference in the world.
That difference also shows that the term ‘value investing’ is a redundancy. All true investment must be based on an assessment of the relationship between price and value. Strategies that do not employ this comparison of price and value do not amount to investing at all, but to speculation – the hope that price will rise, rather than the conviction that the price being paid is lower than the value being obtained. Many professionals make another common mistake, notes Buffett, by distinguishing between ‘growth investing’ and ‘value investing.’ Growth and value, Buffett says, are not distinct. ‘They are integrally linked since growth must be treated as a component of value.’
However, many bank chiefs, investors and politicians did not follow the wisdom of Buffett. They lent money to people who couldn’t pay it back: a sort of confetti money bonanza. They bankrolled firms that were mortally wounded. The lure of a fast buck attracted many moths to the capitalist flame. George Bush’s election campaign was helped by the Enron swindlers. The system is global and the links are numerous between all the component parts: banks, firms, industry and states. Crucially, to paraphrase Adorno: the component parts together are not only capital, but something foreign and opposed to it.
It is not by chance that Buffett has invested in the Chinese car industry, instead of the doomed American one. As Buffett knows, the US government cannot save the car industry. The repercussions globally will be immense, as the system collapses under the weight of its own internal contradictions.
20 Saturday Dec 2008
“We did a Socialist Worker paper sale inside the Woolworths at Cowley shopping centre in Oxford for an half an hour last week.
We made a brief announcement and then petitioned the queues, talking about the need for a fightback over jobs. Some 50 people signed the petition and took leaflets with eight buying the paper. Staff took leaflets to hand out to their workmates.
The first person to sign our petition was the wife of a local postal worker and former union branch secretary. She took the opportunity to add to our announcement the fact Oxford postal workers are also fighting for their jobs.
People were not just sympathetic about the Woolworth workers – they wanted action over growing unemployment in general. One person we spoke to had already lost their job and home as a result of the crisis. Others faced fights to get benefits for disabled children.
We went back to the store for an hour on Saturday, selling 18 papers and collecting nearly 200 petition signatures. One till worker refused to serve any customer unless they signed our petition. Staff thanked us at the end and were very grateful for our efforts. The petitions will be sent off to our local MP.“
Ian and Julie in Socialist Worker, 20 December.
15 Monday Dec 2008
Posted Uncategorized
inIt was unfortunate that Gorz was formulating his most groundbreaking ideas during a period when Fordism was suffering it’s death rattle – for all the bravery of the British mining community in 1984, the writing was on the wall as the proletariat began to fade away. His ideas were met by a wall of hostility on the Left, as anyone with a heart could not but close ranks materially and in terms of ideas with those who dared to stand up against Thatcher’s criminal government. Worse still, Gorz’s ideas were used – against his wishes or intentions – by the former May 1968 generation, especially in Germany, who used him as a cover to get into bed with the establishment. A new generation anti-capitalist movement will have to rediscover the critical charge of his ideas.
An appreciation of the radical thinker who dared to go beyond the dead-weight of orthodox marxist thinking can be found here: http://breadlover.egloos.com/4012203
13 Saturday Dec 2008
Posted On Anti-Semitism, On West Asia, Uncategorized
inMatthias Chang is a conspiracy theorist based in Malaysia. He submits articles for the popular Canadian ‘radical’ Global Research website. Chang’s latest article suggests that the $8.5 trillion bail-out funded by the US government is going to come undone in spectacular fashion shortly after Obama’s inauguration in January 2009. Chang attended the Iranian Holocaust denial conference hosted by Iran’s Ahmadinejad in Tehran in 2007.
If the left fails to confront antisemitism, snakes like Chang will increase their influence. The notion that the ‘finance sector’ is to blame for the current economic crisis, as opposed to the ‘real’ economy – that of ‘production’ – is an ideological cover for antisemites everywhere. The barbaric murder of six Jewish people singled out by terrorists in Mumbai at Chabad House should be a wake-up call for all those dozy leftists who see the Palestinian struggle as their generation’s Spain 1936. Anyone who thinks ‘armed struggle’ is the solution for the Palestinian people are deluded. It is essential the left stop applying the categories of 1930s Europe to the current Middle East – in the absence of their ‘proletarian subject’ desperation leads to unsavoury and sleazy bedfellows. It is disturbing to note that even the more ‘moderate’ hope for the future, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, published a book titled The Other Side: The Secret Relationship between Nazism and the Zionist Movement in 1983, which claimed that far fewer that six million Jews had died in the Holocaust.
13 Saturday Dec 2008
Posted Uncategorized
inTo coincide with the publication of another book on the ‘saint’, ‘Paul ou les ambiguïtés’, (Ed. de l’Olivier, by Jean-Michel Rey) these few entries were published in the French daily newspaper, Le Monde. We have added some critical comments of our own:
‘When the Saint Speaks in the Present.’ Le Monde, 5 December 2008:
Alain Badiou, to this day is proud of his maoist past. If Mao was resurrected to life, he would follow the great helmsman to the end of the Earth. Instead, he admires Saint Paul, the very one who said: ‘Those who don’t work, shall not eat.’ Mao also made this phrase his own. Badiou said of Paul, as quoted in Le Monde, ‘For me, Paul is a thinker-poet of the event, at the same time as the one who practices and enunciates invariant features of what we can call the militant face, and whose destiny fascinates me, between the general idea of a rupture (…) and the one of a thought-practice, which is the subjective materiality of this rupture.’ Saint Paul (PUF, 1997.) Badiou is a dour ortho-marxist, a big cheese at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. Badiou is revered by the Radical Philosophy gang and the NLR/Verso crew. His mandarin status is one some envy. What a joke.
Slavoj Žižek is a sort of polygraph. For him ‘once the death and life of the Christ have been established, Paul tackles his veritable enterprise, which is a Leninist enterprise, the organisation of a a new party called Christian community…Saint Paul Lenininst: Wasn’t he like Lenin, the great ‘organiser’ and, as such, calumniated by the partisans of the marxism-christianism of the origins?’ In La Marionette et le Nain (The Puppet and the Dwarf, Senil, 2006)
Giorgio Agamben, another polygraph and great admirer of Heidegger. He said about Paul: ‘One must restitute Paul to his messianic time before anything in order to try to understand at the same time the meaning and the interior form of a time when Paul defined it as (…) “the time of now” and only ask oneself in what manner something like a messianic community is really possible?’ In Le Temps qui Reste (The Time that Remains, Payot et Revages, 2000.)
Jean-Claude Milner had this to say: ‘Tamed up to their inmost depths of their understanding, the strong spirits as the weak ones hardly embarrass themselves anymore. When they speak of the universal, all the objections must vanish even if they were best founded on reason or actual fact; all depends on Paul of Tarsus, but the most numerous do not know the what and the how: some rarer, quote him, but to contrary ends to which he aimed at.’ Le Juif de Savoir (Grassset-Verdier, 2006)
Perhaps Milner agrees with Paul’s famous phrase on work we quoted – Lenin and Hitler liked it too.
06 Saturday Dec 2008
Posted Uncategorized
inWe publish below another testimony against the lies of Stewart Home – a slanderer and receiver of stolen goods. Michel Prigent is still awaiting the return of his stolen address book, published without his permission on Herr Heimat’s fansite:
‘I was Michel Prigent’s partner and co-founder of Chronos Publications from 1978 to 1984. Michel and I discussed many issues and former friendships and lovers that both of us had had, often introducing those who merited it into our current circle of friends. Hence I met many of Michel’s very interesting friends from Jamie Wadawan to Guy Debord. Never did I hear him mention a Julia Callan Thompson.
I suspect that Stewart Home’s assertions about a friendship between Callan Thompson and Michel Prigent to be as reliable as his account of Guy Debord meeting Dave and Stewart Wise, (in ‘The Assault on
Culture’). Debord, to my knowledge, did not visit England again after visiting Ralph Rumney in the late 1950’s for a congress at the British Sailor’s Society in East London. Debord did not speak English. Dave and Stewart do not speak French. They knew only of each others’ activities through Michel and myself at Chronos. Although Home’s myth-making can sometimes be entertaining, most of it should not be entertained as reliable evidence of fact!
Yours in solidarity
Lucy Forsyth
Former Editor/Translator Chronos Publications
06 Saturday Dec 2008
Posted Uncategorized
in‘Instead of appealing to a speculative philosophy of history, which for a Marx or a Lukacs was wholly self-evident, Critical Theory relies on the new instrument of empirical social research for information about the critical readiness of the public. The result of this methodological reorientation, which constitutes a distinctive feature of Critical Theory, is a sobering assessment of the state of consciousness of the proletariat. Contrary to what is assumed in the Marxist wing of left Hegelianism, the working class does not automatically develop a revolutionary readiness to convert the critical content of theory into society-changing praxis as a result of the consummation of the mechanized production of parts. The idea that Critical Theory could provide the continuity between theory and praxis by merely appealing to a certain predetermined addressee is thus abandoned, and the considerations that take its place all come down to the expectation that the conversion into praxis will be effected by precisely that rationality which the social pathology has distorted but not wholly dispossessed. In place of the proletariat, whose social situaton had previously been considered the guarantor of responsiveness to the critical content of the theory, a submerged rational capacity must resurface for which all subjects in principle have the same motivational aptitude.’
‘The Legacy of Critical Theory’ by Axel Honneth, in The Cambridge Companion to Critical Theory, ed. Fred Rush, Cambridge 2004