Louis Proyect: Provoked by the Platypus
Posted by Mike E on August 30, 2010
The following appeared on Louis’ blog The Unrepentant Marxist, and continues the discussion we have had around a Platypus interview critiquing the Maoist revolutionaries of India. The original name is “Thoughts provoked by the Platypus.”
Platypus is a left journal and political trend based on a few campuses in the U.S. — known for its study circles and slogan “The Left is Dead.”
by Louis Proyect
Last April I wrote about Platypus, a group of young academics with Eustonite politics. I thought that I had said about all that was worth saying but felt inspired to have one more go at it after participating in a thread on the Kasama Project website. This is run by Mike Ely, whose Maoist politics I do not share, but who strikes me as a remarkably intelligent and principled person.
Mike was taking exception to an interview that Platypus had conducted with Jairus Banaji, an Indian professor who I have read in the past for ammunition in the transition to capitalism debate involving Maurice Dobb, Robert Brenner et al. The interview focused on the Naxalite movement in India and Arundhati Roy’s sympathetic “Walking with the Comrades” article, which Banaji and the Platypus interviewers care little for. Banaji’s main complaint is that the Naxalites appear to have no program for India’s urban working class.
Unlike Banaji, I have no problem with movements led by Maoists. In fact, I consider the Chinese Revolution one of the epochal achievements of humanity in the 20th century despite the fact that it departed from classical Marxist norms.
How can one not cheer a revolution that rids the country of a despotic landlord class in league with imperialism?
Upon further reflection, it dawned on me that I have run into Platypus type people before who remind me of those “end of the world” cartoons that appear in the New Yorker magazine, you know the kind—it shows a guy in a robe with a long beard carrying a sign with “Repent” or some such thing.
Leftists who support the Naxalites, the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela, Cuba, etc. are impure in their eyes. They need to repent or else a mighty flood will come along and destroy them.
Like Noah, the Platypus is building a Marxist ark that true believers will board in order to survive. They are dead serious about this as evidenced by their article On surviving the extinction of the Left. Of course, it is a bit of a stretch to think in terms of a survivalism based on a set of ideas, for that after all that is what these young professors and graduate students have to offer, not an actual ark or anything else of material value.
My first encounter with a group of leftists trying to save the left from itself was back in 1996 when members of Syracuse University’s Revolutionary Marxist Collective (RMC), who published a campus newspaper called the Alternative Orange, showed up on the original Marxism list. These were graduate students who took their cue from a troika of professors: Mas’ud Zavarzadeh and Donald Morton at Syracuse, and Teresa L. Ebert at Albany State. They proposed that it was only they who understood Marxism and everybody else was an impostor. Modesty was not one of their virtues.
Like Chris Cutrone, a number of the RMC’ers had been members of the Spartacist League and had assimilated sectarian Trotskyist politics into academic jargon. Stephen Tumino, now a professor at the U. of Pittsburgh, really laid it on thick in an article titled What is Orthodox Marxism and Why it Matters Now More Than Ever Before:
“Any effective political theory will have to do at least two things: it will have to offer an integrated understanding of social practices and, based on such an interrelated knowledge, offer a guideline for praxis. My main argument here is that among all contesting social theories now, only Orthodox Marxism has been able to produce an integrated knowledge of the existing social totality and provide lines of praxis that will lead to building a society free from necessity.
“It is only Orthodox Marxism that explains socialism as an historical inevitability that is tied to the development of social production itself and its requirements. Orthodox Marxism makes socialism scientific because it explains how in the capitalist system, based on the private consumption of labor-power (competition), the objective tendency is to reduce the amount of time labor spends in reproducing itself (necessary labor) while expanding the amount of time labor is engaged in producing surplus-value (surplus-labor) for the capitalist through the introduction of machinery into the production process by the capitalists themselves to lower their own labor costs.”
This article was written in 2001, when these people made their last attempt to present their ideas in a journal dedicated to their cause. Now they have been fully absorbed into bourgeois society.
My prediction is that the Platypus group will also have a very short shelf life since there is not much future in denouncing the rest of the left for having rotten politics. Unless you have a very big endowment like the Socialist Labor Party, you tend to go out of business rather quickly.
That being said, I believe that groups like the RMC, the Platypus and the Spartacists have a very important role to play nonetheless since they can serve as a pole of attraction for people like themselves who might mistakenly join a group like the ISO or Solidarity. If you think of the left in biological terms, the Platypus is something necessary for the healthy functioning of the body. I will leave to your imagination which part I am referring to.
Back in 1995, a couple of local NY professors named Randy Martin and Michael E. Brown wrote an article in “Socialism and Democracy” titled “Left Future” that has some interesting insights (despite the convoluted academic prose it is wrapped in) that relates to all this, especially the following:
One of the more dramatic casualties of seeing the history of the left undialectically, exclusively in terms of failures which reflect dispositions built into socialist and communist politics, was a weakening of support on the part of many democratic socialists for the Cuban and Nicaraguan Revolutions, on the grounds that neither government was “democratic.” The principle of this rejection was undefineable as typically stated, and in no case was it or could it have been generalized rationally to other more favored nations. The judgment was, in that form, anti-historical and inconsistent with any notion of politics as a self-reflective and complexly mediated development of organization, consciousness, direction, definition, and power.
When we refer to this as a casualty, then, we mean that it is a casualty for the North American left’s understanding of itself: In particular for attempts to reconcile prescriptions for reforming that left with descriptions and analyses of what is happening elsewhere in the world. We are not claiming that particular cases should never be evaluated and criticized, but only that being judgmental in so categorical a way is inconsistent with respecting the types of non-institutional political processes which are inevitable as such under conditions which generate a left (including the left attempting to reform itself). Such a categorical attitude assumes as well that referring to historical conditions of those instances of social/political action which make it necessary and possible to reflect on further prospects of action is merely incidental to such reflections and, indeed, can only be disruptive of them.
The efforts to generate socialism within and against the global dominance of capital are recognizable along two dimensions. The first includes attempts, however fitful, deformed, or immature, to struggle for a social economy, for which the production of social life in general has priority over production for profit. The second includes all organizations in which the forms of participation–and their mediations–are conceivably consistent with the interdependence and forms of association which Marx referred to as the society of the producers beyond the producers of society. It follows that socialism and democracy are two aspects of the same politics as they are of the same theoretical problematic even when their expressions are historically compromised. It also follows that any process by which the left can be said to develop will be one which is as internally critical as it is externally articulate. From this point of view, the left’s future is, as always, now; and “now” is a distinctly historical present, both in its need to incorporate a past it nevertheless must transcend and in its need to recognize the activist, ideological, and theoretical elements which continue to constitute it despite the momentary desire of so many to redefine it beyond recognition and, apparently, beyond hope.
But this “now” is also a process of self-reflection and learning. For whether part of a distant and glorious past or an as yet unachieved future, an idealized conception of socialism–negative or positive–makes the future utterly obscure if only because practice, infinitely mediated as it can only be, is never perfectible. Therefore the idealist prospect of practical perfection can never be a basis from which to cross the utopian divide into a perfectly progressive state of being. Indeed, it can only render all present efforts as in perfect error. It is, as we hope we have shown, just such an implicitly negative utopian perspective which yields the current self-defeating desire for a yet newer, true left.
Amen.
(Contact me at lnp3@panix.com if you want to read the entire article.)
Chris Cutrone said
One point I have to make straightaway re: Proyect’s critique of Platypus is that he is subject to a linear/quantitative notion of historical progress that it is perhaps Platypus’s most important point of departure to dispute.
The closing quotation from Proyect’s post gives an essentially pragmatist, trial-and-error idea of the relation of theory and practice, which is quite different from Hegel’s or Marx’s conception of the issue of the active self-transformation of humanity in self-conscious practice.
It is not a matter of (Platonic) ideals being inevitably and necessarily compromised in practice, causing corrections in some simple learning curve. This would be a non-dialectical conception of the actual historical process (under capital, which involves, according to Marx and those who followed him on this score such as Lukacs and Adorno, “alienation” and “reified” forms of “necessary misrecognition”).
To restate the matter from Marx’s 1843 letter to Ruge calling for the “ruthless criticism of everything existing,”
This is Platypus’s mission, following Marx. It’s because of our recognition of the present “Left’s” dire straits that we refrain from offering positive programmatic political positions, and seek rather to host the critical conversation that is otherwise absent (among the entirely sectarian-dogmatic, and hence “dead,” “Left”). We don’t think it’s necessary to simply “make do” with what passes for the “Left” at present, but we don’t oppose it but rather critique it.
Furthermore, Marx wrote (late in “Gottfried Kinkel,” 1950) that,
We in Platypus follow Marx in this as well.
If Proyect predicts that we will be “reabsorbed by bourgeois society,” we have only Marx’s example to point to for an alternative possibility, which is the deepening and advancing by way of critique that we seek to help facilitate.
We don’t pretend that we do so ecumenically, but we forthrightly state the perspective from which we proceed, Marx’s.
Mike E said
Back in 1980, (i.e. back in days when Avakian was much more interesting and creative) he put forward a view called “Leninism as the Bridge.”
That is a verdict (tightly stated) not the underlying argument itself…. but I think there is something to think about here.
Specifically, there is something non-materialist about the very idea that one can go “back to marx” in search of a kind of pre-political purity or correctness — as if the developments of the intervening century have not happened, back to the time when socialism was confined to Europe, back before the anticolonial revolutions and a protracted history with socialism…
It to “go back” in that sense is not really to go back to Marx (any more than a grown human trying to climb back into a womb would be “going back” to being an embryo).
It seems tied to undervaluing politics, war and material force. I.e that we “know things to change things” and that change requires ideas to become a materials force by being grasped and applied by human beings (and then summed up, precisely on the basis of such largescale application and experiment).
And it seems tied (theoretically) preferring precisely those elements in Marx that needed to be developed (i.e. transformed) in light of subsequent experiences and developments (imperialism, the lopsidedness of north and south, the experience of a century of revolutionary war, victory and reversal etc.)
There are contradictions, voids and flaws with the communist theory we have accumulated at this point… but it strikes me as an odd (and revealing) thing to try to resolve those problems by going back to a state of theory before they emerged (and to theory written before many of those problems could even be engaged.)
Again this is not a specific engagement with the specific issues raised by Platypus — but a general comment on the problems of a certain approach.
Chris Cutrone said
@ Mike: I could have, and would have said that the perspective from which we in Platypus forthrightly proceed is as much Lenin’s (and Luxemburg and Trotsky’s) as much as Marx’s (and Engels’s). I didn’t because I chose not to cite Lenin in my argument against Proyect. If I were to do so, I would point to Lenin’s dialectical conception of politics, found throughout his writings and his exercise of practical political judgment.
I actually have a published response to Avakian on “Leninism as a bridge,” from my “Chinoiserie: A critique of the RCP, USA on Alain Badiou” (in Platypus Review #26, August 2010, the same issue as the Banaji interview), as follows:
Bob Avakian, the leader of the RCP, writing about “Leninism as the bridge,” put the matter of the relation between Marx, Lenin and Mao this way:
But Avakian and the RCP have a fundamental ambivalence about Lenin. In the same article, Avakian wrote that, “as stressed before there is Leninism and there is Lenin, and if Lenin didn’t always live up to Leninism, that doesn’t make Leninism any less than what it is.” This is because, for the RCP, “Leninism” is in fact Stalinism, to which they recognize Lenin’s actual politics cannot be assimilated. It is therefore a standing question of what remains of Marx and Lenin when they are unhitched from the Stalinist-Maoist train of 20thcentury “communism,” the eventual course of the Russian and Chinese Revolutions to which the RCP points for inspiration and guidance. But the RCP’s imagination has always been fired more by the Chinese than the Russian experience. If “Leninism” was a historical “bridge,” it led to Mao’s China.
http://platypus1917.org/2010/08/05/chinoiserie-a-critique-of-the-revolutionary-communist-party-usa%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Cnew-synthesis%E2%80%9D/
So, the question of “Trotskyism” looms. The irony is that Proyect’s (the former “Trotskyist’s”) critique of Platypus is in fact a species of the kind of Stalinist (including Maoist) characterization of Trotskyism as “Left in form, Right in essence.” (See Carl Davidson’s classic 1970s New Left Maoist tract at: http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/critiques/guardian/index.htm)
Chris Cutrone said
@ Mike: P.S. A quotation from Karl Korsch in “Marxism and Philosophy” (1923) might help inform the perspective from which Platypus is proceeding:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/korsch/1923/marxism-philosophy.htm
I would argue that the traditions of the “Left” from the intervening history, since Marx, Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky’s own times (e.g., Maoism, “Trotskyism,” etc.), indeed “weigh like a nightmare on the brains of the working masses” today.
As Lenin put it, in his 1914 encyclopedia entry on Marx, from a Marxian perspective, history does not proceed in a straight line but a “spiral.” Platypus is engaging the history of Marxism at that level.
As Lenin wrote, development “repeats . . . stages that were already passed:”
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/granat/ch02.htm
jp said
i’ve always liked mao’s “if you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it.”
20th century attempts to fight back against oppression, whether characterized as Marxist or not, have changed the material world, and a different world requires adapted analyses (yes, i know, everyone claims to do this). karl wrote in a world without the chinese revolution.
the kid gloves platypus has shown to people like c. hitchens (who is best characterized as ‘a butterfly who metamorphosed into a slug’ – g. galloway), compared to its false accusations of ‘lying’ made at the likes of tariq ali, show the root rot of platypus: elitist contrarianism.
i have some sympathy for those accused of contrarianism, since most of us posting here can be accused of it by mainstream thinkers, but this is the contrarianism of those who might be otherwise productively engaged. or maybe i’m wrong about that last guess…
Ryan H said
What really stinks about Proyect’s “critique” is how uncritical it is. He can’t really engage with our ideas, so he just engages in innuendo and the lame tactic of “guilt by association” both by extensively linking Platypus to some random Marxoid sect who hurt his feelings back in the nineties, and then by repeating his allegation that Platypus are “Eustonites.” He has yet to prove this absurd allegation!
[snip accusation of dishonesty]
….read the Spartacist version “Platypus Group: Pseudo-Marxist, Pro-Imperialist, Academic Claptrap” which anticipated most of the charges levelled by Proyect et al., but did it better and two years earlier.
Chris Cutrone said
@ JP: We have not “lied” about, e.g., Tariq Ali. As David Black pointed out on the British Principia Dialectica web site:
http://www.principiadialectica.co.uk/blog/?p=1069
Dave Black Says:
[August 11th, 2010 at 9:57 pm]
Being a disinterested party I decided to check out the youtube link provided by Chris Cutrone. Here’s Tariq Ali interviewed by Cutrone in response to a question about the Al Qaeda’s sectarian bombings of civilians:
“It is true that Al Queda, WE HAVE BEEN TOLD, HAS BOMBED SHIITE MOSQUES. I say we have been told, because do not forget that in all wars there is a black ops side – and actions. Now in Basra about three years ago an entire British – three British commandos – dressed in Arab clothes, their car filled with explosives and dynamite were captured by the militia – not the militia, were captured by the official Iraqi police under the occupation. They didn’t know they were British. Then they searched their boot and FOUND WHAT THEY HAD BEEN DOING. They wouldn’t say what they were going to bomb. They were taken into to an Iraqi prison, they said they were British soldiers, nd finally the British army attacked the prison, burst in released them and took them out.”
In short what Cutrone says about Tariq Ali is a lot more accurate than what Tariq Ali says about Iraq. Tariq Ali is of course well known of course for his confusions of cause and effect. In the Guardian 9 July 2005 Tariq Ali said the cause of the London 7/7 bombings was “the unstinting support given by New Labour and its prime minister to the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq” and the “violence being inflicted on the people of the Muslim world. And unless this is recognised, the horrors will continue.”
Mike E said
[moderator note: I want to remind everyone, BEFORE problems emerge. Personal attacks are discouraged here. Make your comments substantive and focused on the question of line -- not on various individuals. We remove comments for non-compliance.]
Carl Davidson said
Here’s Proyect quoting Torino:
I take a slightly different view. Any effective revolutionary theory has to start by solving some problems, especially the one’s we face today. Here’s a few for starters:
–Organizing the workers in the country’s largest employer, Walmart.
–Organizing mass organizations of the unemployed in the communities of the oppressed, and developing a platform for full employment.
–Organizing working-class voters into a political project that can run in and win elections, supplanting the Dems from the left without aiding the right.
–Organizing inner city school reform so half the youth don’t drop out.
–Getting all the troops and other forces home from Iraq and Afghanistan.
In my opinion, the sector of the left that’s ‘dead’ is the one that’s too busy doing something else rather than working on finding the solutions to problems like these. I take the entire left seriously, but those I take most seriously are the ones actually organizing among the workers and the oppressed–and you don’t have to give up a university post to lend a hand.
I’ll echo JP and Mao here on biting into the peach.
As for the puzzle of the platypus, one of my favorite discussion of it is in Robert Pirsig’s ‘Lila: An Inquiry into the Metaphysics of Morals,’ a book I’ve strongly urged Bill Martin to take a look at.
jp said
excuse me, chris cutrone, but what was that thing you posted?
re: cutrone’s tariq ali accusations, inquiring minds can see the lbo-talk list on ‘platypus – what we are, etc.’ starting, say, with http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20100405/005409.html.
search the lbo-talk subject line and see who lied about what. Richard Seymour, who blogs very incisively as Lenin’s Tomb in the UK, does the best job of dismantling cutrone’s… assertions. that lbo-talk back and forth is enlightening in a way those would-be ‘ruthless critics’ won’t ever be.
[note to moderator: it's not petty, to me, to call someone out for dishonesty. in fact, it's required in order to proceed honestly.]
the issue here is that platypus poses as ‘cutting edge,’ daring to tell us their false ‘truth’ about t. ali and their contrary ‘truth’ about someone like c. hitchens.
don’t we all have differences of left theory to discuss? don’t we all think this or that thinker deserves more, or less, attention? how does ‘the left is dead’ get turned into a method? how does a demand for attention become a theoretical platform?
louisproyect said
Here’s Proyect quoting Torino:
—
That, I believe, is a car that featured prominently in a regrettable movie directed by Clint Eastwood. I was quoting someone named *Tumino*.
Chris Cutrone said
@ Carl: Thanks!
@ JP: Fred Halliday has a great line in an interview with Danny Postel from 2005 (“Who is Responsible?”), about he and Tariq Ali parting ways, with one going Right and the other going Left, and not even Allah knowing which was which. That’s the point, that the “Left is dead!” in both its products of disintegration, Christopher Hitchens (as an “anti-fascist”) and Tariq Ali (as an “anti-imperialist”). They both deserve attention, but it takes more effort to make the case that (the trajectory of degneration of) Hitchens deserves as much attention as (the trajectory of degeneration of) Ali. This is true of Halliday and Postel as well, as it is of Kana Makiya, et al.
There is not a simple “side” to take in these disputes among former “Leftists,” because they are all equally problematic, I would argue, from the standpoint of emancipation.
It may seem more straightforward and hence easier to come down hard on Hitchen because he “supported” the war (but Bush and Blair needed Hitchens’s support about as much as the USSR needed the Spartacists’ support in Afghanistan!). But the point is that the deficits of Ali’s positions on the war(s) are just as much, if not as obvious, an obstacle as Hitchens’s (which are more obviously so).
louisproyect said
I am not Allah, but I do have an opinion on Fred Halliday’s trajectory:
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/04/27/fred-halliday/
jp said
i know it’s not quite ‘prinicipia dialectica,’ but here are cutrone and doug henwood in exchange on the lbo-list i’ve cited:
On Apr 9, 2010, at 9:38 AM, Christopher Cutrone wrote:
> I publicly interviewed Tariq Ali during the worst period of the Iraq
> occupation, and he lied through his teeth, saying that the sectarian-
> communalist violence in Iraq, i.e., of the mosque and marketplace
> bombings, was not being perpetrated by the Iraqis but by “British
> special forces!” Ali had written in the New Left Review that the
> Sadrists were somehow progressive by virtue of the fact that their
> Baghdad neighborhood strongholds were the same locations that more
> than 50 years ago were centers of Iraqi Communist Party activity —
> but Ali completely dismissed the actual ICP today for
> “collaborating” with the occupation! This is just as bad as Hitchens
> and Makiya, in some ways worse, because the latter at least make
> their devil’s bargain openly, whereas Ali, et al. still pretend to
> Leftist bona fides.
I’m listening to this passage now, which begins around 56 minutes in. (And why couldn’t you edit this thing? There’s 6.5 minutes of room noise before you say, let’s get started, and some more housekeeping after that.) He criticizes the ICP for collaborating with the occupation, and even supplying members to the occupation government – a “disgraceful” act of collaboration which left an opening for the Sadrists – something of which he clearly doesn’t approve.
He also challenges your claim that most of the attacks were directed against other Iraqis – the bulk of the attacks were directed against U.S. troops. (This passage begins around an hour in.) As I recall, even U.S. official stats confirm this. He also said that many attacks attributed to AQ could be black ops – not a fictitious position at all. He blames the broader fracturing of Iraqi society on the invasion – also not a controversial position really.
[snark snip]
The interview is at http://www.archive.org/details/TariqAliInterviewedByChrisCutronePlatypusChicago .
Chris Cutrone said
@ JP:
Dave Black Says:
[August 11th, 2010 at 9:57 pm]
Being a disinterested party I decided to check out the youtube link provided by Chris Cutrone. Here’s Tariq Ali interviewed by Cutrone in response to a question about the Al Qaeda’s sectarian bombings of civilians:
“It is true that Al Queda, WE HAVE BEEN TOLD, HAS BOMBED SHIITE MOSQUES. I say we have been told, because do not forget that in all wars there is a black ops side – and actions. Now in Basra about three years ago an entire British – three British commandos – dressed in Arab clothes, their car filled with explosives and dynamite were captured by the militia – not the militia, were captured by the official Iraqi police under the occupation. They didn’t know they were British. Then they searched their boot and FOUND WHAT THEY HAD BEEN DOING. They wouldn’t say what they were going to bomb. They were taken into to an Iraqi prison, they said they were British soldiers, and finally the British army attacked the prison, burst in released them and took them out.”
[snark snip]
Tariq Ali is of course well known of course for his confusions of cause and effect. In the Guardian 9 July 2005 Tariq Ali said the cause of the London 7/7 bombings was “the unstinting support given by New Labour and its prime minister to the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq” and the “violence being inflicted on the people of the Muslim world. And unless this is recognised, the horrors will continue.”
jp said
chris cutrone, does your double post mean to say you are not aware of the british in ‘native’ garb getting caught? are you saying 7/7 was not blowback for imperial slaughter and the “violence being inflicted on the people of the Muslim world”?
[snark snip]
jp said
Richard Seymour responding to c. cutrone at http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20100405/005447.html:
On 09/04/2010 19:06, Christopher Cutrone wrote:
> Except there’s no smear: Ali said what I said he said.
No, he did not. This has been pointed out to you. The Youtube clips are available for everyone to see, particularly parts 8 and 9:
You claimed that he said that the sectarian bombings in Iraq were carried out by British special forces (note the definitive article). He did not say this. He referred to one instance in which British special forces were captured with weapons and bombs in Basra, wearing Mahdi army gear, and reminded the audience of the black ops aspect of warfare. You also put the word “native” into his mouth in reference to the apparel of the special forces commanders.
You claimed that he said that “Al Qaeda in Iraq” did not exist. He said the exact opposite, that being that “Al Qaeda” entered Iraq after the occupation began.
He doesn’t remember saying what you allege he said, because he did not say it.
[snark snip]
Chris Cutrone said
@ JP: I am aware of the British soldiers getting caught in native garb, but I am also aware of Tariq Ali’s however rhetorically sophisticated obfuscation of what Black called “confusion of cause and effect” regarding not only the 7/7 bombings in London but also the nature of the so-called Iraqi “resistance.” The Islamists (Sadrists as well as al-Qaeda) and former Baathists were *not* trying to evict the U.S. militarily but rather engaged in a sectarian communalist power-struggle in which they engaged in ethnic cleansing and other ways of changing the on-the-ground facts in their favor, none of which had anything to do with Iraqi “self-determination,” etc. It’s the slippage that Ali et al. introduce into their interpretation that’s at issue. His example of the British possibly being responsible for the sectarian violence is just innuendo and completely politically irresponsible. The bottom line is that the U.S. and British et al. had no interest in having Iraq fall apart along ethno-religious lines. This was not divide-and-conquer.
The reason Ali’s argument appeals is that the “Left” wanted to avoid the issue of the actual politics of the Iraqi “resistance.”
[snark snip]
Chris Cutrone said
@ JP: P.S. The point is that an anti-war movement that lies will not be either a viable movement nor really anti-war. Anti-imperialism that has to lie is doomed as an authentically anti-imperialist politics.
[snark snip]
mike ely said
[moderator note: Warning #2: I repeat -- post about substance and stop snark. If the point of your comment is that some individual is dishonest, a liar and a person of bad motives -- don't upload it. It will be removed. Focusing posts on anger, disrespect and personal hostility is not ok.]
Chris Cutrone said
@ JP: Elsewhere on Kasama, Carl Davidson wrote something that resonated strongly with me, about the importance of Leftists orienting towards “organizing among soldiers, vets and their families.” This necessary organizing among (current and former) soldiers and their families will be impossible, I think, if we are less than truthful about the wars in all their murky and far from cut-and-dried aspects, i.e., if we accuse the U.S. military et al. and not the actual responsible parties of perpetrating ethno-religious communalist terrorist attacks.
[accusation of lying removed]
Mike E said
[moderator third and final warning: Questions of substance are involved here - on the war in Iraq, the Iraqi resistance etc. But focusing comments on the veracity and motives of individuals is not ok.
To be clear: It is fine to compare someone's statement with a summary of factual data -- and show a contrast. Calling them liars and dishonest shitbags etc. especially without any substantive comparison of statement and fact is just flaming.
The next comment that focuses on accusing others of bad motives and lying will simply be removed. The writer will be on moderation restriction. Their future comments will need be moderator approved before appearing.
Questions on moderation can be taken up in our moderator thread, not here.]
jp said
by their fruits you shall know them.
empire out of iraq
empire out of afghanistan
empire out of pakistan
a left that can’t unite on that? a left that’s anti-anti-imperialist? we can only hope that left would die a quick death.
[snip of commentary on moderation]
Chris Cutrone said
@ JP: I don’t think the U.S. is motivated out of anti-Muslim sentiment in its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This does not mean that there are no anti-Muslim American politicians, officers and soldiers involved in the wars, but I don’t think that the U.S. is guilty of perpetrating “anti-Muslim” violence per se.
What the U.S. is doing in predominantly Muslim countries it would be fully willing to do anywhere else, e.g., previously in Central America and Southeast Asia.
The elision of the difference between the (perhaps) religious identity of the U.S. military’s victims and the avowed politics of perpetrators of anti-working class terror attacks as in the 7/7 London bombings (or 9/11!) is a real ideological problem.
“Blowback” is a poor explanation for world political realities, and tends to apologize for acts that any Left would have to oppose.
Chris Cutrone said
@ JP:
It’s easy to call for the U.S. out of Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. The difficulty is the self-understanding of the politics of such a position. I want the U.S. out for entirely different reasons than the Taliban, al Qaeda, Sadrists, et al. do. There is no “Left unity” to be had with such types.
Since you earlier cited favorably George Galloway of the British Respect electoral coalition between Islamists and “Trotskyists” (the SWP/U.K.) against New Labour, I suppose you and I may disagree about who can and should participate in a politically effective united front — of the Left — against the wars. Allying with the Islamists is no less reprehensible, I think, than, e.g., Hitchens allying with Bush and Blair.
Otherwise, we are in danger of throwing politics out the window in favor of siding with the “underdog.”
Mike E said
Ryan writes:
If this is true, it would help if you would mention some of those unengaged ideas (or even just describe one well).
Simply fuming about mistreatment is relatively content free. Respond with substance.
Mike E said
Chris writes above:
Engels once comment that theory is a bridge over gaps in data.
The problem is that if your theory is wrong, your attempt to bridge gaps will produce a false image. You will “connect the dots” in ways that produce misunderstanding.
In fact, Chris does not understand what Avakian is saying and doing in this passage.
And I suspect the roots of Chris’ misunderstanding is that he didn’t actually did very deeply into what the RCP was trying to do (largely through the form of a deepening criticism of Stalin and Stalin-era politics.) It is very common for Trotskyists to assume that “Maoism is just a subset of Stalinism” — and so therefore (based on that theoretical assertion) make all kinds of assumptions that misunderstand what “the dots” are actually showing.
In fact, Avakian’s criticisms of Lenin do not show a “fundamental ambivalence” toward Leninism at all — but an attempt to describe and uphold a core set of politics that we can call “Leninism” (which is not simply the sprawling arithmetic aggregation of “whatever Lenin said and did”).
And quite contrary to Chris’s assumption and assertion — Avakian’s project does not at all involve a cover for Stalin or a preference for Stalin OVER Lenin. But Avakian is forced mark some places where (in a few remarks or actions) Lenin sometimes anticipated problems that became glaring in Stalin in order that Avakian might (at the same time) insist on a large and growing distance between Leninism and Stalin as the Soviet Union passed through the 1930s.
To give one particular example: Avakian refers to Lenin’s article “On the National Pride of the Great Russians.”
Avakian is arguing for a strong stand against the patriotism of dominant nationalities (Americans, Great Russians) — especially of the kind that Stalin brought to the fore before and during World War 2 (where he argued that the Russians were first among equals in the Soviet Union and when communists in the U.S. were encouraged to be superpatriotic and flagwaving).
And to do that Avakian had to assert a revolutoinary-defeatist Leninist standard and anti-patriotism in imperialist countries (even if Lenin occasionally strayed from that in this or that essay and “bent over backwards” for certain tactical reasons).
There is a similar critique made by Avakian of a kind of ruthless instrumentalism (which he remarks appears among the early Bolsheviks) which was obviously in full raging command by the mid and late 30s.
So in fact Avakian’s remark means exactly the opposite of what Chris thinks it means. And (in fact) Avakian is trying to excavate a clearer distinction between Leninism and Stalin. And challenge the idea that Stalin’s policies were merely applied leninism.
And (as you may have noticed) the essay where this appears (Conquer the World) is the place where Avakian suggests dropping the title “Marxist Leninist” and “communist” — in favor of (the awkward mouthful) of “proletarian internationalist, revolutionary communist” as the designation of the international communist trend he hopes to assemble. This proposal for self-labeling was dropped shortly afterward, when the Peruvian Maoists insissted on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as a designation (and when Avakian went along, thinking that terminology is not a matter of principle.)
Te deepening distinction between Leninism and Stalin is started in Conquer the World, and then, in the Avakian’s follow-on essay “Advancing the World Revolution” he criticizes the Popular Front, nationalism in the communist movement, and related strategies as major departures from Leninism, and rightist errors of a fundamental kind.
This is quite clear in that essay, when its core argument is exemplified by passages like these:
Part of his argument here is that World War 2 was principally an interimperialist war -=- and that in the Allied imperialist countries a great deal more revolutionary defeatist work (of a Leninist kind) should have been undertaken by communists. Again — the point of asserting Leninism in these essays is precisely to make a critique of the late Stalin and the policies of the Comintern (especially from 1935 on, but even earlier).
And in this Avakian is not only upholding Leninism over Stalin, but also at several points over Mao.
Chris Cutrone said
@ Mike: I think that you and I are using the terms “Stalinism” differently. I am not referring to authoritarianism/bureaucratism (or “ends-justify-the-means”-ism) but rather “socialism in one country.”
I don’t think that politics can ever be based on principles, but is always about judgment, which must go beyond application of concepts to empirical realities. Differences in judgment can then become differences in principle when they are hypostatized — especially when taken out of concrete context, for instance conflating tactics with principles.
On the issue of anti-imperialism in which the thread became unfortunately bogged-down, I think that, given the current state of the “Left,” it is more important to clarify why we are against imperialism than to take the correct “position.” This would mean, precisely, unearthing what, e.g., Lenin meant by anti-imperialism and the important differences from a colloquial use of the term “imperialism” on the “Left” today. When, e.g., al Qaeda says “imperialism” they mean something entirely different than Lenin did. One important point is that Lenin considered his historical moment “imperialist” in the sense of its being “the highest stage of capitalism.” Note: “highest.”
This was Lenin’s dialectical conception, that imperialism signaled the prelude to proletarian socialist world revolution. I don’t think that is our situation today. Lenin’s was a subjective-political estimation, based on the strength of the revolutionary social-democratic workers’ movement of the 2nd International in which Lenin participated, and not (merely) an objective-economic estimation of global capitalism. If we have one aspect without the other, then this changes the meaning of Lenin’s category of “imperialism.”
We are not on the eve of socialist revolution at a global scale, and so this changes, I think, one’s orientation towards phenomena like the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions and occupations. The world is not a tinderbox of heightened contradictions waiting to be lit by any and all sparks, but rather is able to bear a much greater level of barbarism than Lenin (or Marx) would have ever expected to be possible. This must necessarily change the meaning of the Marxist category of “imperialism.”
I don’t think Avakian’s analysis or political judgment takes into proper account the problem of *regression*. This is what I meant by the distinction between Lenin and Stalin, that the latter was the product of adaptation defeat in ways the former was not. I consider Mao to be product of further defeats. It’s the assumption of linear-progressive development, under the guise of meeting demands of “changing conditions,” that I was trying to point to. The question I posed in my critique of the RCP, USA stands: What if Mao, following Stalin before him, marked a *retreat* rather than an *advance*? That’s my point in invoking Lenin and Marx.
Mike E said
Chris writes:
I believe you misunderstood my comment (almost exactly along the lines that you misunderstood Avakian’s comment).
Avakian’s essay was precisely an argument around the relationship between one country and the world.
Look again at the title of that essay: “Conquer the World? The International Proletariat Must and Will.” It is an argument for approaching the process of revolution (wherever it breaks out) as a world process.
(That is why some people call him a “crypto-Trotskyist” and see that essay “Conquer the World” as the RCP rupture with the principles laid down by Stalin. It is not true that Avakian is Trotskyist, or secretly adopting a theory of permanent revolution — but he is sharply taking distance from Stalin’s particular evolving view of “socialism in one country,” and all kinds of strategic moves Stalin was making on that basis by the mid thirties).
In that context Avakian’s assertion of Leninism (the one you quote, Chris) is not an attempt to blur differences between Lenin and Stalin (but to draw them out) — and draw them out precisely over matters of nationalism and a narrow approach that sees defense/survival of one socialist country as the main (or even only) question on a world scale.
Chris Cutrone said
@ Mike: Fair enough. There are nuances of difference to which I was (and may remain) insensitive. But this still leaves aside the question of *regression* that is my emphasis. What made Avakian/the RCP, USA an interesting object of critique for me — why I wrote the article — was the degree to which they have approached the issue of what I am calling “regression,” which makes them better to my mind than, e.g., the “Trotskyist” ISO (or even the later, i.e., post-1970s Spartacists).
b_y said
isn’t the notion of “regression” tied to the same logic of linearity? mao and maoism is not simply the product of defeat, but an entirely different historical-material conjuncture altogether.
Chris Cutrone said
@ B_y: The reason I spent so much time above citing Lenin and Korsch is that I really don’t have much more to say than they did. What Lenin pointed out about the difference between a Hegelian and Marxian “dialectical” sense of development and a more commonplace “evolutionary” one, that history proceeds in “spirals” rather than in “lines,” is to say that the sense of “regression” I am invoking is also non-linear. History is neither a line nor is it “one damned thing after another.” If, e.g., Mao acted and thought in a different time from ours, it is also the case that what he did and thought affects us today. That’s why I bother to raise the issues of “Marxism,” “Leninism,” “Stalinism,” “Maoism,” etc. These figures left a legacy, and I think a highly problematic one. The attempt and failure of Marxism makes it more difficult for people to struggle for socialism today than it did in the past. There is an accumulated effect of defeats/failures. The issue is how to redeem past efforts. We can’t treat this history either as “lessons learned” nor can we try to reinvent the wheel anew, wipe the slate clean, etc. Rather, we have to work through the history of the Left (i.e., Marxism), for the present is its own product, and not (just) of its defeat.
rob said
what do platypus think of nepal?? do they also refuse to support?
Spencer said
I want to bring the discussion back to LP’s post and Chris’s characterization of it as affirming “pragmatism.” What is LP’s response to this? Chris has pointed out that even in the case of the 2nd international, when the growth of Marxism and its deep penetration of the labor movement in the core capitalist countries was palpable and ongoing, nevertheless witnessed a repeated theoretical return to Marx, despite the fact that Marx certainly never witnessed (and, in important senses, could scarcely conceive) anything like 2nd International Marxism. Neither for Lenin and Luxemburg and Trotsky or for us in Platypus is the question of returning to Marx a mere matter of turning back the clock or looking to a simpler, pristine, more cerebral time of theory. It should be recalled that at the very brink of a possible world revolution, Rosa Luxemburg argued for the discarding of the Erfurt Program (or any SPD program) in favor of a return to the program of the Communist Manifesto. This was no mere attempt to wind the clock back. Similarly, at various critical moments in the history of 2nd International Marxism it was felt necessary to look beyond the experience of the Paris Commune, important as that was, to Marx’s revolutionary activity in 1848. This was not mere eclecticism. They are not historical magpies. Rather, the past accumulated “in spirals, not in a straight line… by leaps, catastrophes, and revolutions.” This was because, as Marx had written of 1848,
“proletarian revolutions, like those of the nineteenth century, constantly criticize themselves, constantly interrupt themselves in their own course, return to the apparently accomplished, in order to begin anew; they deride with cruel thoroughness the half-measures, weaknesses, and paltriness of their first attempts, seem to throw down their opponents only so the latter may draw new strength from the earth and rise before them again more gigantic than ever, recoil constantly from the indefinite colossalness of their own goals – until a situation is created which makes all turning back impossible, and the conditions themselves call out: Hic Rhodus, hic salta!”
That said, Platypus is not in a position to relate to the revolutionary past in the way that the 2nd International theorists could, precisely because the course of proletarian revolution is not merely in recoil from its great historical task. The task itself is become obscure.
Carl Davidson said
Marxism shares a great deal with pragmatism.
Both are rooted in a critique of Hegel
Both attempt to approach society and its crises scientifically and experimentally, though open inquiry aimed at solving the problems confronting the working class and seeking truths from practice.
Both oppose dogma and closed coherence theories of truth.
Of course, I’m talking about the pragmatism of Pierce, James, Dewey and Mead, not the caricatures that some people think they’re criticizing when they denounce pragmatism. I think we’d be much further ahead in the development of the revolutionary theory we need if more of our theorists took a more pragmatic and problem-solving approach to the crises and contradictions facing us.
Slaney Black said
I think it’s unfortunate to compare Platypus with the group around Red Critique. RC’s behavior may have been obnoxious – I wasn’t on the list at the time – but they published some good solid Marxian cultural scholarship, and were never anywhere close to Eustonite.
The problem I see with Platypus is not their purism or their Ivory Towerism, but their position vis-a-vis imperialism. Cutrone complains that the thread has become bogged down in it, although for a Platypus thread it is surprisingly not. (Possibly because my and I would guess other people’ off the cuff “f*** platypus their neocons” comments got summarily deleted).
Chris Cutrone has complained that the label Eustonite is inaccurate. To be fair, I have never seen Platypus as a group or any identifiable Platypusite argue vociferously for incinerating brown people. (I will insist on labeling the Afghan war etc. as such; if that gets me on the wrong side of moderation so be it). Yet I always see them arguing vociferously against arguments against incinerating brown people.
To me, the inference is that Platypus is in fact in favor of incinerating brown people. I think that’s a reasonable inference; if it is, the label ‘Eustonite’ is a reasonable label. But maybe I’m wrong! Could Chris (or anyone else) point me toward a positive statement by Platypus, or one of its members, on what position the Left should take on incinerating brown people? If there is one, and it’s different than what I suppose, well great then!
Is there one? It would seem to be a precondition for good faith argumentation with Platypus that some sort of position be laid out. If there is none, comment would be fairly impossible without accusations of distortion and bad faith.
Ryan H said
Mike,
I don’t have the time or inclination to rehearse Proyect’s argument, which anyone can read since it is right above us. Anyone who reads it will note that, title aside, his blog post is mostly just him recounting the history of the ‘Revolutionary Marxist Collective’ (a group with no relation whatsoever to Platypus) and criticizing them, in an effort to associate that group’s failure with Platypus. This is a weak attempt at guilt by association.
But what’s really objectionable is his claim that Platypus has “Eustonite” politics. If you want people to be substantive, ask your contributor Proyect to substantiate this absurd claim.
Countervention said
I think this argument can be best settled by noting that Platypus’s mouthpiece here engages in twisted logic in support of the war, but can maintain an unchanged position with the Spartacist League.
louisproyect said
A point of clarification. The Euston Manifesto was signed by some people who *did not* support the war in Iraq, including Marc Cooper. The main thrust was against the antiwar movement, not to support the war. In this fashion, they reminded me of what Lillian Hellman called the “anti-antifascists”.
Chris Cutrone said
The main reason we don’t “take positions” is that we are a project that could and in fact does accommodate multiple and various positions.
The are historically changing vicissitudes of taking various positions, so that what was once intolerable and bitterly denounced can now be safely entertained (in a bad utopian or otherwise ideological manner) precisely because of its banality or infeasibility.
This is a very important point.
The reason that we in Platypus think that the “Left is dead” is that it is incapable of exercising real political judgment and so instead approaches issues dogmatically/schematically/formulaically. But there’s a world of difference between theoretical approaches and political positions: theory and practice must be articulated, actively, and in changing concrete circumstances and hence in changing ways. There is no theoretically “correct” political position. One can try to justify one’s political position theoretically, but a political position is ultimately not justified theoretically but rather practically.
Platypus, in contrast with a properly political project, is interested almost entirely with theoretical approaches, with the problems of ideological assumptions and worldviews found on the “Left.” This means that we don’t approach groups or thinkers like the RCP, ISO, Tariq Ali, Christopher Hitchens, et al., in terms of their political positions, but in terms of their self-understanding and consciously expressed theoretical approaches. We take them at their word.
We are not interested in, e.g., Hitchens because he was pro-war, but despite this fact. We are interested in how he came to think that way, precisely as a (former or otherwise) “Marxist.” Similarly with Ali, we are concerned with and critical of him not because he is anti-war (for so are we), but for the problems of his worldview underwriting his anti-war perspective. We express interest in and critically engage them at that level. In this, we may be considered entirely “academic.” But there’s a reason for this.
We are interested in recovering the intellectual, and ultimately, political productiveness of a Marxian approach to politics, but not because we are seeking some “politically correct” theory, but because our sense is that the political disputes — on both/multiple “sides” — would be greatly enriched by a Marxian theoretical background. This would sharpen the disputes.
In other words, we think it would be desirable to achieve (or “go back” to) a time in which the most important political disputes were among/between “Marxists,” as was the case in 1914-19, for instance (in which, for example, many avowed anti-Marxists, such as Max Weber, felt compelled to join Marxist parties to engage in politics, in Weber’s case the SPD).
This is because we think there can be legitimate political differences — perhaps the only legitimate political differences, facing and not avoiding the realities, that can take place under capital are — between/among perspectives informed by a Marxian approach to the question of capital and its place in human history. A theoretical approach does not in-and-of or by itself tell you which way one should go or how one should proceed. The latter are properly political issues, which theory cannot address in and of itself. But there is a severe theoretical deficit that must nevertheless be addressed.
Chris Cutrone said
@ Louis Proyect: I am sympathetic to aspects of the impulse, but not the form in which it is expressed, of the Euston Manifesto, the degree to which it is a protest against the sorry state of the “Left” today, precisely as revealed by the “anti-war movement” which was neither a movement nor anti-war, to my mind. You seem to think that this makes them backhanded supporters of the war; I’m glad you now acknowledge that this is not necessarily the case. The point is that Platypus can and does accommodate what may be considered both “pro-” and “anti”-war “positions,” but the basis of our project is not our collective position on the wars, but rather a shared concern that important insights potentially available from a Marxian (or historical Marxist) perspective and lacking and need to be recovered such that those with an ostensible emancipatory (“Left’) perspective could take more meaningful and less rhetorical/spurious practical orientations towards the problems of the wars and imperialism.
louisproyect said
You seem to think that this makes them backhanded supporters of the war; I’m glad you now acknowledge that this is not necessarily the case.
—
You have nothing to be glad about. I do think that the Euston Manifesto was an expression of rightwing Social Democratic politics, along the lines of Dissent Magazine. If you are sympathetic to its “impulse”, that is your problem not mine.
Chris Cutrone said
@ Louis Proyect: I wrote: “I am sympathetic to aspects of the impulse . . . the degree to which it is a protest against the sorry state of the “Left” today, precisely as revealed by the “anti-war movement” which was neither a movement nor anti-war, to my mind.”
The problem with some of habits of mind expressed in this discussion is the psychologism. People are accused of making “revealing” statements, etc. But I’m not looking for a “tell.” This is not a poker game, and I am not interested in maintaining my game face.
The habits of Stalinism (e.g., anti-Trotskyism) die hard, i.e., the idea that people can be “subjectively X, but objectively Y.” I think it is important to take people at their word not because avowed words don’t many times serve contrary political functions, but because I am engaged in a primarily educational/pedagogical activity in which I am trying to get people to think (first of all, and only then encourage them to think in certain ways), not take the “correct” political/theoretical “position.”
Proyect and I (and perhaps also, Mike Ely, et al. and I) are arguing at entirely different (and cross) purposes; we are after entirely different things.
jp said
“…Platypus can and does accommodate what may be considered both “pro-” and “anti”-war “positions…”
that tree is infested with rot and its fruit is putrid
‘a strange and bitter crop’
Chris Cutrone said
@ JP: Again, the spirit of what I am saying seems to be subject to deliberate misconstrual, aiming for a “gotcha” moment. But, Jp: Are you a pacifist? Because only from the standpoint of pacifism could one take a “principled anti-war position.” The point is that even, e.g., Obama and Bush are “anti-war,” in the sense that they regard war as a regrettable necessity. I think a Marxian approach to questions of war and peace must be different from pacifism. We must seek to recognize the continued possibility and even necessity of war.
To be frank, I don’t know if anyone in Platypus is actually pro-war (in Afghanistan and Iraq). (I only know that I am not.) We don’t discuss things at that level. (Similarly, I don’t know if anyone in Platypus is or is not a true believer in God, because we don’t discuss this, even though I think that in certain respects religious belief and Marxism may be incompatible, but this is complicated question, and perhaps not too important politically.)
Platypus takes one simple “political position,” which is that the “Left” today, such as it is, is not an emancipatory force in human history. It is an authentic question for us whether it ever was, but we think it came closest, in theory and practice, at least in ways we think are most productively challenging and hence interesting, circa 1917. We think it is interesting how and why Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky were “anti-imperialist,” what they meant by that in terms of their historical self-understanding and practical politics. We don’t think one can or should be anti-war today in the ways that they were. Perhaps we should be anti-war for other reasons (simple humanitarianism). But, again, this raises all sorts of issues that we as a collective project deliberately remain agnostic about.
Carl Davidson said
This is rather odd–no positions on much save the march of the dialectic through time in the bodies of men and women. Makes you wonder if the claim of Platypus that ‘the left is dead’ isn’t a self-referential statement.
To repeat myself, if you want to do some revolutionary theory, solve some of the problems facing the working class and those who organize among and within it. If you don’t like the list I posted earlier, I can post another.
Chris Cutrone said
@ Carl: Platypus is not some ascetic religion. It is a project in which individuals participate. I am articulating the basis of our organization, not some comprehensive intellectual regime in which people are inhibited from taking positions. Rather, Platypus doesn’t take positions as an organization.
Also: It’s not about the march of the dialectic through history, but about the historical specificity of capital as a phase of human history.
The relation between theory and practice in a Marxian sense, I think, is not the same as empirical scientific models falsifiable through experimentation.
While I agree that theory cannot advance without practice, I don’t think that the aspect of theory I am focused on, namely, Marx’s (and those of his followers in this respect), is primarily about generalization from empirical practice. Scientists can throw out models that don’t work; clearly, human society cannot do so as easily or through the same kind of process.
If I were to articulate the issue simply, for Marx the contradiction of capital (which is his term for the totality of modern society) is that people have continued to live, after the Industrial Revolution, as if they still lived in the 18th century. Marx’s critique of socialism is that it shares certain social-historical presuppositions with capitalism, i.e., the labor theory of value. Marx aimed at a social-historical transition beyond capital, in which human labor would no longer mediate society the way it does under capital (in all its forms, including, e.g., the politics of Soviet and Chinese “Communism”). Marx thought that this could and indeed would only happen as a function of the working class “abolishing itself,” not simply by overthrowing and eliminating the capitalists as a class, but by transforming the social conditions of capital, i.e., the exchange of labor as the basis for society. Most “Marxists” (certainly virtually all “socialists”) have shared Adam Smith’s perspective on labor. Marx’s point was not that Adam Smith was wrong, but that society had potentially moved historically beyond the adequacy of bourgeois categories of social existence. The point is that this has not been worked through in practice, but “Marxism” has served as an ideology for retreating from that social-historical task.
Carl Davidson said
CC, I don’t disagree with your nutshell summary of Marx here, ie, the transition from our current class society to the classless, including ‘workerless’, society of communism, with socialism as the transitional class society between the two. Jerry Harris and I wrote a book about one key feature of how it happens. CyberRadicalism at http://stores.lulu.com/changemaker Cybernetics helps reduce the amount of living labor in any given commodity to zero and as a corollary, the working day shrinks to zero, while markets and states and such wither away. We’re talking about a long timeframe here, obviously.
All that is fine, and it has been a motivating vision of mine ever since I first heard of it nearly 50 years ago.
But we still face the task of organizing to get it; it doesn’t come of its own accord. And the theory, strategy and tactics that enable us to organize are very much tied to working hypotheses that can be proven or dis-proven by social practice and experiment. Like the man asked, ‘Where do correct ideas come from?’
That’s why I continue to say, if you want to make revolutionary theory, then work on solving some of these very specific problems of our time. We can get some guidance from the past writings of revolutionaries in help to form our new hypotheses, ie, we don’t start from zero. But every revolution breaks the mold formed by the ones that receded it.
Platypus doesn’t have to have positions of everything, and can contain conflicting positions. My group, CCDS, certainly is like that. It’s the shying away from dealing with the practical problems of the left that are at hand that I’m challenging you on.
Spencer said
@ Carl – Chris can certainly speak for himself, but I wanted to point out that we in platypus don’t think the impasses faced by the working class are only or even chiefly practical. Rather we see the theoretical impasses we inherit from the history of the 20th century left as the primary obstacle the working class faces today. Historically, too, we would say that proletarian politics advanced not simply because of the momentum generated by successes in solving problems but in theoretical success not only in strategizing to produce victory, but in theory’s ability to forestall self-liquidation and to guide proletarian politics instead to seize the next link in the chain.
jp said
what a world… i find myself agreeing with carl davidson that “the claim of Platypus that ‘the left is dead’ is “a self-referential statement.” (i had earlier said they were projecting.)
c. cutrone’s words:
“To be frank, I don’t know if anyone in Platypus is actually pro-war (in Afghanistan and Iraq). (I only know that I am not.) We don’t discuss things at that level.”
your discussions don’t presuppose opposition to empire and slaughter?
I’d raise the question as to whether this whole project was parody, like the sokal hoax, except it’s been vetted.
Carl Davidson said
We just disagree, Spencer, on what ‘primary obstacles’ are. One of them is that 88 percent of the working class here have no basic organizations to defend themselves, and are trapped by cynicism and by a majority of them thinking they’re ‘white,’ the latter a problem that goes back to the 17th Century. We have a fairly good understanding of what it is, but we’re sorely lacking in fresh ideas about how to fight it today.
Chris Cutrone said
@ Carl: Thanks. My fear is (not with you) that tactics, strategy, goal and principles get conflated and muddled on the “Left” — perhaps productively, as legitimate political disputes over direction, but mostly (especially in the last 40+ years) not so much. Differences over goals get smuggled in over differences over tactics, and vice-versa.
For instance, on the question of imperialism and war, which remains controversial regarding Platypus’s actual activities to date (e.g., interviewing a pro-war Leftist Terry Glavin, publishing a “comradely critique” of Hitchens, our invitation — ultimately declined — to Kanan Makiya to debate at a panel we organized on Iraq at the Left Forum 2010, my raising problems of the conscious political expressions of Susan Sontag, Ward Churchill, Lynne Stewart and Tariq Ali in public fora, etc.), we have been sincerely interested in raising the question of the (in)adequacy of the very category of “imperialism” with respect to how “Marxists” use it in the anti-war movements around Afghanistan and Iraq. The U.S. et al.’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been barbaric, period (i.e., that’s a good overall verdict on the U.S. conduct there). But the barbarism is not restricted to the U.S., but predated it in, e.g., the Taliban and al Qaeda and Baathism, and is also found in policies of the European countries, Russia and China, etc. (who were just as responsible, to my mind, as the U.S. for Saddam).
We in Platypus, and those with whom we sought to collaborate, such as the new SDS, looked at the recent wars and asked how we could improve the anti-war movement, i.e., make it more effective at ending the wars, or, barring that (which was unlikely anyway), at least clarifying the reasons for failure. We thought that “anti-imperialism” as generally understood (on the “Left”) was one clear and key reason of consciousness for the failure of the anti-war movement. In this sense, those “Leftists” who were “pro-war” (or supported the wars’ aims if not their manners of execution) such as Kanan Makiya, Hitchens, Fred Halliday, et al. were worth investigating for the problems they raised that we thought any anti-war/anti-imperialist movement worth its salt would have to answer.
So we do engage in practice, if of a specific kind — and so we don’t regard it as exclusive, but only a necessary (if not sufficient) ingredient. This means engaging in a lot of apparently one-sided rhetoric to justify what we’re doing and keep the space for critical interrogation open. But we’re not deluded. We’re not a sectarian “Marxist” group, at least not in our actual practices (perhaps we can’t help being so in our collective self-understanding, precisely because of the apparent distance these days of theory from practice).
Chris Cutrone said
@ Jp: The reason Platypus may appear to be self-parody is that the entire “Left,” in my opinion, has long since become a parody of itself (see Monty Python’s Life of Brian). The messenger is being blamed for the message. Or, the ingenuous child is being ostracized for saying that the “Emperor has no clothes!”
The reason I raised pacifism/humanitarianism is that of course everyone (literally, including Obama and Bush!) are “opposed to empire and slaughter.” But that’s hardly enough.
Speaking of the Spartacists, they pointed out that the “revolutionary proletariat” would have to “physically annihilate” the Islamists the U.S. is presently fighting. So, why not just have the U.S. do it, then? This may appear to be a spurious question, but it does raise some fundamental issues that we ignore at our peril, I think.
That’s why, e.g., Hitchens’s and Makiya’s “anti-fascist” Leftism goes one way, while Tariq Ali, et al.’s “anti-imperialist” Leftism goes another. They are broken pieces of a historical Left that has disintegrated. If the Left supported the USA and USSR in WWII, why not the USSR in Afghanistan and the USA in Afghanistan and Iraq? We need to be able to answer these questions/problems, I think, which we will never be able to do if we pretend that they don’t really exist.
Chris Cutrone said
@ Carl: I agree completely with your characterization (in all the aspects you list) of the problem of the depoliticization of the working class in the U.S.
With regard to what Spencer and I are arguing, we think that the working class’s inoculation against Leftism in general and Marxism in particular is the fault of the historical/”dead” Left, which we seek to reverse. This means disenchanting and taking an open/critically-minded attitude towards shibboleth’s on the “Left” such as “imperialism” (and “race,” etc.).
For instance, if workers set out to form a union today, the whole question of socialism is immediately raised. Unlike in the (now distant) past, we have to disabuse people of bad notions of socialism before they will even entertain simple unionism!
If we’re not going back to the beginning with a clean slate, we at least need to some serious house-cleaning. This will not be enough, but changing the general ideological climate may just help to some degree with other necessary fronts of activity such as labor organizing, etc.
PT Cruz said
What bothers me is Platypus’s studied refusal to take any sort of position, even as it savages other positions.
Even worse, this activity is often self-labeled as ‘critique’. It is not critique.
Kant, in the Critique of Pure Reason, did not simply savage previous works of philosophical psychology. He used his criticism of previous works to build a new, higher position. Marx did likewise in his critique of political economy.
If Platypus, as a group, does nothing other than point out defects in The Dead Left, then it is not as a group really engaged in critique. Perhaps it encourages members to complete the positive phase of critique on their own? If so, I would really like to see the products of this, however provisional.
Platypus members have complained several times that they are not being treated with good faith in this thread. A statement on anti-imperialism etc. in positive terms, even if sketchy and not representative of the organization as a whole, would go a long way to improving the tenor of the conversation.
Chris Cutrone said
@ PT Cruz: Yes, precisely, we encourage our members to “complete the positive phase of critique on their own,” and in diverse directions.
– One small quibble I would make is that Kant’s notion of “critique” is sui generis if not idiosyncratic, meaning he set out to explore the “conditions of possibility for…” (the use of concepts; taking responsibility for one’s actions; exercising judgment; etc.) I agree more with your characterization of Marx on bourgeois political economy. But certainly Marx — the old “Moor” — had his “savage” moments, no?
I think what I wrote above regarding “imperialism” is a good representation of our anti-imperialist sentiments. But the real question is whether it is tolerable for the “Left” to question the whole notion of “(anti-)imperialism” at all without being accused of breaking ranks. Hitchens’s point, which is that he did not desert the Left but the Left deserted him, is on-point in this respect.
How about this: We agree with the “Left” that imperialism is bad and needs to be fought against, but we potentially disagree about *why*, and, hence, *what* to do about it, and *how* to go about this. Because we’re focused on the question of “why,” we hold off the “what” and “how.” We don’t think that the way forward is solidarity with Islamist “resistance,” and we recognize that that may indeed leave us with no other alternatives and so a default “pro-war” position. But, in hopes for a future Left, we refuse to succumb to what Zizek has called (on the occasion of the Balkan wars) the “double blackmail” of anti/imperialism.
Concretely, any purported “Left” ought to be critiquing and protesting the manner of the U.S. *withdrawal* from Iraq as much as it would have the invasion and occupation. “Anti-imperialism,” especially understood as some underspecified “self-determination” is quite inadequate to be able to do this. The U.S. washing its hands of Iraq and Afghanistan is just as bad/destructive as invading and occupying — or refraining from doing the latter (which the U.S. decides for its own reasons, not ours).
Nate said
Here’s a bit from a recent Platypus book review:
http://platypus1917.org/2010/06/10/rebelling-against-the-world/
“the anarchists’ rage was impotent, their terrorism a sign of weakness, not strength. The story of the anarchists shows how destructive it is to make revolution into a moral imperative outside of its historical grounding. Years ago, the philosopher Hegel characterised the beautiful soul that “lives in dread of besmirching the splendor of its inner being by action…[T]o preserve the purity of its heart, it flees from contact with the actual world and…is reduced to the extreme of ultimate abstraction.” That was the psychology of the anarchists’ love of “the two sublimates of human grandeur: the martyr and the hero” or the “violent Christ.” Their insurrection turned from being a war to free the masses from repression into a war against the masses, dissolving in the end into the worst kind of opportunism.”
I want to note two things. One, the implication here is one of a moral failing by these anarchists, a mistake of moralism. There’s a clear moral overtone to saying someone is “a beautiful soul.” That’s not necessarily a problem, we need moral categories, but this is in contradiction to the remark against moral imperatives. Platypus’s talk over all is highly morally charged, hence their preference for polemic.
Two, there is a sort of moral obligation to the use of highly charged moral assessments. To call someone who is subjectively a revolutionary a beautiful soul in this way is a very seriously thing, not something to do lightly, and one should be cautious and humble in making those sorts of assessments. Platypus in general does not seem to me to have that requisite patience. I think this is not an accident but is because of their one-sidedly theoretical emphasis: they are an organization for theoretical reflection alone. Theoretical reflection is incredibly important. It happens on a social foundation, however, and mass work cultivates different sort of qualities in those cadre who carry out that work than the qualities cultivated by theoretical work. In mass work one learns a manner of approach which is only antagonistic as a decision, as opposed to antagonistic by default as Platypus tends to be.
Three, the assessment here is wrong. (I mention this because I think if Platypus were more careful and were more characterized by patience and modesty they would not make mistakes like this, as they are clearly very intelligent minds.) The anarchists criticized here may well have had an objectively weak — even though subjectively intense — rage and carried out ultimately ineffectual or even counterproductive terrorism. It is, however, incorrect or at the very least questionable to call this activity “flee[ing] from contact with the actual world” or an avoidance of action. If anything, the opposite is true, these actions were a flight from reflection into actions which were poorly thought out and taken as ends in themselves — a sort of dissolving into the actual world without the necessary critical distance needed to think through what actions are needed to make the potential world of communist society into an actual world.
Nate said
Whoops, three things, not two. In good Maoist fashion, one of my original points divided into two…
Chris Cutrone said
@ Nate: James Heartfield is not a member of Platypus, and neither are most of our contributors to the Platypus Review, which is an open-submission publication, our forum-in-print, in which we publish a wide diversity of opinions, none of which we necessarily agree with (even partially), let alone endorse. We seek to continually expand the range of opinion and debate in the PR. BTW: I think your criticism of Heartfield’s article above is good.
Nate said
And one other comment… Chris, you write that “if workers set out to form a union today, the whole question of socialism is immediately raised.” Can you elaborate on this please? I don’t understand. I’m currently involved on a volunteer basis in unionization efforts of at several workplaces, a different model for each workplace. I would very much like your quote to be correct, but I don’t understand it enough to be able to assess it.
Chris Cutrone said
@ Nate: In my (limited) experience (including as a child of the working class), whenever issues of unionism are raised, socialism is never far behind. In one instance, to my surprise, the question was, “Didn’t they try that in the Soviet Union?” My basic point is that it is impossible to engage in the most basic working-class organizing without problems from the history of socialism/Marxism haunting people’s consciousness of what they are doing. So I think that re-valorizing the concept of socialism is actually a precondition for a reinvigorated workers’ movement, which will not come of its own accord due to socio-economic necessities, but must overcome the obstacles in consciousness that the history of the Left has bequeathed us.
b_y said
“just as”, as in “just as bad/destructive/responsible” appears to be a common rhetorical strategy for you, chris. do you find this kind of equivocation useful for concrete politics, or do you think it might be more helpful to examine differences? difference not simply as a divergence or failure, but particularly in terms of what kind of capacities are being developed in these situations you describe and how they might inform revolutionary work moving forward?
Chris Cutrone said
@ B_y: Any use of quantitative evaluations is fraught with problems. You are right, it is rhetorical when I use them, and there are qualitative differences to be addressed that are thus left out of account. I don’t think that moving forward can happen any less problematically from, e.g., Tariq Ali than from Christopher Hitchens, Kanan Makiya, Fred Halliday, et al. (I’m not sure which example[s] of my use[s] of “just as” comparisons in particular rubbed you the wrong way — Ali/Hitchens, US/Europe-Russia-China, U.S. invading/withdrawing, etc. — so I can’t say more than this. But suffice it to say that, of course, I am aware of qualitative concrete particularities. This is a discussion thread, and so necessarily telegraphic, not a monographic exposition on my part.)
b_y said
again, “any less problematic” seems to reflect this rhetorical strategy. i don’t wish to play “gotcha” for playing fast and loose in your response on a blog/forum. but i can’t help but wonder how this kind of strategy informs how you theorize difference and scale, and therefore how attentive you are to the multitude of capacities that are being engaged, developed and underdeveloped, and transformed in the struggles you claim to be “dead”. our conditions, both lived and political in general, are fraught with problems, and any attempt to renew the best of revolutionary traditions that have allegedly been lost will be problematic as well. so in recognition that “problematic” is our condition of existence and possibility, the way you seem to use it when you’ve framed these problematic politics as “not worth engaging”, comes across more as intellectual exhaustion or disabling cowardice than heightened criticality. i think this is why so many of us would feel that platypus staking out a position, other than vaguely “outside” and “critical”, would help considerably with viewing your group as a principled interlocutor.
Chris Cutrone said
@ B_y: I should have put an emoticon next to the “less” in my previous post, which I used very deliberately immediately after acknowledging that quantitative evaluations are problematic.
– But, what have I categorized as “not worth engaging?”
I must emphasize that the proclamation that the “Left is dead” (which is a considered statement, entirely rhetorical, and not a verdict, but meant to pose the immediate question, then: “What is the Left?”) is *not* to say that human struggles are “dead” or not happening. (It is also a play on the idea that the “Left is dead” in the sense of its being, at this point, historical, i.e., as in what immediately follows our proclamation that the “Left is dead!” — “Long live the Left!”)
But the invocation of “living struggles” is itself problematic. As Adorno put it, “Life does not live.” What’s “dead” and what’s “alive” in humanity today is precisely what’s at issue. This is because we consider our project to be part of trying to “change the world.”
As to others’ ability to treat us as “principled interlocutors,” we can’t take full responsibility for that, otherwise it would not be dialogue.
I invite you to check out our actual activities as an organization: Our publication The Platypus Review, our public fora, etc. We’re not a political party, and so we should be evaluated, I think, on what we do, not (alone) by what we say — and certainly not exclusively by what I say on a discussion thread.
http://platypus1917.org
Chris Cutrone said
@ B_y: I should have put an emoticon next to the “less” in my previous post, which I used very deliberately immediately after acknowledging that quantitative evaluations are problematic.
– But, what have I categorized as “not worth engaging?”
I must emphasize that the proclamation that the “Left is dead” (which is a considered statement, entirely rhetorical, and not a verdict, but meant to pose the immediate question, then: “What is the Left?”) is *not* to say that human struggles are “dead” or not happening. (It is also a play on the idea that the “Left is dead” in the sense of its being, at this point, historical, i.e., as in what immediately follows our proclamation that the “Left is dead!” — “Long live the Left!”)
But the invocation of “living struggles” is itself problematic. As Adorno put it, “Life does not live.” What’s “dead” and what’s “alive” in humanity today is precisely what’s at issue. This is because we consider our project to be part of trying to “change the world.”
As to others’ ability to treat us as “principled interlocutors,” we can’t take full responsibility for that, otherwise it would not be dialogue.
I invite you to check out our actual activities as an organization: Our publication The Platypus Review, our public fora, etc. We’re not a political party, and so we should be evaluated, I think, on what we do, not (alone) by what we say — and certainly not exclusively by what I say on a discussion thread.
http://platypus1917.org
b_y said
“Platypus is based on the premise that there are an awful lot of mistaken assumptions from which people need to be disabused, and a lot of assumptions that need to be re-founded, in order to be able to even begin to “engage” in politics. Adorno’s critique of Sartre was that “engagement” was hardly enough, and that the strident call for “engagement” masked the sobering reality that there may not be any existing politics worth engaging in.”
this was a paraphrase you leveraged about contemporary “dead” struggles among the left; the anti-war movement being among those.
though i haven’t had the interest to follow your site as closely as LP, for example, i’ve visited several times and am familiar with your activities and your presence in nyc in particular. i’m not a member of a party or pre-party organization, but i’m not sure why those organizations would be exempt from evaluation based on their activities.
Chris Cutrone said
@ B_y: Responding to Proyect on Sartrean “commitment”/”engagement” is not the same as my making a positive statement on “engagement.” Notice: I said that “there *may* not be any existing politics worth engaging in.” A caveat is not a positive statement.
b_y said
so for the sake of those that are curious – and feel free to offer it as representative of your own personal interests if you’re uncomfortable with representing platypus as a whole – are there contemporary struggles waged by people on the left in your city, in the u.s. or abroad that are not “garbage” and “worth engaging” if only in the provisional sense?
Carl Davidson said
One of my groups, the Chicago Third Wave Study Group, went through something like a Platypus period–if I’m wrong or way off base, I’ll stand corrected.
Around 1988 we decided ‘Marxism was in crisis’. We used that formulation rather than ‘the left is dead.’ What it meant to us was that everything was up in the air and had to be re-examined and engaged, with the idea of ‘breaking on through to the other side’ of the crisis. We spent 15 years doing that–reading Marx, Lenin and more of the classical theorists and leaders. We studied history and philosophy, and new cutting edge physics and mathematics, to get an up-to-date idea of what science was.
We met every two weeks. We periodically summed up some of our tentative conclusions and interests in a journal, cy.Rev, which had eight editions. You can find it archived online at http://www.net4dem.org/cyrev
But we never once separated ourselves from mass practice–the antiwar movement, the Mideast struggles, the plant closing struggles, organizing unions and community battles, creating new high schools, working with soldiers and prisoners, and so on. In fact, we brought the problems of the mass work to the biweekly discussion, to see how it might or might not be informed by our studies. We often thought others on the left were painting themselves into corners, or isolating themselves in cul-de-sacs, but we always held out the prospect of change, of a way out, and that we ourselves didn’t have ‘correct lines,’ but ‘working hypotheses’ we were putting to the test of practice.
You see, in the course of our studies, we gained a much deeper appreciation of the inter-connection of Marxism, of the philosophy of pragmatism and cutting edge modern science.
At a certain point, we published a number of books and monographs, but came to see the organizational development of our trend as the critical next step, so we set about building a number of organizations in a few places around the country. We put out a short paper, ‘Where to Begin,’ at one of our sites, http://solidarityeconomy.net We are still doing this, but we do it in working class, community and high-road business circles, and only secondarily among academics, where we founded the Global Studies Association, which has had annual gatherings and publications for 10 years now. Our view of the left that disagrees with us, which is most of it, is to engage them, some more than others, to be sure. We make priorities.
We clearly don’t take an attitude that the ‘left is dead,’ nor that we have ‘the correct line.’ In the former, that distinguishes us from Platypus, to be sure. But that’s not the main point I’m asking here. What is wrong, from your perspective, with the path we chose?
Chris Cutrone said
@ Carl: I don’t think there has been anything “wrong” with the approach you lay out per se.
Chris Cutrone said
@ Carl: (Sorry, I hit [return] before I was done!)
There are two points that distinguish Platypus from the project you describe: 1.) We emerged not in the late 1980s-early ’90s but in the mid-late 2000s; and 2.) The oldest members of our organization were in college in the late ’80s-early ’90s and the vast majority of our members were in college in the mid-late 2000s. Many in fact were born in or after 1989. I think this means that our project is of our historical moment, which conditions our perspective and our practices.
We have experienced the Left in profound discontinuity, rather than as an evolutionary transformation from prior practice. Regardless of my own brief and organizationally marginal experience in the Spartacus Youth Club, our project is characterized by a lack of experience in Marxist organizations, if not lack of experience on the Left more generally. We have neither quit the Left, nor have we found a Left that we could possibly join. For us, it was either our project or nothing. This is true of the founders as well as virtually all the members, who would not be active on the Left if not for Platypus.
We are trying to make the best of all these factors of our concrete historical origins.
These circumstances give our project its preliminary and provisional status. What distinguishes us is not where we begin but how we proceed. For our most fundamental point of departure is not our chosen direction but our historical circumstances, which conditioned our project largely for us already.
If we had emerged at a different point in time and/or at different times in our lives, or in a different location (i.e., not in the U.S.), our project would have been different.
Nate said
Chris,
I don’t know how to put this better but I’m going to try because I really do think y’all are sincere. When I was a kid my dad worked as a martial arts instructor. He always stressed that if I found myself in a conflict situation I should slowly back away with my hands up and palms out, because that stance is soothing in appearance and non-aggressive. (And, it gives you a clearer line of sight and an opportunity to block or grab an opponent if they attack you, but that sort of bungles the metaphor.)
In my limited experience in mass work I’ve found that at least some mass work cultivates a similar sort of habit in interpersonal relations. I think this is often true of other comrades I know as well. In my opinion, this habit can be transposed into a sort of behavior within intellectual debate among revolutionaries as well. A friend of mine pointed out to me recently that theory is a practice that relies on social foundations, and that bad social practice can inhibit the pace or extent of theoretical advance (as another metaphor, Marx sometimes had to leave the British Library when working on Capital because of pain due to boils on his butt – the ostensibly non-intellectual issue of his health was one of many factors that had an impact on the pace at which he produced his great insights).
Certain types of disagreement can erode the foundations which make productive discussion possible (as a fellow former graduate student you simply must have seen this happen occasionally in academic settings, unless you went to institutions several orders of magnitude better than mine).
I say all this because it seems to me that a major difference between Platypus and Kasama *in behavior* aside from the contents of ideas is that Kasama folk – Mike in particular – take the sort of stance I mentioned, which often helps expand the social bases for theoretical disagreement, whereas Platypus folk tend to be much more polemical and the rhetoric much stronger sounding in a way that often narrows the social bases for theoretical discussion. (I am not putting all the blame on y’all either.) I think this is a real shame because y’all are clearly very smart, knowledgeable, and serious. It seems to me that Platypus does not need this stance in order to have its substance and that if the stance changed there might be more widespread openness to the substantive points your group wants to press upon.
Yours,
Nate
Chris Cutrone said
Thanks, Nate,
I appreciate your comment and suggestion. I think our members have always argued/debated/sparred in good faith, which isn’t to say we couldn’t do better at making this as productive as possible, but there might be some problems of style. Also, we are impassioned about the sorry state of the “Left” today, if that helps to explain anything.
Nate said
hi Chris,
Just to clarify: I don’t doubt your and your comrades’ good faith. If I gave any indication otherwise, I apologize. The issue is not good faith. It’s style. I have no doubt that passion informs this, and I respect and share that very much. I’m also quite sure that this is partly a matter of correspondence style vs in-person style — the same remarks often play out very differently online vs in person, because of the moderating influences of tone etc. (I for one am much louder and more vulgar in person.)
take care,
Nate