10.11.08

The eonic effect and the terminal failure of marxism

Posted in 1848+, Critique of Evolutionary Economy, The Eonic Effect, Ultra Far Left at 8:17 pm by nemo

Below is some Marxist junk email on a conference on Historical Materialism.
Here’s the pitch.

Ever since its foundation in 1997, Historical Materialism has sought
to contribute to the intellectual recomposition of the global Left by
serving as an international venue for critical Marxist research. The
journal’s initial wager – that Marxism remains a vital, and
heterogeneous and many-faceted political and theoretical tradition -
has been borne out in a conjuncture where Marxist thinkers have amply
demonstrated the critical resources at their disposal (witness recent
debates on imperialism and neoliberalism). Within the academy, the
facile dismissal of Marxism seems to have run out of steam, and the
attitudes of new generations of students and researchers have changed
accordingly. Marxist intellectuals are no longer simply forced to
survive in hostile conditions or to retreat into isolated academic
subcultures, despite an often adverse global political context. In
this setting, they face new challenges, which this conference seeks to
address

This passage is mostly baloney, and I don’t say that from anything like a conservative point of view. On the contrary, you’ll note my blog on the Ultra Far Left, which is what?
One of the basic sidelines of the study of the eonic effect is that of the transition sequence between ‘raw liberalism’ to the ‘nineteenth century left’. It enters in the study of the so-called Great Divide, check World History And The Eonic Effect. It provides some basic insight into the phenomenon of revolution and the foundational idea of the left. But one thing we notice is the strange position marxism found itself in at the conclusion of the modern transition.
In any case, the old marxist left is dead. Best to get with it and grasp the point. But unfortunately, after waiting eighteen years after the fall of Communism for signs of renewal, instead we find the same dready cult of historical matrialism proceeding semi-immortal in the university system where it can thrive quite well in low gear and total oblivion. To be fair, Marxism is a difficult subject to evaluate, but then to be fair, and for that reason, it deserves to be replaced with a thorough upgrade.
Historical Materialism is a failed theory and stands in the way of a genuine left.
It is alarming but true that pointing to the reality of the Marxist legacy (100 million dead, the largest body count of any movement in history) doesn’t even produce a reaction in most die hard marxists. In my case suggesting leftists accept this has gotten me unsubbed from every leftist email group on the net. Fuck you, what a bunch idiot reactionaries. A hundred million dead, and you won’t even critique the theory.
I can’t even post on Science for the People anymore. But I manage with pseudonyms. I think we have to wait about two more generations before anything new can happen, and the old idiot left dies off. It was over a century and a half between the English Civil War and the American/French Revolutions, ample time apparently for a renewal of revolutionary thinking. A pity. We need a complete overhaul of the issues raised by Marx, and we need it yesterday, but it won’t happen.
For what it is worth the study of the eonic model, although it does a little better on liberalism (and nonviolence) than Marxist theory can repair all the defects of Marxism at the drop of a hat. But the result, although simple and elegant, doesn’t have the same cast as the traditional clunker that is really a concoction of Engels.
Marx is too misunderstood, and he is never judged by the results of what he did. His work is classic and functional as a critique of class in a capitalist system.
But his historical theory is incoherent, as dozens of critics have pointed out, since the time of Marx. You can’t therefore produce a result with it, and in any case after the example of stalinism/leninism there are no second chances for the theory.
I may therefore write up a revised Marxism 2.0 (and call it something else) using the eonic model.

———————————
MANY MARXISMS
HISTORICAL MATERIALISM ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2008
7-9 November 2008
School of Oriental and African Studies, Central London
Organised in collaboration with the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher
Memorial Prize Committee and with Socialist Register.

Organised in association with the International Initiative for the
Promotion of Political Economy, the journal Situations and the Journal
of Agrarian Change, and with the assistance of the Faculty of Law and
Social Sciences of SOAS.

Ever since its foundation in 1997, Historical Materialism has sought
to contribute to the intellectual recomposition of the global Left by
serving as an international venue for critical Marxist research. The
journal’s initial wager – that Marxism remains a vital, and
heterogeneous and many-faceted political and theoretical tradition -
has been borne out in a conjuncture where Marxist thinkers have amply
demonstrated the critical resources at their disposal (witness recent
debates on imperialism and neoliberalism). Within the academy, the
facile dismissal of Marxism seems to have run out of steam, and the
attitudes of new generations of students and researchers have changed
accordingly. Marxist intellectuals are no longer simply forced to
survive in hostile conditions or to retreat into isolated academic
subcultures, despite an often adverse global political context. In
this setting, they face new challenges, which this conference seeks to
address

How can we develop the plurality of Marxist debates, fields and
schools without making concessions to eclecticism, narcissism or
compartmentalisation? How do we square the concrete multiplicity of
Marxisms with the strong commonalities in intellectual vocabularies,
theoretical sources and political aims? Hasn’t the question of the
diversity of Marxism – of many Marxisms – accompanied the tradition’s
entire development, a testament both to its internationalist horizon,
and to the inexhaustible potential of its many critical insights and
conceptual formulations? What strategies can allow us to confront, and
perhaps overcome, some of the disparities or even misunderstandings
born of these processes of differentiation?

Having tried to foster a form of critical cosmopolitanism and debate
in past conferences, bringing together thinkers working in different
fields, and out of different traditions, this year’s Historical
Materialism conference wants to emphasise problems and opportunities
raised by the existence of ‘Many Marxisms’. To this end, it aims to
take stock of recent developments in Marxist thought, surveying the
most vibrant recent debates; to confront critical moments in the
historical development of Marxism; to identify crucial concepts and
areas of research that can cut across any preconceived academic
specialisation or geographical isolation of Marxism; to reflect on the
ways in which Marxism has and continues to intervene in mainstream
intellectual debates; and, finally, to generate a space in which the
outlines of the many twenty-first century Marxisms may be delineated.

THE FULL TIMETABLE AND ONLINE REGISTRATION DETAILS WILL BE AVAILABLE
SOON

For more details, please contact: historicalmaterialism@soas.ac.uk

THEMES COVERED WILL INCLUDE:

Approaching Passive Revolutions * Art and Capitalism * Aspects of
Imperialism * Base and Superstructure * Beyond Global Value Chain
Analysis in Commodity Studies * Bolshevism: Yesterday and Tomorrow *
Capitalism / Knowledge Capitalism * Capitalism and Architecture *
Climate Change, Sustainability and Socialism * Contemporary Radical
Thought and Marxism: Agamben, Holloway, Zizek * Early Modern
Capitalism * Ecological Crisis and Marxist Theory * Everyday Life *
Finance and Neo-Liberalism * Financialisation and Crisis * Food Crisis
* From the Grundrisse to Capital * Future of World Capitalism *
Historical Materialism and Late Development * Historiography in the
Development of Marxism * International Financial Institutions * Is
Today’s Capitalism Actually-Existing Barbarism? * Labour-Process and
Resistance * Latin American Left Today * Learning from Enemies and
Rivals: Schmitt, Strauss, Weber * Life, Politics & Capitalism * Many
Marxisms and India * Many Marxisms: Key Figures * Many Marxisms:
Problems and Polemics * Marx and Fetishism * Marx on World Economy and
World Politics * Marxism and Cinema: Film Noir and Neo-Noir * Marxism
and Metropolitics * Marxism and Philosophy * Marxism and the Sciences
* Marxism Outside the West * Marxism, Feminism and Women’s Politics *
Marxisms and Literature * Marxisms and Religion * Marxisms and
Southern Africa * Marxisms and Violences: Gender and Race * Marxist
Theories of Practice * Modes of Foreign Relations * Monetary Policy
and Banking under Neoliberalism * Money * Negativity and Revolution *
North East Asian Marxisms and Socialisms * On the Concept of Surplus
Populations * Perspectives from Althusser * Perspectives from Marx’s
‘Jewish Question’ * Philosophies of Revolt and Revolution *
Philosophy in the Early Marx * Political Categories of Marxism *
Political Economy and Economics Today * Politics of the Promotion of
Global Competitiveness * Racism, Class and Politics * Restructuring,
Capital and Labour * Revolutionary Politics in the Middle East *
Sexual Liberation: Historical Materialist Approaches * Situationism at
the Limits: Must we Burn Debord? * Socialism in Search of an Economic
System * State in the Bolivarian revolution * Theories of Class *
Theories of Imperialism * Time, Temporality, History * Transformations
in the Neoliberal State * Uneven and Combined Development: Towards a
Marxist Theory of ‘the International’? * US Financial Power in
Crisis * Utopianism * Value: Political and Economic Dimensions *
‘Western’ Marxism and the Anti-Colonial World/Intellectuals *
Windows on Empire: Perspectives from History, Culture and Political
Economy * Workerism: a Generation Later *

PARTICIPANTS INCLUDE:

Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi, Gilbert Achcar, Talat Ahmed, Greg Albo, Jamie
Allinson, Kevin Anderson, Ricardo Antunes, Giovanni Arrighi, Sam
Ashman, Antonio Carmona Báez, Richard Bailey, Metin Bal, Colin Barker,
Kate Bayliss, Pınar Bedirhanoğlu, Mike Beggs, Riccardo Bellofiore,
Aaron Benanav, Ted Benton, Henry Bernstein, Cyrus Bina, Werner
Bonefeld, Mark Bould, Pepijn Brandon, Peter Bratsis, Robert Brenner,
Dennis Broe, Dick Bryan, Ergun Bulut, Verity Burgmann, Alex
Callinicos, Paul Cammack, Mauro Farnesi Camellone, Al Campbell, Bob
Cannon, Gavin Capps, Thomas Carmichael, Emilia Castorina, Maria Elisa
Cevasco, Hsiu-Man Chen, Vivek Chibber, Alexander Chryssis, Martin
Cobian, Peter Custers, John Darwin, Neil Davidson, Charles Davis,
Chuck Davis, Gail Day, Tim Dayton, Roni Demirbag, Radhika Desai, Pat
Devine, Paulo dos Santos, Peter Drucker, Jean-Numa Ducange, Gérard
Duménil, Nick Dyer-Witheford, Timm Ebner, Bolivar Echeverria, Juliane
Edler, Ersin Vedat Elgur, Katsuhiko Endo, Sara R. Farris, Lucy
Ferguson, Don Filtzer, Ben Fine, Robert Fine, Bridget Fowler, Carl
Freedman, Alan Freeman, Andrea Fumagalli, Cristina Morini, Lindsey
German, Melanie Gilligan, Ruth Wilson Gilmour, Saroj Giri, Richard
Godden, Maya Gonzalez, Jamie Gough, Peter Gowan, Kevin Gray, Nick
Gray, Chris Harman, Barbara Harriss-White, Owen Hatherley, Cristoph
Hermann, Andy Higginbottom, Mike Hill, Christian Høgsbjerg, Evren
Hosgor, Nik Howard, David Jack, Elinor Jean, Oliver Jelinski, Nicholas
Joll, Ismail Karatepe, Ken Kawashima, Paul Kellogg, Geoff Kennedy,
Sami Khatib, Aykut Kilic, Donald Kingsbury, Nick Knight, Martijn
Konings, Michael Krätke, Rick Kuhn, Ishay Landa, Tim Lang, Spyros
Lapatsioras, Paul LeBlanc, Sergio Lessa, Alex Levant, Peter Linebaugh,
Alex Loftus, Rob Lucas, Dennis Maeder, Matteo Mandarini, Christian
Marazzi, Jonathan Martineau, Paul Mattick, David Mayer, Andrew
McGettigan, Philip McMichael, David McNally, James Meadway, John
Milios, Owen Miller, Andrew Milner, Dimitris Milonakis, John Molyneux,
David Moore, Cristina Morini, Adam Morton, Zwi Negator, Susan Newman,
Jörg Nowak, Benjamin Noys, Bertel Nygaard, Bridget O’Laughlin, Keith
O’Regan, Sebnem Oguz, Ulrich Oslender, Ceren Özselçuk, Maria
Cristina Soares Paniago, Leo Panitch, F. Papadatos, Juan Pablo
Painceira Paschoa, Leda Maria Paulani, Simon Pirani, Iain Pirie, Nina
Power, Gonzalo Pozo-Martin, Thomas Purcell, Diana Raby, Michael
Rafferty, Geert Reuten, Paul Reynolds, Ben Richardson, John Riddell,
John Roberts, Bruce Robinson, John Rose, Thomas Sablowski, Spyros
Sakellaropoulos, Jorgen Sandemose, Saskia Sassen, Michael Sayeau, Sean
Sayers, David Schwartzman, Alan Sears, Lynne Segal, Ben Selwyn, Sanjay
Seth, Stuart Shields, Nicola Short, Joe Sim, Rick Simon, Subir Sinha,
Panagiotis Sotiris, Dimitris P. Sotiropoulos, Kerstin Stakemeier,
Guido Starosta, Marcel Stoetzler, Robert Stolz, Gaspar Miklós Tamás,
Bruno Tinel, Peter Thomas, Massimiliano Tomba, Alberto Toscano, Greg
Tuck, Mehmet Ufuk Tutan, Kees van der Pijl, Jan Douwe van der Ploeg,
Carlo Vercellone, Danga Vileisis, Sherryl Vint, Satnam Virdee,
Andriana Vlachou, Elisa Waeyenberge, Jeffery R. Webber, Dominic
Wetzel, Adrian Wilding, Evan Calder Williams, Frieder Otto Wolf,
Andrew Wright, Steve Wright, Galip Yalman, Iván Zatz

*************************************
Costica Bradatan,
H-Ideas Online Editor

Senior Editor, Janus Head
www.janushead.org

Assistant Professor
The Honors College
Texas Tech University

http://www.webpages.ttu.edu/cbradata/

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