Postmodernism, a New Stage of the Spewctacle

Debord and the Postmodern Turn: New Stages of the Spectacle

By Steven Best and Douglas Kellner

Kellner homepage: http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/kellner.html
Curriculum Vitae: http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/DK97CV.htm
Best homepage: http://www.utep.edu/philos/best.htm

"But certainly for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, fancy to reality, the appearance to the essence, ... illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Nay, sacredness is held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness," Ludwig Feuerbach.

"There is no doubt for aynone who examines the question coldly that those who really want to shake an established society must formulate a theory which fundamentally explains this society, or which at least quite seems to give a satisfactory explantion," Guy Debord

 

New Faces of Fascism (2018)

 Phil Hearse reviews New Faces of Fascism by Enzo Traverso, Verso, 2018

The forward surge of fascist and far right movements, symbolised by figures like Trump, Bolsonaro in Brazil and Salvini in Italy, poses important theoretical and political questions for the militant left. Enzo Traverso’s new book is one of the best responses from a Marxist viewpoint. Unlike many studies of this subject, this book does not attempt to provide a factual account of the progress of the hard right, but goes straight to some of the main analytical problems. These include how we can understand the new hard right in relation to ‘classical fascism’ in the 20^th century, the idea of ‘populism’, identity politics (left and right), Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, as well as the usefulness (or otherwise) of the notion of totalitarianism. This is a big agenda, undertaken by an historian with a deep knowledge of modern politics and culture, and is therefore quite dense – decidedly not a basic introduction.

Myths of Ayn Rand (2009)

 Phil Hearse (2009)

Most people outside the United States have probably never heard of Ayn Rand, and a brief introduction to her ultra-pro-free market views would doubtless be enough to convince most of them they haven't missed anything. Yet 27 years after her death, Ayn Rand continues to be seriously debated in the US, her books sell hundreds of thousands each year, her views are propagated by right-wing think tanks and foundations and - bizarrely - Charlize Theron is in discussions to turn Rand's 1088-page magnum opus Atlas Shrugged into a TV mini-series. The Times Educational Supplement claimed in July 2009  that the Ayn Rand revival is gathering pace on US campuses. According to the TES:

Radical right threat to internet freedom (2019)

 Phil Hearse

Two recent events have focused attention on extreme right social media. The shooter in the Christchurch massacre was an addict of white supremacist message boards on platforms like Reddit and 4Chan. Like the alt-right platform Gab, these noticeboards are filled with overt racism, homophobia, misogyny and Hitler worship. A very different sort of hard right social media fuels Vox, the Spanish neo-fascist party that won 13% of the vote in the April general election. Like its siblings in France and Germany its racism is thinly-disguised Islamophobia, and it tries to present a ‘respectable’ image. One aspect of far-right social media often overlooked, but highly relevant with Vox, is the immense amount of money that funds it – generally from millionaire or billionaire backers.

REMEMBERING PETER GOWAN

Peter Gowan died on 12 June 2009. This obituary was written at the time.
Peter Gowan, Professor at London Metropolitan University, a member of the New Left Review editorial board and a former leader of the International Marxist Group (IMG), died on 12 June 2009. He was probably the leading Marxist expert on international relations writing in English, and wrote and spoke with an astonishing grasp of the inter-relationship between economic, political and military power in the modern world. His ability to knit together theory with a vast range of factual knowledge held his audiences spellbound.
But he was far from a detached academic; he was an utterly partisan, determined and vitriolic critic of American imperialism. For him, the central obstacle to world progress and social justice were what he called the “Dollar-Wall St regime”. After 9/11 Peter was in demand around the world to explain why the US had gone to war and what the ‘axis of evil’ and ‘war on terror’ were all about. He claimed American imperialism had made a ‘Faustian bid’ for world dominance, and that military violence was central to that bid. He was also convinced that it could not succeed; that ultimately world domination was impossible by a single imperialist power and that the United States was ‘triumphing towards disaster’.

NNEW POST TEST

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Jeffery Webber on the Crisis of the Latin American Left

Speech given at Socialist Resistance Forum London, March 28 2017

Right win putsch, escalating racism, deepening austerity (2017) - the real meaning of Brexit

Phil Hearse (2017)

“The way the Leave campaign have tried to ramp up a fear of immigration has been disgraceful—but the truth is that if you see an immigrant in a hospital, they’re far more likely to be working there than being treated. The time has come to brand the “Brexit” campaign for what it is—a bid for a right-wing Tory takeover of the reins of power in the UK and to dismantle the hard-worn social gains of the last few decades. The people leading the case for a vote to leave are on the right of the Conservative Party and will take an “out” vote as their signal to make their power grab complete.” Nicola Sturgeon, 16/6/2016

Our enemy’s enemy is not necessarily our friend, and of course the Scottish National Party, despite its vaguely leftish social democratic programme, is not a friend of socialism. But Nicola Sturgeon was completely correct on what was happening during the EU referendum last year. Being anti-EU has been the banner of the Conservative right wing for 30 years or more. The victory of the Brexit vote last June represented the spectacular victory of the Conservative right and the forces that backed them – like UKIP.

Trump and the Future (2016)

Phil Hearse (first published at Left Unity)

The shocking victory of Donald Trump in the US presidential elections is a major turning point that is part of, and will give new momentum to, a surge to the right in world politics.

The international situation is dealt with below, but for starters we should note that there is near certainty that the far right will win the Austrian presidential re-run and that Marine Le Pen has a major chance to win the presidential election new year in France.

Most of all though we have to insist that the Trump victory follows on from, and in part of the same trend as, Brexit in Britain. It seems that that the Lexiteers have gone remarkably quiet. No wonder. How can anyone seriously pretend that the new Teresa May government does not represent a shift to the right in bourgeois politics, or that the victory of Brexit was not achieved on the back of a xenophobic anti-immigrant campaign?

Prithan Singh, India's Naxalite Movement (2016)

By Pritam Singh, Professor of Economics, Oxford Brooks University.

Pritam Singh Professor of Economics Faculty of Business Oxford Brookes University, Oxford UK psingh@brookes.ac.uk (Draft paper for the conference on ‘Before ’68: the Left, Activism and Social Movements in the Long 1960s’ at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, 13-14th February 2016)

India’s Maoist/Naxalite movement Introduction On 25 May 1967, in one village called Prasadujot in the Naxalbari bloc in the West Bengal state of India, a group of peasants led by two left-wing activists Kanu Sanyal (1929- 2010) and Jangal Santhal (?-1981) who were supported by a communist ideologue Charu Mazumdar (1918-1972)i tried to forcibly seize the land from some landlords who controlled the land to which the peasants had the legal entitlement.

Facing opposition onslaught, Chavismo must return to its roots

By LUCAS KOERNER - VENEZUELANALYSIS.COM, December 9th 2015

The United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) suffered a crushing defeat in Sunday’s National Assembly elections, winning just 55 of 167 seats. Formerly in opposition, the Venezuelan right took a two-thirds majority with 112 seats, gaining control of the South American country’s legislature for the first time in 17 years.

The outcome affords the Venezuelan right an unprecedented opportunity to roll back the gains of the Bolivarian Revolution by legal means, without having to resort to coups or other forms of extra-institutional violence. But will they succeed?

Counter-Revolution without Counter-Hegemony?

Under Venezuela’s democratic system, the single-house National Assembly holds enormous power: a two-thirds super-majority can pass or revoke organic constitutional laws, replace Supreme Court magistrates, appoint the heads of crucial public institutions such as the Public Prosecutor’s office and the National Electoral Council, and even convene a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution.

In short, a two-thirds majority gives the opposition all of the institutional weapons necessary to reverse many of the key transformations of the Venezuelan state achieved by the Bolivarian Revolution over the last seventeen years.

They will now be empowered to revoke critical revolutionary legislation such as the Organic Law of Communes, the Organic Work and Workers’ Law (LOTTT), among numerous others, repeal international treaties such as the ALBA-TP and PetroCaribe, as well as pack the Supreme Court with an eye towards impeaching President Nicolas Maduro.

However, while the opposition has indeed won a super-majority and the concomitant legal power to pursue these changes, this does not necessarily mean that they have a popular mandate to carry out such a reactionary agenda.

Neoliberalism's world og corruption - April 2016

By Phil Hearse
T

Rich and powerful hide their money offshore

The Panama Papers’ revelations about the rich and powerful hiding untold billions in ‘offshore’ tax havens may be shocking, but it’s hardly a surprise to anyone who knows the first thing about the way that big business works. We are living through a blitzstorm of allegations and controversy about corruption. In the few years alone we’ve had:

A Socialist Response to Terrorist Attacks: Pierre Rousset and Francois Sabado, March 2016

This article was written by two veteran French revolutionary socialists in  response to the November 2015 attacks in Paris. Its logic and position stands equally for the recent attacks in Belgium. "At such a time, we of course continue the class struggle, to support the struggle of all the oppressed; but beyond that, we defend humanity against barbarism. "

Welcome to the World of Apple

Phil Hearse explains how the world’s richest company rips off workers and governments worldwide

Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California

2/9/2016. First published by Left Unity

The ruling by EU competition commissioner Margarethe Vestager that Apple should pay the Irish government €13.2 bn, because the derisory 2% tax charged on Apple profits was ‘unfair’ to other companies, reveals just a tiny corner of the tax, labour and political practices of the world’s most profitable company. Apple practice is the gold standard of multinational super-exploitation that modern neoliberal corporations aspire to. How Apple functions is closely mirrored by the practices of transnational corporations like Google, McDonalds, Amazon, Starbucks, Fiat Chrysler and many others.

Critics of Vestager – like Apple boss Tim Cook, Ryanair supremo Michael O’Leary and former EU competition commissioner Neelie Kroes (who now works for tax evader Uber) – say she is wrong because the Irish government should be able to determine its own tax rates. The main point however is that Apple was able to aggregate all its profits in Europe, Asia and Africa – most of the world outside the US – in its Ireland subsidiary to benefit from ultra-low tax rates. The Irish government was a co-conspirator in a worldwide scam, ripping off governments and citizens internationally.

A Coup in Brazil - by Alfredo Saad-Filho

Every so often, the bourgeois political system runs into crisis. The machinery of the state jams; the veils of consent are torn asunder; and the tools of power appear disturbingly naked. Brazil is living through one of those moments — it is dreamland for social scientists; a nightmare for everyone else.

Dilma Rousseff was elected president in 2010, with a 56-44 percent majority against the right-wing, neoliberal Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) opposition candidate. She was reelected four years later with a diminished yet convincing majority of 52-48 percent, or a difference of 3.5 million votes.

A Balance Sheet of the New Anticaspitalist Party - Pierre Rousset (February 2016)

In 2009 the French LCR,  follwing two highky successful presidential election campaigns with candidate Olivier Besacenot, took the initiative to form the New Anti-Capitalsit Party (NPA). Although the organisation is still significant compared with British far left groups, its early promise and membership surge has not been maintained.  Here longtime French revolutionary socialist leader Pierre Rousset takes a long hard look at the balance sheet of the NPA.

The following piece was written for Kojkkino, the theoretical magazine of the Greek organization DEA. Though quite long, it does not claim to cover all sides of the question. Indeed, it’s the kind of article that is never really finished and that has to be constantly reworked and supplemented. Its main objective is to stimulate collective thinking about the lessons of the successes and failures of the NPA from its birth to the present day.

Stuart Hall, 2033-2014

 Robin Blackburn (ESSF via NLR)

Stuart Hall CND rally Trafalgar Square 1963

The renowned cultural theorist Stuart Hall, who died on 10 February 2014, was the first editor of the New Left Review (NLR). Stepping down in 1962, he continued to play an outstanding role in the broader New Left for the rest of his life. Stuart made decisive contributions to cultural theory and interpretation, yet a political impulse – involving both a political challenge to dominant cultural patterns and a cultural challenge to hegemonic politics – pervades his work. 

Turkey heads for dictatorship - March 2016

By Sarah Parker and Phil Hearse (first published by Left Unity)

On March 21 hundreds of thousands of Kurdish people in Diyarbakır, unofficial capital of Turkish Kurdistan, flocked to celebrations of Newroz, the Kurdish New Year. The celebrations this year had a more than usual political angle – not just a celebration of Kurdish identity but a demonstration of opposition to the brutal dictatorial actions of Turkish president Recep Erdoğan and his ruling AKP (Justice and Development Party).

The politics of the Newroz are well understood by the regime. In Istanbul tens of thousands of people from across the city tried to reach the Bakırköy district to join the massive Newroz celebration which had been banned by the city governor. In a scene repeated in many cities, people who did reach the celebrations were attacked by the police. Dozens of people were arrested and many injured.

Erdoğan and the AKP are carrying through an all-out attack on civil liberties, opposition parties and media, critical academics and most of all against the Kurdish population of South East Turkey and northern Syria.

The rise and fall of Syriza - Stathis Kouvlakis (NLR) - March 2016

New Left Review. You can download a pdf or order a copy of NLR 97 or subscribe to the magazine by clicking this link

Syriza won power in January 2015 as an anti-austerity party—the most advanced political opposition so far to the hardening deflationary policies of the Brussels–Berlin–Frankfurt axis. Six months later, the Tsipras government forced through the harshest austerity package Greece had yet seen. This trajectory was a predictable outcome of the contradiction embodied in Syriza’s programme: reject austerity, but keep the euro. Why was Tsipras so incapable of envisaging a course inside the EU but outside the Eurozone, the position of Sweden, Denmark, Poland and half a dozen other European countries?

First, one shouldn’t underestimate the popularity of the euro in the southern-periphery countries—Greece, Spain, Portugal—for whom joining the EU meant accessing political and economic modernity. For Greece, in particular, it meant being part of the West in a different way to that of the US-imposed post-civil war regime. It seemed a guarantee of the new democratic course: after all, it’s only since 1974 that Greece has known a political regime similar to other Western countries, after decades of authoritarianism, military dictatorship and civil war.

The right wing fight to ditch Corbyn is already underway - January 2016

Another day, another sharp attack on Jeremy Corbyn in the Guardian, this time from Peter Mandelson. Mandelson heaps half-truths upon untruths and tops them up with venomous red baiting:

“But Corbyn is now in a position to impose his views on the party, and he is doing so by very unconventional means. To secure his support base and grip within the party, Corbyn has created Momentum, a trade union-funded organisation run in conjunction with hard-left networks outside the party. This differentiates it from the moderates’ Progress organisation, which has no outside allegiances…..You would expect Corbyn to recruit loyalists to his office in parliament, but this is largely staffed from two further far left entities: Socialist Action, a Trotskyite group most closely associated with Ken Livingstone, and Labour Representation Committee, which was founded by John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor.” (1)

Mandelson accuses Corbyn of wanting total dominance of the party and a total marginalising of the centre and right. This may be part of the campaign to avert a reshuffle of the shadow cabinet, but it is symptomatic of something else: the campaign to remove Corbyn is already underway.

What Mandelson underestimates of course is that the Corbyn phenomenon is a function of something much bigger than the many thousands who've joined Labour or registered to vote in the election. It's a crystallisation of the opinions of hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people, fed up with pro-austerity politicians including New Labour. This phenomenon will not go away with a successful leadership coup against Corbyn, but it can suffer an important political defeat.

The Building of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign and its Consequences for the British Left

Ernest Tate (1) and Phil Hearse (2)

Delivered at the Left Before 1968 conference, organised at UEA by the Socialist History Society and the University of East Anglia Department of History, February 13/ 14, 2016

Part 1 – Building the VSC

In line with the theme of this conference this presentation will not say much about the large anti-war mobilisations in 1968 or what happened later. Rather, it will discuss what lay behind the remarkable rise of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC) and the factors that influenced its development. 

Launched on 20 December1965, the VSC initiated a series of ad-hoc committees to organise mass protests on the streets of London against the escalation of the war in Vietnam and the Labour Government’s complicity in it.  These protests came to characterise the period. They are now seen as an important expression of the youth radicalisation of those years, and raised the central question for the whole British left of the attitude the working class should take towards the colonial revolution.