Comrades and friends:
1. If I'm not posting here in a while, it's not that I've given up on the project, it's just that I tend to be trying to actually do stuff in the real world to make it a real thing. So don't panic.
2. I'm currently working out a major article to be published in real dead tree format on the issue of how cultural disposession is something that happened to working class "whites" as well as indigenous people, which will of course be full of CM methodology and insights. Also, doing a lot of artwork, getting healthy exercise, and helping out Project Chanology. (In case you didn't get the memo, the theme for the May 10 raid is Battletoad Earth. Check Encyclopedia Dramatica if you don't get the joke.)
3. I'm fed up of all this one-way communication. It makes me think that no-one's listening. However, I do a google search occasionally which shows that people are actually listening and creatively engaging with the concepts - by which I mean critiquing them rationally, not just having pre-programmed "COMMIES ARE STUPID LET'S THROW ROCKS AT THEM" kneejerk reactions like those idiot Bobbies (and sadly Rev. Stang) did in May last year. This warms the cockles of my black little heart.
4. Aphorism #83 says: if you don't have a scene, make one (from Tony James via Malcolm McLaren). So... how can we turn the Chaos Marxist meme into a conversation rather than an audience listening to a monologue from an easily distracted stand-up guru? I have no interest in being "Source". Will you guys start making comments, or sign up as contributors to the blog, or do we need an actual webforum or something?
Hi- I've been in the audience for the past several months, and have been stimulated by and benefited from your posts, though I haven't felt myself in possession of solid enough knowledge of either of the two main currents from which you draw to offer comment (my knowledge of magic is none, and of dialectical materialism, scanty and Mao-oriented). But I guess it's rather un-Marxist of me to continue only reading what you produce, without seeking to engage in the human sensuous activity of production? So, I'm wondering if you could explain to me (beyond your boostering for Lenin), what you think about the general field of dialectical materialist philosophy- in which of its traditions do you see yourself working?
ReplyDeleteThanks for playing. :)
ReplyDeleteWell, for a start, I'd have to say I get a little nervous at the whole concept of "Marxist philosophy" - mainly because, as Old Beardy said, philosophers interpret the world when the point is to change it! If I "booster" Lenin, it's because he combined rigorous intellectual analysis with actually effective political action, which I think is the only way to actually "do" Marxism. Generally, you can tell the cult leaders by the fact that their writing is arrant nonsense and has nothing to do with their actual practice (you ever actually read Mein Kampf, Dianetics, or anything Stalin ever wrote? I wouldn't recommend it).
As for my tradition, as I think I said in one of the earliest posts on the blog, I come out of the tradition of Trotsky by way of Tony Cliff - which essentially means an emphasis on bottom up democracy, and also an emphasis that socialism is not the same thing as a state-run economy. However, I've been reading a lot on Cuba recently, and though I'm not convinced yet that Cuba is any sort of model to be followed, I am open to persuasion.
Do my articles on the sidebar help to explain the basic ideas of magick?