Anti-Capitalist Fake-ism

poetix

we murder to dissect
Capitalist Realism is a book about a particular form of "realism": a particular set of interrelated notions about what reality is like, what the elements and relationships are that make up the "concrete" dimension with which "real" politics is allegedly concerned. The argument is that it is at the level of these notions - the "symbolic co-ordinates" of our shared ideological world - that the "real abstraction" of Capital has installed itself, limiting our sense of what is possible both culturally and politically. The question is then one of how to displace these symbolic co-ordinates, so that alternatives pre-emptively ruled out by capitalist realism become practically imaginable. There is an element of Kulturkampf and alternative canon-formation (k-punk's stock-in-trade, not that I think that's anything to apologise for) in this, but also an element of direct practical intervention: for example, the book calls for public sector workers to organise around a collective refusal to abide by the bureaucratic norms of target-setting, self-auditing and ersatz-marketisation.
 

poetix

we murder to dissect
I should add that I think the questions of how to be radical, what makes one a real radical, what's the most radical way to carry on etc. are pretty uninteresting in themselves. Radicalism is something one predicates of ideas and actions primarily, and only secondarily of people. "Radicals" are those who adhere to radical notions or engage in radical activities. What makes those notions or activities radical is not the self-nomination of those who adhere to them as "radicals", but their power - such as it is - of striking at the root of some problem. It's infinitely more important to recognise and evaluate the radical potential of propositions than it is to judge the strength or consistency of this or that individual's adherence to them.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
This is such a tepid critique, though, just really disingenuous. From what I understand, Kpunk was active in union organizing, but was frustrated at how ineffective it was at accomplishing the goals he felt important. His project, which he seems to share with others writing for Zero Books and elsewhere, is to THINK through the impasse of traditional left politics and perhaps offer alternative forms. To disassociate thought (and reading and writing) and acting is completely false, designed to shut down discussion, not further it.

I believe poetix's advice about examining his arguments instead of these bizarre, clearly envious, fantasies of how he does or does not conduct himself in life to be a far more productive angle. "What are you DOOOOing?" How the fuck do you know what he does?

There IS something to how certain forms of left activism is a supplement of capitalism (Zizek has written loads on this), but whether Kpunk's ideas are or are not should be argued. Obviously no one (self included) has read the book.

I think it's a valid critique. I mean, it's one thing to point out what's wrong with the current system, and K-punk is very far from being alone in this - people do it from all ideological angles: far left, social-democratic, conservative, far right, fundie Christian, Islamist, anarchist, libertarian, whatever. But it's quite another to offer any kind of solution, or even to point in the general direction of where you think a solution might lie, albeit eventually realised by someone else. I'm not the one trying to "disassociate" thought from action; it's KP and his acolytes who seemingly disparage the very idea of action in its entirety! Like gek-opel, who used to employ his considerable sophistical skills in arguing that anyone who actually got their hands dirty and tried to do anything about the various injustices around the world was merely perpetuating the globalised po-mo capitalist status quo, and therefore part of the problem rather than the solution. Clearly, humanity will be saved by posting arch comments on an internet forum, or not all.

As far as what KP himself does, no I don't know what he's up to on a daily basis because I'm not one of his fanboys. But he does blog extensively, so it wouldn't be too hard to find out what he's doing if he chooses to write about it.

Unless you're offering at least the glimpse of a glimmer of some practical alternative to the reality you're eloquently railing against, you run the risk of looking like a very erudite left-wing Disgusted Of Tunbridge Wells, all sound and fury and not much else.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
what does it mean to be a radical[?]

Good question. It occurred to me that most of the time you hear the word used on the news, it's as a description of a group like al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah...groups whose ideology is obviously ultra-conservative when considered in modern liberal-democratic terms, but who fully deserve the appellation 'radical' because their agenda is a restructuring or transformation of society 'from the root up'. Much the same could be said of the 'radical right', in the sense of those truly fascist regimes that were revolutionary or transformative in nature, rather than merely an extreme form of traditional conservatism.
 

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
O lord...

My sides hurt.

massrock said:
I've read k-punk blog since the start, more or less, and often it's entertaining (yeah) and provocative and I have full respect for the chap. I also look forward to reading CR, but at present I would have to agree with zhao's assessment that ultimately there is nothing much there, and neither is there really meant to be because the discourse exists in a symbiotic relationship with it's supposed enemy. So the monologue runs on and on and it's sort of semi-compelling if you're not paying too close attention and want to be hypnotised, but really it's going nowhere and saying nothing. Maybe it's a zen thing...

This right here...exactly. I've enjoyed the k-punk blog and in general I've always figured it's a good read. But I also find that I very rarely agree with what the guy's saying if I let myself think through the rhetoric.

The best/most engaging writers aren't necessarily the best thinkers. It's often the reverse, I've found. People who can think very well often can't write for shit, and it's probably because they're more interested in getting the concepts and facts straight than they are interested in making pretty sentences and playing word games. Often writer types think that playing clever word games *is* thinking well, but it isn't. It's masturbation. Maybe it's creative and fun. But it isn't necessarily brilliant even if it's well- or persuasively written.

Good communication based on brilliant strategy and keen intellection is another story.

Edit: Also, Padraig, I don't know anything about k-punk as a person so I can't comment on that. But I think that there are some people here who have consciously put themselves on a "radical" perch, who behave and speak as if they are in a position to arbitrate matters of whom and what is proper politically, as if they know what's best for everyone the world over, and this unsurprisingly gets peoples' backs up. Anyone who's going to do these things has to be prepared to be held to the same standard they're meting out--it's only fair, no? I agree with Zhao in some respects here: if you're going to put yourself up on that pedestal, don't be surprised if people try to knock you down. And in k-punk's case, I don't think it's too difficult to do--he's just some guy journalizing himself a New Media career in watered down academese based on pop culture and the damned Junior Boys. He's really got nothing on me, or anybody else I know, politically. I can think of tons of people whose opinions and influence on the world I think of as much more "radical", and none of them are leftist academics, fwiw. None of them are bloggers, either.
 
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Attelaawabe

Member
Anti Capitalist Fake ism

They are that I hate the recent car commercial where the guy picks up a mime and drives him until he says "Wow". He should have just run over him. I would have bought one
 

scottdisco

rip this joint please
I don't think it was a literal statement.

thanks for clarifying, i'd never have guessed
:rolleyes:

meanwhile, this

Mark Fisher said:
If there was any doubt that capitalist realism has survived the bank crash - or that capitalist realism has nothing to do with 'realism' as such - one need only look at the recent (entirely predictable) display of government cowardice in the face of the RBS directors.

is good
 

woops

is not like other people
i would like to see kpunk writing sci-fi novels. i think he would be quite good at it. his concepts are more suited to that field than to theory i think and it would force him to make his prose tighter, less journalese....

I agree and I think you should do the same Luka.
 

comelately

Wild Horses
i think empathy and intuition and re-connection with ourselves and each other, through which we realize that we actually don't need all the bullshit Capitalism makes us think we need, i think this is what the system is afraid of.

I agree with this, I think. But if it is mainly the middle-classes getting together to do this, and accompanying it with a bunch of extra-curricular activities/networking that may infact somewhat contradict their spuritual practice of 'empathy and reconnection', then I think Zizek's critique is more powerful than you're suggesting.

Zizek's idea of "spiritual disciplines" being able to be so completely co-opted by the system as to become a part of it shows how much he knows about spiritual disciplines -- not much. We are talking about comprehensive physical, mental, spiritual disciplines which have been used for thousands of years to fight oppressive power and its influence, and he thinks they can be co-opted by a social system which is no more than a few hundred years old? and why, because all he sees are yuppies in Slovenia going to trendy Yoga classes? he is in many ways a very intelligent man, not when it comes to this.

As it goes, I'm friends with several shamanic dance teachers who, although based in Croatia, are about to have a New Year workshop in Postojna (Slovenia) - maybe I will ask them about their customer base. I actually broke my Zizek virginity today, because I had came to the hypothesis that that the spiritual linguistic concepts, underlying assumptions etc within the spiritual community I participate in strongly reinforces class structures and capitalism.

Although complete 'co-option' may be an exaggeration, isn't Zizek nonetheless making a fairly powerful point? If not, why not? Old spiritual texts contain advice for leaders on how to best control their subjects, do they not? Can you give some examples of how spiritual disciplines have been used to fight oppressive power? I'm not saying they don't exist, just curious as to what examples you would give. Should we all be joining Judo dojos?

just looked at my FB feed - **** ******* became a fan of Divine OM Trio and Sterling Income Management LLC. All part of the Tao babee!
 

luka

Well-known member
As it goes, I'm friends with several shamanic dance teachers who, although based in Croatia, are about to have a New Year workshop in Postojna (Slovenia) - maybe I will ask them about their customer base. I actually broke my Zizek virginity today, because I had came to the hypothesis that that the spiritual linguistic concepts, underlying assumptions etc within the spiritual community I participate in strongly reinforces class structures and capitalism.

speaking of facebook, i just stole the above quote for my status.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
of course any system can be used for any purpose.

most of the enlightened zen priests in japan were pro-militarization and pro-fascism late 19th and early 20th century. Tibet has been in the shackles of an oppressive hierarchy for a long long time under the absolute rule of the lamas.

but also, Buddhists have been persecuted all over Asia through out history, and Buddhist teachings have been used in countless instances as a direct means to counter state control. the temples were in essence seperate economies in remote areas which existed outside of government jurisdiction, and the powers have always been threatened by their autonomy.

look, I'm no historian and far from being any kind of expert on this subject. but the anti-establishment history of buddhism is long and rich. in China, in Vietname, in Thailand... etc.
 
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nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
unauthorized insomniac rant

padraig (u.s.) said:
The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in "advanced" countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world.

I meant to respond to this weeks ago and I forgot.

This quote neatly sums up why, although I agree with many of the criticisms of globalized market-driven social organization that come from the crit theory perspective, I ultimately have a hard time with the idea that nu-Communism is the "answer" to all of the world's problems, so that if we only go back to a purer conception of communism and stick to it we'll create a "better world". Communism as a movement was very vital and produced all sorts of productive anti-State interventions in its early days, no doubt about that. But everything about it, from its ethos to its concepts of Capital and labor, are simply not as relevant to today's society as they were during and in the early years post-industrialization. The world was smaller then, more manageable, and easier to draw into focus as a "whole". Economic structures were simpler, more localized, and different in many key respects to ours today. The globe is huge now, and even in becoming more like "one" world it's become entirely too complex a network to theorize into political compliance. Learn from Marxism, take your inspiration, but move on, in other words.

If critical theorists would move away from reformulating the words and works of their Masters and spend a lot more time looking at concrete political situations (without the ironic shrug and eyebrow raise of mainstream outlets like The Daily Show), they may be able to build a new conceptual framework that would produce important interventions in whatever way would be most productive *now*, not a century ago. I'm not pretending I have a grand plan. But maybe that's the problem--the fact that too many people are obsessed with a "final solution" approach. Instead of one grand plan, how about a trillion small but manageable plans that eventually add up and form a network? If a very simple "nomadology" strategy can work for Al Qaeda, essentially a bunch of random nobodies from the middle of no-man's land with few resources fighting a world power--it can work for anyone. And I don't mean the violence and terrorism, I mean the type of organizational infastructure they rely on for their survival.

What bothers me most about the new Left is the crippling nostalgia they engage in and that most of their theory is steeped in. That used to be the Right's problem--idealizing the past and referring to some bygone era where everything was simpler and better--not ours. But now it seems to be an equal opportunity employer of everyone along the political spectrum. This is something K-punk is usually, and ironically, good at diagnosing, given his own rather hard to miss propensity toward idealizing-mythologizing the recent past.

Instead of trying to revive media that were popular and productive 150 years ago, why not cultivate whichever new ones are at your immediate disposal? Along these lines, blogs are a good start. But internet access is still (largely) the privilege of the middle class in developed countries. I am convinced that there are people all over the world who want to be truly informed of political events and situations, but there's just nowhere to go for reliable information that isn't actually infotainment sold and controlled by a venture capitalist.

I hope we can all agree that the younger generations suffer from a lack of awareness more than anything else. So that would be a good start: fix that. Make youtube channels full of free videos about what's going on in the world. Distribute free newsletters, emails, webzines, whatever. Show people the ways in which market-driven government and social organization are failing the entire world. Explain to them that there are things they could do in their own communities all the time--and I don't mean buying Fair Trade, but helping unionize, starting foodbanks, shelters, using grants and local municipal funds for social programs, etc.--and then lead by example and DO THEM YOURSELF. Don't just lament that grassroots efforts are dying off, make them work, show young people that they CAN move past branding themselves through music taste/consumer goods and/or spending all day on Facebook into meaningful action. One step at a time, though. Drop the bogus "all or nothing" self-defeating circular logic and the macho bluster.

A recent study demonstrated that online interactions don't have the same effect on a person's behavior and choices as real-life social interactions. This confirmed what I'd always felt to be true: using the internet is fine, but the way you use it matters. It's an excellent tool for building real life interactions and networks, but if you don't take it to that next level, research shows that you really won't have "a social network" that affects peoples lives in the same sense as you would in real-life between friends and acquaintances. It seems that the Zero Books people are trying to do this, and that's something. They just seem to be woefully off-message to me. I haven't read but bits and pieces of them yet, so I can't say for sure, but the style of thinking in both seems very limited in reach and scope.

Classic Leftist problem: getting hung up on semantics and endless repetition of formulating the problem with respect to the Elderstatesmen of theory, while the Right continuously innovates and breaks barriers. Many many people know what the problems are, they just need something to latch onto. Sadly, the Right gets to sit and watch the Left implode due to internal strife and floundering logical inconsistency (the way many feminists promote a view that devalues female labor and minimizes the intellectual and sexual parity of women in the name of paternalistic tisk-tisking about sex and sex labor comes to mind...).

More than anything, the Left needs to learn to pick its battles. Does Al Qaeda sit around endlessly debating obscure quotes from dead Philosophers or discussing that really awesome record? Probably not. Another suggestion: spend less time complaining about inane and trivial things like vibrators and who is more authentic in their anti-the Man zeal, and more time doing anything, anything in your community to make things better for people who have it worse off than you. Wavy Gravy said you'd passed the acid test when you finally realized this through your actions, how to make things better for people around you who have it worse off...(yes I just quoted Wavy Gravy in an online rant) The left needs to re-take the frikkin acid test already, metaphorically at least.

I already know what I want to do: make sure that I advocate against racism, sexism, classicism, anti-gay bigotry and other problems that exist in the biomedical sciences. I don't want to rail against some generalized Capitalism or World for the benefit of a Big Other that doesn't exist or care about me even if it does, but in one slice of the world that is manageable to me, in my everyday life, all day, all the time. That's going to take dedication, hardwork, and most of all patience. But I know that if I do the right thing for long enough, other people will follow. And if they don't, at least I'll have tried my best.

What I see when I look at the contemporary Left is a bunch of spoiled brats who think they should be able to chant down Babylon, or whine it away, or *suffer terribly* until God's Kingdom suddenly gets ushered in but without any skin off their backs. I've been guilty of it myself at times. But it's a fantasy. Grow up. Build something.
 
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luka

Well-known member
LOL, I think we just compared k-punk to Hitler.
this is a good thread isnt it. when did dissensus become so middlebrow and how exactly did it happen? me absuing k-punk didnt help and the dsf exodus didnt help either. its sad though. even zhao and vim are very lucid and cogent here.
 

luka

Well-known member
As it goes, I'm friends with several shamanic dance teachers who, although based in Croatia, are about to have a New Year workshop in Postojna (Slovenia) - maybe I will ask them about their customer base. I actually broke my Zizek virginity today, because I had came to the hypothesis that that the spiritual linguistic concepts, underlying assumptions etc within the spiritual community I participate in strongly reinforces class structures and capitalism.

great moments in dissensus history
 
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