Wear Clean Draws  (because there’s 5 million ways to kill a ceo)

with apologies to Eric for being totally Hegelian in this :)

At LBO, Michael Pollak wrote:

True, and that was a great editorial to post. But I think both of you are missing a key linguistic and conceptual asymmetry here between right and left, which the left has no interest in curing, but which if we knew what was good for us, we would.

And that’s the this: the opposite of conservative is liberal. And if the Nation asked the question Is Obama A Real Liberal? they’d not only have to answer it emphatically Yes, so would you (SA) and Doug.

The Right has a huge advantage here. Their wing and their center both agree, whether they like it or not, that they share a common identity: they are all conservatives. The only difference is how fierce or how true a conservative they are. Which gives the wing enormous moral leverage over the rest. The center always has to admit they are the less true, less fierce representatives of a common creed. That means they are always implicitly apologizing for their compromises.

My experience with Republicans, Libertarians, and conservatives is that Republicansand Libertarians are loathe to be associated with conservatives. Many see conservatives as repellant, marginal freaks who they must put up with — much as liberals see radicals and Marxists as crazy, embarrassing fringies from whom they must ritually dissociate themselves in order to be taken seriously in mainstream political discussions.

Michael Pollak continues:

But on the left that isn’t true. For us, liberals — the wing we want to influence — are as much a defining other as they are for the right. And we are for them. We’re divided against ourselves internally, in our fundamental categories of thought.

i don’t think you can undo this opposition. Or rather, I don’t think we should want to undo this opposition — at least not in the way you imply, MIchael.

I emphatically do not agree that, “if we know what was good for us” we should want to “cure the asymmetry” between left and right. If the conservative sees moderate republicans as allies in a common struggle, and the radical leftist sees Liberals as the enemy, this is as it should be. This is the crux of the issue. To try to remove the asymmetry, how would we do so?

Conservatives want to keep the entire system going, as is. If they want to perfect it at all, they want to rid it of the noxious taint of Liberalism. They want to go back — thus, they want change* — to the days before Lincoln. They are not opposed to change in and of itself, as Carrol Cox and others have argued.

Conservatives are our enemy. They must be crushed, but they must never be realized and transcended.

The asymmetry is rooted in this: Unlike conservatives, radicals don’t want to preserve the system at all. To cure the asymmetry is, by definition, working within the system to advance and preserve the system. To cure the asymmetry is to give up on the idea that the system can be changed. it is to embrace the notion that it can only be reformed, its worst effects mitigated.

It would be to become Liberals. By definition, Liberals are the enemy. Any attempt to patch up or reform capitalism is also the enemy.

But whereas we want to crush Conservatives, Liberals are an enemy we do not want to crush. Rather, they are an enemy we want to see victorious, not because we want to see the apotheosis of Liberalism, but because we recognize that the victory of Liberalism is its defeat.

Not to be rude, since I appreciate both of you for your contributions to the list, intelligence, and talent. Still, both of you, SA and Michael, espouse Liberalism. The goal in most of your posts is to defend and advance Liberal thinkers, Liberal ideas. The goal is to persuade radicals, as is the case in this discussion, to *support* Liberals. Which is to say, you see Liberals as the rooting, stabilizing, foundational structure. As something from which you must reach out toward wayward fringies, to bring us back home, bring us back in, to make us reform *our* ideas to Liberalism. Or, the goal is soft-peddled as an attempt to shame radicals (in SAs case) into not being so dissociated and aloof from the causes supported by liberals and progressives.

This is often what is said, to paraphrase:

“If you want to influence people, shouldn’t you stop embracing really crazy fringe causes that “the people” do not support? Aren’t you sick of being marginal? On the fringes? Don’t you want to be popular? If you want to influence the very people who might be on your side — some day — then you must support Liberalism.”

But we are not here to support Liberalism. We are here to kill it. We are not here to modify our radicalism. We are not here because we needthem, the Liberals.

We are here because Liberalism needs us. We are here because Liberalism needs us to help it transcend itself. Without us, Liberalism will be crushed. Liberalism will be sucked into the Vortex.

On the question of what is to be done, I do not see that as difficult problem. We need to have a discussion list to discuss what is to be done? WTF? What is there to discuss? It is very simple. Marx outlined it nicely in his letter to Arnold Ruge. Marx was responding to Ruge’s concern, outlined in an earlier letter, that it wasn’t radical to be engaged in electoral struggles in Germany. These were reformist, not truly radical, and thus it was futile to waste energies getting involved. Best for the radical to stay out of the nitty gritty details of ordinary, reformist, bourgeois politics.

Marx explained exactly why this view was wrong, why we should take sides in reformist, bourgeois struggles. But it wasn’t just taking sides — staking out positions. Rather, he was talking about engagement with actually existing social struggles — engagement with actually existing reformist, bourgeois struggles. You had to take part in those struggles, and then to advance them by engaging in “self-clarification” — critical philosophy.

Marx wasn’t saying, engage for the sake of engagement.

Marx wasn’t saying, engage for the sake of not wanting to be disliked.

Marx wasn’t saying, engage for the sake of not wanting to be thought marginal.

Marx wasn’t saying, engage for the sake of not wanting to be ineffective in mainstream politics.

Marx wasn’t saying, engage for the sake of not being perpetual losers.

Marx wasn’t saying, engage for the sake of being popular.

Marx wasn’t saying, engage in order to advance bourgeois reformist struggles, as such and as is, unmarked by criticism.

Rather, Marx was saying engage because you need to be physically, actively engaged in struggle to have any understanding of it at all. You have to be engaged with other people in order to engage in the activity, the praxis, of “self-clarification” (critical philosophy). You can only understand and analyze the most advanced, progressive side in actually existing politics, if you actually get involved in those politics.

You engage because you want to help that struggle to “transcend” itself.

Because you want to kill it.

Because its victory is its defeat.