Letters

Art refresher

It was a refreshing change to see a serious critique of Paul Demarty’s reactionary article, ‘Bondage and bigotry’ (January 30) in Rex Dunn’s piece, ‘Postmodernism, fetishism and Marxism’ (February 6).

Dunn has done us a service in providing a serious Marxist critique of postmodernism, as well as pointing out Demarty’s reactionary libertarianism: “Postmodernism may be described as the fag-end of modernism, which ends up in the camp of subjective idealism and full-blown obscurantism.”

Dunn also makes reference to the avant garde of the 1920s in the USSR, especially Lissitizky, Rodchenko, Popova and Malevich (the constructivist and supremacist schools) and correctly points out Trotsky’s criticism of this trend in his book Literature and revolution. Trotsky criticises so-called anti-art as utopian and idealist. Trotsky always argued that the party could not dictate how art should be made or appreciated. It was important to have true artistic expression, unlike the Stalinists who were soon to use their own brand called ‘socialist realism’, which was neither socialist nor realistic.

Dunn has made a serious attempt to stress the importance of Marxism and humanism - unlike Demarty, who uses ‘guilt by association’, which has more to do with Stalinism than a defence of artistic freedom.

Art refresher
Art refresher

Wrong life

With a series of exclamation points, Rex Dunn attacks Paul Demarty’s assertion that Robert Mapplethorpe’s black male nude photos are “hot”. Why?

Dunn attacks ‘sexual fetishism’ as a species of ‘commodity fetishism’ in Marx’s sense. But this specifically neglects and actively elides the crucial difference of Marx’s critique of anthropological ‘fetishism’ from Freudian psychoanalysis’s theory of ‘(sexual) fetishism’ that postdates Marx and has nothing to do with political economy. Marx’s theory of ‘commodity fetishism’ has nothing to do with truth versus deception, and everything to do with the ‘way things really are’, the Hegelian “necessary form of appearance” of social reality.

Dunn makes a plea for “humanism” and for “the person” against sexual objectification, claiming that Demarty’s defence of avant garde art is in league with the capitalist dehumanisation of people, the “shock effect” that enhances “exchange value”, but is spurious as the true aesthetic value of art. But is that all that the avant garde can be reduced to? Aren’t Mapplethorpe’s nudes more meaningful - don’t they make one think? - rather than merely shocking? Demarty makes a good case for Mapplethorpe’s art as art.

Dunn restates something observed originally in bourgeois thought long ago: that art must go beyond mere propaganda or entertainment (which is what all art in traditional civilisation was), that it must make one think about aesthetic experience. The question is how it might do so. Sexual objectification can be an occasion for thought and not only mindlessness. It is impossible to separate art - ‘good art’, that is: art that makes one think - from the transformation of humanity in capital, however that may be distorted by unfreedom.

If Dunn thinks that an overly great theoretical effort is required to redeem avant garde art’s social value, then this neglects Hegel’s observation that art in modern society cannot stand on its own, but must be made sense of conceptually, through criticism and historical comparison, which Demarty’s article does attempt to do - for instance, showing how Bjarne Melgaard’s ‘chair’ might relate to its historical reference and predecessor as artwork, Allen Jones’s The chair. By contrast, Dunn seeks to anathematise art works, such as Mapplethorpe’s black male nudes, for their complicity in capitalism, as if it were possible to be otherwise.

Yes, in capitalism, sex is “bought and consumed” as a commodity in the ‘culture industry’. But is that what is wrong with capitalism, that people participate in sexual availability through commodification? Or is the problem rather that human sexuality is rendered worthless, the way any commodity is, in the ‘alienated’ crisis of value in capital? Furthermore, if art that participates in sexual objectification is rendered out of court, then this will cut us off from being able to contemplate and think about the specifically aesthetic experience of sex (not reducible to and apart from its other aspects: for instance, emotional intimacy).

Why is the appreciation of another as a sexual object in itself dehumanising? Aren’t human beings (also) objects? As Kant put it in the moral ‘categorical imperative’, the point is to not treat other humans ‘only’ as objects, but ‘also’ as subjects. We inevitably treat one another as objects in our social relations, but this is not the problem with capitalism. The problem in capitalism is that objects (and not only subjects) become worthless. We all want to be valued objects, erotically and otherwise.

Dunn’s comparison with ‘alienation’ in religion is problematical, in that it turns religion into an attribute of social oppression in itself, rather than recognising that this is what it became in retrospect, by comparison with bourgeois freedom. Religion not only oppressed the peasants, but also made their lives meaningful. The analogue between capitalist alienation and religion is retroactive: indeed, the ancient gods were not nearly as evil as capital!

It won’t do to attack the ‘false idols’ of art for participating in capitalism. For human beings in the present system are no less false. As Adorno wrote, “Wrong life cannot be lived rightly.”

Wrong life
Wrong life

Spot on

Just a quick email to say thank you for a great piece in this week’s Weekly Worker (‘Another Blairite collaborator’, February 6). As a teacher myself, I appreciated your assessment of Ofsted and the current set-up in the education system.

Spot on
Spot on

Not upheld

When reading ‘What we stand for’ and ‘Reformulating principles, mapping out demands’ (February 6), there appear to be some ambiguities between their approaches on the national question.

In WWSF it clearly states that “It is an internationalist duty to uphold the principle, ‘One state, one party’.” Yet this principle is not upheld in the article. There is no call for the Left Unity party to organise in Northern Ireland, hence covering the whole of the state we live in, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

WWSF also supports a “united federal Ireland”. Now most republicans and socialist republicans in Ireland would understand this to mean the old Sinn Féin - current Republican Sinn Féin - demand for a federal republic of Connacht, Leinster, Munster and (nine-counties) Ulster. I presume for the CPGB this means a federation of 26-counties and six-counties Ireland. Yet this is not mentioned in the article either.

Could we please have some clarification?

Not upheld
Not upheld

Hard core

The whole establishment is corrupt, every single branch of it. It is not a democracy. It is an infallible, elitist state that has demonstrated time and time again just how beyond anyone’s reproach it really is.

What a great article (‘Corrupt to the core’, January 16). Intelligent and decisive in delivering the truth. We need to educate ‘plebs’ to educate themselves, hopefully waking up to the fact that there needs to be change. Then the darkness will have the light shone upon it, leaving nowhere for these flawed human beings to hide. What I find astonishing is that, sadly, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Hard core
Hard core

Imperialism

I found Mike Macnair’s article, ‘Changed and unchanged’, extremely profound (January 30). The notion that America will accept higher oil prices to remain the world’s undisputed hegemonic power in order to maintain a strong currency is a notion I have not heard raised anywhere else before, but is nonetheless a very interesting analysis.

I would like to ask two questions about this theory.

1. How does the US maintain a strong currency, when countries, whose ability to pay their debts is far weaker than that of the US, adopt the dollar as their currency, such as Zimbabwe?

2. As an A-level student currently studying Britain’s foreign policy from 1920-1965, I’m told that the main influence on Britain’s foreign policy was the objective of maintaining a balance of power in Europe and across the globe, which would prevent any one nation from seriously threatening the UK’s trade interests ... etc. In your opinion does America’s current strategy of trying to appear tough in order to maintain a strong currency present any similarities with the UK’s own foreign policy from 1920-1965?

Imperialism
Imperialism

Definitionism

I am new to reading your self-declared “paper of Marxist polemic and Marxist unity”, whose incisive analysis I immensely enjoy, though I do not always fully understand it.

One major reason for this is that I feel I need something like an historical and critical dictionary of the Marxist technical terms that so often get flung around as insults - something to refer to when someone is accused of Luxemburgism, economism, movementism, etc. I’m very much aware that probably this is not a simple matter: one person’s economism will be someone else’s something else, but can anyone direct me to any relatively ‘neutral’ source that might help me with this?

Definitionism
Definitionism

Keep digging

The Weekly Worker published a Scottish Republican Socialist Movement statement on the January 26 Scotland on Sunday poll under the heading, ‘Do the maths’ (Letters, January 30).

It is worth pointing out that the Scotland on Sunday poll showed the ‘yes’ vote on 37% and the ‘no’ vote on 44%. However, when the ‘don’t knows’ were excluded, the ‘yes’ vote was 46% and the ‘no’ vote was 54%. When the ‘don’t knows’ disclosed how they were “most likely to vote”, the ‘yes’ vote was 47% and the ‘no’ vote was 53%.

The gap is clearly narrowing and it was on this basis that Blair Jenkins, chief executive of the Yes Scotland campaign, said that a further swing of just over 3% would see the ‘yes’ campaign take the lead.

Interestingly, there has also been a 5% increase in ‘yes’ support amongst women and a 4% increase in those who believe independence would be good for the Scottish economy.

Material on the history of the SRSM and our struggle for a socialist republic can be found at www.scottishrepublicansocialistmovement. org.

Keep digging
Keep digging

Minimum only

“You’ve got some weird friends!” John Bridge told me after reading my old comrade Javaad Alipoor’s letter to the paper last week (Weekly Worker February 6). It was the second consecutive letter complaining about our use of the heading, “No platform”, above an earlier statement from the Republican Socialist Platform carried on our letters page (December 19).

This is obviously a bizarre way to do politics, and I won’t bore readers with anything more on the subject. But Javaad did raise some significant points to do with the minimum programme, and its relationship to the united front strategy. In a private conversation with me last week Javaad said that the basis for our intervention in Left Unity should be our minimum programme, allowing us to organise around shared objectives with reformists.

That reminds me of the “united front of a special kind” defended by the Socialist Workers Party in the Socialist Alliance. It meant the left limiting itself to economic and trade union demands, and derisory ones at that. For instance, the CPGB put forward a living wage of £7 an hour in the SA as a policy objective (compared to the official minimum wage of £4.10), but this was shot down as too extreme by the SWP and Socialist Party in England and Wales, who thought we should only demand the European Union “decency threshold”.

If £7 was too much back then, then our other minimum demands must be barking mad. Abolish the police? The standing army? The entire secret state apparatus? What about an independent workers’ militia? All of these things are essential radical republican precursors to a successful break with capitalism. They can’t really serve a different purpose useful to reformists.

Our minimum programme properly understood then is the bridge to socialism. It is not the same as making minimal demands. Reformist aims have a radically different character, and lead in a completely different direction. That is why the idea of a permanent united front with reformism is an absolute disaster.

It is hardly a new idea to ditch the maximum programme. Eduard Bernstein thought the maximum section of the Erfurt programme redundant - trade union and reformist struggles in and of themselves would lead to socialism. The modern incarnation of this logic is the deployment by the left of Trotsky’s Transitional programme. Fighting purely defensive struggles is supposed to create a shift in consciousness in the working class, whilst forcing capitalism into its “final death agony”. That was put forward in 1938, so how do you think it worked out? The proposals for “radical change” from the Republican Socialist Platform cannot in practice be anything but a continuation of this.

In fact one has to think seriously about the duties of Marxists inside united fronts, where they exist. It certainly isn’t to pander to the reformist leadership and the union bureaucrats, but to expose them and show that they can never deliver the goods. Marxists always try to supplant such leaders, and convince working people following them that they’re frauds. That is exactly what the CPGB has done inside every ‘left unity’ attempt over the last 20 years: beginning with Arthur Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party, through the Socialist Alliance, then Respect and now in Left Unity as well.

Minimum only
Minimum only

Butchered edit

I appreciate that it may be necessary for letters to be edited, but it would be helpful if this could be done in such a way as to retain the flow and meaning of the original contribution. My letter (February 6) was published with a decidedly dodgy sentence at the end of the paragraph (6), which dealt with the development of lab meat.

The published letter read: “Meat at the centre of food consumption” - full stop; when what I actually wrote was: “Not least of all because of the huge and powerful vested interests, which place meat at the centre of food consumption”.

I assume that the letter from Tony Roberts was also edited. If this was not the case, then comrade Roberts was either writing with his tongue firmly in his cheek or believes that Marxists should uncritically accept every word and action of the founding fathers, as if they were immutable. A bit like a secular version of the catechism of Catholic doctrine. Therefore, it would be useful and productive to have this issue clarified.

Butchered edit
Butchered edit