Two articles that appeared in pinko leftist journal Dissent about our Jack, here and here.

Gillian Rose was onto value form critique before most other (Anglophone) scholars. She references Hans Gerog Backhaus’ ‘Zur Dialektik der Wertform’ for an account of Marx’s theory of value in Alfred Schmidt’s (ed.) Beitriige zur marxistischtn Erkenntnistheorie in her book Melancholy Science (1978).

She argues that Adorno, Benjamin and Lukacs all had different comprehensions of Marx’s concept of the value form:

‘In each case, too, ‘reification’ was elevated over the theory of commodity fetishism and made to do more general sociological work in a way which had important theoretical consequences. It meant that the distinction between abstract and concrete labour, on which the theory of value and of commodity fetishism logically depends, received no emphasis and thus no theory of surplus value was adopted. The theoretical foundations for a theory of class conflict or for a Marxian theory of power and the state were thereby attenuated or abandoned.’

She also refers to another Frankfurt School scholar, Friedrick Pollock, and his famous article ‘State Capitalism’, written in I941. In it he offers ‘an example of the difficulties which beset the School’s analysis of capitalism which reappear in Adorno’s works in an indirect and inverted form. Pollock pictured state capitalism as a system where the state has taken over the organisation of production and replaced price and market mechanisms by its own plans. Power to command instead of the profit motive becomes the motor of this system, which has taken over from early capitalism and which may proceed under a totalitarian or democratic political structure. An image of a static and stable regime emerges, although it is not clear to what extent this ‘ideal-type’ is intended to offer an historical analysis or a prediction. Pollock relies inconsistently on Marx’s method for analysing capitalism and his account lacks cogency because of this. He presupposes Marx’s theory of value and commodity production and hence, however unemphatically, the distinction between use-value and exchange-value, but he does not go on to develop on this basis a notion of labour- power and of the extraction of surplus value and thus of class formation . Instead, the state appears as a force sui generis in Poliock’s account and there is no attempt to relate the posited changes in its role to the underlying processes of production.’

There is a case to be made that Gillian Rose is foreshadowing some ideas that Moishe Postone would develop later in his Time, Labor and Social Domination( 1993). Here he also pays attention to Pollock’s work on state capitalism. Postone identifies this as the ‘pessimistic turn’ in the Frankfurt School, whereby Pollock argues that the potential for a socialist transformation of society has been eclipsed by the creation of the administered state (either bourgeois democratic, stalinist or fascist) Postone sees this analysis as arising from Pollock’s reliance upon a ‘standpoint of labour’ thesis. Rose doesn’t develop the idea of a ‘negative reading’ of Marx’s Capital in the way that Postone or Robert Kurz do, but it is interesting to note some confluence in themes.

A critique of ‘standpoint of labour,’ or ‘Kantian’ Marxism, from Gillian Rose’s glossary in Melancholy Science:

lmmanent/transcendent (immanentftranszendent) ‘Immanent criticism’ accepts the presuppositions and terms of a society or work. Such criticism judges a work by its own standards and ideals and confronts it with its own consequences. ‘Transcendent criticism’ brings alternative and external concepts and criteria to bear, approaching a society or work from a particular standpoint. Marxist sociology is often considered to employ ‘transcendent’ theory, but Adorno seeks to show that materialist and dialectical criticism must be immanent. See Prisms pp. 25- 3 1 , tr. pp. 3 1 -4.

All quotes from The Melancholy Science: An Introduction to the Thought of Theodor W. Adorno by Gillian Rose.

SD

Excellent article on the philosophical background to Freud’s practice, by John Gray, here.

According to Le Monde of 22 and 23 January 2012, things do not look too good for the Gibson guitar manufacturers. They would have been bleeding the Madagascar forests of rare rosewood. Sometimes a pallet of wood bought for $10 or $15 dollars reached up to 1 million dollars. Incredible…Gibson has been in trouble with the federal authorities wich were investigating this business of using rare woods. In 2011 the manufacturer was in trouble for being suspected of utilising ebony coming from India. An organisation called Musicians against illegal logging has been launched. At the same time the recording industry in Nashville is fighting back: “The musicians who owned Gibson guitars will never be worried, only the manufacturer will be targetted by the federal authorities”.

There is still a contradiction that Le Monde and the Musicians against illegal logging did not mention and that is musicians singing protests songs about the environment with a Gibson guitar…

Taylor Guitars have put forward statement saying that “there is no illegal wood in Taylor Guitars.”

Hoisting the Matthew Thompson Bell, Bradford Town Hall

Who is this petrol-head with plenty of money to spend on Ferraris in which to poodle around Connaught Square? Last time – you may remember – the licence plate read IRAQ. This time it reads CHERY after a modification from CIICRY. With that kind of money the owner failed the litmus test for acidic wit, and should have taken the critique much, much deeper.

Bradford is under-estimated as a city even though its Victorian town centre, with buildings that exuded city pride and commerce, was wrecked according to the orders of its ‘city fathers’. Those kinds of buildings that were erected when materials, labour and energy were cheap will probably never be seen again.

“I think it might be Britain’s first failed city” was a comment from one resident.

After tying up our horse in Dewsbury, in the same county of Yorkshire, we learned from a native of Dewsbury who is a photo-voltaic system installer that: “It’s a dying town. Everything is closed down – boarded up. All the (textile and woollen) mills are closed down. The biggest mill in the centre of town is all flats and shops.”

In a moment of resigned alienation he said: “It’s whatever they do with it now.”

Nicolas Holliman

Lacan eventually could not take it anymore to be around with patients, devotees, followers, students of his so-called Lacanian school.

So he sent a cryptic phrase to all his followers: JE PERSEVERE ET JE DIS SOLUTION. (I persevere and I say solution). The only trouble is that the so-called master was really wicked, the phrase also meant : JE PERE SEVERE (I SEVERE FATHER) ET JE DISSOLUTION (I DISSOLVE). The followers were really lost for answers. So some of them got in contact with the master and told him they wanted to do a magazine, the only trouble was they did not have a title for it. So Lacan suggested L’ ANE (THE DONKEY)..It was his way of subverting his followers, they did not see it like that, so they went ahead, and to this day there is mag called L’ANE…

“Don’t follow leaders, watch your parking meters”.

“WORSE THAN THE EXCEUTIONER, THE VALET”..

We may knock Libcom, but by god do we hate those pricks called Spiked. Every Friday their weekly round-up of ponfications land on our electronic door-mat. We despise them even more than the SWP. The SWP are like Mellor writ large from Lady Chatterly’s Lover: Stupid, with a touching grace of incontinent passion, wheras the ex RCP Spiked crew are the creepy, fascist masochistic Lord of the manor. Every week you feel more and more depressed at the fact that these revolting yuppie cocksuckers still have the motor neurone ability to communicate the crap they write. And what a bunch of media whores! They are like rats up a drainpipe when it comes to ‘publicity.’ But beware! Some of these smart arses have read Hegel – you have to wonder: what is it they want? Do they really think the alpha and omega of freedom is ‘consumer choice’ or even some insipid concept called ‘freedom?’ They aren’t stupid, so keep an eye on these slick dicks. As Bobby D. once said: ‘You don’t have to be a weatherman, etc.’

A trip to the good ol’ Conway Hall this week: always a bit of a giggle. Upstairs: the indefatigable Meade McCloughan (one of probably less than ten Londoners currently alive who has actually read Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit) was attempting to conduct the geist through one seminar on Walter Benjamin, via another shortly after on ‘art and western philosophy.’ All courses full. When I turned up a couple of students were hunched over back copies of ‘Art Monthly.’ What a lovely sight, in London town, on a wet January evening.

The Conway Hall hosts all type of gatherings: The London Gothic Society (‘Chairman: Bob Monkhouse’) has regular meets. It must be the only place in England, let alone London, where 20 year old punks mix it up with 80 year old afficionados of German expressionist horror movies on a wet and dismal Wednesday night in March. Over a cup of tea and biscuits. Sublime.

Upon my descent down to ground level, I happened upon a class of salsa dancers, before emerging onto the ground floor, where one section of the British communist party were holding a public meeting. Through closed doors we could hear: ‘The organised working class, once again, betrayed…BETRAYED, comrades, by the petit bourgeois canards who claim to represent the labour movement, etc. etc.’

Outside a comrade acted as the bad conscience, selling a Maoist version of the communist newspaper. ‘Good evening,’ I wished him, as I emerged into the night air. Only in London town…