Chicago based journal ‘Platypus’ member Chris Cutrone recently replied to Principia Dialectica’s article on May 1968 ‘Let the Dead bury the Dead’ at tiny.cc/vfTp2 When you read Cutrone’s response you realise that Platypus 1917 have not moved one inch out of the ortho-marxist-leninist swamp. In fact it seems Cutrone is pleased to still wallow in it.

Cutrone can positively eulogize the Russian revolution with the usual Lukacs quote, but says nothing about the outcome of the take-over by the Bolsheviks. Indeed, the exit stategy of Lenin and co. was a real disaster. They ended up managing capital in the Russian region - with the dire consequences that are well-known today. Do we need to remind Cutrone that Lenin paved the way for Stalin, as Ante Ciliga said in The Russian Enigma (1937)? It seems we need to do so!

Guy Debord did not need to wait for Cutrone when he published La Societe du Spectacle in 1967 to say: ‘The seizure of the statist monopoly of representation and of the defence of the power of the workers, which justified the Bolshevik party, made it become what it was: the party of the proprietors of the proletariat, eliminating the essential preceding forms of property.’ (Thesis 102)

The massacre of the sailors and workers in Kronstadt in 1921 by Lenin and Trotsky clearly signified that an opposition would not be tolerated. As Debord went on to say: ‘Stalin would extend the logic towards a perfect division of the world: “Here or there with a gun, but not with an opposition…we have had enough of an opposition.”‘ (Thesis 103)

And here is another contradiction for Platypus/1917 to mull over: As the Bolsheviks were denouncing the butchering of the Paris commune by General Gallifet, they were embarking on some butchering of their own: the massacre of 16,000 sailors and workers in Kronstadt who were fed up with the lack of bread and the iron rule of the top Bolsheviks who lived well, managing the factories and administering the country.

Amadeo Bordiga said the putting down of the Kronstadt Commune was necessary. he was not alone in defending that shameful act. We wonder what the British journal ‘MayDay’ who are involved in a debate with Cutrone’s Platypus have to say on the matter? Both groups appear to hold to the idea that ‘the proletariat’ constitute the subject, any other idea being completely beyond the pale. History punishes myopic thinking by condemning it to insignificance, as both groups are discovering.

We find it laughable that Cutrone/Platypus 1917 attempt to put the Situationist International in the same camp as ‘the anarchisms.’ The student of revolution that Cutrone is needs to do some more research - he will need to find out that the S.I. did not co-exist peacefully with anyone (and even less with the organized bureaucratized anarchists of many countries.) This is well documented. Indeed, Guy Debord’s critique of anarchism was absolutely scathing, as anyone who takes a look at Thesis 93 in Le Societe Du Spectacle can see.

Cutrone goes on to state that we ‘borrowed’ some of Platypus’s rhetoric in our statement ‘Let The Dead Bury the Dead’ but in reality we must say, after reading Cutrone’s slippery prose, we never had and never shall borrow one single line.

Cutrone/Platypus 1917 do not much care for our critique of messianism. Of course, every marxist-leninist wants to bring the message to the working class, since their mentor (who, incidentally, could not even finish Hegel’s Science of Logic) once said: ‘workers can only attain trade-union consciousness’ and anything else will have to be provided by the communist party. It did not work then, and it won’t work today. We will continue to undermine all ortho-marxists. For the ortho-marxists, everything hangs on the moment of the ‘proletarian revolution’ - their historical promise, the moment when ‘messianic’ justice can finally be served.

Such ideas are laughable, and take no account of the underlying structural deformations that really glue the system together. As well as gaining a deeper understanding of genuine Situationist ideas, Cutrone would do well to research the thoughts of Robert Kurz. In a recent article, Kurz demolishes the sloppy thinking of ‘ortho-marxists’ who fantasise that radical ideas of a bygone age can still be pressed into service today: ‘The utopian thought always toyed with the idea of abolishing money. In general, however, such reasoning fell short of its object because money is just the surface phenomenon of a determinate social form. Money, according to Marx, is the appearance of a social essence, that is “abstract labour”, and of value (the valorisation of value). Any attempt only to do away with the superficial phenomenon without touching the fundamental deep structure will cause havoc rather than liberation.’ The full article by Robert Kurz can be read at: tinyurl.com/6yf9f4

If Cutrone reads the original scholar of ‘the messianic moment’ Walter Benjamin’s Moscow Diaries (1925) he will realize the extent of Benjamin’s despair with the wonderful Soviet system. All those corn-fields, and ballet in the evening! We very much doubt that Benjamin continued with his messianism after leaving ‘the workers’ paradise.’

Cutrone crosses the line when he put ‘Situationism’ in the same camp as Proudhon. This character was criticised many times in the review Internationale Situationniste (I.S. no.1, 1958, no.10, no.11 and lastly in 1969, in I.S. no 12. Proudhon was called ‘an advocate of order’, ‘backward’ etc.) Strangely enough many anarchists all over the world still refer to the antisemitic nationalist Proudhon. We wonder if Cutrone’s contacts in London from MayDay still admire Proudhon’s ideas? Some would say that Cutrone is a disinformer. We err on the side of generosity and tend to think he is simply ignorant.

For a more in-depth analysis of Proudhon it is advisable to read Zeev Sternhell’s The Roots of the Radical Right in France.’

In short, for Cutrone/Platypus 1917 there is still a revolutionary ’subject.’ They speak about ‘realignment’ and set themselves the task of dispensing with all that is dead in critical Marxian ideology, but so far they simply confirm our worst fear - despite praising Moishe Postone’s book Time Labor and Social Domination they have failed to comprehend it’s most important lesson- that in 2008 we need to come to terms with the fact that capital itself is the subject.

It also seems that Cutrone is incapable of understanding our article ‘Let the Dead Bury the Dead’, just as he is incapable of understanding the consequences of the Russian revolution for today. He is also incapable of grasping the importance of May 1968 in France when 10 million workers were on strike and many more people paralysed the French state for one month: a real carnival that rocked the world. We have tried to understand and criticize that period, in order to know where we are today. Unfortunately, for the ortho-marxists, history has not moved on.

               

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