Sunday, August 2, 2009

Another Post About Aerosmith and the Black Crowes

In a sweeping, communist-er than thou tirade against the four of five Anglo-American 'left' journals with readerships greater than 200, The Commune arrives upon that beloved OG tackling dummy, John Bellamy Foster, and spews forth fire:
To borrow a catch phrase from Nick Cohen: what’s left of the left? Not much it seems once we plunge into the depths of the other journals floating about out there. A glance across to the U.S. publication, the Monthly Review, might indicate that we are looking at the journal of New Maoist thought – and that would be the Mao of the Great Leap Forward, rather than the Mao of the Cultural Revolution. The entire issue for July to August 2009 is devoted to agriculture, “food sovereignty,” land reform and, or course, the relevance of climate change to all these matters. The May 2009 issue even has a favourable review of a book of Mao’s poetry. It seems that under John Bellamy Foster’s editorship (author of the fraudulent “Marx and Ecology”) the Monthly Review is becoming entirely devoted to slightly left of liberal North American thought: climate change, anti-Zionism, anti-war. Anything, it seems, than engagement with the working class, the labour movement and the promotion of communist ideas.
I know what yr thinking, and yr right! Why accuse a man and his (marxist) organ, of Maoism, when the far more damning charge is that of irrelevance? Probably because you're a self-identifying communist raging against the non-revelation that actually existing 'marxism' in this Northern hemisphere is largely, lamentably, of an academic sort.

'Thing is - and I'm saying this as somebody with a New Left Review chest tattoo, mind you - MRZINE is probably the most accessible, least Trot-y, closest thing to left-of-liberal one-stop-shopping for international news that we have here in Amorica. And notwithstanding some recent grossness re: overly 'hard left' Iran-boosting, le MR usually manages to stay on this side or the reality/ir-reality divide, and even eschews the lengthy Plekhanov references/hammer+sickle porn that alienates so many of us pomo-petit-lumpens -- let alone, y'know, actual humans with non-blog jobs.
Yep, even accessible, less-than-parochial marxist clearing-houses like MRZINE are rarely accessed by exactly the folks parochial marxists wish were accessing 'em {-- and that sucks big phlegm-sodas outta cat-sacks, don't get me wrong.} But at l'end of le day, even less accessible* is the cliquish ur-theory that'd cast Foster's eco-marxist imaginings as not just 'wrong,' 'dumb,' or 'ill-conceived,' but instead as "fraudulent."

[* Yeah, yeah, and, uh, least accessible is my writing style, sure. But do you see me fronting any worker-councils, foaming beatitudes, or spewing forth any other such vanguardist-froth? No you don't, Jack/Jill. No you goddamn don't. And shame on me for that. But I gotta go watch Dynasty, see?]

4 comments:

evil r + b guy said...

How far into Dynasty have you gotten?

EZ said...

I just received a sample copy of the progressive populist, and found it had readability...maybe they padded the sample copy but it had columns from jim hightower, john nichols, norm soloman, arriana huff, robby reich, dean baker, joe conason, greg palast, amy goodman, a frackin' highlarious piece from garrison keillor....

not exactly mao...but printed w/soy ink on recycled paper... its what passes for leftyish in the USA...

lex dexter said...

R+B,
I have watched (and enjoyed) the first two seasons of Dynasty, though Season 1 was admittedly a superior product.

lex dexter said...

EZ, Are the progressive and populist traditions reconcilable?