FS & Praxis

[bob scheetz]

"Bourgeois lib democracy" is what it is objectively, ...the sociology (c
wright mills, richard domhoff, edward s herman,...) is by now pretty patent.
The model is "the for-profit publicly held private corporation."  No room
for mystification.  Simply a "businessman's gov't" where the "democracy" is
by shares, and the choice of executive management team, agenda, goals,...,
contested, logically, among the leading shareholders, or big interests.
Clearly there are accidental benefits; notably. as you indicate, laissez
faire applied socially leaves some latitude for individualism; but its
essential aim is to secure and augment private, not common, wealth or
well-being.
However, I don't agree with the ironic thesis in re perverse effect of
radical praxis.  Obviously juvenile forms, hollowwood versions, or marginal
audiences don't matter; but, eg, Michael Moore's lese majeste at the
Academy Awards did real hurt to Power, ...no wise compensated, let alone
strengthened, in the being able to boast its magnanimity of free speech.
nor there's been no pac-man effect here? ...rather a deafening silence,  no?
There certainly are very straitened "parameters of permissable discourse".
Julius & Ethel Rosenberg, Paul Robeson, Malcolm X, MLK, very likely Sen
Frank Church, Stoughton Lynd, Ramsey Clark, Noam Chomsky,..., ...FBI has
always been a political police, and Hoover,  nothing if not an american
Beria.  Last year  Harvard prez, Laurence Summers, threatened to fire
faculty if they continued organizing an effort to pressure Israel toward
justice for the Palestinians.  And within last few weeks the hse minority
whip (name escapes me, ... "mc" something) got canned from the leadership
and will likely be targeted, for pointing out the obvious, the significant
american jewish influence at the highest levels of US mid-east policy and
the Iraq gambit.  Try doing nuanced analysis of OBL, ...or even Castro, or
even still of Nazism, ...all forms (at least) of guaranteed professional
auto de fe.  And on the periphery, as for eg El Salvador during the 80's
Central American War, the CIA and Mossad and Ollie North, Eliot Abrahms, Jn
Negroponte, GWH Bush, etc., it was flat out death-squad city.  so, nothing
but bourgeois liberalism allowed, cujus regio ejus religio, political
totalitarianism.
     ...and then there's culture, the ubiquitous white-noise, crass and
insipid juvenility of lowest common denominator commercial culture,
...radio, tv, papers, cinema, public landscape...the tyranny of the teenie
market. and on and on and on, eh?

nor are we in any meaningful sense, as a body politic, even "free to think",
so overwhelming is the apparatus of indoctrination and thought control,
...the techniques of madison ave, ...have perfected a pop consciousness of
abject superficiality and conformity, ...pavlovian regurgitation of the mass
media party line, ...brokaw says it at 6 pm in the east and by 9 its gospel
coast to coast.

anyway, a monster polemic, Jim, ...and rife with potential for semantical
speciousness, but i'd hold for the vast superiority of merkan
totalitarianism over all comers.  USA, number 1!

thanks,
bob




----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Rovira" <jrovira@drew.edu>
To: <frankfurt-school@lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Sunday, April 06, 2003 11:49 AM
Subject: Re: FS & Praxis


> Bob -- I would ask, though, "a totalitarianism of what?"  I think style is
> substance in this case -- at least a part of substance.  The style you
describe
> means the totalitarianism is not one that revolves around any particular
figure
> (for example, Bush) -- we don't have a totaliatarianism like Hitler's
National
> Socialism, in which a single, male subjectivity was imposed upon an entire
> population.  Our totalitarianism doesn't care who gets elected, because it
> doesn't matter.
>
> We have a totalitarianism of consumerism.  This is an entirely different
beast.
> It doesn't care if you're a communist, a Marxist, a social critic, a
> fundamentalist Christian, or a staunch Republican.  It can turn what you
have --
> even your social criticism -- into a product sold either to the masses or
at
> least to a discreet demographic group.  Even critiques of mass culture are
now
> part of mass culture, part of consumerism -- ever see the movie "The
Matrix"?
>
> This is both better and worse than older forms of totalitarianism, in that
we're
> "free" to think whatever we want . We're simply not free to stop being
> consumers.  We can, of course.  It is theoretically possible to buy land
and
> livestock, grow all your own food and make your own clothing, and refuse
to own
> a television.
>
> But somehow I don't think most people on this list are going to be running
to
> join Amish communities any time soon, even if they'd let us.
>
> Jim Rovira
>
> bob scheetz wrote:
>
> > Jim,
> >      I think it's universally recognized the potus is a fool.  And
that's
> > the measure of the contempt the ruling corporate class has for us
masses.
> > Because of the liberal (laissez faire) nature of the system the style is
not
> > classic, but the effect is unmistakably totalitarian.
> >
> > bob
>