Acid Communism ?

[brixtonscot]

I agree with comments that this could all be a bit academic....
Nonetheless , here's some more on AC & Mark Fisher ( also from USA , I think ) -

"The struggle against capitalism, he knew, requires fighting on all levels, through culture no less than parliamentary politics but also, always, in the streets.
It requires taking seriously the dance floor no less than the riot as sites of politics; learning from the queer, black, and female producers of dance music about building coalitions that can change the world.
The left, he wrote, should let go of “the rigidity of unity” and seek instead coordination among diverse groups; let go of control and offer instead a vision of the world worth fighting for.....

He insisted that “we must have the courage not to be nostalgic for this lost Fordist world of boring factory work and a labour movement dominated by male industrial workers.” Even communist nostalgia was impossible: “our desire is for the future.” .....he pointed out that the left and the labor movement had been too slow to grasp workers’ desire for something better than forty years of forty-hour weeks on the assembly line. The Thatcherites and their ilk had seized the moment to paint their reorganization of the economy as liberation while too many leftists sung (and still sing) paeans to the factory floor. The urgent need now is for a working-class politics that doesn’t love work."
Cybergothic Acid Communism Now | Sarah Jaffe

 

[butchersapron]

This is all very gushing and future sounding isn't it? But the content of that last para is just another iteration of a dispute/position that has been running through class politics since the birth-fights of the industrial revolution - this is pre-communist nostalgia even. The fights over saint monday etc were 3-400 years ago. It's that stuff with cyber-added on isn't it? I mean the bit where work was celebrated was only ever a temporary top-down imposition taken up by a minority of active hacks as part of the legitimating myth of a certain set of interests wasn't it? And actually, it was those same hacks and institutions that Fisher was arguing that people needed to be participating in at the time of his death. Much of this does read like just say - not anything - but everything. And at once. There has to be some critical intelligence that can judge/distinguish between all these things doesn't there? Not just everything is great at once.

 

[butchersapron]

Woah acid corbynism is fucking out there man:

The growth created by our national investment plan, underpinned by the responsible economic management embodied in our Fiscal Credibility Rule, will create good jobs, drive up living standards and improve the public finances.

3 centuries worth of collective dreaming finally standing on the verge of actually happening.

 

[killer b]

I don't think the people involved in this imagine it's anything new tbh - in fact it's as much as anything about introducing useful practices and ways of thinking for a new audience that isn't familiar with them. And I don't think it's about academic enclosure so much as making stuff which could be dismissed as academic more accessible.

I've mixed feelings about Gilbert - he's very pleased with himself and often goes off on the wrong track - but he's a good communicator and some of the stuff he covers is valuable IMO. The other guy Keir Milburn is better still - has anyone read his book?

 

[Gaia]

Jeremy Gilbert has a regular podcast on Novara about this - it's called Acid Corbynism, which is a mistake IMO as it's very good and the name is likely to put of loads of people who might find the content really interesting...

acid corbynism | Novara Media

Nah, mate, it's on Novara, it's pro-Corbyn propaganda. Everything on NM is, by definition, pro-Corbyn propaganda. It publishes as much truth as the Daily Mail, S*n and Express combined.

 

[killer b]

I guess it isn't for you then.

 

[killer b]

(no real defence of Novara, which I've not much time for in general - but they do host some good things, this being one of them)

 

[butchersapron]

Nah, mate, it's on Novara, it's pro-Corbyn propaganda. Everything on NM is, by definition, pro-Corbyn propaganda. It publishes as much truth as the Daily Mail, S*n and Express combined.

Speaking of truth, did you ever back up your claim that Corbyn was in the (acid) communist party?

 

[butchersapron]

Oh brilliant, Gilbert is on the management committee of Compass, a soppy left fabian group which thought the party under Ed Miliband was too tribalist left wing and wanted to open up membership to lib-dems (which they have now done).

 

[killer b]

In 2011 it says here. My understanding is that Compass have moved significantly to the left in recent years (Gilbert joined the committee in 2016)

 

[butchersapron]

Yes, they wanted to let lib-dems in during the coalition in which they were leading the attacks on the working class and attempting to lay the intellectual justification for austerity. Not sure that you can really come back from that no matter how many trendy vicars you recruit.

 

[Brainaddict]

Agree that I don't think there are many new ideas in there (though most leftists perhaps don't talk enough about the intersection of politics and culture), but think a lot of it is about struggling for new language to talk about older ideas. A lot of left wing language got rinsed out by association with authoritarianism, top-down unionism, weirdo left factions, and state-centric socialism. Half the battle in creating new conversations about it is breaking those associations so you can actually have an interesting conversation. The use of terms that are meant to be a bit surprising - acid communism, FALC - is about doing that. I think there is some use to it, though it's true another battle is to free the language from academic foolishness...

 

[Brainaddict]

As I say, I think it's a shame they called it Acid Corbynism, as I reckon the stuff they cover in the podcast would be of interest to lots of people beyond the insular circles giving it that name risks keeping it to.

Not sure about this. Corbyn has millions of people who have supported him to varying degrees, hundreds of thousands who supported him actively enough to join the party. Communism probably gets no more than five figures in terms of the number of people who identify with it. Cynical rebranding perhaps, but it isn't trying to attract the U75 audience who are interested in this stuff anyway.

 

[butchersapron]

It's far more likely that Gilbert decided to switch it to that to highlight how important he is as he's such a great mate of Corbyn that can even speak for him and - andso he could get more kids to his ping-pong nights at the youth club.

 

[killer b]

Not sure about this. Corbyn has millions of people who have supported him to varying degrees, hundreds of thousands who supported him actively enough to join the party. Communism probably gets no more than five figures in terms of the number of people who identify with it. Cynical rebranding perhaps, but it isn't trying to attract the U75 audience who are interested in this stuff anyway.

Yeah, I was just thinking this - like it or not, one main route into leftwing politics in 2019 is via the Labour Party, so the name makes sense if your project is about consciousness raising etc in these newly politicised people, even if it does stick in the craw for us.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

It's far more likely that Gilbert decided to switch it to that to highlight how important he is as he's such a great mate of Corbyn that can even speak for him and - andso he could get more kids to his ping-pong nights at the youth club.

I think what’s so frustrating about Gilbert is that he has a bunch of decent ideas but it baffles me that he has been unable to break with the Labour Party and join people outside it who are essentially on the same page. I remember watching some panel discussion on YouTube where he said that a group of young LP types had been taken to one side in the early 90s and told to keep away from anything that might be incriminating if they wanted successful political careers. And rave was happening, so he didn’t do that - but also seemingly didn’t pause for a minute and think “who are these dickheads I am working with politically?”

He’s definitely trying to present himself as doing the political/cultural education for the fresh faced Corbynistas (in the tradition of the early working mens’ clubs) with stuff like this: Culture, Power and Politics

And again is working alongside decent people who are v critical of Corbyn.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

But at the same time, this was always going to happen. If the Labour left rose in profile it would always exert a gravitational pull on decent people and decent ideas in our space. And we’d always be pissed off about it, but that’s not exactly a useful or constructive approach.

 

[butchersapron]

I think what’s so frustrating about Gilbert is that he has a bunch of decent ideas but it baffles me that he has been unable to break with the Labour Party and join people outside it who are essentially on the same page. I remember watching some panel discussion on YouTube where he said that a group of young LP types had been taken to one side in the early 90s and told to keep away from anything that might be incriminating if they wanted successful political careers. And rave was happening, so he didn’t do that - but also seemingly didn’t pause for a minute and think “who are these dickheads I am working with politically?”

He’s definitely trying to present himself as doing the political/cultural education for the fresh faced Corbynistas (in the tradition of the early working mens’ clubs) with stuff like this: Culture, Power and Politics

And again is working alongside decent people who are v critical of Corbyn.

I started the CP and Politics lecture/seminar on 'High Weirdness' last night thinking it may fit into this thread only to find Terrence fucking Mckenna under discussion.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

I started the CP and Politics lecture/seminar on 'High Weirdness' last night thinking it may fit into this thread only to find Terrence fucking Mckenna under discussion.

LOL. I went to a few of the ones that Debra Shaw did and they were pretty good intros afaik to stuff like Foucault, Gramsci and the like. It evolved into a short lived book club where we read stuff like bell hooks and Federici.

Gilbert’s sessions in the series seemed more like people plugging their books so I stayed away.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

DMT Corbynism.

 

[killer b]

I listened to and enjoyed a lecture by Terrence Mckenna about Marshall Mcluhan a few months ago.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

I met Terence McKenna a few times and he was an interesting guy. But his ideas were largely complete bollocks and all his very specific predictions/prophecies have been proven wrong.

 

[killer b]

I think I enjoyed it because it reminded me of 1990s 4am drug rambles as much as anything else.

 

[brixtonscot]

Link to all of Acid Communism (Unfinished Introduction)
From
MARK FISHER | K-PUNK
THE COLLECTED AND UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS OF MARK FISHER
EDITED BY DARREN AMBROSE
REPEATER 2018
Mark Fisher | Acid Communism (Unfinished Introduction)

 

[imposs1904]

maybe as one of urban's three designated working class people you could listen to the podcast and tell us whether it appeals to you?

I better be one of the other two, or I'll be kicking off and getting propah nawty.

 

[butchersapron]

Incidentally, there's a long piece on Fisher in the latest New Left Review, looks incredibly gushing;

Simon Hammond K-Punk At Large

The most powerful critique of neoliberal culture since the crisis, issued from the margins of the blogosphere. Simon Hammond traces the arc of Mark Fisher’s career, from accelerationism to Capitalist Realism and beyond, in a striking comparison with the critical cultural studies of Stuart Hall.

_____________________________________

(The Streeck piece looks much more interesting:

Wolfgang Streeck Progressive Regression

A periodization of European social policy, from attempts to manage the militant labour upsurge of the late 1960s to a supra-national lever for neoliberal restructuring, by way of Maastricht’s Social Protocol. The upshot: a deleterious relocation of social-policy battles from the terrain of welfare-state building to the fields of fiscal policy and immigration.)

 

[butchersapron]

I don't think the people involved in this imagine it's anything new tbh - in fact it's as much as anything about introducing useful practices and ways of thinking for a new audience that isn't familiar with them. And I don't think it's about academic enclosure so much as making stuff which could be dismissed as academic more accessible.

I've mixed feelings about Gilbert - he's very pleased with himself and often goes off on the wrong track - but he's a good communicator and some of the stuff he covers is valuable IMO. The other guy Keir Milburn is better still - has anyone read his book?

I have now. Identity politics with age replacing race/etc. Flattening down internal differences amongst millions of people to fit them into a classical bourgeois sociological framework (mannheim for gods sake), old people are conservative failures due to neural plasticity and reading newspapers, massive quotes filling in the already tiny chapters. Like much from this milieu, it's gushing. I've probably been the biggest negriphile on this board (where all/much of this derives from) for 20 years now, but even i can see the problems that the actually existing world has thrown up in that period since Empire was first published. And i am so so sick of corbyn. Basically, imagine articul8 collecting all his longer posts on here adding some techno-utopia and ultra-progressive left-accelerationist it's really happening rhetoric getting you all fired up and then ending up with vote labour.

Edit: oh yeah, age is now how class is lived, in the same way that Stuart Hall correctly argued that race is one (note: one!) of the modalities through which class is lived.

 

[Flavour]

And actually, it was those same hacks and institutions that Fisher was arguing that people needed to be participating in at the time of his death.

which institutions, out of interest? the Labour Party?

 

[butchersapron]

which institutions, out of interest? the Labour Party?

Yes, the labour party (under miliband) and and wider participation in other classic state institutions, to wring out any democratic possibilities they may contain. On the first, he wrote a pamphlet (pdf) with Gilbert for Compass in 2011 (as mentioned above, at the height of lib-dem austerity and compass arguing for allowing lib-dems in and establishing a broad progressive coalition) that covers some of this.

 

[Flavour]

Funny. So much in there about neoliberalism and so on, but after all the analysis the three bullet points of grand strategy proposals includes:

• An experimental openness to the possibility of productive relationships between political actors from a range of political traditions and with a range of institutional or counter-institutional commitments

waffley.