If what the paleontologists say is true, homo sapiens has
been walking around on this planet a pitiful 350,000 years. Of that amount, I,
at 67, have been here 0.00019142857 of that time. It ain’t much. When I raise
my eyes and look at the politics of my time, or the past 200 years or so (0.00057142857),
I notice that I have been, except for certain exceptional periods, pretty much
on the losing side of all political battles.
At one time, working class leftist politics was animated by
the idea that it was inevitable. The working class, being the productive class,
would eventually realize its power and overthrow the aristocrats and plutocrats
and institute the reign of plebocrats – democrats.
That, I should say, defined politics in the supposedly “short”
twentieth century.
The working class decisively lost. The plebocrats, it turned
out, were bureaucrats from the Party. And on the other side of the wall, after
a number of concessions were made after WWII and up until the sixties, the Free
World reverted to the old capitalist order in which those who succeeded in
maximizing their wealth a thousand and ten thousand fold more than those who
produced the wealth held all the power and made all the decisions, although, as
is right and proper, through various representatives who could claim to
represent not only the interests of the richest but also, on marginal things,
the interests of the rest.
Working class leftist politics, in my time, shifted its
focus: it became a matter of those who had the most cultural capital. A wholly
untrustworthy group, blind for the most part to their socio-economic function
and retreating to a Left of the Mind. Not that I am bitching – I’m a camp
follower of that group.
At certain points in my life, I have said, oh fuck it and unplugged
from reading about politics – the politics of the 0.00019142857 of the time
that homo sapiens have been here – because it was so frustrating. I was at a
mook’s distance from any real power. I understood the non-voter better than the
voter, really. Alas, I’ve grown old and no wiser, and here I am again, a wee
little American pea, raising my voice against war, atrocity, and the bestial
stupidity of the ruling class. I know in my bones what happens, having seen it happen
over and over – the current crop of idiots will fall, and power will once more
return to the technocratic representatives of the plutocrats, who will make
little deals for us all, to an extent. The poohbahs of the left, with their
cultural capital, will alternatively bitch and tell us all that our very lives
are at stake if we don’t elect a buncha oatmeal to “fight” for us. And so on.
Well, what was I, a 0.00019142857-er, expecting?
4 comments:
LI I haven't commented in a while though several of your posts have had fingers twitching at keys. But didn't as first of all I'd be largely quoting you know who and I still haven't got her stuff online. Also, I've been travelling - in the US - and so far haven't been deported to Colombia or Rwanda. Wandering around NYC the last few days came across many volunteers out on streets asking for votes for the 100% Communist Lunatic, not one for the establishment candidate with the "name recognition".
Anyway, can't help but comment because you're not simply a "wee American pea" though it would be pretty damn nice if there were a whole bunch of such American peas. Because the voice you raise involves thinking, reading, writing none of which are easy tasks and are not simply cultural capital to dispense by the numbers.
What would a 0.00019142857-er, expect? I could come up with as could you and countless others with various expectations. But how would they relate to the long or short span of human history with its repeated disappointments? Going back to your recent post on Benjamin and Adorno. The latter's gripe against the former is a lack of mediation. Amie would have pointed out that Benjamin's theses on history writes of the now blasted out of history. She's gone. But we 0.00019142857-ers who remain have our chances.
- Sophie
As a certain cinephile we know might say, sometimes a sigh is just a sigh. I wish that you would follow the itching in your fingers and comment - it is lonely trying to have a high toned conversation here. I feel sometimes like I am talking to myself, and in such conversations, usually one of the partners is an idiot. So I need all the help I can get!
I'm not sure if I'm capable of a high toned conversation as my previous sorry comment shows but yes reading LI I do find myself within a conversation. What I could contribute to it would be to be start publishing from Amie's notebooks, which would make for, I think, a rather startling conversation. (I've commandeered all her notebooks and library and could start publishing today but for someone in the family who doesn't want them published and who I still hope to convince otherwise.)
Re your drift and July 4th post, I found myself in downtown Brooklyn and somehow drifted into a fireworks watch party with a Mexican family. The husband kept filling a large plastic cup with large amounts of tequila for me while telling me how he worked as a construction worker in Lancaster, PA and his encounters with Amish people who he thought were "good people". The wife kept giving me slices of cake, "not too sweet" she said. How does one drift into such encounters and conversations?
Re a sigh. A couple of conversation pieces from Amie. There's the Benjamin quote she has in the Marx text you have on LI. Nature, lament, sensuous breath. She wrote about that extensively in her notebooks. Don't have them with me so can't quote. But do remember some things. Phren in Greek tragedy. Which she relates to "howl, howl, howl" in King Lear. You know of course the lines about Cordelia and breath. And that she died by hanging. Jocasta, Phaedra, Antigone, all dead by hanging, suicides. I remember also that she mentioned a post on LI about a DC "madam" who, if I remember correctly, committed suicide by hanging.
-Sophie
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