by nemo on August 31, 2008
The premise of this blog is to look at the question of ideology, theory, and politics in the light of the eonic effect, whose mainline theme is the correlation of emergent liberalism in the early modern. It is an opportunity to reexamine the emergence of modern freedom in the light of a new kind of historical theory, and in that context the sudden shift to the far left in the nineteenth century has a documentary significance for that study.
The ‘ultra far left’ is simply the ‘left shift’ visible in the dynamics of modernism. After the spectacular failures of the revolutionary left via Leninism it is appropriate to simply move with the ‘left shift’, instead of regressing backwards, or rehashing the stale and almost defunct ideology of Marxism. It is useful to see the ‘ultra far left’ as an integration from the far past to the far future, and beyond that to nature of ideology in the context of the whole of civilization, with a question about the future.
Thus, the ‘ultra far left’ is left of Old Marx/Engels, it seems, but has at first no real meaning.
It is useful to reexamine Marxist theory (and liberal philosophies of history) to see where it goes wrong, on theory. On practice, the left of the nineteenth century performed a world historical task in its embrace of working class movements. So it is the philosophy of history, certainly no science, that animates Marxism that needs a closer look.
So the ultra far left is so far left one begins to see Zoroastrian halos around one’s lightbulbs in dinky working class flats.
Perhaps we will have to settle for better bibilography.
You can call off the Feds, plots against the dot.gove are turned off by default til furthe notice.
by nemo on August 28, 2008
A One post blog?
The idea for a one post blog is a foil to consider the issue of the politics of evolution by focusing on one key moment in the emergence of modern politics. But our real subject is the larger context of the eonic effect, and theory and ideology. On the way it is worth looking at the main event: the emergence of liberalism, and the Marxist response to that. And that leads to the question of historical theory.
The eonic model beats all parties hands down here, and offers a new way to examine both liberalism and the theories of historical materialism. Among other things.
In general, theories of revolution have proven problematical, as have theories of evolution/historical dynamics. The fate of Marxist theory suggests the need for a re-examination of the whole question.
So one thing leads to another and before you know we will have the Huffingpost for the ultra far left, hey, what’s that?
Anyway, that’s our starting point: the era of the 1848 revolutions.
by nemo on August 25, 2008
The context of this ‘blog idea’ is not really politics at all, but the question of the eonic effect and the way it impinges on ideology. And it does so in a ‘macro’ fashion, from the politics of the Pharaohs to the politics of the Zoroastrian endtimes, a fairly mind-bogglind ‘dialectic’.
The revolution of 1848, and that really should invoke the issues of the French and American Revolutions, has a kind of ironic status in terms of what is called the ‘eonic sequence’ in the model of the eonic effect. It is this generation that is the first to be on the outside of this sequence. And that gives it a kind of ominous significance: it is the point, in the language of the eonic model, when micro-action replaces macro-action.
We can elaborate on that further, but perhaps it is amusingly apt to think of Marx/Engels in the period of the ‘last aftershock’ of the French Revolution, save only the Commune perhaps, described in a blog of the red year, or years.
It would take a lot of research to backdate a blog thus, and the idea is enough, with one post.
Beyond that the politics of evolution takes an ironically deeper significance in terms of the eonic effect, and we are simultaneously standing back from the total spectrum of ideologies and at the same time putting definite focus on a selective strain of such, from the Reformation, and the German Social Revolution, to the emergence of liberalism at the Great Divide.
In that sense the ambiguity of Marx/Engels generates the strange suspense of modern liberal politics in, at once, its prodigious success, and inherent limitation.
by nemo on August 22, 2008
Marx in Neue Rheinische Zeitung December 1848:
The Bourgeoisie and the Counter-Revolution
by Karl Marx
Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 169
Translated by the Marx-Engels Institute
Transcribed for the Internet by director@marx.org, 1994
Cologne, December 11. When the March flood — a flood in miniature — subsided it left on the surface of Berlin no prodigies, no revolutionary giants, but traditional creatures, thickset bourgeois figures-the liberals of the United Provincial Diet, the representatives of the conscious Prussian bourgeoisie. The main contingents for the new ministries were supplied by the Rhineland and Silesia, the provinces with the most advanced bourgeoisie. They were followed by a whole train of Rhenish lawyers. As the bourgeoisie was pushed into the background by the feudal aristocracy, the Rhineland and Silesia were replaced in the cabinets by the old Prussian provinces. The only link of the Brandenburg cabinet with the Rhineland is through a single Elberfeld Tory. Hansemann and von der Heydt! These two names exemplify the whole difference between March and December 1848 for the Prussian bourgeoisie.
Full Text, background