I'm beginning to feel a little like Jim Anchower; I should be starting this entry by saying "Hola amigos, it's been a long time since I rapped at ya." In spite of my recent lack of blog updating, this will change. I'm about to get busy with essay & paperwork, and I always write more when I have to procrastinate. Plus I have a number of worthwhile topics to cover. Today I thought I'd return to that old favourite, what the fuck I'm doing as a Marxist in grad school.

Epiphe-whatnow?

When I was 19, I took a course on materialist philosophy - it's what sparked my interest in Marxism. We learned about Heraclitus, Spinoza, Dietzgen and Lenin. The concept that our ideas are grounded in the social, material relations we live everyday, is extremely powerful. It means nothing is eternal: concepts like human nature, good or evil are not fixed according to a god, but changeable - we can have an impact on them through our collective self-activity.

'Slave-owning is the most just form of society.'
'What do the slaves think of that?'
'I'm sure they'd agree if I ever asked them.'

To take the obvious example, I consider the normalized relations of capitalism to be evil - not because of 'the gospel according to Marx', but because they're anti-human: they exist by crushing the self-development of most people, and impose a false individualism on our actual collectivity. (This is quite separate from whether Marx has a concept of evil. I don't know enough to comment.)

At the same time I took a Humanities course entitled 'Good & Evil'. I was excited by the chance to define what those giant concepts are. But I quickly found myself in the morass of idealism: ideas, concepts and thoughts with a life of their own, disconnected from human activity. The course dealt with Plato, St. Augustine, Aquinas - all of them creating abstract schema for society which fit into their pre-conceived notions of 'the good'. Worse, they claimed to be transhistorical, developing lessons that applied for all time, when their concepts were obviously part of the society they were a part of. Plato didn't develop Socrates' notion of religious overlords on his own: he generalized from the slave society he benefited from.

Still, I thought I should give idealism a fair try. My first course said the history of ideas was a battle between idealism and materialism. So I asked my humanities prof what he thought of this conflict.

"This is what's called epiphenomenalism," he said curtly, and turned back to his other business. I was impressed until I looked up the word in the dictionary, and discovered it meant 'something that doesn't really matter.' It was at that point I decided to call myself a materialist. The idealists didn't counter the arguments of materialism - they just ignored them, and continued to weave tortured analogies about stolen pears. It was irrational and unscientific. Worse, it supported those in power. The slave-owners found the idea of naturally ordained rulers very useful; the capitalists are happy to generalize their own greed in the name of acquisitive human nature. It was a matter of choosing sides, and I knew whose side I was on.

Materialist, not materialistic - though that's not bad either... Apple's 20 inch 'cinema display'

Times have changed

There are many levels to complain about postmodern cultural studies, and this is one. I find most of it idealist. Texts and concepts only refer to other texts and ideas. 'Practice' becomes writing an article. With a breath-taking arrogance, it tries to destroy the notion that you can ever really know anything.

Against this, we have to measure the real accomplishments of postmodernism. It has deconstructed the equal arrogance of triumphant, capitalist modernism which proclaimed the end of history, with our desperately unequal world as the best we can achieve. It posed questions about new developments in capitalism: why does cultural production take on increasing importance in the core capitalist nations? What happened to the organized working class that won social gains in the 50s & 60s? Why were those gains often restricted to white males?

Materialist hackles... rising...

I'm referencing capitalism deliberately: postmodernism is valuable when it's materialist, explaining real social relations. Unfortunately, much of it assumes these battles have been fought, and we're free to decentre, deconstruct and problematize without ever relating that back to what people do. And by people, I mean those scurrying, hunched-over commuters outside the university. Throughout, there has been a critical Marxist tradition that has tackled precisely these questions, and one which much of postmodernism overlooks in its battles against tyrannical metanarratives.

What's relevant

Which brings me back to grad school. I'm going to be taking 3 courses on post-modern cultural theory next term. I've experienced a mounting anxiety as January draws closer. How do I stop myself from blurting out "This is all irrelevant!" in the middle of class?

1) Instrumentalism

I'll have to know this stuff if I want to teach some day. I may not like Baudrillard, but I need to be able to talk about him.

2) Critical engagement

Any question that postmodernists have raised, Marxists have raised too (often first.) Art, language, the knowability of the thing-in-itself - it's all there in Marxist debates. I can learn more about my own tradition by engaging with others. Plus there's a real danger if I don't; if I dismiss postmodernism the same way my Humanities prof dismissed materialism, I won't convince anyone. As another prof put it to me today, I need to learn how to 'argue my corner' outside of the safe confines of a blog.

3) Materialism? Somewhere?

There's a chance that I'll actually get to study Marxists - that I won't simply have to ransack my library on my own. People like Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Edward Said, Aijaz Ahmad, Himani Bannerji - these are all Marxists who have contributed greatly to the cultural studies debate.

Is that enough to get me through 3 courses on cultural theory? I don't know. I didn't come to university because I had all my ideas worked out and I wanted to apply them. I have lots to learn; however, what I want to learn falls mainly within the Marxist tradition. Here's a partial list of debates, with history, practice and hundreds of participants, I need education in:

- the transition from feudalism to capitalism (the Brenner debates)
- the relative autonomy of the state
- the nature of modern imperialism
- ideology and its uses under capitalism
- the role of crisis in regulating capitalism
- do profit rates fall over time?
- permanent revolution (there being no clear-cut stages in the revolutionary process, and all revolutions proceed naturally to socialism unless prematurely checked - in the past, often by Stalinist and Maoist forces)

Theory can be about practice - from the UK Stop The War coalition

It's safe to say that, with the partial exception of ideology, cultural studies addresses none of these. (OK, and imperialism, although I find cultural imperialism as an issue epiphenominal too - not that it's completely unimportant, but I don't consider it central to how imperialism operates. I'm willing to hear otherwise.) These questions are central to how capitalism and class struggle operate. And the main reason I went back to school is instrumental: I want the space to study these questions in depth.

I understand, of course, that school entails great sacrifice, just like anything else. I don't expect a Marxist panacea - this ain't May '68. But I have a tolerance limit too. How much alienated labour is involved in grad school? How much do I have to swallow my lumps, read my Lyotard and grin & bear it? I hope not entirely. Because if I have to endure 4 years of this, I'll wake up one day and discover I'm a secretary again, sooner rather than later.

Mmmm... parasitism

Finally, my stomach is a little unsettled because I drank my afternoon mochachino too quickly. I am fully conscious of my privileges as a student. Grad school has a lot of questions to answer for, but the chance to spend an afternoon reading in a cafe isn't one of them.