From: gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch)
Subject: Re: -= Non-Institutional Community =- (re: Death of America)
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 16:51:18 GMT
Organization: mydog in exile
Keywords: Hope as passion, not concept

I've put the article I'm following up at the _end_ of 
mine, so you don't have to read through it unless you missed 
it.  If you did miss it, go read it now, because I'm not
quoting a lot and it's worth reading.

First, as to totalitarianism and poetry: poetry is generally
totalitarian in that it seldom presents alternatives or doubt.
We do not find "On the one hand... on the other hand...."
much in poems or bibles.  The poet can avoid totalitarianism
by espousing anarchy in a radical, personal sense; even then,
her words may be all too _effective_.  Strangely, one can say 
"Behold the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, 
neither do they spin...." and "If someone strikes you on one 
cheek, turn the other to him" and find one's followers burning 
humans to death as an act of devotion.  Maybe every utterance
of poetry should be followed by "Don't follow leaders!  Watch
th' parkin' meters!"

I find Ellul, as quoted, basically backward-looking; I think
he's stuck at around 1930.  I think it's becoming
increasingly clear that there is no possibility of
constructing the efficient state visualized by the seers of
not-so-long ago, for the simple reason that there is no
adequate means of disciplining the people, and what means
there are, are becoming increasing less effective as time
goes on.  The Nazis and the Communists, who were at the
forefront of the construction of ideal polities, imagined
(because of their doctrines) that race or class determined
consciousness and will.  But it turns out that it's the
other way around, as any liberal could have told them.

What I think gave many people the idea that technology would
lead to an efficient, totalitarian state was that, during 
the earlier stages of capitalism, the working class were 
sufficiently pressed so that they could organize themselves 
only in very crude ways, unions and political parties; while 
the bourgeoisie was organized around the efficient 
preservation and extension of capital.  It seems easy to put 
these two cultures or causes together and come up with a
machine -- a fairly stupid machine, in fact.

However, since World War II, when the bourgeoisie had to
allow a huge amount of wealth to pass into the hands of the
workers -- hence the postwar boom -- it's turned out that,
given any kind of room, people simply diverge into hundreds
and thousands of interests and ways of life.

Thus far, this divergence has been kept in control by the
corporate economic authority, the bourgeoisie, to some
extent.  But, as I posited in my "singularity" articles, I
believe the means of this control is coming to an end
because to the way in which the nature and distribution of
capital are changing.  (I will mail copies of these articles
on request; but I am cooking up others.)  Since our social
system's central control mechanisms (the government, the
corporations, large institutions, and so on) are formed
around bourgeois authority, the decline of the latter will
lead to a disappearance of central control. That being the
case, anarchy is not an interesting alternative to 
liberal bourgeois capitalism or the imagined efficient 
totalitarian state; it is the fate, the outcome, of the 
former, and the refutation of the latter.

Consequently, I think we have to learn how to make anarchy
work. And for this reason I am impatient with, e.g., Carse.

When Carse says that the three essential passions of humans
are to create, to love, and to play, I think he's indulging
in wishful thinking -- a game of his own.  After the
satisfaction of animal desires (food, sex, sleep, care of 
progeny, enjoyment of socialization with fellow family,
pack, or clan members, and so forth) the three most 
prominent human desires are clearly to get stuff, to control 
other people, and to hurt other people.  Now, maybe Carse is
talking about animal desires -- he can get away with love
and play here -- but these are not what people generally
express politically or socially.  If you doubt this, turn on
a television set and watch it with a critical mind as long
as you can stand it.

If it were true that humans wanted primarily to create, to 
love, and to play, we could have set up working anarchies a 
long time ago, could we not?  "Man is born free and is
everywhere in chains...." because he _likes_ chains.  We are 
not going to be successful in generating viable futures 
without recognizing these and other unpleasant facts and
dealing with them. 

I don't want to get into my view of what a working anarchy 
entails, because I've written about this in other articles
and will probably do so again, but I do want to note that in
mentioning Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, we invoke the
two big patriarchal religions and their ancestor, whatever
Jesus et alii may have preached.  These religions, being
monotheistic, accord well with totalitarianism.  It seems
necessary (to me) for the anarchist to be an agnostic or an
atheist in abjuring generally knowable absolute truths, just
as it's necessary for her to reject violence and property
because violence and property are the state, whether manifest
or not, and monotheism -- even if mechanistic -- is its
basic ideology.  

(article I'm following up starts here:)

| In article <1992Dec12.230628.8635@panix.com>, 
| gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes...  
| 
| >Poetry in opposition can be very effective: 
| >"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs," 
| >is one example.
| 
| "Effective," interesting choice of wording. Jacques Ellul would assert
| this to be the watchword of the totalitarian state, Gordon. Let's see
| if I can make this more worth your while. I'll touch on Carse again in
| passing...
| 
| Jay M. Van Hook
| "The Politics of Man, The Politics of God, and The Politics of Freedom."
| 
|         Ellul sees modern society as characterized increasingly
|         by "technique," which he defines as "the totality of
|         methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency
|         in every field of human activity." Technique, in this view,
|         is not simply technology; it is the mind-set of an age
|         wholly preoccupied with means and efficiency. We are
|         beyond the point, he thinks, where the end justifies
|         the means; in a technical society "the means justifies
|         itself." ...
|         
|         For Ellul, the modern conjunction of technique with the
|         state creates the totalitarian society -- totalitarian
|         in that it attempts to absorb the citizen's life com-
|         pletely.... The technical society he envisages
| 
|            will not be a universal concentration camp, for
|            it will be guilty of no atrocity. It will not
|            seem insane, for everything will be ordered,
|            and the stains of human passion will be lost
|            amid the chromium gleam. We shall have nothing
|            to lose, and nothing to win. Our deepest 
|            instincts and our most secret passions will
|            be analyzed, published, and exploited. We 
|            shall be rewarded with everything our hearts
|            ever desired. And the supreme luxury of the
|            society of technical necessity will be to 
|            grant the bonus of useless revolt and of
|            an acquiescent smile.  [JE: Tech. Society p.247]
| 
| The socialist-totalitarian path will assert that when properly ordered
| most of society need not work, only perhaps 20 percent. And of course,
| the state will co-opt the poietai, just as happened with Hitler; in this
| I agree with Carse. Ellul would likely assert that poetry so used is
| propaganda, and that... 
| 
|         (as per Michael Real in,
|         "Mass Communications and Propaganda in Technical Societies:")
| 
|         ...mass education and the leadership of intellectuals
|         do not prevent propaganda but in fact coincide with
|         its spread. Americans have been commonly instructed
|         since the 1930's that education and intellectual 
|         analysis detect propaganda and immunize the citizenry
|         against it. Instead, Ellul sees education as a neces-
|         sary precondition for propaganda and the intellectual
|         as the most propagandized member of society because
|         of his access to overwhelming amounts of information,
|         his need to have an opinion on every subject, and the
|         conviction "of his own superiority." [JE: Propaganda p.111]
| 
| But Carse is not so much a proponent of poetry as of play, and
| specifically non-competative play. Not unlike Ellul ala "Between
| Chaos and Paralysis:"
| 
|         When I speak of the individual as a source of hope
|         I mean the individual who does not lend himself to 
|         society's game, who disputes what we accept as self-
|         evident...who questions even the movement of society
|         ....This radical subjectivity will inform also the
|         three human passions which seem to be the essential
|         ones -- the passion to create, to love, to play. But
|         these mighty drives of the human heart must find a
|         particular expression in each person. It is in build-
|         ing of a new daily life, in the discovery of things,
|         acts, situations utterly different from those that
|         society would fasten on us, that this subjectivity
|         can express itself... I am convinced that Christians
|         are absolutely the only ones who can attempt it --
|         but here on the condition that they start from zero.
|         
|         Kierkegaard, it seems to me, alone can show us how
|         to start...If we are to question our society in so
|         radical a fashion, we must adopt a point of view
|         essentially different from that of society's -- one
|         that we cannot arrive at by starting from our human 
|         wisdom. 
| 
| And thus the stage is set for Christian Anarchy. A non-partisan,
| non-denominational, non-institutional community of spirit, where
| truly it can be said that GOD alone is sovereign. 
| 
| I part with Ellul, and Vernard Eller, on the assertion that such
| a community need be Christian only. Looking to Martin Buber it
| is apparent that the longing for the spiritual community burns
| deeply in the Remnant of Israel. Certainly the same is true in 
| Islam. Humankind may not be able to achieve this without GOD's
| help, but the common core of our faith tells us that it is HIS
| will on which we should rely. For all intents, such a community
| would have the political nature of anarchy, precisely because
| of it's dedication to the non-institutional. Ellul doesn't go
| this far, but remains instructive:
| 
| Ellul, _Precense of the Kingdom_ p.138:
| 
|         Day after day the wind blows away the pages of
|         our calendars, our newspapers, and our political
|         regimes, and we glide along the stream of time
|         without any spiritual framework, without a memory,
|         without a judgment, carried about by "all winds
|         of doctrine" on the current of history, which 
|         is always slipping into a perpetual past. Now
|         we ought to react vigorously against this slackness     
|         -- this tendency to drift. If we are to live in 
|         this world we need to know it far more profoundly;
|         we need to rediscover the meaning of events, and
|         the spiritual framework which our contemporaries
|         have lost.
| 
| Van Hook, Politics of Man, God, and Freedom ...
| 
|         Ellul's solution requires groups of "citizens 
|         organized independently of the state" and possesing
|         a "truly democratic attitude in order to depolitize
|         and repolitize." The purpose of these groups is to
|         introduce "tensions" into society by declaring their
|         independence and demonstrating that there are areas
|         of life which can not be absorbed into the state.
|         These tensions are not intended to destroy the state;
|         they aim instead to create a political life free of
|         illusion. He sums up his proposal:
| 
|           .... it is important to above all never to 
|           permit oneself to ask the state to help us.
|           This means that we must try to create posi-
|           tions in which we reject and struggle with 
|           the state, not in order to modify some ele-
|           ment of the regime or force it to make some
|           decision, but, much more fundamentally, to
|           permit the emergence of social, political,
|           intellectual, or artistic bodies, associa-
|           tions, interest groups, or economic or
|           Christian groups totally independent of the
|           state, yet capable of opposing it, able to
|           reject its pressures as well as its controls,
|           and even its gifts. These organizations must
|           be completely independent, not only materi-
|           ally but also intellectually and morally, ie
|           able to deny that the nation is the supreme 
|           value and that the state is the incarnation
|           of the nation.... What is needed is groups
|           capable of extreme diversification of the
|           entire society's fundamental tendencies,
|           capable of escaping our unitary structure
|           and of presenting themselves not as negations
|           of the state -- which would be absurd --
|           but as something else, not under the state's
|           tutelage but equally important, as solid and
|           valuable as the state.
| 
| We may contrast the Quakers, and Berlet's Bane, Christian Identity,
| on how practically to proceed. As well as home schooling, Gritz,
| and such.
| 
| A bit deeper a consideration for you Gordon.
| 
| -= Will Campbell has it right, "Think Sect." =-
|         

-- 

 )*(    Gordon Fitch    )*(    gcf@panix.com    )*(
( 1238 Blg. Grn. Sta.,  NY NY 10274 * 718.273.5556 )
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