/lit/ - Literature

>>22758040
Wrong. Read Ellul.
>As Genesis shows us, the origin of sin in the world is not knowledge, as is often said (as though God were interdicting our intellectual development, which would be absurd); it is knowledge of good and evil. In this context knowledge means decision. What is not acceptable to God is that we should decide on our own what is good and what is evil. Biblically, the good is in fact the will of God. That is all. What God decides, whatever it may be, is good. If then we decide what the good is, we substitute our will for God's. We construct morality when we say and do what is good, and it is then that we are sinners. To elaborate a moral system is to show oneself to be a sinner before God, not because the conduct is bad, but because, even if it is good, another good is substituted for the will of God.

>>22455913
>The triumph of Marcuse merely points to the sterility of the sexual liberation. What he means by “Eros” is never clear to begin with: sexual activity (in the Freudian genital sense), or an aesthetic-sexual mixture of art, sex play, and creative effort, or the whole domain of instinct (which returns us to the age-old problem of reason versus instinct), or else “everything oppressed by civilization.” How does one conclude that revolution will occur through Eros and also will liberate it? Of course, the vibrant call for sexual liberty and uninhibited emotions would appeal to young people. But is it not plain that this licensed pan-sexuality, made out to be the highway to revolution, is among the most effective propaganda weapons (the kind that hits below the belt, as Hitler himself put it) and also the most demagogic form of deceit? To redeem spontaneity by that means is senseless regression in terms of revolution—“Post coitum animal triste”: that is all we can expect of it, unless an iron fist clamps down on the rampant irrationality, the results of which we have already seen. We ought not to forget the vast irrational movement of our time which produced public festivals and mindless emotionalism on an incredible scale: National Socialism. The practice of “classifying,” and thus dismissing, Nazism should stop, for it represents a real Freudian repression on the part of intellectuals who refuse to recognize what it was. I must admit also that the ideas of Marcuse strike me as drenched in the earliest phase of Hitlerist philosophy. There we have the one and only great revolution of irrationality which ever occurred, the great festival (the greatest by far): what it did to reinforce the state, technology, propaganda, and all the rest, is history. Any orientation of that nature will have the same results. That is why current invocations to irrationalism and to the mystique of revolution fill me with dread. For their only possible outcome was demonstrated by Hitler. The consequences of uncontrolled irrationality are inevitable and predictable. There is no intrinsic virtue in Eros, whereas there is a menace behind those dark forces which were unveiled and used solely for inflicting on mankind the worst disaster it has ever known. What Marcuse has done is sow the seeds of a new Nazism.

>>22310623
>As Genesis shows us, the origin of sin the world is not knowledge, as is often said (as though God were interdicting our intellectual development, which would be absurd); it is knowledge of good and evil. In this context knowledge means decision. What is not acceptable to God is that we should decide on our own what is good and what is evil. Biblically, the good is in fact the will of God. That is all. What God decides, whatever it may be, is good. If then we decide what the good is, we substitute our will for God's. We construct morality when we say and do what is good, and it is then that we are sinners. To elaborate a moral system is to show oneself to be a sinner before God, not because the conduct is bad, but because, even if it is good, another good is substituted for the will of God.

>>22120984
>We ought not to forget the vast irrational movement of our time which produced public festivals and mindless emotionalism on an incredible scale: National Socialism. The practice of “classifying,” and thus dismissing, Nazism should stop, for it represents a real Freudian repression on the part of intellectuals who refuse to recognize what it was. Others lump together Nazism, dictatorship, massacres, concentration camps, racism, and Hitler’s folly. That about covers the subject. Nazism was a great revolution: against the bureaucracy, against senility, in behalf of youth; against the entrenched hierarchies, against capitalism, against the petit-bourgeois mentality, against comfort and security, against the consumer society, against traditional morality; for the liberation of instinct, desire, passions, hatred of cops (yes, indeed!), the will to power, and the creation of a higher order of freedom. When I read the following: “The mob disclaims all responsibility, either for those who join it, or for what will happen tomorrow. Their actions and words are free of traditional restraints. They believe what they are doing and saying is simply the truth at the moment. ... I do not represent anyone; I think what I say voices the feelings of the students as a whole. ... He is a reflection of them just as they are the reflection of science. It takes me back thirty-five years to when I first read Alphonse de Chateaubriant’s Te Deums to Hitler. There we have the one and only great revolution of irrationality which ever occurred, the great festival (the greatest by far): what it did to reinforce the state, technology, propaganda, and all the rest, is history. Any orientation of that nature will have the same results. That is why current invocations to irrationalism and to the mystique of revolution fill me with dread. For their only possible outcome was demonstrated by Hitler. The consequences of uncontrolled irrationality are inevitable and predictable. There is no intrinsic virtue in Eros, whereas there is a menace behind those dark forces which were unveiled and used solely for inflicting on mankind the worst disaster it has ever known.

>>21977168
>And of course Karl Marx put the final touches on the edifice by providing the theoretical justification for what was as yet only emotion, impulse, need. Marx is truly a bourgeois thinker when he explains all of history by work, when he formulates man's whole relation to the world in terms of work, when he evaluates all thought in terms of its relation to work, and when he gives work as the creative source of value. Although he did not believe in values, he implies that work is a virtue when he condemns the classes that do not work. He was one of the most articulate interpreters of the bourgeois myth of work, and because he was a socialist and a defender of the working class, he was one of the most active agents in spreading the myth to this class. Besides, it was through work that this class would one day win power and freedom. For the post-Marxian working class, therefore, work meant both the explanation of its condition and the certainty of seeing it end. Once the motive of doctrine had been added to the motive of necessity, how could the workers fail to be imbued with this ideology? It was the bourgeois who invented the dogma of the eminent dignity of the worker, but it was Karl Marx who led the proletariat to this thenceforth ineradicable conviction. From then on, the myth of work became a myth of the left, and the bourgeois and the worker were united in the same commonplace: work is the be-all and end-all of life. The only difference is that for the bourgeois, work tends more and more to be the work of other people, while for the worker only he himself can bear the noble title of worker. Anyone who does not belong to the proletariat, being a nonworker, is a parasite.

>>21597610
>Finally, let us not overlook the ideology of revolution which leads inevitably to terror. It is one thing to hunger spiritually for revolution and to risk one’s life for it in an absurd gamble; it is something else to believe in it, to rave about it, to wrap oneself in a dream of it, to talk of nothing else, to join a handful of others in stirring up the fires of hatred and violence; or else to regard it as the most obvious, banal, and ordinary fact of life and a theme for sociologists. When revolution does occur, those dreamers and pseudo-scientists are the terrorists. The current attitude to terrorism generally fails to account for revolutionary ideology as an inexhaustible source of terrorism fed by the complacency of those who give in to it. If revolution is to come about in our society, it must contest vulgarized revolutionary ideology. “Revolutionary theory is now the alert and declared enemy of revolutionary ideology” (Debord).

>>21264865
>Habermas does a superficial analysis of the relationship between technology and politics. He is content with arguments like: "the orientation of technological progress depends on public investments," hence on politics. He seems to be totally unaware of dozens of studies (including Galbraith's or mine) showing the subordination of political decisions to technological imperatives. He winds up with the elementary wish to "get hold of technology again" and "place it under the control of public opinion . . . reintegrate it within the consensus of the citizens.” The matter is, alas, a wee bit more complicated; likewise, when he contrasts the technocratic schema with the decision-making schema. To grasp the interaction, he ought to study L. Sfez (Critique de la décision, 1974). And Habermas's discussion of the "pragmatic model" is along the lines of a pious hope, a wish: the process of scientification of politics, such as appears desirable to him, is a "must.” But the reality of this technicization of politics actually occurs on a different model! Habermas poses the philosophical problem honesty: The true problem is to know if, having reached a certain level of knowledge capable of bringing certain consequences, one is content to put that knowledge at the disposal of men involved in technological manipulations, or whether one wants men communicating among themselves to retake possession of that knowledge in their very language. But Habermas poses the problem outside of any reality. When reading this text, we need only ask: Who is that "one" who puts technology at the disposal of either group? Who exercises this (if you like) supreme “will”?

>>21252437
Ellul is French.

>>21238885
He's only one of the the most important Marxists of the 20th century.

>>21029313
>Reich's very elementary approach has been completely superseded. G. Deleuze and F. Guattari provides us with a much more significant model for our day: 'Marxism? Unrelated to what we are saying! Doctrinal synthesis? Of course not!” Yet in spite of such denials, their writings involve a well-camouflaged latent Marxism. They propose an "analysis" (which is not "psycho") based on an unavowed Marxist construction. They interpret everything as a machine, in terms of production and economics (since capitalism is evil itself), based on class division, fascist paranoia, and schizophrenic revolutionaries. Finally, they indict the family, not as the cause of neuroses, but as nonexistent. Such essentially "Marxist" positions lead to a different analysis of the so-called mentally ill person. In Deleuze and Guattari's writings, the reader or listener finds himself unconsciously within the Marxist circle of thought.

>>20871742
>Likewise, Mumford demonstrates at length that the sole conceivable and real finality of "technics'' is the augmentation of power. There is absolutely no other possibility. This brings us back to the problem of the means. Technology is the most powerful means and the greatest ensemble of means. And hence, the only problem of technology is that of the indefinite growth of means, corresponding to man's spirit of power. Nietzsche, exalting this will to power, limited himself to preparing the man predisposed to the technological universe! A tragic contradiction.

>>20760771
>And of course Karl Marx put the final touches on the edifice by providing the theoretical justification for what was as yet only emotion, impulse, need. Marx is truly a bourgeois thinker when he explains all of history by work, when he formulates man's whole relation to the world in terms of work, when he evaluates all thought in terms of its relation to work, and when he gives work as the creative source of value. Although he did not believe in values, he implies that work is a virtue when he condemns the classes that do not work. He was one of the most articulate interpreters of the bourgeois myth of work, and because he was a socialist and a defender of the working class, he was one of the most active agents in spreading the myth to this class. Besides, it was through work that this class would one day win power and freedom. For the post-Marxian working class, therefore, work meant both the explanation of its condition and the certainty of seeing it end. Once the motive of doctrine had been added to the motive of necessity, how could the workers fail to be imbued with this ideology? It was the bourgeois who invented the dogma of the eminent dignity of the worker, but it was Karl Marx who led the proletariat to this thenceforth ineradicable conviction. From then on, the myth of work became a myth of the left, and the bourgeois and the worker were united in the same commonplace: work is the be-all and end-all of life. The only difference is that for the bourgeois, work tends more and more to be the work of other people, while for the worker only he himself can bear the noble title of worker. Anyone who does not belong to the proletariat, being a nonworker, is a parasite.

>>20737728
Because of technique:
>Likewise, Mumford demonstrates at length that the sole conceivable and real finality of "technics'' is the augmentation of power. There is absolutely no other possibility. This brings us back to the problem of the means. Technology is the most powerful means and the greatest ensemble of means. And hence, the only problem of technology is that of the indefinite growth of means, corresponding to man's spirit of power. Nietzsche, exalting this will to power, limited himself to preparing the man predisposed to the technological universe! A tragic contradiction.