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OML Archives-
Subject: Re: Reich and Marx - Thu, 14 Mar 1996 02:53:55 -0500
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 02:53:55 -0500
From: zzippy@cris.com (Christopher T. Phillips)
Message-Id: <199603140746.CAA29737@darius.cris.com>
Subject: Re: Reich and Marx
To: orgonomy@jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Sender: owner-orgonomy@jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
>I came to Reich several times, via several different routes, before the
>bells really rang. I read parts of _Function of the Orgasm_, out of
>curiousity as much as anything, the way i read the _Communist Manifesto_
>the first time, or Freud's _Introductory Lectures..._. My education had
>prepared me particularly well to appreciate Reich, Marx or Freud, all of
>whom were first presented to me in rather cartoonish form, with Reich
>being of course dismissed as 'crazy,' Marx and Freud as wrong and vaguely
>anti-american. A "liberal" arts education can get you a pretty
>conservative knowledge base. Imagine my surprise to find that none of
>these folks were particularly evil or insane.
>
>Actually, i suspect many of you can relate to the experience of finding
>Reich not as mad as advertised. His thought is perhaps "unaccustomed" for
>us, and certainly complex (and unfinished), but what body of thought of
>any consequence isn't? Certainly, the work of Marx and Freud require as
>much care in handling as Reich's, and understanding them is of particular
>importance for those of us interested in Reich because of their profound
>influences on him. In fact, of the two, perhaps Marx's influences is
>clearer, since the influence of Freud always seems to have been played
>against an interest in the psychologies of Bergson, Semon, etc. That is,
>perhaps the line of influence from Marx (and Engels, who was engaged in
>work on natural science at the end of his life) is most direct - however
>much Reich distanced himself from various currents of Marxism (a group of
>ideologies, more or less faithful to the principles to be found in the
>writings of Marx and Engels), and particularly from what he called Red
>Fascism, the degenerate remains of Bolshevism (which was derailed almost
>at the first by intervention, both military and economic, by the
>capitalist West. Forced to resort to "war communism" there was never any
>opportunity for Soviet Communism to actually attempt true government by
>the soviets.
>
>If you don't understand Marx - and the differences between what Marx
>advocated and "Red Fascism" as it happened - then i can't imagine that
>either Reich's sex-economic and social thought or his approach to crucial
>questions of science are going to be clear.
>
>Right now, we seem to be laboring under the weight of misunderstanding,
>about Marx and about what other OMLers are saying.
>
>For example...
>
>C. T. Phillips said:
>
>[...]
>> Unfortunately there was only one freely-elected Marxist that I
>> know of, perhaps I am mistaken, but I beleive it was Presedent Allende
>> of Chile. Unfortunately it appears that the U.S. Government assisted
>> military dictators to overthrow and murder Allende. Not an unfamiliar
>> theme, I'm afraid.
>
>You open a difficult can of worms - or several - here. I suppose that
>"freely-elected" government is meant to be related in some way to
>capitalism and/or democracy.
Sorry, that was not my intention. I ment merely to point-out
that Allende was a Marxist and was elected by the people as a Marxist,
as opposed to simply seizing power with guns and saying he's a Marxist.
Again, as far as I am aware, his was the only Marxist government that
has existed. Not as a member of a parliment or congress, but as a
chosen form of government.
>But i don't know how Allende could be the
>"only" one in any event, since European parliamentary governments often
>have "marxist" or "communist" members.
> Of course, Marx's thought is
>explicitly revolutionary, and based in a notion of class conflict which
>suggest that no total change in a society will come about without
>revolution. Reich discusses the "dictatorship of the proletariat" in
>_Mass Psychology of Fascism_ in surprisingly positive terms. In any event,
>"free elections" are almost never the source of radical social change.
This is true, but I prefer the "mild" social changes afforded by
an equal voice in government to the bloody changes wrought by revolutions
that accomplish little except to perhaps reduce populations and destroy
the livelyhoods of those left to scrape-up the pieces.
>Certainly, the history of the US is an example of revolutionary change,
>with the attendent "transition." The transition in the US was certainly
>marked by violence against loyalists, continued violence against first
>peoples, and the "democracy" which we ended up with was based in large
>part on mistrust of the people and strong central authority. Not so
>different a tale really from that of the Bolsheviks.
I disagree. The people in Russia elected the Menshivecks and
the Bolshevecks seized power by killing and imprisoning the Menshivecks.
In The American colonies many appeals were made to the King of
England, he refused to address their grievences, placed cities under
martial law, and increased taxes. The colonies rebelled, with clearly
defined reasons for doing so.
>Jefferson and Lenin
>are the great flawed geniuses of peoples' revolution.
Shawn, I do beleive you are saying this just to annoy me !
Jefferson's revolution brought about clearly different results than
Lenin's. It is hard for me to see the parellels your trying to draw
here, after all, Jefferson didn't have the chance to contend with
the problems associated with the Industrial Revolution.
>The capitalist revolution, which is perhaps still ongoing, was based in
>the same sorts of constitutive violence.
I havn't the slightest idea what you mean by "constitutive violence".
>> I simply disagree with the Marxist dogma which villifies
>> person or persons that organise people so they can be be steadily
>> employed, and depicting them as being little more than exploiters
>> of labor, deseving to be prosecuted for wrongdoing. This is, in
>> my opinion, seriously flawed.
>
>Recall that the concentration of labor power necessary for the takeoff of
>industrial capitalism required the forcible redirection of labor,
>relocation of workers, appropriation and enclosure of land.
Nobody FORCED anybody to take those jobs. People CHOOSE to go to work
for industrialists. People CHOOSE to relocate to take thease jobs. This is
more than can be said for totalitarian states.
> It was
>necessary to recreate laborors as mass workers, and this process has a
>long and bloody history. Nobody freely elected the first capitalists, any
>more than we elect them now (except to the extent our politicians stand
>for them.)
I havn't said anything about electing Capitalists. There is no
Capitalist form of government, because Capitalism is an economic system,
not a form of government. I find the villanisation of Capitalists to be
as rational and as usefull as the villanisation of the Jews.
>No doubt there are forms of marxist and anarchist critique that are as blind
>to the substance of Marx's critique of exploitation as those who have
>never read Marx (and often because the 'marxists' haven't read Marx
>either.) However, the 'dogma' decried here sounds like a Cold War
>charicature. In any event, isn't there some difference between "organizing
>people" and people organizing themselves? Isn't there an immense
>difference?
>> That's really all I have to say about it. I am not critiquing
>> Reich <at the moment>, after all, he was a product of his time just
>> as we are of ours. But I do not feel compelled to blindly accept every
>> statement Reich ever made as gospel either. He had his shortcomings
>> too. <gasp!> After all, he was born human into a superstitious soceity
>> just as we are.
>
>Precisely because we are products of our time and character, it is
>necessary to open ourselves to explanations that are unforeseen (recall
>that Reich related that capacity to democracy). If there were no other
>value to Reich's work, it would still be of immense use in providing
>doorways to seeing important strains of thought in provacative
>juxtaposition (Marx with Freud, with Bergson, with Semon, with Engels,
>etc...) What is called for is not blind faith in a "gospel," but a serious
>engagement with the details of the works in question. Online forums are
>not the greatest arenas for communicating subtleties, but we can try to at
>least help one another see where there are unexplored possibilities.
>
>-shawn
Thanks
C. T. Phillips
<zzippy@concentric.net>
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