The Rotten Elements

2012-01-27T02:54:00.002Z

2012-01-27T02:35:00.002Z

Clarkenhill - Behind the scenes #1

2012-01-26T03:57:00.003Z

Clarkenhill crack crack crack crack clip

2012-01-26T03:34:00.002Z

Clarkenhill - pop pop pop pop etc

2012-01-25T13:13:00.002Z

Clarkenhill go a funny dolor

2012-01-21T19:01:00.009Z

Clarkenhill clip

is over-investment on yr part...

2012-01-13T15:07:00.000Z

2011-12-24T03:49:00.003Z

Griselda Pollock, Antonioni & Tottenham Hotspur

2011-12-22T04:04:00.003Z

Detective Safari about to go out

2011-12-19T04:12:00.002Z

Iceberg of absurd mumbo-jumbo

Iceberg of absurd mumbo-jumbo
As the governance of number Jumbo
As the good-natured number Jumbo
Asda said mumbo-jumbo
Unite with his cock jumbo
Demo Jumbo

Iceberg search said Mike

2011-12-18T19:28:00.000Z

ICEBERG OF ABSURD MUMBO-JUMBO

Not for the first time, there were dissatisfied mutterings from a handful of CPGB comrades about the supposedly excessive attention paid to the RAG's "just-so" stories about the revolutionary origins of humanity and our primitive communist past. But, to date, these comrades have yet to publish any material that challenges or refutes the logical, coherent stance...

The Moon Room is dark, with no windows. Projected on one wall are images of the moon and stars. Astronomers, clock-makers and archaeologists conspire in the darkness with entertainers from the sex industry and with forest spirits from Central Africa. Our aim is to enchant and captivate the world.

... merely the tip of an iceberg of absurd mumbo-jumbo...

If the concept of origin is situated beyond history, the question takes on an ontological cast far removed from that solid ground that the prestigious concept of origin evokes; moreover, any invocation of the concept of origin that is divested of its temporal element transgresses against the simple meaning of the word, to which the philosophers of origin claim to be privy.

2011-12-18T05:08:00.008Z

From Unkant Publishing

john game said...
"I would like to position myself foresquare with Ian Birchall on this one.
John Rees upside down is no more attractive then when he's right ways up."
December 13th 2011

Discuss...

Sunday Double Bill!

1. NOITULOVER FO ARBEGLA EHT!

2. Dizzy

2011-12-16T11:54:00.003Z

JOIN THE ROTTEN ELEMENTS IN OUR CAMPAIGN TO RID THE LEFT OF CHOCOLATE-TEAPOT MARXISM!

JUST SAY 'NO' TO CHRIS KNIGHT AND THE BLOODY RADICAL ANTHROPOLOGY GROUP!

2011-12-13T22:07:00.001Z

We know you were looking for William Hill

but here's why you should bet with us.

We'll even give you a £50 Free bet!

2011-12-08T19:43:00.002Z

roomtism

2011-12-07T20:15:00.004Z

Mega Mega White Thing (repeat)
Underworld get the Olympic gig

2011-12-05T21:03:00.001Z

sirendribble

2011-12-04T19:56:00.001Z

Thamesthink

2011-12-03T07:21:00.002Z

lexi cola naomi

2011-12-02T03:54:00.002Z

Dalston Junction - C L R James 30/11/11

2011-11-30T21:45:00.001Z

Speed apparently took his own life just hours after appearing on BBC show Football Focus

2011-11-24T05:58:00.003Z

dimples

2011-11-23T11:43:00.003Z

acker & ackee hack levi

2011-11-22T16:31:00.000Z

ROLL-UP, FOR THEE MYSTERY TOUR

Introducing yet another investigative reporter for the Rotten Elements, Frayed Bentos, that old poison dart trick

Hello folks.

Pop music? What do we think? Eh? I've been toying with my name: frayed or fraying? You decide. I'm the sorta Ringo Starr of this set-up. I'm the one who's learning mad chess moves in the corner while the rest of them cats knock the shit out out front. Stick your bloody sitar up your arse, or something. But all the while I've bin accumulating knick-knacks. Stolen letters from Gloucester, a sort of epiphany. I'm kinda useless but every hamster has its day. Forty-seven year old, from Madrid. In 30 minutes I took her to, I took her. 'It's your Barbour, man. Your killing 'em.' But I'm only an apprentice here, man. Down here on a visit...

Letter for Bentos, 14 May 2011

Dear Mr Menthos,

Sorry I haven't sooner written to you, sir. I've had problems with the old lady's uterus. Home surgery's never been a strong point in our family and I've had some bad incidents over the years, so that I, metaphysically speaking, have to put a tourniquet on my emotions and do the algebra in my front room by the fire. I don't like the questions where you yourself have to pose the question: I'd rather just find the solution. Otherwise I get chapped lips.

It all started with a 'sausage roll'. Life's not a Carry On film and I only expected sausage meat in a flaky pastry casing. That's all I expect and all that I want. I define it as a sort of hinge upon which a weekend can rotate. But a 'sausage roll' became a tussle with Rose on a stained duvet. My dignity collapsed after this filthy scuffle and I asked myself (time and again, in my head symphony, I'm a big fan of Brahms and Wagner, the actor guy), why I would even contemplate buying a hot snack from a council house.

But the real trouble started when I started looking for a builder in a contact magazine. In between the sense of heightened expectation and blacked-out eyes, I was seeing Blenheim Palace on an autumn day and my body suspended from a scaffold as I gazed out on another world, a sort of space scene with floodlit dumper trucks and Martian handling machines. Lunar. I felt fantastic, like Alexander the Great. But the patio turned into a kind of regal monolith. I lay awake for hours, my heart pierced by hard concrete, listening hard for the screams and groans, the pleasure that had 'gone wrong'.

When I next looked, I'd been scuffed out, five miles down the road. Will you forgive me, Menthos? I think not. And, in a more refined sense, I don't want to be forgiven. I'm living in the hostel now but I'm still on a metaphorical mound of skulls; living as a kind of Pol Pot for Greater Manchester.

I did agree with what you said about that Tottenham Chances place. Surely, that is the ultimate oxymoron.

Yours sincerely,

Dirk Solder

2011-11-21T06:22:00.002Z

Sunday

2011-11-17T21:45:00.001Z

Dalston Junction Bed Show

2011-11-11T04:42:00.004Z

I hired a contract killer

2011-11-06T08:19:00.001Z

katja gravity's rainbow

2011-11-06T07:27:00.002Z

the ba

2011-11-03T19:15:00.005Z

We all knew Clifford Jarvis.
"Clifford Jarvis was an inspirational presence on the London jazz scene for the best part of two decades in the 1980s and 1990s, but his reputation as one of the great jazz drummers of his time was made in his native USA, and in a remarkably wide-ranging variety of contexts. Jarvis added his sensitive but always incendiary drumming to the bands of leaders as diverse as Chet Baker, Freddie Hubbard, Jackie McLean, Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders and, perhaps most famously, Sun Ra.
He continued to play in diverse settings after settling in London, but made an even bigger contribution as a teacher in both history and music. His work in music education in Hackney brought great benefits to professional musicians as well as more community-based projects."

And we all know about The Graham Road Curve.
"Just a personal opinion but I can't see how the cost of construction of the Graham Road Curve was ever justified. It was installed solely as a step in the closure of Broad Street and only used by a maximum of three (rush hour) passenger trains per day in each direction for a short period of time. The extended journey times using this route led to the gradual withdrawal of these services. Since then, it has only been used (to my knowledge) for stock movements and engineering diversions which could just as well run via Stratford. It is one of the railway's great white elephants and I'm surprised it is still there."

2011-10-31T03:56:00.010Z

Fast London

2011-10-25T20:34:00.001Z

What's in it for us? The 'alternative culture' of German social democracy and the forward march of The Rotten Elements (III)

This afternoon I listened to a Channel 5 documentary about Fred West and fantasised about his voice imploding onto a deep house track. I settled for an evening quietly writing up me notes about The New Communist Party in the British Library. Speed, speed, ecstasy...

All quotes below are from Vernon Lidtke The alternative culture: socialist labour in imperial Germany Oxford University Press, 1985, except for the ones that aren't

Mike Macnair says that the centre tendency of the Second International did not lack a grasp of the dialectic. Of course, I realise that Macnair is setting up a general argument in which the exceptions, presumably, prove the rule. But this dialectical lapse is precisely one that Lidtke draws out in relation to the 'alternative culture' of German social democracy, in particular to literary and theatrical production.

This lapse was a theoretical and practical one. In theory: 'Social Democratic intellectuals and social commentators, with few exceptions, had absorbed their aesthetic principles directly from the German culture of which they otherwise so deeply critical, and yet they showed little or no uneasiness about this ironic situation. In failing to develop a special set of socialist or Marxist aesthetic principles, they passed up an opportunity to clarify their relationship to all the arts (pp142-143).'

This spread down in to practice with the 1884 poetry anthologies of Rudolf Lavant giving precedence to political propaganda purposes over aesthetic considerations, under the rubric of 'worker poetry'. 'To put the matter as succinctly as possible... [socialist] poets [such as] Hasenclever were to be used but not studied; poets [such as] Goethe were to be studied but seldom could be used.' Similarly, organisations such as the Freie Volksbühne rarely performed plays by socialist authors as the writing did not meet the (bourgeois) aesthetic standards of the movement (pp148-149). 'Franz Mehring, for many years a leading light of the Freie Volksbühne in Berlin, prepared socialist commentaries on forthcoming plays which were distributed to subscribers. Except for these and for the fact that audiences were entirely from the labour movement... such events were indistinguishable from the regular productions of the professional stage (p150).'

What this 'culture' actually ended up with was a crude, undialectical redrawing of the division of labour between art and politics, and thus between artists/theorists and activists. 'The upshot was that Social Democratic theorists on culture were more likely to be discouraging than encouraging with respect to the efforts of amateur musicians, artists, and writers within the labour movement (p157).' So the positive moments of what I commented favourably on in the last instalment, i.e. a relative dismissal of workers' culture as a product of capitalism (or what workers 'had') got worked over into this alien and bureaucratic construct.

So what were are left with is a cultural example that strongly resonates with our present situation in the most negative of senses. The descriptions above could be taken from any contemporary left organisation (including the CPGB), albeit at much lower organised level. In contrast, while writers, artists and theorists in the 'official' communist movement were generally embattled, this was a movement that did produce writers and did raise up a distinct set of Marxist aesthetic principles.

I'm beginning to wonder exactly what can be salvaged from the rubble of this 'alternative culture'... answers on a postcard....

2011-10-16T09:07:00.001Z

What's in it for us? The 'alternative culture' of German social democracy and the forward march of The Rotten Elements (II)

Semolina séances in the remains of the day. I slunk out in backstreets with a machine that I, like, invented. It run on clicks (click, click, click) and synchronised random menstrual cycles. Beware that my dad thinks a click is something that took over Hook Norton Cricket Club circa 1995...

All quotes below are from Vernon Lidtke The alternative culture: socialist labour in imperial Germany Oxford University Press, 1985

What is the meaning of this 'alternative culture' of the German SPD in the era of the Second International that, as previously argued, has become such a touchstone for CPGB members? Lidtke defines this broadly as 'an alternative culture in which organised workers could fulfill their needs for companionship, sociability, recreation, learning and aesthetic satisfaction' (p3). Lidtke rightly rejects the instrumentalist practices of assessing this movement by its formal absorption of this or that Marxist principle or through the prism of the SPD's ignominious collapse of 1914.

The author rejects the idea of seeing this 'culture' as a 'subculture', arguing that imprinting it with this label cannot do justice to the 'alternative' culture's interaction with the dominant culture of imperial Germany, arguing that 'the border lines between the two realms were at some point scarcely discernible' (p4). Nevertheless, Lidtke does believe the socialist movement was 'creating a world of its own' (p9) and that it did represent a genuine threat to imperial Germany.

What was interesting to me (and a surprise, because I thought the precise opposite would be the case) is the attitude shown by the 'alternative' culture's practitioners toward existing working class culture: 'Social Democrats did not believe, for the most part, that there was much of value in what workers already had. Socialists glorified the proletariat unceasingly, but in practice they did not recommend that a future socialist culture should take over the mores, customs, behaviours and cultural values as they existed in the way of life contemporary workers... Social Democrats did not seek to draw on the existing working class culture ... as a source for the cultural endeavours of the labour movement... (p19). Rather, Lidtke argues, the working class brought their existing culture into socialist festivals and so on. I think there's a slight theoretical problem here of situating 'Social Democratic' and 'worker' culture at arm's length. But, nevertheless, this is quite a striking state of affairs, given that the current Marxist left is saturated with the opposite idea i.e. that you abstract a lowest common denominator of what exists and concentrate this back onto your interaction with 'the class', meaning that your 'practice' thus becomes perceived as a form of oppression.

So far, so good, but in practice these good intentions only created something much more contradictory and diffuse (and I'm reading this from Lidtke's sympathetic account). In his summation of the 'alternative culture' he argues: 'As participants in those secular rituals, members of the party, trade unions, singing societies, and gymnastic clubs, to name only the most obvious, generated togetherness on a massive scale' (p199). Lidtke says further on: 'The genius of this alternative culture lay in its capacity to synthesise the particular interests and needs of proletarians with principles of universal humanitarianism' (p201). To be blunt, this seems like lauding nothingness. It is not the job of Marxists to simply reproduce the proletariat (in whatever oppositional guise) to make some kind of cultural gluepot that can be rode roughshod by future bureaucrats. That 'Marxists' have spent much of the last century on this project of realising the proletariat, and seemingly not to abolish it (i.e the communist project), is a particular ignominy. And synthesising the 'needs of proletarians' with 'humanitarianism' seems like some ghastly prequel of Popular Frontism.

CPGB members need to think very carefully before attempting to trade this political currency of the 'alternative culture'. Yes, it would be good if an approximate culture existed among the contemporary left (fat chance of that) but it can't be merely adopted. This message will be mercilessly hammered home in the next exciting instalment, which will look at Lidtke's examination of the SPD's literary and theatrical culture.

2011-10-13T19:32:00.000Z

"in darker moments, the CPGB leadership has viewed us as an 'anti-party' grouping"

What! That's typical of the CPGB leadership I must say. Anyone who knows anything about the rotten elements will know that I've been core at the party hard for as long as anyone can remember! And this despite of lack of party memory at the time, the morning after, and so on.

Plus!

We change things, we plan things, we gestate. Often only millimetres are involved, but this is nano & so a white line gone wrong is a white line liminally finessed, it sits waiting, abrooding, the lair of the white worm, fit to burst - YAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!

2011-10-11T21:54:00.000Z

What's in it for us? The 'alternative culture' of German social democracy and the forward march of The Rotten Elements (I)

I regard myself basically as neutral and commercial. Take a pair of pliers, you can make it unpleasant for anybody. It's how I was bought up...

From small acorns. Back in December 2008, Ben Lewis of the CPGB interviewed Lars T Lih in the Weekly Worker. Lih made the following statement: 'A classic study of the SPD is The alternative culture by Vernon Lidtke. The book describes how the SPD used everything from an extensive party press to choral singing societies in order to inculcate the proper socialist outlook. In many ways, the Soviet Union is the SPD writ large, and Lidtke’s title could be used for a study of the Soviet era.' I would contend that if you listen to CPGB members at meetings and informal gatherings, that this idea of the 'alternative culture', presented in a largely positive and uncritical form, has become the operative one when CPGB members confront issues of cultural production.

Such judgements have a more explicit political underpinning. The 'alternative culture' is, of course, a product of the centre tendency in the SPD, and thus the centre tendency in the Second International, which is critically lauded (for good reason, in some cases) by Mike Macnair's Revolutionary strategy book. This may (or may not) explain why Lars T Lih's positive assertion has been left unchecked and left to the whiles of mere circulation. Surely, it's worthwhile to dig into the Lidtke work and explore what exactly using this history as a positive model to be emulated might entail?

The CPGB, like the vast majority of the far left, has a history of sharing a basically Stalinist attitude to cultural production. In classical mechanical materialist stylee, artifacts were abused, manipulated to wrench out whatever narrowly political point the organisation felt was pressing down on it at that particular moment. When this came under attack (from groups such as The Rotten Elements), leading CPGB members flipped over into vague metaphysical ponderings on genius, beauty and the like, which left 'safe' artistic 'fellow-travellers' fawned over and the process of art unexplainable. Popular Frontism lives! Don't mention Kant...

I'm glad to say that we weren't without influence in this sphere but onlyreally to the extent of pushing the above attitudes underground (notsurprising, in that we have been told that, in darker moments, the CPGBleadership has viewed us as an 'anti-party' grouping). There is, of course,the Red Mist venture, which does seem to have worked out that the ideologicalram raids of the past are counter-productive (literally, in this case) but hasobviously reached an easy accommodation with the organisation that spawned it(approving mentions in the WW). Rather, it is the duty of thesecomrades to declare out-and-out war on shit ideas (and to listen to'Subhuman' by Throbbing Gristle every day for a year until cured).

The point (I think) behind these meanderings is to suggest that when thisnotion of the 'alternative culture' got dumped, seemingly uncritically, on topof the wreckage of these other 'ideas' and attitudes, it made me nervous. Inthe second exciting instalment, I will be raising up this 'alternativeculture' through Lidtke and exploring its actual meaning. I will also recountto readers an erotic dream I had about Unity Mitford and antique bed linen. Saywhat ye like, John, but it's never dull...

2011-10-10T07:49:00.000Z

No home to go

2011-10-07T20:32:00.002Z

'JC at the end of the day is not a philosopher' or 'tell us something we don't know' or thee Lukács debate unwinds

Poet Duster: Nearly launched my computer out of the window after listening to Conrad's 'remarks' on Lukács at this year's CU. Isn't it about time he went into a rest home (Conrad that is)? For fuck's sake...

James Turley: Which one was that?

PD: I stuck it up on the RE homepage [see 'Spot the difference' below].

JT: You like that quote. You always miss out the next bit: 'But the activity of the party in a revolutionary period means something fundamentally different. If the basic character of the times is revolutionary, an acutely revolutionary situati...on can break out at any moment. The actual time and circumstance are hardly ever exactly determinable. But the tendencies which lead towards it and the principal lines of the correct course of action to be taken when it begins are thereby all the more determinable. The party’s activity is based on this historical understanding. The party must prepare the revolution. In other words, it must on the one hand try to accelerate the maturing of these revolutionary tendencies by its actions (through its influence on the proletariat and other oppressed groups). On the other hand, it must prepare the proletariat for the ideological, tactical, material and organizational tasks that necessarily arise in an acutely revolutionary situation.
'This puts the internal problems of party organization in a new perspective as well. Both the old idea – held by Kautsky among others – that organization was the precondition of revolutionary action, and that of Rosa Luxemburg that it is a product of the revolutionary mass movement, appear one-sided and undialectical. Because it is the party’s function to prepare the revolution, it is – simultaneously and equally – both producer and product, both precondition and result of the revolutionary mass movement. For the party’s conscious activity is based on clear recognition of the objective inevitability of the economic process; it’s strict organizational exclusiveness is in constant fruitful interaction with the instinctive struggles and sufferings of the masses.'

I don't see how you can argue that this does not authorise SWP or otherwise Trot-Blanquist politics.

Okay, Lukács hedges his bets a lot in this whole chapter, so you can call *any* interpretation one-sided if you really want to; but were you to go through the text and attempt to interpret it as an argument for mass organisation starting from the objective fact of the Marxist left's current marginality in society (which seems to me the most generous version possible from a CPGB point of view), you would end up with an endorsement of Kautskyoid politics conducted through a polemic against a fictional interpretation of Kautsky as a 'vulgar Marxist', a fictional interpretation of Lenin's thought on proletarian organisation as rigorously distinct from the Second International centre, a fictional interpretation of the Bolshevik-Menshevik split, and a reference to Lenin's theory of imperialism which at least points in the direction of the Spart/IBT version of the necessity of ideological exclusivity. This does not seem to me to be a useful contribution; on the contrary, it would then be an unsustainable compromise between two incompatible positions on organisation dressed up unconvincingly as a dialectical contradiction.

It IS a useful contribution, however, if you are trying to square voluntarist tics with an at least superficially-orthodox and theoretically defensible version of Marxism. In other words, if you are John Rees.

JC at the end of the day is not a philosopher. He is a politician. If you consider Lukács's Hegelian Marxism useful to theoretical work, then he is defensible on that basis (for the most part, I do not). Directly political interpretations of him end up repeatedly in voluntarism because *that is the fundamental political tendency in his work*, and you cannot magic it away.

PD: I can see it would help your case if I was John Rees… but I’m not. I’ve made it clear that I think his interpretation of Lukács is intellectually false and as a project the Rotten Elements have done our very best to paint his and Lindsey Belgium’s conspirational politics in the most moronic light as possible.

No, James, I don’t read that quote that you have lovingly reproduced for the delectation of their dark desires as authorising ‘Trot-Blanquist’ politics, partly because there is nothing truly objectionable here. Indeed, it only becomes (very) mildly objectionable if you abstract it away from the other material in this chapter, which you, rather lamely, cite as examples of Lukács hedging his bets ‘a lot’. Let’s consider other pearls from this ‘Trot-Blanquist’ masterpiece… (i.e. Lenin: a study in the unity of his thought).

'In no sense is it the party's role to impose any kind of abstract, cleverly devised tactics upon the masses. On the contrary, it must continuously learn from their struggle and their conduct of it. But it must remain active while it learns, preparing the next revolutionary undertaking. It must unite the spontaneous discoveries of the masses... with the totality of revolutionary struggle, and bring them to consciousness.'

'The Bolshevik concept of party organisation involved the selection of a group of single-minded revolutionaries, prepared to make any sacrifice, from the more or less chaotic mass of the class as a whole. But does not the danger exist that these 'professional revolutionaries' will divorce themselves from their actual class environment and, by thus separate themselves, degenerate into a sect? Is this concept of the party not just a practical result of that Blanquism which 'intelligent' Revisionists claim to have discovered even in Marx? ... [Such criticism] misses the core of Lenin's concept of party organisation simply because, as Lenin said, the group of professional revolutionaries does not for one moment have the task of either 'making' the revolution, or - by their own independent, bold actions - of sweeping the inactive masses along to confront them with a revolutionary fait accompli.'

In other words, this material is not incidental to the overall idea of working out the dialectic between party and class, and in reaching some kind of balance sheet of this work it is absolutely pointless for you and me to trade this or that quote abstracted from the totalising theme (admittedly I have done this myself to fire a bolt up people's arse). In my reading, Lukács is presenting party and class as a dynamic and inter-relating movement, which is actually a direct threat to the ‘Trot’ configuration of this relationship, which generally relies on mechanical and static inter-relationships (alongside a patronising and disfiguring narrative about ‘ordinary people’, which would make it impossible for the party to learn anything from the broader class). There is nothing here whatsoever that logically *has* to lead to ‘voluntarism’; I have already suggested the historical circumstances that led to Lukács being adopted by such types but that is hardly his fault or that of his original theory.

The trouble with being blind to this totalising thrust is that it then pushes you into a position where I don’t think you can perceive the real ‘error’ and ‘closure’ in this text, which is not the supposed ‘Trot-Blanquist’ quagmire of horror that you paint but inherent in its interpretation of Lenin at that particular historical juncture. Lenin bears the stamp of bureaucratisation in the sense that Lukács is rather sketchy and light (and thus abstract) on the concrete mediations that can blur the relationship between party and class (i.e. in your language, pushing it more into the realms of a decentred, rather than simply ‘expressive’ totality), a practice that he had already warned against in HCC. In other words, there seems to be an easy assumption of the unity of party and class, which, of course was an extremely sensitive subject in the Soviet Union (and hence the Comintern), where this relationship had been practically smashed (for a number of reasons) by 1924. This is what pushes the Lenin work (or at least its political 'unconscious'), despite its value, into the realms of ‘ideology’. So Lukács partly wishes away the difference; but assuredly not because he is intent on some vast Trotskyite conspiracy against the class as a whole.

2011-10-05T19:11:00.012Z

prematurely closed totalities #3
trailer 4
Dead & Alive!
(click 4 full length)
starring Captain James Turkey as
The Assimilator

2011-10-05T12:12:00.006Z

Today is the hundredth anniversary of Flann O’Brien’s (Brian O’Nolan’s) birth.

Here's one at-swim contribution to the celebration from the Third Policeman of the CPGB Mickey Macnair, written in June this year in Automatic Writing ostensibly agout Adorno, but we all knew who he meant really:

My grandmother was lucky not to be run down when, in her 90s, she set out to cycle to town, forgetting that traffic speeds and density on the road passing her house had changed since the 1930s;

2011-10-05T11:23:00.001Z

SPOT THE DIFFERENCE

'The problem I find with them, Lukács, Benjamin blah, blah, blah... is that I'm somewhat mystified why Marxists are using the exact [Hegelian] terminology and that level of obscurity. To me what these guys are doing is returning to left-Hegelianism and junking 50 years of Marx's Marxism. I read Lukács and I find the odd passage that is brilliant but the rest of it I find, not useless, but very dodgy. I read it as 'we've just had a revolution, we're in a minority, let's justify a minoritarian revolution on the basis we're the enlightened few'.
Jack Conrad, August 2011

'The old formulation of the question about "making" the revolution is based on an inflexible, undialectical division between the historical necessity and the activity of the relevant party. On this level, where "making" the revolution means conjuring it up out of nothing, it must be totally rejected' ( Lenin: a study on the unity of his thought, 1970, p32).

Georg Lukács, 1924

2011-10-05T02:21:00.018Z

4 AFAJISMS
re:
prematurely closed totalities #2

In my view
i am untroubled.

I don't see why
this is not assimilated.

It is quite legitimate to judge
philosophical positions.

Philosophy is what
marxist philosophy is for.*

* 1st draft
Brr gap
In my vted
philosophiciew
i am untrto juoumphy
is wIt is philo u ite bled
philoso legitimate dgeI don'hy
this it see ws not assimilaal positions
hat
marxist sophy is for

2011-10-04T20:09:00.000Z

COME ON EILEEN (BUKKAKE REPRISE)

James Turley of thee CPGB and Scared-of-Throbbing-Gristle-Red-Mist debates Thee Poet Duster on thee subject ov Lukács and Hegelian Marxism.

James Turley: Interesting. There are a few problems: firstly, you argue that it is unfair of Mike to assimilate Lukács to the left/mass-strikist tradition on the basis of HCC, since he was in transition away from that trend to 'official' cominternism. Fair enough; but one of the clearest self-criticisms he makes in that preface is precisely the idea that the dialectic consists in the perspective of totality, which IIRC he argues deprioritises the economic base. So it is precisely the Hegelianism par excellence of these works which even for Lukács is a holdover from his leftist phase.

This is not to say that he then ditches Hegel, but that the particular conceptualisation of Hegelianism in HCC is 'messianic-sectarian' *because* of the very things that make it an enduring classic. And so the vast bulk of reclamations of Lukács are either from a straight left/council-communist outlook (eg Debord) or are in some other way dedicated to the mass-strike/spontex perspective (viz the SWP's Blanquist reformism). In my view, that little sentence on totality is the best thing in HCC, as well as the conceptualisation of the concrete, but I don't think it works the way he does, so I am untroubled by theoretical leftism. Hopefully.

Secondly, Mike argues for the mass-political perspective common to the various trends of the Second International centre, including Bolshevism. Lukács, Korsch etc offer a philosophical pseudo-critique of this trend (it is mechanistic, hates the dialectic and so on). This critique is simply wrong-headed, and cannot survive confrontation with the historical record (see Lih). It was not Lenin's supposed conversion to Hegelian Marxism in 1915 which gave us 1917, but the *political* perspectives of Bolshevism dating back to its birth; so, it turns out, the 'mechanistic materialism' of MEC had no significant deleterous political effects at all.

Speaking for myself, this is not surprising at all. Korsch is wrong. Philosophy is the class struggle in theory; it *does not have* internal standards of verification bar the various ideological systems of a priori guarantees. It is quite legitimate to judge philosophical positions based on their political effects. Surely that is what Marxist philosophy is *for*, and if the followers of a particular text end up driven into the same errors over and over again (HCC a fabulous example), then some kind of political-philosophical critique is surely necessary...

No, Karl Korsch is not assimilated to the CPGB tradition; being that he's a key figure of the 20s Hegelian left who proceeded in relatively short order to straight-ahead left-communism, I don't see why this is problematic. He pretty much proves our point. We don't have 'bogeymen'.

Thee Poet Duster: I don’t think that Lukács was in any kind of transition to official ‘Cominternism’, given his well-recorded displeasure at the operations of Zinoviev and his toadies, and his debunking of Bukharin’s Historical materialism textbook in 1925 (which I actually read when I was an undergraduate for the sole reason that it annoyed co-members of Workers Power, and which I can personally vouch for as the third-worst book ever). Georg was an outré figure for much of his career. I do, however, think he was in movement from the ultra-left toward his own standpoint (I am not setting myself up as a defender of his various stances in any kind of totalising manner, which would be impossible because I don’t support Stalin, socialism in one country, popular frontism and so on and so forth). But I don’t think Mike’s attempt to lump Lukács in with ‘mass strike’ politics works at all because he doesn’t actually clearly define what period of ‘early’ Georg he is referring to, and makes a static critique where Lukács becomes a convenient foil on which to hang garbage. His analysis is not concrete enough.

I’ve also got big problems with this ‘reclamation’ argument. People ‘claim’ all sorts of theories to justify their actions (Stalin claimed he was a Marxist; and many people falsely claim the name of the dark lord Satan to justify animal cruelty and so on). That’s not a reason to ‘dump’ books or thinkers. Otherwise we just end up in the ridiculous position of Ticktin that just because Stalin said saxophones were ‘bourgeois’, this means we can’t have Marxist aesthetics. I don’t think that it is ‘natural’ for HCC, for example, to lead to economism, left-communism and so on (it hasn’t done so with me, I always read it as an exotic brand of ‘Leninism’ and used totality as against economism i.e. mastery of all spheres of capitalist society), in that this has happened because of a particular set of historical circumstances (i.e. HCC, Korsch etc were branded as philosophical outcasts by the bureaucracy and – hey presto – they get picked up by other less interesting heretics as a philosophical convenience).

In terms of the 1967 preface to HCC, this is, by turns, insightful at one moment and shit the next. In terms of the concept of totality, Lukács argues that he still regards it (in 1967, flower power) as ‘one of the great achievements’ of HCC to have ‘reinstated’ it (i.e. despite the fact that he’s not a left-communist anymore). But when he complains that the manner in which he then presented it was guilty of ‘overriding the priority of economics’ he slips into banality. I am not belittling the importance of the economic structures to societies, but the so-called priority can’t be established a priori without a concrete exploration of historical circumstances. This alienated language leads back into the interminable base/superstructure debates which make me yawn even typing the words.

As for the Second International ‘centre’, I haven’t read the works of this trend so I don’t feel able to give a measured judgement. It may well be that Lukács went OTT in attacking this trend. It could be that he was spot on. I don’t know as I’d have to read the originals. I don’t see 1917 as the earth-shattering moment that most of the revolutionary left does in this country and I don’t idealise the leaders of that revolution. The point being that using 1917 to me as a positive approval of, say, Lenin’s MEC or other ‘centre’ works doesn’t exactly fill my tired old heart with joy.

Finally, I have real problems with the fact that individuals such as Korsch would not be ‘assimilated’ (yuck!) into CPGB thought. There’s much more to him than ‘left-communism’; he raised an interesting philosophical critique that trod on the toes of the ‘Comintern’ bureaucracy and that, even if you disagreed with every word, can still be engaged with and learnt from. Also, more broadly, Korsch argued against ‘Bauernnapoleon’ Stalin and argued in the mid-1920s that the Comintern had become a tool of the Russian state. Surely these latter points are worth ‘assimilating’ if they haven’t been so already.

2011-10-04T19:39:00.007Z

prematurely closed totalities #1

Paper quote
“Interestingly enough however, a few weeks later I heard a woman living on the Sighhill estate in Glasgow making precisely the same point that the council giving new fridges to asylum-seekers had spurred residents to anger. What was being created was a ‘fridge gap’.”

[4 2 voices]

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2011-10-01T05:24:00.003Z

2011-09-27T19:55:00.002Z

V. Final thoughts to begin new thoughts on Mike Macnair and thee CPGB flight away from Lukács

As I tread softly in another direction the thin monotone of devotion heightens my reactions to the vistas around me. In the gloaming during the holiday-season the curve of the bay is strung with coloured lights.

I must confess that I seldom risk breaking this spell by actually asking permission, for speech dilutes vision; and I offer apologies to the incumbents of many churches for this discourtesy. The herd instinct seems to delight the sun-bathers ... a noble, aquiline feature nobody can deny...

2011-09-23T13:13:00.000Z

IV. Cosmic tomes for mental therapy. Further notes from Thee Poet Duster on the CPGB flight away from Lukács

In his Revolutionary Strategy book (2008), Mike Macnair specifically groups together the tactic of the mass strike and 'Hegelian Marxism' (p44), while later, 'Lukács and others' are grouped as 'the far left' (p65). As Macnair makes clear, the strategy of 'proletarian revolution' through a series of apocalyptic mass strikes is a strategy that has always patently failed to solve issues of authority and mass decision-making, and has become the modus operandi for tiny sects hoping to come to power on the backs of a somnambulant majority. But that is less important here than an elemental issue of logic. Why is this grouped together under the aegis of 'Hegelian Marxism'?

Let me put this in a more elementary fashion. Macnair believes in, as far as I can gather, the opposition between 'concrete mediations' and 'totality'. As I have argued before, such theories are clearly opportunist in present circumstances. But it would be patently in error for me to 'read off' from this false philosophical premise that Macnair must somehow be in error over, for example, his conclusions as to the false strategy of mass strikes, the party regime, the errors of the Comintern and so on and so forth. This would be a 'prematurely closed totality'. Macnair does exactly this from the opposite angle, reading off dubious philosophical theories from a set of political judgements. One does rather suspect that Macnair has repeated the philosophical errors of Lenin that were criticised long ago by Karl Korsch (presumably recently added to the CPGB's list of bogey-men), namely: 'Lenin decides philosophical questions only on the basis of non-philosophical considerations and results' ('The problem of "Marxism and philosophy"' in Marxism and philosophy, 1970, p113).

But what of these 'mass strikist, far left, Hegelian Marxists' such as Lukács? Does he fit the mold laid out by Macnair? Of course not, given that he was in movement in the 1920 away from the ultra-left. As an aside, the various health warnings of 'messianic sectarianism' that Lukács later gave to his works of the early 1920s ring somewhat hollow in this age, when there is simply no such thing as a Marxist movement, only a somewhat disorientated shadow. In fact, some of the material produced by Lukács in this period acts as a standing rebuke to the sectarian 'mass strike'/transitional demand grouplets that exist today.

'The old formulation of the question about "making" the revolution is based on an inflexible, undialectical division between the historical necessity and the activity of the relevant party. On this level, where "making" the revolution means conjuring it up out of nothing, it must be totally rejected' ( Lenin: a study on the unity of his thought, 1970, p32).

'In no sense is it the party's role to impose any kind of abstract, cleverly devised tactics upon the masses. On the contrary, it must continuously learn from their struggle and their conduct of it. But it must remain active while it learns, preparing the next revolutionary undertaking. It must unite the spontaneous discoveries of the masses... with the totality of revolutionary struggle, and bring them to consciousness' (Ibid, p36).

Note that 'totality', in this instance, does not automatically lead to the politics of the 'mass strike' conspiracy. There is simply no need for this extreme philosophical position (and the subsequent ignorant abuse of Lukács by CPGB writers). We don't need 'philosopher kings' and Lukács was in error over lots of issues throughout his career. But it's also ridiculous to begin to relegate certain theoreticians on the basis of spurious shorthands and affinities ('prematurely closed totalities'). This just reintroduces all of the theoretical problems of adopting philosopher kings through the back door. Some philosophers are clearly more equal than others.

2011-09-22T19:51:00.002Z

chair

2011-09-18T05:16:00.001Z

2011-09-16T19:54:00.002Z

2011-09-14T20:27:00.002Z

III. The Poet Duster presents his ‘n’ her notes on Mike Macnair and thee CPGB flight from Lukács (nightflight to Venus)

"The dialectical trap here is in the last analysis the same as that which the Hegelian Marxist lefts fell into. If we treat Hegel’s Logic as a guide to the Marxist dialectic and argue, as Lenin did, that “It is impossible completely to understand Marx’s Capital, and especially its first chapter, without having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel’s Logic” (CW Vol 38, p180; cited by Rees, pp13, 185), we will imagine that the Marxist dialectic is, like the Hegelian, a theory of knowledge. We will then believe that the world can only be known by grasping the totality. The result is that we will grasp at prematurely closed totalities, and neglect concrete mediations - which can only be known from empirical evidence. In the Hegelian Marxist left this premature closure is on the inner dialectical movement of capital. In Lenin in 1918-1920 it is on the will and on the party as a totality, with the result that the concrete mediations in the construction of the party and the relation of party and class - especially factional struggles, but also the decision-making capacity of local organisations and trade union fractions and the resulting feedback to the centre - are sacrificed in a false abstract unity." (Mike Macnair ‘”Classical Marxism” and the grasping the dialectic’ Weekly Worker, 11 September 2003).

We are of course supremely interested in the notion of 'prematurely closed totalities' and 'false abstract unity' given that the whole idea behind the Rotten Elements was to interrogate and attack a leftist 'theory' of art that was premised on a narrow (and thus aborted) 'politics'. As I have argued before, the attack on notions of 'totality' is itself a product of the defeat of the workers' movement but one has to make some supplementary observations. Lukács himself specifically inveighed against the type of abstract closure argued against above. He said: "Only in this context which sees the isolated facts of social life as aspects of the historical process and integrates them in a totality, can knowledge of the facts hope to become knowledge of reality. This knowledge starts from the simple (and to the capitalist world), pure, immediate, natural determinants described above. It progresses from them to the knowledge of the concrete totality, i.e. to the conceptual reproduction of reality. This concrete totality is by no means an unmediated datum for thought. 'The concrete is concrete,' Marx says, 'because it is a synthesis of many particular determinants, i.e. a unity of the diverse elements'" ('What is orthodox Marxism' in History and class consciousness: studies in Marxist dialectics Cambridge Mass., 1975, pp8-9).

He also said: 'We repeat: the category of totality does not reduce its various elements to an undifferentiated totality, to identity' (ibid, p12). So presumably, when Macnair talks of this 'Hegelian Marxist left', I am quite entitled to accuse him of a foolish grasp for a prematurely closed totality, given that one of the key determinants of this scene (i.e. Lukács himself), doesn't fit into what is, apparently, its definitive error. It also strikes me that Macnair relies on a seeming counterposition of totality/concrete mediation, whereas Lukács himself is interested in the relationship and dynamic of the two.

Mind you, this could be the beginning of a new, stunning, beautiful, politically illiterate concept. 'The Hegelian Marxist left minus Georg Lukács.' Yew never know, Mike, it could, like, catch on with the kids.

I'd like to wish all my readers a very good evening.

2011-09-14T07:26:00.002Z

4 years after Capital was published Charles Dodgson wrote:

Alice rubbed her eyes, and looked again. She couldn't make out what had happened at all. Was she in a shop? And was that really — was it really a sheep that was sitting on the other side of the counter? Rub as she would, she could make nothing more of it: she was in a little dark shop, leaning with her elbows on the counter, and opposite to her was an old Sheep, sitting in an arm-chair, knitting, and every now and then leaving off to look at her through a great pair of spectacles.

'What is it you want to buy?' the Sheep said at last, looking up for a moment from her knitting.

'I don't quite know yet,' Alice said very gently. 'I should like to look all round me first, if I might.'

'You may look in front of you, and on both sides, if you like,' said the Sheep; 'but you can't look all round you — unless you've got eyes at the back of your head.'

But these, as it happened, Alice had not got: so she contented herself with turning round, looking at the shelves as she came to them.

The shop seemed to be full of all manner of curious things — but the oddest part of it all was that, whenever she looked hard at any shelf, to make out exactly what it had on it, that particular shelf was always quite, empty, though the others round it were crowded as full as they could hold.

'Things flow about so here!' she said at last in a plaintive tone, after she had spent a minute or so in vainly pursuing a large bright thing that looked sometimes like a doll and sometimes like a work-box, and was always in the shelf next above the one she was looking at. 'And this one is the most provoking of all — but I'll tell you what —' she added, as a sudden thought struck her. 'I'll follow it up to the very top shelf of all. It'll puzzle it to go through the ceiling, I expect!'

But even this plan failed: the 'thing' went through the ceiling as quietly as possible, as if it were quite used to it.

2011-09-13T12:19:00.001Z

II. The Poet Duster presents his ‘n’ her notes on Mike Macnair and thee CPGB flight from Lukács (nightflight to Venus)

Having previously dissected the 'Macnair war on Georg by proxy', we can now consider his critique of the concept of totality. The Poet Duster will be commenting on this critique in detail but it is worthwhile considering that this attack is not neutral, in that it arrives after a particular historical juncture: the defeat of 'working class' politics at the end of the twentieth century. A previous attack on the concept of totality was delivered back in 2007 by Hillel Ticktock, which was debunked in an old Rotten Elements' article in some detail. Clearly, Macnair's own assault is a product of the same historical juncture and many of the conclusions in the extracts below are relevant to the present debate.

THE WEEKLY WORKER DEBATE ON ART (EXTRACTS)
Hillel Ticktin’s article ‘For realism, for humanity’ (Weekly Worker, 8 November 2007) was interesting in that it is reasonably rare to find a Trotskyist writer discussing art who seems to have read Leon Trotsky on the subject. The Rotten Elements have frequently commented that the operative ideology lurking behind Trotskyist criticism is that of ‘socialist realism’ or Stalinism. So we must give a (restrained) hurrah for statements such as: “Art is art, following its own rules and its own forms, but they evolve within a particular socio-economic formation, with all its profound and complex consequences.”

Having said this there are immense problems with some of Ticktin’s formulations... I would... begin by looking at the political context of some of Ticktin’s arguments.

Ticktin says: “In discussing the Marxist method one has to begin by saying that it applies only to political economy, its history and its philosophy - it would be absurd to argue that there is a Marxist physics, music, art or literature.” What does such a statement reveal? In our current political period, the ‘revolutionary left’ thought it could sidestep the reactionary tidal wave of post-Soviet history by thinking small (community work, trade unionism or even mindless ‘activism’ in general), even when engaged in relatively large-scale enterprises such as the defunct Socialist Alliance. And a smallness of vision leads to a smallness of ambition. When issues emerge that cannot be boiled down to the leftist routine (environment, nationalism), it adapts itself to non-Marxist, bourgeois ideas (green politics, Scottish nationalism). ‘Marxism’ itself has thus become a shrunken body of ideas, used by the ‘revolutionary left’ (in some cases) to sustain a sectarian divorce from the world, or (in most cases) for Sunday speechifying or in educational meetings of no practical significance.

Ticktin’s ludicrous claim that there is no Marxist method in music, art or literature is merely part of a generalised reformist drift of the left. If Marxism is not about the mastery of the whole of the society by what is currently constituted as the working class then it is nothing at all. Of course, Ticktin has a far broader vision than most of his left-wing contemporaries but his method of lopping off this or that part of the Marxist critique is the same product of an intellectual retreat that he has been unable to understand or theorise.

Staring defeat in the face?
In a 1998 article Ticktin reasoned that, “whereas the end of Stalinism has meant that some sections of the working class and peasantry, particularly in the third world, regard the end of Stalinism as the defeat of socialism, the removal of the controls associated with it has made and will make an enormous difference to consciousness” (H Ticktin, ‘Where are we going today? The nature of contemporary crisis’ Critique 30-31, p45). Writing as someone active in politics in 1998, I did not recognise Ticktin’s description then and I do not recognise it today. Ticktin has continually underestimated what still is a period of reaction for working class politics. Hence, his gross over-estimation of the prospects of what was to become the Campaign for a Marxist Party in 2006. This manifests itself in his relative truncation of Marxism and its applicability to artistic practice. Anybody with some kind of understanding of our reactionary period would be able to understand the politics behind such a demand: the surface politics of reformism.

Ticktin says: “We have to re-establish respect for Marxism, given how Stalinism made it an intellectual laughing stock by using it in a caricature form. Stalin’s declaration that the saxophone was a bourgeois instrument is obvious nonsense, but more sophisticated Stalinists were making parallel statements in fields where the nonsense was often accepted, because so few Marxists were able to refute such absurdities.” This brings us to the second main reason for Ticktin’s truncation of Marxism in the domain of art: a complete phobia towards the products of ‘official’ communism (increasingly bizarre in the light of his friendly relationship with the CPGB/Weekly Worker group - an organic product of what could crudely be labelled ‘left Stalinism’).

'Totalising world view'
Lukács (presumably damned to hellfire by Ticktin because of association with ‘official’ communism) recalls how Stalin launched an attack on Plekhanov in 1930: “If you only consider Stalin’s chief purpose in this argument [bureaucratic control], then obviously you have a Stalinist way of thinking, but for me it still had one extremely important consequence: Stalin’s criticism of Plekhanov gave me the idea of making a similar critique of Mehring ... [who] introduced Kantian aesthetics into Marx ... Plekhanov introduced what was essentially a positivistic aesthetics. The way I interpreted Stalin’s critique of the Plekhanov orthodoxy was to see it as a view which rejected the idea that Marxism was just one socio-economic theory among others. Instead Stalin saw it as a totalising world view. This implied that it must also contain a Marxist aesthetics which did not have to be borrowed from Kant or anyone else” (I Eörsi [ed] Georg Lukács: record of a life p86). I am actually pretty dubious as to whether Stalin was actually the inspiration for Lukács in this arena, given that Lukács had already addressed the issue of totality (albeit in idealist terms) in History and class consciousness. However, the basic thrust of the argument is sound: don’t throw out the Marxist baby with the Stalinist bathwater. But for Ticktin, Stalin despoiled the practice of a totalised world-view so we must junk it. One might as well say that because Stalinism despoiled Marx we should forget Marx.

Taking steps towards equipping our class for the concrete mastery of the arts does not mean working towards a series of productions that have the narrow premise of securing the control of a bureaucratic caste, thus negating their own existence as art objects. Rather, the Marxist method seeks to unfetter art products from the bewitchment of the commodity and the instrumentalism of a narrow political control that suffocates form under the guise of ‘content’.

There is then a Marxist method that applies to art, music and literature. This method will never be ‘finished’ or complete, even under communistic society. But it will presumably be one that has broad and shifting boundaries, and that is itself a site of contention and struggle. Such a method draws on all the best existing products of Marxist and bourgeois artists (even fascist artists, if they have made genuine technical strides); it does not therefore limit itself to one artistic style or philosophy, indeed it simply cannot allow itself to draw on existing modes on expression (thus it cannot be ‘working class’ or ‘proletarian’ culture, expressions of reactionary sentimentalism). The Marxist method in art thus moves from the past, through the present and into the future. It also incorporates into itself all Marxist criticism, which come to form a distinct part of the artwork. This means also that, and here I agree with Gordon Downie (Letters, 9 January), “the mystical or quasi-religious function of art is eradicated in favour of a materialist and concrete aesthetic that is open and transparent”.

Of course, critics such as Downie and Turley have recognised the idealist bent of some of Ticktin’s formulations: “However, we should note that, although Balzac wanted to go back to before the French Revolution, his work is profoundly humanist and is a genuine reflection of the emotional and generally human problems faced by humankind.” There is no escaping that such metaphysical statements are practically useless in constructing a Marxist critique; indeed, they directly preclude it.

2011-09-12T21:16:00.002Z

The Poet Dusterpresents his ‘n’ her notes on Mike Macnair and thee CPGB flight from Lukács (nightflight to Venus)

In his RevolutionaryStrategy book, Mike Macnair of the CPGB presented what I take to be a conclusion on Lukács: “It is a commonplace of thefar left, following hints from Lenin elaborated by Lukács and others, to accuse Kautsky inparticular and the [Second International] centre in general of an insufficientgrasp of dialectic. I have argued against this approach before (p65).” Aproblem here. Macnair argued this “before” in a polemical review of books byJohn Rees and David Renton (‘”Classical Marxism” and the grasping the dialectic’Weekly Worker, 11 September 2003).

In this review, Macnair took Rees at face value as being a thoroughlylegitimate interpreter of Lukács(of course, ‘which’ Lukács issomething of a thorny issue, given that Lukács himself was in rapid dialectical movement through the 1920s, butusually people tend to mean the Lukácsof History and class consciousness).So we have statements such as: “In this closed dialectical system capitalismproduces commodity fetishism - things at the immediate level have values, whenat a deeper level these values express social relations between people. Reesgives a good explanation, discussing Lukács’s sophisticated version... .”

Infact, in one of my previous incarnations (they dragged my body away and burntits hulking mass next to the cemetery wall, oh brother), I demonstrated thatRees has a consistently idealist interpretation of Lukács, to the extent to which he had todistort works (such as Tailism and thedialectic, produced in the mid-1920s) as being continuations of theidealist imbalances of History and classconsciousness (Phil Watson ‘Significant engagement’ Weekly Worker 18 January 2001).

In his introduction to Tailism and the dialectic (London,2000), Rees argued: “Subjective and objective constantly trade places. Ourwrong subjective decision today will reappear as an objective determinant ofour action tomorrow. The objective process and such moments of decision arelike a knotted rope; each knot of decision forms part of the objectivestructure of events stretching out behind us, determining what and how we candecide today (p30).” This, as I argued 10 years ago, was the philosophicalmeandering behind a crass motivational tool to convince SWP members that thesimple insertion of their ramshackle and reactionary organisation into acomplex and variegated social world would somehow ‘make a difference’.

Other CPGB members, such as Ben Lewis, offer a cruder takeon Macnair’s approach to Lukács,albeit with the implication that it is quite correct to treat John Rees as the major interpreter of Lukács (‘Illusion of being a master ofstrategy’ Weekly Worker 2 December2010). Problem is that using John Rees as a tool to attack Lukács is a bit like using tinned rice puddingas a means to attack fresh clotted cream (from a farmhouse, as I remember).

2011-09-11T22:18:00.007Z

A late Adorno birthday present has just arrived in the nick of time! It's a 108 character word liberated negatively from the back of a Wetherspoons food menu. And it goes like this:

handbatteredroastcollectfromthecondimentsorpleaseasktheresttosorttraditionaladdabananaashotofdatesslices&trim

n.b Actually if you check I'll think you'll find it's 109 characters but Adorno would have appreciated the lack of identity thinking going on covertly behind the tall laminated menu cover.

2011-09-11T17:41:00.003Z

Happy Birthday Theodor Adorno! 108 today!

"I was playing the piano on the table top, just as I used to when I was a child. But there was music. I can clearly remember very powerful, vivid chords in E flat major of the kind I would like to produce. I said to G, 'You see if you are in good form artistically like me, it makes no difference whether you are playing a piano or an old table top.'"
Adorno dream 20th March 1955

108 E flat majors for Teddy

2011-09-10T05:26:00.004Z

Rate of profit
Marx never examined the problem of surplus capital

2011-09-09T17:08:00.026Z

"Bristol City had played Notts County and won. Right from the kick-off Lennox had somehow known that Notts was going to lose, not through any prophetic knowledge of each home-player's performance, but because he himself, a spectator, hadn't been feeling in top form. One-track pessimism had made him godly enough to inform his mechanic friend Fred Iremonger who stood by his side: "I knew they'd bleddy-well lose, all the time."

Towards the end of the match, when Bristol scored their winning goal, the players could only just be seen, and the ball was a roll of mist being kicked about the field. Advertising boards above the stands, telling of pork-pies, ales, whisky, cigarettes and other delights of Saturday night, faded with the afternoon visibility."

ALAN SILLITOE The Match

Fridays with 9's in have traditionally been coincidence dream days at the rotten elements

Bristol City were drawing nil-nil with Notts County away from home. I was in the crowd with my chums Jack Spicer, Donal Lunny and Jonny Dankworth, when L approached insouciantly selling hot dogs. To be fair to them they were extra large & part & parcel of a new range of farmers market organic priced at £9.99, which beaten we all agreed was really too much. And so in a gesture of impotent defiance I suggested we eat my jelly baby's instead. Everyone laughed so much, but not blokes, garrotting them we missed what happened.
L was on the pitch sucking away at a City defensive wall of thick red whorled rods of chorizo sausage-cock. Jutting out like a row of Sieg heils (I never averted raptly noticing her nose, all of Chekhov, slowly & suddenly concave to convex &) that had been formed to avert in advance a County free kick that never materialised. Thus allowing the oldest club in the league to bang in the winner with the last kick of the game! Through the home crowds cheers & tannoy I reared up from masticating confectionery & bellowed:
- Leave the fancy Fred & Rose stuff back on the training ground you wanker!
Woke up crying.

And here is one of Theodor Adorno's

"I had an indescribably beautiful and elegant mistress: she reminded me of A, but had something of the grande dame about her. I was extremely proud of her. She told me that I absolutely had to acquire a prick-washing machine. I pointed out that I took a bath every day and that I kept myself scrupulously clean. She replied that only such a machine would guarantee that one would be free of every objectionable odour in the relevant place. Only if I were to buy one would she make love to me with her mouth. I was uncertain whether she might not be a saleswoman for the firm that manufactured the machine.
Woke up laughing."

2011-09-08T18:13:00.001Z

The Camra Eye at Communist University 2011 (Coda or you couldn't bloody make it up)

high-quality food at a very reasonable price
it is fun, it involves a lot of play and experimentation
a lot of left schools often lack real fun
the presence of children gives more of the feel of a genuinely fun communist household
While still on the subject of fun, there was an evening musical performance from comrade Steve Cooke on his amazing Roland Keytar - whose music blends sharp-witted lyrics with fun and acid jazz grooves, electronica and new wave rock
recitals of original poetry and fun, perhaps next year
sadly, comrade Strafford could not stay for the whole session, as he had fun to catch
this was one of the fun hits of the week
Not for the first time, there were dissatisfied mutterings from a handful of CPGB comrades about the supposedly excessive attention paid to the RAG dolls' lack of fun
a noticeable number of our own supporters and members were absent
there appeared to be an unusually high preponderance of weddings, births, illnesses and so on
No fun

2011-09-07T20:45:00.026Z

Principia Dialectica: "Goodbye, Rotten Elements. The world is entering a period of convulsive love. You are picking fluff out of your belly buttons. But no doubt that has some meaning that can be dialectically reconciled in your pathetic universe.
In the immortal words of John Bon Jovi — they give love — a bad name."

Karl Kraus would have quickly picked up that the word used isn't they , the song is called - You give love a bad name, and asked, why the elementary mistake?

Shot through the heart and you're to blame
Darlin' you give love a bad name

It seems to be about a bloke who's been jilted. So there's something 'deeper' going on here with this Principia operation. Some covert, unconscious, odd motivation that needs a Private Dick like Adorno to do a Blow Up on it and delve in there. Of course it will mean Bolus back in the saddle...But for now quotidian, one step at a time. We are still here, etc. And

unlike others, we don't doubt we doubt. So we've been thinking about this galumphing prophesy of the world entering a period of convulsive love. To begin with, as it were to confound their it thought that 'we' are 'worse' than 'them', so 'they' can kill 'us' off; we go on dialectical quantum tandems to the end of omphalos. Convulsive love...

Prologue

Convulsive love #1

Convulsive Love #2

Convulsive Love #3

Convulsive Love #4

2011-09-05T13:16:00.002Z

The Camra Eye visits Communist University 2011 (part III)

Noticeboard: Bruce Banner's fetish club

Bruce will be visiting ye inhabitants of CU 2011 to provide inspiration and advice for young lovers a-seeking a rare thrill by being wrapped up in left-wing banners new and old. Bruce will be recounting some of his thrilling exploits, including the time he was embroiled so deep in a Durham miners banner, his cock was a-poking and a-peeking through Keir Hardie's mouth! Bruce has given the organisers of CU some of his personal feedback from delighted users of his unique service.

'I was taken to admire a lovely Alliance for Workers' Liberty banner in a disused car lot in Peckham. Within 20 minutes I was having unprotected anal sex with Sean Mat-gamma-ray. Thanks for making my dreams cum true, Bruce.'
Pam, Kettering
'The service is incredible (Hulk). I'm de monster, coming in closer, I'll roast ye!'
Brian, Hull

Investigator's notes I

Check it out. I rolled up to a house ensnared in brick on the outskirts of Dagenham. As I waited at the pavement, the curtains were twitched. I could smell the intrigue. I was ushered into a back room to drink the coldest lemonade while the interviewee's kids clambered around the room: up, down, around and around. The joint was rocking. Mr Dawson was then talking in a sombre lemon-inflected voice that spoke of ageless anxiety in the outer nebula. 'My crime was to start to question the involvement of Knight and the rest of the RAG dolls. This is chocolate-teapot Marxism. The worst form of consolation. Read Adorno's Origins of art excursus. I stood up and shouted: No we're not going to do bleedin' Stonehenge! Incomprehension all around. Pop culture was never a strong point. Later I was visited by Knight (in armour) who told me mercurially that there were "older gods". Life quickly became a dour struggle to save myself and these young uns from thee abyss. As Lovecraft conceived the deities or forces of his mythos, there were, initially, the Elder Gods... [T]hese Elder Gods were benign deities, representing the forces of good, and existed peacefully... very rarely stirring forth to intervene in the unceasing struggle between the powers of evil and the races of Earth. These powers of evil were variously known as the Great Old Ones or the Ancient Ones. Conrad is actually Yegg-Ha, a huge faceless humanoid with tiny wings, while Knight is only a pale copy of the God of the Red Flux. Did you really think they blocked up the ladies' because of that fetish-wear incident of the banner? Ha! Those toilets lead to unmentionable crypts and caverns that would drive you mad with despair. Could you hang on a minute? I've got some oven chips on the go, comrade...'

communist university points a way out of this dog mess
sold bugger-all copies
over eight days of intense and open barking
occasionally licking their own genitals
the aim is clarity and bite to show the relevance
perhaps Lisa will do a session
perhaps Lisa will do a session
perhaps Lisa will do a session
save us

2011-09-03T19:44:00.074Z

Where is the luvver and where do we catch him?

Remember the 21st of June? We don't, but Prissypal Diarrheacal, a mago that issued twice-o via trees in 2006, and which is now a collocation of cascading style sheets to the wind and a toughy to in late-lefty drinky-poo charades have written about us here.
Entitled:
A message for the so-called ‘Rotten Elements’: You are a disgrace

Right so. Just to flesh this foolishness out a little bit more, imagine the spectre of Eddie Stobart in Housmans pimping Moshie Postone out for a pasty, a Brazilian strip & shaving Nina Power promising Issue 3 soon. Sans narrative; Ian Heaps caught Jules Verne at skool via worms. Hopeless words cum loa as a man used up: cock cork porn.
And it ends:
'Goodbye Rotten Elements!''
Alright if you want, goodbye!...but we don't remember saying hello...apart from hello in the general sense of hello, like hello to life & love etc, which we extend to all in the 1st instance. But we don't blush red or greet just because someone we don't know decides he knew us once and now we're finished, that would make us snivelling lickspittles. We avoid bullies and dunderheads. But there's enough cruel shit thrown at us as it is everyday from all directions. Fine, let's polemic away and let's argue blah, fantastic, groovy, but telling us it's 'good-bye'? You are ejecting us, throwing us out of somewhere, from where? To where exactly?
Maybe it's coded, so coded even the author doesn't really know what they're saying...Are you in love with one of us? Have we jilted you? Have we cuckolded you ? Oh no...This is getting like Old Boy...Ok...Shit...let's think about this...And let's not do anything rash that you might regret...
*This blog will now be continued by Vivian Bolus. PH had to leave suddenly saying he was going to corner this rogue male for himself, that he may be some time and to just wait awhile before the rest of us take a turn)

...No. There's no good-bye. We don't do going away just because you said so. Rather, because you say goodby,e we say we're going to fuck you up. And you'll wish you never thought you could just be so flip and there be no consequences. Of course there are. Ok, you Cosmo-vodou & economically pasted us up alongside a v risqué photo of bare-chested satyr Bon Bon Jovial. Et pork pi pas? Jack Use!
Adorno/Debord: You shorn/Or scalped. We decide.
Apologies to readers for sounding aggressive, there's just something about lefty-surf chucklehead bully boys that starts with them receiving dogshit through the letterbox. But what else can be done? If hairs are wires then black wires are tapped. I'll write some more whilst we find out for certain their address.
Did they really mention ketamine?
Do you want some ketamine?

Sean is away down a k-hole and cannot return your calls...

In italics below is the letter followed by our reply:

A message for the so-called ‘Rotten Elements’: You are a disgrace

When the ‘Rotten Elements‘ first hit the stratosphere, about eight years ago, we gave them the benefit of the doubt. One idiot around here thought they had something approaching ‘bracing’ politics. We tried to ignore the fact that they had connections with the so-called ‘Communist Party of Great Britain.’ (What moron could ever contemplate joining a political party with the title ‘Great Britain’ in it?)

We have witnessed their sad decline into the gutter of irrelevancy over the last eight years. They had a hissy fit a little while ago because the salon de Ben and Esther’s Esthetix Dialectics (or whatever they call themselves) weren’t interested in their particular brand of absurdist spontaneist marxist dadaist waffle.

Rotten Elements are not even a footnote. Are they on ketamine? Do they ever leave their bedsits? In the immortal words of John Bon Jovi — they give love — a bad name.

Goodbye, Rotten Elements. The world is entering a period of convulsive love. You are picking fluff out of your belly buttons. But no doubt that has some meaning that can be dialectically reconciled in your pathetic universe.

We hope you can see what we are dealing with here. So we replied kindly and succinctly below in bold. To avoid any confusion, please note that the last 3 lines of laconic dialogue are not ours. They are culled from the 'Fictional Interludes' part of yon poetasters blog:

Prince Dial you have unashamedly deposited us in here, with there. Or deffo with there there.

It's OK mag for you to talk sport like that! It all outputs so ically dessicated the way you shakenvac it! But not everyone can go straight to wok like you! We fuck away at it and moist of the rime what we do is mariner swerves to shore and don't we know it?

Yet nevertheless, thanks for taking some time out of your Project with all it's jelking extension sheaves ribbed & dangling. Sir you give us damn good talk-talk 2!

And maybe, not just maybe, we will, purge some of your adamantium elan and widdershin verisimilitude macula with lignums and unguents we’ll nip down and purloin from £Land in Purfleet.

In your mean times drear Dial Prince, we're ughing down the foam of fiction you alone publish, lest we forget - 'Fictional Interludes'. But my throat, you're too cleaver for your own wood sumptimes! No imagine most people’s portals will glaze @ all the shrunkwhipped meanings yv Lidl finger-bapped up - right up, left up in there, for us to clean up. Shit, it's taken us 2 weasel word weeks to pop out just a tiny friction of the drizzling sunken city of hidden single word scores you row & row round & round Finsbury Park.

Mais Plink. Mais Plonk. You are Mathew Pinsent before our alka selzered eyes! We have never cum over such a biz of liminally attache’d modulating lucutious unctions b4 4 b4.

But kneel Dial, is yr giftshop of whyting spore Bonsai, yr gaping agape die a log, yr

mind that gap, yr Keith Talent,

a tin ear?

‘John.’

‘Ferret.’

‘Fancy a drink?'

2011-09-02T17:01:00.001Z

The Camra Eye visits Communist University 2011 (part II)

Letter from female comrades to PCC CPGB

Re: Toilets at Communist University 2011

Dear comrades,

we are writing to express our dissatisfaction at the situation with the ladies' toilets at CU. Some of the ladies, I'm afraid We took Tina's pretty slogan rather too literally. 'See you at CU' has been thoroughly misinterpreted as 'cocks out for the girls'. Why this Victorian attitude to female sexuality, we wonder? Did you not feel the frisson of excitement that ran through the assembled females last year when it became clear that male attributes had made themselves present on the Sunday? You prudes! Do not stop us from sniffing that flag, ye hear?

wcg,

Ladeez Innit

Song sung by Tom Maybe to taunt female comrades wanting the lavatory at CU 2011

When I were a lad I were so glad to go to CU in the daytime
With me fork, and a bottle and a cork to help out in the breaktime
Was standing near the ladies (under PCC instruction) when I met young Lucy Bailey
And I said my dear 'Are you often here', she said 'Yes sir, twice daily'

I fobbed her off in the summer sun, it was so thrillin'

I gave her directions to another lav, but that young maid weren't willin'
With her bladder full of CU tea we was talking gaily
She ups and slips and zomut rips and I blocked the door twice daily

(Oh ah oh I did too)

She said, dear, I do feel queer think I outa tellee

It ain't new bread but this here wee that's swelling up me bladder

Told her go to old Doctor Jack, off she went and was gladder

He gave a dollop of a gert thick jollop and said take this twice daily

(Orrible stuff it were )

Now Lucy's dad were very mad, chased Jack 'round the haymound
Said my son you've had your fun, the time has come to pay now
My girl you'll piss, the old man said as he waved his shotgun gaily
And Uncle Jack then couldn't stop her pee twice daily
(despite a clear PCC resolution to the contrary)

Near hysterical euphoria
Come and join us last year and make yr contribution to the job of tooling up
My name is Jack Conrad, welcome to Utopia
If a comrade shows signs of leaving the room, engage him or her in a pointless disagreement that is inherently different to the pointless disagreements voiced during the sessions. Encourage them to sit down... remember, comrades, that every minute spent socialising with us is time they could be spending money on piss-weak tins of lager for the Summer Offensive
Could we charge for toilets... for the SO?
Look, could we drop the fucking issue of toilets?
Does any comrade have a spare bucket and mop?

It was the stink of old men that did for me. Body odour, farts, dandruff, laces trailing around in girly urine. I'm not much of a symbolist but the exquisite irony was not lost on me. Swap the vanguard for some fucking abortion of a brass band on a council estate. Feels like ecstacy...

2011-09-02T11:59:00.036Z

What must He be thinking?
There's nothing that can be done that hasn't already been done

In the recent Weekly Worker Wiot editorial Peter Manson wrote his resignation letter as editor & member of the PCC. Dialectanalme speaking: Scouse, black Giggs or whatever. He did and he didn't know he was and he wasn't resigning. Just so you do and you don't know, within & without yourselves & it need not only be cosmetically. Anyway, no-way, osmosisically, the rotten elements kwik-time regenerated our copy of Karl Krauss. You know nothing of language, you are the supreme enemy. Blimey. We'd merely just astro-jelked quantitatively on top of Flann O'Brien's puncture repair kit. & yet ("Inside the barracks he meets two of the three policemen, Sergeant Pluck and Policeman MacCruiskeen, who speak largely in non sequitur and who are entirely obsessed with bicycles.") after the previous resignation letter, Demonic ape or no, written only buy a bloody gushing women's wise wound ago, sago, agog, agape, submit! By Mike McNair on Viagra-Adorno! Via Vauxhall! Viva Virginia Woolf! Virginia Wade, Rebekah Wade, Urithea Johnson & tumultously, Mike McNair's granny. Found floundering flanning around on her bike to the lighthouse! Mike lived in the bath with his gap-toothed nanny. The great big saw came nearer and neared and neare to his little man and his fanny, both. Forsooth, we seal up mammaries. Club. Club. Club.
"My grandmother was lucky not to be run down when, in her 90s, she set out to cycle to town, forgetting that traffic speeds and density on the road passing her house had changed since the 1930s;"
Some soothsay that soon to be remoulded Peter Manson is a one-man Gyorgy Bukkake gang-bang! A Phillip Dicky! You must be jelking! Somefing to Hyde? Tell us straight mate hate. A crack in space. Fill it up. O'er time. Fleeting. Many moons. Smuggling. Suck me. Yesternow. Concerning r'Organs. It's House Style. Hani & Hansi jive! Winnie jumps a train again and again and again. How many roads must a man go down before he is. This land is ours. To Cecil Rhodes you a man.
Peter is editor every week.
Porpoisely missing the pisspot as the cowpat jumped over the moon doth Pete. Sends us to Coventry, fuck. But hold on. Ask him to remember. No tread. Invisible steppes. Slip-shod. Nietzsche falls passionately in love with a horse called Man. Now he's doing horse. Complicated? You bet! Rent. Trod. Flat.
'A fleeting moment of power, a fleeting moment of pure joy, a fleeting moment of fulfilment.'
We could expire happy-slapped if it were so. Even so-an-so, but no! No! Thrice no! 'Fleeting', 'Moment', 'A' and 'Of' spell Roy Bull 4 hex's pour Peter. Oh la-la, la-la.
So imagine my redesigned to the point of no designs Work Programme & Berger Paints live/work sense of signs as golden wonders landfill when one of my moments returned to forever! And I, fleet-footed Inspector Plodded past the huge former Kurdish political centre the Halkevi.
And lo tis Retailed. Wee-cent-ly. Beyond Retro. Despite, despot & bespoke the wildly intoxicating gift of yr Achebian areolae, it can't & we can never erase the mausoleum of a familiar bust. Sand-stoned yet austere. Tom of Finland, £1 in Iceland & embalmed on this most balmy of mellow fructose dog-days. Great tits auburn oppo of the dead sun! Expiring; unpaid rent & class cleavage lent:
"A large-scale, exclusive vintage collection and no two stores have the same product within. Beyond Retro are renowned for their show stopping stores that celebrate style through the decades."
Which in it's world-weary, conspiring, gangsta-rap scares the shit shot Capes out of me! Untraditionally fleeting. They are sexual. They want it all the time. Yet no binary as yet. So they prefer MFP discs of Wagner. Avec Brian Rix? Brian Rix? A flea in the ear? C'est possible. A pier. Pierrepoint. Counterpoint. Artists all. They were the reason I did it. I hate them. I do it for them. Ungrateful, root ginger. Untrustworthy, beetroot. A fleeting salty satyr wastrel of a Party! The clock ticketh. Flea flee fleeting. Demonic apes cum kwik. And so I'm not interested any more. Mix the plasma semen screen 12 inch please. Now! Seamen? You seem totally fucking Kronstadt!
What else is there?
Other than buckets of his goodly goo & her squirting her miss steer email us chatologue:
'We run tings, tings nuh run we.' &, 'What the fcuk! I edict a riot, I swill a permanent self-defence unit!':
Delivering the ego eco-flange-praline in the face fuck for ex-editor Manson's kitsch historical misunderstandings. Delivered at an Ian Pace smirking irons to drain count Dracula.
'Paul? Just cut all those pictures out of the paper please Paul. The Communist University red flag around cock, big bad cock scandal. Smoke them. And collate them. Yes, we'll see Paul. If Paul formed a Party, Paul would cry because he wanted too! Ha-ha-ha. Fleeting moments. We don't trust you, tings trust we.
Oh come on chaps, have a chop each! He's had a bloody good knock! It was always an oranges at half-time appointment anyway. Wasn't it? If we're all toe-tapping, lip-curlingly, totalisingly honest - smack; which we're not, so neither was Gyorgy. Hit. Ahhhh. I gave him 16 months max, not 16 interminable, 'One road! Kingsland Road! One solution! Slippers!' years (exactly the way we say yr ten speed gears in Bristle: 'Pour Thelma's 'aving a mare of a time with her years...' ):
"The example of Turks and Kurds in Dalston is a positive one. In one part of Kingsland Road residents succeeded in driving away the rioters in the late evening of August 8. Although the media refer only to shopkeepers defending themselves, there were more people involved than a few kebab and coffee shop owners in this traditionally leftwing community."
The recently closed, much-lamented El Panchos (The Hamburgers) a legendary Kingsland Road gringo gastro-panto:
"Now we all know I have a passion for awful Tex-Mex food, but never before have I been served Doritos with chopped tomatoes and it be called Nachos. So strange it was terrifying. Almost as terrifying as the Turkish waiters and fluorescent cocktails. Even my baffling Mexican spring rolls disguised as Chimichanga couldn't disguise this lack of knowledge of Mexican cuisine. It's was so sad it was actually funny. Now there is no way I would 1 star this place, the staff were so friendly and the food fresh if a little odd. Go on try it if you're brave, it's a Turkish-Mexican muddle!" (Kurdo-Mexican to be more precise, or less, given there is and never has-been a country called Kurdistan.), now has a sign up asking passers-by to email in their guesses as to what kind of food the new restaurant will be serving. This is of course genius, sound-bitingly but not tongue-tastingly post-modern in its disdain for original cuisine, apart from Levi Gene's! New!Original! Raga-Reggae Sheep-dip! It could be kebabs, very clever, the classic adana double-bluff! Or maybe really Kurdo weird...Kurdo-Nouveau?...Martian-Kurd...Martial-art-Hi Karate chop-Kurd?...Jam Tart Kurd?...Gulag-Kurd? Or, which is my guess, the canny homeless owners will count up the emails and the type of food with the most votes will be the next taste-sensation on offer! Now that's what I call a traditional leftwing community, regenerating in response to consumer demand! Their hearts ripped out by the pain & humiliation of not going home to a glorious Socialism in one country, because everyone always knew they never had homes to go to, let alone a country, play along...'Hey Gringo wanna play Bingo!' So, long gone soon to return Peter Manson is dead right, sorry left, that's what he calls Ye Olde Traditional Left wing and chips, sorry fries. A funny thing happened down on the farm. There's no farm. Perhaps a Firm. Very firm. Firmed-up. Traditionally these people were the bright Dorito future! Doomed to relive not even the past anew, but a simulacrum of...when? Someone else's, the CPGB's, cast-iron Pyrex Pot noodle of double-think that's when. Niet. The chickens are deep-fried mice and always come home to roost. Speedy Gonzales - Andale-Andale!
'In one part of Kingsland Road the residents succeeded in driving away the rioters.'
To where exactly? The rioters and the residents are all residents dispossessed. But you seem to know, it's traditional after all, so where did they go then? Tell me where you fucking idiot.
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

2011-09-02T09:05:00.018Z

Creative writers are no different in essence than the rest of us, they have their ups and downs, periods of profligacy and abscesses of striation. The Creative Process is a mysterious and lucrative process, just look at Volpone. Joyce hadn't a clue what riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodious vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs meant. Neither do Ringo or David Starkey, they just know what they like better than we do.

But we still have to ask Writer Questions.

And so it is in that spirit of Weberian ethics or the other way round that the rotten elements are publishing the following email document of a simmering contra-temps that erupts like a lanced boil or Lance Boil! It’s significance lies in that the combatants Vivien and Vivian are internationally acclaimed and without doubt the leading creative writing philosophers in the country, behind Melvyn Bragg, China Mieieieieieieville (City and the City and the City and the City and the City and the City and Bristol City, et al) + Russell & Jo Brand. (& don't forget Alexie 4 Sale! ed)

Read on do, but bare in mind what follows is not for the faint-hearted, unsophisticated or High Roads Woolwich, Tottenham, Hackney, The Cotswolds etc!

rotten elements 2/9/11

The Vivien and Vivian Correspondence.

Sent: Tuesday, 23 August, 2011 16:45:40

From: Vivian

To: Vivien

Subject: Writer Questions

A fine suggestion has come in from Joe Orton's translator (and he should know) Mr Dottle in Nottingham:

"Stick an I in it"

Sent: Tuesday, 23 August, 2011 16:50:40

From: Vivien

To: Vivian

To: Subject: RE: Writer Questions

Genius! When's his play on?

Sent: Tuesday, 23 August, 2011 16:55:40

From: Vivien

To: Vivian

Subject: Re: Writer Questions

Oh yeah and what are those three questions you struggle with as a writer and would like to see explored in a handbook for writers (which of course I know you wouldn't)? I gotta start it today. Vx

Sent: Tuesday, 23 August, 2011 17:00:40

From: Vivian

To: Vivien

Subject: RE: Writer Questions

Hi Viv - I think he's rehearsing now. He txted me the other night saying he was holding a copy of a book with Orton/Dottle along the spine!

Sent: Tuesday, 23 August, 2011 17:05:40

From: Vivian

To: Vivien

Subject: RE: Writer Questions

But as a quick stab -

1 - Is it possible for the thing I'm writing at the moment to avoid incorporation?

2 - How?

3 - Then how best to assemble the various components that make up my failure to adequately pose or answer those 2 questions.

Sent: Tuesday, 23 August, 2011 17:10:40

From: Vivien

To: Vivian

Subject: RE: Writer Questions

Yes, 1/ 2 is I think a good question which will not be easily answered in the format of a handbook but will certainly be in there in some form. 3 is tricky.

Sent: Tuesday, 23 August, 2011 17:15:40

From: Vivian

To: Vivien

Subject: RE: Writer Questions

I think 3's the easiest in the sense of - 'It never ends up being what I wanted in my minds eye just a pale imitation, blah-blah, Plato's cave, etc...

Sent: Tuesday, 23 August, 2011 17:20:40

From: Vivien

To: Vivian

Subject: RE: Writer Questions

Hi Viv,

Do you think there is such a thing in writing as an 'authentic voice'? I suspect you'll have a strong opinion on this very different to my own. Do you take a kind of Barthes/Foucault line or what? I'm just wondering how it informs your work and the way you write. I would call you but you no ding-a-ling.

Sent: Tuesday, 23 August, 2011 17:25:40

From: Vivian

To: Vivien

Subject: RE: Writer Questions

Hi Viv - been in Rugby.

I think there's a sizeable industry within 'creative writing' where people can pay to 'find their voice', and where precisely the point is for them to be incorporated and produce tosh like Jenny, or give up because as Melvyn Bragg said - We've got enough writers what we need is more readers.

I'm not sure how helpful the Barthes/Foucault 'line' is in terms of creative writing as opposed to literary criticism/cultural theory.

But Kafka is Kafka because he is Kafka. Too many people unfortunately don't get that and spend money and the best part of their creativity on various ways to ensure that they permanently mistake themselves for someone else.

Sent: Tuesday, 23 August, 2011 17:30:40

From: Vivien

To: Vivian

Subject: Re: Writer Questions

Thanks Viv that's really helpful and I might quote you if I can find a good place to do so and you don't object! But anyway is it possible to avoid incorporation? As soon as you start getting feedback from anyone your sense of your work/self shifts a little (or a lot) each time. Obviously there is an industry which prescribes ways of writing and reflects status quo etc but so does each individual who reads your work...is it possible to work outside this or only if talking to yourself? Hope you had a good time in Rugby - seeing family? Vivx

Sent: Tuesday, 23 August, 2011 17:35:40

From: Vivian

To: Vivien

Subject: RE: Writer Questions

Hi Viv - I wasn't talking about feedback particularly, although I am v suspicious of the writers group as collective critic, I meant 'finding your voice' as a component specifically punted by 'creative writing' 'writers' like:

Finding your voice

(He lists 3 'Finding Your Voice' creative writing courses - ed)

etc

The 'you're only talking to yourself ' accusation I find particularly odious. And so the question about it being either that, or excepting the views of others is the exact formulation of incorporation. Accept infantilised, utterly banal social democracy living in the real world or face solipsistic isolation. It reveals the fear and loathing at the heart of capitalism, and as it goes the type of Stalinism you and Jock come out of, against use value, unlicensed production; Aufheben.

Sent: Tuesday, 23 August, 2011 17:40:40

From: Vivien

To: Vivian

Subject: Re: Writer Questions

Mmm... well it wasn't an accusation it was a question! How do you avoid incorporation? Is that possible in our society? I didn't mean you personally though I wasn't excluding you either, I meant writers generally. In terms of such 'finding your voice' workshops there may be good and bad but it's probably the biggest issue writers have - how to be truthful with yourself rather than trying to write what the market or other people want. So I think there's a big contradiction there for writers and I'm not sure it's resolvable under the present system x

Sent: Tuesday, 23 August, 2011 17:45:40

From: Vivian

To: Vivien

Subject: RE: Writer Questions

Viv - Of course I didn't think you were accusing me. The accusation I meant is general as well - which you then immediately & kind of inevitably go on to adumbrate: That's the point, once you get into the reflexive gyre of 'motivation' and 'finding your voice' etc, it's not a matter of good and bad, it's all as anything 'real' is concerned an incorporated slap, come down from there! There is no contradiction, in as much as there is every contradiction, between being 'true' to 'oneself' and 'trying to write what the market or other people want.' It's not even really a contradiction, it's a coercive 'framework' to snag contradiction. Art etc is a repository of all the manifest contradictions else it's nothing.

Sent: Tuesday, 23 August, 2011 17:50:40

From: Vivien

To: Vivian

Subject: RE: Writer Questions

Viv, I've been trying to work out you're saying but I can't totally. I need it said more simply. I agree with what you say at the end. I'm thinking I could talk about No Rules as a kind of space between rule making and breaking that happens when you're in full flow in that creative whoosh when it is really you. Is that the sort of thing you mean or not? x

Sent: Tuesday, 23 August, 2011 17:55:40

From: Vivien

To: Vivian

Subject: RE: Writer Questions

Widdy read my novel and said she wanted it to be more like JG Ballard. You told me to burn it. One of the contributing writers makes the case that creative writing courses support you in validating your voice as a writer. I'm thinking I might do a course in novel or screenwriting. Or find a group or something. Do you meet with other writers?

Sent: Tuesday, 23 August, 2011 18:00:40

From: Vivian

To: Vivien

Subject: RE: Writer Questions

You're trying to control the 'voices' who contribute to this book thing about writing. Via your novel. It's boring -

"One of the contributing writers makes the case..."

Whatever the case may be, you support it. I don't. You won't, but I think you should stay away from any course from now on until you die.

I think you are hell bent on delivering this silly writing tips book as 100% 'incorporated'. Anything else is failure and fripperies . That's what I meant before about you and Jock coming from Stalinism.

"I need it said more simply"

I bet you do.

Fuck off.

Sent: Tuesday, 23 August, 2011 18:05:40

From: Vivien

To: Vivian

Subject: RE: Writer Questions

Wow so much incoherent anger. I thought we were having a conversation.

Sent: Tuesday, 23 August, 2011 18:10:40

From: Vivien

To: Vivian

Subject: RE: Writer Questions

I was wondering if you've ever had any relationship with a woman, friend, lover whatever that you haven't destroyed through being abusive. I can't think of any can you? Ever thought that maybe it's time you dealt with some of your own fucked-upness rather than keep projecting it onto others - women mainly? So what's the problem with me asking for clarification or holding a different opinion? None whatsoever. And in fact I was mainly agreeing with you. But of course any disagreement must make me a Stalinist or some other dishonest hackneyed term of abuse. It's all bollocks Viv and a shame.

Sent: Tuesday, 23 August, 2011 18:15:40

From: Vivien

To: Vivian

Subject: RE: Writer Questions

Ok so that was over the top and about as relevant as you bringing Jock into the conversation. I've calmed down now.

But I'm tired of you putting me and my work down and I don't understand why we can't just talk about something we both care about so deeply without it becoming some sort of competition from your perspective. I'm interested in your ideas and the ideas of many writers including my own. I might not be as well read as you in many areas, but all your interpretations of me in your emails don’t resonate with me at all or make any sense. I am not telling anyone what to say, I'm trying to write a book that will practically help people. You may think that’s 'boring', 'silly' and 'Stalinist'. Putting aside the question of what do you gain by throwing abuse at me and how it may be considered the behaviour of a friend, putting that aside, if it is honestly what you think then why on earth wouldn't you try to put a coherent and comprehensible alternative perspective? And why, when I ask for one do you give the verbal equivalent of a supercilious sneer?

Sent: Tuesday, 23 August, 2011 18:20:40

From: Vivian

To: Vivien

Subject: RE: Writer Questions

Sorry Viv, but why should I be bothered with someone who is so brazen about their stupidity, I've got things to do.

“if it is honestly what you think then why on earth wouldn't you try to put a coherent and comprehensible alternative perspective?”

“don't resonate with me at all or make any sense”

2011-09-02T09:02:00.001Z

2011-09-01T21:00:00.000Z

The Camra Eye visits Communist University 2011

Look I'll be honest with you, buddy. I've bin pretty broken up these last three years. Jeez it went from bad to worse. But I do get respite. Coupla months at best. Coming up for air, so to speak. You know my problem? I want to live a sorta cutesy metropolitan lifestyle within the realms of my dad's life. I haven't got the... the constitution for these tricks. I'm still at that kinda stage of cricket scores and sandwich spread on a Sunday, that kind of emotive fraud (if I could finda Vicar that would put up with Terry Eagleton, then that's my boy). But I've messed with cults, evil if ya like.

So, I'm being honest. I'm a failure in lotsa ways. But life's mean and that's some kinda solace for a funk like me. I also didn't go to the event that I have been asked to write about. Boom. But then I've always kinda hated empiricism and liked that jive about neo-positivism. I did attend back in 2010. One session. That ended with someone's erect cockhead wrapped up in a party banner. Shameful. So this is a record of my absence as much as anything else. Yew know the drill by now. Lock the door and all that. Remember the summer of Althusserian legend when the text jest poured?

Ideas for the thinking left for all the flatulent talk of change what the Communist University is all about

The university is the need of the hour there are several groups that are communist and dangerous for the Indian people

The latest flatulent change to the timetable was made on August 5

The Association of Musical Marxists fuck yew up

'Well Earl, they say that music is louder than words, so we'd rather express our opinion that way'

'Okay, if you really wanna do it'

And of course cum along to CU yourself (see you at CU and so on and so forth). Not only can we promise stimulants and controversial debates but an opportunity to relax among comrades... and help us meet targets [Taylorism refined for social intercourse]

The ladies' loos are strictly out of bounds for the duration of Communist University. Sorry comrade ladies, you'll have to flop it out in the bushes (it's much safer, yew know what happened)

Yeah, that's good

Now that we are on our last legs, let's make sure we complete the course, comrades

2011-09-01T04:35:00.002Z

pop goes the easel

2011-08-29T03:38:00.001Z

Dalston amusements

2011-08-27T19:35:00.001Z

Making friends on a Friday night

2011-08-26T02:26:00.008Z

it's here

2011-08-25T03:04:00.010Z

Shaking the stick via Dalston

2011-08-25T02:37:00.012Z

John Stevens & her

#2

2011-08-12T04:12:00.001Z

2011-08-10T21:31:00.002Z

...liberals have their Daily Mail moment...

2011-08-10T20:11:00.001Z

Love me I'm a liberal

2011-08-09T02:55:00.003Z

As a result BlackBerrys have become the weapon of choice of Britain’s disaffected youth. Anything as unlikely as beauty parlours were broken into.

2011-08-05T18:53:00.004Z

liveworklive

2011-08-05T10:31:00.002Z

2011-08-05T02:33:00.003Z

Earnester

2011-08-04T23:08:00.005Z

Earnest

2011-07-29T16:12:00.002Z

night and day and night and

2011-07-24T06:25:00.002Z

staging the real thank you

2011-07-16T05:07:00.003Z

Hit those highs

2011-07-15T04:04:00.004Z

Djinner Jazz!

2011-07-14T19:40:00.004Z

Wrong Number
(4 David Antin)

Last night as I was walking home I took a call on my mobile.
Wrong number wanted to speak to David Antin.

2011-07-13T01:32:00.029Z

Today's Disc Jokey's™ are to me culturally hugely significunt.
They are Walter Benjamin's great unfinished Arcades; Janus-faced quotidian immanent critics of what is NOW!
Why?
Because they just like kill sets man!
Like just nail sets man, murder them!
- Garbage-Garbage!
They just blast shit like that out over the top of something!
Like a Rick James-Barbershop-Chav-Jap-Burberry-Java-lavalamp-Gamelan-Astro-Bontempi groove!
They might invite you on; maybe look you up; they're at Festivals©.
Like Fritz Lang - It's the suspense. What will happen next; after, no, if, no silly, before they play a record?
To me they are today what Lady Antonia Fraser was to Harold Pinter in 69.

2011-07-05T14:02:00.003Z

We're all in this together...

2011-07-01T02:57:00.008Z

On The Road 2 The Heart of Charity (Hackney 2 Walthamstow)

+ Sneak Preview of Part 2!!! (The Supplement)

2011-06-27T04:36:00.016Z

Dead Parasite #1
Post-Shale: Glastonbury Live!
A time to reflect via olive branches.
There ain't no ferry to Glastonbury...A job well done.
One down.

Cameron settled down with local ladies to chew the fat. Mrs Cameron joined the crowd, sitting in front of a chaste glass of fizzy water. “I wish I could say it was a double vodka,” sighed pregnant Samantha.
Lord Chadlington, brother of John Gummer, was there, and expressed caution about the exit poll’s low showing for the Lib Dems.
Christopher Shale, 55, retired, said he hoped the exit poll had understated the Tory vote. But no one really knew. It is at times like this that the rawness of politics is felt. There is an essence of gambling to this power game. With plenty of hands still to be dealt.
'ALMOST everybody pays too much for almost everything they buy.' So says Christopher Shale, entrepreneur and managing director of Oxford Resources.
But then again, he would say that. Mr Shale has staked his business career in a venture whose sole aim is to reduce corporate overheads.
Mr Shale is clambering aboard a bandwagon (Well, off now, Ed). Recession taught companies that cutting costs could make the difference between business survival and receivership.
Most companies, suitably equipped with a miserly finance director, can internally reduce costs, but a number of outfits like Oxford Resources act as consultants to do it for them.
'Suppliers sell the same item to different customers at quite different prices,' says Mr Shale. 'More than that, separate departments of a single organisation will frequently pay different sums for the same product.
'In addition, even the most efficient companies get their sums wrong occasionally. Some will not notice if they are overcharged on an invoice and will go ahead and pay it regardless.
'Some suppliers will invoice twice for the same order and finance departments will pay the bill twice. There are even occasions when an invoice is sent just once but the bill ends up being paid in duplicate.' According to Mr Shale, inefficiencies creep in largely because buyers are preoccupied with more high- profile tasks. But because purchasing is Oxford's sole responsibility, it can concentrate on that single function.
Most of the cost efficiencies come through hard negotiating. Oxford acquires leverage by researching the markets in which its clients operate. It also achieves savings by taking advantage of special deals and incentives.
By chopping and changing it can exploit promotions. This strategy is particularly lucrative when playing telecoms suppliers off against one another.
He and his team concentrate on areas where there are no recognised experts. Rent, rates, service charges, telecommunications, insurances, stationery, photocopier contracts, printing, storeroom supplies and the like are meat and drink to Oxford.
Mr Shale attracts business by agreeing terms that are strictly linked to the amount of money he saves clients. If he does not manage to cut costs he earns no fee.
Mr Shale's greatest success was a 92 per cent reduction on an invoice for a printing contract. Average returns are more modest.
'Given a reasonable spread of opportunities we aim to save a minimum of 15 per cent before we take our slice of commission,' he says. 'We hope to save more like 25 per cent.'

2011-06-18T13:01:00.016Z

Missed Again

Here at the rotten elements we welcome any new cultural initiatives on the left, not even Red Mist.

The CPGB have convinced some of it's younger versions of their own stupid doctrinaire youth to to review stuff so as some publishers can lob a gurt load of art books their way so they can sell it sharpish on ebay and pay for Jack Conrad's next supplement on God, Robert Johnson and classic early Crossroads Motel episodes featuring Amy Turtle and Sandy in his wheelchair +! Mickey McNair's recently rediscovered 'Black Book' diaries where he soberly recounts his sado-masochistic Ballardian via Flann O'Brien autohardon relationship with his grandmother and her bicycle. That kneaded oiling constantly. And still does. God rest its rubber sole. Suffocate to say, Mickey wouldn't let either of them out of the house!

"My grandmother was lucky not to be run down when, in her 90s, she set out to cycle to town, forgetting that traffic speeds and density on the road passing her house had changed since the 1930s"

James (Amy) Turley who fronts the thing up in this weeks Weekly Worker is clueless at even making up his own clues & has done his level-best to mist a bit of fug up to make it not seem they mean busyness. Have a look by all means. But leave yon cursor hovering over 'BACK'.

"Join us on our journey through the bizarre, contradictory cultural life of capitalism - hopefully we will one day get out the other side."

Yes Jim-Bob, quite. After all:

" In the world of the market, an artist can only try something that has already been tried and been seen to succeed."

You repulsive little bastard. And so:

"And, though we are a theoretically minded project, we will not destroy your will to live with 10,000 word Lacanian disquisitions on Proust."

And so Macie Gray-Zizekki believes:

"While Gaga’s debut album, 'The fame', was a near flawless dance-pop record that merged watered-down club beats with smart songwriting, the new single is somewhat of a disappointment."

Yes it is isn't it, boomshangalang. And now a book review section wherein Harley Davidson:

"I mentioned in passing this book – Cold World by Dominic Fox – which is a short collection of essays on, as its wordy subtitle would have it, “the aesthetics of dejection and the politics of militant dysphoria”. “Sadness does something to the way we see the world,” he begins (p1). What he has in mind is a sense of profound separation from the world, which then figures into our aesthetic comprehension and political relationship to that world."

Imagine having that mist yr monitor on any given hanging Monday morning - "Oh for godsake enough! Press enter and chuck the fools a review copy! Just the one mind! Give them that Gordon Downie herbal tea table book - MFI Plastic Construction Pack - Flat. No Relief. " Bored, publishers have late afternoon competitions, the time it takes for a book to arrive at CPGB HQ and then appear on ebay. Jack Conrad's books don't count of course. Press Pulp. And not Common People.

Yes so. Quite. Quite like hives. Scratching. Fingers down the blackboard. Itching, scratching. Nothing there. Enough so.

Here. Meanwhile! We have our own review of a tremendous new figure on the global art scene market-place!

Ape My Engels is a Hackney-based conceptual artist inspired by Duchamp and fuckmyjeans.com who has tried everything once. Here's a short video of her work, which speaks for itself, in a Voloshinovian/Archie Andrews/Nina Temple stylee:

2011-06-18T06:39:00.001Z

Don't look now

2011-06-18T04:17:00.007Z

Rotten old love in Hackney

+ Directors Cut

+ Producers Cut

2011-06-17T20:31:00.004Z

Westfield Stratford City

1,900,000 square feet (177,000 m2), it is claimed to be the largest urban shopping centre in Europe.

Westfield Stratford City is I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and
saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy
among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy &
publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear,
burning their money in wastebaskets and listening
to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through
Laredo with a belt of marijuana for adjacent to the London Olympic Park, Stratford Regional and Stratford International stations. The shopping centre is part of a large multi-purpose development project called Stratford City. It is expected to contribute significantly to the local "Take off the bra."

She reached behind and unhooked the clasp, letting it fall. She saw his eyes, gazing at her body, the same look she saw in the bookstore... as is he was assessing her.

"Lovely. I love the color of your nipples. And I was right, you are bigger than Jen."

She felt her breasts rising and falling as she breathed. She could almost feel his gaze on her, like a physical thing.

"I want you to throw away that bra, and any you have like it. I want you to wear something with a lower cut, more revealing. Something you'd wear to seduce a man."

Something about this seemed to bring her to her senses... she had the first clear thought since he had arrived at her door.

"I'm not about to throw out perfectly good bras! You men have no idea what those damn things cost!"

"It's your choice, Helen... it's always your choice. You can either move forward with your sexuality, or we can stop. But you ARE a very sexual woman, and you are worth the cost of some sexy new bras to showcase those lovely tits of yours." economy, with the creation of up to 8,500 permanent jobs.[1]
Contents
[hide]

* 1 Retail area
* 2 Transport
* 3 See also
* 4 References
* 5 External links

[edit] Retail area

The shopping centre is anchored by a 240,000 sq ft (22,000 m2) John Lewis department store, a 32,000 sq ft (3,000 m2) Waitrose supermarket, a 200,000 sq ft (19,000 m2) Marks and Spencer department store, and a 14-screen all-digital Vue cinema. The shopping centre will also have a 267 room Premier Inn hotel,[5] and another hotel with 350 rooms.[1][6]

The shopping centre will have approximately 300 stores, including:[1]

* Boots
* Esprit
* Forever 21
* H&M
* and exalting his own self-hood, and usurping sovereignty,

XI

had endeavoured to Impose upon man his iron laws which " no
flesh nor spirit could keep one moment.John Lewis
* Marks and Spencer
* Monsoon
* Next
* Primark
* River Island
* Schuh
* Topshop
* Uniqlo[7]
* Waitrose
* WHSmith

2011-06-16T21:28:00.002Z

Yr not innit reeedux

2011-06-16T10:25:00.002Z

Thatcher-Back

2011-06-15T20:35:00.002Z

Olympic Boil

2011-06-13T04:27:00.008Z

Yr not innit (Directors Cut)

Alongside Rust Charley

2011-06-12T05:28:00.002Z

The New Model Army

2011-06-10T20:53:00.007Z

September 2010 marked the launch of the Dalston Hat; a brand new scheme of 33 stylish apartments, in the heart of trendy Dalston.

The one and two bedroom apartments are finished to the highest of standards, with dark wood floors, contemporary bathroom suites, fully integrated kitchens and built-in bedroom storage. A select number also have their own private balcony or roof terrace.

The apartments surround a beautifully landscaped communal space, which has been specially designed to offer residents a peaceful outdoor haven, away from the bustle of Dalston High Street.

Stirling Ackroyd is the sole Lettings Agent for the scheme. The apartments, priced from £275 to £450 per week, are available from September onwards.

2011-06-10T20:01:00.010Z

Plattypussy

Mickey McNair's extraordinarily prescient analysis of Theodor Adorno recently within the pages of the Weekly Worker sent us all back to basics. Like the Emperors New Clothes and the Tailor-Maid for you new Work Programme, we had all missed something all this time. It took Mike to point it out.

leap?

No. Fall...

That 'something' was of course, nothing! Rien, c'est voila! - Sorry Mike, that is not Historical Reconstructionism ('This year we're the chuffin' cops yr the miners, still got the chuffin' bruises from last time!'), via scienceoleaginouslochness lingo. Wayland 2 vogue and inter milan continental.

Rather:

- Ay up! Look at my granny chuffin' sucking eggs!

In my opinion, however, the method in Benjamin, in Dialectic of enlightenment and in Minima moralia, produces precisely occasional interesting aperçus buried in a mass of nonsense and triviality.

Prompted us all to double glaze over Adorno's bastard great grandson Cocky Warren, who (We've looked at the evidence and yes it is true) is like father like son.

"Dialectic of enlightenment and in Minima moralia"

Lower casement e & m. Lynne Trussed would be shooting up!

We rest Mike's casement leaves.

Tuff but fayre. Maid.

Read The Black Books. It's all in there.

c/o
The Maids
E Goldfinger & C Cardew
Budding Grove Tower Estate
Frankfurter
Nobyl Genet

Notes (Ron Noades)

1. Evidence (see below)

2. Saul Bellow

The idea that this method is counterposed to “obtuse French theory” (ie, postmodernism, Foucaultianism, etc) is illusory: it is, rather, a forebear of the literary theory on offer in today’s academy.