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A dialogue between Marxist and Magic Theory

  
  

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Bruno
12:26 / 07.05.05
[edit June 3rd 2005: The point of this topic is to: (a) ask people who are more well read than me if there has been any dialogue between marxist theory and magic theory, and where to find it, (The most obvious place for that crossover would be Situationism and Chaos Magick)
&
(b) to have a place on this forum where that dialogue can take place.] [Edit stops]

I have read the claim once or twice (I forget where, maybe by Hine) that Chaos Magic as a movement has been influenced by Situationist theory. Can anyone recomend authors and texts that use both?

Does anyone use Marxist theory in their practice?
Anyone noticed the parallel between Carrol's(?) religious paradigms (shamanic->pagan->monotheist->atheist->?) and Marx & Engels's modes of production in The German Ideology (primitive communism->agricultural->feudal/city->capitalism->communism)?
Anyone think about commodity fetishism in magical terms?


I's like to discuss it, also to explain key situationist/marxist terms which people might not understand.

[Edit June 3rd: As this points out, the Hine reference is wrong. It appears that Chaos Magic as a movement has not been influenced by Situationism too much.]

-bruno-
 
 
trouser the trouserian
15:10 / 07.05.05
ooh, good topic Bruno.
Not much time right now, but you might find this old thread of interest as there is some discussion (admittedly not much) on commodity fetish/Marx.
 
 
power vacuums & pure moments
21:22 / 07.05.05
Hmm Debord despised any form of mysticism so any parallels arent obvious to me. Ive always been fascinated by the reve-dirige though and i find its a nice alternative path to gnosis. How would you use marxism for magik?
 
 
illmatic
08:44 / 08.05.05
Nothing springs to mind that explicty situationist, but a lot of early Chaos Magic ideas seemed to reference it to a degree. Several of the old 'eighties occult zines used to reference situationist stuff quite a bit, notably Stephen Sennit's Nox and Joel Biroco's Chaos/Kaos.

For general situationism, you might find the following link of interest: Ken Knabb's Confessions of A Mild Mannered Enemy of the State. It's an autobiographical account of the author's involvement with situationism and counter-cultural activism. It's not very "occult" or self-consciously magical (apart from maybe the part where the author talks about his zen practice)but so what? I found it absolutely fascinating.
 
 
madhatter
17:57 / 08.05.05
i do not know a lot about situationism, so thanx for the link above.

anyway, it seems to me that magick and "classical" marxism do not fit too well together:

there is, on the one hand, the marxist notion that "das sein bestimmt das bewusztsein" (which i with my bad english translate as "the [economic] existence determines the mind"), whereas magick, as far as i understand it, has at it's core the belief that "das bewusztsein bestimmt das sein" ("the mind determines the existence"), which is quite the opposite.
[if anyone here knows the textbook-translations of the two phrases in the context, please deliver them!]

dialectic materialism as a way to interpret human history seems to look for a point of view, from which all kinds of "religous" idelogies can be looked at as symptoms of specific economic systems. i have little doubt that chaos magick as a social/historical phenomenon can be interpreted with the instruments of marxism, which means, be critisised as a form of "false conscious"("fasches bewusztsein") just as the "fetishism" marx (and later marcuse) writes about.
but: whilst the fetishism of consumer goods, as marx describes it, is certainly a kind of "magical worldview", this does not mean that there is no different flavour of magical worldview out there.

the other way round, it seems possible to critizise marxist philosophy as a kind of religion which hides all traces of "god" or any "other world"/"hidden truth" in the pictures of the glorious future that awaits if only we beat the crap out of the evil capitalists...

traditional "magical worldviews" ("as above, so below" and vice versa) and classical marxist philosophy (no above save what is determined by the way our economy works) are both "ready". they do not allow for theoretical input from somewhere else.
situationism an chaos-magick, on the other hand, seem to be open in a way that marxism and "traditional religious paradigms" are not.

please, competent readers of english editions of marx, clarify the quotes!!!
 
 
Bruno
21:56 / 08.05.05
A quick response (for now):
devoHmm Debord despised any form of mysticism so any parallels arent obvious to me...How would you use marxism for magik?

He is similar to Reich in a way. e.g. Reich's rants against mysticism in Mass Psychology of Fascism; but then Reich was used by Regardie etc and his writings are important magically.

some parallels of Debord/Marx/Engels and magic:
- Hegelian dialectic method (thesis+antithesis=synthesis) compared to alchemy (and yoga?). Unity of object & subject. Theres a book called "Hegel & the Hermetic Tradition" which describes the occultist & mystic influences on mr Hegel.

- To Hegel the highest point achievable is that of contemplation, the philosopher (theologian i.e. intellectual mystic). Marx flips it around and moves the theory into revolutionary praxis:
theory->praxis
mysticism->magic
Every act is a magical act etc.

- Life as Art (this is an evolution of dada & surrealism, which are very magic influenced), again it can be understood as ritual/magic activity. (or maybe i am just on a 'everything is magical' trip, ha)

- Black Mask/Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers/Werewolves who were outspokenly 'mystical' & hence got kicked out of the SI.

- The Spectacle is described almost as an entity, a thing with volition, a virus, etc. How would this be described in magical terms? A thoughtform?

madhatter: by 'classical' marxism if you mean the materialist side of things (Lenin, Mao, Stalin etc) yeah of course it is super anti-magic. Marxism with its hegelian-idealistic roots (Lukacs, Gramsci, Marcuse, Fromm, Critical Theory/Frankfurt School, Debord) I think allows more space for dialogue... A lot of the later Marxists criticised the baconian/scientific/materialist worldview as being an extension of colonialist/capitalist ideology.
Rather than saying 'the economy (base) forms the mind (superstructure?)' it makes a lot more sense to say that the relation between the two is (what else) dialectic.

Marxism is definitely a religious world view. There is the sacred & the profane. In religions, gods are sacred while this world and the human are profane; humanity objectifies itself and creates gods which have power over it. In capitalism the commodity is sacred and humanity disempowers itself in its name. In marxism humanity is sacred (Engels says somewhere "God is man" which links up with all kinds of mystical/magical traditions) and is self-creating. (which say is the same as the Great Work, or the Will, etc).

ok so its not such a quick response. I am just firing things Ive been thinking about.

Trouser and LuckyLiquid I will give all those links a go, that is a lot to go through so it will take a bit of time.

-bruno
 
 
madhatter
08:11 / 09.05.05
in a hurry right now. just: bruno, thanx for the english vocabulary.

and: even though walter benjamin and gershom scholem had their (rather different) interests in and influences from kabbalah and from alchemist iconography - the mainstream frankfurt school seems quite anti-mystical to me, and even those two studied their "magical stuff", as far as i understood it, as sort of "special cases of early burgeois mind". more on that later.
 
 
illmatic
09:15 / 09.05.05
Reich was used by Regardie etc and his writings are important magically.

Reich wouldn't have been happy about that, trust me, he'd have been fucking horrified.
 
 
power vacuums & pure moments
09:54 / 09.05.05
Hegelian dialectic method (thesis+antithesis=synthesis) compared to alchemy (and yoga?). Unity of object & subject.

I dont know anything about alchemy, but how does Hegel's dialectics compare to yoga?
 
 
Bruno
12:21 / 09.05.05
madhatter: I forgot all about Benjamin and the kabalah, that is another good connection. I just read Walter Benjamin for Beginners that is all i know about him. I do not know scholem.

I am not claiming that Marx, Debord etc were mystics. (At the end of the day mysticism and occultism are not the most exact of terms, especially now that they do not necessarily imply a belief in God, a word that makes most Marxists angry). We can still use some of their writings, descriptive tools, models. (Lucky, re Reich. Is it important what Reich would think? At the end of the day I care about the ideas not the man).
If we read the 1st chapter of society of the spectacle (http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/debord/1.htm) can it really be understood as a materialist text? It uses heavy metaphysical language. Even religious language (see thesis 25). It is written to imply things which do not make sense in a regular state of mind. Yet it is describing a real phenomenon.

devo: I dont know anything about alchemy, but how does Hegel's dialectics compare to yoga?
Hegel was very flexible. He was well known for being able to stand on his head for hours. He even worked in a small shop in Stuttgart selling yoga mats and tapes of dolphins singing.
Seriously though, I was thinking of the uniting of subject and object, knower and thing known, self & not-self, into a whole.


A quote from Marx showing communism is not atheist but post-atheist (from Private Property and Communism, on marxists.org):
"Atheism, as the denial of this unreality, has no longer any meaning, for atheism is a negation of God, and postulates the existence of man through this negation; but socialism as socialism no longer stands in any need of such a mediation. It proceeds from the theoretically and practically sensuous consciousness of man and of nature as the essence. Socialism is man’s positive self-consciousness, no longer mediated through the abolition of religion, just as real life is man’s positive reality, no longer mediated through the abolition of private property, through communism."

i.e. the dialectic goes 1.religion->2.atheism->3.Synthesis in socialism.
 
 
illmatic
13:27 / 09.05.05
Bruno: As someone who is quite into Reich's ideas,it's important to me. With any thinker, I think it's worth trying to get a sense of the totality of their work, even if one disagrees with it. I think this is doubly true of someone who moved over as much theoretical and practical ground in his career as Reich did. His ideas are very attractive to occultists, but people very rarely have any sense of their full scope, there's several shitebiographies of him about, and his work is generally picked up piecemeal and shoehorned into all kinds of unnecessary contexts. I think this is a great shame.
 
 
LVX23
21:42 / 09.05.05
Bruno wrote:
The Spectacle is described almost as an entity, a thing with volition, a virus, etc. How would this be described in magical terms? A thoughtform?

Well it could be considered as a vast egregore or even a hypersigil, I suppose. Though to me The Spectacle seems more like a medium in which many thoughtforms exist and interact. It's sort of a socioeconomic aether filled with all manner of spirits (brands, product, simulacrum, story, icons and actors, etc...). But I think it's ultimately very difficult to define where the Spectacle ends and life begins.

"We live in a spectacular society, that is, our whole life is surrounded by an immense accumulation of spectacles. Things that were once directly lived are now lived by proxy. Once an experience is taken out of the real world it becomes a commodity. As a commodity the spectacular is developed to the detriment of the real. It becomes a substitute for experience."- Larry Law, from Images And Everyday Life, a 'Spectacular Times' pocket book.

One aspect of Situationism is in the reclaiming/rebranding of Spectacular propoganda. This makes me think of the utilitarianism of CM as a mechanism for finding magick in any pop culture artifact of one's choosing.
 
 
Bruno
23:49 / 10.05.05
Trouser, I read your older posts on fetish, and am going to try and expand this bit and see what comes up:
Marx's use of the term fetishic relates to his theories of commodities and value. His argument is that material objects are given value through social relations, but this process of constructing hierarchies of value is forgotten, and commodities are seen to be 'naturally' valuable - and the processes of exploitative production are forgotten. Marxist theorists argue that the material forms of capitalist production are to be understood as relationships between objects, which serves to conceal and distort the underlying relations between people.
...
So on the one hand, there's Fetishism as a subjective, personal experience as explained by Freud, Lacan et al, and on the other, Fetishism as a product of structures of power and social relationships - Marx, and Foucalt.


So to make it more concrete. The example of a book. Let us assume it is a collection of things written by different people. They sat and wrote it (spending time and energy; labour). Then there is the printing of it, which requires the time and energy of the printers. There is the labour of office people, also labour can be traced back to the acquisition of raw materials of wood for paper, iron for printing press, etc.
The labour is not just by one person, so it is a social relationship. Under capitalism it is a social relationship of exploitation of the employees by the employers.

But the end-product, the book, is not comprehended as the culmination of the social relationships involved in labour. The product is fetishised as something seperate from the people involved and acquires its own aura or quality of value (which is different from its actual use-value, which in the case of the book, is the quality of the information it contains. In the case of a table it would be the sturdiness for example, or the size in relation to the space in which it will be used.)

So to the commodity-fetishist of books for example, a book is not perceived as the thoughts of an author transcribed onto paper, but in addition to this (or instead of this) acquires other characteristics (e.g, it is romanticized, associated with X mental state or Y emotion, it transfers imagined qualities onto the owner, it is linked with a form of gratification etc).

To the commodity-fetishist, this imaginary relationship with the object (the commodity) is perceived as more real then is the relationship with the actual people involved (who are forgotten). So the 'real' humans are robbed of their reality, and the 'not-real' thing is perceived as real. And by doing this the fetishist robs the reality of himself. (OK so real is a bad word to use. I hope my meaning gets across). From Trouser's post: Fetishism here is understood as a fixation on the form of a thing as against its content or on the part of a thing as against the whole.

And spectacle is the commodity-form combined with image as the market and the media become a single entity. So I could fetishize a media-image (e.g. a poster of 50cent) in much the same way as I can fetishize a car. The example of the book is probably a lot closer to spectacle than to classical commodity-fetish as Marx described.
It gets a lot more complicated if we imagine things like a 'cool' gesture or catch-phrase as an object of fetish. They are not really within the marketplace but they act as if they are. The same goes for roles of behaviour.

1. How does commodity-fetishism link up to the investment of energy in things like talismans & magical tools? Especially since a lot of the time they are the result of other peoples' labour. I have not done it before, not consciously anyway.

2. Crowley MiT&P: "DEFINITION." MAGICK is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.(Illustration: It is my Will to inform the World of certain facts within my knowledge. I therefore take "magical weapons", pen, ink, and paper; I write "incantations" --- these sentences --- in the "magical language" i.e. that which is understood by the people I wish to instruct; I call forth "spirits", such as printers, publishers, booksellers, and so forth, and constrain them to convey my message to those people. The composition and distribution of this book is thus an act of MAGICK by which I cause changes to take place in conformity with my Will). By this definition of magic, Labour and Magick are the same thing. Except that estranged labour (i.e. exploited labour) is not in conformity with Will.


Wikipedia on Commodity Fetishism (easy reading):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_fetishism
Marx on Commodity Fetishism from Capital (hard reading):
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S4

-bruno
 
 
Bruno
16:33 / 12.05.05
LVX:
Well it could be considered as a vast egregore or even a hypersigil, I suppose. Though to me The Spectacle seems more like a medium in which many thoughtforms exist and interact. It's sort of a socioeconomic aether filled with all manner of spirits (brands, product, simulacrum, story, icons and actors, etc...). But I think it's ultimately very difficult to define where the Spectacle ends and life begins.

You used a lot of interesting words here. I found out what egregore and hypersigil mean; the first one I think makes more sense. Spectacle is not 'neutral', it is not just a part of ideaspace where things happen to interact, it belongs to an ideology, it is expansive, it corrupts people. Understood as egregore, then Debord's book is as much about chanelling as it is about describing. Even though he didnt know it.
LVX (or anyone else) can you recomend any books or sites which are related to egregores/ideaspace/thoughtforms/memes.

It is generally very difficult to define where any one thing ends and another begins, we can only suggest but never define perfectly.

Here are the sites I found out about egregore: (http://www.chaosmatrix.org/library/chaos/texts/gegregor.html
http://www.key23.net/occulture/archives/2004/08/02/the-corporate-egregore/
http://www.philhine.org.uk/writings/ess_egregore.html)

-bruno
 
 
alejandrodelloco
23:22 / 12.05.05
For some reason putting Chaos Magic and Situationism together comes out as Hakim Bey to me: Sufi-mystic poetic terrorism and whatnot. 'Course, when I think of situationism, I think of these delightful chaps.
 
 
LVX23
18:50 / 16.05.05
It is generally very difficult to define where any one thing ends and another begins, we can only suggest but never define perfectly.

Agreed. What is the boundary between spectacle and the minds that inform it and are fed by it? Pop culture is a feedback loop as is commodity and consumerism. Are people dumb because of television or is television dumb because that's what people want? When I really try to grok it I find it very difficult to even define what the Spectale is, as something independent of society and culture itself. It all starts to overlap and blur.

I can try to narrow it a bit by consider spectacle as only simulacrum, as anything constructed to represent and thereby take the place of the real thing. But isn't that what language is? Both are representational layers cast over "reality", and both engage consciousness on an abstracted level removed from the thing itself.

But I digress. To the original query of this thread, CM and other occulted arts (particularly Thelema) encourage individualism while attempting to undermine the guarded beliefs of the concensus. What follows from the experience of deity, whether via invocation, trance, psychedelic gnosis, etc... is an deep understanding of the fallacy of the status quo - or at least the limited degree of its perception of "reality". The Spectacle as a representation, a simulacrum, like language itself, is assailed by gnosis and found to be inadequate and false. The shaking of it's foundation is the initail impact of numinous experience, while the intentional destruction of Spectacle is the willed path of transcendence.

Of course, this pits the gnostic/chaote against the corporate feeders of the Spectacle and all of it's adherents, willing or not. The Spectacle is seen not only as false, but sinister when coupled to a commodity culture of consumption. The simulacrum is crafted to offer more than reality itself and you end up buying fabric softener to have a more love at home and wearing Nike sneakers so you can be more like Mike. Brands are sigils and adverts are spells. The Spectacle is a candy-coated dreamscape alive with the wills of countless entities vying for mindshare, luring the spiritually malnourished masses into a fantastic escape of consumerism.

The inverted pentagram is said to represent the imbalance of matter over spirit. The Spectacle seeks to reprogram the spiritual longings of humanity with the empty rewards of matter. CM & Thelema and other spiritual paths should seek the affirmation and adoration of spirit within matter, seeking transcendence of both.
 
 
LVX23
16:33 / 18.05.05
I guess my question is: to what degree is the Spectacle intentional (and sinister) and how much is simply the face of culture?
 
 
Bruno
18:03 / 18.05.05
I guess my question is: to what degree is the Spectacle intentional (and sinister) and how much is simply the face of culture?

What do you mean by sinister? Spectacle is not intentional as I understand the word; it is not a conspiracy. It is much much bigger than any powerful group can control.It is an ideology, a mode of thinking which producers and consumers must follow. It is the accumulated energies of centuries of slavery and alienation, following the expansive rules of the market. Its purpose is absolute control.

Culture is very difficult to define. Even in so-called developed countries there are pockets of grassroots culture which are outside of its influence, but you could say that Spectacle is the dominant cultural paradigm.

-bruno
 
 
J Mellott
19:19 / 19.05.05
Debord is a lost cause, as his dislike of religious/mystical tendencies is well known. However, his partner in crime Raoul Vaneigem is quite a different case. Many of Hakim Bey's ideas, IMHO, come directly from Vaneigem's The Revolution of Everyday Life. Vaneigem eventually left SI (he was kicked out by Debord, I believe), which is fitting, as he was always less interested in theory (as opposed to experience) in the first place. My favorite work of his is from the 80's, it's called The Movement of the Free Spirit, and it all about the various Free Spirit heresies that popped up in Northern europe during the late middle ages. Many of these are similar to the more "libertine" gnostic sects of the first few centuries of the common era.

I came to the occult by way of theory, and I have to admit that I was quite enamored by the SI my first couple of years of college. I still like many of Vaneigem's ideas, and I find it fitting that his work sits on the same shelf as Georges Bataille, as some of their ideas match nicely.
 
 
illmatic
10:25 / 20.05.05
Debord is a lost cause, as his dislike of religious/mystical tendencies is well known

I don't think this is always a bad thing myself - I've found Wilhelm Reich's criticism of what he defines as "mysticism" quite telling. (See Mass Psychology of Facism) I don't think it means we should boot someone's ideas out the window anyhow. Interested in the comparison between him and Vangeim.

I find it fitting that his work sits on the same shelf as Georges Bataille, as some of their ideas match nicely.

Can you expand on this?
 
 
J Mellott
20:41 / 21.05.05
Though Vaneigem never states so explicitly, I think he agrees for the most part with Bataille's assertion (from Erotism) that Christianity operates like an inversion of agrarian paganism. Bataille thinks that paganism places highest interest or concern in "nature" or the life cycle, while, in contrast, traditional (i.e. stemming from the Roman Catholic church) Christianity obsesses mainly on death. The validity of this perspective aside, Vaneigem clearly loathes most expressions of Christianity for reasons similar to Bataille (though probably not as strong).
 
 
LVX23
04:54 / 24.05.05
Bataille thinks that paganism places highest interest or concern in "nature" or the life cycle, while, in contrast, traditional... Christianity obsesses mainly on death.

How long did it take him to figure that out? Of course, both are correct.
 
 
trouser the trouserian
07:59 / 30.05.05
A situationist chaos magic fetish?
 
 
Bruno
10:17 / 31.05.05
Debord is a lost cause, as his dislike of religious/mystical tendencies is well known. However, his partner in crime Raoul Vaneigem is quite a different case.

If I remember correctly, it was Vaneigem who kicked Ben Morea and the Motherfuckers out of the SI, for associating with a well known mystic? I dont have the books with me to check.

I think, probably, situationists, marxists, anarchists etc were opposed to occult thought because:
a) It was identified as being either 1. like organised religion (objectifying man to a false authority) or 2. like mysticism (no praxis)
b) Occult orders were hierarchical, aristocratic and politically reactionary.
c) It attracted the weak minded and their fanciful beliefs (pop-occultism such as horoscopes etc)
d) it was not scientific,which to a marxist means very much being ahistorical.
(an interesting article is Adorno's Theses against Occultism: http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/adornocc.html)

I will check the 'The Movement of the Free Spirit' book when I can.
 
 
Bruno
09:59 / 03.06.05
A summary of connections between Marxism and Magick up till today (June 3rd). Hopefully a more substantial discussion will follow.

1. a lot of early Chaos Magic ideas seemed to reference it to a degree. Several of the old 'eighties occult zines used to reference situationist stuff quite a bit, notably Stephen Sennit's Nox and Joel Biroco's Chaos/Kaos. (Lucky Liquid) and:
The only direct link I can think of is that Joel Biroco and Larry Law of Spectacular Times had a good arguement-fact check - no it was Tom Vague and Larry Law. Dave Lee did review Vague 18/19 Control Data Manual in Chaos International 3 / 1986 and picked up on the Situationist references quote. (from the situationist-chaos-magic-fetish).

2. devo and John Eden pointed out the most obvious crossover is derive/reve-dirige and psychogeography. Turbulence has some good articles, and the last two, 'the bluffers guide' are a good introduction. Lots of original Situationist articles including Debord's Theory of the Derive. John Eden also says The LPA uncovered a lot of alchemical references in Chtcheglov's "Formulary for a new urbanism". LPA.

3. LVX23 suggested the Spectacle as an egregore, a hypersigil, or a medium in which many thoughtforms exist and interact. It's sort of a socioeconomic aether filled with all manner of spirits (brands, product, simulacrum, story, icons and actors, etc...).

4. alejandrorodecello pointed out Hakim Bey, there are a lot of his writings here.

5. J Mellott says Raul Vaneigem's writings are closer to magic/mystic thought than Debord's. He also suggests Bataille.

6. madhatter points out Walter Benjamin's interest in the Kabbalah.

7. I suggested that marxist methodology (dialectics) has a debt to mysticism and occultism - remember Hegel was a theologian as much as he was a philosopher (see Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition by Glenn Alexander Magee.)

8. I also pointed out that if there is to be a dialogue, it can't be with 'classical' marxism (which madhatter pointed out does not fit with magic paradigms at all), but with thinkers such as Lukacs, Critical Theory/Frankfurt School (Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Fromm) and the SI, who are more idealistic and less materialistic - their approach to communism is not economically determinist, and crosses over with literary criticism, psychology and myth, dada & surrealism.

9. As for Marx himself, his earlier texts are more abstract and more magico-mystical to my mind, in particular the 1844 manuscripts. Note the importance of conscious action in Marx - when labor is directed by consciousness it is an expression of freedom & self-creation; but when it is estranged labor (aka alienated labor), it enslaves the laborer to an external force. I suggested that Labor can be used interchangably with Magick (in the Magick in Theory & Practice definition by Crowley), and that consciousness is very similar to Crowley's Will.

10. Something else I pointed out: the magical paradigms and the modes of production have an interesting parallel: 1. shamanism/hunter-gatherer, 2. pagan/agricultural, 3. monotheist/feudal, 4. atheist/capitalist -> so what is 5? I quoted above from Marx's 'Private Property and Communism' showing that he believed a communist society would involve a transcending of both atheism and theism.

11. John Eden said: Chaos and SI stuff was an influence on TOPY London in the 90s. Situationists are mentoned in this TOPY interview. Also the section in the TOPY Grey Book on Television.

12. On the Post Modern Magick by Seth thread, once TaylorEllwood joined the discussion on page 3, there were some posts related to magic, pop-culture, anti-capitalism, detournement and situationism. Including lots of needless agression by me.

13. Commodity Fetishism, see here, and trouser's link which is the 2nd post on this thread.

14. Wilhelm Reich, who was not in any way mystical, but was a communist for a long time, his book The Mass Psychology of Fascism is a Marxist classic, and his work on sexual repression has been very influential among occultists.

-bruno
 
 
Perfect Tommy
02:15 / 04.06.05
there is, on the one hand, the marxist notion that "das sein bestimmt das bewusztsein" (which i with my bad english translate as "the [economic] existence determines the mind"), whereas magick, as far as i understand it, has at it's core the belief that "das bewusztsein bestimmt das sein" ("the mind determines the existence"), which is quite the opposite.

Just because a couple of things are opposite doesn't mean that they're not both true. I am under the impression that Marxism suggests that when the time is right for an idea/an art movement/a revolution/what-have-you, the zeitgeist essentially causes a person or persons to enact it; it's not the heroic action of an individual, it is society's request for this thing to happen. (Perhaps better said that society allows it to happen, and if the idea was had previously it didn't fly.) But magicians, particularly when we are disappearing up our own asses, can believe that we are the kings of infinite space when in fact we have bound ourselves cozily inside our nutshells. I should think both approaches might be useful opposites to keep in mind simultaneously—reality determines the mind determines reality.
 
 
delacroix
07:32 / 10.06.05
Reality determines the mind determines reality:

First off, it's hard to get more mystical than the Frankfurt school. Deconstruction(ist) discussions usually end up in drivel, but Minima Moralia (for example) is like an I Ching of shadows, of anti-insights that I found useful for voiding portions of my mind; I mean to say its ritualized assault on mysticism takes the form of sorcery, and you don't have to be a sophist to see it if you just pick up the book and look at the way it's arranged. It's one of the stranger, holier texts in my collection.

(Isn't there an essay in there, a Toy Shop, where Adorno argues that children play with toys in a vain effort to preserve their use value and deny that they have, essentially, only exchange value? And in arguing this, does he not more or less prove that he doesn't care what his ideas can be exchanged for, that he's really supplied the brief chapter, apropos of nothing, as a _useful_ toy for readers to play with?)

And because the economic relationships between people _are_ reality in Marx, once you translate "exchange value" from "What one person can get from another" to "what one person can get from The Cosmos," the economic exchanges do not change form, they just change color: from excahnges to rituals, or ceremonies. So actually, I think Marxian thought and Magickal thought are just about the same.

-Delacroix
 
 
Bruno
14:34 / 10.06.05
Delacroix: I liked your post. But I'm not sure if I understood this bit:
And because the economic relationships between people _are_ reality in Marx, once you translate "exchange value" from "What one person can get from another" to "what one person can get from The Cosmos," the economic exchanges do not change form, they just change color: from excahnges to rituals, or ceremonies. So actually, I think Marxian thought and Magickal thought are just about the same.

Do you mean that to Marx, reality is only economic relationships between people?

I don't understand what 'color' refers to here.

I also don't understand what your two translations of exchange value are saying. By the second one ("what one person can get from The Cosmos,") do you mean that 'The Cosmos' (people, life, nature, matter, time, the 'spritual', everything) becomes objectified?
Since once we are talking about The Cosmos, the self vanishes; we definitely can't talk about profit in terms of "me and the cosmos", profit loses any meaning in that context. One of the not-so-hidden gods of capitalism is the ego, the seperated alienated self.

Ritual is a strange word, because (in the anthropological sense anyway) it refers to any action.

feeling a bit lost here.
-bruno
 
 
delacroix
17:12 / 10.06.05
Bruno: "One of the not-so-hidden gods of capitalism is the ego, the separated, alienated self."

Well, saying that, that's a shading technique in the aesthetics of wordviews. Thats what I meant about things changing color. "Alienation," etc, are themes, really, and aren't more or less real than other aesthetic choices, like the filmstock used to make a movie, or the lights used on stage.

And the "ego" which looks false and burlesque when its seen as "alienated," appears different once "Cosmos" is interpellated (I guess) by magick, a new mode of attention (I guess you could say it's the opposite Althussair's(sp) call of "Hey You" from the cop to the citizen, because its an immediate relationship of respect.) The Self doesn't disappear at all.

So what I meant by color was that the whole drama of alienation and exchange has the same lines and the same movements, but its all now lit differently.

(Maybe you could see the Frankfurters as lighting the stage of economic life with flourescents?)

(...need coffee... thanks for being so patient with me...)
 
 
Bruno
20:30 / 10.06.05
delacroix,

"Alienation," etc, are themes, really, and aren't more or less real than other aesthetic choices, like the filmstock used to make a movie, or the lights used on stage.

Alienation is much more than an aesthetic choice! For Marx, alienation referred to the seperation of the laborer from his activity & its fruit, of humanity from its nature
This is a very real, objective phenomenon. People are exploited. Their time is robbed of them in the service of an irrational economy. Any sense of community and collectivity is subverted by the status quo. Our capability for free thought is castrated in youth, our social relationships those of master and slave, customer and prostitute. And then 3rd world conditions - without which the 1st world "quality of life" could not exist - starvation, wars, disease, envronmental catastrophe, because of capitalist economics. This state of things exists on a scale we cannot begin to imagine. I might be describing it in a semi-poetic way but i am describing real conditions.

I can go to a supermarket and there are infinite ways to look at it. I can take in the experience in all kinds of aesthetic ways, I can look at colors and lighting and I can even run and jump into the trolley and slide like a kid. I can shoplift and dance and think about the magical properties of pepsi's color scheme and I can sing sadly while gazing at the ham.
But
the people at the cash register are still exploited,
and the cows whose milk is in the dairy products are still tortured,
and so on
Truth. Real. Not aesthetics.

Without meaning that we should spend the whole day staring at the floor going 'oh no everything is so alienated'. There are plenty ways to deal with reality.

Have I misunderstood you Delacroix?

I do not know the original Althusser quote of the cop. I found him very difficult and never read him.

-bruno
 
 
delacroix
08:03 / 12.06.05
"Alienation is much more than an aesthetic choice!"

I'm confused; why are we bothering to talk about magick at all if you're willing to invest belief in a convoluted, amorphous concept used (somewhat) differently by so many people?

Kidding aside:

You haven't misunderstood me, but you're talking about the world (the referent) and I'm talking about the signifiers (Marx, the Frankfurt School, theories.) Alienation is real, but when people talk about alienation, they use the word by aesthetic choice. And the word "alienation" is often a fashion statement. I don't mean to belittle these concepts if they're sacred to you, because "aesthetic" doesn't mean "superficial" or anything pejorative like that. You seem to be objecting to my take on alienation on moral grounds, so try and hear me out here.

People who talk about the alienated subject get so carried away with the drama of it (sorry, but) that we don't see the point where our testimony becomes more of a phantasmagoria than a description. Moreover, to connect this with magick: at a certain point you're not even describing the world so much as casting a spell upon it.
(Picture someone haivng a relative institutionalized "for her own good," and shaking his head sadly, even though the relative might be sane and capable of handling her own life: I don't mean to offend, but that's the image I get whenever people seem emotionally attached to theories of alienation because they're "real" and "true.")

Why not "theorize" an empowered subject? A lot of thinkers would say: "That's impossible in this world, because [and then they cast a binding spell on themselves and anyone who takes them seriously]."

Maybe that's the point: when the real truthcould be used instead of philosophy.

And this isn't pseudometaphysical poststructuralist bullshit either, I'm not on an apple-box about truth being a fallacious concept or anything like that.

There is a spirit of animosity in the writers who haunt this discussion (Not Marx but Adorno, Jameson, et. al) and it's an animosity toward human power, toward agency. They don't really know they're doing it, but writing is sorcery, not description. Words are power.

Writers of this school toss phrases like "the alienated subject/ego" like wicked witches trying to turn the Reader into a toad, and, in an equally predictable Grimms Fairy Tale fashion, they tend to act like they're on the Worker/Reader's side.

And while we're chatting, what ever happened to good manners? Isn't it rude to subjects to say that they're alienated and incapable of changing that, they may not know it, but it's true? Again, why ask about magick if you're willing to "believe" assumptions so banal and constrictive? I mean, you boldfaced the words real and true, so you're investing belief in something, and you seem to be doing it in the name of compasion, but from another vantage point, it could be seen as condescending.

I hope I'm a little clearer... I'm sticking to my guns on this one; it's dangerous not to see writing as an aesthetic exercise, even if you believe it, even if you find it "true." Especially if it's supposed to be true, in fact.

I'm one who thinks life is pretty random except where human efforts make it less so, and I think it's a tragedy that the Old Testament is the center of world literature; it got to be that way because folks decided they'd rather not see it as a work of art, but rather as a book of facts. But they responded, not to truth, but to aesthetic power resonating in the text. Marx is no different.

And you can call me Susan if it isn't so.

Am I a little clearer now?
 
 
Bruno
17:50 / 13.06.05
Delacroix:
I think I agree with your post on most points. Criticism accepted. My previous post was written in a bad mood (got to stop doing that).

Obviously alienation as a word means lots of things. Like all words. I am curious, the word 'sorcery' as you use it, is it the same as magic(k) or something different?

I didn't mean 'aesthetic' to mean superficial, I just really dislike supermarkets. Sorry for the patronising tone.

These terms are not sacred to me, but for me the referent for alienation is the essence of profanity. So I take it seriously, too seriously at times. I am still an alienated fucker a lot of the time (but the ladies still love me because I am cool).

Now agency and power are very strange terms, especially power. Power, it's the name of a gym near my house. It is central to magic, the Will (to Power), 'the man of power' etc. It can be a synonym to Freedom or it can be a synonym to Authority.
Power in the context of the academic, well the academic tends to be alienated and this blends into his writing, the academic is often disempowered but finds a power of sorts in the words. The academic also tends to be jealous of the more empowered, tends to create a false bubble of superiority (often through jargon & other stylistics that only other academics can understand). The academic has risen to his current status via the authoritarian hierarchy of institutionalized education, and usually believes in its principles on some level. I agree with Gramsci that the intellectuals have to become workers and the workers intellectuals... it's a very logical synthesis.

So how does one theorize an empowered subject. On a large scale, I do think it is not possible at this point in time. On the smaller scale, it is the possibility of Conscious Action - in magic this is usually understood as very individualistic (and is often not considered 'conscious' but instead channelled or subconscious), in marxism this is class consciousness. I used to be in favor of political violence but it is just a dead end, it makes the State much stronger, and I do not agree with 'ends justify the means' any more. Right now I just have a very vanguardist approach to art (mainly music and lyrics, hip-hop with the MC being the empowered subject par excellence) and hope that this can create a change in consciousness on some level, especially outside of the context of show business and instead in the context of community. I think the Rastafarian influence in reggae is a good starting point for future movements, especially since the empowered subject is both individual and communal at the same time, I&I. So that is casting another kind of spell, a spell of liberation.

Real education, as opposed to the brainwashing we get nowadays, is really the way forwards I guess, for conscious action and agency to manifest... we are programmed to act like robots on so many levels, lately I have been thinking about the body, breathing, the tongue, the eyes, muscles, nutrition, all of that stuff I think is directly linked with Consciousness, waking. An ecology of the microcosm. Magic takes all of these factors into account but Marxist's don't from what I know. A good exception being Reich.

I am interested in hearing other thoughts of yours, especially as regards "theorizing" an empowered subject into existence.

-bruno
 
 
Bruno
12:26 / 18.06.05
-On The Supermarket-

In agricultural societies life revolved around farming. Farming revolved around the seasons and the weather. You were born and your reality was constantly linked to the fields being tilled by your extended family. There was an awe for the weather and all of these things. Obviously religion sprang from these roots, the central myths of most polytheism is linked to the seasons, the source of food, the source of life.
Under capitalism, the child knows that food comes from the supermarket. Our mothers take us to the supermarket in our prams, it even seems exciting to us, we are hypnotised by the boxes and boxes of cereals and drinks and so on, we choose them by the characters on the cover, by the bright colors, rather than the taste or feeling eating them gives us. The infinite choice, anything you want, all end with the ritual of buying, signing the check, counting the change, collecting the coupon, carrying the bags. One of the central myths.

---
Sometimes I go for walks and imagine each person I see is a god; I like to think I am allowing myself to be overwhelmed by their essence, or rather the essence of that moment between us. It can be many things.
When I try this in places like supermarkets or shopping districts, the god in them seems gone. Confused, desperate. Am I imagining it?

-bruno
 
 
jbsay
23:49 / 19.06.05
Marxism is definitely a religious world view. There is the sacred & the profane. In religions, gods are sacred while this world and the human are profane; humanity objectifies itself and creates gods which have power over it. In capitalism the commodity is sacred and humanity disempowers itself in its name. In marxism humanity is sacred (Engels says somewhere "God is man" which links up with all kinds of mystical/magical traditions) and is self-creating. (which say is the same as the Great Work, or the Will, etc).

I agree that Marxism is religious. I would disagree with this statement and re-formulate it as follows:

I would be hard pressed to define "religion" by saying that gods are sacred and the individual is profane. How would you classify Gnosticism?

In Marxism (or any branch of Socialism that advocates public ownership of the means of production) the State is sacred--the individual Will is subsumed by the Will of the State (i.e. a small group of individual Wills). Each individual is equal, just some are more equal than others.

In Capitalism each Individual is sacred (and private property rights, as a means to securing the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for each and every individual).
 
 
jbsay
00:01 / 20.06.05
Re: Marxian commodity fetishizing:

Marx's use of the term fetishic relates to his theories of commodities and value. His argument is that material objects are given value through social relations, but this process of constructing hierarchies of value is forgotten, and commodities are seen to be 'naturally' valuable - and the processes of exploitative production are forgotten. Marxist theorists argue that the material forms of capitalist production are to be understood as relationships between objects, which serves to conceal and distort the underlying relations between people.

The Marxian view of value has subsequently been disproven many times over by the marginal (subjective theory) of valuation. His view arose from an error in thinking on the part of classical economistss (Ricardo, Mills, etc.). It would take too long to go through the history and economics, but to disprove Marxian theory, reductio ad absurdum: I could spend thirty years worth of labor hours and other resources working on the perfection of a giant steam-powered unicycle. If, however, on offering this product no consumers can be found to purchase this tricycle, it is economically valueless, regardless of the misdirected effort that I had expended upon it. Value is consumer valuations, and the relative prices of goods and services are determined by the extent and intensity of consumer valuations and desires for these products.

To summarize, all valuation is subjective. If you want more info look up Carl Menger, subjective valuation, and marginal analysis.
 
  

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