Debating Marxism and Revolutionary Practice

Nine members and close friends of PLP participated in the week-long annual summer institute of the Marxist Literary Group/Institute on Culture and Society (MLG-ICS) at Ohio State University. Over many years, a number of us have attended this gathering — which draws together faculty, graduate students and artists in the humanities.  This year’s experience was the best ever.
The worldwide economic crisis has generated profound skepticism about the ability of capitalism to meet the needs of the vast majority of the inhabitants of the planet.  While a decade ago it was difficult to utter the word “communism”— even among self-described Marxists! — the word is now on the lips of many.  Although the “New Communist Philosophers” — most notably Alain Badiou, Slavoj Zizek, Jodi Dean, and Bruno Bosteels — hardly envision the same path to communism as PLP, the fact that leftist academics are vigorously discussing how to get past capitalism opens up significant possibilities for deeper political work.
Our presentations ranged over a wide array of topics.  We offered critical commentaries on the representations of race, class, gender and nation in popular movies and TV shows.
We argued that widely accepted anticommunist versions of Soviet history are false. We examined the financially-saturated language in which sexual and romantic relations are formulated in the mass media.  We urged a critical reexamination of the unscientific terms in which the connections between capitalism and nuclear power are widely construed.  We proposed friendly but sharp critiques of the shortcomings of various New Communist Philosophers, particularly in connection with the need for antiracism and internationalism.  No one could fault PL members for being focused on a narrow agenda!
In the sessions where papers were given, we engaged in sharp but friendly commentary and critique of the ways in which Marxist theory was being applied to literature, philosophy and history. In conversations with fellow graduate students and faculty members, we discussed matters of common concern, such as turning academic labor into more contingent, temporary, unstable jobs without benefits. We discussed the dismal job market, as well as the need for a mass communist movement in which the fight against racism plays a central role.  Although we could have done a better job of distributing Challenge, we had better discussions this year than in the past about the role that PL is currently playing in the building of that mass communist movement.
The barriers to political work in this group remain formidable. Neo-Marxism and post-Marxism, while less fashionable than they were a decade ago, continue to divert potential radicals into hyper-theoretical discussions having little to do with revolutionary practice.  Anticommunism, while more on the defensive, continues to guide many assumptions about politics and history.
Too many presumably leftist academics remain unbothered by the nearly all-white participation in gatherings like the Summer Institute. We need to wage a continuing struggle for a more objective and dialectical understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the past century’s attempts to move past capitalism and build egalitarian societies.
Most of the PL members and friends who took part in this summer’s MLG-ICS meeting built new friendships, consolidated old ones, and deepened our ties with a number of academics who take seriously the need for communism.  We were also energized to enter the fall semester with a renewed commitment to campus organizing.