Fidelity to Truth

This is my comment to Jodi Dean's post, "No Time for Politics":

Hello Ms Dean,

It is a little bit late, but Happy Birthday!

My birthday was April 2nd. As an ordinary celebration I spent my 32nd birthday by contemplating on the path my life, on how the forms of social relations ironically consumes the content of proper communication, our capacity for full speech, the field of political interaction (Here I mean something very fundamental other than real politics. Political in the sense of a praxis that interferes in the connection of two people), namely, I dwell on how this non-stop bombardment of “empty gestures”, ear-splitting prattle of “empty speech”, all those hysterical exchange of links, You-Tube videos, SMS massages, etc. etc. leads to an all-embracing isolation.

I think there are two connected features of the contemporary excessive communication or the “communicative capitalism”: The first one is the hyperactive exchange of “empty gestures”, images, jokes, slogans and the most stereotyped expression of language, etc. to prevent something that will probably disintegrate our dispassionate purity in this sheltered space. As Zizek describes as, “people not only act in order to change something, they can also act in order to prevent something from happening”. And the second one is this obsessive exchange of “empty speech” does not only provide an escape from “full speech” which verbalizes a truth about our desires in the boundaries of present, but also provides a blockade that prevent us to lie about ourselves since lies generally disclose the depth of truth more explicitly than sincere and straightforward statements. Thus the concealed silence beneath this communicative uproar signifies our or their anxiety to accidentally reveal an unbearable truth of ourselves. She or he consistently avoids proper communication to prevent the outbreak of any evidence that would possibly expose a disturbing truth: I have the right to remain silent. Here we need Hillary and Barak to sustain our counter-revolutionary hyperactivity by handing over the entertaining demonstration of the leakage of truth from the crack of “empty speech”.

“The Soviets--they had stamina, the stamina for politics”. I agree. The Soviets had stamina for politics in the conditions of specific political dimensions. In the present, I think we must attach another quality to this essential precondition to deal with politics. As Badiou pointed out, no matter how unbearable and impossible they seem, we also need a decisive fidelity to political truths: Fidelity to disclose them with every possible manner.

I will publish this comment on my blog.

Best,

An Imperialist Poll

A recent article in MRZINE about a public opinion poll that was carried out by WorldPublicOpinion.org introduces how Iranians are satisfied with their goverment.

There is a profound ideological implication in the form of these questions.

First of all by querying an affirmative statement abstractly (Do you TRUST the national government in Iran to do WHAT IS RIGHT? etc.) the interviewers direct the subjects to shy away from negative answers. Together with this crafty manipulation and Iranians' well-founded suspicion that there could be covert government investigation beneath this sudden interest about their opinions, it is not surprising that this pseudo-poll has reached its original goal. The deduction here is not a critique of Western imperialism in the sense that how it misleadingly depicts Iran that fits their imperialist intentions. Surprisingly, this scientific pool perfects the imperialist propositions: The danger with Iran is not merely about its undemocratic, antiquated, oppressive and unpredictable regime like our politicians used to represent. But there is also an ossified trauma, an internal evil haunting the mentality of this monster: Although the Iranian regime is an utter outrage, the citizens are somewhat contended to be a part of it.

As I said, the questions are arranged to repress the negative responses. Let us apply something else that entirely removes the possibility of a negative response and completes the perfection of ideological manipulation. Let us compel Iranians to give concrete affirmative answers. For instance, instead of asking whether they are satisfied of Iran’s economy, let’s ask them to enumerate the positive developments in economy in recent years, or ask them to give tangible examples of the improvements in the social life, etc. Only by this way, only through forcing the subjects to neglect the negative option which is already repressed in social life, it is possible to reveal the ironical humiliation in the Iranian regime. Let Iranian people creatively fabricate lies about their reality. Their answers might reflect the immensity of the oppression that they are dealing with.

There is a wonderful passage in “Bob Dylan's 115th Dream” that perfectly depicts how people creatively lie about an unpleasant reality. (The caps are mine):

"Well, by this time I was fed up
At tryin' to make a stab
At bringin' back any help
For my friends and Captain Arab
I decided to flip a coin
Like either heads or TAILS
Would let me know if I should go
Back to ship or back to JAIL
So I hocked my sailor suit
And I got a coin to flip
It came up TAILS
It rhymed with SAILS
So I made it back to the ship"

We Need a First Life

On Marxmail, David Picón Álvarez inquired the opinions of the comrades on whether The Ultimatum Game has potential to represent “the capitalist assumptions about rational agent behavior”. This is my response:


If we apply to Hegel, rationality is not a set of fixed formulas that serve to calculate the existing order of things, but an equation contains some variables and expresses the proportion between rationality and actuality. I think this experiment indicates one thing at best: People have a propensity to adjust their rationality to the texture of actuality. Once an equation that provides a hinge for interaction has been established, some people attempt to revolutionize the actuality, some try to prevent it, some neglect to interfere in, etc. Also, these entire scuffle structures the rationality. If we force the subjects of this experiment to play this game 10.000 times, but not for a once and anonymously, we certainly reach very different conclusions.

Two weeks ago I read an article about “Second Life”, the renowned virtual 3D world. Then I installed the game client to figure out and experience the enjoyment of virtual reality. I spent the first hour by struggling to create an avatar which exactly looks like me, a bald guy wearing t-shirt and black jeans. And after studying the basic movements I was ready to vanish in the mist of virtual reality. Unfortunately, it didn’t took me long realize that I was doing the exact same things that I would do in real life if I suddenly plunge into an unfamiliar environment. I was stone broke and glazed the showcases of shops, wandered around without any effort to meet and interact with new people, watched the sunset in an exotic island, etc. After couple of hours, it dawned on me that I need a First Life in the first place. Then I quitted the game with the taste of dissatisfaction.

I am not eager to buy any of two common explanations of how people act in virtual reality: People tend realize their fantasies or reveal their true characteristics repressed in the real world by the restrictions of social order. Both of these are too simplistic and overlook the reciprocal manipulation processing between the subject and reality. Therefore, my own experimental fiasco in “Second Life” is largely because of my stubbornness to adjust my reality to the arrangement and procedure of virtual reality but not as a result of a lack of any fantasies and unrecognized desires repressed by social order. For instance, two weeks ago a bizarre scandal was disclosed about Max Mosley, the president of FIA, who was caught in the act of sado-masochistic sex orgy with some girls dressed as Nazi officers. The common diagnosis is he is a regular pervert racist who likes to get his ass whipped and can only get pleasure from sexual intercourse with the mediation of fetish objects. But there is another fascinating feature in this scandal: He knows the mechanism and the order of the sado-masochistic virtual reality so that he is able to realize his darkest fantasies in the regulations of sexual role playing game. He precisely knows the laws and principles of the game; therefore he is capable to manipulate the virtual reality: “Oh Mistress! Please spank me, I am a traitor”

When I started to play poker, I was ashamed to bet and raise or check-raise since my personality obliged me to regard this sort of moves as an insult to other players. I was a usual tight-passive donkey constantly losing money for the sake of preserving my dignity. Then I decided to read the most important books dealing with the game, from Sklansky, Harrington to Brunson. After I have acquired a fundamental understanding about the reality within the game, I started to manipulate and exploit its very reality. I had become a downright hypocrite, cunning, provocative player making the sneakiest moves comfortably. As long as I could adjust myself with the rationality of a given table, I secured permission to act like a complete lunatic, betting with nothing, folding with something and calling with the nuts, etc. to manipulate the dynamics of the game. It is not because of the possibility that perhaps I possess a swindler in me repressed by social reality. But the deceptiveness enveloping the order of the game had compelled me to adjust my naivety according to its regulation. After this continuous process of alteration has become intolerable, I quitted this game as well.

In “18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte” Marx said:

And as in private life one differentiates between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does, so in historical struggles one must distinguish still more the phrases and fancies of parties from their real organism and their real interests, their conception of themselves from their reality.

The Genius of Soros

After reading Louis’s post (I will give the link later on) I searched the Internet to find out what the heck Soros means by “reflexivity”. Then I found the text of speech that elucidates his notion of “reflexivity”:

http://www.geocities.com/ecocorner/intelarea/gs1.html

As I understand, he indicates that “the participants’ bias” in market transactions triggers the disequilibrium of markets and consequently changes the reality of economy. He ridiculously assumes that he has discovered an innovative theory about the connection between the reality and thinking. He is way too materialist in the matter of understanding that the reality is constituted by human activity but a total idiot in the sense of regarding this activity as the product of individual bias, the unreasoned judgment about the existing reality.

I know I have already overstepped the mark today by relating the concept of price by psychoanalytic definition of the symptom but I feel obliged to apply another extraneous metaphor, since George Soros’s filthy speculations in financial markets is commonly designated as “BETS”. I am not familiar with financial markets, but I have considerable amount of experience about the theory and practice of betting. Therefore, this time I will give an example in connection with the game of poker:

Let us consider that in the very beginning of a tournament; I was dealt a pair of jacks, a premium hand, but just to run against an imbecile sitting on the button who raises all-in with Ace-King suited. Suppose that I can see his or her hand. The reality of mathematics and the theory of poker advise me that I must call his bet immediately since I am nearly 54% favorite to win the hand and I have to prefer the actions that are profitable in the long run. But there is no such a thing as long run in a poker tournament. Therefore, the reasonable action here is to fold my beautiful jacks. At the moment I don’t have enough chips to prove the rightfulness of probability.

For that reason, what Soros regards as a bias against the existing reality does not imply an unreasonable preference disregarding the elementary science of probability and the art of evaluating the worth of correct information in the financial markets. But unlike Soros most of the gamblers in the grand financial casino haven’t got enough chips to consistently warrant the science of probability by making mathematically and informatively the correct decisions. His genius in financial markets sarcastically originates from the merciless reality that he has a lot of chips that provides resilience against the distasteful variance and teasing jokes of probability.

Once Marx said:

“In reality and for the practical materialist, i.e. the communist, it is a question of revolutionising the existing world, of practically attacking and changing existing things.”

The Symptom of Value

A comrade suggested on Marxmail that we Marxists should focus on money to save Marx's theory of value. This is my response:

Although in an inverted fashion, the questions that have been raised by Rakesh Bhandari imply the fundamental methodological difference between Marx and the classical political economy.

On couple of occasions Marx mentioned how preceding economists incorrectly began with analyzing “the real and the concrete” outcomes of the historical development of capitalist production, for Marx, “which have already acquired the stability of natural, self-understood forms of social life, before man seeks to decipher, not their historical character, for in his eyes they are immutable, but their meaning”. Out of the sphere of classical political economy this critique might be regarded as relevant about the economics after Marx, just think about Keynes’ theory of prices which is focused on the connection of the quantity of money and the changes in the price-level.

With running the risk of antagonizing comrades here, let me define price as the symptom of value. Although it is the final and the actual manifestation of value, in a repetitive fashion, it speaks about a fixed, concealed meaning that underlies the value. But just as Marx has revealed perplexingly that instead of disclosing a hidden meaning, what if it is the immediate, concrete form of value that conceals its authentic nature, the mechanism of social relations that produce value? If we return to the metaphor above, and remember Lacan’s statement that the real excludes meaning, there is a remarkable resemblance between Marx’s never-ending critiques of political economy and his decisive break with the its methodology and Lacan’s famous declaration that “psychoanalysis is a scam”. It is a scam as long as it supposes there is a direct, unambiguous connection between the meaning of the symptom and the real. Similarly, bourgeois economics is a scam as long as it presupposes that the meaning of immediate forms of capitalist production could be deciphered by investigating the real. As Marx said:

“The whole mystery of commodities, all the magic and necromancy that surrounds the products of labour as long as they take the form of commodities, vanishes therefore, so soon as we come to other forms of production.”

Therefore, it is not a wise idea to focus on money-form to save Marx’s theory of value. This approach would be exact opposite of his methodology.

On Marxmail, Angelus Novus wrote:

"Mehmet, by any chance have you read the first chapter of Slavoj Zizek's The Sublime Object of Ideology? :-)

I am somewhat skeptical of Zizek, due to his reputation as being an academic comedian, but I was very pleased to see that he heavily leans upon Alfred Sohn-Rethel in his discussion of Marx's analysis of the commodity. Anyone who uses Sohn-Rethel as areference for these discussions is fine with me. "

Mehmet Çagatay:

Hello Angelus,

No, I didn't read Zizek's book. Two years ago I tried to read it while I was staying at the house of a friend but because that I was so desperately in love with my host, I couldn't manage to focus and didn't understand anything. I didn't read it afterwards as well since that book reminds me her.

To be honest, a while ago I read Jacques Alain Miller's essay on symptom.My references to Lacan generally orginates from Miller.