MARX CONTINUED
"Consciousness does not determine life, but life determines consciousness." Marx
Period. [ mid XIX century ]
After a month or so I and the Latina police got relaxed; it was obvious that the Soviets had no plans to kidnap me. So, I would walk out of the camp, get to the station and go to Rome. All that Capitano asked me is to be back at night.
I met her on the train going back from Rome. She was sitting right across -- dark eyes, dark hair -- and I thought about her. I knew very few words in Italian, not enough even to make small talk, never mind my thoughts. I thought that maybe this is it, I mean, to stay here in Italy, to paint, forget all my plans, America, books, the USSR and Moscow, marry her....
She got up, the next stop was Latina, my station. And she walked out in front of me, with her big hips, her breast -- and I got up and walk behind her, knowing that she knows my thoughts. I am sure of that, because several times our eyes met.
She was standing at the door and I was the only one behind her. I do not remember what I said. Did I ask something? Maybe. And she answered. I said something else. Now we were standing next to each other and looking at each other.
"Speak English, if it's easy for you," she said.
No, it wasn't easy. The only language I knew was Russian. Who would know Russian in Italy besides Russians and East Europeans. I am Russian. That is what I said to her. She knew where the refugee camp was. In fact, she had a friend who speaks Russian and works sometimes for the refugees.
We were standing on the platform and the train was gone.
She said that they will come to see me, she and her friend. And she wrote her phone number and gave it to me. And then she walked away and I was the only one there. It was getting dark.
I. ALIENATION? THANK YOU!
No wonder that the weak minds love Marxism. My life in this view is nothing but a monologue of history. My identity is produced by life as text, where I am a material. If we exclude the Self, Marx is right. Why not see self-consciousness simply as a segment of this reactive apparatus? Something of the animal's instinct for self-preservation. Self-awareness becomes totally social, my relations with myself are secondary. The slaves had to wait so long for their own theory.
What could be a radical answer to the radicalism of Marxism? There is something admirable in his shocking dismissal of the Individual. Nietzsche couldn't answer it. Existentialism is a data, communism is a conclusion. Nothing utopian about it, in different forms (fascism or techno-culture) we practically explore the world without Individual. Extending life expectancy or achieving immortality wouldn't add to the "productive" conditions of being a person. It's "life-time product policy" only. Tell me about God's individuality? How much do we know about Christ's personality? History of modernity culminated in positioning the last on the top of the social pyramid. God, child, idiot...
No, Marx is not a historical matter and the so-called "collapse of communism" is a historical misreading of history. Technology, which in Foucault' terms of power and discipline, accelerates faster than ever. Our rising standard of living makes us into super-needy producers. The more we produce our own lives, the more this "humanism" loses its human face. As if an individual and a human are not only lost contacts but go away from each other with the speed of light. Whatever is good for me, as a member of humanity, is a mortal blow as an individual. The classical conflict between one (hero) and all (society, now -- humanity) became metaphysical. The cataclysmic split is even more dramatic inside me.
Existentialism is a paranoid REACTION to Marxism? Or Marxism is a reaction to the romantic individualism? Tailor's answer to Lord Byron. Nevertheless, there's Master's logic of emotions too well described in Russian literature of the Golden Age. If I have nothing to do (the extra people -- Onegin, Pechorin, Oblomov), if I'm free from labor and need of survival, if I am outside of the social, and, practically, dead... My relationships with myself are the only business of mine. Too bad that Marx gave up on poetry. The self-awakening begins with this value of I, which becomes my main profession and pre-occupation. My historical makeup is secondary, otherwise, how would I be able to identify myself with Shakespeare and he to write in the name of the living and the dead?
Marx didn't believe in God. Hard to imagine. Or was he offended by the silent of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost? In Karl's outrage the Holy Ghost granted him some revelations. Capital is a good reason to write Inferno. His honesty was rewarded -- his conclusions are irrelevant; we testify, our judgment is only an opinion.
"Man is nothing..."
A cry of dying soul... Panic! What else would motivate Heidegger to support the Nazi Revolution? The crowds of Russian intellectuals who went into the flames of Bolshevism for their annihilation. What was this cultural outburst about, the protest triggered by the Age of Revolution? For two centuries an individual in agony over losing grounds in humanity.
Oh, we thought that we are in it together!
I have to write to stay as a particle, to have a sense of my
presence. It's my personal history of becoming a human.
The human will only become human, according to Heidegger, in the relationship to being that is founded by thinkers and poets; only through language as the "house of being" can humans find their essence.[1]
Forget Plato and Kant, common sense should tell you that the closest "being" is my own. How do they look like, the human
relation to the being? Who could they look like? Very dramatic!
...I'm a compromised existentialist, a pomo. To live is a compromise. Actually, an existentialist is a guilt stricken conformist. Yes, I want to be alienated from such an individual -- me. God is always dissatisfied (read Genesis, read moments of happiness). Tragic method of existentialists is nothing less than a description of God's reflections on himself. Now, imagine the degree of being disappointed in yourself which is underneath the powers. Imagine His multiple personalities which are developed to the point of stable personalities. POMO finally, approaching the land of pure desperation of the divine. Yes, yes, follow Him!
... Time to learn what it means to be One and Only. The Greek gods were a happy banch. One God is different, and I am not sure why he is immortal -- what is the meaning of it, if you are alone? This singularity is a heavy matter. What's the point to talk about my humanity, if I am the One Only? My relations to everything are secondary.... weel, that is where the uniquess comes. Listen, let me stay for another century or two and see how further away I will be from you! All I do since I was born -- a departure. I far away from the living today and walk away even from the last contacts I have with you.... Maybe I need another millennium to get it....
Pragmata of Resurrection (good-for, use-value, service) moves on me with the absolute powers of nature. My Self is looking for a refuge, a cave of language, a black hole of humanized universe. Or should I see it as a fact of my existence -- being in this parallel universe, an invisible observer of my own life. I am not courageous enough to accept this fact of resurrection. I passed the horizon of the black hole, everything already took place; it's only a light, a delayed event -- I, an individual, am gone.
They came, she and her friend, who spoke Russian. They came to the office where I was typing the documents in Latin letters for the refugees from the Eastern Europe for whom Russian was the only foreign languge they knew. It easy job and paid job, I had to spell their names as close as possible to their original sounds. Well, it's not that easy with the Slavic names. Look what happened to my own name.
They came and talked to my boss behind the door at the end of the big office and, when the three of them came out smilling, I understood taht I am free for the rest of the day. We walked through the camp under the eyes of so many, went through the gates and the guard saluted us with the smile, as if he too knew what was going on.
Her friend was comfortable with the twoo of us, but she was her friend. I didn't care. She wanted to know who I am and I said that I am a writer and a defector. That I was with the delegation from Moscow in Rome and asked for a political assylem in the American Embassy. Why in US Embassy? Because I want to go to America? Why?
This point would come back often.
"America is no good," she said in English.
I understood it.
II. IDEAS AS A MATERIAL
So, the labor makes it into "materialism"?
4. Heidegger points out that Marxist materialism is not to be understood as the vulgar assertion that "everything is only matter" (S. 337) but as a metaphysical determination "according to which all
entities appear as the material for labour". (S. 337)
They, the workers, are against the labor. Capital is opposing the work. I'm a worker, I do treat myself as a material for labor. Capitalists are the best marxists. And do I do -- alienate myself? Willingly? With pleasure (workaholics)? Metaphysics of slavery -- refusal to alienate yourself, to think. Does a machine "work"?
It is nothing but the work.
(God) is not so much concerned with our works as with the spirit with which we perform them all... (Eckhart 27)
Does it mean that Existence is a work, labor, production? The matter exists while it is working, the moment an atom stops "sweating" it falls apart. Physical energy is this will to perform, and in good will! Will to exist, to be, to live.
And you don't have to be aware of labor. You better not.
When we find ourselves under pressure or constraint, it will be apparent that we are more worked than working... (E 47)
How could I compete with an electric bulb in consistency of this working attitude? Compete with the gravity? And I am supposed to over-perform them all!
Didn't you want to be God? Here we go!
Now you know why paradise feels like hell.
Adding insult to injury: whatever you make doesn't count if
it's not truly original -- new values (Nietzsche). It has to be
"non-existed before property"; something like VCR. Or CD. Not
born.
One day she invited me for a dinner. It wasn't an invitation, she came alone and we drove away from the camp. She had a car and was proud of it. She worked in Rome for the Ministry of Education, or something; there are many ministries in Italy.
The apartment was small. It was her apartment, but she let her brother, who was no good, to stay. The brother wasn't there. There was the table, the dinner and wine -- and we talked, mixing Italian and English words. It was the summer and the night hadn't come yet. There were dark spots on her light dress, under the arms and in back -- from the sweat. The sky behind the window wasn't blue anymore.
III. ALIENATION PRODUCED
Eckhart on the size of alienation[2]:
And so, if you wish to live and wish your works to live too, then you must be dead to all things and be reduced to nothing. It is a property of creatures to make one thing from another, but it is a property of God to make something from nothing. (A)[3] And so if God is to make something of you or in you, then you must first yourself become nothingness. Enter your own inner ground therefore and act from there, and all your works shall be living works. That is why 'the wise man' says that 'the just person lives in eternity' since it is because they are just that such a person acts, and all their works are living works. (E p. 145)
Creating from Nothing requires being in a state of Nothingness? Thought has God's creative attributes, or, better -- feelings! Oh, now we the dawns of virtuality make a lot of sense. The less matter is involved the bigger are the results.
Wait!
Heidegger: "Humankind is not the master of entities. Humankind is the shepherd of being." (S. 338)
... Why wouldn't they say it? Why not to say that Man is the only God's human expression, not people. Why not to say that Man is the master of entities? Why? Because we do not know which man? Does it matter? He could be Heidegger, Neitzsche, Eckhart, me. Whoever is capable of being Man. Isn't this alienation a good pointer, that Man is separated from people no less than God? Why not to give it to him, an individual? What do we know about Christianity othervise? What was the story of Christ about? Just because Plato looks like his slave, it makes his "human"? Human my foot! Human, animal, so what? He is this matter which is capable of alienating itself from itself -- what could be a better demonstration of the divine?
Man (God) is. Humanity is only an outer image of God. The Father. I'm the Son, Logos. Between us the Ghost -- knowledge, language, culture.
Marx: "Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious
being, and the being of humans is their real life process."
(ibid. 26) The being of humans, their real life is taken as
starting point for viewing history. "What constitutes life above
all is eating and drinking, having a place to live, clothes and
several other things." (ibid. 28)
OH!
Unbearable simplicity of Marxism:
They themselves start to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they start producing their means of life. (ibid. 21)
Marxism is powerful in its primitive simplity. What could one say about the above statement of alienation? Yeah, right! Now I understand? Really?...
Being Alive:
In so far as it is something external that prompts you to act, to that extent your works are dead, and even if it is God who prompts you to act from outside, then such works too are dead. If your works are to be living works, then God must spur you to action from within, from your innermost part, if they really are to be alive. For that is where you own life is, and that is the sole place where you are truly alive. (Eckhart p. 146)
Labor is evil (the original punishment) as long as it has an
external force. Inner-spurred work isn't the work, it's Want not
Need (define ?).
Everyone talks about alienation. But the worst alienation is not to be dispossessed by the other but to be dispossessed of the other, that is to say to have to produce the other in his absence, and thus to be continuously referred back to oneself and to one's image. If we are today condemned to our own image (condemned to cultivate our body, our look, our identity, and our desire), this is not because of an alienation, but because of the end of alienation and because of the virtual disappearance of the other, which is a much worse fatality. In fact, the paradoxical limit of alienation is to take oneself as a focal point [comme point de mire], as an object of care, of desire, of suffering, and of communication. This final short-circuiting of the other opens up an era of transparency. Plastic surgery [la chirurgie esthetique] becomes universal. That surgery of the faces and bodies is only the symptom of a more radical one: that of otherness and destiny. (Baudrillard _The Other_)
My identity is not an image, but a process. My image of myself (if any) is far away from my self-awareness. Can I even dream about imagining myself? I only wish to stretch the distance between my act and observation of this act.
My alienation? I beg for distance from them! From myself! Yes, more, please! How else I see myself? God is divorced from everything in principle. The more I'm distant from the reality, the closer I'm to One. Does it contradict my drive for the global? Of course, a slightest shadow of absence of contradiction is an indicator of death. You don't have to understand it, you can see it -- boring!
What is the difference between paradox and nonsense?
Let me think.
She tried. She made an appoinment for me with her minister. He was a small man, we shook hands, I spoke in my broken Italian and was explaining to him what I said. He was very friendly, this short man -- and the citizenship won't be a problem, no problems, none.
I even typed on my Russian typewriter an article about something Soviet and her friend translated it for the publication. She tried to show me that I could have my life here in Italy. The three of us went to the local galleries and to my surprise I sold all my paintings. For minimum pay, but she was happy, because I could live in Italy and do what I wanted to do.
She took me to her rich friends. We had to drive to the coast and up, where was this villa. They were nice. They wanted to know about Russia and a little bit about me. They all were Italians. And I was not. I knew that I will never be an Italian. It's like with the Russians. You have to born Russian and from the Russian parents. Nothing you can do about it. It's not America, you know.
She didn't understand it. Everything American was bad. She was sure that I shouldn't go there. She didn't understand that once I was a member of the big family, family of Russians, and now I want to be on my own, by myself. You can't have it twice. I lost it and it was a big loss. Big, she understands. But the life is not over, no....
My paintings were dark. With a lot of red in them. I quit the office and I painted all day. My Russian roommate didn't understand me. He didn't understand that once I made this big decision and I wasn't ready for another. He was a second captain of a Soviet commercial ship and the CIA took him away after a few weeks, because he knew some secrets. He wanted to know about her and me, he saw her with me and although he wasn't so talkative at first, he wanted to help me. We promice each other that we will keep in touch in America, but he saw that I can stay in Italy. We both knew nothing about America, though he was in New York and some other ports a few times. We both were not well to give any advice to anybody or ourselves.
He watched me paint and he talked. About himself, the family he left behind. About his wife, who will be okay, because she has a lover at the city hall, but he still loves her and will support their daughter. Every time he would start talking about me, he ended up talking about himself. Both of us weren't in Italy, we were in Russia.
Through the small window I could see how the sky is getting darker and the cool breeze came inside. And when I couldn't hear his Russian stories anymore, I would go on the roof to smoke and watch the dark sky with so many stars. I haven't seen so many since I was a child. The Italians have more stars than Russians. When you live in the North, you do not need that many stars, not in Russia, at least.
I will finish it on 1980 pages and NYC pages. I'm trying to explain why a man needs and woman and why I wanted my family.
NOTES
See _Revolt of the One_ (Anti-Marx) and Notes on Existentialism.
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