live from the cloud forest 2020 - changes in the structure of political compromise

horsemouth is live from the cloud forest. it is a grey day and he is up early. today rain (says the forecast). to read he has brought the essential frankfurt school reader (so he can continue to think about where we are at politically), art, mimesis and the avant-garde by andrew benjamin (if he gets round to it - because he thinks the themes might relate and he’s had it sitting round for a number of years now), and women by bukowski (because he just rescued it from a book recycling pod).

if there is no united subject:object of history (the working class), the people formed by history who can change it, then what? this is horkheimer’s problem - and he gives 'the most abstract of all possible answers: a moral appeal by the isolated theorist'.

yesterday horsemouth babysat (a wander round victoria park in the sunshine a visit to the cafe) and then wandered home. on the way back he bumped into minty and martin at one of the cafes on chatsworth road, the cafe was just shutting up so they chatted briefly (how was everybody, how little sense government facemask regulations made), horsemouth wandered up towards lower clapton with martin and then back to his.

then a remove to the forest for some cat-sitting. (horsemouth does like to make himself useful if only to cats and children). 

horsemouth has begun on the essential frankfurt school reader (urizen books 1978) a decent sized housebrick of a book in a fetching green. adorno-benjamin-horkheimer (the founding fathers) together with the lesser known pollock, kirchheimer, lowenthall, and the successors marcuse and fromm. paul piccone does a great introduction and andrew arato/ eike gebhardt do good introductions to each of the eras. so far horsemouth is in the foundational era - horkheimer’s the end of reason, we have left the era of bourgeois liberalism and the individual and the reason they possess (founded on an economic liberalism, free trade etc.) and are entering the era of the mass society and a monopoly capitalism, where what is left of an individual’s reason is spent trying to survive, and become wholly twisted in that cause.

the frankfurt schoolers looked around them at the world of the 30ies - at fascist italy, nazi germany, soviet russia, and even at the US new deal and saw economies driven to ruin by unfettered capitalism and the state stepping in and taking over whole areas of economic life in order to ensure capitalism’s continued survival. and this, we may note, is not unlike the current situation.

this is the take home message of horkeheimer and kirchheimer (his changes in the structure of political compromise details how this actually worked in nazi germany) and pollock’s initial essays. for adorno all subsequent drivel about entrepreneurship, creative destruction, disruption, privatisation is just nostalgia for vanished varieties of agency.

but is this actually the case? horesemouth would probably compare it to boltanski and chiapello’s the new culture of capitalism that points not just to the continued survival of entrepreneurialism etc but in fact its intensification post the 1970ies (at least in management cadre training literature). this they see as an attempt to deal with the problem of recruiting a cadre of managers both for the larger state managed enterprises but presumably also for the smaller boutique businesses existing in the interstices of the monopolised economy. 

piccone’s opening essay sees part of the frankfurt schools founding genius as recognising that the economy had changed since the days of marx and that this was the motor of changes in consciousness.

in the past the future used to be better deadpans the austrian comic valentin. but what if we are in an oscillatory but stable system of fetishisation of entrepreneurialism/ actual rescue by state capital? free market ideology/ nostalgia ridiculously continues to be active despite the post 2008 state bailouts and the necessary measures against coronavirus, there is a perpetual enthusiasm about the new technology. of course the consequence of the necessary measures against coronavirus (and presumably the necessary measures against climate change) push us in the direction of state monopoly capitalism (and the consciousness necessary to survive under it).

anyway - horsemouth will reread (and then he will read some more). there’s a bit in minima moralia where adorno discusses the nostalgia for entrepreneurialism as a symptom of monopoly capitalism. horsemouth will try and dig that out.

while there is evidence of schmitt and benjamin having read each other it is good to see the frankfurters thinking on this moment (as in changes in the structure of political compromise surely a very schmittian thought).

being on the edge of a forest the air is humid and warm. hidden behind the wild flowers on the kitchen window is a damp meter. horsemouth has boiled a kettle for coffee so currently it shows ‘open a window’. he is surrounded by art, things are cleverly arranged to maximise space (it is very pleasant). there was just a pied woodpecker at the bird feeder and horsemouth thinks that’s a nuthatch.

in normal years horsemouth would ‘hit’ the second hand and charity shops of the neighbourhood and do some serious browsing (previously he’s had good hits with a thelonious monk compilation and on the corner by miles both for a quid) but these are not normal times, they are only new-normal times).
 the sun shone. there are plenty of guitars here should horsemouth find the music point and start. keyboards also. if it’s going to rain he’s probably excused watering duties on the allotment until tomorrow. at some point he will go for a wander and, if there are no witnesses, a jog.