CONFRONTING THE AUSTERITY: SIGNIFICANCES OF THE WEAK CLASS STRUGGLE AND SOME PROBLEMS OF THE LEFT

Ana BAZAC

Abstract

By describing some aspects of the relations of force in the post-1989 Romania and especially in the present world crisis, the paper aims at a more general perspective: to put the problem of the future ending of the relations of force. The first part theorise some questions of the tactics of the left, but the lagged-behind level of a country like Romania is interesting not only for this kind of countries. The contradictory standpoint of the official left concerning the austerity measures from 2010 and the suggestion to support left-wing goals, not clichés, are framing the logic of this part.

The second part dots the importance to have in view the social structure, and the existing and missing conditions of a radical change of capitalism. The problems of moral judgements over capitalism and economic growth as criteria of the analysis of the behaviour of the left are better lightening the urgency of the constitution of a world consistent left.

WHAT FELT? REMARKS ON THE ONTOLOGY OF COMMUNISM

Ana Bazac

Professor

Politehnica University

The paper, only an introduction to the theme, intends to make out some different discourses about communism in order to suggest its ontology. But this one means a structure of concepts related to both the static and dynamic (principles) of communism, as well as to its position in space and time, and to its realisation. Ontology of communism appears in this way to be challenged by the intertwined and complex levels of practice.

However, ontology itself is a discourse: concepts as possibility, readiness, necessity, conjunctures, identity, forms, essence, transformation, accidents, universals and particulars, factors and forces of communism issue from discourses as active positions of the transmitters (including from their desire to form reality according to theirs representations about it). Thusly, the relationship between discourses and existence is not one of exteriority, but of inclusion of the former into the given reality. Even the given character of reality is the result of interferences between discourses (and the intertwining of many types of discourses) and existence: in this way, discourses could exclude elements of the existence, or construct new ones, generally alternative virtual existences.

The remarks in this paper are made in a traditional philosophical view: not starting from practice which does criticise itself, so deducing ontological properties of communism from this critique (as I should be tempted to do), but going from some concepts to reality, for grasping how and if they are reciprocally fit. In other words: I suggest the questioning of the theoretical representation that the concepts would be a Procrustean bed for the communist ‘reality’ (as process and discourses), just researching the framework of concepts and somehow postponing the problem of the pressure of ‘reality’, issuing from its ontological essence, for new interpretations (discourses).

The rhetorical lecture of some discourses about communism sends to an ideological one. The paper gives some definitions of the presuppositions used here: rhetorical lecture, ideology, ideological lecture. The discursive theory appears to be not an alternative to the ideological one, but a part, also an antecedent of this one.

Therefore, after an introduction about the above-mentioned aspects, the paper summarises the logic of Marx’s and Lenin’s theory on communism from the standpoint of some of the above-mentioned concepts of ontology. The same outlook is affected to the concept of communism as revolution in Lenin and Trotsky and some Trotskyites. By this token, the problems: the correspondence of the discursive properties of communism and the real process, and the essential and accidental features of ‘communism’ remain open. As a consequence, a non-conformist opinion concerning what felt is suggested.

ALTERNATIVAS, N.

Бушуев В. Г.

Approaching the crisis: questions challenging the technophile optimism

 Ana Bazac¹.

 Доклады Международного теоретического форума «По ту сторону кризиса: потенциал фундаментального образования, науки и культуры» (19-20 апреля 2010). Организаторы Фонд «Альтернативы», Фонд им. Фридриха Эберта.

Günter Mayer

FROM MUSIC IN THE MEDIA TO MUSIC FOR THE MEDIA

Towards an Aesthetics of "Radiogenic" Music

"We have also sound-houses, where we practise and demonstrate all sounds and their genera­tion. We have harmonies, which you have not . . . divers instruments likewise to you un­known, . . . strange and artificial echoes reflect­ing the voice many times, and as it were toss­ing it, . . . also means to convey sounds in trunks and pipes in strange lines and distances".

(Roger Bacon, The New Atlantis)

The emergence of modern audiovisual media and the power they have unfurled are part of a very real, advancing process of socialization. The media are one fea­ture of the many processes of social and political transformation which also ex­ert increasing influence on the liberation movement and its development in the former colonial and oppressed countries of the Third World. The development of the record industry (not to mention film) the development of the big, industrially organized public institutions in radio and television , and the influence of the various branches within the media industry (especially leisure electronics) have brought about a deep, worldwide change in the historically inherited insti­tution of music, in the functions and structures of old and new music alike.

The latest revolution in the media, the introduction of cable and satellite technology and new peripheral technologies, is changing the way in which millions of people live and work, thus causing further changes in the mode of exist­ence of music, that is, in the social processes of production and reproduction of musical occurrences, of their distribution and exchange, and of their appropri­ation by recipients.

Popular Music in the GDR

Günter Mayer

Internationally the German Democratic Republic is very well known for its high standard of music culture, especially in the realm of classical music. Classical music has long traditions which were followed and improved in the last decades.

Composers such as Heinrich Schütz, Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Friedrich Handel, Philip Telemann, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy and Richard Wagner were born in or lived within the territory which became the GDR in 1949. In 1985 Dresden, Leipzig and Halle will be celebrating the anniversaries of the 400th birthday of Schutz and the 300th birthdays of Bach and Handel respec­tively. The heritage of German classical music (including Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert) is an important part of the programs of concert halls, opera houses, radio transmissions and record produc­tions. VEB Deutsche Schallplatten, for instance, released the world's first complete edition of Beethoven including more than 120 records.

Music historiography: music of the GDR – music in the GDR

Günter Mayer

This is a welcome opportunity to discuss the phenomenon of the GDR in a more objective and differentiated environment than that which dominated in the years immediately following the bankruptcy of socialism in 1989, and which has pervaded to some extent in recent publications about new music in the GDR.ⁱ I want to begin my essay with some moral and philosophical reflections. Interpretations of the GDR in which dictatorship is the central category determining the presentation of facts, in which all life is seen as a ‘dance in chains,’ⁱⁱ offer a decidedly one-sided view of reality. The theoretical reflection and the selection and evaluation of facts is emphatically critical, but condescending and underpinned by a presumptuous certainty. This approach involves a devaluation and de-legalisation of the lived experience of the majority of citizens of the GDR. It is an interpretation in which the attitude of depreciation is predominant. In practice this orientation is an anti-communist one.

Mass-Culture in different Marxist concepts

Günter Mayer

1. Term of culture

a.)

- not very precisely used in history of concepts on culture

– ambiguous in its generality, abstractness

– tendency in the traditional use (look for instance Eckward B. Taylor, 1871) to define

culture as the quintessence of knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, behaviour and all other

capacities, talents and customs, which have been acquired by human beings as part

Майер  Гюнтер

Профессор Гюнтер Майер в 1959 г. закончил Гумбольдский университет в Берлине (ГДР) по философии и музыковедению. В начале 60-х гг. Г.Майер обучался в аспирантуре и в это время на протяжении шести месяцев он проходил стажировку в Ленинградском Государственном университете у Моисея Соломоновича Кагана (1961—1962). Будучи по профессии философом, Г.Майер большую часть времени занимался вопросами как музыковедения, так и философии. С 1972 года — доцент, с 1980 — профессор (специальность — проблемы эстетической культуры социалистического общества).

В 1994 году (т.е. после присоединения ГДР к ФРГ) Гюнтер Майер по политическим причинам был отправлен на пенсию, а его место было предоставлено западному профессору. Такое отношение вытеснения высоко профессиональных кадров науки, сформированных в ГДР, проистекало из политики радикального сокращения марксистски ориентированных специалистов в академической среде. Кстати, эта политика подавалась как процесс «христианизации» бывших университетов ГДР.

С многочисленными работами профессора Г.Майера можно познакомиться на его собственном сайте — http://www.guentermayer.de

Ниже мы представляем несколько статей данного автора.

I have studied only at Humboldt-University in Berlin (GDR) from 1953 to 1959 and have finished there in philosophy and partly in musicology.From 1959 to 1963 I was «Aspirant», that is a kind of doctorant-time, during this time I was for 6 months in Leningrad, at the university imeny shdanowa, with Moissej Samoilowitsch Kagan (1961/62).
My professija is officially «philosoph» but most time it is «musicologist» or both. I became Dozent in 1972 and professor 1980 (aesthetic cultur of socialist society). I was sent into pensii in 1994 - by political reasons: my profssorship was given to a professor from the West. It was the process of «christianization» of the Universities in the former GDR, that is, to cut out the marxist orientated people of the academic cader.

Электронный сборник трудов теоретиков социализма разных времен и народов. Так же при библиотеке существует виртуальный дискуссионный клуб.
P.S. Для входа в библиотеку необходима регистрация на сайте http://vkontakte.ru/

«Антикризисная стратегия: левая альтернатива»

Russian Academy of Science

Institute of Information on Social Science

---------------

Moscow Financial and Law Academy

__________

Rosa Luxemburg Foundation

"Alternatives" Foundation

PROGRAMME

International scientific conference

CRISIS: senarios and alternatives for the future

"SOCIALISM-XXI"

INTERNATIONAL INTERNET INSTITUTE

Information Bulletin No 4

November 2007- March 2009

Contents

International scientific conferences: 3

"The World Crisis of the XXI century: reasons, nature, alternatives of overcoming" (Russia in Global Context) 3

Post-Liberalism: What Can We Have After Crisis?. 4

ATTAC Germany International conference "The End of Capitalism?". 5

К ИСТОРИИ ПОРАЖЕНИЯ СИЛ СОЦИАЛИСТИЧЕСКОГОс ВЫБОРА В СССР: ПРОБЛЕМА РАЗОБЩЕННОСТИ ЛЕВЫХ (1985 - 1991 гг.)

Анатолий Штырбул

В апреле 1985 г., под лозунгами экономического, демократического и гуманистического обновления советского социализма, партийно-государственное руководство СССР во главе с М. Горбачевым приступило к преобразованиям и реформам, которые сначала, в 1985-1988 гг.

О ЧЕМ ДУМАЛ СЛЕДОВАТЕЛЬ?

Горькие воспоминания и раздумья

Людмила Эльяшова

Тот вечер я помню до мельчайших подробностей, а ведь мне тогда было 16 лет, теперь же... Сколько прошло? Страшно подумать... 70 лет.

ФИНАНСЫ РЕВОЛЮЦИИ

К 120-летию со дня рождения Г.Я. Сокольникова

Михаил Воейков

Из предваряющего материала Г.Г. Тартыковой, наверно, стала ясной краткая биография Г.Я. Сокольникова. К этому можно лишь добавить, что личность и деятельность Григория Яковлевича для многих раздваивается или даже разтраивается.