[Marxism] For What It's Worth - Telos Online

[Sean Andrews]

I'm not old enough to remember it's heyday so I was actually pretty
surprised to find out it had one.  A few weeks ago in trying to get my
head around Schmitt, I had a look at some of the recent work there.
The stuff by Alain de Benoist is just staggering--the pinnacle of
which is his review of the "Black Book of Communism" which, like so
many such works, reads like it was written in a parallel universe
where capitalism and capitalist imperialism did not exist.

http://journal.telospress.com/cgi/reprint/1998/112/178

As Tracy B. Strong puts it in her introduction to Schmitt's "The
Concept of the Political," "There is no question but that the Left and
the Right are, in their interest in Schmitt, responding to a perceived
need to find other sources for political theorizing. [and in
corresponding footnote] Telos continues to look to the right.  The
Summer 1994 issue is devoted to the writings of Alain de Benoist, a
leading theoretician of the French New Right" (xxvi).  Though she
tries to connect Schmitt more directly with the Frankfurt School early
on, I have a really hard time imagining a moment when this journal was
actually radical instead of reactionary. How can this line of inquiry,
at this moment in history, really be any help to anyone who needs it?

On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 1:41 PM, Louis Proyect <lnp3 at panix.com> wrote:
>  The irony, of course, is that Danny Postel has followed Telos down this
>  very road himself.

Yeah, his latest book was basically a long ode to anti-Leftism using
Iran as his muse.  There was a conversation about it, and Scott
McLemee's interview w/ him over it, on lbo-talk.  Here are a couple of
posts from a conversation about it; the original interview is linked
in the first post.

http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2007/2007-February/003151.html
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2007/2007-February/003104.html

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