Bury me beneath the Black Square

“The Funeral of Suprematism,”
by Mieczysław Szczuka (1927),
& Malevich’s Suprematist funeral

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Image: Malevich’s funeral procession,
his coffin carried by Suetin and others (1935)

Burying Malevich: A Suprematist funeral

Malevich’s grave, underneath the black square (1935)

Malevich’s funeral car, with the black square (1935)

Malevich in his deathbed, surrounded by his works (1935)

Suetin’s arkhitekton coffin for Malevich (1935)

Suetin’s arkhitekton coffin for Malevich (1935), side view

Malevich in his deathbed, surrounded by his works (1935)

Attendants of Kazimir Malevich’s funeral (1935)

Malevich’s funeral procession, his coffin carried forward by Suetin and others (1935)

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Translated by Wanda Kemp-Welch.
Between Two Worlds: A Sourcebook of
Central European Avant-Gardes, 1910-1930.
(The MIT Press. Cambridge, MA: 2002).

• • •

The retrospective of Kazimir Malevich in the Polish Art Club (end of March and beginning of April), its character and trends remind me vividly of the first steps of modernism in Poland which also made its debut in the Art Club. Personally, I feel very close to the period (1919-24), it was the period of the formation of Polish modernism, its emergence. Later, others (besides its artists) undertook to further the movement giving it different forms.

Polish avant-gardist Mieczysław Szczuka

At that time “Formism” was breaking down. Leon Chwistek was leaving the scene, Tytus Czyžewski was falling into folk primitivism — only the most talented of the Formists, Kamil Witkowski stood by his principles, which he still develops today.

Back then the group of the youngest artists brought to an extreme some of the problems of form in plastic art which had existed in Formism and put forward, independently, slogans so far completely new to Polish art. In 1924 Teresa Žarnower took the initiative to unite the artists in the Blok group. (March 1924 — the first exhibition of the group and the first issue of programmatic periodical of the same name).

It is now 1927. The Blok group has split — there are different aims and tasks ahead of us.

Marx and Wertkritik

Elmar Flatschart, Alan Milchman,
and Jamie Merchant

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Image: A. Akhtyrko, Abstraction (1922)
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Originally published in the Platypus Review. On Saturday, April 6, 2013, the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted a panel, “Marx and Wertkritik,” at its Fifth Annual International Convention, held at the School of the Art Institute Chicago. The panel featured Elmar Flatschart of the German theoretical journal EXIT!, Alan Milchman of Internationalist Perspective, and Jamie Merchant of Permanent Crisis. It was moderated by Gregor Baszak, of Platypus. What follows is an edited transcript of their discussion. A full recording of the event can be found online. 

Event Description

Perhaps one of the most influential developments in Marxist thought coming from Germany in the last decades has been the emergence of value critique. Building on Marx’s later economic works, value critics stress the importance of abolishing value (the abstract side of the commodity), pointing out problems in traditional Marxism’s emphasis on the “dictatorship of the proletariat”. The German value-critical journal Krisis has famously attacked what they believed was a social democratic fetishization of labor in their 1999 Manifesto Against Labor. Such notions have drawn criticism from more “orthodox” Marxists who miss the role of the political in value critique and the possibility of immanent transformation through engaging the realities of capitalist societies. Did the later Marx abandon his political convictions that he expressed in the “Manifesto”? What about his later political writings, such as his “Critique of the Gotha Program” in which he outlines the different phases of early communism? Is Marxism a scientific project as claims from value critics indicate? Was Marx trying to develop of a “science of value” in his later works? What can value critique teach us after the defeat of the Left in 20th century? Did traditional Marxism necessarily have to lead to the defeat of the Left?

Elmar Flatschart: Value critique, or, following the theorem developed by Roswitha Scholz, a critique of value-diremption (Wertabspaltungskritik), seeks to understand and critique the fundamental mechanisms that govern modern society. This critique is not as interested in the political Marx of class struggle and the workers’ movement, but more in the philosophical aspects of his work that focus on the abstract and fetishized character of modern domination. This approach tries to keep the abstract critical theory of society strictly separate from the contradictory practical attempts to overcome capitalism. Marxism shouldn’t be understood as an identity-giving, wholesome position, which history proved to be erroneous, but should be reduced to a theoretical core that can help us to understand society, via a negative critique, even if it does not necessarily provide us with a way out. The call for the abolition of labor does not have immediate ramifications for Marxist politics.

There is no new program or a master plan for emancipation that can be developed out of the abolition of value. Rather, it can be seen as a condition of emancipation from value and the abstract system of oppression it represents. How emancipation will be achieved is a more complex story. We know what will not work: much of what the Old Left proposed as Marxist politics. A lot of that should be abandoned because, essentially, abstract domination cannot be abolished through the imposition of some other kind of direct, personal domination. If we are to critique the abstractions of the economic forms, we similarly have to target the political form itself. While Marx and Engels suggested as much by their formulation of the state eventually “withering away,” I think we need to be a lot more radical. Emancipation ultimately has to mean the abolishment of the political as well. This is contradictory in the present political situation, but we should not try to postpone this task until after the revolution. We should see the constraints and the fetishizations immanent to the political form as something we want to get rid of now.

Paxton’s Crystal Palace at Hyde Park (1851)

I recently finished reviewing Douglas Murphy‘s debut book The Architecture of Failure (2012). For whatever reason, the review took me much longer than I had anticipated. Nevertheless, I am extremely pleased with the result and have submitted it in the hope it might be published somewhere soon.

As a way of disburdening myself of its unbearable weight, in light of its completion, I’m including a gallery that features some of the more impressive photographs and renderings I was able to find of Paxton’s original Crystal Palace at Hyde Park (1851). Of course, it is important to make this specification given the widespread confusion surrounding it and a subsequent (heavily altered) iteration of the Palace after the bulk of its materials were relocated to Sydenham, only now with an arched transept running cruciform along it, bisecting the front vault.

For any Russian readers who might follow my blog, I will leave you with an abbreviated version of Dostoevskii’s literary treatment of the subject in Notes from Underground:

Вы верите в хрустальное здание, навеки нерушимое, то есть в такое, которому нельзя будет ни языка украдкой выставить, ни кукиша в кармане показать. Ну, а я, может быть, потому-то и боюсь этого здания, что оно хрустальное и навеки нерушимое и что нельзя будет даже и украдкой языка ему выставить.

Вот видите ли: если вместо дворца будет курятник и пойдет дождь, я, может быть, и влезу в курятник, чтоб не замочиться, но все-таки курятника не приму за дворец из благодарности, что он меня от дождя сохранил. Вы смеетесь, вы даже говорите, что в этом случае курятник и хоромы — все равно. Да, — отвечаю я, — если б надо было жить только для того, чтоб не замочиться.

Image gallery

Rendering of the interior of Paxton’s 1851 Crystal Palace at Hyde Park

Color rendering of the interior of Paxton’s 1851 Crystal Palace at Hyde Park

Black and white rendering of the interior to Paxton’s 1851 Crystal Palace at Hyde Park

Photograph of the interior of Paxton’s 1851 Crystal Palace at Hyde Park

Photograph of the interior of Paxton’s 1851 Crystal Palace at Hyde Park

Photograph of Paxton’s 1851 Crystal Palace at Hyde Park

Photograph of the exterior of Paxton’s 1851 Crystal Palace at Hyde Park

Sketch of the interior of the Crystal Palace at Hyde Park (1851)

Sketch of the exterior of the Crystal Palace at Hyde Park under construction (1851)

Color sketch of the interior of the Crystal Palace at Hyde Park (1851)

Sketch of the interior of the Crystal Palace at Hyde Park (1851)

Color sketch of the interior of the Crystal Palace at Hyde Park (1851)

Color sketch of the interior of the Crystal Palace at Hyde Park (1851)

Sketch of the interior of the Crystal Palace at Hyde Park (1851)

Sketch of the interior of the Crystal Palace at Hyde Park (1851)

A snapshot of historical self-consciousness

Photograph of a display honoring the
First through the Third International,
with gigantic constructivist arrows (1919)

Outdoor diorama honoring the First through Third Internationals (1919), with gigantic constructivist arrows

Photographic details

Vladimir Lenin standing and talking

Third International closeup, with Lenin

First International Marx closeup

Crowd in Red Square

Soldiers in front of the monument

Plaque commemorating the fallen Bavarian Soviet

To the glory of India, China, workers of the world unite

Leonidov’s Narkomtiazhprom [Наркомтяжпром Леонидова], 1934

Above: Ivan Leonidov

Ivan Leonidov’s Narkomtiazhprom proposal (1934)

Ivan Leonidov’s Narkomtiazhprom proposal (1934)

Sketches and proposals by Ivan Leonidov

Leonidov’s Narkomtiazhprom (1932)

Ivan Leonidov – Narkomtiazhprom Project (1934)

Ivan Leonidov’s proposal for a House of Industry (1929)

Ivan Leonidov’s Narkomtiazhprom proposal (1934)

Ivan Leonidov’s Narkomtiazhprom proposal (1934)

Ivan Leonidov’s Narkomtiazhprom proposal (1934)

Ben Campbell’s Sidney Hook moment

A harrowing account of cults,
neophytism, and reefer

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Image: Sidney Hook, American pragmatist
and ex-Marxist whistleblower (1950s)
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Sidney Hook, after disavowing his former political associations, wrote in his 1973 essay “The Cult of Revolution” that

[t]he cult of revolution has various roots. The longest and strangest of its tap roots grew out of the writings of those who, having revised Marx’s theory and ideal of revolution, still wish to be considered his dialectical successors and heirs. Nothing reveals so starkly the elitist, undemocratic bias of the cult of revolution. There is something snobbish as well as hypocritical in the spectacle of middle-class intellectuals, cradled in security and comfort, luxuriating in a standard of living dependent upon the intensive use of the latest technological refinements, hectoring the masses.

Of course, Ben Campbell will claim the opposite is true with respect to his own relationship to Platypus. He will claim that he was somehow “duped” by the ingenious schemes and made to “drink the Kool-Aid,” as it were. (Below it will become apparent, however, that it was only by smoking some weed and having a “bad trip” that Campbell was able to see Platypus for what it really was, through his bloodshot eyes). Yes, a “LaRouchite cult,” as if he has the slightest clue as to what that would entail. Luckily, Ben made it out of this “cult” and became a “real Marxist” so he could pursue his true calling in life: running a shitty webzine.

It’s uncanny how those who suddenly most have convert’s zeal — or maybe apostate’s zeal — in exposing a so-called “cult” tend to be the ones who behaved most unctuously during their time in the organization. Hence their obsessive, crybaby antics, which some have noted resemble nothing more than that of a “jilted lover.” Ben’s come a long way, though, realizing that what passes for the “Left” today is primarily a popularity contest (or a “fraternity,” as he himself once put it). Now that he’s been initiated into this fraternity, whose hazing rituals are no doubt far worse than that of the “cult” he just left, he’s able to finally emerge from the shadow of Binh, whose “terrible articles” were hogging all the attention on their website The North Star.

In the name of greater transparency, here’s a brief record of Ben’s assorted statements on the Left, on leadership, and his harrowing account (a Reefer Madness for our time) of a “bad trip” in Chicago.

Aelita, or the decline of Mars

With an image gallery and synopsis

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Image: Still from Aelita (1924)
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Image gallery

Still from Aelita (1924)

Movie poster for Aelita in Russian (1924)

Movie poster for Aelita in German (1924)

Still from Aelita (1924)

Still from Aelita (1924)

Still from Aelita (1924)

Still from Aelita (1924)

Book cover to Tolstoi’s Aelita (1924)

Still from Aelita (1924)

Still from Aelita (1924)

Still from Aelita (1924)

Still from Aelita (1924)

Still from Aelita (1924)

Still from Aelita (1924)

Building the constructivist set for Aelita (1924)

Building the constructivist set for Aelita (1924)

Still from Aelita (1924)

Still from Aelita (1924)

The constructivist Martian surface from Aelita (1924)

Still from Aelita (1924)

Still from Aelita (1924)

Still from Aelita (1924)

Still from Aelita (1924)

Still from Aelita (1924)

Still from Aelita (1924)

Still from Aelita (1924)

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ENGINEER M.S. LOS INVITES ALL WHO WISH TO FLY WITH HIM TO THE PLANET OF MARS ON AUGUST 18 TO CALL ON HIM BETWEEN 6 AND 8 PM AT 11 ZHDANOVSKAYA EMBANKMENT.

This notice is hanging on the wall of a deserted building in Petrograd. A tall, broad-shouldered demobilized soldier named Aleksei Ivanovich Gusev reads the notice and reacts approvingly. An American reporter named Archibald Skiles also sees it and is stunned. He assumes that the author must be either a fraud or a raving lunatic.

Building the constructivist set for Aelita (1924)

The workshop

Skiles goes to the modest shed/workshop where engineer Mstislav Sergeevich Los is constructing his spacecraft, a metallic egg about 8 and a half meters high and 6 meters in diameter. Los estimates that his trip to Mars will take only eight or nine hours, since he’ll be traveling at close to the speed of light. The spacecraft is powered by ultralyddite, a fine powder which is more powerful than any other known explosive (and which was discovered by Petrograd factory workers!)

Skiles asks who is financing the project, and Los says the Soviet Republic is. Skiles offers to pay Los in advance for his travel notes — six articles of 200 lines each at ten dollars per line. Los accepts payment.

Still from Aelita (1924)

Dario Cankovic’s report on the Platypus International Convention 2013 in Chicago

“A fantastic experience”

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Image: Artistic rendering of a tragic childhood
accident Cankovic is said to have suffered.
Many feared permanent brain damage.
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Dario Cankovic, so often slandered today as Ben Campbell’s brainless gimp,recently attended Platypus’ 2013 International Convention in Chicago. He typed up this report to me covering his experience of the Convention, detailing the panels and workshops he attended as well as his impressions more generally. Cankovic was just interviewed by C. Derick Varn for The North Star, the publication of which reminded me that I still hadn’t published the report he’d sent me. My apologies for not posting it sooner. Of course, only a month has gone by since then — and Cankovic is not known to be fickle in issuing judgments — so not too much can possibly have changed in the interim:

Toward a hermaphroditic humanity

Hermaphroditism
is a humanism

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Image: El Lissitzky, photographic double-
exposure of a young boy and girl (1929)
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El Lissitzky, poster for the Russian exhibition (1929)

Radical interpretations of the present crisis

New York, NY | 11.26.2013

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Image: Aaron Douglas’ May 1928 of
W.E.B. Du Bois’ magazine, The Crisis
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Loren Goldner, David Harvey,
Andrew Kliman, Paul Mattick

Platypus Review 56 | May 2013

Last autumn, chapters of the Platypus Affiliated Society in New York, London, and Chicago hosted similar events on the theme of “Radical Interpretations of the Present Crisis.” The speakers participating in New York included Loren Goldner, David Harvey, Andrew Kliman, and Paul Mattick. The transcript of the event in London appeared in Platypus Review 55 (April 2013). What follows is an edited transcript of the conversation that PAS-NYC hosted on November 14, 2012 at the New School.

Panelists Loren Goldner, Paul Mattick, David Harvey, and Andrew Kliman with Ross Wolfe moderating

Loren Goldner: The title of my talk tonight is “Fictitious Capital and Contracted Social Reproduction.” It is important to note that as we convene tonight, there are general strikes across the southern flank of Europe, the miners’ strikes in South Africa, and at least 50 strikes a day in China. While we convene to talk about the crisis, there are people in motion trying to do something about it.

Marx writes in his Grundrisse, “Capital itself is the moving contradiction, [in] that it presses to reduce labor time to a minimum, while it posits labor time, on the other side, as sole measure and source of wealth.”[1] Unpacking that one sentence can get us very far in understanding the crisis and the history of at least the last hundred years.

Capital can be broken down into Marx’s categories: surplus value (s), variable capital (v), and constant capital (c). Within constant capital there is a breakdown into (i) fixed capital, which refers generally to machinery and tools, and (ii) circulating capital, which refers to things such as raw materials.