Perry Anderson

Reading Part III. A simple response consistently emerges: one that many of us have felt about many other things and fields.*

It's basically: "I believed you, indeed was profoundly impressed, when you were talking about those other places and things that weren't very familiar, but now you're talking about where I live and things I went through, and you keep saying things - even if only small things - that I know are wrong."

Not to say it's all wrong, or useless. But it's surprising how cavalier he is with factual narrative when talking about things that most of his readers will already know as well as he does.

[*A parallel: it's been said that everyone likes most things about Declan Kiberd's INVENTING IRELAND, except that Wildeans don't like the chapter on Wilde, Joyceans don't like the chapter on Joyce, Shavians don't like the chapter on Shaw ...]

im going to be using the expression ukania on ilx long after perry mason has shuffled off this mortal coil

"Not to say it's all wrong, or useless. But it's surprising how cavalier he is with factual narrative when talking about things that most of his readers will already know as well as he does."

Is it not very surprising or just wrong? I've certainly not seen this command of the overall narrative from anybody on the mainstream press though I've read good reporting on aspects of it.

Part of the reason people have been as divided on Brexit -- and not just along Leave or Remain either, with both camps having its own cliques -- is that there is very little agreement on the nature of the EU and its benefits and who are the main beneficiaries?

This was certainly part of the weakness of the Remain argument during the referendum and is a lot of the bathos of the angrier end of the FBPE crew

God knows when/if I'll get to read this PA piece but the subject of how the EU sells itself to its citizens would be worth a lot of analysis in itself

PA's argument is that it doesn't bother because it doesn't need to, and that the vitally important decisions made by (in partiuclar) the European Council and the ECJ are made in camera without the bother of tirseome politics or democracy.

I've read the first part and he essentially makes it sound like a confidence trick.

After the first part I'm mostly 'man, fuck a dutch tory'

As Perry Anderson's greatest admirer on ILX (with the caveat that Mark S was into amphibologies before I was) -- I found Part III of this overall remarkably poor.

The first half is a standard account of UK political history since the 1960s which you could assemble from Wikipedia or even from most UK adults' general knowledge -- but, as I noted, strangely specked with errors, casually misleading and false claims, which go with the 'breezy journalism' genre. Still, he does add *some* new analysis to this story, though its accuracy too remains questionable.

Then he gets on to Mount, Oborne, Wheatcroft - which feels much too easily self-selecting, PA as so often just going back to the same people he's been reading for years (especially Mount). It's at least interesting to see how much Mount has changed his tunes. But PA says these are all less impressive than Noel Malcolm and Richard Tuck, Hobbes scholars. Hm ... So what do they have to say?

Mainly that the EU is undemocratic and unaccountable - which is PA's general case, which could have been made in a page, not 30,000 words. But as for Tuck: first PA repeats a standard Lexit claim ('the EU wouldn't let you nationalise industry', etc) which is interesting but has never been empirically tested in a large member nation (a point PA totally omits), surely *because those nations are neoliberal in their national politics anyway* ... That's all OK up to a point, but PA also TWICE cites the fact that Tuck argues that *Brexit makes the break-up of the UK less likely*.

Well, this could be true; it could be too early to say; but it flies in the face of everything that any political analyst has said for the last 6 years, and PA does *nothing* to explain why they're wrong and Tuck's right about it. And yet Tuck is one of his great sages!

And finally we get a last couple of pages just repeating the general charges of undemocratic structure and personal corruption, and along the way saying that the EU is politically worse than the UK.

Some of this article is true, some of it is insightful, but the balance of new insight to retreads is unusually unfavourable here by PA's standards. It's even noticeable that his prose is less sparkling than usual.

Part II was informative but unexciting. Part I, which Fizzles greatly admired, I still haven't properly read. But overall the balance of value here seems to be towards a let-down.

In part 1, there was a startlingly... tendentious (ie bad and wrong) paragraph about the founding of the United States.

"But as for Tuck: first PA repeats a standard Lexit claim ('the EU wouldn't let you nationalise industry', etc) which is interesting but has never been empirically tested in a large member nation (a point PA totally omits)"

No large EU state is testing this claim precisely because it is against the rules they are bound to observe by being in the EU.

Good point on Tuck, it did seem one of two points -- the other on Momentum and languages -- that were obscure and needed more, though I think in the latter there was a larger point on Labour's infighting on the issue that would've detracted from the piece.

very busy at the moment and still only halfway thru the second essay

two things i wanted to note in passing before i forget:
i: "They are set not in stone, but in granite" wtf u think granite is anderson
ii: "documents of such ‘epic length’ that the Ireland’s EU commissioner declared of the last that ‘no sane and sensible person’ could read it" where am i going with this

Perry Anderson is no Mason

wtf u think granite is anderson

incredible. reminds me of some otherwise completely forgotten tv doc years ago where the presenter knelt down by a railway in france and said something about 'this rail of non ferrous metal', i thought 'whaddya think sncf stands for ya mook'.

copy-editors sleepwalking as ever in the great man's contributions: i mean if it were me i would be DELIGHTED to catch him out, less obnubilation more reading back what you just wrote SIR

Those are excellent amusing comments by Mark S.

Latest LRB features, not 3pp of letters followed by a long response from PA, but ... one letter, from someone who was involved in European defence policy 20 years ago.

"But as for Tuck: first PA repeats a standard Lexit claim ('the EU wouldn't let you nationalise industry', etc) which is interesting but has never been empirically tested in a large member nation (a point PA totally omits)"

Actually this was also wrong? PA went through the episode where Italy tried to nationalise a utility in the early 60s, which was blocked by the ECJ.

I've still not read the second one, but 'not set in stone, in granite' strikes me as a forgivable rhetorical messing around with a maxim. Bit clumsy like but not it's not a mistake as such.

some non-clumsy messing around: "if x is set in stone, that stone is granite"

also (since i'm apparently in maximum subbing-nerd pedant-mode today): "the effect of 'constitutionalising' (the apostrophes are needed, because… )" -- perry ffs they're not "apostrophes ", they're quotatation marks

thats right "quotatation marks"

Indicating quotatating

I did find 'apostrophes' odd there.

The LRB's editor should quit after allowing these errors through.

Oh.

when i read it i legit sat there for a minute trying to remember the phrase "inverted commas" and then thinking did i invent that? has it just been apostrophes this whole time? no it hasn't.

A parody of Perry Anderson from 1966:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/sedgwick/1966/xx/pseudlr.htm

still padding* thru the second installment and lolled at this: "Foucault’s overblown identification of knowledge with power here finds literal embodimen"

translation: "i sourly grant on OTM to a figure it's very important you grasp I deprecate" <-- dude this^^^ is bad rockwriting, terminology and also trope

*my work at the moment is a large book-length edit at deadline so i can only really read and think abt other stuff in the brief breaks i am barely taking (= i had no weekend to speak of) -- if only the great man knew of our dedication to his flawed genius eh

Kevin and Perry Go Large but it's Perry Anderson and idk some famous Kevin I haven't done the work here tbrr

Things I was shockingly old when I learner: Perry is a shortening of Peregrine

s/b PIPPIN imo

According to his wiki page, he started out as a rock critic, writing under the pseudonym Richard Merton. I wonder if any of his rock writings have ever surfaced

they're in the LRB archive* and they're NOT THAT GREAT!

one of my (way too many) highly delayed projects from last year is writing them up as an overlap of incompatible worlds!

*(tbf there may be more elsewhere also: e.g in alex cockburn's underground weekly 7 Days which isn't currently arechived on-line (or wasn't when i last looked) (pre-pandemic)

I will check out the LRB archive!

you have to pay per article :(

(which fair enough i guess -- they have a business model and writers shd be paid for their craft)

BUT

Surely not the LRB archive?

The NLR archive?

I'm unsure if it was Mark S who gave me PA on the Stones, or vice versa - I think the latter - in any case we discussed it quite a bit at some point. Possibly not on ILX. Possibly even in an actual pub.

PA's argument on the Stones is actually relatively good and distinct (ie: good because it is an argument at all, not just waffle). It's something like: the Stones are more interesting than others from a progressive POV, because they proceed by taking reactionary things (like sexism) to an extreme.

This argument is structurally very similar to Adam Mars-Jones' VENUS ENVY (c.1990?) in its praise of Alasdair Gray in contrast to Amis & McEwan.

I tend to agree with Mark S re PA on Foucault - that line didn't work very well. For PA's overall take on MF one might want to go back to the very entertaining IN THE TRACKS OF HISTORICAL MATERIALISM (1983?).

oops yes apologies zelda, i meant the NLR achive not the LRB archive

i shouldn't actually be posting at all this morning i am RGHT UP AGAINST IT deadline-wise

[posts some more]

Coming back from a long ILX hibernation and have to post in reply to the parody article upthread, I genuinely LOL'd - thanks for sharing that! It looks like there are some old blog posts about him floating online as Richard Merton w/ excerpts (https://chaosofmemories.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/perry-anderson-meets-the-rolling-stones)

A t/s question on British Marxist historians writing music criticism under a pseudonym: Richard Merton (Perry) vs Francis Newton (Eric Hobsbawm)?

I still have to read the new LRB essays when I have the time...

PA on music would always interest me much more than EJH - simply because EJH, like Philip Larkin I suppose, only wrote about jazz. The very idea of PA on the Stones is, by contrast, utterly compelling to me.

That's a good blog post.

hobbo took a pseud bcz the CPGB line on jazz at the time he started was that jazz was footling and degraded bourgeois trash (the proletariat shd be levelling up to and inheriting the classical greats, not shifting dodgily sideways towards modernism or anything american and commerical) -- and then kept it after this line softened bcz that was the name his critical work was attached to and the reveal would never not be awkward

PA i think bcz the NLR's foray into rock writing was very much a kind of intellectual speculation when a curious artistic opening seemed to flash up in a moment of political turmoil: he was (correectly) very uncertain of how the times (and the arts of the times) would work out, PLUS he didn't want to risk his recently acquired high-octane intellectual shtick and is nothing if not a massive cowardly pussy in this regard

in conclusion: i disapprove

also what a boring pseud ffs

he shd have called himself PIPPIN SHAGRAT

anyway reading that blogpost has reminded why it is so very U&K that i complete my patreon post on the same material but also that i have a ton of actual real work i'm actually being paid for that i need to get on with right now >:(

perry shd totally subsidise me for my attention to his oeuvre, out of his pots and pots of inherited landed-gentry money, the only way for the intellectual thread to extend to a new generation imo

While we're talking NLR pseudonyms, we can recall that Peter Wollen called himself Lucien Rey and Lee Russell. One reason in his case was that he had deserted the Army and was afraid of being recaptured and court-martialled.

One of my arguments about PA on the EU was that he overstated the extent to which the neo-liberal EU would automatically forbid any kind of social democracy. My sense is that it is more contingent than that, and more a matter of Realpolitik, rather than rigid rules.

Thus, an extreme instance: if Germany were to 'go socialist', could the EU stop it? Effectively unthinkable, as Germany is an EU hegemon. But of course the whole issue is more complex anyway.

I raise this because a letter to the LRB has made these points:

Perry Anderson claims that ‘Bernie Sanders’s three basic demands – reject or modify Nafta and the TPP; raise taxes on Wall Street; free university tuition – would be out of reach’ if the US were subject to EU rules. The EU member states and the EU Parliament rejected TTIP. The Commission has no direct influence on corporation tax but has objected to the tax breaks sanctioned by several member states, including Ireland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. It is true that the Stability and Growth pact attempts to exert fiscal discipline, but this is routinely flouted, especially at present during the Covid crisis. Taxation remains an area of state competence, beyond the reach of the Commission. As for tuition fees, many EU member states charge virtually nothing for university tuition and whether they do or not has nothing to do with the EU.

Simon Sweeney
York

I think 'routinely flouted' is the most useful reminder here. One thing that we often learn about the EU (from PA as well as others) is that it makes up, bends and breaks rules as it goes along.

The point about tuition fees (again, look at Germany) is rather a zinger - but perhaps PA has a comeback to this that I have not yet read.

yes the tuition fees thing is so obviously wrong with many eu member states currently having, or having previously had free tuition fees (scotland for example, which, perry cuomo being someone who is somewhat knowledgable on the uk and, you know, from there, should know) and bernie sanders tuition thing being limited to public colleges,HBCUs and trade schools.

I recently finished PA's 'The European Coup', so admired by Fizzles.

Superb levels of knowledge and detail - often into absurdly arcane things like sub-post-Machiavellian thinkers. Yet there is also a certain absurdity in PA writing at such length about this one writer, Luuk can Middelaar (I'd quite forgotten his first name till now), at such length. He seems to be mainly an ideologue, a self-justifying hack, though quite well-versed in the history of political thought.

I suppose you have to say that this is a conceit, a way of writing about the EU. But PA writes about the EU anyway, in parts 2 & 3!

Or is van Middelaar, whom many of us had probably never heard of, actually a bigger deal - not just in the halls of the EU itself but among, say, British pro-European types? Is he actually admired by the same people who like to retweet pictures of Donald Tusk saying he regrets Britain's departure? Had half the people on the anti-Brexit marches heard of him? Has he influenced their thought even if they haven't?

Many of us have had some degree of investment in the EU and a wish for the UK to stay in it. But it is hard for that view to endure PA's critique. He is one of the few people I have ever read who can make Brexit seem quite a logical and principled idea (though still, I think, a bad policy in real-world practice). I recall JC's grant of a score of 7/10 to the EU. People have scorned that for years. But wasn't JC, as usual, correct? PA, though, would surely not give the EU higher than 2/10.

i need to write up my commentary on this 3-part piece but not right now as i am extremely tired after being extremely busy for weeks on end

This thread must now be one of the best multi-authored discussions on PA ever to exist. It's longer than you might think.

we shd post him a print-out of this thread so he can rewrite where necessary (e.g. concerning uncle adolphe and also omitting any discussion of john bayley's opinions on anything)

― mark s, Wednesday, August 22, 2018

one day important ppl will be collecting my ilx comments into benjamin-style convolutes and writing as to how we wont see his (my) like again

Remarkably, I don't think that Mark S, or anyone, has yet commented on PA's epistolary exchange with Luuk von Middelaar himself, which becomes like a tribute act to the vintage exchange with T G Ash.

It's extraordinary stuff overall, with LVM writing a letter 2/3 of a page long in which he accuses PA of ad hominem biographical attacks, and drags in facts about PA's family history.

PA then responds to all his critics - too briskly and briefly to be satisfactory, in truth - and *in each case* inserts biographical facts about their careers as though these undermine what they've said! Rather playing into the image of him that LVM has just constructed.

Then PA responds to LVM, making too light of his own factual errors. He responds to LVM's excusing of his youthful Neo-Con writings (they were only in 2001! When we were writing on ILX! But LVM treats them as impossibly distant and thus forgivable), asking if LVM showed any sign of opposition to the Iraq War. This is odd because in early 2003 PA wrote an LRB article scorning protesters against the Iraq War. (I probably complained about it on ILX at the time!)

Finally PA winds up talking about 'tease for tease' between them and hopes to meet LVM over a glass of wine. Amphibologies revisited!