Herr Naphta

Posted by Ross Wolfe

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Image: A recent photo
of Herr Naphta

“Herr Naphta” somehow manages to outdo even Herr Vogt in terms of his sheer buffoonery.

Striking the gravest pose of which such a buffoon is capable, Herr Naphta gleefully announces:

I don’t get denounced by pompous racist asshats every day, but when I do, I buy a bunch of beers and celebrate. [italics mine]

Those unfamiliar with Herr Naphta’s collected works might at first mistake this for a just a passing counter-denunciation, improvised on the spot. Looks can be deceiving, though. “Pompous racist asshats” has a precise — nay, a scientific — meaning within his sublimely banal blog of Marxist marginalia. Continue reading →

Studies on hysterical materialism

Posted by Ross Wolfe

Three essays

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Image: Il’ia Chashnik,
Kosmos (1925)

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A brief overview of the recent series on hysterical materialism: its etiology, pathology, symptomology. Needless to say, these three studies represent a major contribution to the field of medical Marxism, and should aid in the production of new vaccines, remedies, and prophylactic techniques for the treatment (and prevention) of materialist hysteria.

Also, note well:

Masturbation is to eros what suicide is to thanatos.

Enjoy. Continue reading →

Hysterical materialism

Posted by Ross Wolfe

An historical diagnosis

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Image: Gustav Klutsis,
Composition (1921)

“Historical materialism,” Franz Mehring once wrote, popularizing the phrase, “approaches every section of history without any preconceptions.”

Hysterical materialism — it might be said, phrasing things quite oppositely — approaches any supposed “sectarian” with every preconception.

In explicating the former, historical materialism, Mehring was simply making public something that his friend and comrade Friedrich Engels had already communicated to him in private. The term, abbreviated “histomat” (after «истмат», a good Soviet portmanteau), referred to a general outlook and a methodology for interpreting social reality. Quite fittingly, Mehring sought to explain historical materialism’s emergence in the second half of the nineteenth century by applying the historical materialist method reflexively to itself. Continue reading →