It's not that Jacobin was a disguise for "the same old shit," it's that these magazines operate under capitalism. The incentive to publish more of the stuff that gets the clicks gradually erodes genuine intentions. It is because this is a gradual process that these people can all believe, in the beginning, that this time is different. For a brief window, it is different--and there are some genuinely interesting, critical pieces. But the longer the magazine runs, the more it is subject to the perverse incentives, and the more it becomes like the stuff it was created to supplant. Eventually, they become like New Republic or Mother Jones, even though all of these magazines are founded by people who genuinely hate New Republic and Mother Jones. It's the capacity of capitalism to gut whatever intentions we approach it with that is so devastating. Even your blog would, if sufficiently commercially successful, end up in the same place. This is why it is imperative not to make a living from political writing. If you depend on the market you are enslaved by it, no matter what you intend.
I regard Offguardian as a Forum. It promotes itself as Not 'The Guardian' newspaper. Oftentimes it post stuff merely for discussion; some times it's dissenting, some times it's anodyne (adj). Nothing to write home about. Attracts a lot of trolls, and if they're not trolls then they're over-schooled.
Maybe in my mind dissent is too closely associated with a political stance.
Offguardian is my first port of call each morning, goes well with my first mug of coffee that kick-starts each day...
'As such, [most new journals] tend to follow particular trajectories. Initially they seek to introduce alternative perspectives into the cultural environment generally seen as mired in conformism and unable to deal with the "new" other than by reducing it to an extension of the "old". These periodic injections of allegedly fresh ideas, however, end up recycling older and forgotten notions, or becoming rapidly (absorbed) into the very orthodoxy they meant to explode from within.
Thus, after a phase of preliminary self-definition, most professedly radical outlooks degenerate into commonplaces.....' Telos #75 (Spring 1988. p3)...
Fifth Estate (Detroit) offered "Critique of FE. Are We Losing It ?" #324 the Fall 1986...
Or as Dylan once sung "How do we get out of having to go through these things twice ?
Sorry, I only discovered this substack now, but will comment anyway. This critique applies as well to most substack writers and their commenters, whose pitch for subscribers is honed to the sense of collapse, the piling up of irresolvable crises, and especially to the apparent reversal of the left from its previous path. The latter touches on subscribers' need to escape personal isolation by locating themselves on the spectrum and joining a collectivity in basic agreement. To escape isolation is perfectly valid, but beyond that some of us need others not for companionship per se but to aid in getting past our own illusions. To do this we should avoid the common trait of Marxists of substituting the polemical denunciation of others (as “weak” and unable to stand up to “ruthless critique”). Instead we need to acknowledge the points where we are so invested in a point of view, and anxious for others’ agreement, that we can’t see past them. Those we denounce are other versions of ourselves.
It's not that Jacobin was a disguise for "the same old shit," it's that these magazines operate under capitalism. The incentive to publish more of the stuff that gets the clicks gradually erodes genuine intentions. It is because this is a gradual process that these people can all believe, in the beginning, that this time is different. For a brief window, it is different--and there are some genuinely interesting, critical pieces. But the longer the magazine runs, the more it is subject to the perverse incentives, and the more it becomes like the stuff it was created to supplant. Eventually, they become like New Republic or Mother Jones, even though all of these magazines are founded by people who genuinely hate New Republic and Mother Jones. It's the capacity of capitalism to gut whatever intentions we approach it with that is so devastating. Even your blog would, if sufficiently commercially successful, end up in the same place. This is why it is imperative not to make a living from political writing. If you depend on the market you are enslaved by it, no matter what you intend.
As a reader of many of these 'dissident' magazines over the past few years, this was very thought provoking, thanks! 🙏
I regard Offguardian as a Forum. It promotes itself as Not 'The Guardian' newspaper. Oftentimes it post stuff merely for discussion; some times it's dissenting, some times it's anodyne (adj). Nothing to write home about. Attracts a lot of trolls, and if they're not trolls then they're over-schooled.
Maybe in my mind dissent is too closely associated with a political stance.
Offguardian is my first port of call each morning, goes well with my first mug of coffee that kick-starts each day...
'As such, [most new journals] tend to follow particular trajectories. Initially they seek to introduce alternative perspectives into the cultural environment generally seen as mired in conformism and unable to deal with the "new" other than by reducing it to an extension of the "old". These periodic injections of allegedly fresh ideas, however, end up recycling older and forgotten notions, or becoming rapidly (absorbed) into the very orthodoxy they meant to explode from within.
Thus, after a phase of preliminary self-definition, most professedly radical outlooks degenerate into commonplaces.....' Telos #75 (Spring 1988. p3)...
Fifth Estate (Detroit) offered "Critique of FE. Are We Losing It ?" #324 the Fall 1986...
Or as Dylan once sung "How do we get out of having to go through these things twice ?
Do you do interviews/ podcast appearances?
I wonder if Off-Guardian fits into this analysis?
Sorry, I only discovered this substack now, but will comment anyway. This critique applies as well to most substack writers and their commenters, whose pitch for subscribers is honed to the sense of collapse, the piling up of irresolvable crises, and especially to the apparent reversal of the left from its previous path. The latter touches on subscribers' need to escape personal isolation by locating themselves on the spectrum and joining a collectivity in basic agreement. To escape isolation is perfectly valid, but beyond that some of us need others not for companionship per se but to aid in getting past our own illusions. To do this we should avoid the common trait of Marxists of substituting the polemical denunciation of others (as “weak” and unable to stand up to “ruthless critique”). Instead we need to acknowledge the points where we are so invested in a point of view, and anxious for others’ agreement, that we can’t see past them. Those we denounce are other versions of ourselves.