Thursday 19 May 2011
Engeldust
Marx thought he had a theory of economics and politics - casting sidelights on history, society and psychology.
It's an impressively wide ranging theory - indeed, if only half of it turns out to be true, it would still be one of the great theories humanity has ever produced.
But that kind of reach wasn't enough for Engels - he thought he had a theory of everything. Atoms, societies, galaxies, emotions, reason and everything in between.
Lenin followed Engels instead of Marx. Trotsky and Mao followed Lenin. Luxembourg followed Trotsky, and now whenever we read Marx, we read him through the lens of Engels.
Seeing as Engels was wrong - both about the need for a totalising theory and about the theory itself - this is a problem.
So the questions are:
* Is this problem fatal to the marxist project of political change if it's unresolved? And,
* If there's a solution - a way to get marxism back on track - what is it?
I haven't found answers to these questions yet - these little essays are partly an ongoing attempt to find them - but here's an oblique stab at them.
Believing in a false (or meaningless) theory - if you act on it - is obviously not a recipe for success. If, like any major church, you kind of believe in it, and justify your actions in terms of it, but don't actually act on it, then adherence becomes an empty ritual.
A lot of people like their rituals empty, but are there any positive effects of the influence of engelsism (to coin a term) on marxism?
I'd say there is at least one positive effect, namely that marxism as a theory of everything is much more attractive to potential recruits than marxism as a theory of economics and politics - or even as a theory of world revolution.
The percentage of revolutionaries who want to make a revolution, as opposed to struggle for one, must be quite small.
But there's a flipside to this. Many are attracted to marxism because it provides a social support network for them - and depending on the stripe, this may extend to it being a closed cult, which of course is exactly what many disaffected people want.
Others are attracted to the liberal progressive campaigning that some groups do - as a way to hold the party together until a revolutionary situation presents itself.
Some like bloodcurdling rhetoric of violent overthrow, or the opportunity to walk in the road with a banner shouting abuse at the police.
These desires are obviously not mutually exclusive or fully conscious, but another one would be the desire to have a totalising theory of absolutely everything. They're attracted, not really to the theory itself, but to the fact that there is one.
Most marxists don't understand dialectics, and aren't sufficiently troubled by their lack of understanding to read the standard works about it - which is of course one reason why they don't realise how vacuous it is.
Indeed, most marxists haven't read Marx, or any of his followers. Some books are for reading, some are for quoting, and some are for owning. But it doesn't seem to impair (or improve) their effectiveness as marxists, so long as the cell, branch or party has a resident intellectual or two to set the line for others to follow.
So, the mysticism of Engels may - or may not - be a factor in the failure of marxism as a political project. But it's also probably a reason why there are so many marxists.
Tuesday 17 May 2011
Au Contraire
"To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink."
- George Orwell, 1984
How is it possible to believe two mutually contradictory things? Actually it's quite easy - people do it all the time. Voluntarism and fatalism exist side by side as psychological tropes, as do sympathy for suffering and blaming the victim, knowing that winning streaks don't go on forever, and organising your life around the assumption that this one will.
The trick of course is to believe different things at different times, about different things, in different circumstances - while always maintaining that whatever belief you have at any given moment is the complete and unalterable truth.
You lost your job? There was nothing you could have done about it. You're applying for a new one? If you're confident, you'll get it. You didn't get it after all? There was nothing more you could have done. Or you weren't trying hard enough, take your pick.
The 'clever' part of doublethink is not the hypocrisy. Although there's a perverse admirability in the ability to flip nimbly between blatantly incompatible positions in an eyeblink - even between complex metaphysical and moral structures.
The clever part is in marshaling all the ancillary lies and evasions required to prevent the incompatible beliefs bumping into each other - and in the further lies and evasions involved in restoring cognitive consonance when they do collide.
As Orwell says, to be convinced by your own lies you need to lie to yourself about lying, and evade the fact that you're evading. If the generals fighting a losing war could plan operations with the skill and speed needed to justify the war inside their own heads, they'd probably win in a week.
Of course, sometimes the buzz of sophism in a person's head leads only to vacillation, paralysing indecision, or a steady state of being conflicted. People have been known to spend their lives working towards a goal, but to constantly invent delays in reaching it.
Marxists have elevated doublethink from a psychological coping strategy to a grand overarching narrative of the universe - with the astonishingly flexible and convenient notion of 'contradiction', in which it's not people who are hypocrites, it's the universe!
'Contradiction' means whatever you want it to mean, whenever you need it, and never when you don't.
The union has sold out strikers? Not to worry comrade, because every time the workers are betrayed, their consciousness increases, so their (eventual) political activity level increases, hastening the revolution. Every defeat is contradictory, because it creates success.
Employers want to reduce wages, but with low wages the workers can't buy commodities to make the market work? That's not irony, and it's not a flaw in the design of capitalism, it's a contradiction - in a completely different sense of the word.
Workers interests (revolution) aren't the same as those of employers (the status quo)? Yes, they're in contradiction - in a different completely different sense.
1+1=2? According to Engels, the two 1s are in contradiction. Something's moving? Engels says its position is contradictory.
Light is a particle and a wave? Magnets have two poles? Entropy increases but biological life gets more complex? That shows how physical reality itself is contradictory - which with great circular convenience (and scientific illiteracy) proves marxism as a whole.
The one place where we conspicuously don't find contradiction is our own movements, which is odd, because they're so full of ironies, conflicts and paradoxes.
Your party talks about democracy, but doesn't have any of its own. Your tendency believes in human freedom, but demands obedience. Your group hates all the other groups, because apparently they're all sectarians.
It seems the world is constantly contradicting itself, so in describing it, it makes sense for us to contradict ourselves. But we don't see contradictions in ourselves - instead, we see 'subtleties' and 'nuances' of theory and practice.
So it seems we don't see ourselves as part of the world we want to change.
Make Light of Reason
Marxism is Romantic. It therefore has an ambivalent attitude towards the Enlightenment.
On the one hand, it proudly claims to be based in reason and materialism, also acknowledging that these are enlightenment values - and thus preconditions for science and technology, themselves preconditions for industrial capitalism.
On the other hand, it looks forward to a postcapitalist world, where industry serves the necessary needs of all humanity, as opposed to the unnecessary greeds of a very few.
In such a world, reason and materialism are the philosophical norm, and while advanced science and technology won't be seen as good or inevitable in their own right, they would most likely be ubiquitous. Everyone would have all the technological comforts they could want - provided the production of this technology weren't harmful to other people, or the environment.
In the marxist image of capitalism, the people are servants of reason, itself a servant of the ruling class of industrialists. In the marxist image of postcapitalism, the relation between people and reason is inverted, which raises the question of which image came first to Marx, and which was the derived inversion.
Under marxist postcapitalism - aka communism - reason is the servant of the people. This is significant because it's seen as a re-inversion - a restoration of the corrupted original order - of the role of reason in classless primitive communism. It's not an accident that the original (pre-fall, edenic) state of humanity shares a name with the projected (post-apocalypse, idyllic) final state.
Under communism, we are returned to a classless, oppressionless state - but higher than the original. Indeed, the negation of classless society by classes is negated by the industrial and social products of class society.
Given the severe problems in dialectical theory, this alone should set off alarm bells.
On the one hand, it proudly claims to be based in reason and materialism, also acknowledging that these are enlightenment values - and thus preconditions for science and technology, themselves preconditions for industrial capitalism.
On the other hand, it looks forward to a postcapitalist world, where industry serves the necessary needs of all humanity, as opposed to the unnecessary greeds of a very few.
In such a world, reason and materialism are the philosophical norm, and while advanced science and technology won't be seen as good or inevitable in their own right, they would most likely be ubiquitous. Everyone would have all the technological comforts they could want - provided the production of this technology weren't harmful to other people, or the environment.
In the marxist image of capitalism, the people are servants of reason, itself a servant of the ruling class of industrialists. In the marxist image of postcapitalism, the relation between people and reason is inverted, which raises the question of which image came first to Marx, and which was the derived inversion.
Under marxist postcapitalism - aka communism - reason is the servant of the people. This is significant because it's seen as a re-inversion - a restoration of the corrupted original order - of the role of reason in classless primitive communism. It's not an accident that the original (pre-fall, edenic) state of humanity shares a name with the projected (post-apocalypse, idyllic) final state.
Under communism, we are returned to a classless, oppressionless state - but higher than the original. Indeed, the negation of classless society by classes is negated by the industrial and social products of class society.
Given the severe problems in dialectical theory, this alone should set off alarm bells.
Monday 16 May 2011
Far Out Man
There are recreational drugs which make the banal seem profound. There are also ideologies which do the same.
For instance: The more I write, the more my biro runs out of ink - it's on a journey from 'full' to 'empty', where the quantitative lessening of the ink supply ends in a qualitative shift from 'useful' to 'useless'. Indeed, a full pen is an aid to communication, whereas an empty pen is actually an impediment, proof that an object can have opposite properties at different times.
Or: No two cups of tea are ever exactly the same temperature. Given that there are an infinite number of possible temperatures - and an infinity between each of these points and the next - it follows that every brew is unique. Although empirical proof is impossible because we don't have an infinitely graded thermometer to check.
Or: The song I heard on the radio today isn't the same as the same song I heard yesterday. The radio, DJ, transmitter, CD and ears may all be the same, but they've all changed minutely in 24 hours. So although the lyrics are identical, they mean something slightly different now - because the universe has changed, and I've changed, so my interpretation is different, so the meaning of the song to me is different, every time I hear it.
If you think these insights are deep, with great political consequences if only everyone else would realise them, you're either stoned...or a marxist.
For instance: The more I write, the more my biro runs out of ink - it's on a journey from 'full' to 'empty', where the quantitative lessening of the ink supply ends in a qualitative shift from 'useful' to 'useless'. Indeed, a full pen is an aid to communication, whereas an empty pen is actually an impediment, proof that an object can have opposite properties at different times.
Or: No two cups of tea are ever exactly the same temperature. Given that there are an infinite number of possible temperatures - and an infinity between each of these points and the next - it follows that every brew is unique. Although empirical proof is impossible because we don't have an infinitely graded thermometer to check.
Or: The song I heard on the radio today isn't the same as the same song I heard yesterday. The radio, DJ, transmitter, CD and ears may all be the same, but they've all changed minutely in 24 hours. So although the lyrics are identical, they mean something slightly different now - because the universe has changed, and I've changed, so my interpretation is different, so the meaning of the song to me is different, every time I hear it.
If you think these insights are deep, with great political consequences if only everyone else would realise them, you're either stoned...or a marxist.
One Size Fits All
A lot of philosophy - especially bad philosophy - consists in applying a single principle to everything in the universe. For Empedocles it was the war of Love and Strife, for Schopenhaur it was the universal Will, and for Engels it was the dialectic of nature.
In arguing against Dühring's all-embracing system - and indeed against the notion of all-embracing systems - Engels wants to show that his system is superior to that of Dühring...but doesn't want to admit that he's playing the same universe-explaining game as Dühring. So, he fudges the issue.
The rest of the book is more honest, piling up examples of how the dialectic accounts for everything which happens or exists, from simple arithmetic to the motion of planets and the nature of revolutionary struggle. Years later, the convert JBS Haldane comes right out and says it.
In arguing against Dühring's all-embracing system - and indeed against the notion of all-embracing systems - Engels wants to show that his system is superior to that of Dühring...but doesn't want to admit that he's playing the same universe-explaining game as Dühring. So, he fudges the issue.
"...this work cannot in any way aim at presenting another system as an alternative to Herr Dühring's “system”, yet it is to be hoped that the reader will not fail to observe the connection inherent in the various views which I have advanced."
Frederich Engels, Anti-Dühring (1877)
The rest of the book is more honest, piling up examples of how the dialectic accounts for everything which happens or exists, from simple arithmetic to the motion of planets and the nature of revolutionary struggle. Years later, the convert JBS Haldane comes right out and says it.
"...dalectical materialism, the philosophy which, along with Marx, he founded, is not merely a philosophy of history, but a philosophy which illuminates all events whatever, from the falling of a stone to a poet's imaginings."
JBS Haldane, Preface to Dialectics of Nature, by Frederich Engels (1833)
Sunday 15 May 2011
In Lieu of an Introduction
I don't have a manifesto - nothing so grand. I don't have a list of specific reforms or personal grievances, nor a sweeping new theory or program of strategic proposals.
What I have is a web of unanswered questions after a decade of calling myself a marxist. You could call it a crisis of faith, a kind of burnout, or just another personal journey by blog.
I'd call it frustration. I've run out of patience - with the baseless assertions, inconsistency, evasions, pseudotheory and bullying of marxist leaders and intellectuals. That, and the general failure of marxism itself.
For a theory which promises so much, it seems to deliver so much in peripheral areas - psychology, art, linguistics, history, sociology - and so little in its own target area - effective political action.
Marxism looks like it should be great, but it's a joke. I want to know what went wrong, and what elements in marxism itself contribute to its sorry state. I want to know if its successes are real or just so much hot air - and whichever it is, why.
What I have is a web of unanswered questions after a decade of calling myself a marxist. You could call it a crisis of faith, a kind of burnout, or just another personal journey by blog.
I'd call it frustration. I've run out of patience - with the baseless assertions, inconsistency, evasions, pseudotheory and bullying of marxist leaders and intellectuals. That, and the general failure of marxism itself.
For a theory which promises so much, it seems to deliver so much in peripheral areas - psychology, art, linguistics, history, sociology - and so little in its own target area - effective political action.
Marxism looks like it should be great, but it's a joke. I want to know what went wrong, and what elements in marxism itself contribute to its sorry state. I want to know if its successes are real or just so much hot air - and whichever it is, why.
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