What is the Relation of the Marxian Theory to Struggles? What is the Point of Intellectual Effort?
The problem of what the Marxian intellectual is doing with theory, what we think theory is supposed to do, remains.
Especially if one begins from the idea that theorists and intellectuals do not 1) raise consciousness, 2) develop a political program, 3) develop a political line, and are not 4) ersatz activists, aka popularizers who are self-conceived of as organizers or the brain of the organizers (of a movement or an organization or even a journal), and that a "revolutionary consciousness" (if such a term is even meaningful) therefore comes out of struggles and how they fall in relation to capital as such and at its specific moment. If the coming to self-consciousness isn't strictly speaking theoretical or the activity of some group of people conscious before the fact, then why even "do theory"? Against the idea that intellectual intervention is useless because the struggle (conceived in a completely objectivist fashion) teaches all of the lessons and a consciousness adequate to the struggle merely arises magically without dialogue, discussion, critique and self-critique, I do consider the development of a new self-consciousness, a self-awareness of the implications of what one is doing, essential to people being able to actually control their own lives and constitute a different world. If consciousness is not necessary, then are we not still in fact dealing with the automatic subject, Capital? Isn't the irrelevance of self-consciousness as much a fetish as that of the educator (party, intellectual, organizer, etc) as Messiah-awakener?
There is a dualism of consciousness that is shared by both those who accept the theoretician-party as bearer of a class consciousness that must be adopted, and therefore raiser of consciousness, and those for whom the theorist, as spontaneist, rejects the importance of consciousness to the overcoming of capital and the production of a new society. Each fall prey to a fetishization of externality. The former where the theory-party is magically external to the society as a whole, and thus the bearers of Truth that will awaken the Messiah; the latter as the bearers of the Truth that the proletarian overthrow is itself also machine-like, external to and independent of consciousness, a certain kind of theoretical nihilism that is not nihilistic about its own activity.
I'm thinking there is another way to think about this, one that allows for theory to be meaningful and contributory, but which does not rely on theory as bearer of revolutionary consciousness and consciousness raising as the key to revolutionary success or consciousness, and struggles over ideas, as irrelevant to revolution. The former wants to lead the masses, the latter reduces theory to an activity "theorists" pursue because that is what they do, which is to say, consciousness is meaningless and theory only exists to to convince other theorists of its meaninglessness, hence a kind of nihilism. Obviously, I am posing extremes, suggesting that the truth of the matter is not in the murky middle, but in the excessive statement of the extremes.
On this one, I would definitely start from these points:
1. The obligation of the intellectual is not to offer answers, but to pose problems and bring forth dilemmas and shortcomings, to attempt to provide a ground on which we might clarify the inner contradictions of everything, from our ideas to our actions to our social being.
2. The intellectual has to say what only they can say, understanding that their work will not necessarily find an audience initially. Ideas do not create the ground of a radical practice, however radical practices will look for ideas in order to clarify and comprehend its own activities and limits.
3. Marxian theory understood as critical theory is negative. It is not a political programme nor does it lead to recipes of the future. It has a vision of the future, but in a rather broad way that is always shifting as the world out which it draws its visions changes, and yet there is an element that is invariant. The invariant element is a wager that if we think this is still capitalist society, then we still think that certain concepts apply because certain real abstractions remain determinate.
4. The language can vary. It should not be academic, but it is not obligated to be popular. The intellectual must trust that if their ideas do catch people's attention, they will find ways to express them in popular turns of phrase. Rarely is it the intellectual who can be popular because inevitably they write for the future. They are not activists or politicians, they do not have to adjust to people's consciousness and they do not have to raise people's consciousness.
5. The intellectual's work is not educative or consciousness raising; it is clarifying through troubling, probing, and de-naturalizing. It is a dialogue and a provocation. It is closer to the positon of the Freudian analyst, who first of all cannot tell you what your problem is, cannot tell you how to resolve it, is NOT the one who knows even as they appear to be "the one supposed to know". The intellectual, like the analyst, tries to trouble the excuses we make, the bad things we settle for, and the attendant forms of evasion of ourselves through denial, projection, and so on. And like the analyst, the theorist has to accept that they too are a neurotic, that they too need analysis and are an analysand, and are not at all external to this world. The possibility of insight comes from the inner contradictions of this world, not from their intelligence or effort or mystical access to a Truth from theory as a Truth Generating machine. The intellectual, especially the would-be revolutionary, often falls into the trap of self-consciousness Hegel illuminates in the Phenomenology of Spirit as "The law of the heart, and the insanity of self-conceit".
6. Does this require an organization? In one sense, a political party is inimical to this kind of work. It has a line to tow, a platform, and for most organizations, their theory is a justification of their practices and the self-analysis of the organization is always the prerogative of the leadership, so that it cannot happen. Simultaneously, it is essential for people to share, to comment, to develop each other and this in no way requires a hierarchy or a programme. In the end, there is no such thing as an autodidact and intellectual engagement and production is not restricted to the official institutions of this society, the universities and think tanks and professional societies. It is undoubtedly something that would always be a hot mess. Does not mean it isn't potentially valuable. I think it would have to be about certain kinds of relations and ways of relating.
7. The next greatest limitation the intellectual finds is finding a public, being able to have an audience that goes outside their milieu. The less precise, the less threatening to this society, the more an accomodation to the current consciousness, the more likely one is to get published, assuming one is not an academic, and the rule applies there too. The "popularizer" of radical ideas ends up also being an academic and they are popular in their broad, more middle class circles, which gives an illusion of "speaking to the masses".
8. What the radical intellectual hopes for is that moment where they are surpassed by and lag behind the actions of masses of people in struggle, and that their ideas, having provided self-clarification, are surpassed by the realization of whatever the overcoming of this society may be. After all, the problems of this society, this world, cannot be solved in ideas or because we suddenly became conscious or got educated. We transform the world collectively, in practice, a practice which is neither mechanical nor ideal. Following Hegel we might speak of Substance which is Subject, Subject which is Substance, but no longer a totalizing Subject or Substance. Rather, subjects whose substance is themselves and each other, in which substance is neither a Master or Other to be mastered, but an extension of the self whose independence is also acknowledged.
9. Coming back to language, should there be one language? If we take up the idea of the theorist as analyst, does the analyst talk to the analysand as they talk to other analysts? Is there a scientific (Hegelian notion of scientific here, Wissenschaft) language? Or does the analyst have to find a new way of speaking that is both psychoanalytic and self-engaged, self-reflective? Can there be a thoroughgoing conceptual discussion in the same language as the public, "session" language?
This is not a trivial issue. If we take the psychoanalytic idea seriously, it is not productive or necessary or even appropriate clinically in the therapeutic session to discuss psychoanalytic concepts. What is important is to trouble, provoke, and call out all evasion, self-deception, resistance, projection, etc. Can it also investigate its own conceptuality? Do Marx and Hegel do this? I am not convinced it is possible, and maybe this dilemma, this linguistic diremption, must be registered and we must remain uncomfortable with it, a kind of "register but refuse to normalize". The diremption in language is just another a moment of the contradictions of this society and it also won't be overcome by the intellectuals. But we can register and struggle with it and make it explicit and be open to being challenged as such.
Addendum
This occured to me quite some time after I originally wrote this up in draft: the activist/recruitment/programmatic organization (hereafter sect or racket) is to theoretical work as self-help gurus are to psychoanalysis. The sect or racket uses theory (truncated, simplified, and codified, stripped of ambiguity and complexity and the need for development and pruning, and of course moderated by the original Leader-Followers who run the racket) to tell the people looking for answers that only their program aka their theory and their practice, are the right one, and the sect will supply you with a schemata. Much of this involves something very much akin to a Tupperware or Cutco pyramid scheme, where each person is expected to not merely sell the goods, but more importantly to get two new people to now buy in and sell the goods, and they each get two people to buy in and sell the goods, and so on.
The self-help gurus have a product to sell you and they want to recruit you to sell their snake oil. Most importantly, they need you to add more people to the pyramid scheme. Unlike the psychoanalyst, they desperately need your familiaity with the product, with its marketing and brand, with its schemes, with its language. They need you to also become self-help gurus. They need you to work and evangelize. They need you to be accept that you are permanently an addict so that you permanently need the sect.
Of course, such self-help gurus are in competition with other self-help gurus, even if they have the same parent approach. There is no greater enemey of a self-help guru than the most closely competing one who looks the least different, and so it is among the sectarian rackets.
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