getfiscal
getfiscal
Mike Nelson here.
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From Becoming-Minor to a Socialist Majority
"I want to be the minority."
- Green Day
Postmodernism is a cultural condition that emerged in the wake of the failure of student and worker revolts to transcend the increasingly broken Fordist model. In the broad neoliberal austerity that followed, there emerged an incredulity at grand narratives, given the failure of the global labour and postcolonial movements to build new societies free of bureaucratic control. Here I have chosen, as Slavoj Zizek says, "to historicize historicism itself" - that is, I have positioned postmodernism within a historical narrative that is tied to specific socio-economic conditions. This choice is often associated with a Marxist attempt to reassert the primacy of class struggle. Louis Althusser said that history was a "process without a subject." This means that history can be studied scientifically as a process, but that individuals do not have any necessary essential features and groups or classes do not have specific historical tasks. Poststructuralist theory implies that these processes are, at root, discursive practices that are contingent and could always be articulated differently.
Gilles Deleuze developed the concept of "becoming minor." This concept suggests that we should appreciate difference and focus on the ways we are subordinate within prevailing power structures. To "become minor" is to work to see oneself as being in league with others that are somehow excluded or oppressed. This is related to the ethical position of antirepresentationalism that is valued in poststructuralist and postmodern theory. In other words, one must "speak for oneself" in all matters. This suggests a certain sort of politics with a distrust of authority and an emphasis on individuals and communities speaking for themselves in direct democratic forms rather than orthodox vanguard parties and statist bureaucracies.
Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, contrary to the anarchist positions of many poststucturalists, suggest that antirepresentationalism is best developed through liberal-democratic institutions that prevail in the West. Rather than prioritizing participatory democracy, they see the right focus as being on transforming existing institutions. As Mouffe quotes Bobbio, the question for democracy today is not "who" but "where." As such, Laclau and Mouffe suggest that liberal institutions be radicalized through the rise of linked social movements. While I think there is value in this approach, I think it misses out the basic lessons of Marxism, especially the non-neutrality of the state. Every time a socialist party has come close to pushing radical reforms it has been compromised from within or without - it finds itself confronted by overwhelming power of the state and capital, and it cannot simply appeal to liberal-democratic principle to save itself.
I would suggest that Laclau and Mouffe's position on participatory democracy, which they see as dangerous to liberal-democracy, must be turned upside to be placed on its feet. The only way to truly save democratic institutions while proceeding to socialism is, as many Marxists say, to put them firmly in the hands of the working class. By this I mean that socialists must support local democratic mass assemblies as the basis for their movement and as the embryo of the future socialist state. On the other hand, I don't think that this means that parliaments ought to be swept aside - I think there is generally an obligation to use them insofar as a legal politics is possible. However, socialists must be fully prepared to continue to push beyond the constraints offered by liberal-democracy in the event of a crisis brought on by reaction. Here violence and extraparliamentary power becomes indispensable.
Laclau and Mouffe also offer a procedure for counterhegemonic interventions which they call building a "chain of equivalence." A chain of equivalence takes social movements and links them together as if they were naturally joined by some common factor. For example, radical feminism might link together socialism (the labour movement) and feminism (the women's movement and the queer movement) with the common thread that both are about ending subordination (workers to bosses/capitalists, women to men/sexists). That way, a feminist might see as obvious the need to work with socialists. This also means that there is no limitation to who can help socialism due to the process of becoming-minor: A wealthy ecologist might come to support socialism because ecosocialism has created a chain of equivalence between socialism and ecology. The related term "intersectionality" implies that such interconnections can be made with any issue to imply a broad linkage between socialists, feminists, anti-racists, indigenous rights, disability rights, ecologist and many other issues.
The same logic that makes chains of equivalence possible also helps explain why so many people are not socialists. Each individual tends to have multiple axes on which they gain from the system, and tends to emphasize these privileges that are constantly reinforced by hegemony. For example, a woman may consider herself a feminist, which would open her to links with radical feminists, but she may also be white and come from a middle-class background. Discursive practices will determine how she makes trade-offs between different dimensions of identity and oppression. Since whiteness and middle-class positions are continually reinforced by hegemonic discursive practices, the woman in question will tend to side with these aspects of her identity, creating a liberal feminist position which sees no contradiction between, say, supporting centrist politics and being against sexist violence. The task of radical feminists, then, is to create a narrative that is intuitive that shows such women how they ought to support socialism.
I would argue that ought statements are ethical in nature and must be rooted in some sort of moral framework. Here I largely agree with Todd May's position that poststructuralism is consequentialist. What we care about in moral consideration is how well people's lives go, largely by their own measures. May includes the principle of antirepresentation in his determination, meaning that one way that we would determine how well things were going would be how much people can speak for themselves in institutions. Here I would suggest a sort of hybrid position between May's anarchism and Laclau and Mouffe's liberalism - institutions must be participatory democratic where possible and representative where necessary. If we return to the notion of historicizing historicism, it is possible that we could re-imagine Marxism in light of this hybrid position - our struggle is partially to move from representation (by state and capital) towards participation (through direct democracy and workers' control).
Importantly, many people are already working with these principles of radical democracy. For example, in many countries there are new left parties and anticapitalist movements that work hard to link together various social movements around a common program of social transformation. These new parties differ from traditional parties in that they tend not to have a single narrative in their construction or deliberation. Most are openly multitendency parties that have a mainstream that is not dominated by any single perspective. This mixing is producing a new generation of activists that are largely disconnected from the baggage of orthodox Marxism. This has its drawbacks, given the wealth of experience in actually existing socialism and from its many critics, which is something which will need be thrashed out. But it also gives these new movements a sense of innovation and vitality which is useful in shaking off the "muck of the ages." While these new movements will need to link up in more forceful ways with extraparliamentary democratic movements and build a base beyond their small followings, the prospect of doing so is certainly exciting.
"I want to be the minority."
- Green Day
Postmodernism is a cultural condition that emerged in the wake of the failure of student and worker revolts to transcend the increasingly broken Fordist model. In the broad neoliberal austerity that followed, there emerged an incredulity at grand narratives, given the failure of the global labour and postcolonial movements to build new societies free of bureaucratic control. Here I have chosen, as Slavoj Zizek says, "to historicize historicism itself" - that is, I have positioned postmodernism within a historical narrative that is tied to specific socio-economic conditions. This choice is often associated with a Marxist attempt to reassert the primacy of class struggle. Louis Althusser said that history was a "process without a subject." This means that history can be studied scientifically as a process, but that individuals do not have any necessary essential features and groups or classes do not have specific historical tasks. Poststructuralist theory implies that these processes are, at root, discursive practices that are contingent and could always be articulated differently.
Gilles Deleuze developed the concept of "becoming minor." This concept suggests that we should appreciate difference and focus on the ways we are subordinate within prevailing power structures. To "become minor" is to work to see oneself as being in league with others that are somehow excluded or oppressed. This is related to the ethical position of antirepresentationalism that is valued in poststructuralist and postmodern theory. In other words, one must "speak for oneself" in all matters. This suggests a certain sort of politics with a distrust of authority and an emphasis on individuals and communities speaking for themselves in direct democratic forms rather than orthodox vanguard parties and statist bureaucracies.
Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, contrary to the anarchist positions of many poststucturalists, suggest that antirepresentationalism is best developed through liberal-democratic institutions that prevail in the West. Rather than prioritizing participatory democracy, they see the right focus as being on transforming existing institutions. As Mouffe quotes Bobbio, the question for democracy today is not "who" but "where." As such, Laclau and Mouffe suggest that liberal institutions be radicalized through the rise of linked social movements. While I think there is value in this approach, I think it misses out the basic lessons of Marxism, especially the non-neutrality of the state. Every time a socialist party has come close to pushing radical reforms it has been compromised from within or without - it finds itself confronted by overwhelming power of the state and capital, and it cannot simply appeal to liberal-democratic principle to save itself.
I would suggest that Laclau and Mouffe's position on participatory democracy, which they see as dangerous to liberal-democracy, must be turned upside to be placed on its feet. The only way to truly save democratic institutions while proceeding to socialism is, as many Marxists say, to put them firmly in the hands of the working class. By this I mean that socialists must support local democratic mass assemblies as the basis for their movement and as the embryo of the future socialist state. On the other hand, I don't think that this means that parliaments ought to be swept aside - I think there is generally an obligation to use them insofar as a legal politics is possible. However, socialists must be fully prepared to continue to push beyond the constraints offered by liberal-democracy in the event of a crisis brought on by reaction. Here violence and extraparliamentary power becomes indispensable.
Laclau and Mouffe also offer a procedure for counterhegemonic interventions which they call building a "chain of equivalence." A chain of equivalence takes social movements and links them together as if they were naturally joined by some common factor. For example, radical feminism might link together socialism (the labour movement) and feminism (the women's movement and the queer movement) with the common thread that both are about ending subordination (workers to bosses/capitalists, women to men/sexists). That way, a feminist might see as obvious the need to work with socialists. This also means that there is no limitation to who can help socialism due to the process of becoming-minor: A wealthy ecologist might come to support socialism because ecosocialism has created a chain of equivalence between socialism and ecology. The related term "intersectionality" implies that such interconnections can be made with any issue to imply a broad linkage between socialists, feminists, anti-racists, indigenous rights, disability rights, ecologist and many other issues.
The same logic that makes chains of equivalence possible also helps explain why so many people are not socialists. Each individual tends to have multiple axes on which they gain from the system, and tends to emphasize these privileges that are constantly reinforced by hegemony. For example, a woman may consider herself a feminist, which would open her to links with radical feminists, but she may also be white and come from a middle-class background. Discursive practices will determine how she makes trade-offs between different dimensions of identity and oppression. Since whiteness and middle-class positions are continually reinforced by hegemonic discursive practices, the woman in question will tend to side with these aspects of her identity, creating a liberal feminist position which sees no contradiction between, say, supporting centrist politics and being against sexist violence. The task of radical feminists, then, is to create a narrative that is intuitive that shows such women how they ought to support socialism.
I would argue that ought statements are ethical in nature and must be rooted in some sort of moral framework. Here I largely agree with Todd May's position that poststructuralism is consequentialist. What we care about in moral consideration is how well people's lives go, largely by their own measures. May includes the principle of antirepresentation in his determination, meaning that one way that we would determine how well things were going would be how much people can speak for themselves in institutions. Here I would suggest a sort of hybrid position between May's anarchism and Laclau and Mouffe's liberalism - institutions must be participatory democratic where possible and representative where necessary. If we return to the notion of historicizing historicism, it is possible that we could re-imagine Marxism in light of this hybrid position - our struggle is partially to move from representation (by state and capital) towards participation (through direct democracy and workers' control).
Importantly, many people are already working with these principles of radical democracy. For example, in many countries there are new left parties and anticapitalist movements that work hard to link together various social movements around a common program of social transformation. These new parties differ from traditional parties in that they tend not to have a single narrative in their construction or deliberation. Most are openly multitendency parties that have a mainstream that is not dominated by any single perspective. This mixing is producing a new generation of activists that are largely disconnected from the baggage of orthodox Marxism. This has its drawbacks, given the wealth of experience in actually existing socialism and from its many critics, which is something which will need be thrashed out. But it also gives these new movements a sense of innovation and vitality which is useful in shaking off the "muck of the ages." While these new movements will need to link up in more forceful ways with extraparliamentary democratic movements and build a base beyond their small followings, the prospect of doing so is certainly exciting.
DRUXXX
DRUXXX
el area metro
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ugh man why are you using the first person so much
babyfinland
babyfinland
tardy on these heaters
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getfiscal
getfiscal
Mike Nelson here.
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~
DRUXXX posted:
ugh man why are you using the first person so much
because it is about my views you germ
germanjoey
germanjoey
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DRUXXX posted:
ugh man why are you using the first person so much
because that's how you write an essay that's a.) honest and b.) not boring as fuck
germanjoey
germanjoey
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great essay IMHO! gonna try to respond Wednesday evening; busy as fuck until then.
[account deactivated]
aerdil
aerdil
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christmas_cheer
christmas_cheer
north pole
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That the Hitch opted not to forego extensive medical treatment and simply suicide makes me really question his wisdom.
aerdil
aerdil
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christmas_cheer posted:
That the Hitch opted not to forego extensive medical treatment and simply suicide makes me really question his wisdom.
lol he has a long article in vanity fair today all about this while invoking nietzsche for no real reason
If I had been told about all this in advance, would I have opted for the treatment? There were several moments as I bucked and writhed and gasped and cursed when I seriously doubted it.
Impper
Impper
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gf i appreciate these essays. i always find myself reacting to them, going "that's wrong, that's wrong, that's wrong, and yes, that too is wrong," not necessarily in response to what you say but in response to what you are saying other people say. perhaps i'm an old reactionary at this point, but when you talk about these "new formulations," these "innovations," these "new forms of democracy," all i can really do is sort of laugh and shake my head - that is i get the sense that i'm looking at people who are doomed: and why are they doomed? it seems to me that they are beating around the bush, that they're riffing and pontificating about forms of democracy without any sort of center - precisely because they've abandoned the past. the past doesn't seem possible: yes, this is postmodernism, and we are not going to formulate anything that resembles the past in the least; but then what are we trying to do? the past being impossible doesn't seem to give us a right to throw away its truths . . . by this i mean: why not attempt to replicate exactly the past, and then see what happens? why not take our lessons from what has worked, do that, and let the chips fall where they may. the only other alternative i can think of is to destroy everything.
i'm just not comfortable with these silly academics feeling around in the dark and declaring they've found "new truths." it's silly and it's clearly not working. every time a historical event takes place in the present we glean the same old lessons: the anarchists are idealistic fools, the liberals side with the police state, the capitalists will attempt to profit, the imperialists will stop at nothing to further their aims.
in short, i don't believe in innovation, particularly theoretical ones. we don't need theory; what we need is champions - and champions can use whatever theories they wish
i'm just not comfortable with these silly academics feeling around in the dark and declaring they've found "new truths." it's silly and it's clearly not working. every time a historical event takes place in the present we glean the same old lessons: the anarchists are idealistic fools, the liberals side with the police state, the capitalists will attempt to profit, the imperialists will stop at nothing to further their aims.
in short, i don't believe in innovation, particularly theoretical ones. we don't need theory; what we need is champions - and champions can use whatever theories they wish
noavbazzer
noavbazzer
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Impper posted:
in short, i don't believe in innovation, particularly theoretical ones. we don't need theory; what we need is champions - and champions can use whatever theories they wish
where's the streetwise hercules to fight the rising odds?
christmas_cheer
christmas_cheer
north pole
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The only way to be a "champion" is to achieve within the system. Someone who is generally supportive of the progress of human civilization thus far, their criticism is listened to more thoroughly because they are not known as a critic. They are known as a moderate. If they are known as a conservative it's even better. Only Nixon could go to China.
Someone who criticizes everything about civilization is ignored because they are obviously just a bitter malcontent. They can theory their way into new ways to be bitter and new hypothetical perfect systems all they want. But political power does not come from poorly dressed revolutionaries but from respected individuals.
The democratic system is literally designed to marginalize your bizarre opinions and keep you out of power
Someone who criticizes everything about civilization is ignored because they are obviously just a bitter malcontent. They can theory their way into new ways to be bitter and new hypothetical perfect systems all they want. But political power does not come from poorly dressed revolutionaries but from respected individuals.
The democratic system is literally designed to marginalize your bizarre opinions and keep you out of power
noavbazzer
noavbazzer
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i think thats exactly why impper has thought and posted a lot about bitter malcontents being the only human beings fit to violently seize power and run society
its when the decent human beings gain control that all is lost as far as i understand the theory
its when the decent human beings gain control that all is lost as far as i understand the theory
getfiscal
getfiscal
Mike Nelson here.
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Impper posted:
in short, i don't believe in innovation, particularly theoretical ones. we don't need theory; what we need is champions - and champions can use whatever theories they wish
to make something clear, i don't necessarily think much of what i said is "new", and i don't know if you need to put it in my terms at all. at core all i'm saying something extremely simple: that we all have our own views that are mostly based on rational intuition, that we mostly care about things going well, that this involves social cooperation, that since it is mostly people speaking for themselves we need democratic forms where we can have them, and that experience suggests that this includes people deciding on economic issues in a collective way.
in those terms above, nothing is particularly "marxist" or "postmodern" or anything, and i think a lot of people would easily relate to them. the reason i draw on (post)marxism is because it unpacks marxism and modernism for me from positions i used to hold, and because it speaks to a particular strategy that i think is correct, and because i see it as a theory of the labour movement in the same way that feminism is a theory of the women's/gender movement.
Impper
Impper
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getfiscal posted:
to make something clear, i don't necessarily think much of what i said is "new", and i don't know if you need to put it in my terms at all. at core all i'm saying something extremely simple: that we all have our own views that are mostly based on rational intuition, that we mostly care about things going well, that this involves social cooperation, that since it is mostly people speaking for themselves we need democratic forms where we can have them, and that experience suggests that this includes people deciding on economic issues in a collective way.
i suppose that it's on this account that i'm a misanthrope - that is we can reduce politics to these simple terms and find entire lands of common ground, yes, of course, everybody does it from liberals to communists to hitler to anarchists, we do have common ground as far as that goes: but doesn't this fall apart once you introduce larger modes of organization? this is precisely when it falls apart, and precisely when "modernism" becomes necessary; because things are too large and human organizations (with all their accompanying desires & interests) have grown far beyond the ability for small communities to even engage, it becomes necessary then to 'decide' what people are saying when they speak for themselves, to 'follow a path' to accommodate the greatest sum total of human desires. and then, well, you have liberalism or communism or hitlerism or anarchism, don't you? why should our faith in humans' ability to cooperate at the level of the small community be privileged? nobody even denies this; that the grand narratives have fallen apart as time has passed isn't evidence that grand narratives are impossible. perhaps we simply haven't found the right one yet, or failing that - permanent revolution!
babyfinland
babyfinland
tardy on these heaters
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I agreed with your first post Impper, but I don't agree with your last one. I agree that there is no point to trying to formulate new utopias and that essentially any solution will be found by picking up the tools we have, that we know are sound, and attacking the present with them. The resolution of this action will be that new solution we seek. However, I don't agree that this means precisely a encore of modernism: I think that one of our tools is the failure of the enlightenment ideal. This is articulated in your first post: we can not program a utopia, plug it in and voila, a universalist society functioning perfectly, like the clockwork mechanistic universe our modern cosmology promises. If anything, our most important tool is the rejection of these bourgeois constructions. The revolutionary position is to embrace the crisis of bourgeois half-measures and to implement in full the revolutionary position. The chips will fall where they may, but the error will be in hesitation to reject a known failure.
I know that this might come across somehow contradictory, the contradiction located somewhere between the rejection of bourgeois cosmology in the reproduction of our society and the demand for full implementation of a revolutionary social program, but I do not think it is a really-existing contradiction. I think it is a contradiction that arises from our perception of a post-revolutionary state of the world from our position in the pre-revolutionary one: it can only appear in the negative, as a rejection of the antiquated, the failed, the bourgeois. The positive features of the post-revolutionary society will arise from necessity as we reorganize with a rigorous revolutionary logic.
I know that this might come across somehow contradictory, the contradiction located somewhere between the rejection of bourgeois cosmology in the reproduction of our society and the demand for full implementation of a revolutionary social program, but I do not think it is a really-existing contradiction. I think it is a contradiction that arises from our perception of a post-revolutionary state of the world from our position in the pre-revolutionary one: it can only appear in the negative, as a rejection of the antiquated, the failed, the bourgeois. The positive features of the post-revolutionary society will arise from necessity as we reorganize with a rigorous revolutionary logic.
Impper
Impper
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yes, i think i agree with all of that, especially as in that in a pre-revolutionary society, before the Event, it is impossible to make predictions or definitively Know anything about the terrain of the post-event world - i suppose inasmuch as this i'm "so pomo . . . ," not that being so pomo is without merit.
i think though that you took my argument that we need an encore of modernism too far, or at least it's a misconstruction: what i meant is we need, to some extent, some of the modernists' confidence when it comes to assertions. we can't constantly sabotage our own intellectual foundations with our doubt and our radical self-knowledge: perhaps we need to lie to ourselves. i do very much see these returns to anarchistic modes of organization as retreats from the coordinates of the modern world: of course if we could organize into units of 150 people, communes, occupies, self sufficient villages, we'd solve a lot of our problems: but so what? this stance is even more passive than a full embrace of accelerationism.
what i mean here is that when occupy (or whoever else) talks about how their radical democracy and "form of organization" is going to change the world i'm deeply skeptical; but when occupy (or whoever else) is providing electricity, food, shelter, security, essentially attacking the state by replacing its functions, i can see that something is definitively happening. this is no sort of innovation - it's something that every revolutionary has known intuitively from day one.
okay, well somehow this post has gone off the rails. i haven't been accustomed to writing essays or arguments for a while now
i think though that you took my argument that we need an encore of modernism too far, or at least it's a misconstruction: what i meant is we need, to some extent, some of the modernists' confidence when it comes to assertions. we can't constantly sabotage our own intellectual foundations with our doubt and our radical self-knowledge: perhaps we need to lie to ourselves. i do very much see these returns to anarchistic modes of organization as retreats from the coordinates of the modern world: of course if we could organize into units of 150 people, communes, occupies, self sufficient villages, we'd solve a lot of our problems: but so what? this stance is even more passive than a full embrace of accelerationism.
what i mean here is that when occupy (or whoever else) talks about how their radical democracy and "form of organization" is going to change the world i'm deeply skeptical; but when occupy (or whoever else) is providing electricity, food, shelter, security, essentially attacking the state by replacing its functions, i can see that something is definitively happening. this is no sort of innovation - it's something that every revolutionary has known intuitively from day one.
okay, well somehow this post has gone off the rails. i haven't been accustomed to writing essays or arguments for a while now
babyfinland
babyfinland
tardy on these heaters
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i agree with that. however, im not as skeptical about smaller, intentional communities. to me the issue is more a hesitancy and lack of imagination that stops there, at eating and producing locally, which is simply a program for "the new apartheid". it is the satisfaction with that alone that is problematic, not the (implicit proposal) of a complex networking of small intentional communities with fluid and intersecting memberships
aerdil
aerdil
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Impper posted:
gf i appreciate these essays. i always find myself reacting to them, going "that's wrong, that's wrong, that's wrong, and yes, that too is wrong," not necessarily in response to what you say but in response to what you are saying other people say. perhaps i'm an old reactionary at this point, but when you talk about these "new formulations," these "innovations," these "new forms of democracy," all i can really do is sort of laugh and shake my head - that is i get the sense that i'm looking at people who are doomed: and why are they doomed? it seems to me that they are beating around the bush, that they're riffing and pontificating about forms of democracy without any sort of center - precisely because they've abandoned the past. the past doesn't seem possible: yes, this is postmodernism, and we are not going to formulate anything that resembles the past in the least; but then what are we trying to do? the past being impossible doesn't seem to give us a right to throw away its truths . . . by this i mean: why not attempt to replicate exactly the past, and then see what happens? why not take our lessons from what has worked, do that, and let the chips fall where they may. the only other alternative i can think of is to destroy everything.
i'm just not comfortable with these silly academics feeling around in the dark and declaring they've found "new truths." it's silly and it's clearly not working. every time a historical event takes place in the present we glean the same old lessons: the anarchists are idealistic fools, the liberals side with the police state, the capitalists will attempt to profit, the imperialists will stop at nothing to further their aims.
in short, i don't believe in innovation, particularly theoretical ones. we don't need theory; what we need is champions - and champions can use whatever theories they wish
hmmm yess... u might say what we have here is a theoretical....... end of history
nOT.
Impper
Impper
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i'm pretty sure i was saying that history needs to be our guide?
aerdil
aerdil
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youre disregarding innovation in theory, then in the next breath leaping to disregarding theory entirely. and it's completely incoherent. obviously some historicism is necessary for any Good theory imo, but Theory must continually be built on due to lessons in the present. we need champions, yes, but champions armed with good theory. look back to your cherished history, we have had champions before, many champions. and almost every single one wasted their potential on flawed ideology.
Impper
Impper
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oh, of course, when i wrote "we don't need theory," wha ti meant is that "we need theory." but you misread
aerdil
aerdil
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urgh. you pomo cretin.