Rethinking Communism is the theme of one of the plenaries at the Rethinking Marxism conference this year. Details here. Aspiring ultraleftist malcontent that I am, it strikes me that several of the practical examples included, most of them actually, are of a rather … administrative or bureaucratic tenor.
June 27, 2006
… is rethinking communism?
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Indeed. And in the Northern examples, it must have taken quite an effort to exclude the more, um, nonadministrative, that is, the spontaneous and extraparliamentary, big events of the past year.
Comment by Eric — June 28, 2006 @ 3:42 pm
Yep. Effort or big blindspot. I was at some event, a talk on political theory stuff, and someone in the crowd voiced a pessimistic take that nothing is happening today. Afterward someone I was talking with put it really well: politics is happening all around (these) people and they don’t see it. I work as a grad student and I don’t want to be the grad student anti-academia, but … while I feel meanspirited to say this and a bit hypocritical as I am interested in these theoretical questions, I feel like there’s a problem here which is a possible implying that the task of academics is to rethink communism for nonacademics, a head and hand division. A more useful conference might be “funding communism” wherein academics plan and commit to giving away more money and time to projects that can use it.
Comment by Nate — June 28, 2006 @ 4:47 pm
And I don’t wish to be an anti-academic who has no connection to the academy; that’s a rich tradition of American anti-intellectualism I don’t want to carry on. But…I think your diagnosis of an acceptance of head-hand division of labor is correct. And if it’s the academic’s job to theorize, then it is the job of others to carry out the revolution, which division inevitably leads to disillusionment: why do they lack consciousness? why aren’t they taking to the street?
Comment by Eric — June 29, 2006 @ 1:56 pm
Agreed. Particularly if folk are not plugged into networks of activity (which why should one, if one’s role is to be the head?) or information (which are generally closely connected to activity networks such that lack of connection to the former often is the same as lack of connection to this). This is all reductive and overly general, but it is a type that occurs I think, or an asymptote, so to speak. The other bit is that the division of whose job is to be the head vs hand is also a division of waged and unwaged work, to some extent. The head folks get paid - my job is to read books and teach etc - and the hand folks don’t. Exceptions are staff of unions and other groups, who do get paid, but I think those organizations have a hard time not playing out their own internal head (and waged) vs hand (and unwaged) division.
One way to think this (is that an irony?) I think is the bit of Plato on the myth of the metals (I quoted it once, at the bottom here http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2006/06/15/is-enlightenment/).
One way to characterize what we’re concerned about is an implicit platonism. It’s also a Leninism or Kautskyism. I just found this quote in the new Althusser collection, Althusser is critical (but with kid gloves) of Lenin for approvingly citing Kautsky in What is to be Done. Kautsky says:
“Of course, socialism, as a doctrine, has its roots in modern economic relationships just as the class struggle of the proletariat has, and, like the latter, emerges from the struggle against the capitalist-created poverty and misery of the masses. But socialism and the class struggle arise side by side and not one out of the other; each arises under different conditions. Modern socialist consciousness can arise only on the basis of profound scientific knowledge. Indeed, modern economic science is as much a condition for socialist production as, say, modern technology, and the proletariat can create neither the one nor the other, no matter how much it may desire to do so; both arise out of the modern social process. The vehicle of science is not the proletariat, but the bourgeois intelligentsia [K. K.’s italics]: it was in the minds of individual members of this stratum that modern socialism originated, and it was they who communicated it to the more intellectually developed proletarians who, in their turn, introduce it into the proletarian class struggle where conditions allow that to be done. Thus, socialist consciousness is something introduced into the proletarian class struggle from without [von Aussen Hineingetragenes] and not something that arose within it spontaneously [urwüchsig]. Accordingly, the old Hainfeld programme quite rightly stated that the task of Social-Democracy is to imbue the proletariat (literally: saturate the proletariat) with the consciousness of its position and the consciousness of its task. There would be no need for this if consciousness arose of itself from the class struggle.” (Quoted here - http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/ii.htm#v05fl61h-373-GUESS)
More head and hand. I eventually plan to read the whole book (WITD, I mean), Jodi and I planned to a while ago and I dropped the ball. Anyway, that’s the problem.
The alternative I’m less clear on. My initial view is that I’m not sure a general positive theory thereof is possible or desirable, though I wouldn’t want to rule it out. I think at the level of ideas it’s a matter of doing sort of individual case studies or something, as evidence for the falsehood of the Platonic/Kautskyist perspective and to look at and take seriously the contents of the thoughts present. It’s also I think an ethical thing, trying to always make sure to not fall back into that bad old habit (or other ones), like training oneself to drop problematic impulses etc.
Ramble ramble…
Take it easy,
Nate
Comment by Nate — June 29, 2006 @ 5:21 pm