Ett ögonblick av kritisk historia

Efter ett besök i den kungliga huvudstaden inser man lätt den försoffade inställning som man själv vaggas in i av den kvävande borgerliga ideologi som är förhärskande i samhället. Rosa Luxemburg skriver:

Plötsligt händer så något, som har samma effekt, som om någon mitt i en krets väluppfostrade, fina och vänliga människor av en slump påträffade spår av vedervärdiga förbrytelser eller skamlösa utsvävningar under de kostbara möblerna. Plötsligt rycker den fruktansvärda misärens spöke bort masken av välanständighet från samhällets ansikte, och dess ärbarhet visar sig vara en skökas smink. Plötsligt visar det sig, att en avgrund av barbari och djuriskhet gapar under civilisationens yta av glans och glitter; helvetiska bilder stiger upp, bilder där mänskliga varelser gräver i soporna efter avfall, vrider sig i dödsryckningar och döende skickar upp sin pestlukt. Och muren, som skiljer oss från detta dystra skuggornas rike, visar sig vara en grant målad papperskuliss.

Precis på detta sätt är den borgerliga historia som berättas för oss i hela vårt liv. En berättelse som får oss att misstro oss själva och själva den erfarenhet som vi fått. Den enda möjligheten för oss att bryta oss ur den, att bygga en konsekvent världsbild och återsamla alla de sönderslagna bitar av spegeln som borgarklassen spritt över samhällets golv är att förena oss med alla andra i samma situation och mödosamt knyta syskonbanden och organisera den kamp som bedrivs på gator, på torg, på fabriken och kontoret, i polisstationer och skolsalar.

Jag tror Peter Weiss menade någonting i den här stilen när han skrev Motståndets Estetik. Vi måste konstant ta oss an det förflutna och betvinga det, inse vad Dagens Nyheter verkligen skriver och vad som egentligen döljer sig bakom officiella proklamationer, i TV-nyheterna och i människors dagliga tal.

Stockholm är en stad som alla andra, märkt av klasskamp i tusen år eller mer. Djupt ingrodd med den svenska arbetarklassens uppvaknande i den Fackliga Landsorganisationen och i det Socialdemokratiska partiet. I berättelsen där människors frihet är penningens frihet är fackföreningen och sammanslutningen bara en konspiration, en illvillig och oförstående blockad gentemot den bästa av alla möjliga världar. I deras berättelse reduceras vi till barn, till själviska usurpatorer och barnsliga våldsmakare.

Alla vet egentligen hur det är, av samhällets majoritet det vill säga. Borgarklassen berättar sina historier för att överhuvudtaget klara sig existentiellt och ideologiskt. Arbetarklassen inser vad som händer, men dess förståelse är inkonsekvent och steget från insikt till aktiv handling kan vara långt. Att organisera människor för klasskampen är att medvetandegöra dem och i de stunder när nävarna knytes kring upprorsfanans stång rycker man bort anständighetens mask från samhällets ansikte och - än viktigare - kan då gemensamt möta våra verkliga villkor och vår verkliga situation och kämpa tillsammans.

Som miljoner gjort före oss och kommer göra efter oss sjunger man Internationalen gemensamt och låter den dåna ut i möteslokaler, Folkets Hus, på gator, på en vinterkall gata i Petersburg 1917, från ett podium i USA, på en demonstration i Egypten. Vi har en lång, vacker tradition som mer levande än någon text beskriver vilka vi är. Den är nersatt i monument, texter, sånger och framförallt - i oss själva. Stolthet över partiet och rörelsen är det enda möjliga för att vara stolta över oss själva. Och det är också det enda möjliga när vi reellt har mött oss själva, vår situation och vår historia.

Praxis Part 2: Historical Materialism

I wrote in the first post about praxis concerning misunderstandings of historical materialism. The entirety of this post is directed towards giving an explanation that will hopefully clarify some details and mistakes that are possible.

Determinism

Some people dislike Marxism because, so they claim, it is a determinist theory. And determinism deters a lot of people. Others, in their attempts to misunderstand and miscredit Marx are firmly economist in their anti-Marxism and believe that socialists believe that things happen automatically, by the grace of god - or by the forces of production in this case.

First of all, let us remember that history makes man, but that man also makes history. Human beings face situations in their everyday life, they are faced with economical, social, moral and political choices. They do not always make the best of choices, as I detailed further in my previous post, as they are influenced by ideology that remains a necessary factor in understanding reality. But they do make choices, and the thing with Marxism is that economy is really what goes bump in the night - so to speak. A tribe without means of subsisting themselves would die. A farmers family would flourish given a better way to plow, one that failed would fall apart. In this sense, we must realize historical materialism as an evolutionary theory.

Human beings make choices, and sometimes they do not make the best or worst choices. That Peruvian medieval economy did not follow the exact pattern detailed in it's so rudimentary forms in the Communist Manifesty or The German Ideology is no deadly blow to Marxism. People make their choices from the actual realities of their situation as interpreted through ideology. We stand with our legs on the material ground and can see no further than the next hill, but we may go whichever way to get there - driven ahead by our past choices and the powers that influence our lives.

To answer our question: is Marxism a determinist theory? Only in the sense that saying that a child will become an adult is determinist. There is no steady rhythm heading towards one place or the other, merely choices that crop up sooner or later - driven onwards by what we must do to survive. Marxism, then, is neither rational choice nor 'hard' determinism.

Socialism is inevitable

While refuting determinism the argument is not difficult to make that socialism is an inevitability. Merely consider the national liberation groups, the Soviet Union or other failed emancipatory movements. While the October revolution, the Algerian war for independence and the Vietnam war were all victories for the good guys they fell apart after being unable to create socialism proper. And this is not the 'revisionism' that some Maoists charge us with. Rather, it is simply the case that the underlying conflicts in capitalism resurfaces time and time again even if some of them have been resolved. That is, for example, the case of South Africa. The economical structure will reproduce the same conflicts and actions time and time again until they are finally resolved. To believe that capitalism is inevitable and eternal is the most ideological and metaphysical claims that can be made. The opposite is the sober realization of material conflict and the actual change that real people make in the real world.

The last instance

Althusser's claim that the material decides in the last instance with cultural, ideological and other factors ranking above it but being structured by it is in many ways a proper way to understand Marxism, but it is also affected by a troublesome illusion hailing from the idea of the superstructure. Rather, while economy is the main structuring force that gives way to ideology and shapes the basic cultural pattern that we move in it is as much a governing force in clearly understood conflicts as an inbedded, structured one. That is to say that there are authentic understandings of the class struggle through actual class relations rather than through any direct, obfuscating ideological filters. Also, while the superstructure model is quite handy it is better for us to think of historical materialism and the individual as Mayakovsky's printing press, carried aloft by a thousand feet rather than the building that Marx provides us with, at least from time to time.

Ethnicity and Gender

Some claim that Marxism is gender or colourblind. While this might be true with some Marxists, it is hardly so for the entire school. With the importance of ideology as a factor in Marx's theory and the later developments of it, it is easy to see the divisions and the structures that are created through the hard work of so many burgeoise philosophers. Of course, it is not merely a trick of the upper classes that men dominate women or that europeans dominate the periphery. However, as I have argued before we cannot quite comprehend racism previously to capitalism with it appearing to serve a powerful role in colonialism.

Praxis as the dialectal movement between the theory of racism or power over one gender or the other gives us the opportunity to solve a few of the antinomies raised by the idea of racism/capitalism/sexism as categories. They are all consisting of a theoretical, half-understood foundation and a kneejerk practical reaction that serves everyday life and that feeds or destroys the ideology in question. Or rather, it typically bends it one way or the other. Complete destruction of either one is the rupture of reification that in turn can cause a political chainreaction of a sorts - that is to say, the anti-racist has an easier time understanding the practical implications of wage-labour than someone without that practical-critical experience.

The sad thing about Marx and Engels failed prophecies are that they were both wrong about the positive things that they said. Engels who believed that there was more or less no oppression of women in the proletariat, Marx who believed that capitalism would emancipate women. Racism and sexism are not foreign concepts to capitalism, they are actually an integral part created through different, but similar mechanisms. Racism is heavily connected to imperialism and colonialism while sexism in some ways have an older heritage, tied in with the ideology of the Church and in western Europe with the class and gender struggles of the 19th century's labour market.

Both of these unequal power relations are produced by burgeoise ideologists and reproduced in various ways by all layers of society. That human beings live, act, think and change is far more true than that they are implemented with a ready-set kit of ideas and beliefs at birth. The fog of reality causes unclarity and uncertainty for the sharpest of minds. In the masses there are various groups that struggle through their praxis against one another, this is simply the way of capitalism. Pure capitalism as envisioned by naked, history-less groups of proletarians and the upper class is an impossibility in a reality that changes, produces and reproduces ideology and struggles.

Praxis Part 1: Epistemology

No revolutionary movement without a revolutionary theory - V.I Lenin

We are going to start our next philosophical exploration with the concept of praxis. Praxis is understood as practical-critical labour; what Marx writes about in his Theses on Feuerbach. We are also going to discuss how we may use praxis and what solutions it may provide, there are many attacks against Marxism, and while most of them are ridiculous, there are some which requires more attention than the typical sneer you give to the typical sycophantic and incompetent petit burgeoise who believes he can unmask historical materialism with the typical unoriginal platitudes we come across every so often as we go about our daily routines trying to rouse the masses and incite mobs.

One of the charges against historical materialism is how the concept of the superstructure (Swedish: bas-överbyggnad), transforms Marxism into an economist and determinist theory. While I believe that economism is a possible deviation in Marxism, I am not going to join the chorus of modern Marxists that shake their fists at imaginary economistic philosophers - simply because I don't know of any. Rather, I know that there have been some and that it is possible that some exist, but it is hardly the case that any of the important scholars have been hopelessly infected with economism. Who really believes that there is a 1-1 relationship between the base and the superstructure? What would it even mean for there to be a 1-1 relationship?

Praxis and the Dialectic

For us to understand the concept of the superstructure and to develop it further and allow for us to realize the narratives, ideologies and systems within the superstructure we must maintain and understand the concept of praxis as a central point of Marxist philosophy. The manner in which we organize our economic life creates a basis for reflexive understanding of the world and ourselves. It is of course not the "big Lie" that some philistine right-wing idiots blabber on about, but rather a system of lived experience based around a continous input from the material realities of life. In a less academic fashion, we can simply say that the medieval peasant who worked the fields every day, far from any major center of commerce, will develop a certain understanding of the world. He understands how his tools work, how the weather changes, how he must reap and sow, etc. Around him is built an extended family unit, varying in size and composition on the basis of the individual family, the economic base but also the superstructure - what might be called pure chance, but also involves learned tradition, superstitions and other things. From the basic understanding given from the reflexive consciousness produced by habit is raised the movement towards the world as well - the faint grasping for understanding offered by religion and magic, the solidarity caused by the necessity of the situation with other peasants and so on.

Praxis then is dialectic in the true sense of the word, it contains the two parts of theory and practice, molded together but also 'exploding' - causing revolutions in understanding or practice. Practical reality gives us input, but unfortunately not as easily as Lenin believed when defending a simple reflexive materialist epistemology in Materialism and Empirocriticism there is the necessity of existing ideological frameworks for us to understand the world. It is what the child learns through the pedagogue that is his parents in combinations with the playing, chewing, touching and hurting that are the lessons of the baby.

Science

Aligning myself with Thomas Kuhn I am of the opinion that science is dependant on pre-existing notions of philosophy, theory and concepts. Einstein's debt to Spinoza, Newton's to the alchemists and so on are all illuminating examples. All science is built on tradition, and metaphysical examples can be a helpful guide to breaking through the invisible cages of language and the dormant metaphysics existing in all scientific theories.

So we find then the concept of praxis at the heart of science as well. A society of a certain type with a specific material basis and development in the superstructure can open up radical new ways of understanding reality, which is of course also indicating that there are ten doors closed for every one door opened. But that is the way of things, ability provides means but is also excluding.

Mass Struggle and Ideology

Through the economic floor that the classes rise up on they continously come into conflict with one another until the means of production have matured enough to cause the release that is revolution. Classes see themselves through the stories they tell themselves - part lies, part myth, part self-delusion and part insight in tradition, history and modern politics. All grounded in the ongoing struggle of praxis that shapes and reshapes currents of thought, action and organization. What is part and parcel for one group within the two vast classes might be foreign to another part. Thus we find the insistance on anti-fascism within certain elements of the leftist movement, while others are more concentrated on the defence and development of the welfare state. From time to time we confuse our tactical and strategical choices with our genuine causes. Believing that there is a value in itself for, for example, the welfare state. Certainly, to understand the development of political organizations it is vital to understand the traditions that give rise to both the deteriorations of Leftist groups, as for example the split in 1917.

The masses are taught, disciplined and developed in their class consciousness through their activity in the class struggle. Their practical-critical development is caused through actual action rather than the passive consumtion of ideology - whether from a party or media. While these might be effective leaders, interpreters or theoreticians in the Gramscian tradition they are no substitute for actual class consciousness, generated through the realization of the class system that is only revealed to the large majority through their own eyes.

Postmodernist Blahblahblah versus Positivism

The idea of praxis might be co-opted by postmodernists from time to time, but it is actually a defence - the only defence - for materialism. The most effective argument for the existance of an objective reality is that it changes over time. It deteriorates, it grows, it falls apart and it comes together again. Disasters happen, forests burn and seas are made dry. Humanity may influence nature, but doesn't rule it. It makes no sense to attribute these changes that are so often foreign to our conception to our reality to a priori existing filters in us - the filters that truly exist are most likely biologically evolved to aid us in decoding other human beings and to increase our efficiency in manipulating reality.

Both postmodernism and positivism, at least in their vulgar forms, make the same mistake to see reality as given through either social creations or 1-1 reflections of reality. I am not going to insult either tradition in saying that they are all in that manner, but that the difference between Marxist Third Way-ism in the question of epistemology is the insistance that praxis solves many metaphysical questions as well as ties in important understandings of humanity and nature - two things that should not be as separate as both the postmodernist and positivist tradition make them out to be.

Praxis and Politics - Individual and Collective.

At long last comes another post. The lack of posts on here has been due to visitors from abroad. While this will not be a very long post, there are a few issues that are in need of being repeated - ad nauseum if necessary.

I have previously written about the self and politics, about the major breakthrough that feminism brought - the revelation of the personal as political. While some might condemn it as "identity politics", and while certainly it can veer off into that, it is a necessary tool to break through burgeoise ideology.

In the latest issue of New Left Review Malcolm Bull has written "Vectors of the Biopolitical". While this is no time to write a full post about it, he touches upon some important things. Above all the importance of Aristotle - especially for socialists and feminists.

Aristotle is one of the most important philosophers and one that Marxists should pay more attention to. Reading the Nicomachean Ethics, for example, gives you the basic value theory of Marx - without the necessary component of where value comes from, how it is produced. Marx, in his typical fashion, goes on at some length about the genius of Aristotle, but also that he lacked the ability to truly grasp the labour theory of value due to his position in society and the underdeveloped nature of production in the antique world.

Also, Aristotle's old claim that man is a political animal is an ancestor of the fact that the personal is political. The philosopher was of course one of the ideologues of patriarchy, as well as having quite a few racist notions. However, we can use quite a few of the insights that he had and that he was unable to explore and understand.

Man as a political animal and virtue as it connects to the human community which in itself is part of the polis, engaged in a structure that must be - cannot be anything but - political is essential to an understanding of morality and humanity. That also that the family unit and the private sphere is subject to power relations, ideology and politics is the key to create equality and the destruction of gender roles.

The fact of the matter is that all humans are political animals and that they are all engaged in politics daily, throughout their waking hours. The realization that there exists structures of power and ideology and the consciousness that is awoken about what happens at work or at home is the smashing of reification. Of course, this is not an easy process, but it is a revolutionary one. And indeed, life as it is is painful, filled with unknown problems and alienation. Only through collective action that awakes political consciousness can women be emancipated and a revolutionary movement awoken. Politics is what happens in your backyard, in your bedroom and what you do at school. Organizing and awaking the consciousness is what we try to do in the Left - or what we should do.