action proceeds consciousness
Aug 20 2009 20:15
I'm doing research on ideas around the relationship between consciousness and action, and when they contradict eachother. Martin Glaberman is explicit about this topic, and puts forward the thesis that often action proceeds consciousness in workers in struggle, and that struggle can be transformative of consciousness (shouldn't be controversial really, but it is). I'm curious if others know of other revolutionaries who tackled these topics. Lukacs in History & Class Consciousness grazes the issue in a few places from a different perspective. Any suggested readings would be appreciated.
Aug 21 2009 08:59
#2
I think the approaches of Lukacs and Glaberman, while different, can be complementary.
Glaberman is useful for understanding the impulses and situations that can act as catalysts for activity.
Lukacs (and his admirers in the Frankfurt School) is useful for understanding why that activity often runs up against an ideological barrier and hence why revolutions are so rare.
Aug 21 2009 09:13
#3
I think Lukacs' approach is a great one for understanding 'ideology' - or at least how capitalism (the commodity-form, more precisely) shapes our consciousness down to a fundamental level. However the weakness of his analysis is that the party functions as a deus ex machina, cutting through the alienation of consciousness and being unaffected by reification by virtue of being the 'historical consciousness of the proletariat'. That seems more like an article of faith than anything else, and runs against the reasoning that he lays out earlier in his critique.
Lukacs was obviously a big influence on the Situationists, and Society of the Spectacle takes up a lot of the themes. It ditches the magic wand of the party, but isn't without its own problems.
There's a good article in the latest Aufheben (#17) which critiques both Debord and Lukacs while going over Retort's Afflicted Powers. Its not online yet though.
Your central thesis is a no-brainer though, and is absolutely right.
Aug 21 2009 11:12
#4
Um, I've never actually read Gramsci himself, but having read various second-hand digestions of his ideas, I thought that he was meant to be one of the big theorists of consciousness and its transformation? According to a book I have about him, in the prison notebooks he says that "it is not a question of introducing from scratch a scientific form of thought into everyone's individual life, but of renovating and making 'critical' an already existing activity." Which'd seem to fit with what you're arguing, I think.
Aug 21 2009 20:53
#5
I would recommend Jeremy Brecher's essay "Who Advocates Spontaneity?" in the November-December 1973 issue of Radical America. It seems to be the sort of thing you are interested in. That issue of Radical America had a symposium on Jeremy Brecher's Strike!, which includes a critique by Glaberman dealing with the question of spontaneity and organization. So Brecher's essay is in part a response to Glaberman. Anyway, I have a pdf copy of that issue of Radical America, so anyone who is interested could pm me their e-mail address.
Aug 21 2009 21:50
#6
Quote:
I have a pdf copy of that issue of Radical America, so anyone who is interested could pm me their e-mail address.
You could just put it in libcom library.
Aug 21 2009 22:52
#7
good idea. I tried, not sure if I did it correctly . . . the file doesn't show up, but maybe it just has to be checked by a moderator first? I am not terribly confident in my computer abilities.
Aug 22 2009 00:45
#8
If you edit the library article, there should be a box called 'list' in the file attachments section, that you need to tick.
Aug 22 2009 00:50
#9
OK, I ticked it, the pdf is there now;
http://libcom.org/library/radical-america-november-december-1973
Aug 24 2009 02:59
#10
for lukacs check out history and class consciousness- the essay on reification section 3
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/hcc07_1.htm
the most concise place for glaberman online is here
http://www.marx.org/archive/glaberman/1999/wages/conclusion.htm
but he repeats this theme in everything he did, and punching out is probably the best place in book form.
the other suggestions are great y'all
Aug 24 2009 09:28
#11
This discussion also takes place in a somewhat different vein in the philosophy of mind and consciousness. Benjamin Libet did some experiments 30 years ago that compared electrical signals in the brain with consciousness of action. He found that electrical preparation for movement of a finger preceded conscious registry of the decision to move. Daniel Dennett interpreted this to mean that awareness "followed rather than preceded the brain's initiation of action." This interpretation is criticised by Merlin Donald, who think this is an over-interpretation, and argues that there is no proof that awareness of action is irrelevant. He sees consciousness as highly important in determining action, and learning new skills.
This discussion takes place in an interview with Donald in the magazine Cognitive Semiotics on page 70.
Aug 24 2009 11:23
#12
booeyschewy
You may find our pamphlet Communist organisations and class consciousness (http://en.internationalism.org/pamphlets/classconc) useful
Aug 24 2009 11:25
#13
That's the problem with terminology. Awareness in analytic philosophy is a better term than consciousness since it denotes only the self-reflective experience of reality. Consciousness is hazy including that, the phenomenological feel of things, mass social activity (lukacs), deliberateness, etc.
Dennett's conclusion doesn't seem useful for us because if true, it either has no practical consequences (the casuality is the same, but awareness is epiphenomenal), or it relegates awareness wholly irrelevant.
Experiments I was thinking of are around where people are unable to remember something that occurs, and they invent the memory to explain the occurence given what they know. It is part of a more general phenomenon of people having a difficult time incorporating new data and instead refashioning it in terms of their existing system of beliefs. The practical consequences of which are that there may be emergent social actions that people are unable (or even unwilling) to reconceptualize at various points outside the dominant ideologies. Which would explain action proceeding consciousness, eventually new ideas emerge but there is some lag. I'd have to dig up my citations though.
Aug 24 2009 18:27
#14
No suggested readings but I think you mean 'action precedes consciousness', i.e. action comes before consciousness. 'action proceeds (from) consciousness' is the opposite of this, i.e. consciousness comes first.
Not trying to be a dick, but might as well be precise if it's your headline.
Bakunin touches on it when he talks about materialism versus idealism in God and the State. Let me know what other sources you find, and please paste some relevant quotes or links from Lukacs and Glaberman here if you have time, I'm very interested in this topic.