Principia Dialectica Gets It Wrong

Angelus Novus:
Nicely put. I'm more than sceptical about "class struggle - in the strict sense" and see it as an ideology that is preventing a better understanding of capitalism and hence more effective struggle.

right and what is the more effective struggle again? or are us class struggle ideologues making it too cloudy to give a proper answer at this moment?

jesuithitsquad:
You are rejecting attempts to improve theory based on the supposed utility of class struggle so how are you measuring it? Would you argue that 'successful' struggles - who's success you'd like to attribute to class struggle - would not have been at least as successful if a deeper understanding of capitalism had been employed? You also need to explain why class struggle's workerism wasn't a major cause of the failure of the Russian revolution. Would you claim Maoist victories as a 'win' for class struggle? As for today, are you measuring it on a volume: 'we can get more people to meetings' basis or perhaps, 'people radicalised per activist per year' basis?

so once again, no answer. got it.

where did i reject attempts to improve theory? you and your ilk consistently refuse to answer a simple question, but instead time after time resort to resorting to all manner of informal fallacies. i asked you a very, very simple question. i'm guessing your answer is something along the lines of "just because i don't like your answer doesn't mean i have to have one myself." which is fair enough as long as you're straight forward and honest with it instead of engaging in ridiculously transparent strawman arguments all the while pretending you have access to some manner of exclusive knowledge.

maoist victories? fuck off. seriously.

I think it's pretty clear that the russian revolution failed not because it was workerist (whatever that is supposed to mean in this case!?!?), but because a party (ie. a group distinct and separate from the class, although partially composed of members of the class) was able to take over the existing capitalist system through a coup d'etat and become the ruling class.

How this ought to count as something that proves Class Struggle fails because it hasn't instantaneously destroyed "the commodity" or "abstract labour" or some other "deep" point is completely beyond me.

Will this do?

You introduced the idea of "more effective struggle" which unless you provide clear measurement criteria comes across as being a smokescreen for rejecting change out of hand.

If abstract labour (and the commodity) had been understood ti be as inherent to capitalism as the bourgeois class then surely the Bolshevik's justification for their rule would have been weakened?

AN: I was responding to B_Reasonable. Still I read your above quote the first time and now a third and fourth time and I have yet to figure out how that responds to my question. Who are you arguing against? Who here ascribes mystical historical missions?

when you earlier said

my friends and i find it to be in our interest. can we then make the revolution?

B_Reasonable: It was you who introduced "more effective struggle." and for the quote in #34 you point out, no it won't do. i have no idea what you're talking about.

the "you're making a straw man argument" gets really overused as a response, but i swear to god you guys do nothing but. it really is unbelievable. who are you arguing against?

Fair enough, I hadn't realised what you were picking up on. I think that "more effective struggle" requires a theory of capitalism that is thorough enough to attack the underlying relationships and doesn't just lead to another version of social domination. "Class Struggle - in the strict sense" (for me this means labour is the historical subject) isn't an adequately thorough theory of capitalism and should therefore be rejected in favour of capital as the subject. That's essentially what I've been talking about on this thread.

If I misrepresented your position, and then argued against that position, that would be a strawman argument. Apart from indicating you are a "class struggle ideologue", you don't seem to have advanced any POVs that I could represent correctly or otherwise.

I believe that more effective struggle is struggle which move against the underlying social relationships of capital.

A group which is collectively struggling against these fundamental relationships, call it "the revolutionary proletariat" (or "the happy blue pandas" or whatever), will, to one extent or another, create its theory. I don't think it's wrong for revolutionaries to intervene to encourage those in struggle to have the most radical possible opposition to the present social relations but I also don't think such intervention will be the most important activity - those in struggle will appropriate the theories that work with their activities whatever our actions and intentions are.

I think that historically, a useful task of self-conscious minorities has been to encourage an already radical group to "have the courage of their convictions". It seems like, in different ways and in different historical circumstances, both Situationist International and the Maknovists had this virtue.

Agreed. However, the Maknovists successfully organised against the White's and the same anti-bourgeois excuses were trotted out (excuse pun) to justify suppressing the Kronstadt Rebellion. We can't know what effects a deeper understanding of capitalism would have had. I made the point to challenge the idea that class struggle (in the sense of labour as the subject) is not justified as the optimum theory by what happened during the Russian Revolution.

Sure, and I think that the "underlying social relationships of capital" are the social relationships brought about by capital (self-valorising value).

Unless this group has a theory that enables them to identify "the underlying social relationships of capital" then they are unlikely to be struggling against them. They also can't know "the theories that work with their activities", i.e. "collectively struggling against these fundamental relationships", without that underlying theory. I don't think their is much latitude for groups to have different theories (at the fundamental level) AND for them to still be "struggling against these fundamental relationships".

I think you're right but that doesn't obviate the need for radical groups to have a theory that is adequate for overcoming capitalism. How (or if) that theory comes from "self-conscious minorities" is something I am interested in but I don't have any firm ideas about it.

So you're conception is that ideas must proceed activity?

I think that it is common belief system today.

I know what I'd call that. What would you call it?

So you think theories will overcome capitalism? Well, if you believe that theories have such power, I can understand your great interest in strengthening them.

..

You are saying that to overcome capitalism, people have to know what it is. When does this understanding have to appear? Before the first wildcat? Before the first community wide council? After the world has been reorganized? When?

I certainly am not against "purposive" behavior. The thing is the creation of a revolution is something of "bootstrap problem". The proletariat as a whole is not going to learn and embrace a theoretical critique of capital in the present conditions of relative normalcy and social peace.

Rather, the process of struggle has to be a process of self-education. Sure, the revolutionary party/group/theorists can do some things to help but they isn't going to simply impose ideas on the proletariat. Rather, the process of struggle will involve creating ideas, debating ideas and testing ideas to a degree that clearly is not practical in the present phase of passivity. "Theoretical understanding" is not something that can or will just happen to the proletariat with flip of a switch or the reading of a book. Rather, our degree of collective theoretical coherence is something that will have to expand along with our collective power. Learning from both experience and critical thinking will be critical as part of this dynamic (but it naturally is absurd to expect this learning process to have the rigor of a physics experiment, to tie-in the other thread).

And indeed a few structural Kernels, like "the basis of capitalism is wage labor" might turn out to be crucial points to raise within such a complex revolutionary process. But even then, these points will only have their applicability when they incorporated by a dynamic revolutionary collective.

I would say that we're getting to the nub of this matter here. I congratulate B_Reasonable for being willing to start talking about scenarios. In considering this, the question of theory's value authentically appears - in the abstract, pious statements about the value and objectivity of "theory" are easy to make.

This perspective is that reason (or science or objectivity or whatever) will not be the tutor and dictator of the proletariat but will instead have to march beside it in its progress. Such a perspective assumes that a struggle to overcome capitalism will take the form of a sudden upsurge, as we've seen relatively recently in Argentina or Bangladesh or where-ever. Those who imagine a proletariat which will be first fully educated first before making any moves might well be thinking about a different process.

For you fans of reason, the syndicalist position is indeed logical. If you can imagine that the working class will slowly, slowly educate itself to understand the nature of capitalism, then you can imagine that it may eventually act in your fully purposive manner (hopefully before the sun expands to destroy the earth).

The only problem is that there is not the slightest evidence this could work and tremendous evidence that the time for this form of struggle has passed. Among many other factors, consider that capitalist society is changing quickly, quickly and slowly just doesn't cut-it today. But aside from its complete divorce from reality, the approach is very reasonable and gives a triumph to the conventional view of reason which my dialectics certainly doesn't offer.

Anytime before capitalism is successfully overcome. Wildcat strikes occur over 'British Jobs for British Workers' - struggle and large social change can be very reactionary.

Your conclusions seem to follow from your assumptions but I think your assumptions are open to question:

- what is your definition of the proletariat and are they the only people who can overcome capitalism?

- why can't theories of capitalism be adopted, developed and 'owned' by the proletariat?

- is being a theorist and a proletarian mutually exclusive?

- I can see why leaning from struggling against capitalism can improve the effectiveness of future struggles but why does it necessarily improve the understanding of how capitalism works?

- are you not confusing the form and content of theories? Clearly, the current articulation of 'capital is the historical subject' is far too abstract, and laden with Marxist/Hegelian jargon, to be adopted by most people. But surely if it were recast in terms that people could identify with their experience there is no absolute barrier to them adopting it? Following your Physics analogy, quantum mechanics can be expressed in quite different ways, e.g. Schrödinger's equation,Heisenberg's matrix mechanics, or Feynman's path integral formulation but they all describe the same phenomena and predict the same results.

1) Of course we all celebrate workers' spirited attack against wage slavery. It seems inconceivable to me, however, that these sporadic eruptions of desperate people struggling for life, stuck on the edge of the system, can be posited as the emblematic motif that can point to a way beyond the capital/class dynamic in 2009, as much as we would like it to be. At the end of the day, the company who employs these workers are trapped by the imperative to create a profit, and so will pack up shop and transfer plant and production elsewhere. Good luck to all those involved in the struggle against this practice, but when British consumers enjoy hunting for a bargain in British Home Stores/Next etc, we are hardly talking about the kind of capital/proletariat relationship Marx dissected are we? Kurz wrote something interesting recently called 'the money subject' or similar. Painful stuff, but true. Without grasping this painful stuff, can we really hope to create a new movement? Who wants to follow nice but dim people into battle? Or even brave but dim? I tried that. It hurts. You lose.

Jean-Marie Vincent:

[Marx] overestimated the power of oppressed individuals and groups to throw over cognitive and cultural structures as well as limitations of social practices. This led him to transfigure, virtually to deify, the wage laborer, who even before any process transforming the social relations of labor became the emblematic incarnation of emancipation.

2) Aufheben published an article last year on Debord and the SI. It went further than the usual tosh written about that particular legacy, but it's mealy mouthed conclusion was that the SI didn't locate the contradiction in 'production' but in 'consumption' instead. Rubbish! What the SI grasped was that the contradiction is located at the point of the abstract labour process itself! This is something Mr C J Arthur needs to understand - for him and the trad marxists it is all about the mediation of exchange. Wrong. This is why no-one reads the boring trad marxist mags, but everyone (still) reads the SI review! A simple problem, so hard to get right, to paraphrase Mr Brecht. There's gold in them thar hills...

3) I disagree with Mr Reasonable in that it is not just a case of reframing the problem in different language. In some ways this is correct - Andre Gorz spent a lifetime perfecting this, and his work is more relevant today than a dozen 'alive' so-called marxist theorists. He really got the deep Marx, and made a good attempt at creating dialogue at many levels. His ideas will be returned to, that is for sure; If not, we are in trouble. But, it isn't a case of recreating the problem in different 'language' because this ends up with us just fetishising the working class, which is my next point.

4) Deification of the working class. Did American 'blue collar labour' organise to oppose the Vietnam war? No. In many cases, this constituency was the most conservative force at this time. Did the anti-nuclear movement spring out of the working class movement? No. Does the environmental movement find itself in pitch battles with organised labour? Yes. This isn't to say that a large section of the greens are wrong - but a movement unaware of the insights of Marx and the critique of value are going to be falling short somewhat aren't they?

5) The British anarchist movement is in a right old mess and needs to move fast to repair the cracks. No theory, not much debate. Shouting for MPs/bosses/bankers blood in these times is actually a retrograde step. The fascists have secured that ground. Perhaps the conference next week in London can address these problems - but without a grounding in value criticism, the anarchist movement won't be taking off much - it will all be left for the leninists to make hay. Again.

PS: Incidentally, the above mentioned J M Vincent wrote a book called 'Absract Labour' in 1991, which was published by Verso. Then disappeared forever. Anyone ever seen it?

Sean68; as "abstract labour" is so central to your views, please state your definition of it - in your own words, rather than resorting to any academic authority - and state why it is such a central category for you.

Ret - I would have thought the comments about nuclear power say a lot about what abstract labour starts - and ends - in.
To create a new movement which can make concrete this abstraction is a negative worth getting positive about (ha ha)
Other than that: go read POSTONE! Then play around with what you find, Mr Marut!
There are some positive signs out there - I think people are less inclined to fall for the leninist bullshit than before - have you seen the socialist workers' recent guff about pensions? And their headline calling for the arrest of all MPs? Responses to this fetishism separates the wheat from the chaff, my friend...

Aw, that's so sad. Poor company, I never realised how tough it was to be trapped by the imperative to create a profit. Their 'profit-slavery' will doubtless continue until they are supplied with a Perfect And Complete Understanding Of Capital. Everyone keep an eye out for one of those, I'm banking on it falling out of the sky any day now.

~J.

go kill yourself fantasist

But maybe he wasn't just pointing to an academic authority, but claiming that when someone reads Postone they are actually engaging in "abstract labor" and will come to understand it first hand. To be fair. . .

Wow...

So what can "be posited as the emblematic motif that can point to a way beyond" our present existence? Cooperative Internet businesses? Meetup.com? Leftist Food Coops? Nothing-what-so-ever-that-we-can-experience-today? I'm-smarter-than-you-go-read-Postone?

Lol, get a grip. The only people who think the SI have any relevance are art historians, and its certainly not because 'what the SI grasped was that the contradiction is located at the point of the abstract labour process itself!'

Humanity will never be happy until the final situationist dinosaur is hung with the guts of the last sub-academic crypto-lifestylist!

Now Django, not so hasty. I may not know much about art, but I can tell a class position when I see one. Didn't the situationists, back in the Jurassic epoch before 1968, argue that the proletariat was the revolutionary subject? And isn't Principia Dialectica's Unique Selling Point the argument that the proletariat isn't the revolutionary subject? So hang all the sub-academic crypto lifestylists you want, but leave the situationists' guts out of this.

this is the one thing most of their contemporary fanboys manage to overlook, despite it being absolutely central to the main texts. and what do you get when you take verbose situ pomposity minus class politics? enter PD...