FDs Response

Dear reader,

Thank you for your wrestling with what we have written.

[quote]So in other words: the revolutionary event comes from the course of capitalism’s practices of domination themselves. This means that the revolution is a product of capital. This seems incoherent to me for several reasons. It entails a definite continuity between capitalism and whatever comes after it. Revolution belongs to the movement of capital’s total domination and development, and if this is the case then how is it possible for the revolution to escape capitalism in the first place? How could such a situation—a crisis produced by capital itself involving workers totally dominated by capital—give rise to something new? Aren’t all the old desires/practices still in place? Isn’t proletarian “self-interest" still the interest instilled in it by total domination by capital? In other words, how can total domination produce something different out of itself, if capitalism is as univocal as MD constantly insists? Wouldn’t the crisis just perpetuate the same, or a very similar, set of material conditions? I mean: how is it possible to have something new suddenly emerge from the totalizing old stuff without a theory of the development of counter-practices which develop against as well as within capital? The result is that MD’s notion of “revolution" can’t be a “break" with capital but instead must belong to capital’s continuous progress as its product. Seems like we need a mysticism of the revolution to make this work: a mystical theology of a sudden, inexplicable, unconditioned gift of total newness—“grace" ![/quote]


The question of what we might as well call the search for a grace particle is the entirety of our project. You will note the title of our book is ‘a critique of optimism’. It is therefore not surprising that with much hesitation we present the possibility of revolution in highly unoptimistic terms. The aperture for positive social change from present circumstances is very tiny indeed and under any conditions would require the equivalent of a ‘perfect storm’ in terms of the confluence of many key factors, most of which are not under human command.

You point out that our presentation is incoherent (in essence because we do not stick to your model and preferred methodology)... but this is, with the greatest respect, a misreading. We are not unveiling our model, we are merely recording our thoughts on how a revolution might occur considering the various constraints based on: our life experiences; the history of the C20th working class; the sinister circus of marxism; the bizarre flickering, coming in and out of consciousness of the pro-revolutionary milieu; the theory of Camatte (his analysis of Marx as the theorist of bourgeois dominance; his theory of real dominanation; his theory of repressive consciousness; his understanding that capital has realised the project of communism on its own territory) and the analysis of the group Negation’s ‘Lip and the Self-managed counter-revolution’ amongst several others.

From these practical and theoretical constraints we calculated the likelihood of a communist revolution to be something less than any given individual winning a national lottery jackpot, which is itself less likely than than that individual being struck by lightning. In other words, we could find no justification in the world for identifying an objective communist movement in history... on the contrary, what Marx describes as the progressive socialisation of productive forces we find to the advance of the materiale of social domination in physical form. Therefore, in the absence of corroboration in the objective world for our communist tendencies and in order to hold onto our ideals, we had to transform ourselves into idealists, utopians, theologians even though we had begun from an aggessively materialist ground. We had to accept that the world was not as we would like it to be, that it did not affirm us, or our ideas. But we also decided that we would not give up our values even though we discovered them to be historically groundless.

As to the content of your arguments, these are addressed in the text here but please feel free to further your critique: http://fendersen.com/solutionism.htm

But let us talk a little about method, in which you claim we make such a poor show. Again, it is well to remember that we are not presenting a model for others to adhere to and we are not describing the abstract forces of reality. Instead we are explaining our departure from the assumptions of the dominant mode of analysis of capitalism from a pro-communist perspective because we have found that model to be practically and theoretically unconvincing and unnecessary.

You talk of an 1843 letter of Marx to Ruge, in which the materialist method is set out... I am not familiar with that letter, but I would think it highly unlikely that Marx really has presented such a method sans idealism (as you identify it) because at that period, and this was not to change later, Marx’s indebtedness to Hegel is evident in everything he wrote... in short, the idealistic element in his theory is based in the proposition that the method coincides with the development of historical reality, that the real is rational and the rational is real – the materialist method assumes the progressive rationalisation of social production when in fact there has only been a rationalisation of productive methods within a set of constraints that are almost entirely irrational. There is no such identity between the method and reality as the history of the C20th has demonstrated, there is no confirmation in the world of Marx’s conception of history.

What are we left with then, by force of circumstance, we default idealists? You rightly point our that we assert the domination of reality by capital, that everything in play realises the value form. Ok, but I have just said that we are most interested in the ‘grace particle’, that element (or elements) of human existence that is not in play... I think I have identified in the commodity form, a ‘third’ which I have called ‘not-use’ and which is not subject to the laws of use/exchange; I also think I have identified in human beings a remaindered social ‘essence’ that is not engaged by production. I have further theorised that these two particles are related or are even the same... it is from these that I hope that a communist society might be engendered (if the dominant relation is first suspended). But much work needs to be done on this (and probably not by me). In other words, it is up to you. However, if you cannot use our scandalous book and unreliable research as a basis for further your investigation into particle idealism then perhaps you might want to use the academically respectable concept of ‘hauntology’ for your studies (I think there are enough similarities to get you somewhere interesting).

But why you? Why should you get involved in this search for obscure particles of human existence that capitalism has not enclosed within the productive apparatus? Because that is all that is realistically left for any of us. And you have nothing to lose. At the moment, from the evidence of your letter, your theory is based in ideologically affirming a pre-established theoretical model, and arriving back at the point from which you began your opinions from (a philosophically most unsatisfying circumstance). The point is not to stage this return to Marx and thereby affirm his method (what difference does that make to anything?) but rather to exist in a state of eternal departure from Marx and into your own ideas.

I congratulate you on your first involvement with these convolutions, I hope it is not your last.

Happy hunting

FD
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#14 Today 01:56:46
belote
Administrator
Re: Nihilist Communism
I have just read the September 1843 'ruthless criticism' letter to Ruge, and in no way does it seem to contradict our approach. On the contrary... which only goes to show.
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#15 Today 05:30:33
belote
Administrator
Re: Nihilist Communism
I didn't talk about 'rest' here which the interlocutor includes in the reproduction of labour power but we were more talking about the whole productive process coming to rest, i.e. dissipating its energy in order to enable a stepping away from it.
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