Some comments on "Nihilist Communism"

I think Nihilist Communism is constituted by two distinct parts, constantly repeated and interwoven in random order: 1.) statements that work like definitions about the nature of revolution—the essence of capitalist cooption of all social and economic practices; the nature of the “past” and its function in our lives; and how the revolution will emerge from this generally shitty situation; and 2.) a critique of the role of leftist revolutionary groups in bringing about the revolution, including a critique of the effectivity of “consciousness” and “consciousness-raising” in those groups. The two parts seem to relate to each as a set of statements or definitions (1) about the revolution and its possibility in which allow MD to make his case about consciousness (2). So I think this pretty much characterizes his philosophical method too: he gives a series of definitions about capitalism and the proletariat then bludgeons the reader over and over with conclusions drawn from the definitions.

I don’t generally have a problem with the content of the conclusions MD draws, i.e., that revolutionary groups are generally ineffective and that the practice “consciousness-raising” doesn’t do much good, and might actually do some harm. But I have serious problems with the set of normative statements he provides to make his argument. First, I think the methodology here is absolutely non-materialist, i.e., idealist. The task MD sets for themselves is to establish a series of statements/definitions regarding capital and revolution and to draw out the conclusions from them. Therefore, the elements of the social whole are deduced without reference to a reality rather than analyzed. The same goes for things like “consciousness”: it is analytically derived from the definitions instead of historically-materially described in differential relations within a real, historical, and moving social whole. In this way his definitions function as a priori regulators of the entire work.

Second, I think MD’s definitions themselves are often incoherent. One of the major definitions is that capital’s domination is total and it is univocal. (In this vein MD says the present is totally dominated by a material past that structures the world in an inescapably capitalist way (“Preamble”). He supplements this idea by saying the revolution will not be determined by the materially dominated past. More than this, he claims that as a result, it is impossible to draw “predictions” for the future from the past. History is too completely dominated by capital—it can’t give indicators of a different future. MD says: “If we cannot recognize the future by the present, then we cannot decide which pro-revolutionary activity or value of the present should be promoted or carried through into the future” (“We Start, As We End, In Simplicity”). So by saying the revolution isn’t conditioned by the past, he means the revolution must happen like an unpredictable event, and therefore is not to be “promoted” or “started” by radical groups or by the spreading of consciousness.

(As a side-note: MD’s result doesn’t follow. Just because the future isn’t totally materially conditioned by the past doesn’t mean there aren’t trends in the past moving into the future. An identification of trends in the past is exactly how Marx describes the methodology of materialism in his 1843 letter to Ruge, which seems right.)

This notion of the past as totally dominated by capital, and of capital’s rule as univocally total, involves another definition MD keeps making throughout the text: the working-class, like everyone else, is totally dominated by capital. The revolution doesn’t come about by any conscious, revolutionary program by workers but arises simply from the material situations of certain proletarians in certain sectors of the economy who are looking out for their own best interest (a set of desires itself totally conditioned by capital).

These definitions seem to be two of the major sources of MD’s argument about revolutionary groups and “consciousness”: everything—the past, the present, the working class, etc.—is totally and univocally dominated by capital. Therefore, any attempts to locate or create other, radical “movements” within it are bunk. Thus, revolutionary groups are bunk.

So this raises a serious question: if capital’s rule is as univocal as MD defines it to be (without any kind of materialist analysis whatsoever), then how is it possible to get anything new at all out of it, let alone a totally new social order?

The answer comes in the “We Start, As We End, In Simplicity” section. First there has to be a seizing of production by certain segments of the proletariat; then there has to be a general destruction of the existing forms of power. MD ascribes this to a “particular alignment of events, and a series of causes and effects which produces a specific economic crisis that ends up with workers holding the levers of production.” The working class will “arrive at this first level of revolution by force of circumstance.” By promoting its own self-interest as a dominated element of capital, the proletariat “ends up, almost by chance, in charge of the productive economy.” This is the “hole created by events.”

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”!

A great illustration of this problem comes in the section “Working Class Crisis?” There MD’s defining revolution again: it will happen “selfishly”, in terms of “self-interest,” etc. It is “the struggle … against the maximization of productivity and for the maximization of rest….” Here the revolution appears in terms of “rest.” This is reinforced much later in the text when MD says the body is a locus of resistance insofar as it doesn’t want to work. But Marx does a phenomenal job of showing, in Volume I, that “rest” is itself a category of capitalist domination. The worker is paid a wage in order to recuperate herself in her off-time so as to return the next day. In capitalism the practice of rest/leisure therefore belongs to capital’s productive time, to the practice of actual work, as presupposed necessity as well as product. So if a revolution is the fight for “rest”, then it still belongs to the course of capitalist development, the promotion of one capitalist practice (“rest”) over another (“work”). We find MD incapable of thinking a break with capital.

MD’s answer might be something like this: with a change of material circumstance—the seizing of the means of production by the proletariat—new practices and desires can emerge. But I think we have to ask how new the “new” material conditions can really be in this scenario. Aren’t those new conditions still produced by capital itself out of its total domination of everything? Aren’t the workers, who suddenly have the levers of production, themselves totally determined by capital? I.e., isn’t the “self-interest” of the worker itself a product of capital—ready to perpetuate it again and again? So if there is this kind of “continuity” between capitalism and the revolution, it seems like two things could happen: either the revolution will amount to just another demand for higher pay, shorter hours, etc.; or it will be a simple negation of capital—it’ll just be an inversion of capital and therefore remain locked into capitalist logic of domination, exploitation, etc. (it won’t be able to produce anything new—it’ll be a reversal within the capitalist system itself).
Ok, so to conclude: 1.) I think MD’s methodology is idealist: it begins from a priori statements or definitions and deduces arguments from them. It therefore operates in separation from analyses of the materially real, of practices within a real and material social totality. 2.) The definitions he operates from are inadequate because they seem to be incoherent—in particular, what he means by “revolution” in its relation to “capital”.

One more thing: as a result of all this, the thinker who MD most resembles is Martin Luther. His argument is formally identical to Luther’s: first, beginning with something irreparably dominated by an evil force (for Luther, human nature; for MD, the past, the present, the working class—everything); then, identifying a force capable of breaking with it—and which, as a result, both belongs to the irreparable thing and gets beyond it (for Luther, grace; for MD, the revolution). I think MD faces the same problem Luther does: if things are so terrible, where does a change come from? And MD’s answer is identical in form to Luther’s: it has to be an unconditioned, unpredictable gift that somehow breaks with the past in a way that produces something new in an inexplicable fashion. So interestingly enough, the absolutely central category of Nihilist Communism winds up being a kind of “grace,” since I think only a mystical category can make sense of what he means by “revolution”!