The revolution will not be theorised!
Posted Under: Culture, Democracy, Education, Environment, GreenFeed, London, Media, Philosophy, Protest, Revolution
Two events, at each end of the last week here in London, have highlighted the real range of activities and viewpoints of the left community in this country. The 7th annual Historical Materialism Conference, held last weekend at SOAS and Birkbeck, offered a fantastic opportunity for over 700 attendees from around the world to discuss Marxist theory. Today’s actions of “The Wave” followed by the beginning of a 48-hour climate camp in Trafalgar Square represented the cutting edge of British lefty activism. The question is, then, why can one not find the same faces at both events? Why are our theorists disinclined to involve themselves with activism, and why are our activists not engaging with the theoretical debates that surround the issues they wish to tackle?
At the Historical Materialism conference, there were literally hundreds of papers given, on topics ranging from political economy of the current crisis, to climate change, to aesthetic debates in the 1990s, to the poetics of containerisation. Despite this being a conference focussed on Marx’s thought, and on later Marxist thought, there can be no doubt about how great a level of heterogeneity there was in the viewpoints expressed, nor of ongoing polemics that occasionally bubbled to the surface. The atmosphere was lively, and unusually for a bunch of academics, the attendees were all serious about changing the world. Let us not get this wrong, despite the Marxist tradition often being highly intellectual, there were no punches pulled about the necessity of the forcible overthrow of the status quo. When on the first night, a Canadian academic gave a paper on the use of historical materialism is social scientific study to aid social democratic ends, he was absolutely taken apart, and the conference ended with Frederic Jameson arguing that we have to make the choice between Socialism and Communism.
Today’s “The Wave” march was equally heterogeneous. Finding myself marching with everyone from the Socialist Workers’ Party, to the Lib Dems, to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (who happen to act like a rather right-wing pressure group most of the time), with everyone kitted out in blue garb. Everyone was coming together to make what they see as necessary political demands. Of course, the climate camp taking place later in the day was rather less diverse, with attendees being a range of hippies, students, recent graduates, and NGO workers. The Wave, itself, is of little political interest, it was not particularly left-wing, and the demands were broadly reformist, but this is not the case for climate camp.
And yet, climate camp is a heavily anti-theoretical environment. One finds oneself surrounded by the most conservative discourses on nature, in which people consider the rolling back the industrial revolution. Both nature and creativity become a fetish, in the here-and-now climaxing most ingloriously in a hedonism whose claim to make demands for the future are, with the creative obsession and the throwing away of history, held firmly and problematically in the present. Maybe I give the climate camp a bad press. They do amazing work, and get the sort of media attention most Marxists could never dream of. Nonetheless, as an urbanist of sorts, and as a modernist, I can’t help feeling slightly uncomfortable about banners that say “Nature doesn’t do bail-outs”. Somehow I think that, “Humanity shouldn’t do bail-outs” would be more appropriate to the cause.
And yet the academic Marxists have their problems too. Surrounded by the most erudite and eloquent debates on theory, a session on Israel and anti-Semitism was banal at best. The imposition of a Realpolitik was awkward and confused. The one time in the weekend when I felt that this was really being addressed was in a fantastic session on “Apocalypse Marxism”, with one of the papers being given by a PhD student at University of California Santa Cruz who also happens to be involved in the ongoing student struggles across California. Maybe the collaboration of theory and praxis are going better elsewhere
Amongst the book stalls at the conference, the SWP’s seemed rather out of place, with its emphasis on popular Marxism and Trotskyism not quite hitting the spot. The problem is, for many Marxist academics, that left-wing activists seem inherently dogmatic. Academics would often rather be debaters than involve themselves in the sort of demagoguery needed to run a vanguard part.
The challenge to integrate theory and praxis has been long-discussed, and it is perfectly possibly that my judgment is clouded by the demise of Adorno at the hands of May ‘68ers, and their slogan of “Adorno as an institution is dead.” I see their legacy in climate camp. I see it in the lifestylism that allows placards that read “you can’t eat meat and be an environmentalist” or in any challenge to capitalism at the point of consumption.
If we carry on as we are, any revolution will not be theorised, and yet we cannot afford for this to be the case. Maybe we can analyse this split in terms of Marx’s famous final thesis on Feuerbach: “Philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” In its popular, although incorrect, interpretation this is a call for activism, to throw out philosophy. The other interpretation is that Marx demands a philosophy that itself changes the world. But take with it the argument that philosophy should be immanent to all elements of human existence, and you have a fine argument for a ground in which philosophers must partake in praxis, and activists must at the same time critically examine their status rather than simply assuming it. And yet to simply make this argument is not enough, as we must start to think very carefully about how these two important elements of the left can be integrated, and in fact must be integrated, to effect any real change.
Reader Comments
Thanks for that Jacob. I feel like I bothered to turn up now!
I disagree that our ‘theorists’ don’t involve themselves in activism. They may not all be directly involved in political parties, a la Alex Callinicos, but a great deal of them get up to stuff besides that. Especially when universities themselves move into struggle.
Besides, I’m a theorist and so are you. The very fact that we’re having this type of conversation marks us as the best practitioners of praxis, does it not? We’re reflectively engaged with what we’re doing on the ground. That we don’t have tenure is hardly here or there; believe it or not, people really have led revolutions without it.
It seems to me that one of the key problems is this; most activists, by their very nature, tend to believe very strongly in certain ‘principles’ – by which I mean incomplete and imperfectly theorised blocks of ideology.
Academics on the other hand have a tendency to try and form cohesive theories at the expense of almost everything else.
Which means that, given the tendencies of both to awkward, dogmatic and opinionated – it’s really hard to get both groups working together, particularly in any form of broad coalition. And given how fractured the modern left is, any substantial movement will, by nescessity, be a coalition.
As such, if such coalitions are to be formed – individuals and organisations must focus on their essential values and theory and try not to get drawn into unnescessary debates about questions that are not central. Or if these debates must occur, that they are not allowed to take too central a position.
I wonder how theoretical the theory problem is. It’s true that climate camp doesn’t engage with theory enough, but the socialist parties don’t engage in meaningful activism a great deal of the time. Even organising around strikes and pickets is usually a pretty dull affair – no wonder the SWP got such a turn out for the bbc-bnp demo. something to actually do.
@David – yes, we’re all theorists, but being engaged with what’s going down on the ground, and actually helping with what’s going down on the ground is quite different. The very practical problems of ‘how shall we organise a meeting in the rain with 150 people’ or ‘what do we do when the police get here’ or ‘an anarchist just picked a fight with a news reporter – help!’ are of course intensely political.
There’s also the fact that a genuinely diverse grass-roots movement (which the climate movement increasingly is) also requires a really broad vocabulary for expressing theoretical ideas. so while ‘Nature’ is of course incredibly problematic, I don’t think it has as much anti-industrialist connotations for the banner-holders as you might think. But you’re right that when certain slogans are acceptable, they carry a legitimacy within the movement, even if not total agreement. For instance, Nature Doesn’t Do Bailouts isn’t a favourite of lots of people in the Climate Camp network, but it’s one of our big weather proof banners, made especially for the G20 (when it made more sense), and the ‘Capitalism is Crisis’ one, while well cool, kind of omits that we’re meant to be a climate change movement.
I think one of the main reasons I stay involved in Climate Camp is that I’d rather problematize the theory of a group doing something than try and get a bunch of so-called theorists to turn ideas created outside of ANY struggle into some kind of action.
It’s easier to teach a singer to act than an actor to sing.
“It’s true that climate camp doesn’t engage with theory enough, but the socialist parties don’t engage in meaningful activism a great deal of the time. Even organising around strikes and pickets is usually a pretty dull affair – no wonder the SWP got such a turn out for the bbc-bnp demo. something to actually do.”
I don’t think this is at all fair. This all hinges on what you think meaningful activity is, I suppose, but I think it’s a bit sad to reject what people do so easily. Trades Councils, unions, solidarity committees, visiting pickets, these are all meaningful, and they are a fraction of what the socialist orgs do. And I don’t think they are dull at all. Vestas and Visteon certainly weren’t dull, and for different reasons neither were the construction strikes. Even the pickets at Colchester bus garage are a fascinating experience.
@Richard, when you say we need a wide vocabulary to express ideas to a broad movement, what you really mean is that we need to use slogans which other people will agree with. Which is fine; every movement involves compromise so we find the lowest common denominator for our common efforts and each group agitates on the side for what it believes too.
But let’s call a spade a spade eh?
On that score, I personally didn’t care about the Nature Doesn’t Do Bailouts banner, though if it has the anti-modernist conclusions which Jacob points to, then I resent it equally, because it’s not a progressive slogan and it’s anti-scientific. It doesn’t represent a lowest-common-denominator for me in that instance.
But as I say, I didn’t get too hung up on it.
@David: totally, lots of slogans do end up being just a reflection on agreement, and so quite pointless. I’d much rather they were challening. Perhaps “kill nature, save the climate” would be fun. Actually, I quite like people dressed as animals with placards saying ’save the humans’ for that reason.
@Dan: I said the SWP don’t engage in meaningful activity ‘a great deal of the time’. Sure, there have been exceptions, although Vestas isn’t one of them. I felt thoroughly embarrassed by the attitude of many party marxists there.
Of course we have to engage and agitate struggles, but by dull I mainly mean the bread and butter of keeping a party going (on which we should have a separate conversation if indeed we need to have one). It easts up most socialists’ time, it’s not imaginative, and I don’t think it’s particularly progressive.