In such light, can we consider a migration of communism or at least its name from politics to philosophy? This too is no easy agreement. And, you may notice - the pre-eminent philosopher of our time, Alain Badiou's metaphysical scaffolding would emphasize the intransitivity between politics and philosophy, even if the former may be a site for the explication or confrontation between competing philosophical positions. Zizek's relation to Mao would appear similarly in terms of its characterization of the relation between politics and philosophy. As Russo puts it, their separation is vital to both, yet following Badiou, Russo would also acknowledge politics as a condition for philosophy.
The interventive step marked by Russo is positing communism as a name for 'the ethics of philosophy' regarding its political condition. This, I would remind our reader or onlooker, is in marked contradiction to its characterization as a mode of production that supplants capitalism, with the latter having exhausted its productive or generative potential.
He also acknowledges the state of the present doxa which can think of no politics outside of state power. Concurrently there is also the recognition of the threat of de-politicizing philosophy itself. There seems to be a dilemma here, not as much of thought but of maneuver. In renouncing a politics that seeks to gain state power, while at the same time resisting the depoliticization of philosophy, the philosopher is left with no bulwark of negotiation against the capitalist enterprise, which often has its fingers in the organs of government in any case. The only alternative here is an embrace of the common, which Russo characterizes with the following statement 'politics can only be an invention for everybody, as absolutely egalitarian as philosophy itself'. Remarks you may notice which are not as readily accepted in a political climate that is anti-intellectual as fascist forces often are.
In presenting hence the name of communism, and noticing its historical manifestations - he also presents how this name may have markedly different destinies in politics and philosophy. In the former, were it to be periodized formally we may cite a beginning, however unaccommodating of earlier tendencies marked by Marx's manifesto. In the latter, however, the author views it in continuity with a Platonic idea materialistically reforged.
We are also presented with a hypothesis, and I would add a welcome one, that the only politics worth discussing here articulates a singular desire - to invent forms of mass self-liberation, and to deploy its capacities in a register of unceasing subjective discontinuities.
In terms of the characterization of politics presented here, a leaf is taken from Sylvain Lazarus in depicting its existence only in given sequences, brief and pertaining to a strong intellectual singularity. And here the author makes a pressing point - that each of these sequences, political as they are, has its own stakes and consequently, their own politics.
This brings us to the question, how is it possible to think the relationship between two distinct sequences? Perhaps via an ethnography, if not a philosophy of the encounter, but more tellingly how do we think the relationship between brief political sequences and often long periods of depoliticization? These are the queries brought forth.
In placing such developments in a historical continuum, the issue of periodization does arise. And here we would have to mark a certain kind of end in the year 1990. This was a major change of state regimes with the collapse of the Soviet Union and almost all communist party states. As for the reasons for this collapse the author does present a vague and rather fantastic statement of uncertainty. Though we do know that the arms race with the U.S, and the clause in the founding agreement between socialist republics upon the constitution of the USSR allowed any party to leave as they so desired.
We do now arrive at what is the chief topic of the essay before our consideration. The issue of the ambiguity regarding the relation between the political events of the 60's, including May' 68 in France, a landmark of the Cultural Revolution as seen today, but also the Vietnaam War. And, the dissolution of the USSR and the Eastern Block in the early 90's.
If there ever was a political movement, which by definition, by its very constitution was heterogenous in the strong sense, that is naming not merely a set of discrete bodies, parties or practices but who acted in its name in ways that are markedly different in several national situations; that would be the cultural revolution. Emblematic of this is when Mao meets with students and dissenters in Tiananmen on 66 and proclaims that it is right to rebel against the present government in Beijing, charging that bourgeoise elements had penetrated the government and society, acting to restore capitalism.
This sequence, if it may be called one is said to be marked by a closure in the 70's and indeed many even in the West identify this in the Foucaultian epistemic sense. A prerequisite , or condition as it were is said to be necessary for examining this two-fold termination - namely 'to disentangle the singular forms of political intellectuality, appearing worldwide, from what Badiou would call that 'culture which constituted the language of the situation; and I would like to point to the reader here how easily the 'culture' in question may stand-in for the structure of class relations.
In terms of the emergence of a political formation that characterizes these events that have marked the 60's and the 70's, whose historical significance cannot be understated, the rise of political subjectivities which were categorically opposed to the party-state is recognizable. These are apparent in Mao's invocation to rebel against the party, in the wildcat strikes in Italy, and in the uprising that was May 68 in France, but also tellingly in the resistance to the Vietnam War in the U.S.
The dissolution of feudalism in Europe took with it the enshrined system of the estates, nobility, clergy, merchants, etc. If a caustic parallel were to be drawn between that order and the welfarist consensus which existed between the party, the class, and the worker prior to the 60's - then we must ask which forces pressed against this concensus and whether the position taken up against it was indeed a progressive action. A form of political engagement did arise however which challenged this earlier historical order and perhaps does so even today, even as it has found no alternative to the form of the state. And here, I do think that Arab Spring and the protests of Occupy Wallstreet bespeak of telling fissures. Yet, what we must remember of the Cultural Revolution is the cracking open of this universalist dimension which consequently found a voice and was able to reach out to those in similar situations and plights.
Within the party hierarchy itself, that is the Chinese Communist Party; the consequences of this exhortation to revolt led to a schism between Mao and Liu Shaoqi, and Deng Xiaping. Most crucially there was a disagreement over the role and position of the Red Guard. Mao still harboured for them a vanguardist role which they might play, whereas Shaoqi and Deng Xiaping considered their autonomy to be an anarchist force. This was not a light matter and today any democracy does have to come to terms with the role and extent of autonomy they may wish to grant their standing army - a tension that has been palpable since Roman times. Decisively, the stake here was whether the Red Guards as an independent entity were to make political declarations or not. To reiterate, unlike students and workers - this was an armed force instituted by the state. A history of coups will remind us that no other force poses a greater threat to the party-state, with Latin America and Pakistan serving oft-cited examples.
Where does class struggle fit into this picture? The essay before us is less clear on this matter - however, the author asserts that a 'class-based vision' was unable to re-politicize - and in some unfortunate cases, references to 'class doctrine' were deliberately used to create confusion.
Indeed the author stresses the former point regarding how a class-based vision 'hindered the development of new forms of political subjectivity.'
The creation of new 'Red Guard like' organizations remained a contentious issue, even after the 'Decision in 16 Points' released in August 1966 that stated that independent organizations were welcome. Of concern was the fact that most of these organizations would be started by sons and daughters of the party nomenklatura, and sadly there may have been a tendency in such organizations to favor students from a 'good' class background.
If I might add, with the onset of the second generation we also see a theory of lineage being offered by Xue Ton Lun, a curious commingling of dialectics and genealogy. The offspring of the bad classes were supposed to be counter-revolutionary, whereas those of the good classes were predisposed to be revolutionary cadres. While simplistic it is conceivable that the interests of the families would be guided by their class background, as would be their position vis-a-vis the Cultural Revolution. Bad revolutionary theory in any case.
There even appears to have been some sort of internal bifurcation with the Red Guards facing a challenge of some sort from the Scarlet Guards, suggests the author.
In gathering these influences, we are presented with a conceptual history of the Cultural Revolution which may be surmised as its most basic ideological presumptions. 1. Party states, via a coagulation of bureaucracy had become anti-political. 2. A class-based vision of politics was unable to revitalize parties, but was a hindrance to the development of new political subjectivities. 3. The inclusion of the political figure of the worker in the state was falsely political even if it provided the scope for the emergence of new disciplinary forms. The first point here is now accepted as historical common sense, with both Mao turning on the party, and deadlocks in the Soviet Union often between constituting nations being recognizable examples.
The party which appears forlorn in this game of musical chairs between parties and independent organizations are the democratic socialists, who while positing their independence, relying on the state as a regulatory body capable of facilitating the national distribution of goods and services which in any capitalist and perhaps even later state forms, would remain commodities. - The 1990's witnessed the gradual withering away of this formation of which more may be gleaned in my review of Shankar Gopalakrishna's work ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_hJTn7HTxQ ) in India's case.
We do have Alessandro Russo to thank however for providing a narrative that can link the crises of the socialist states to events arising from the Chinese Cultural Revolution, most pointedly to an 'impasse in the relationship between the working class and the Communist Party. This was to change the functioning of the party and the general form of the organization of the state. There is a division observed by the author in the name of communism; operating in philosophy and in politics. As the subject of the conference which produced these papers - and as an invocation of post-party political organizations we notice this duality. Yet the Chinese Communist Party still persists - and here is where the chief difference lies. Indeed as the author indicates - the very existence of such a conference bears testament to the fact that the cultural revolution did not end communism as a philosophical idea, and an adjudication on the adequacy of its actions cannot be broached in the conference in question; even as it remains a question of debate.
The proper aim for a conference such as this, we are reminded, is perhaps other considerations; to think the relationship between politics and philosophy upon which we are provided some interesting observations by Russo. To quote "philosophical resources have strengthened political inventions", yet have also obfuscated the singularity of political intellectuality in a given sequence.
Indeed such conferences are held, materially to invent new relations between philosophy and politics. In this regard, we would do well to cite; but more importantly, read developments in French philosophy since the 60s that have provided conceptual inventions which open new dimensions in our relationship to the state for example - as fresh or weathered a Marxist question as any. Here the names Sartre, Althusser, and Badiou would be guiding lights. The last name, perhaps crucially for philosophy charting his ontology as an attempt to think its conditions, which may indeed be mutually independent, (or not). A delightful problem for theorists of cognition, particularly the Hegelian kind, reification, and indeed set theory.
The closure that communism may have faced in the 90s and even earlier is reflected strongly in the lines of the contributing theorists and has constituted something of a repressive horizon some have lived with. Its re-emergence as a drive indeed as a desire in philosophy speaks for the import which our theorists have brought to some of the issues touched upon, perhaps most crucially the call in philosophy tied to the concept of equality... The communist horizon as seen in this light would establish a terrain for intellectual friendship by thinking compossibility.
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