Sunday, November 27, 2005
What revolutionaries need to study
This is part of a discussion I had with a friend about what to study. It relates to my ongoing academic ennui - how one applies Marxism to different fields. The question of cultural studies came up. My ongoing exposure to postmodern cultural theory makes me leery, but cultural questions are a key part of the Marxist tradition, too. So, how do I justify my newfound interest in economics?
Cultural theory relates directly to the question of building a revolutionary movement. Myself and other Marxists believe the standard Trotskyist formula - sell newspapers, attend coalition meetings, recruit members - needs to be reworked. Both content and form have to change if the revolutionary message is to be heard.
Could I just get a brief show of hands - who came to this meeting because they saw the billboard? Yes, you in the back...
However, I think the issue of 'communication' poses more questions than it solves. We have to talk about ideology and cultural theory, yes. But we also have to talk about
- history: what have revolutionaries done before? What's worked and what hasn't, and why?
- politics: what were the circumstances? How did they affect revolutionaries' space to move?
- economics: how do the material circumstances revolutionaries operate in affect their chances?
Obviously all three interact in a seamless dialectic, yadda yadda yadda. But I'm coming to think that the last one has been neglected, which makes it the most important thing to understand, at least right now. Globalization, imperialism, the financialization of capital all have traceable links to forms of organized resistance, and the spaces they operate in. Fascism is the clearest example, but resurgent American militarism opens up whole new questions. Since I think that political changes are predicated upon economic ones - or, rather, they don't occur in isolation from economic forms - I have to understand those economic formations.
Lenin is a great example - he wrote tirelessly on ideology and revolutionary strategy, but he also wrote 'The Development of Capitalism in Russia'. He was part of a tradition that linked World War 1 to imperialism and competing blocs of national capitals. Without that tradition we're stuck in the realm of ideology: tabulating what people are doing, rather than why they're doing it.
None of this is to imply that communication is unimportant. I think the question of why people don't fight back is vital, though I'd put a different emphasis on it (i.e. why do people fight back when they do?) However, I think there's a lot of work to be done before asking that question, and I want to do that work.
Cultural theory relates directly to the question of building a revolutionary movement. Myself and other Marxists believe the standard Trotskyist formula - sell newspapers, attend coalition meetings, recruit members - needs to be reworked. Both content and form have to change if the revolutionary message is to be heard.
Could I just get a brief show of hands - who came to this meeting because they saw the billboard? Yes, you in the back... However, I think the issue of 'communication' poses more questions than it solves. We have to talk about ideology and cultural theory, yes. But we also have to talk about
- history: what have revolutionaries done before? What's worked and what hasn't, and why?
- politics: what were the circumstances? How did they affect revolutionaries' space to move?
- economics: how do the material circumstances revolutionaries operate in affect their chances?
Obviously all three interact in a seamless dialectic, yadda yadda yadda. But I'm coming to think that the last one has been neglected, which makes it the most important thing to understand, at least right now. Globalization, imperialism, the financialization of capital all have traceable links to forms of organized resistance, and the spaces they operate in. Fascism is the clearest example, but resurgent American militarism opens up whole new questions. Since I think that political changes are predicated upon economic ones - or, rather, they don't occur in isolation from economic forms - I have to understand those economic formations.
Lenin is a great example - he wrote tirelessly on ideology and revolutionary strategy, but he also wrote 'The Development of Capitalism in Russia'. He was part of a tradition that linked World War 1 to imperialism and competing blocs of national capitals. Without that tradition we're stuck in the realm of ideology: tabulating what people are doing, rather than why they're doing it.
None of this is to imply that communication is unimportant. I think the question of why people don't fight back is vital, though I'd put a different emphasis on it (i.e. why do people fight back when they do?) However, I think there's a lot of work to be done before asking that question, and I want to do that work.
