This is my reading digest from critical social theory from 10 October 2006.
Engels, Frederich. “Letters on Historical Materialism,“ 1890, 1893, 1894. in The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd edition, edited by Robert C. Tucker, 760-768. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1978.
Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich. “What Is To Be Done.“ 1902. Internet Modern History Sourcebook. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1902lenin.html
Marx, Karl. “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.“ in The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd edition, edited by Robert C. Tucker, excerpt 70-105. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1978.
The topic from our class readings and discussions for last week that stick in my head the most revolve around patronizing and empowering the proletariat. Primarily, the locus of this debate seems to lie in whom we view as having the real power. Does the proletariat have power, or should they, in decision-making and in the means of production? Or should we continue to view the bourgeoisie as the class with power? Yes, realistically the bourgeoisie currently has power, through ownership of means of production and through ownership of hegemony (the power to name, to control discourse, to control the dissemination of ideology). But when we consider social change and how to engage ourselves in the process of real social change, how should we go about that change? Should we work with the proletariat to help empower them, or should we work with the bourgeois power system to get them to change?
The genesis of this deliberation for me came from the graduate seminar this week, in which Cara (sp?) discussed her desires to work with large entities in creating change for disempowered people. I didn’t realize how anti-system I had become until I found myself really disagreeing with her views. Yes, I agree with their intent: to make the world better and more tolerable, but I don’t agree with their modus, and the implicit statement: “you cannot make things better yourselves, so we (those in power) will make them better.“ Or, more accurately, “you do no know what’s good for you, but we do.“
Who knows what’s best for the oppressed? I really like what was brought up in class: that it’s not important that we decided that now — rather, we should redistribute power so that there is one class and then let the new society decide how to deal with stuff. It is presumptuous for us to imagine the perfect ideal society (yet we so easily fall into this trap). It’s also easy to go the realist route and decide that change from the top down is effective. I stand by what I said in class that this is patronizing and misleading to the oppressed. As discussion in Ethics of Diversity explains, kindness is the worst form of oppression, and when an oppressive system is kind to the oppressed (increased wages, relieved debt, better health care) without changing the power dynamics itself, it’s really just appeasing the oppressed to prevent any radical change. This is the type of appeasement we should loathe, not the appeasement that neoliberals tell us to fear when they conjure up images of Britain capitulating to Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
One form of patronizing thought — that of Lenin — was something that we didn’t really get a chance to discuss much in class. We touched on it, but we didn’t spend much time on him. Lenin seems incredibly distrustful of the proletariat — they somehow do not know what is good for themselves, too wrapped up in the politics of trade unions, and that, somehow, Lenin knows what is best for them. That Lenin was into secret organizations seems to me very troublesome. To not advocate transparency and open communication with workers seems once again to expose Lenin’s disdain and distrust for the worker. Lenin may as well be the great father here to usher in a new age, one in which he knows what is best for those who are less fortunate.
This seems to pertinent today — still — when white liberals sitting in their living rooms can feel some form of contribution to the world by donating money to organizations that help third world countries, when liberal foreign policies that claim to be ameliorating horrendous conditions in other countries are in fact perpetuating such conditions. The World Bank might do some good by forgiving loans, yes, but it will continue to use labor in so-called “Third World Countries“ in claims of benefiting those countries, when in fact the benefactors are large multinational corporations that receive contracts and keep most of the profits in the hands of (mostly) rich white men. Any changes in the way the World Bank or IMF works merely continues to perpetuate a system of power.
So, we can’t really make changes for people, but we have to create situations where people have power — are empowered — to make changes for themselves. Else, real change does not take place. But this leaves me feeling incredibly…useless? I have slowly given up more and more on the Democratic Party, bothered by their liberal politics that at times mirror the scary reactionary neoliberalism of the Republican Party (really, isn’t it only a different type of masculinist bravado that separates George W Bush and Billy Clinton? That, and a higher tolerance of ambiguity and difference for Clinton. Both were more than willing to leave the poor out to dry/die). When I read about pacifists who refused to vote in our violent system, I thought they were “checking out“ – but do I want to engage in the system? I am, to a degree, forced to (unless I leave the country and live on my own, self-sustained island — not likely), but to how much. What actions (praxis) are useful and which ones are merely capitulating to a system that I don’t want to perpetuate?
