Raúl Prada
Alcoreza, Grupo Comuna, Bolivia: Counter-Processes
Translation not checked
We will be speaking of oppositional
phenomena which run counter to transformation processes, commonly referred to
as processes of change, which has the historical meaning of a process detached
from social movements, as well as from indigenous nations and peoples. A
process of change is also a term for processes derived from the constituent
process giving rise to the political will to decolonize. This process is
intimately linked to the ratification of the Constitution by the Bolivian
people, a Constitution defined by a plurinational, communitarian, and
autonomous State. The application of this Constitution requires institutional
and radical changes, as well as structural, economic, political, social, and
cultural transformations; a new relationship between State and society,
converting the State into an social instrument which is progressively
reincorporating itself into the general social framework. This new relationship
is expressed politically in a system of participatory democracy, garnering the
overall participation of and under the control of society, a process which has
the objective of economic transformation from the perspective of a productive
model which abandons extractivist conditions in favor of food sovereignty,
redefining industrialization in terms of fostering the internal market. This is
also a process which orients itself on an ecological and earth-centered model,
in harmony with ecosystems and living beings. As will become apparent this
discourse, this process has also been referred to as living well, to be
understood as an alternative model to development, modernity, and capitalism. Overall,
this process is interstratified with the dismantling of the colonial,
institutional, social, cultural, and subjective legacy. For this reason, open
participation is understood to be indispensable in the decolonization of
indigenous and aboriginal peoples and nations, as well as in anti-systemic
social movements, in both urban and rural settings. This pluralistic,
communitarian and autonomous construction defines characteristics wholly
distinct from the experiences of emancipatory anti-capitalist and proletarian
projects experienced during the 20th century.
The socialist revolution was understood
as an egalitarian social transformation, stemming from the socialization of the
means of production, the revolution of productive forces and the transformation
of the relationships of capitalist production. The socialist revolution was
clearly understood to be a modern event, integral to the momentum of the
productive forces and the social appropriation of surplus, destined to progressively
improve living conditions for all. This project was trapped in the dramatic
experience of socialism in one single country in the periphery of the world
capitalist system; the profound contradictions of this experience decimated the
construction of a socialist project, producing state, bureaucratic and economic
perversions. The Eastern European socialist states finally crumbled without
being able to expand the revolution on a global scale. The question that
remains to be answered is: why did these states fall and why were these
experiences discarded? We will not conduct an evaluation here of the hypotheses
to this question, which were generally weak and circumvented the culpability of
the leaders, specifically, of the Communist party. The problem is much more
complex than trying to resolve it with discussions of strategy or tactics, in
the best case scenario, or with discussions about corruption, in the worst case
scenario. The problem has to do with lacking a comprehensive understanding of
the capitalist world system with its cycles, its expansions, its forms of
accumulation and structural changes. It is to safe to say this evidences a
tremendous weakness in the traditional left. The crucial questions were never
asked, and appropriate responses were never explored. The downfall of the
socialist States was interpreted as circumstantial events in the inevitable course
of the historical laws, which were supposed to eventually spell the defeat of
capitalism and the triumph of socialism, assuming historical progression
inscribed in the essence of social evolution. The traditional left adhered to
stereotypes, restrictive capitalist schemes, and reduced utilitarian models. It
neglected to contrast its abbreviated interpretations with the real and
effective context, cyclical processes, circumstances, periodic and concrete
forms of capitalism, needless to say took on the task of reflecting over
political defeats. In this respect, we can ascertain a calamitous separation
between political leadership of the leftist parties and theoretical studies on
capitalism, as well as disturbing departure from Marxist studies. We are not
only referring to different languages of interpretation, but to different
conceptions altogether. The Marxism of parties became stagnant in the
positivist episteme of the 19th century, giving rise to a liberal interpretation
of Marxism, moreover, paradoxical which only seems like Marxism. This is the
only explanation for falling into an ingenuous economic determinism and thus
into an innocent historical figure, constructed according to an assumed
Darwinian evolutionism. In terms of understanding the state question and its
comprehension of the State, the scope of improvised interpretations correspond
to the same limitations imposed by bourgeois State theories, and at best, to a
non-critical adhesion to political science in respect to institutional
analysis. In relation to this topic, one cannot clearly discern the development
of a State Marxist theory. Instead, its absence becomes apparent. Academia and
Marxist theoreticians sought to reassess the state question from the standpoint
of problems of hegemony, of specific accounts of class struggle, and historical
studies of states, including a sociology of contemporary states. Rather than
intellectual works elucidating the state question, one sees apologies for the
State and an obsessive legitimization of the machinery of domination, stemming
from the heritage of political philosophy and political science. Political
philosophy desperately sought to neutralize the political, i.e. the class
struggle, in much the same way that political science assumed the task of
normalizing relations, institutionalizing political processes, enacting
policies to conserve order. Transcending the neutralizing limitations of
political philosophy and policy-making in political science broke the
boundaries of political and juridical theories and aims to expand the horizons
historical political theories. This is done from the standpoint of signifying
the problematic of power and relations of domination. Given these impoverishing
determinants of the analysis, circumscribed with justification for the State
and legitimization of power, one can understand the anachronism entrenched in
the colonial left; a general consensus on proletarian dictatorship was
maintained on the part of the “radical” left parties, and reformist left parties
were content with proposing adaptations and applications of the State from the
perspective of deferred transitions.
In any case, even today, the persistence
of these anachronisms in political behavior, ideological expressions, and
extemporaneous world views corresponding to the epistemological sediments of
the Enlightenment and of the 19th-century is shocking. We speak of a
positivist conception of science, similar to a religious archetype, a
representation of science in terms of an indisputable reality, interpreted as
absolute objectivity, which is intended for the discovery of the laws of
nature, history and society. One can see in these anachronisms the essence of
academic stagnation in the Ivory Tower. Many activists in this left appear to
be more like the evangelical preachers pathetically prophesying the apocalypse
in their revolutionary metaphors than actors in liberating social
transformation. It is safe to say that at the heart of these activists’ agenda lie
the hidden vestiges of Christianity. They are far closer to sacrifice and
redemption than to radical transformation of the power structures and mental
dependencies. In a country like ours, Bolivia, the profound nuances of the
problematic concerning power, domination, and the given capitalist condition
remain fundamentally elusive. It is very difficult to outline an adequate
theory which accounts for colonialism and the continuing state of being
colonized; in its simplest form racial domination does not exist, or it is
reduced to a violent form of class struggle or an invention of the Indianists. In
some cases, inventory is taken of classifying studies of peoples, languages and
cultures; nonetheless, these studies fall short of mapping the phenomenon of
domination over bodies, territories, and subjectivities. Instead, these studies
go to the extreme of reducing the complex persistence of indigenous and
aboriginal societies, cultures, nations and peoples to their condition as land
workers. Such reductionist stereotypes force a dependency between land worker
liberation to the leadership of an industrial worker vanguard, mechanically
repeating the thesis of the industrial and agricultural worker alliance
developed in the context of the Russian revolution during the first decades of
the 20th century. These approaches are then converted into
guidelines for the political strategy in confronting conflictive situation of
the Bolivian process. In the heads of the traditional left, none of this would
have happened since the approval of the Pulacayo Thesis (1946); all history
would have been detained in the reiterative events of militant memory. The
experience of the 1952 Revolution and its dramatic outcomes serve only to
confirm the jurisprudence of the party program. Scholarly interpretation is
vindicated: nationalism will not liberate the workers or the nation; only the
proletarian miner can do the job. The question is never asked as to why they
did not intercede in the discourse concerning the events or why they did not
rupture history, why they did not succeed in completing the revolution. Instead,
they resorted to the cliché of the lack of comprehension by the masses. The
characterization acquires a jocular tonality when those same arguments return
to haunt us in other points in time, when the Popular Assembly was defeated,
when the UDP prematurely collapsed, when the neoliberal project came on to the
scene, taking advantage of the political and ideological vacuum left by the
defeat of the workers’ movement. This behavior assumed a pathetic tone when it
repeats in discourse and departs from the conditions at hand, repeating the
script in a pathological and almost knee-jerk, monotonous and mechanical
manner, whenever confronted with the root causes of a process in motion,
detached from social movements, aboriginal or indigenous nations and peoples,
where these events were irrelevant and in fact, completely foreign. Debating
the process in terms of its own contradictions, dangerous to be sure, is believed
to be key to becoming the vanguard of the betrayed revolution. It is believed
to be obtainable by revisiting the stereotyped image of a class struggle
reduced to a confrontation between abstract phantoms of industrial workers and
specters of a bourgeoisie equally fictitious, incapable of conceiving a
specific manifestation of struggle articulated in that of the nomadic
proletariat, confronting monopolistic mechanisms in the form of transnational
capitalism, mediated by intermediary bourgeoisies and dependent political
institutions. In this situation of political delirium, stifled by the extemporaneousness
of an unknown revolution, we cannot expect a traditional left to understand the
intimate link between colonial domination and capitalist exploitation. Neither
can they be expected to understand that indigenous and aboriginal peoples and
nations cannot be reduced to land workers, and the fight for land and agrarian
reform are tied to the struggle for territories; that confronting the State
that they conceive in terms of a bourgeois state cannot be resolved in maintaining
a State-nation under proletarian hegemony. For this reason, the perplexity and
incomprehension on the part of the traditional left concerning the construction
of a decolonizing, plurinational, communitarian State is understandable. It
cannot be otherwise, as this left has inherited the ideological assumptions of
colonialism and modernity.
To be
fair, the crystallized anachronisms of the traditional left are not the only
forms of counter-process; there are perhaps other types of counter-process that
are more dangerous, owing to their political incidence. In any case, even
today, the colonial left only informs political outcomes in so far that their apocalyptic
cries, heart-wrenching prophesies, and flyers outlining an incomprehensible
revolution are taken seriously. By order of importance, we can affirm that the
most significant counter-processes are state inertia, pragmatism, and the
political realism of governments adhering to old norms and practices, painstaking
regulatory administration, a nationalistic self-definition coupled with
maintaining a nation-state and replicating state capitalist ventures, and the
imagery of an industrial worker revolution, mimicking the populist strategies
and Latin American nationalisms of the 1950’s and ‘60’s. This meandering has
led the traditional left into a cul-de-sac into the cogs of the fabulous state
machinery, which sparks a replication of the social order and balance imposed
by the geopolitics dominant in the current cycle of capitalism in the context
of the crisis denoted as US-American hegemony; this left wanders lost in the
directives of determinants set by corporate transnational, financial,
technological and market monopolies; this manner of spiraling in the labyrinth
of state machinery has led the left into the illusory trap of maintaining a
monetarist economy and perversely emitting a neoliberal decree, as exhibited by
the famous case of the gasolinazo, or
the “big gasoline hit.” The dominant nationalist bloc in the government has
become the biggest obstacle to decolonization and constructing of a
plurinational, communiarian and autonomous State. This bloc likewise poses the
largest threat for the emancipation of indigenous and aboriginal nations and
peoples, for the liberation of intercultural societies, as well as for the
emancipation of the nomadic, pluralistic, and diverse proletariat which is
articulated on the margins of capitalism, which combines savage exploitation
with ultra-modern capitalist exploitation by transnational corporations. The
nationalist bloc in the government has inserted itself into games it does not
control, games whose rules are already given and imposed by the structures
inherent in the current capitalist cycle. They believed that they could control
the rules of the game by assuming they were enlightened and relying on their
prestige; however, these personal attributes were useless before the
determinant movement of the capitalist logic and geopolitical interests,
meaning not only regional interests, but global capitalist interests in general.
For instance, industrialist strategy and the way of infrastructure are none
other than submission to the giddy development of the emerging power of Brazil.
PETROBAS, Brazilian companies that manufacture power and the
macro-hydro-electrical plants of the future, trade agreements, political and
economic treaties, are a part of the regulations, mechanisms and tools of innocent
subjugation to the demand for energy and the connection of the Pacific with the
emerging power. Romantic projects of integration and the ideal of constructing
one great country and have been relegated to the museum of utopias. What is
happening here is a regional hegemonic project drafted by the Brazilian
bourgeoisie, not just one that threatens emancipatory decolonization projects
of social movement in Bolivia, but in Brazil as well, squelching the push for
agrarian reform and other egalitarian projects on the part of exploited
classes. The nationalist bloc in the government has become another cog in the
machinery driving the geopolitical domination of finance capitalism and
regional hegemony. Indeed, all of this happened without much coincidence to
what occurred, where leaders were confident in their enlightenment and prestige,
forgetting that these strategic issues ought to be handled transparently and
openly, in discussion with the people, movements, organizations, and
institutions in a popular government which was originally assembled by grassroots
movements. Decisions made regarding strategic policies must be constituted by collective
and participatory elements as established in the Constitution. The enlightened
specialists are incompetent in responding to tasks which compete with their
expertise, at least in terms of processes of emancipation, liberation, and
decolonization. For the purposes of depreciating participatory democracy, the
nationalist bloc has revived personal defects entrenched at the core,
reproducing pathological and hallucinatory paranoia regarding all forms of
government entrenched in political practice, and all the associated corrosion
and despotic perversions. After wandering in this labyrinth, one ends up in
unfathomable isolation, unable to explain what came of instrumental political
project, leaving behind the memory and possibility of directly exercising
democracy by communitarian representation.
This
off-course tack of the government requires serious reflection and analysis,
because there is a need to redirect the process in order to realize its
potential and possibility, in mobilizations accompanied by fundamental policy
and institutional shifts; and economic, structural, political, social and
cultural reversals. This does not in any way imply trying to find out whose
fault it is in the manner of the 19th-century monks searching for
their inconclusive revolution, the same approach that was also taken by the
Inquisitors. It simply means redirecting the process from the standpoint of its
protagonists, the social movements, the indigenous nations and peoples, as well
as the nomadic proletariat. It also involves understanding the field of
relationships, structures and agencies of power, its restorative logic, the
shape bodies and subjectivities take on, transforming those that bear
responsibility, for whom the question is about resisting and freeing themselves
from the polymorphous forms of domination, pushing for multitude-oriented and
participatory forms of government, inventing pathways to open spaces by way of
liberating, collective, communitarian and individual subjectivities. This
process is not lost, as some may believe and predict, as long as the collective
subject of mobilizations intervenes, popular and proletarian movements
intercede, and the radical process of dismantling the immense machinery of
domination and administration of capital, which is the State, and the building
of free associations between producers and communities begins. The priority in
this case is the fomentation of the collective political will and its political
intervention. This means social movements regaining the political leadership in
this process. In terms of evaluating and analyzing this critical juncture, it
should not be forgotten that any revolutionary and transformative process
undergoes these conflictive and contradictory situations, and that these
changes in course reflect the same disjunctions that exist in any change
process as it continues to radicalize, or stagnate, opening the floodgates to
restorative forms of power and State. Whenever a change process encounters
these decisive moments in outcome, it is crucial to correct the regulatory
framework of political power, orientation, and leadership.
One can
say that processes and revolutions have experienced moments like this, but
also, one can affirm that in the majority of cases, if not overall as a general
rule, the direction of the process or revolution was lost without the ability
to change the course of events. The Communist Party in the Soviet Union was
entangled in an internal battle that resulted in a frightening wager for the
staggering weight of an absolute bureaucracy, militarized industrialization,
and a dictatorship in the name of the party, carrying with it the leftovers of
the despotic rule typical of Asiatic production. The Communist Party of the
People’s Republic of China sensed impending collapse of the proletarian and
agrarian revolution, so it called for a general mobilization that sought to
return the decision-making power to the masses. This reorientation was known as
the Cultural Revolution. However, this heroic intent was stalled by multiple forces
of resistance and petty bureaucrats in the party, the same elements which brought
the Cultural Revolution to its capitalist outcome, reinserting the existing
capitalist cycle and finance capital regime into the administrative mechanisms
of the party bureaucracy. It is ironic that the Communist Party in the People’s
Republic of China called this project revolutionary market socialism. The
Bolivian national revolution of 1952, led by proletarian miners, factory
workers, impoverished middle classes, with intervention from the indigenous
movements in land occupations, was quickly co-opted by restorative measures,
when it remobilized the army and opted for a liberal nationalism, gradually
distancing itself from the decisive factor of workers’ organizations, excluding
workers’ and agrarian militias, and rapidly turning to the US Department of
State to make a deal; resorting to drafting monetarist policies and allowing US
American engineers to manage the COMIBOL administration. The MNR handed over
its petroleum to Gulf Oil and claimed it was defending the mines for the State,
but in fact permanently deferred the installation of foundries, condemning the
country to the starkest form of extractivism, namely, the export of its raw
materials. Bolivia then opened its markets to the Orient in its Plan Bohan,
while gearing its economic process toward the formation of a national
bourgeoisie. The MNR ended up divided into three tendencies, a right-wing, a
left-wing, and centrist. In this context of decomposition into national
revolutionary decadence, the second government under the Paz Estensoro
Administration ended in a confrontation with armed miners’ militias in Sora
Sora and surrounded in November of 1964 by a State coup instigated by the
Pentagon and CIA, with the active participation and cooperation by left parties
PRIN, PC and other political forces. We will not refer to the Cuban revolution
here, as this process has continued despite its avatars, contingencies, an
economic blockade, and systematic sabotage on the part of the United States.
Perhaps it would be prudent in another context to concentrate on the tensions
and contradiction inherent in the Cuban revolutionary process, above all, on
the ways and methods of solving the successive problems the revolutionaries have
had to confront. Neither will we delve into the case of the Mexican revolution,
which began to unravel within the second decade of the 20th century
and perhaps lasted until 1940. The complications encountered in Mexico’s
revolutionary process, whose first goal was agrarian reform, from the
standpoint of the Zapatista army, notwithstanding the importance of other
objectives associated with political reform, forced the underlying structures of
the Mexican revolution to be analyzed within their own specificity and
temporality. Nevertheless, it is apparent that the most advanced tendencies of
the revolution were in the armies under the command Francisco Villa and
Emiliano Zapata. The other caudillos
and generals were much more of the institutional persuasion, including some
belonging to the constitutionalist tendency. The Mexican revolutionary process
was affected by US military intervention, such as the taking of Veracruz in 1914,
as well as in the persecution of Francisco Villa in 1916. The Mexican
revolution can be described as appearing to lack any point of inflection, when
in fact, the entire course of its revolution constituted a line of inflection.
For this reason, it is imperative to study these problems of contradiction
inherent in such processes, their tendencies, the correlations of political
power, and decisive moments, differentiating and distinguishing these fluxes. In
this brief summary, two extreme cases are discernible: one is the link to the
Mexican revolution, which is evidenced by the persistence of a permanent
crisis, hence the constant clash between competing forces; the other is the
Cuban revolution which is seeking the unification of forces against the
permanent aggression of imperialism, hence the decision to continue the
revolution down the path of defense. We also see clearly in other cases the
points of inflection leading to divergence in course, whose outcome threatens
to shatter revolutionary processes.
In
describing the forms of counter-process, we absolutely cannot forget that obviously
counter-revolutionary factors, such as the interventions of regional
oligarchies, the intermediary bourgeoisie, their communication media, and political
parties. Neither can we neglect to mention interventions of imperialism,
transnational corporations, and finance capital. Without resorting to
conspiracy theories, we can see that these power structures are positioned in
geopolitical space in such a way as to effectively be poised to move against
transformative processes. They oppose, place obstacles to, and generally attempt
to destroy transformative processes. Nevertheless, one must take into account
that these types of counter-processes become part of the political structures,
workflows, institutional mechanisms, and agencies of power before the process
even begins. These counter-processes were historically established as a remnant
of post-colonial society and during the period of Republican rule in the
margins of the capitalist world system in the so-called Charcas Audience that gave
rise to what is now Bolivia. Therefore, more than counter-processes, it
involves consolidated political and economic policies, all the more possessing
structures and networks of geopolitics and imperial domination, with the
cycles, ebbs, and flows of the magnified accumulation of capital. Overcoming
historical obstacles that stall the transformative process or transformations
in the process implies strategies and tactics, methods, which are different to
those which seek to struggle against previously identified counter-processes
having a shorter time span relative to the length of the process and to successive
situations, have had to experience the same process from its beginnings to its
changes.
One is
tempted to use words rather than concepts; for instance, to distinguish main enemy from main contradiction, main
enemy in the historical period at hand, to main contradiction in the context of a given circumstance. For
instance, it is important to understand that the main enemy is the strategic
positioning characterized by imperial geopolitics, the geography of capital,
the ebbs and flows of capital, the networks of finance capital, the
organization of transnational corporations, the mediation of intermediary
bourgeoisies, localization of regional oligarchies, political apparatuses of
intermediary bourgeoisie and regional oligarchies, and corporate communication
media. In addition, one needs to be able to distinguish this main enemy, which entails a structural
contradiction, from a secondary enemy, which entails contradictions that are
not necessarily structural, but can be temporal or circumstantial.
Nevertheless, such contradictions can
become a main contradiction in a
certain moment, so without allowing this contradiction
to be resolved, the structural
contradiction will not be able to be resolved with the main enemy. In the ever changing landscape of contradictions, the same will play the same dynamic role of
articulations, determinants, and regulatory frameworks; some contradictions become representative of
other contradictions. The positioning
of the map requires the resolution of some contradictions
in order to be able to resolve others. For instance, the positioning of the
main enemy cannot be resolved unless the contradiction with the national-liberal
bloc in the government is resolved. For the contradiction with the sedimentary
machinery of the nation-State to be resolved, the entire contradiction with the system of normative, administrative, and
practical mechanisms of the old State must be resolved. As much as the nationalist-liberal
bloc dominates the political scenario, the national-State is restorative,
maintaining liberal norms with their administrative and practical forms. The
resolution of contradictions with the main enemy when confronted with it cannot
be affected unless the main enemy is waning, mediated, sabotaged by nationalist
demagogy. Policy-making is converted into a theater on stage, whose objective
is mainly electoral politics, and the diatribe against capitalism, imperialism,
and the bourgeoisie is no more than a demagogy, in effect, sealing its pact
with instruments of empire and capitalism.
This kind
of explanation seems adequate to describe the scenario, relating to the reading
material we acquired on situation and process, indispensable to mobilizing
political forces to redirect the process, but nevertheless assuming a
spontaneous utilization of terminology such as main enemy, main or secondary contradiction, terms which
originated when politics were defined as war and was one of the discourses
pertaining to dialectics. If one uses these terms in this way, the theoretical
consequences can be incontrollable. Therefore, it is essential when rigorously
naming and mapping counter-processes.
It is not
a matter of getting rid of the thesis which interprets politics in terms of war
in the watermark of peace, as Michel Foucault inserted into Carl von
Clausewitz’s thesis, but to begin to see the implications of this thesis, above
all, in the usage of terms like enemy or
the understanding that politics is an invention of the enemy. Is it still possible to think this way? Has not the idea of
war itself changed? Nowadays, war is not an event to be understood in degrees
of intensity, or a curve of intensities. For instance, does the strategy of low
intensity warfare with the purpose of containing and controlling an undefined
enemy take into account shifts in the conception of war and thus in respect to
the topic in this paper does not take into account political shifts? It does
not. War is a control of spaces, not just of territories on the ground but of
aerial, maritime, informational, communication, and natural resource spaces as
well. War understood not as perpetual war but of unrestricted war, which in
itself entails a new conception of weaponry. The entire spectrum of shift in
the concept of war, at the least, is a factor in determining political shifts. If
the new conception of war propagates the figure of an enemy dispersed into an
ambiguous figure of an undetermined enemy within the context of an infinite war,
can we continue to speak of an enemy in
politics? Alain Badiou says that in respect to the class struggle between the proletariat
and the bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie is not the enemy, but the bourgeois world
itself and its instruments of domination. He concretely says:
The true
contrary of the proletariat is not the bourgeoisie. It is the bourgeois world,
imperialist society, of which the proletariat, let this be the antagonistic
political pole. The famous contradicton of bourgeoisie/proletariat is a limited,
structural scheme that loses track of the torsion of the Whole of which the
proletariat qua subject traces the force. To say proletariat and bourgeoisie is
to remain within the bounds of the Hegelian artifice: something and something
else. Why? Because the project of the proletariat, its internal being, is not
to contradict the bourgeoisie, or to cut its feet from under it. This project
is communism, and nothing else. That is, the abolition of any place n which
something like a proletariat can be installed. The political project of the
proletariat is the disappearance of the space of the placement of classes. It
is the loss, for the historical something, of every index of class[1].
The
opposition is thus against the class shift, in the context of the social
relationships of production which create a disassociation between the means of
production and the work force, which is expressed in a structural contradiction
between productive forces and relationships of production. From our
perspective, we can say that the opposition is with the scope of relationships,
structures, plans, networks, institutions, and agencies of power which separate
bodies of instruments and technologies that affect them, converting it into a
ductile material of power, malleable and moldable, which meet the requirements
of demarcation, punishment, discipline, normalization, and control. In both
cases, we are referring to spaces, maps, and shifts. But who is opposed to this
space occupied by classes? For Badiou, it is not the proletarian who is the
notorious element of imperialist society as a productive force and antagonist
political pole. The oppositional force to this space of classes is in fact the
political project, or communism. What stands in opposition to the space
occupied by relationships, structures, planning, institutions, and agencies of
power? It is certainly not a political project but an immanent force, a
boundless energy coming from bodies, flows of desire, lines of escape. In any
case, a nomadic project. This will not be handled here, in this moment of
comparing and contrasting between both postulates, the political project of
communism and the nomadic project, but what is discussed here is the comprehension
of the opposition, the contradiction, the enemy, which are specifically
understood to be shifts, and thus analyzed in terms of their shifts. This
comprehension lends a distinct tone to politics; politics understood as a
confrontation between class and power shifts, politics understood as a
confrontation between relationships of production and structures of domination.
Politics as a radical questioning of the scope of these social relationships
and de facto, consolidated, legitimized, hegemonic, and dominant power
structures. Politics which suspend the realm of relationships of domination.
In
respect to dialectics, the problem is more complicated and the discussion is of
a theoretical order. We will still not embark on a discussion of pluralistic
thought and dialectical thought. This debate is undoubtedly indispensable. But
for the moment, we will concentrate on the limitations of the dialectic and the
problems it poses.
The
dialectic is one of the forms of thought. In addition, there are various
interpretations of the dialectic, or dialectics. One of the most common is known
as the dialectic of Plato (428 B.C.
– 347 B.C.).
Much later, identifying the multiple layers of modern philosophical thought, we
can interpret the transcendental dialect of Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804), as a critical response, as the criticism
of criticism, seeking an absolute knowledge, we were acquainted with the
dialectical system of Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel (1770 – 1831). Perhaps this wold be the most important reference point of dialectical
thought. Nonetheless, Karl Heinrich Marx (1818 – 1883)
took on a criticism of Hegel’s speculative dialectic and reoriented dialectical
thought toward material conditions, effective history, society, politics, and
economics, a reorientation of thought which came to be known as material
dialectics, in respect to method, historical materialism, interpretation of
history and society, and above all, the mode of capitalist production. How did this dialectic differ from
Hegel? Generally, it would be necessary to take into account how Marx
criticized Hegelian dialectic and philosophy throughout the entire course of
his works, from his youth to maturity. Various interpretations of Marxist
currents of material dialectics and historical materialism developed later,
some cases where fundamental differences to Hegel were highlighted. Particularly
striking was the interpretation by Louis Althusser (1918 -1990), who postulated that Marx missed the opportunity to formulate a
pluralistic dialectic. In addition, waves of innovation in thought proceeded,
for instance, in the case of Theodor Adorno, who wrote Negative Dialectics, attempting to break with the tradition which,
according to him, ended in the affirmative. Hegelian approximations also
followed, such as the rare case exhibited by the interpretation of Alain Badiou
(1978[2]). For our purposes, we are
interested in sketching a profile of dialectic shifts, highlighting their
avatars, their problems, and limitations, in the context of shifts in other
forms of thought. Above all, the recent shifts and particularly, those which are
associated with theories on complexity and pluralistic thought. We are
certainly far from considering dialectics as the only form of true thought, the
one and only way to become acquainted with the essence of reality or, as the
positivists who think they are Marxists like to discuss, singularly give the
only accurate account of history, society or nature. This is no more than
dogmatic fallacy, or fanaticism in the worst case, akin to the medieval search
for the philosopher’s stone. The stone does not exist, neither does one true
reality, except for in the delirious heads of dogmatists. There has never been
any kind of thought which has coincided with the secrets of reality’s complexity.
This belief is reflected as much in the concept of the end of history as it is
in absolute knowledge, where the consciousness is fully realized as absolute knowledge
and the absolute recognition of this idea of consciousness in its own motion. This
speculative experience is none other than a theology, the return of God an religion
to philosophy and modern science. The marvel of human capacity can be found
elsewhere, not in theoretical or speculative reductionism, rather in the entire
breadth of possibilities open to creating distinct forms of thought, of
knowledge, by way of revealing the secrets of complexity which reflect the
progression, accumulation and map of our experiences. Dialectics are no more
than such approximations, and certainly limited by the horizons of their time,
the 19th and part of the 20th centuries. The advance of contemporary
science, since the revolution of quantum physics, knowledge, and experience,
has transcended the confines and problems of dialectics. We find ourselves
before the development of a complex school of thought on multiplicity, at the creative
and vital cusp of pluralistic thought.
In
summarized accounts, the dialectic, the Greek διαλεκτική (dialektiké), τέχνη
(téchne), which means the technique of conversation, has an equivalent
significance in Latin, where it is defined as dialectical art, (ars). In
modernity, the dialectic has been transformed into transcendental criticism, an
experiential phenomenon derived from the consciousness, as well as into logic,
philosophy and a critique of political economy, a theoretical tool for
interpreting history and society, a weapon of criticism, and a critique of the
weapons used in the political struggle of the proletariat.
So now
what does the dialectic have to say about contradictions? Let us take four
responses: those of Hegel, Marx, Mao Zedong, and ending with the response of
Alain Badiou.
The dialectic of Hegel
Here, we
will analyze in Hegel two works, one is the Phenomenology
of Spirit, and the other is Science
of Logic. One expounds on the science of experience and the other on the
science of thought, but also on the idea of motion, on bringing abstract work
which passes from the undetermined to determination, from immediacy to
mediation, thereby conserving One. This logic is already philosophy, certainly
a dialect; it has ceased to be rhetoric or language, as well as rules for sound
thinking. It is a logic which treats the formation of the idea as part of its
own motion within, its own immanence in constant contraposition to its
transcendence. This tension is dialect. Perhaps the most beautiful and lucid
about Hegel can be found in the conception of this rupture in reality and at
the same time, this re-articulating force, of One. Above all in Phemonology of Spirit, none seems to
find one’s self contemplating poetry or a novel, a tragedy of the subject that
constantly returns from perpetual and exhausting journeys, experiences of
alienation, that are harbingers of deep reflections to come. The speculative
dialect seeks to bring about the consciousness in absolute knowledge, the
mediated indetermination, the beginning, the emptiness, an absolute idea. This
comprises the terrain upon which the dialectic is moving. We can hardly apply
and barely wish to encounter the same moments of indetermination-determination,
immediacy-mediation, differentiation-unity, origination and completion in the
territories, levels and spaces of reality. Would a dialectical synthesis be of
the idea be possible in different compositions, related and existing in
different levels of reality: historical, economic, political, cultural? Would
it not be better to wait for moments of disjunction and heterogeneity?
Obviously, this was not Hegel’s intention, but rather, is that of those who
believe that similar attributes to the idea and to consciousness can be found
in matter? These quarrels are not the responsibility of Hegel, but of those who
confuse the problems, polemics and fields, as if putting everything in one plane,
similar painters in the Middle Ages, without perspective. Experiential problems
concerning consciousness and thought, of speculative philosophy cannot be
converted to historical-political, historical-social, historical-economic, or
historical-cultural problems. There are not such assumed dialectical laws that
can be mechanically transferred and be converted into historical, social, or
economic laws. This last folly in reasoning is the combined result of positivism
and misreading Hegel and Marx.
The dialectic of Marx
Karl Marx
understood very well how to proceed in his critique of Hegel’s speculative
philosophy, as well as Hegel’s philosophy of the State. It was necessary to
abandon the speculative system in Hegel’s dialect, the reproduction of logical,
pre-formed spheres. Better said, it was necessary to find the types of real
movements, how to depict effective history, and the kinds of social, economic
and political contradictions. Marx attempted to reveal how these levels of
reality came about, their linkages, and forms of resolution, none of which come
to any type of synthesis. Simply to say Marx turned Hegel on his head or placed
him upright is none other than an expression of an innocent figure. The problems
that manifest themselves in Hegel’s philosophical system do not have any
correlations to the interpretative, investigative or academic fields where Karl
Marx devoted his studies. There is not the same symmetry as exists in Hegel; we
are thus confronted with distinct problems in a differing territory. Marx is
not Hegel turned on his head, or with his feet on the ground. The difference
lies in an entirely different problematic field altogether. This is something
to consider when we are examining Marxist dialectic.
The first
thing Marx did was denounce the speculative character of Hegelian dialectic,
its abstract form which took shape in a negative system which seeks to affirm
the negated in another dimension. The same scheme is replicated in philosophy,
in logic, and in the philosophies of law, history and nature – in every field
of philosophy. For Marx, these philosophies are nothing more than theology,
referring to Ludwig Feuerbach’s criticism of religion in The Essence of Christianity. This position is already articulated
in his early work Critique of Hegel’s
Philosophy of Right where he writes:
Thus, the criticism of Heaven turns into the
criticism of Earth, the criticism
of religion into the criticism
of law, and the criticism
of theology into the criticism
of politics[3].
Marx’s
epistemological shift is especially notorious in the disciplines of analysis
and critique, the latter of which corresponds to both the critique of political
economy and to his historical and political writings. The former is an extensive
work containing the analysis Value, Price
and Profit, the Economic-Philosophical
Manuscripts, annotations on the theory
of surplus value, the Grundrisse,
and compiled in Fundamental Elements for
the Criticism of Political Economy, Capital.
In the second case, we also have the prolific work in The misery of philosophy, Class
struggle in France 1848-1850, The
Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, The British Rule in India,
Revolutionary Spain, Civil War in France, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Europe. In both cases, one
notes Marx’s preoccupation with revealing the inherent logic in these levels
and fields of reality without the theological pretension of finding all parts
of the dialectic. Rather, one can understand the logic specific to a specific
object, ascending the concrete aspect of it, and understanding the object as a
synthesis of multiple determinants rather than a speculative or abstract
synthesis, but as a social historical, economic historical, and effective
synthesis. Above all, Marxist dialectic seeks to account for political events,
avoiding obsession with finding an economic determinant, or the prioritization
of analyzing the determinants of the said economic structure above those of the
legal, political, ideological, or cultural system. Instead, Marxist dialectic
distinguishes itself by recounting these events, revealing their temporal and
momentary contradictions, and showing how they manifest in political and State
crises. The varying apertures, the search for specificity, but also, the
critique of political economy seeks to expose contradictions in the modes of
capitalist production as well as in the forms of accumulation seem to have
given Althusser his rationale on his interpretation of Marxist dialect.
The dialectic of Mao Zedong
Mao
Zedong, like Marx, confronted concrete problems, relative to the levels of
experiential reality; maybe the problems Zedong faced are more pressing and
more direct, leading him to direct the Communist Party on course for a long
protracted struggle and a strategy of prolonged war, in moments of great debate.
When he wrote On contradiction,
Zedong describes a party tendency he called dogmatic, influenced by Soviet
ideologue Deborin. The writing begins by quoting Lenin: Dialectics in the proper sense is the study of contradiction in the very essence of objects. This
is cited in Lenin’s Lectures on the
History of Philosophy in his notes in his lecture on Hegel’s philosophy. Mao
Zedong says in this respect: Lenin often
called this law the essence of dialectics; he also called it the kernel of
dialectics[4]. There are two annotations Lenin
wrote. One is found in On the Question of
Dialectics, where the Bolshevist theoretician wrote: The two basic (or two possible? or two historically observable?)
conceptions of development (evolution) are: development as decrease and
increase, as repetition, and development
as a unity of opposites (the division of a unity into mutually exclusive
opposites and their reciprocal relation). The second annotation can be
found in Lenin’s summary in his book The Science of Logic, where he
writes of Hegel: Dialectics is
the teaching which shows how Opposites can
be and how they happen to be (how they become) identical,—under what conditions they are identical, becoming
transformed into one another,—why the human mind should grasp these opposites
not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, becoming transformed
into one another. One can see the sequence of how dialectics are
interpreted: Hegel, Lenin and Mao Zedong. The main reference point here was
Hegel, not Marx. This is important to note, that there is a great difference
between Marx and the Marxists who followed; Marx criticizes Hegel’s philosophy
and dialectic, even breaking with the Neo-Hegelians of the left, who were like
the interpretative current that Marx belonged to. This critique and these
ruptures consequently gave way to another method, distinct from that originally
conceived by Hegel, and other logics were examined which were inherent in the
levels of reality, and to the comprehension and acknowledgement of historical,
social, economic, political, and cultural circumstances. What was this method
called? Marx was not concerned with labeling the methodologies of his
criticisms, investigations, disclosures, or conceptual constructs; they were
simply what they were, critiques of philosophy, of dialectics, of Hegel’s
philosophy of right, Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon’s philosophy, as well as a critique of the political economy, a historical-political
critique of events and circumstances of crisis. Speaking of classifying
methodologies, for now, I take the liberty to name these investigative
procedures used by Marx method of the logic of concrete acknowledgement.
In order to
interpret, understand, and apply the same essence of Mao Zedong’s dialectical
materialism, he proposes a program to examine these philosophical problems: The problems are: the two world outlooks,
the universality of contradiction, the particularity of contradiction, the
principal contradiction and the principal aspect of a contradiction, the
identity and struggle of the aspects of a contradiction, and the place of
antagonism in contradiction [5].
The first
part of the text On contradiction,
which is referred to in the section The
two world outlooks, is not sustainable at all. No more of a reductivist
interpreation of philosophical history is possible, which paints a caricature
of history in black and white, or better yet, projects an image of history as
one between angels and devils, the dialect against metaphysics, the dialectical
materialism against idealism, or, as Lenin put it, The two basic conceptions of development (evolution) are: development
as decrease and increase, as repetition, and development as a unity of opposites [6]. If we remain on the margines of
htis contextual interpretation, historical periods and their particular
characteristics expressed in philosophical tendencies and schools, their
epistemological horizons, along with their connections juxtapositions, have
also undergone transformation and shifts. This is remarkable, especially when
the intention is to salvage Hegel’s logic and philosophy, which, we can say, deals
with an idealistic philosophy and logic, to be understood in dualistic terms. This
interpretation is far from methods, procedures, and treatment Marx employed,
and distant from advancing a specific logic of the specific object which, in
this case, will come to be a product of the logics inherent in the expository
and conceptual formations of the philosophical currents and schools, their
connection to historical contexts and chronologies. Overall, it offers a
glimpse of how insurgent and progressive critics can question the legitimacy of
the status quo, which can be both idealistic and materialist at the same time. We
are far from the Theses on Feuerbach,
which says:
The main
defect of all hitherto-existing materialism — that of Feuerbach included — is
that the Object [der Gegenstand], actuality, sensuousness, are conceived only
in the form of the object [Objekts], or of contemplation [Anschauung], but not as human sensuous activity, practice [Praxis], not subjectively. Hence it
happened that the active side, in opposition to materialism, was developed by
idealism — but only abstractly, since, of course, idealism does not know real,
sensuous activity as such. Feuerbach wants sensuous objects [Objekte], differentiated from
thought-objects, but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective [gegenständliche] activity. In The Essence of Christianity [Das Wesen des Christenthums], he therefore regards the
theoretical attitude as the only genuinely human attitude, while practice is
conceived and defined only in its dirty-Jewish form of appearance [Erscheinungsform]. Hence he does not grasp the
significance of ‘revolutionary’, of ‘practical-critical’, activity.
This
evaluation of materialism is profound, as the source of the problem lies in the
balance of the critical perspective lies between idealism and materialism,
clearly showing a preference toward idealism, albeit in an abstract manner. The
materialism founded by Marx consists of critical-practical revolutionary. Certainly
the Chinese Communist Party is involved in revolutionary action along the lines
of Marxist materialism, even though their interpretation of philosophical
history is pathetically reductionist, which serves to dismantle more than
create militancy. It thus becomes clearly evident that we can only uphold these
arguments using exactly the dogmatic methods Mao Zedong claimed to refute.
In the
section titled The universality of
contradiction, Mao Zedong sustains that this universality manifests itself
in the development of actuality and also that the movement of opposites
presents itself in the development of actuality. He says: Objective contradictions are reflected in subjective thinking, and this
process constitutes the contradictory movement of concepts, pushes forward the
development of thought, and ceaselessly solves problems in man's thinking[7]. He continues remarking: Thus it is already clear that contradiction
exists universally and in all processes, whether in the simple or in the
complex forms of motion, whether in objective phenomena or ideological
phenomena[8]. Criticizing Deborin, who sees that
the inception of the process occurs after a defined period of time, not from
the beginning, Mao Zedong is categorical: This
school does not understand that each and every difference already contains
contradiction and that difference itself is contradiction[9]. From this perspective, one can
speak of an absolute character of contradiction. It is like saying that
contradiction is inherent in being, an ontological characteristic. This is all
essentially a materialist return to Hegel.
In the section The particularity of contradiction Mao
Zedong makes an incursion into what can be called the specific logic of the
specific object from the perspective of contradictions, omitting for now the
perspective of articulations and relational conception, to be developed later by
Nicos Poulantzas. He postulates that every type of movement implicates its own
contradiction. A little later, he affirmed this formulation in writing: This particular contradiction constitutes
the particular essence which distinguishes one thing from another. It is the
internal cause or, as it may be called, the basis for the immense variety of
things in the world. There are many forms of motion in nature, mechanical
motion, sound, light, heat, electricity, dissociation, combination, and so on.
All these forms are interdependent, but in its essence each is different from
the others. The particular essence of each form of motion is determined by its
own particular contradiction. This holds true not only for nature but also for
social and ideological phenomena. Every form of society, every form of
ideology, has its own particular contradiction and particular essence[10]. This is important to focus on in respect to political leadership, in
defining strategies and tactics in the phases and situations of the Chinese
revolution. Zedong establishes: When we
speak of understanding each aspect of a contradiction, we mean understanding
what specific position each aspect occupies, what concrete forms it assumes in
its interdependence and in its contradiction with its opposite, and what
concrete methods are employed in the struggle with its opposite, when the two
are both interdependent and in contradiction, and also after the
interdependence breaks down [11].
He adds that: Lenin meant just this when
he said that the most essential thing in Marxism, the living soul of Marxism,
is the concrete analysis of concrete conditions[12].
Another
annotation about the transformation of contradictions in historical temporality
of the highly discretionary process: The
fundamental contradiction in the process of development of a thing and the
essence of the process determined by this fundamental contradiction will not
disappear until the process is completed; but in a lengthy process the
conditions usually differ at each stage. The reason is that, although the
nature of the fundamental contradiction in the process of development of a
thing and the essence of the process remain unchanged, the fundamental
contradiction becomes more and more intensified as it passes from one stage to
another in the lengthy process. In addition, among the numerous major and minor
contradictions which are determined or influenced by the fundamental
contradiction, some become intensified, some are temporarily or partially
resolved or mitigated, and some new ones emerge; hence the process is marked by
stages. If people do not pay attention to the stages in the process of
development of a thing, they cannot deal with its contradictions properly[13]. This map of contradictions, this reading of change in the map of
contradiction is a political lesson. It is not the same as prioritizing one
situation over another, one phase distinct from another, or intervening in one
moment of the event or another. This political sensibility demands an
experiential sensibility in relation to the interpretation of its make-up,
structures, and transformations. In reading Zedong’s On Contradiction, we arrive at a number of questions surrounding
the universality and particularity of contradiction, as well as the relationship
between the main contradiction and its principal aspect, about identity and the
struggle around various aspects of the contradiction and the role of antagonism
in the contradiction.
The dialectic according to Alain Badiou
Alain
Badiou was a disciple of Louis Althusser and was active in Marxist
organizations with a Maoist orientation. Between 1972 and 1978, he was part of
the Group for the Foundation of the Union of Communists of France Marxist-Leninist (UCFML).
During this period, he was taking a course at the University of Vincennes where
he released erudite reflections on the dialectic and theory of the subject. The
book Theory of the Subject is a
compilation of these interpretations, which we will discuss in the following.
We will
begin with two concepts which are used throughout Theory of the Subject, esplace
and horlieu, combinations and
compositions found in the French language. The first passages in the editor’s tote
in the section titled Image are
defined in the following manner:
Esplace (‘splace#): This is a
neologism or portemanteau word based on a contraction of espace de placement, ‘space of
placement’. It can be understood as a near-synonym for ‘structure’ or even
‘symbolic order’, even though tehre is no strict parallelism with either
Althusser or Lacan. That which Badiou calls ‘state of a situation’ in Being and
Event and ‘world’ in Logics of Worlds also roughly corresponds to ‘splace’ in
Theory o fthe Subject. The dialectical counterpart to the ‘splace’ is the
‘outplace’, just as ‘place’ in general functions in a dialectical opposition
with ‘force’ starting as early as in Badiou’s Theory of the Contradiction[14].
The
interpretation of the dialectic carried out by Badiou plays with two concepts, esplace and horlieu, which, for the purposes of the English translation while
maintaining the composition and combination reflected in the original, can be
understood as splace and outplace. We can say that the
dialect exists between a placement, or edification, an exteriorization of
force, a displacement, a deconstruction, an internalization of force. Using the
terminology of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, not wholly unfamiliar to the
significations known by Badiou, we can interpret this sense of the dialect as a
play of capturing force and the force of the vanishing line. The difference
rests in Badiou’s definition of force in its transformative aspect, which lives
both experiences, one of estrangement, one of derailing, one of
externalization, and one of internalization, one of return, one of meditation,
and coinciding with the Hegelian conception of phenomenology and logic. In turn,
Deleuze and Guattari speak of forces in the plural, dichotomies, qualitatively
distinct, coinciding with his pluralistic and nomadic conception. Certainly, it
does not concern approximating Badiou’s interpretation to Deleuze’s and
Guattari’s nomadic and pluralistic theory, and could not. This becomes clear
when we turn to Badiou’s critique of pluralistic conceptions; he postulates
that pluralism is nothing other than an apparition, since the position of myriads comes to an assumption that One is
Substance, excluding Two[15]. ¡Go to Badiou’s interpretation of
multiplicity! Multiplicity can only be conceived with One as a point of
departure, and plurality can only be conceived excluding Two, meaning, the
dialectic. The basis of this line of thought can be found in Two, which permits
us to conceive of One, the unification of opposites, of difference; it follows
that it is based in distinction of One and The Whole. In this respect, we may
note that One and The Whole are part of monotheistic religious traditions, which
subject the scriptures to the State. It is a political and religious project,
expressed in the domination of bodies, souls, and territories. Polytheism is
left behind and marginalized, immanent relationships with forces, akin to
pluralistic thought. The problem is that dialectics do not permit One but
require a Two, i.e. a contradiction, but barring anything beyond Two. This is
the dialectic and inherent contradiction in Dualities. They are incapable of
conceiving complexity, heterogeneity, the multiplicity of different forces that
are qualitatively distinct. However, let us return to the matter at hand, which
involves illuminating the underlying significances of the interpretation of
Badiou’s dialectic. It is interesting to see the images found in capturing and vanishing line; capturing,
in light of the concept of splace, vanishing lines, in
reference to the concept of outplace. In addition, it is
unsettling how the concept of force is used, even though the same is
circumscribed to the Hegelian idea of beginning. We can say that according to
the interpretation of Badiou, the force is the subject. Nevertheless, it would
be prudent to return to Hegel and read this passage in Phenomology of the Spirit on the concept of force[16].
Again,
Hegel’s philosophical clarity; speaks of how understanding, which sustains
thought, transpires. This is a treatment of the experience of conscience. The
dialectic exists in the tension between immanence and transcendence, between
internalization and exteriorization. This tension is experienced by the
subject. I am left with the title of Badiou’s work, understanding the as a Theory of the Subject. It is not
possible to apply the experience of the subject to other events, eliminating
their own quality of being, autonomy, and radical distinction from our
intimacies, as if these events were subjects like us. This is a subject-driven
reductionism, centers which materialism has supposedly broken. We do not claim
to be God, nor to dominate the universe or the world, make all things obey us,
believe that we can know everything, intersecting everything with our viewpoint,
our experience, our thought, reducing the marvelous plurality and difference to
a hedonistic experience of a subject with the desire to dominate, that is, all
humans. This is the deepest expression of the egotism and vanity of modernity. Materialism
gives way to enjoyment, bounty, and the perplexity and diversity of
multiplicity. It is not a renunciation of wisdom or knowledge, nor a negation
of comprehension, but simply does away with pretension, forming a part of the
creative and communicative excesses of life, referring to the plethora of flows
and new beginnings (cyclical and coinciding). It is similar to the stroke of a
given, as Badiou reflects on the poetry of Mallarme.
Badiou analyzes
three dialectical forms and interpretations, including, three separate
dialectic systems: Hegelian dialectic, structural dialectic, and Mallerme’s
poetic dialectic. This does not mean that any of these three forms are lacking
tradition, continuity and coincidence; on the contrary, they are replete with a
form of thought, the dialectic. In the chapter Action, where the subject dwells, the author suggests a structural
synthesis in dialectical sequence; this sequence departs from the contradiction
between splace and outplace, between space of place and
placement within the outskirts of place, between spatial edification and the
subject. Continuing the scission: to this respect, he says that the contradiction manifest itself solely in
the expression of a scission. The strict determination of a limitation or
boundary follows. This determination is linked with the conditions affixed to
placement, the determination of the relationship by its setting. The strict
determination is related to a return to the right, which can be termed
fetishism of statism. Here is where the limitation starts and the point a
boundary is reached, where it takes a turn to the left. The limitation is
produced by a new crisis, or better said, a reinforced return to the force of
place, leading to an subjective departure, a subjectifying the crisis. One must
take into account that these are abstract figures that correspond to distinct
scenarios and outcome. For instance, Badiou gives an example of the swing to
the right by referring to economic objectivism of Liu Shao Shi, and exemplifies
the return to the left by referring to what Lin Piao terms ideological
fanaticism.
We are left with
the impression that the dialectical interpretation remains within the confines
of the possibilities within the speculative dialectical forces found in Hegel. The
interpretation ends with a return to a reductionist and deterministic scheme.
The grave consequences of this “schematicism” appear when “transfers” occur on
the political plane, when we seek a verification of the dialectic in events
having occurred and read as history. Reductionism appears like a caricature,
subjects, actors, and protagonists like marionettes strung by invisible
dialectical laws. This theoretical treatise ends up limiting “reality” to the
confines of existing as a shadow of logical and profound – but disembodied –
movements. The theory results in putting on glasses that blur the complex and
pluralistic dynamic of forces. It is impossible for Liu Shao Shi and Lin Piao to
understand themselves as momentary caricatures of the dialectic. They form a
part of the historical context and of circumstances in the map of mutually
impeding forces, outlining the tensions and inherent tendencies that the
Chinese Communist Party found itself in, like a ship in the middle of a storm.
The Cultural Revolution was an attempt to transfer the dominant revolutionary leadership
to the reconsolidated forces in the councils and youth manifestations, rescuing
it from the hands of institutionalized bureaucrats in the party structure. This
internal struggle ends up being won by the bureaucrats, who toss out the
bearers of the Cultural Revolution, and lead the Cultural Revolution into a
dead-end by allowing the bureaucrats to turn the Chinese revolutionary process
into a market socialism, which is, in plain terms, naked capitalism in the full
decadent cycle of North American capitalist domination
There is another
even more calamitous example of these schematic applications of dialectical interpretation.
When Alain Badiou describes the development of the party as a constant purging,
making an unmistakable apology for the Stalinistic practice of party purges. These
were procedures which led to imposing a frightening dictatorship. There is a
certain innocence in theorizing which reduces the complexity of the power games
to, constellations, tensions and confrontations, in warring political camps, to
caricatures alluding to a dialectical logic.
Returning to the
case of the Bolivian process in question, we see that interpreting the contradiction
in its dialectical sense, above all, suggestive of the method Mao Zedong did
this, is illustrative, even descriptive, but does not succeed in leaving the
vicious cycle of dialectical negativity which does nothing other than pursue
new forms of logical affirmation. It is important to understand in the
political process the counter-processes ha are not limited to being dialectical
contradictions, cannot be interpreted as a demonstration of dialectics, but
which are tendencies and crystallizing forces that resist and oppose the colossal
power of the field of possibilities opened up by transformative forces, which
can expressed in terms of Badiou’s figure, the forces that place positioned
institutions outside of place, which form the backdrop of Deleuze’s image of
forces that correspond to the vanishing lines which traverse the intersecting space
of State and put it in disarray.
Translation: Rebecca Ellis
[1] Refer to Faundes: C. (2010). From
total to unrestricted war. Thesis, Santiago de Chile: Academia Nacional de Estudios Políticos y
Estratégicos. The concept of unrestricted
war (超限战, literally "war fulfilling all limits "). Refer
to Liang and Xiangsui: New concepts of Weapons; 1999. Also see Creveld; M.(2004): The Transformation of War, New York; Free Press.
2
Alain Badiou: Theory of the Subject,
p. 7.
[2] Refer to Badiou: Theroy of the Subject. Continuum 2009. New
York. Also see Being and Event. Continuum
2006, and Logics of Worlds, Continuum 2009, London, New York, by the same
author.
[3] Karl Marx: A Contribution to the
Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Proofed and corrected by Andy Blunden,
February 2005, and corrected by Matthew Carmody in 2009: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm,
24 September 2011.
[4] Mao Zedong: On Contradiction. August, 1937.
[5] Ibídem: Pág. 333.
[6] Lenin: On the question of dialectics.
[7] Mao Zedong: On Contradiction. August 1937.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[14] Alain Badiou: Theory of the Subject. Translator’s Introduction: p. xxxi.
[15] Ibid: p. 46.
[16] Stern R. Routledge
Philosophy Guidebook to Hegel and the Phenomenology of Spirit [e-book].
Taylor & Francis Routledge; 2002. Available from: eBook Collection
(EBSCOhost), Ipswich, MA. Accessed October 10, 2011.
