Re: AUT: Re: D&G, Leninism, vanguardism

["Chris Hurl" <munkah@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

alright, so all this talk about vanguardism has pushed me to write a paper
in order to get my thoughts straight.  it is currently too abstract for my
liking, but hey, you gotta start somewhere.  I have included a beginning
(below) to cope with Lenin.  any feedback is appreciated.

--chris

--------------------------------------------
In asking, 'What is to be done?', Lenin seeks to reconceptualize the notion
of revolutionary agency.   The question presumes that a response can be
formulated, a practical analysis that can subsequently be implemented in
action.  The response entails an attempt to situate the activities of a
specific group or individual within a larger context.

	Such a response is necessarily crosscut by a series of problems.  How is
the analysis constituted as a reflection of a particular state of affairs?
What ties the analysis to any sort of action?  Moving from analysis to
implementation presumes the constitution of some sort of agency that is
capable of enacting such conclusions.  The unity of this agency cannot be
presumed.  On the contrary, the presence of a whole multitude of divergent
and often conflicting relationships must be anticipated and somehow 'dealt'
with.

	Of course, Lenin's 1902 response to this question is well known.
Recognizing the increasing incorporation and containment of social struggles
through institutionalization under political parties and trade unions, he
seeks to constitute a coherent revolutionary force.  Critical of the narrow
focus on agitation in the factories, Lenin argues, revolutionary agency
cannot arise spontaneously out of any particular struggle.  On the contrary,
a revolutionary program must be actively constructed that somehow moves
beyond the narrow confines of a particular situation.

	Critical of acquiescence towards a plurality of theoretical viewpoints,
Lenin rejects the selective use and revision of theory by his fellow Social
Democrats1.  In attempting to build a basis for unity, many Social Democrats
advocated a "freedom of criticism" which would enable the coexistence of
divergent ideas.  Lenin argues that the piecemeal application of theory,
contingent on the specific situation at hand invariably leads towards the
privileging of short term goals without any connection to a broader
revolutionary perspective.  It leads towards opportunism.  Lenin responds by
arguing, "Without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary
movement" (Lenin, 1902).  A unitary revolutionary program is necessary in
order to build a coherent and long term basis for action.

	Lenin is also critical of those who focus on the factory struggle in and of
itself.  Revolutionary syndicalists at the time recognized the industrial
worker as the privileged agent of social change and concentrated their
energies on catalyzing widespread struggles in the factories.  This struck
Lenin as hopelessly narrow.  In the context of Tsarist Russia, where the
industrial working class only made up a small part of the population, which
was in the midst of a losing war with Japan, which was clamping down on free
expression and association, the factory struggle appeared as one amongst
many issues that needed to be addressed.  From Lenin's perspective,
revolutionary syndicalists largely neglected to make important connections
with struggles beyond the workplace.  These struggles consequently appeared
as separate issues, existing independently of the factory.  There was no
necessary connection between the day-to-day struggles and a revolutionary
standpoint that encompasses the totality of struggles across society.  For
Lenin, the worker's standpoint is alone insufficient, remaining on the level
of 'trade union consciousness', restricted to day-to-day interactions with
the employer2.  Lenin argues that the consciousness of these broader social
struggles can only be brought to the worker 'from without'.

	In acknowledging the contingency of social struggles, requiring
revolutionary analysis and organization 'from without',  Lenin implicitly
rejects economic determinism, the idea that the economy serves as a motor
driving towards the inevitable revolution3.  In the context of Tsarist
Russia, there can be no necessary connection between the "revolution" and
the the immediate day-to-day struggles of workers.  On the contrary, the
revolution demands a third party.  "Without revolutionary theory, there can
be no revolutionary movement".  This third party is capable of moving beyond
the 'particularity' of the workplace struggle, incorporating these struggles
under a "broader" revolutionary assemblage.  Hence, this 'outside'
standpoint is accomplished through the constitution of an 'inside'.  The
vanguard party internalizes the "revolution".  The "revolution" only becomes
possible through the enclosure of particular struggles within the
"revolutionary" party.

	The constitution of a third party, a "vanguard" party entails a double
movement of incorporation and subordination.  The vanguard speaks as a body.
  This body is constituted through the incorporation of things, words, and
actions.  The vanguard party has members.  It has a program.  It has a set
of principles for making decisions.  But how are its decisions binding?  How
is its authority constituted?  The vanguard party refuses to be recognized
as just another group.  The vanguard party is the revolutionary actor.  This
cannot be accomplished by simply bringing together particular struggles.
The vanguard party must anticipate and somehow envelop all future struggles
as well.  It must constitute itself as universal.  It becomes universal
through abstraction, through its split from its own particular
circumstances.  By claiming ownership over the "revolution", it ceases to be
an event, but rather becomes the product of signification.  Universality is
accomplished through the act of enunciation.


>From: Lowe Laclau <lowe.laclau@xxxxxxxxx>
>Reply-To: aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>To: aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: Re: AUT: Re: D&G, Leninism, vanguardism
>Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2004 16:24:53 +0100
>
>Chris, "Peeps" and Others,
>
>
>On Sat, 20 Nov 2004 17:30:27 -0800, Chris Hurl <munkah@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > hey peeps,
> >
> > alright, to make this conversation a little more concrete, I thought I'd
>go
> > back to our conversations of Leninism and vanguardism and how these
>relate
> > to 'Statist thinking'.
> >
> > Now, Lowe, you refer to State power in the production of signs, the
> > production of an interior in which an enclosed semiotics can function.
>In
> > Mille Plateau in the "Postulates on Linguistics" chapter, D&G discuss
>Lenin
> > and the vanguard party.  They argue,
> >
> > "Lenin invented or decreed [an] incorporeal transformation that
>extracted
> > from the proletarian class a vanguard as an assemblage of enunciation
>and
> > was attributed to the "Party," a new type of party as a distinct body,
>at
> > the risk of falling into a properly bureaucratic system of redundancy"
>(83).
> >
> > Now, D&G talk about the two heads of the State.  One head is juridical,
> > forming contracts between groups.  The other head is despotic,
>functioning
> > through capture, tying together knots and bonds.  As I understand it,
>this
> > largely functions through the production of signs, through the
>production of
> > the despotic Signifier.
> >
> > Now, isn't Lenin's vanguardism despotic insofar as it depends on the
> > production of an interior, a Sate semiotics based on that all-powerful
> > Signifier, the vanguard "Party"?  As an example, D&G use Lenin's
>declaration
> > that the slogan "All Power to the Soviets" would only be valid from Feb.
>27
> > - July 4.  Through the "extraction" of an 'assemblage of enunciation',
>Lenin
> > is able to make such declarations.  The constitution of this body is
>based
> > on the extraction "from the masses a proletarian class as an assemblage
>of
> > enunciation before the conditions were present for the proletariat as a
> > body" (83).  The vanguard party was a necessarily partial attempt to
>extract
> > something that didn't actually 'exist' as of yet.  It was a 'shortcut'
> > attempting to construct the power of the proletariat through an act of
> > enunciation.
>
>Right. Signs both calls worlds into existence (via language's command)
>and (also via language's command) also bind brains within particular
>kinds of semiotic chains. Yet the nature & quality of the signifier
>(determined in its use) is never truly set in stone. At a certain
>level if a vanguard exists, those being led have to have accepted and
>agreed with its existence (semiotically). But this in and of itself is
>a complex phenomena... insofar as any semiotic engendering of a
>subject (to a vanguard or whatever) is always plural and "polyphonic"
>(to use one of Guattari's uses of Bakhtin's term). Thus one aspect
>that allows one to be held under the sway of a particular
>semiotization could be the very thing to later lead a person to reject
>it. Race very often acts like this. Being semiotized into particular
>socio-cultural strata that often times undergo violent shifts in
>hierarchy (in importance for a particular subject). I'm now thinking
>of a particular event in the news... but one of Guattari's favorite
>examples is that of the stock market and the intimate coexistence of
>economic semiotization and psychological factors (kinda like what
>Marazzi writes about in his paper on Pan and panic in economic
>crises). .
>
>
> > This is a good example of how Statist 'processes' insinuate themselves
> > within social movements.  It seems like these processes of insinuation
>are
> > always at work.  Groups are always attempting to constitute an
>'assemblage
> > of enunciation'  that is capable of bringing struggle under the despotic
> > power of their own "Signifiers".
>
>One of the areas that D&G appreciated in the work of Foucault was his
>own deconstructing of the dispositifs of the state and to displace the
>classic definition of the State with that of governmemnt. D&G of
>course go a bit farther with this, but the problematic is still in
>essense the same. That of understanding diagramatization and multiple
>levels of assemblages and "agencement". There is never simply The
>State... but at every instance, there is this micro-political strata
>that exists not at a distance, but immediately... in our own
>relationship with economy, with institution, with the Signifier etc.
>
>So the State then implies a very particular way of organizing "life"
>in general that need not presuppose the existence of whatever formal
>institutions and whatever formal recognition granted by other "real"
>States. Perhaps one can consider Palestine already something of a
>"nascent" State. But in this ontological decentralization one can see
>that this idea of Palestine need not be so. Another thing I was
>thinking about was a comment I read by Howard Zinn about Nader (this
>was a month or so ago) about how Zinn greatly admired Nader's work and
>what he's doing to give credence and recognition to the idea of
>thinking beyond the US's two party dictatorship (my words). But, he
>said that Nader should not have fallen under the sway of electoral
>politics, to the "glamor" of "State" power (I'm paraphrasing). His
>thing, his influence and where he's most useful is not working with
>the State but in what he called "movement politics". I liked his
>comment because it elicits a formal distinction between types of
>political action and the huge difference in telos between the two.
>
>But I'm actually not being precise about the way D&G theorize formal
>distinction in political telos(es)... (teloi? sp? I don't want to use
>"ends" here because I'm thinking more along the lines of N's
>definition of the materialist telos and D's kairos... but you get my
>point). There isn't just a opposition of two "types". The "types" are
>always multiplicitous... but a "two" is useful simply to get ones'
>thinking beyond the identity "politics = State".
>
>And also the very idea of the Signifier as they define it is very
>complex as well... it does not simply define the bounds of the
>"truths" being held to (the content *and* the form of them), but it
>creates voids whereby all "things" are judged, divided up, shipped off
>such that there is only "one" ethicoaesthetic-politics viable, only
>one type of valorization viable. The vanguard, the party, the
>institution, insofar as they "control" signification, define the
>viable for those vying... living. Thus one should never take "meaning"
>lightly. The people running things... the insitutions, religions,
>governments etc certainly don't.
>
>Speaking of religion I just read a recent comment by El Papa Juan
>Pablo talking about a "need" to ecumenicize the different Christian
>sects. Reason: growing immorality, women and homosexuals ruining good
>ol' fundamental Christian values. Underlying reasons (perhaps):
>increasing disenfranchisement within the Catholic faith... increasing
>bad PR all over the world about these damned people molesting little
>children... increasing popularity of Islam... merging and pooling
>resources might be the only way for Christianity to save itself in a
>capitalist world that in and of itself could care less about its
>"values"... I don't know... I'm just making conjecture.
>
>Lowe
>
> > --chris
>
>
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