FOURTEEN YEARS OF CHAOS MARXISM: a personal resumé and manifesto

So who am I, and why have I spent 14 years on-and-off on this poorly read blog? The first thing to assure you is: I write pseudonymously (though pretty transparently) because these are very provisional ideas which are considered "oddball at best" in polite society. You can find out my "street name" with some basic internet detective skills, and if you're not a dick I'll say hi to you.

I am a materialist and a Marxist. I do not believe in the supernatural at this point in my life, but I have no reason to argue with the beliefs of those who do as long as they do not stray into science-denial. I heartily endorse Stephen Jay Gould's concept of "non-overlapping magisteria" in that regard. I believe that the "superstructure" of human culture - culture, psychology and even religion - is based upon material reality and the physical and social processes through which humans survive and reproduce, and how this shapes their relation to each other and their environment. (By "materialist" I of course mean "ecological" - humanity as an animal amongst other animals living on Planet Earth is the necessary starting point.)

At the same time I am a mystic. It is clear from my own experience and my studies that the Numinous or the Absolute - that which cannot be explained in language and which does not appear to obey the laws of material reality - is a deeply important (subjective) reality in human culture, psychology and religion. I think it most likely that this numinous experience has a material basis, but that - until science has advanced further in understanding it - the tools given to us by human culture for understanding and appreciating this are found in various traditions and languages of religion, magic, poetry and art, and in modern materialist psychology to some degree.

I have spent my life trying to integrate these two equally real and true aspects of my life experience, in order to try to "find a way out of the trap" in which class society and in particular capitalism has trapped the world. The materialist and mystical paths are both true, complementary, but non-overlapping for me. A "vulgar materialist" form of Marxism can simply not engage humanity at the very real and important level of spirituality/meaning-making, as is necessary to form a collective subject for social action - except by transforming itself into a religious substitute and therefore denuding itself of the possibility of changing reality (as in Stalinist personality cults). Conversely, religion and magic are not necessarily liberatory - both can lead to reactionary as well as revolutionary conclusions. The belief system which inspired Malcolm X also inspired the Ayatollah Khomenei.

The basic principles of my praxis are as follows:

1. Capitalism can only be overthrown by organised action of the working classes and oppressed peoples of the world, acting in solidarity and mutual aid. The working class can and will become the ruling class only when it becomes fully unified, which means perfecting solidarity, mutual aid, and unity-within-diversity within itself.
2. Capitalism (like all class society) fulfils human needs for spirituality, art, and meaning (as well as more biological needs) in ways which enforce its own hierarchies and promote acquiescence to them. A (materialist) study of psychology, culture, religion and art is necessary to understand the very human need for spirituality, art, and other encounters with the Numinous, and to find ways in which people can encounter these aspects of life in a way that promotes solidarity and mutual aid.
3. This also applies to psychology. Capitalism elevates the individual ego, its avoidance of pain and drive towards pleasure, as the basis of participation in society; thus, it actively undermines social solidarity, the only social force which can replace it. These latter arise not from intellectual assent to the propositions of socialism, but of (cultural and economic) practices of ethical behaviour and mutual aid within communities.
   
4. The ego must be transcended or no social solidarity of the strength which can overthrow capitalism can be achieved; we probably won't even get far as creating a non-toxic socialist "scene". Various cultural traditions have been passed down to us which offer technologies for superseding the ego, which include:
   
   1. committing to a code of humane ethics, including the ability to self-sacrifice in the cause of solidarity;
   2. opening consciousness to "inspiration from outside", but at the same time strengthening the personality so that such "outside experiences" can be experienced safely, without damaging the psyche or its ability to function in the real world;
   3. integrating such experiences positively into art, intellectual endeavour, or relationships with other living beings.
   The goal is to make all these compatible with not only basic humane ethics, but the ethics of building a revolutionary movement of solidarity; which means also disentangling them from the necessity of ascribing a supernatural aspect to them.
   

The goal of Chaos Marxism, therefore, is reiterated as: a commitment to "complete the personality" through the taming of the individual ego, with the aid of not only humanistic psychology but of techniques which allow "magickal/mystical" experience to be experienced safely, and for its insights to be "brought back" to enrich the "real world" and the movement to change it.

Ancient traditions such as shamanism, Taoism, Buddhism, Sufism and Jewish and Christian mysticism, as well as more modern traditions such as Crowley's "magick" or Gurdjieff's "Work": all these aim to "complete" the human being, or at least make it something more than the accidents of heredity and environment have programmed it for. An encounter with "the other world" means enabling the introduction of novelty, or a random factor, which would have been unavailable to the workaday ego. (It is said that the best proof that Crowley's Liber AL really was channelled from outside his own ego is that, unlike everything else he wrote, it's not disfigured with misogyny.) Conversely, we find it very interesting to analyse the history of the Marxist and/or Leninist movements in the same terms as religious movements such as Islam; we do not believe Marxism should be a religion, or a substitute for it, but it is crucial for us to understand how it has been experienced so, so we don't fall into the same trap.

I have studied various forms of religion, magic and mysticism in my life. 10 years ago I was initiated as a dervish of the Ni'matullahi Sufi Order as my own commitment to try to get over my own ego, to practice the ethics worthy of someone who wants to live in a socialist future, and to strengthen my own personality, Will and ability to make commitments at the same time as opening oneself up to the "outside".

A few thinkers whom I have based these writings on, in vague chronological order: Starhawk; Robert Anton Wilson; Robert Fripp (from J. G. Bennett and G. I. Gurdjieff); exponents of anti-Stalinist Marxism such as L. Trotsky and T. Cliff; Sufi masters such as Dr Javad Nurbakhsh and Kabir Helminski; and most recently Michael Muhammad Knight, who has linked Islam with questions of racial/gender justice and magic/"altered states" like no-one else I know of. I have also gotten immeasurable benefit from the teachings of the Church of the SubGenius, a satirical project which skillfully incorporates all the most dangerous aspects of mind-control cultism and fundamentalist religion, thus (hopefully) inoculating its practitioners from falling for such things in real life. Every time some petty cult leader had me half-convinced of something ridiculous which required me to smash my brain flat, I realised "... that sounds like something 'Bob' would say!" and the feeling dissolved. J. R. "Bob" Dobbs is thus still one of my household gods, as it were. I'm clearly not a good Muslim on any level, but I don't have to be.

Questions? Comments?