Chaos Marxism stands for separation of church and state; and of the personal and the political. Not in the sense that they have nothing to do with one another - on the contrary, there's a strong dialectical interrelationship between the social microcosm and the social macrocosm, because that's what we're talking about on this blog. But don't confuse the levels.
Frank Zappa said "You can't run a country by a book of religion". Well, it might be objected that the early Islamic ummah did reasonably well for a few centuries, but that wasn't being run entirely on the basis of the Noble Qu'ran, but on the personal authority and example of the Prophet, peace be upon him and all that. That gave the system an essential flexibility and humanity that is lacking from all dogmatic structures - and from arbitrary personality cults, at the other extreme. There are good forms of religious-inspired political activism which realise this, and bad forms that just want to show a particular legalistic interpretation of the Bible or the Qu'ran or the Collected Works of V. I. Lenin or Quotations from Chairman Mao down your throat. That crap will last a few decades and collapse, at best. (Unless, sadly, it's sitting on a buttload of natural resources. We need to understand exactly what the House of Saud have been up to for the last few decades - simultaneously schmoozing with the worst scumbags among Western capitalists, and spreading an interpretation of Islam which is pretty much all sword and no heart on a global scale.)
At the other end of the scale of trying to use your personal religious beliefs or identity as a means for social organisation or activism, of course, lies the trap of using your political activism as a substitute religion or identity. This is of course what we've been cursing out on this blog for ages - the essential solipsism of sitting at home polishing your soul while the world falls down outside, while engaging in "play-politics" to make yourself feel better. One way lies heartlessness - the other, uselessness. Marx and Lenin never gave any indications for how you should live your life, nor should they have. Find one that works for you and is consistent with the principles of the new world they wanted to build.
The poet Rumi said: "Faith is one whereever you go, but beliefs are many", or words to that effect. So, a social movement which might have a chance of actually building a new world has to be completely firm on certain basic principles of action/communal effort, but completely tolerant on exactly how those principles might be expressed. The middle road - the best combination of the rational and irrational, personal mildness and firm principle, ends and means - is what any healthy and progressive social system needs. If you ask me, modern capitalism has gone all the damn way towards the irrational, which is why it breeds dogmatic cults such as fundamentalist Islam and Christianity as a counterbalance.
This is the principle of the united front applied to macrocosmic social organisation as well as to how we get on with our neighbours and friends. In Islamic terms, it is the fusion of the "greater jihad" of personal ethics and the "lesser jihad" of striving for social justice. From the Thelemic standpoint, we might distinguish the "lesser magick" of fighting back against the memetic bombardment of the current industrial deathculture and creating symbols and egregores that will serve us, and the "greater magick" of becoming the kind of people who will be fit of living in a new and better Aeon. The Prophet Muhammad and V. I. Lenin both got the job done because they knew how to make this combination, which is why they changed the world, each in their own way.
Showing posts with label identity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label identity. Show all posts
2009-03-26
The next step
"The capitalist economy presents itself as a vast accumulation of commodities" - Karl Marx
"Life under capitalism presents itself as a vast accumulation of spectacles" - Guy Debord
"The memetic environment under consumer capitalism presents itself as a vast accumulation of identities" - Doloras LaPicho
Identity-as-commodity is, Chaos Marxism insists, fundamental to explaining the ideological effect of capitalism. Social identities have always been based on participation in a social network. The novelty of late, Fordist/post-Fordist capitalism is that in every other era, identity-networks were based on one's place in relations of physical or memetic production. In the modern era, they are based on consumption. Which is why they proliferate, because they expand along with the dizzying consumer choice offered by the debt-driven monopolistic competition model. There are of course "mass market" identities sold to virtually everyone as race, nation, religion, favourite sports team, and if you're an American, "liberal" or "conservative". And then there are the niche market identities, which most readers of this blog will buy into. The important point is that adopting an identity based on consumption means that - unlike the proletariat of the 19th century - you do have something to lose apart from your chains if capitalism comes to an end, that very thing which (we argue) is fundamental to existence as a human being.
Just a brief note that what seems most ludicrous about the popular culture of the late '80s - late '90s (i.e. the high water mark of consumer capitalism) is the whole "neo-tribal" bullshit. It was the era in which wearing a subcultural uniform really took off - the more outlandish the uniform and the more "unconventional" its choices of entertainment commodities, the better. That is the dark future of total fragmentation predicted by Ken MacLeod in The Star Fraction. To some degree, the collapse of this economy (begun with the dot.com crash, accelerated by the War On Terror in which once again a position for or against the Powers That Be became important, and perhaps finally ending with Depression 2.0) is the collapse of the idea that fulfilment consists of finding the right clique to hang with. Now can someone tell this to the Marxist and anarchist sects? Or the Paultards, for that matter.
An even briefer note that no-one had better be thinking that stripping someone of their identity forcefully, or even challenging it directly, is a good idea. If it doesn't work, you've made an enemy for life, and if it does, they will be rendered useless. Of course, if you run a mind-control cult, the second is precisely what you are hoping for so you can reprogramme them according to your whim. You have to get the goose out of the bottle without breaking the glass - that's Trotsky's transitional method. Proposed political action has to be consistent with currently existing mass identity, while following a logic which leads out of them.
Special note: we have abolished pre-approval for comments, although we reserve the right to delete anything we consider retarded, or not retarded enough.
"Life under capitalism presents itself as a vast accumulation of spectacles" - Guy Debord
"The memetic environment under consumer capitalism presents itself as a vast accumulation of identities" - Doloras LaPicho
Identity-as-commodity is, Chaos Marxism insists, fundamental to explaining the ideological effect of capitalism. Social identities have always been based on participation in a social network. The novelty of late, Fordist/post-Fordist capitalism is that in every other era, identity-networks were based on one's place in relations of physical or memetic production. In the modern era, they are based on consumption. Which is why they proliferate, because they expand along with the dizzying consumer choice offered by the debt-driven monopolistic competition model. There are of course "mass market" identities sold to virtually everyone as race, nation, religion, favourite sports team, and if you're an American, "liberal" or "conservative". And then there are the niche market identities, which most readers of this blog will buy into. The important point is that adopting an identity based on consumption means that - unlike the proletariat of the 19th century - you do have something to lose apart from your chains if capitalism comes to an end, that very thing which (we argue) is fundamental to existence as a human being.
Just a brief note that what seems most ludicrous about the popular culture of the late '80s - late '90s (i.e. the high water mark of consumer capitalism) is the whole "neo-tribal" bullshit. It was the era in which wearing a subcultural uniform really took off - the more outlandish the uniform and the more "unconventional" its choices of entertainment commodities, the better. That is the dark future of total fragmentation predicted by Ken MacLeod in The Star Fraction. To some degree, the collapse of this economy (begun with the dot.com crash, accelerated by the War On Terror in which once again a position for or against the Powers That Be became important, and perhaps finally ending with Depression 2.0) is the collapse of the idea that fulfilment consists of finding the right clique to hang with. Now can someone tell this to the Marxist and anarchist sects? Or the Paultards, for that matter.
An even briefer note that no-one had better be thinking that stripping someone of their identity forcefully, or even challenging it directly, is a good idea. If it doesn't work, you've made an enemy for life, and if it does, they will be rendered useless. Of course, if you run a mind-control cult, the second is precisely what you are hoping for so you can reprogramme them according to your whim. You have to get the goose out of the bottle without breaking the glass - that's Trotsky's transitional method. Proposed political action has to be consistent with currently existing mass identity, while following a logic which leads out of them.
Special note: we have abolished pre-approval for comments, although we reserve the right to delete anything we consider retarded, or not retarded enough.
2009-03-24
More on identity
As an introduction: if you're not watching Joss Whedon's Dollhouse yet, you should be. It will make a lot of the following post a lot clearer.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs is missing a bottom rung. Because humankind is a social animal (in particular a troop animal, like the other great apes), self-actualisation, esteem, love, safety and even physiological integrity are based on fitting into a social order in some way - in other words, having a social identity. If you're an ape living up a tree, then if you don't have a place in a troop of other apes for mutual self-defence and food gathering, you will starve to death or get eaten by a lion. And with our big sexy walking-upright brains, our place in our "troops" is based on identities constructed through social discourse.
The need for a social identity is therefore absolutely fundamental to human nature - which is why some people would prefer to destroy themselves physically than have to give up their social identity. If people are prepared to kill themselves if they lose their partner or their job or even some kind of social status, you have to re-examine exactly what is important in human nature. This is why, especially in the states, they've started handing out cellphones to homeless people - having a number where you can be contacted is more important to being "part of the social order" than having a house to live in or a job to go to, and is in fact a prerequisite to either of the above.
Slotting back into a Marxist approach to political economy, a given politico-economic structure will interpellate (that term (c) a notorious French wife-killer) the identities it needs. The reason why pre-WW2 Marxism is increasingly inadequate is that, while "working class" as a socio-economic category still clearly exists, as a social identity it's been more or less wiped out. The mass consumption economy needs mass consumers - people whose identity is based on what they consume rather than what they do. "What they do" to get the $$$ to consume with is a dirty little secret that is actually consciously repressed.
The Media Priests as I call them (the middle-class intelligensia in charge of memetic engineering) are of course perfectly placed for this, since they produce nothing but memes and consumption is their main function in the real economy. Therefore, they create a memetic environment where consumption is the basis of all social identity. We are in an era where people will riot over shortages of their preferred brand, even if perfectly equivalent alternatives are freely available, because mess with their brand, you mess with their identity.
The existing left is useless because it itself is trapped in niche-market or subcultural ways of thinking. Changing the world is increasingly a platonic goal at best - the real goal is perpetuation of "the scene" and of one's own preferred monkey troop within that scene. Apart from the serious ground-level business of helping build workers' resistance to attacks on capital, for real radicals of the new millenium, our overriding strategy must be: DESTROY ALL IDENTITIES. Actually existing personal and social identities do nothing but ensure that you will stay in your box forever. And that includes the identity of "revolutionary" or "magus" or whatever.
I don't think we're in the business of trying to build new identities, because (a) that's just another trap, (b) that ends up in a kind of "social psychology / mind-control cult" trap, where people get to play "more enlightened than thou". We have to smash the doors on our own cages open, while helping others smash their own locks. Only a self-sustaining chain reaction and collective action can actually achieve any social-wide change.
Cognitive behavioural therapy states that exorcising demons, smashing mind-forg'd manacles, whatever you call it, is best done by challenging those bad things' right to exist, and by practical experience doing something different. That should be the goal of all political activity -
1. challenge the dominant paradigm with memetic flair backed up with logic;
2. encourage practical activity (which can actually be done by the vast majority in their lunchbreaks and weekends) which proves that it's only real if you believe in it.
Here's some examples of memes that need to be destroyed with great urgency if we want the planet to continue to support an advanced technological society:
- I am what I consume.
- Money is real.
- People different from me in race, gender, nationality or sexuality are my enemy.
- What I do is of no value and the boss pays me out of the kindness of their heart.
- The individual is the only reality - collectives are powerless and useless.
- The current social order is fixed and natural and can't be changed.
A word of warning: some very, very dodgy things come up when the repressed return. That's what a revolution is all about. A terrible danger is "radicals" still stuck in a middle-class-intellectual identity freaking out when the awakening masses come up with memes they don't like the look of, and decide that they'd prefer living under oppression to the rule of the uncouth, un-PC mob - as if enactment of a particular programme was the determining factor. Eg - mass strike breaks out in the UK, some leftists freak out because the workers are raising the wrong slogans (i.e. different from those that the wannabe memetic engineers in the leftist groups worked out in advance.)
But human liberation is the only determining factor, our only real goal. Programme is only a means to an end in that regard. We must be fanning all oppositional, anti-consumption, pro-production-for-use activity, while combatting any attempt to build up new identities, especially those around creating new niche identities, or more particularly in beating the crap out of people with a different identity.
A couple of other words of warning:
- A good way to make sure nothing ever changes is to require perfection. In the political sphere, this translates to "I don't get out of bed for anything less than full-blown revolution in the streets". If we set achievable goals for shifting society's memes one tiny step away from "money is real" and towards "production for people and planet, not profit", then we can be happy. Note that this is not the same thing as "recruit one more member to my ridiculous little fan club" - in fact, quite the opposite. We need to be spreading ideas wide, not creating a cult.
- A new sustainable world will of course create its own web of identities which will of course need to be overthrown in their turn, but let's burn that bridge when we come to it. Suffice to say that if your identity is based around changing the world, then when the world is changed you will suddenly be out of a job and might want to kill yourself, so you might even end up subconsciously preventing yourself from success.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs is missing a bottom rung. Because humankind is a social animal (in particular a troop animal, like the other great apes), self-actualisation, esteem, love, safety and even physiological integrity are based on fitting into a social order in some way - in other words, having a social identity. If you're an ape living up a tree, then if you don't have a place in a troop of other apes for mutual self-defence and food gathering, you will starve to death or get eaten by a lion. And with our big sexy walking-upright brains, our place in our "troops" is based on identities constructed through social discourse.
The need for a social identity is therefore absolutely fundamental to human nature - which is why some people would prefer to destroy themselves physically than have to give up their social identity. If people are prepared to kill themselves if they lose their partner or their job or even some kind of social status, you have to re-examine exactly what is important in human nature. This is why, especially in the states, they've started handing out cellphones to homeless people - having a number where you can be contacted is more important to being "part of the social order" than having a house to live in or a job to go to, and is in fact a prerequisite to either of the above.
Slotting back into a Marxist approach to political economy, a given politico-economic structure will interpellate (that term (c) a notorious French wife-killer) the identities it needs. The reason why pre-WW2 Marxism is increasingly inadequate is that, while "working class" as a socio-economic category still clearly exists, as a social identity it's been more or less wiped out. The mass consumption economy needs mass consumers - people whose identity is based on what they consume rather than what they do. "What they do" to get the $$$ to consume with is a dirty little secret that is actually consciously repressed.
The Media Priests as I call them (the middle-class intelligensia in charge of memetic engineering) are of course perfectly placed for this, since they produce nothing but memes and consumption is their main function in the real economy. Therefore, they create a memetic environment where consumption is the basis of all social identity. We are in an era where people will riot over shortages of their preferred brand, even if perfectly equivalent alternatives are freely available, because mess with their brand, you mess with their identity.
The existing left is useless because it itself is trapped in niche-market or subcultural ways of thinking. Changing the world is increasingly a platonic goal at best - the real goal is perpetuation of "the scene" and of one's own preferred monkey troop within that scene. Apart from the serious ground-level business of helping build workers' resistance to attacks on capital, for real radicals of the new millenium, our overriding strategy must be: DESTROY ALL IDENTITIES. Actually existing personal and social identities do nothing but ensure that you will stay in your box forever. And that includes the identity of "revolutionary" or "magus" or whatever.
I don't think we're in the business of trying to build new identities, because (a) that's just another trap, (b) that ends up in a kind of "social psychology / mind-control cult" trap, where people get to play "more enlightened than thou". We have to smash the doors on our own cages open, while helping others smash their own locks. Only a self-sustaining chain reaction and collective action can actually achieve any social-wide change.
Cognitive behavioural therapy states that exorcising demons, smashing mind-forg'd manacles, whatever you call it, is best done by challenging those bad things' right to exist, and by practical experience doing something different. That should be the goal of all political activity -
1. challenge the dominant paradigm with memetic flair backed up with logic;
2. encourage practical activity (which can actually be done by the vast majority in their lunchbreaks and weekends) which proves that it's only real if you believe in it.
Here's some examples of memes that need to be destroyed with great urgency if we want the planet to continue to support an advanced technological society:
- I am what I consume.
- Money is real.
- People different from me in race, gender, nationality or sexuality are my enemy.
- What I do is of no value and the boss pays me out of the kindness of their heart.
- The individual is the only reality - collectives are powerless and useless.
- The current social order is fixed and natural and can't be changed.
A word of warning: some very, very dodgy things come up when the repressed return. That's what a revolution is all about. A terrible danger is "radicals" still stuck in a middle-class-intellectual identity freaking out when the awakening masses come up with memes they don't like the look of, and decide that they'd prefer living under oppression to the rule of the uncouth, un-PC mob - as if enactment of a particular programme was the determining factor. Eg - mass strike breaks out in the UK, some leftists freak out because the workers are raising the wrong slogans (i.e. different from those that the wannabe memetic engineers in the leftist groups worked out in advance.)
But human liberation is the only determining factor, our only real goal. Programme is only a means to an end in that regard. We must be fanning all oppositional, anti-consumption, pro-production-for-use activity, while combatting any attempt to build up new identities, especially those around creating new niche identities, or more particularly in beating the crap out of people with a different identity.
A couple of other words of warning:
- A good way to make sure nothing ever changes is to require perfection. In the political sphere, this translates to "I don't get out of bed for anything less than full-blown revolution in the streets". If we set achievable goals for shifting society's memes one tiny step away from "money is real" and towards "production for people and planet, not profit", then we can be happy. Note that this is not the same thing as "recruit one more member to my ridiculous little fan club" - in fact, quite the opposite. We need to be spreading ideas wide, not creating a cult.
- A new sustainable world will of course create its own web of identities which will of course need to be overthrown in their turn, but let's burn that bridge when we come to it. Suffice to say that if your identity is based around changing the world, then when the world is changed you will suddenly be out of a job and might want to kill yourself, so you might even end up subconsciously preventing yourself from success.
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