The metaphysical dialectic

I'm too stressed and my brain is too close to a homogenous mush to work this out much further, but I want to extend the point I made in a post below that a dialectic approach to the thought/object, subjective/objective, spirit/matter, machine/soul dichotomy is the only alternative to either mechanical materialism (which lets stupid idealism in through the back door via voluntarism or "positive thinking" bullshit), or stupid idealism (which lets mechanical materialism in through the back door with the idea of cause -> effect between thought and action, eg. the Catholic Church attempting to draw up a scientific analysis of miracles).

And that addition is the question of quality turning into quantity. The way you can tell that Stalinism is a form of capitalism as opposed to a form of socialism is its belief in pursuing quantity above all else, in the blind assurance that this is automatically the same thing as quality. Whether this is measured in $$$ of profit or millions of surplus tons of pig-iron or kitty litter, no-one actually thinks of acting like Marx suggested and seeing what the use value to actual human beings is of all this piled up "stuff", and what its non-quantifiable costs are. A sure sign that a "revolutionary" group has succumbed to capitalist/state capitalist logic is that it measures its success using quantitative tools - X papers sold, Y people at this demo or that meeting, Z extra members. A real revolutionary group would measure itself by its use-value - i.e. what it actually makes happen.

Robert Fripp, who is one of those "intelligent idealists" whom Lenin liked better than the stupid materialists and so do I, talks about "quality" as if it came from a Higher Realm and intersected with quantity. That's at least a bit closer to a materialist dialectic and is a sign of taking the question seriously.

A blessing

"May we wish for each other what we wish most deeply for ourselves." - Robert Fripp. Thus:

May every friend and reader of Chaos Marxism be recognized for who they are and what they can do, and may they be given work which embodies that recognition.

In other words: may you all be delivered from alienation. Or rather, may we all deliver ourselves.

[UPDATED!: Great bonus Subgenius vs SubGenius fistfight in the comments.]

Reflections on "the juice"

Every "current", to use the Thelemite term - i.e. a sustainably self-replicating meme for action and living - is defined by what Robert Fripp calls "the juice", which is nothing other than life. This is to be distinguished from rules (although a current may have rules), in the sense that it is the spirit rather than the letter of the practice.

One way of telling if a current still has "the juice" is to see whether it generates Masters - that is, those who are not able to tell the letter from the spirit of the Law, but are perfectly capable of breaking the letter to preserve the spirit (thus causing the current to be reborn under a new name), and bear the terrible personal costs of doing so. So, an organisation or tradition where people simply reproduce and replicate the insights of a Master (orthodox Trotskyism or corporate Scientology) is dead, dead, dead, and only produces symptoms of brain-death and soul-death in its adherents.

A Master is able to renovate the tradition, and in some ways this may mean being able to abolish the Law in its current form. Robert Fripp closed down Guitar Craft; Brad Warner closed down Dogen Sangha International; but initates of both those orders continue to do the work, under new names. Compare this to the screams of "liquidationism!" hurled at those who suggests that revolutionaries may have other options to organise themselves than toy-town Bolshevism or Seattle-cool-person anarchism. Javad Nurbaksh renovated rather than closed down the Ni'matullahi Order, but he caused massive outrage when he declared that the Order was no longer Shi'ite, or Sunni for that matter.

But yeah, a real Current involves within it the possibility of not only producing a Master but of thereby giving birth to a new Current. The "juice" in Gurdjieff's tradition would be proved by the fact that J. G. Bennett learned from G, and then started his own branch of the work; just as Robert Fripp did for JGB; and how these guys have done for Fripp.

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Oh, and while I'm on it:

1. The structure of the ego can be described as a Bottom Line (self-description) and Rules of Behaviour which follow from and reinforce that Bottom Line.
2. The goal of the ego can be said to be avoiding an encounter with the painbody - i.e. the "shadow" part of the ego which is repudiated and repressed.
3. What the ego hates the very most is others who do things which are most strongly against its Rules of Behaviour, and therefore most strongly repressed into the painbody. This is trivially obvious, and even a joke when it comes to homophobia and other anti-sex Rules of Behaviour, but I don't think I realised its deeper applicability until now.

Sturm & Drang (or: back to psychology)

Chaos Marxism Aphorism #1 is: you are what you do. (I just found out the other day that this is also a lyric from a KMFDM song, cool beans.) And what you do is about 80-90% habit and conditioning, the power of which "it is difficult to exaggerate" (R. Fripp). It's just more efficient to run on automatic, even though you become half-ape and half-robot instead of a human being.

You can't change "what you are" - your wants, needs, desires, likes, dislikes, etc. - in any direct sense because you don't have the kind of objectivity necessary. "The only thing more powerful than the human mind is the human ego" (I. Stang). But your habits and conditioned reflexes are learned in the process of daily life - problems are usually solutions to previous problems (Hubbard) and if you kneel in the same place and recite the same prayers for long enough you will believe in God (Althusser).

And it is possible to do so consciously, as an act of will - you can change, first, your conscious choices of behaviour; and, secondly, learn to notice your habits and conditioned reflexes, at which point you can begin "reprogramming" them gradually, using magick or Cognitive Behavioural Therapy or psilocybin or Scientology or revolutionary political struggle, whatever's most convenient at the time. Of course, you can only do this through practice, which - when we translate this into politics - means that simply lecturing the workers about how they and the boss class has nothing in common will just get them pissed off at you. To do any good, your activism must have practical suggestions for the here and now which reinforce your goal-message.

Perhaps "you cannot walk the path without a Master" (Rumi) because the Master offers a necessary "stable datum amid confusion" (Hubbard) to act as a truly objective reference point. And to be a stable datum you must submit to that stable datum absolutely, no matter whether it's actually "good" in any objective sense. This is why "any act based on principle is a good one" (R. Fripp), and why some people have even got positive results from the teachings of Joseph Smith or Bhaghwan Shree Rajneesh. But eventually the goal would be to "find the Master (or the hero) inside yourself" - uncover the heart as an internal stable datum, not the endlessly fickle feline ego/nafs.

The Scientology goal of "clearing the reactive mind" - i.e. having no habits or conditioned reflexes - seems foolish. Imagine if you had to remember to breathe, as apparently some psychonauts have ended up doing to themselves. No, the more feasible goal is to be fully conscious of all your habits, and edit them in accordance with Love and Will.

Couple of fun readings for you: my old buddy Michael Lebowitz argues against John Holloway that you have to struggle against the Black Iron Prison, not just opt out of it, since only struggle makes it possible for you to learn to live outside a prison cell (see above); and our favourite junkie queer literary genius William S. Burroughs reminds us that, at one point in the past, cool people like himself and Leonard Cohen were attracted by L. Ron's research project.

(Note by those offended by the positive references to Scientology teachings and concepts: L. Ron Hubbard was a massive plagiarist and of course even a blind squirrel finds a few tasty nuts once in a while, and it's those "tasty nuts" that Independent Scientologists are interested in promoting, rather than that bat-shit crazy stuff about Xenu or the fascist antics of the existing "Church" run by pope-on-a-box David Miscavige.)

Why the emancipation of the workers has to be the act of the workers

If we are not free to say no, we are not free to say yes. Any authentic change, ie transformative and transforming change, comes from the inside; and moves outwards to direct and shape our behavior. If behavior is compulsory, if we are compelled by an external force or authority, there may well be “good” repercussions, but not transformations: it’s just more-of-the-same. 

Emphasis added, thank you Boppin' Bobby. A "good" government or leadership may open up possibilities for social revolution and the self-transformation of the masses, please note this cousin Hugo (and get well soon), but will never substitute for it. More of the same = "meet the new boss, same as the old boss"; revolution from above may improve things but will not open the door into the Better World.

Damn, am I becoming an anarchist (or at least a council communist / Left Communist) as I get older? Perhaps not because I do still see that participation in bourgeois electoral politics can be a useful first step towards self-liberation. But I am certainly not a Leninist, while still finding much of value in Lenin's work.

A nice syllogism

We help beyond any help ever available anywhere. We are a near ultimate in help.

- L. Ron Hubbard

Helpful people are a nuisance.

- Guitar Craft aphorism

The power of love is a curious thing

I have experience of fantasy & its power, on the inside & outside. A very small part of it is real, which gives the rest of the illusion/delusion its strength. The Orthodox might call this a strategy of The Great Deceiver, The Tempter, the Prince of Lies, and see fantasy being used as a device to hold us to this earth, and prevent us realising our destiny.

- Robert Fripp (source), emphasis added

Further to the discussion below: the religious might say that there ain't nothing that's completely foul and worthless through and through, because it wouldn't exist. All evil has a kernel of good, that's what gives it its power. And all cults have some real truth and goodness amidst all the bullshit and lies, else no-one would get involved in the first place. Fatso Hubbard was absolutely right that most people hold themselves down with subconscious commands, and Neo is absolutely right that most people live in a prison of their own imagination. But - physician, heal thyself. "Thou art that." The critic gives themselves away in their criticism - which might give you some insight into this Doloras, if you'll note that what she hates more than anything else is hypocrisy, people who say one thing and do another.

A couple of thoughts...

One by Llewellen Vaughan Lee:

What the wayfarer does not initially understand is that the real work on the path is not to have access to spiritual or mystical experiences: these are given through grace. The work is to create a container for them, so they can be alive in our daily life. Part of this container is to discriminate between a real inner experience and a spiritual illusion created by the ego. Without a container or discrimination the wayfarer easily becomes lost and wastes the energy and potential of her awakening.

To put it another way - the goal is not to get metaphysically high. That's far too easy. Certainly you can eat a few mushrooms, chant and breathe in unnatural ways or even hit your head against the wall and you'll see God, or something that is trying to look like God at least. The goal is to bring something useful back from that Other World into the Real World of Horrible Jobs. As Robert Fripp puts it, you can take the elevator up to the penthouse on special occasions, but you cannot afford to pay the rent to actually live there - except if you've been saving up for a long, long time.

Another important point from above is that you don't call the Spirits. The spirits call you. The best you can do is prepare yourself so you're at least at home and awake when the Ulterior World comes knocking. All the truly great spiritual masters have a truly astounding level of humility - coupled with a wicked sense of humour.

And an original thought: the rebirth of the polytheistic nature religions in the mid-to-late capitalist era has, I feel, far less to do with a reassertion of collective unconscious or the awakening of the Goddess, than the cultural fragmentation brought on by the consumer era. Monotheistic religion suggests a tightly organised Creation supervised by an ineffable but essentially benevolent God. Polytheistic religion suggests a confusing jumble of spiritual powers, spirits, loa etc. all feuding with one another - to tap into the world of Lawrence Miles for a moment, there's a War in Heaven and humans are going to get caught in the crossfire if they don't make powerful friends among the various Godfathers. Welcome to life in the era of mass media saturation.

But Marxism agrees with the mystical monotheisms in that it's all a unity behind the scenes. The various Brands which stalk our cultural landscape like alien gods are not real - when the Muslims say that shirk is the gravest sin, what they mean is by bowing down and giving your soul-energy to a cultural phantasm. Of course, you can create your own Brand, your own cult, your own small god, carve out a little niche in the World-As-Is where you can enjoy the illusion of your separate existence and your Special Snowflake status. But all power ultimately rests in the willingness or otherwise of the working class to allow their labour to be exploited. All those phantoms will disappear when we as a class discover the magic word. It's our destiny as a species.

ETA: speaking of Fripp, here's a good article.