Fabulous piece, thanks! This is very interesting to me, because I always read that section from Boris Groys, about, communism as the coexistence of contradictory opposites, to be a kind of rephrasing of Kojève’s characterization of posthistory. The same idea Vince was channeling in his piece on liberalism as the supremacy of language. So it’s interesting to me to take that also as an interpretation of Mao’s endless revolution, which initially seems to jettison the idea of a posthistory. In fact, there is a footnote somewhere in the Introduction where Kojève explicitly criticizes the idea of a permanent revolution, and I always wondered whether Kojève was referring at all to Mao’s idea here. The other alternative is that Kojève is just referring to the liberalism of endless discourse - but that raises the question what differentiates Mao’s idea here from liberalism?
Jonathan, this is such a good comment and question that, rather leaving the response here in the comments, I’m going give it the short post it deserves!
Dialectics (history) is happening before our own very eyes but it's not going anywhere dammit! It's a practico-inertia. (Dis)United in slavery, misery and lies. "Connubial bliss" as McLuhan put it. And the World as Phamtom and MATRIX according to Günther Anders.
“That is, man is capable paradoxically of producing a reality that denies him” (Social Construction of Reality Berger & Luckmann p.103)
"Denies him" can be likened to castration.
This text is rich there's much more things I'd like to comment on but I will limit my self:
"He makes the dialectical process infinite, and by doing so makes struggle, collision, revolution equally extended into the furthest points of duration. This has profound ramifications for every element that is touched by the Marxist analytic and political program: Mao has effectively removed any sense of true guarantees from history. Communism’s realization becomes highly contingent, and even where socialist revolution has succeeded, it will be characterized by the eternal persistence of struggle from both inside and outside itself."
This is beautiful. And I dare to show the possible solution.
"To talk about polymorphous perversity is to talk about the imagination. To reeroticize the body we must also reeroticize the head. To overcome genital organization is to overcome body-soul dualism is to overcome the tyrannical domination of one part of the body over the others, and finally, to overcome genital organization is to overcome egoism. Politics and genitality: the president and the prick: that we allow both to play leading roles is part of our theatrical self-repression and selfforgetfulness. Sex and politics: both the theatre of the poor said Talleyrand. Amidst riches we are poor, precisely because we have made fetishes of our commodities and emptied or ejaculated ourselves into them. Psychic and symbolic deprivation: "Workers of the world, unite! Throw off your chains," said Marx: but Freud said that would be hard to do because we are in love with our own chains."
--William C. Shepherd, SYMBOLICAL CONSCIOUSNESS: A COMMENTARY ON LOVE'S BODY (1976)
Waiting for the return of the gods
witnessing the return of barbarism
the new barbarians
Engels, on The Origin of the Family, Private Property
and the State:
the origin—the coming-into-being and the passingaway—
"Indeed, only barbarians are capable of rejuvenating
a world laboring under the death throes of unnerved
civilization."
Vico is right
Engels is right
—
Here is that synthesis that Gramsci sought:
Vico and Marxism reconciled
—
Mao is right
—
The Great Cultural Revolution was to detach
communism from civilization. The civilized
world looked on and could not believe its eyes.
Closing Time p. 62 - Norman Oliver Brown
For now the last bastion is the citadel of consciousness (McLuhan/Dobbs coinage/usage)
“No matter how many walls have fallen, the citadel of individual consciousness has not fallen, nor is it likely to fall.”
--Marshall McLuhan and George Thompson, COUNTERBLAST, 1969, p.135
Well; you have worked the miracle now; and although the Radio is still in full blast—“Keldtti-kax,
koax, koax!”—and the automobiles are hooting, and the machines are clattering, and the self-expressionists are chattering about sex, you are alone with the Inanimate; you are a conscious self once more, alone with the elements out of which all consciousness arose; you, a nucleus of Mind, are alone with primordial Matter.
-- John Cowper Powys -- Philosophy of SOLITUDE
While there is no class consciousness we retreat to ours
Fascinating. I’ve been meaning to read Allinson’s book and I think I’m going to get around to it this winter.
A (not so) brief comment: I think that much of this is very useful to make sense of Badiou’s thought. I’ve been thinking recently that his approach needs to be fully contextualized as the only real attempt to work through dialectics after Mao. The abolition of the negation of the negation and the infinitization of dialectical process is at the core of Theory of the Subject, for example.
What’s interesting is Badiou’s plain rejection of Mao’s “naturphilosophie”, his claim that division is fundamentally against nature and should rather be understood as an artificial and technical apparatus. The most telling version of this is in The Concept of Model, where he rejects the logical empiricist interpretation of model-theoretic semantics in favor of intra-mathematical asceticism; in other words, *techniques* of division are themselves divided according to their axiomatics, quanta, not to be thought “in-themselves”, are but tools for the production of the infinite (I think this idea is best expressed in “Infinitesimal Subversion”).
But you also have, at the same time, a basic affirmation of Mao’s confidence in the immediate reversal of fortunes. Technique is subordinated to the exception, and this leads to the explosive act of succession at the limit. This means that the infinite is an actual field which exceeds any finitary technique.
As for war it's going to space and once again it evokes McLuhan's "philosophy"
"The Global Village Theatre!” I had never seen that phrase before—not “Global Theatre”, but the “Global Village Theatre”. Interesting phrase… it’s like half way to the Global Theatre evoked by satellites. That’s the first quote to point out: what is the “Global Village”?"
Those drone sightings in East Coast, what you think it is? eh
"Arab civilians still have what free-world civilians have lost. The latter are now nothing more than human resources —a well-suited, cynical, but not very Kantian expression— Stalin still had the politeness to say "the most precious capital."
Consequently they are dealt with "en masse " and, obviously, not solely by their assassins. Mass man is treated everywhere and always as mass man. So there he is, held hostage to suffer for the sinister pranks of the strategists. When strategists goof, human resources go "poof". Popu is forever being shit upon. Every day the television heaps insults upon him"
I love the phrase "non-resolving dance of contradiction." From a simply stylistic standpoint, I think it gets to the core of this anti-teleological Marxism you're describing so beautifully. I'm imagining each successive societal shift (from feudalism to capitalism to communism) as a new overture in the neverending ballet that we're but dancers in, choreographed by the angels (?). Each revolution (that is, the American, Haitian, Russian, and Chinese) as a different movement within different sections of the infinite dance perfecting itself over time. I don't know if I'm getting those musical terms right to make the analogy airtight, but it's soothing to think that we'll forever be dancing through infinity.
Apart from the style and warm feelings evoked by the phrasing, I'm still stuck between communism as the End of Time and communism as but another peak and trough along the endless sea of waves through infinity. I was brought up by my mentors with the former as my basis. It always seemed to border on truism that perfection was impossible, and per Mao that dialectical development was transhistorical and going to power the locomotive of history beyond communism. That there would always be more work to do seemed comforting to the mind that questioned why there was currently so much work to do.
As I became more religious, though, I started to become more convinced (by those pangs of faith in a final heaven) that there was an end to eventually be achieved. Logo was a really helpful clarifier of this merging of Marx and the Bible. This seemed compatible, at least in Marxism's relationship with teleology and its treatment of end stages with the Scientific Marx as well, which is really championed by Jehu (who would hate me putting the Biblical Marxism and his Marxism in the same camp).
Curious what the salon (and of course yourself, Ed) might think of these two contradictory methods converging on the same thesis.
a simply phenomenal article; so thrilling and inspiring how you weave the transcendent, the political, the economic
Thank you so much!!
Fabulous piece, thanks! This is very interesting to me, because I always read that section from Boris Groys, about, communism as the coexistence of contradictory opposites, to be a kind of rephrasing of Kojève’s characterization of posthistory. The same idea Vince was channeling in his piece on liberalism as the supremacy of language. So it’s interesting to me to take that also as an interpretation of Mao’s endless revolution, which initially seems to jettison the idea of a posthistory. In fact, there is a footnote somewhere in the Introduction where Kojève explicitly criticizes the idea of a permanent revolution, and I always wondered whether Kojève was referring at all to Mao’s idea here. The other alternative is that Kojève is just referring to the liberalism of endless discourse - but that raises the question what differentiates Mao’s idea here from liberalism?
Jonathan, this is such a good comment and question that, rather leaving the response here in the comments, I’m going give it the short post it deserves!
Dialectics (history) is happening before our own very eyes but it's not going anywhere dammit! It's a practico-inertia. (Dis)United in slavery, misery and lies. "Connubial bliss" as McLuhan put it. And the World as Phamtom and MATRIX according to Günther Anders.
“That is, man is capable paradoxically of producing a reality that denies him” (Social Construction of Reality Berger & Luckmann p.103)
"Denies him" can be likened to castration.
This text is rich there's much more things I'd like to comment on but I will limit my self:
"He makes the dialectical process infinite, and by doing so makes struggle, collision, revolution equally extended into the furthest points of duration. This has profound ramifications for every element that is touched by the Marxist analytic and political program: Mao has effectively removed any sense of true guarantees from history. Communism’s realization becomes highly contingent, and even where socialist revolution has succeeded, it will be characterized by the eternal persistence of struggle from both inside and outside itself."
This is beautiful. And I dare to show the possible solution.
"To talk about polymorphous perversity is to talk about the imagination. To reeroticize the body we must also reeroticize the head. To overcome genital organization is to overcome body-soul dualism is to overcome the tyrannical domination of one part of the body over the others, and finally, to overcome genital organization is to overcome egoism. Politics and genitality: the president and the prick: that we allow both to play leading roles is part of our theatrical self-repression and selfforgetfulness. Sex and politics: both the theatre of the poor said Talleyrand. Amidst riches we are poor, precisely because we have made fetishes of our commodities and emptied or ejaculated ourselves into them. Psychic and symbolic deprivation: "Workers of the world, unite! Throw off your chains," said Marx: but Freud said that would be hard to do because we are in love with our own chains."
--William C. Shepherd, SYMBOLICAL CONSCIOUSNESS: A COMMENTARY ON LOVE'S BODY (1976)
Waiting for the return of the gods
witnessing the return of barbarism
the new barbarians
Engels, on The Origin of the Family, Private Property
and the State:
the origin—the coming-into-being and the passingaway—
"Indeed, only barbarians are capable of rejuvenating
a world laboring under the death throes of unnerved
civilization."
Vico is right
Engels is right
—
Here is that synthesis that Gramsci sought:
Vico and Marxism reconciled
—
Mao is right
—
The Great Cultural Revolution was to detach
communism from civilization. The civilized
world looked on and could not believe its eyes.
Closing Time p. 62 - Norman Oliver Brown
For now the last bastion is the citadel of consciousness (McLuhan/Dobbs coinage/usage)
“No matter how many walls have fallen, the citadel of individual consciousness has not fallen, nor is it likely to fall.”
--Marshall McLuhan and George Thompson, COUNTERBLAST, 1969, p.135
Well; you have worked the miracle now; and although the Radio is still in full blast—“Keldtti-kax,
koax, koax!”—and the automobiles are hooting, and the machines are clattering, and the self-expressionists are chattering about sex, you are alone with the Inanimate; you are a conscious self once more, alone with the elements out of which all consciousness arose; you, a nucleus of Mind, are alone with primordial Matter.
-- John Cowper Powys -- Philosophy of SOLITUDE
While there is no class consciousness we retreat to ours
Fascinating. I’ve been meaning to read Allinson’s book and I think I’m going to get around to it this winter.
A (not so) brief comment: I think that much of this is very useful to make sense of Badiou’s thought. I’ve been thinking recently that his approach needs to be fully contextualized as the only real attempt to work through dialectics after Mao. The abolition of the negation of the negation and the infinitization of dialectical process is at the core of Theory of the Subject, for example.
What’s interesting is Badiou’s plain rejection of Mao’s “naturphilosophie”, his claim that division is fundamentally against nature and should rather be understood as an artificial and technical apparatus. The most telling version of this is in The Concept of Model, where he rejects the logical empiricist interpretation of model-theoretic semantics in favor of intra-mathematical asceticism; in other words, *techniques* of division are themselves divided according to their axiomatics, quanta, not to be thought “in-themselves”, are but tools for the production of the infinite (I think this idea is best expressed in “Infinitesimal Subversion”).
But you also have, at the same time, a basic affirmation of Mao’s confidence in the immediate reversal of fortunes. Technique is subordinated to the exception, and this leads to the explosive act of succession at the limit. This means that the infinite is an actual field which exceeds any finitary technique.
Really enjoyable read.
As for war it's going to space and once again it evokes McLuhan's "philosophy"
"The Global Village Theatre!” I had never seen that phrase before—not “Global Theatre”, but the “Global Village Theatre”. Interesting phrase… it’s like half way to the Global Theatre evoked by satellites. That’s the first quote to point out: what is the “Global Village”?"
http://eng.chinamil.com.cn/WORLD_209198/WorldMilitaryAnalysis/16296004.html
--
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/12/the-us-military-is-now-talking-openly-about-going-on-the-attack-in-space/
Those drone sightings in East Coast, what you think it is? eh
"Arab civilians still have what free-world civilians have lost. The latter are now nothing more than human resources —a well-suited, cynical, but not very Kantian expression— Stalin still had the politeness to say "the most precious capital."
Consequently they are dealt with "en masse " and, obviously, not solely by their assassins. Mass man is treated everywhere and always as mass man. So there he is, held hostage to suffer for the sinister pranks of the strategists. When strategists goof, human resources go "poof". Popu is forever being shit upon. Every day the television heaps insults upon him"
Jean-Pierre Voyer, The Parthian Shot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwCdGbnLovE&t
(Chinoserie - Duke Ellington)
I love the phrase "non-resolving dance of contradiction." From a simply stylistic standpoint, I think it gets to the core of this anti-teleological Marxism you're describing so beautifully. I'm imagining each successive societal shift (from feudalism to capitalism to communism) as a new overture in the neverending ballet that we're but dancers in, choreographed by the angels (?). Each revolution (that is, the American, Haitian, Russian, and Chinese) as a different movement within different sections of the infinite dance perfecting itself over time. I don't know if I'm getting those musical terms right to make the analogy airtight, but it's soothing to think that we'll forever be dancing through infinity.
Apart from the style and warm feelings evoked by the phrasing, I'm still stuck between communism as the End of Time and communism as but another peak and trough along the endless sea of waves through infinity. I was brought up by my mentors with the former as my basis. It always seemed to border on truism that perfection was impossible, and per Mao that dialectical development was transhistorical and going to power the locomotive of history beyond communism. That there would always be more work to do seemed comforting to the mind that questioned why there was currently so much work to do.
As I became more religious, though, I started to become more convinced (by those pangs of faith in a final heaven) that there was an end to eventually be achieved. Logo was a really helpful clarifier of this merging of Marx and the Bible. This seemed compatible, at least in Marxism's relationship with teleology and its treatment of end stages with the Scientific Marx as well, which is really championed by Jehu (who would hate me putting the Biblical Marxism and his Marxism in the same camp).
Curious what the salon (and of course yourself, Ed) might think of these two contradictory methods converging on the same thesis.