Vlad Navitski,

European Humanities University, Vilnius, Lithuania

uladzislau.navitski@ehu.lt

 

 

To End History:

What the Leftists’ Experience Can Tell us about the Contemporary World

 

 

Abstract: The article looks at the historical views of the different branches of the leftists over the past century and a half. As well as this, prompted by a foundational and constitutional declared interest, I attempt to show that theoretical stances of the leftists on history not only predetermined their own practice (and, were consequently influenced by it), but are also exercised in the worldwide contemporary social and cultural trends, not related to the leftist practice at all. Among them globalization, practices of the multiculturalism/ fundamentalism and identity politics should be mentioned in the first place.

Keywords: Political theory; Leftists; Multiculturalism; Fundamentalism; Identity; Subjectivity.

 

 

Introduction

 

The very terms “left”, “leftists” are confusing nowadays – it seems that they lost their meaning in the 90’s, after the Soviet Union’s fall. Though there are powers and trends nowadays which identify themselves with the radical past movements, it is easy to show that this identification is based on a romantic fascination exerted by the great shadows of those times rather than on shared ideas, goals and practices.

In general, the peculiar imitation of the leftists’ practices – once specific to them – by the contemporary social trends (alter-globalists, radical subcultures and so on) has been explicitly clarified by the leftists themselves (Gilles Dauvé)[1] and by the more moderate researchers (Jean Baudrillard). But, to my mind, in order to see what are the reasons or causes of such imitation, we have to go further than just to identify this doubling with the cunning nature of the society of consumption, assuming even previously contradictory practices for its own sake (Baudrillard).^[2] Similarly, we shouldn’t stop at a mere characterisation of this doubling as ridiculous parallelism (Dauvé).

Moreover, the very term “leftist” has become too blurry to signify anything. Many things which were socialist and communist decades ago have now become common for many people, without turning the latter into political radicals. For example, describing the difficult situation in which the EU countries have found themselves, an observer of the Deutche Welle media company puts it in this way:

 

Jubeln können jetzt diejenigen Fondsmanager und Anleger, die sich mit Kreditausfallversicherungen für Griechenland eingedeckt haben. Diese könnten bald einen reichen Geldsegen bringen, auch für Anleger die gar keine griechischen Staatsanleihen besitzen. Ein perverser Effekt des zügellosen Raubtierkapitalismus, den wir in den letzten beiden Krisenjahren mit Entsetzen kennen gelernt haben. Es ist weit gekommen: Private Bewertungsgesellschaften wie Standard and Poors entscheiden über das Schicksal von ganzen Staaten und Völkern. Griechenland ist heute nicht anders als vorgestern. Seine Menschen, seine Güter, seine Hotels, seine Fabriken sind aber in den Augen der Rating-Agentur nur noch Ramsch.[3]

 

Make no mistake – DW’s staff and Bernd Riegert himself are not Marxist, they just try to comprehend the reality in which they – and we, as well – live. Though Mr. Riegert speaks about wild capitalism, blames the hedge-funds for crushing people’s life into dust, calls for state control over the financial markets, this doesn’t turns him into a leftist; otherwise, Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and Barack Obama[4] would seem leftist too, and this sounds absurd. The rejection of Raubtierkapitalismus these people demonstrate, their resoluteness to prevent the power of the financial institutions from determining the lives of billions of people is not about the proletarian revolution or the elimination of the exchange value’s dominance. It’s about the attempt to save the prevalence of political authority and sovereignty over the social body and cultural practices.

All these examples are given not to prove the importance of the leftists or to announce their return, etc.; on the contrary, one must agree that this notion has lost its sense. On the whole, my task here is not ideological or political, it is not about defending (or destroying) some political strategies, norms and ideas. It is rather a scientific and philosophical one – to represent one of the possible ways to comprehend the social and cultural reality which we live in. It appears that the experience which leftists have had during their long history in Western modernity is relevant to the problem of understanding our present situation. By their dream of a better society, they have brought some changes to the social and cultural trends of the past centuries but have failed to establish a real alternative to the existing modes of political, economic, social and cultural relations. Has it been by accident? Has it really been the result of their romanticism or utopian thought? Have their ideas and practices been too weak to overcome their enemies?

But what if the contrary is true? Let’s just imagine that the very foundations of the leftists’ strategies predestined their fall in future? What if this fall is not evidence of the leftists’ messianism, but a demonstration of their utter relevance to the conditions and processes in which they existed? What if left politics was a successful project, which has fulfilled its task and has been deconstructed as no longer necessary? Perhaps this point of view helps us better to understand this ridiculous resemblance between the contemporary political and social trends and some leftist ideas.

What we should do here is understand this imitation as a phenomenon bearing constitutional meaning for the comprehension of the contemporary social and cultural trends. And this understanding, I believe, is – mainly – possible when we pay attention to the leftists’ standpoints on time and history and their perturbation in the afore-mentioned trends. It doesn’t mean that contemporary social and cultural processes have been induced and/or conducted by socialists, communists or anarchists. Rather, their points of view on historicity and time have demonstrated the styles of thought and practice which appear to be significant and constitutional for the contemporary social subjects, involved in the multicultural/ fundamentalist trends, identity politics and processes of globalization. The leftists have been truly avant-garde – surely, not as the prophets of a better society, but rather, as the bearers of future practices and theories. So, in order to comprehend ourselves, participating in modern life, we should understand the leftists’ stances on history and time and see why these stances have become crucial nowadays.

That is the general exposition of the article. But before it becomes possible to fill this schema with the rough material, some methodological explanations should be offered.

 

To begin – some methodological notes

 

1. The very first note considers one of the key terms of the article – the leftists. To use this word naively is possible only within the journalistic jargon. When one considers the leftist parties and movements, which have existed for the past century and a half, it becomes clear that there’s no such thing as the “leftists”. That’s why it’s important to understand in what sense the term “leftist” is used here.

This theoretical disposition implies a crucial point – to consider the left wing movements as those which practise the same epistemology. Epistemology here is understood in a wider sense, as the general way of comprehending the social reality. It’s not a kind of theoretical standpoint – rather it should be understood in the sense of Kuhn’s paradigm. Surely, Kuhn applied his own notion of paradigm only to the scientific schools, explaining the growth of “normal science”. But there’s a strong reason why Kuhn is mentioned here – paradigms can channel research, even if there are no explicit rules and norms which would determine research activities directly.

Not identically, but similarly, we can discern a certain paradigm of the leftists, i.e. a common way of problematising the social reality without talking about the leftists as a united front, in the sense of a real political unity. In other words, a common question doesn’t presuppose a common answer, but if we understood what the common question of the leftists was, we would make a real progress in the explanation of the leftists’ history and their present state.

There is one more methodological point to discuss – doesn’t such “insight” demonstrate a kind of intellectual violation, the deformation of the historical and social realities, an infusion of some “paradigm” which doesn’t really exist? Well, it doesn’t. In fact, whether we add some superfluous layers of meanings to the leftist movements by the concept of paradigm or not depends on the mode of operation of this concept, i.e. on how we handle it, how we operate it. If we think that there is some “leftist” paradigm which has found its embodiment in the history of the nineteenth – twenty-first centuries, then surely it is too close to the work of excessive imagination, producing non-existing entities. I’d rather suggest comprehending the concept of paradigm not in the ontological, but in the methodological sense, that is as the working instrument of social science. In other words, the concept of the leftists’ paradigm or the epistemological foundations of the left wing political movements is totally the theorists’ invention, made in order to grasp the social problematic and to determine the probable directions of social trends. But an idea constructed as a theoretical invention shouldn’t be rejected for that – as if it were a kind of fantasia. The propriety of such an invention, and moreover, of its content and its applicability to the social world depends on its explanatory and clarifying potential – in other words, it should be assumed “when it works”.

 

2. The question whether the assumption of the so-called “left epistemology” is legitimate can be reinforced by the doubts whether this epistemology should be really arranged with the problem of time and history as its central theme. Isn’t this problem just a derivative from the economic and political programmes of the left wing movements?

Surely, such economic and political reduction is workable for the goals of political sciences. But there’s a strong reason to exercise a kind of philosophical approach to this problem – and the reason is to understand ourselves better. I argue that to investigate the left epistemology is to analyze its views on the problem of history and time.

To prove these theses – of the common leftists’ stances and of the primary role of their historicism – we can turn to the classics, namely Karl Manheim’s Ideology and Utopia. It is his view on the relation between thinking and social reality – understood as the total ideology – that is extremely important here. Moreover, Manheim applied this relation also to his analysis of the leftists’ stances – so it helps much to make our notion of the “left epistemology” more accurate. And – last but not least – the leftists’ total ideology is conceived by the German thinker in terms of its historical and temporal interests. To prove that, let’s turn to the book.

For Manheim, the crucial task is to show that our social positions predetermine our thinking. But this statement is too abstract and it misleads us due to its quasi-Marxist meaning. For Marx, the social position can always be reduced to the truth in the last instance – namely, position in the social production, understood in the narrow economic sense as the industry. For Manheim this “truth in the last instance” is the social position itself – it cannot be reduced to any other realities or factors.

Thus, there’s no one reality alone – the reality of industrial production – to which we can reduce all forms of thought and all ideologies. Any of the social subjects occupying their own social positions possesses his/her own reality or, to be more precise, his/her own social reality. It means, besides all, that there’s no ontological primacy of the social reality, supposedly distributing the positions among the social subjects and determining their thought and ideology. Manheim underlines this by the assertion that the diversity of the political Weltanschauungen shouldn’t be understood as a quantifiable problem, as if we could compile some single social reality by summing up all the partial world-outlooks.

 

Würde die Gespaltenheit der politischen, weltanschaulichen Einsichten nur darin bestehen, daß sie jeweils eine andere Seite, ein anderes Stück, andere Inhalte im geschichtlichen Geschehen beleuchten, so wäre eine summative Synthese ohne weiteres möglich: man müßte eben die Teil­wahrheiten addieren und auf diese Weise zu einer Ganzheit zusammen­fügen.

Diese einfache Konzeption einer Synthese ist aber nicht mehr denkbar, wenn man gesehen hat, daß die Standortsgebundenheit parteilicher Ein­sichten nicht nur auf inhaltliche Elemente sich gründet, sondern sich schon in einer Spaltung der Aspekte, der Problemstellungen bekundet und nicht zuletzt auf einem Auseinandergehen der Denkkategorien und Ordnungs­prinzipien beruht.[5]

 

Here we see how Manheim transforms the meaning and general role of thinking in social life. Now, the social subject’s thinking is not just the derivative of the social system, either disclosing its truth in the political science or obscuring social reality in the phenomenon of ideology as false consciousness. Categories play a significant role in the forming of social reality – for example, Manheim lay stress on the task not only to show how different social positions stipulate different ways of thinking, but also to explain why these positions arrange one’s experience with different categories.[6] It doesn’t mean that reasoning in some act of poiesis can create reality, but it also doesn’t mean that processes of thinking are directly predetermined by some objective social structure. The appearance of a social position and the development of relevant ideology are simultaneous movements, which should be understood as two sides of one process – namely, politics, which has a very specific meaning in Manheim’s thought.

What is important for us here is Manheim’s persuasion that there’s no and there can’t be any social movement, or even social subject without its specific system of thought, consisting only of particular convictions, beliefs or concepts. Basically, these systems comprise the modes of problem definition, principles of arrangement (Ordnungs­prinzipien) and the general ways of questioning and problematisation. All this leads Manheim to speak not in terms of mere thinking itself, but in terms of “thought models” (Denkmodelle) or even “styles of thinking” (Denkstile), accentuating that the uniformity of total ideology – the left one, for example – is stipulated not by the common content of their thought, but by their common ways of comprehension.

Thereby, this reasoning helps us to prove and strengthen our notion of the leftist epistemology as the general way to understand the social reality, posing the same questions but not leading to the same answers.

 

3. By that, we’ve solved a formal problem – showing that the notion “leftist epistemology” is valid and legitimate. But before passing to the further discussion, there must be worked out another formal difficulty: why it is argued here that explaining the relation to the problems of history and time is crucial for the understanding of left wing ideology.

While solving this problem, we should clarify the notion of “historism”, involved in this article, and that would help us to ground our conviction that historical and temporal matters play a leading role in the constitution of the leftist epistemology.

The notion of “historicism” is derived here from another classic – Popper’s writing The Open Society and Its Enemies. Though we can’t apply his definitions of historicism and historicism to the notion of the leftist epistemology directly, they can, nevertheless, be, with certain reservations, appropriate for our study. Let’s see, what these reservations are and how they make Poppers’ concepts relevant.

In the very beginning of his book, Karl Popper poses the notion of historicism, which he considers as one of the constitutional traits of totalitarian thought. The followers of totalitarianism, Popper argues, “assert that it is the task of science in general to make predictions, or rather, to improve upon our everyday predictions, and to put them upon a more secure basis; and that it is, in particular, the task of the social sciences to furnish us with long-term historical prophecies. They also believed that they have discovered laws of history, which enable them to prophesy the course of historical events”. And further, “the various social philosophies which raise claims of this kind, I have grouped together under the name historicism”.[7]

The next conception – historism – is used by Popper while talking about a kind of relativism, conceding all forms of thought, social institutions and cultural practices as stipulated by the historical milieu, particular historical configuration.[8]

The hindrance due to which these notions are inappropriate for the goals of our investigation now has become clear. First of all, Popper points his discourse against totalitarian thought, which cannot be identified with the left ideologies in no way. Then, it is even more important that historicism, as well as historism – refers not only and specifically to the attitudes on history, as it may seem considering the very word. Popper uses these concepts to denote the general style of thinking which find its best manifestation in the stands on history. Bearing in mind that these methodological notes are devoted exactly to the leftist ideologies and exactly to their historical stances – regarded as some of the constitutional aspects of their Weltanschauungen – it can be definitely demonstrated that Poppers’ historism and historicism are not immediately feasible here.

But if we peered into the discourse of The Open Society…, there would appear strong reasons to involve its ideas into this thesis. It’s true that Popper devoted his writing to the critics of totalitarian thought – but at the same time, animadverting historism and historicism, he found three key persons to blame for that: Plato, Hegel and… Marx. Though Popper reveals ambivalent attitudes to Marx, deeply esteeming his strong moral convictions, still he tries to elicit totalitarian traits from Marxism and its adherents.[9] This deduction grounds the belief that in the leftist ideologies, at least in their Marxist versions, their historical stances are the centrepieces which determine all their structure.[10]

But even if that’s true, how can we pass the second hindrance, stated above, namely that historicism refers to a general style of thinking and not to standpoints on history specifically? Solving this difficulty becomes possible if we take into consideration that though historicism, as well as historism, touches upon all the order of totalitarian ideology, it still affixes to historical and temporal aspects some paradigmatic significance. The very formation of totalitarian thought reprises its stances on history and time.

These speculations bring us closer to the main question of this chapter – the sense in which the term historism is used here and with what reservations it can be drawn from Popper’s writing.

If Popper applies the notions of historism and historicism to totalitarian thought in general, I suggest speaking of historism in respect to the leftist ideology in particular. But at the same time, Poppers’ ideas can be viewed as the grounds persuading us that to consider the leftists from the point of view of their thought order is possible and efficient.

While Popper purports that historicism/historism bear definite meanings, of historical essentialism or relativism respectively, I suggest considering the notion of historism in its formal and neutral meaning, i.e. as standpoints on history and time. Still, it is the paradigmatic meaning of these historical and temporal views that is common for Popper’s approach and the consideration, exercised in this article.

 

4. This reasoning can be reinforced by getting Manheim’s ideas on this matter involved in the present consideration. Indeed, Popper provides the view on totalitarian thought – isn’t there then an example of a similar approach to the leftists’ thought specifically? Popper also implies in the notion of historism a general mode of thinking – can’t there be found an example when historical and temporal stances gain constitutional, not only paradigmatic, significance?

These examples can be found in Manheim’s cited book. First of all, he really speaks of leftist thinking,[11] understanding it as the left wing total ideology (which, by the way, Manheim suggests generalizing under the heading “socialistic theory”[12]). But even more important is his conviction that to apprehend the essence of this particular thinking becomes possible, when we pay attention to the historical and temporal stances of total ideology, including its left version: “Man kann die innerste Struktur eines Bewußtseins nirgends so klar erfassen, als wenn man sein Zeitbild von seinen Hoffnungen, Sehnsüchten und Sinnzielen her versteht. Denn von diesen Sinnzielen und Erwartungen aus gliedert es nicht nur sein zukünftiges Geschehen, sondern auch die ver­gangene Zeit”[13].

To present a detailed account of Manheim’s thought on the leftists’ standpoints on history and time is the task of the following chapters. For now, it is sufficient to say that according to Manheim, leftist ideology demonstrates a much more sophisticated approach to history and time than it was declared in the writings of Popper. Due to Marx, the leftists had tried to occupy “the golden mean”, to use this word, between the essentialism of historicism and the radical relativism of historism. All our thoughts and ideas, therefore, become some derivatives of the present moment – hence, this displays a combination of rationalism (as we rationally analyse a situation and calculate its possible outcomes) and intuitivism (as this calculation changes the situation which we are in and makes it something completely new and unpredictable). Manheim describes it as the “function of becoming”.[14] And such comprehension of history and thought, demonstrated by the leftists, stipulates all their ideas and conceptions with the sense-making principle, as well as their practices and activities with theoretical groundings.

It should be repeated once again that when one talks about the leftist epistemology (“total ideology” or “thought model”), one doesn’t imply some particular thoughts and ideas, but primarily the way of comprehending the rough social and cultural material, some Ordnungs­prinzipien, which then constitute the production of conceptions and theories.

5. Previous reasoning provides us with all the needed theoretical tools to proceed to our principal object –disclosing the essence of the leftists’ historism and proving that the same historical stances are exercised in contemporary social and cultural trends. Surely, it doesn’t mean that the leftists converted the masses to socialistic or anarchistic beliefs – this similarity between the leftist epistemology and contemporary views on history and time should – and will – acquire another explanation. It has been argued that the very notion of “leftist epistemology” is relevant and demonstrates fruitful and efficient examples of its explication. Let’s summarize what we’ve got at the present moment.

Leftist epistemology refers neither to particular ideas or conceptions nor to an explicit, quasi-scientific methodology of thinking. It’s a general way of comprehending social reality, with its own specific modes of forming the problems and arrangement of material.

Leftist epistemology can be described concerning its various aspects, but it can be argued that one of the most efficient methods is the analysis of its standpoints on history and time, which bear the constitutional meaning for the leftists’ total ideology in general.

Hence, the conclusion that historical and temporal aspects of the leftists’ epistemology somehow ordain all the order of the leftists’ epistemology. What are these aspects in terms of their contents, how do they particularly arrange the modes of the leftists’ style of thinking are the questions of the following chapters, driving us towards the principal task, stated above.

 

Leftist epistemology and the question of difference

 

As it has already been said, thanks to those methodological statements, we can talk about the leftists as something whole, as something united, while over the past century and a half, socialists, communists and anarchists have been hardly more favourable to one another than to their worst common enemies – the “exploiters”. Hence, we can say that in spite of all the aggression that leftists from different branches have demonstrated to each other, they exercise together the same epistemology, the same Denkstile. Now it’s time to answer the question what are the particular features of their style of thinking, how can it be described? Obviously, the answer to this question would be the relevant solution to the problem posed in the beginning of the methodological explanations: “what is the meaning of leftist thought while trying to comprehend contemporary social trends”?

Though historical and temporal aspects bear constitutional meaning for the leftist epistemology, it has yet to be found. Therefore, successive and consistent reasoning on the Denkstile of the leftists is inevitable here.

 

1. To begin with, one can notice that in all leftist movements can be found the orientation based upon and aimed onto some crucial persuasion, which once was explicitly expressed in Hegel’s philosophy, namely that society must become the subject of its own development, or, to be more specific, it must turn itself to the subject-object identity. Though idealistic, this statement goes into the foundation of all the branches of the leftists – but surely, in their own specific way, without any meta-historical, meta-social and meta-cultural senses.[15] This thesis was proved in the previous chapter through the analyses of the history of the radical (“left”) movements and organizations – from Bakunin and Marx to Hardt and Negri as so-called alter globalists. By doing that, a very important conclusion appears – for most of the leftists, Hegel’s strategy should be turned in Spinoza’s direction: society must be the commonwealth of the multitude, bearing the principle of their cooperation in themselves and not posing it outside of the social body.

Making ourselves the masters of our social and cultural life and freeing ourselves from all forms of transcendent domination and suppression surely imply the question of power – actually, this constitutes the core of the political programs of the left. The question is “Who possesses the power to determine our lives”? To avoid exploitation, we (the “exploited”) should take over the power which the authorities have and turn ourselves into the bearers of constitutional power, forming our own life.

Contemporary leftists, as I argue, stick to this program, but alter it in some way, paying much more attention not to political power mainly but to the wider range of the cultural and social problems – there can be examples of the leftists’ enthusiasm for gender analyses or critics of the society of consumption etc. This question of power – biopolitical power, so to say, i.e. embracing all the spheres of human existence – encounters the question of boundaries. While we believe that there is some transcendent instance which executes power outside the boundaries, limiting our potentials and actualities, we never infringe this power. For example, if we believe that gender differences have been established by some laws of nature or by words of God, we never consider these differences as a matter for our abilities to change them. The power to establish gender differences and boundaries between men and women is not ours, but lies outside, in some transcendent sphere – natural or divine. Though these metaphors of the outside/inside, outer/inner can seem too abstruse or obscure, it can be argued that they bear constitutional meaning for the leftist epistemology. They are also directly connected with the standpoints of the leftists on history and time – but that requires more scrutinizing investigation and will be the next step after reasoning on differences and boundaries and their place in the leftist epistemology.

 

2. Therefore, it is necessary here to raise the question of limits and borders as they may be seem from the leftists’ perspective: obviously, if the radical movements sought for Spinoza’s/Hegel’s ideal, they inevitably came to the afore-mentioned problem. For if the members of society determine themselves autonomously, there cannot be either an outer, transcendent principle of governing (such as God, Nature or transcendent Social Reality) nor territories – geographical, social and cultural – that are abandoned by society itself. Hence, the implementation of the mentioned ideal is impossible without a simultaneous historical process, the meaning of which consists in the growing penetrability of limits and borders. It goes without saying that the latter should be understood not in the geographical sense alone, but mostly in the social, cultural and even anthropological senses. Examples can be following:

a) The most important social boundary – from the leftists’ perspective – is one between two classes: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The leftists declare that they – in accordance with some historical laws – aim at the elimination of this boundary by eliminating the very class of the exploiters. But beyond this declaration there can be found an intention, specific to the leftists of all kinds, namely – not to erase this difference completely, but to make it penetrable. To prove that, we should take a look at the proletariat itself – actually, it’s not the social or political class in the strict sense. When it wins a victory over the bourgeoisie, as the leftists believe, it’s not like a class defeats another one – rather it’s the attack of the classless multitude on the previous class. The proletariat is determined only negatively as those who cannot be represented as a whole unity, as a class (in the classical Latin meaning of “prōlētārius”). This clarification emphasizes the intention of the leftists not to win in the existing framework, but to change this by making the differences between the social groups penetrable.

b) The limits that determine races and genders have been the most important issues to discuss over the past century – it’s enough to recall the 60s with their developed rhetoric going side by side with political and social changes. But there are also some cultural differences, which are not so crucial as the ones mentioned above, but which, nevertheless, are symptomatic for the leftists. Let’s take the example of the difference between working hours and leisure: for the capitalist society and the bourgeois culture, this boundary is foundational and even constitutional (the famous Weber’s research «Die protestantische Ethik und Geist des Kapitalismus» should be mentioned here). The leftists of all kinds, on the contrary, link the promise of the new world and – not essentially, but inevitably – the elimination of the strict difference between forms of work and hobbies or leisure. Such elimination must be understood – the leftists continue – as one of the steps to eliminate the exploitation which exists in society.

c) The leftists of any kind haven’t got their own anthropology. They cannot say what a human being is, but there is some kind of anthropology in erasing the strict differences between the humans, on the one hand, and the machines or the animals (people as conglomerates of bodies, of biological individuals), on the other. The example of the machines is very important from two standpoints: firstly, it’s historically symptomatic – think of the 20s (as well as the 90s), when the combination of a human being and a machine was a very popular idea; secondly, it involves the question of technology as the means of eliminating differences.

 

3. These examples drive us to the point where we can make our next step: to implement their own political ideas, to negate the transcendent, outer order of the social reality, the leftists must pull their forces against strict differences – therefore, we must think of leftist politics as the management of differences. The importance of this conclusion will become clear if we bear in mind that traditionally socialists, communists and anarchists are considered as opposed to only one difference – the one separating two classes – and, actually, the very notion of difference itself doesn’t matter much here. We should leave this traditional view behind in order to get a clear idea of how the leftists have approached – actually, we can see that throughout all their (as well as our) history they have had to deal with differences themselves, to be more accurate – strict differences, trying to make them penetrable.

This connection between the Spinozan-Hegelian social ideal and, on the other hand, a kind of the politics of difference should be accomplished with the synonymous cognitive notion of predictability. Eliminating any kind of transcendent order and, therefore, penetrating the existing difference are possible only if the following condition is met: the things which are beyond the boundaries are not something we are unaware of. Unless it is true, this boundary turns into a strict difference and, hence, it limits these unpredictable things as the transcendent ones, which are out of the sphere of immanence.

This leads us to a very important conclusion: the intention to make differences penetrable is linked to the appropriation of the previously transcendent sphere – an appropriation that is both intellectual (to be aware of) and practical (to handle this sphere). For example, if traditionally gender roles prescribe that it’s abnormal for women to drive, grounding that in an appeal to some natural order, this gradually comes to its end when more and more people begin to recognize the normality for women to be drivers, and allow women to exercise such practices.

So, penetrating the boundary means not only going beyond it – as when a young woman of the late nineteenth century tried to enter the university. It also means spreading a certain kind of knowledge – namely, that one which equals women to men in their right to be educated. Otherwise, such an example – even if it’s possible – will turn to be a singular case of heroism and not of a general shift of the educational system and society on the whole. So it must be clear that the penetration must have some cognitive nuances and I suggest calling this dimension of the leftists’ standpoint “predictability” – the world must become predictable by being comprehended, and this knowledge must spread all over society.

At this stage we’ve got the theoretical line, which allows us to get an idea of what the essential features of the leftist movements of all the branches were – even when they clashed with each other in their strategies. This line can be described as the following:

 

negation of the transcendent order;

growing penetrability of borders;

management of differences;

predictability of the world;

 

4. Let’s repeat it once again: the implementation of “predictability” doesn’t presuppose that the leftist movements were formed as merely intellectual projects, as if some theorists had invented the line, mentioned above, and then persuaded, hired or deceived the masses to implement these ideas into social reality. On the contrary, this theoretical framework establishes not certain political forces, but the outlines of epistemology, within which the political trends could then appear, due to the activity of the masses and their leaders.

The next step which is required at this stage of reasoning is to see the real social phenomena or processes, corresponding to the implementation of the leftists’ framework – and for this role, the process of homogenization suits the best. This notion is drawn from the writings of Marx and Hardt and Negri, and it refers to the meanings we’ve met above – it refers to the blending and merging of social and cultural differences. The manifestation of these processes is, first of all, deterritorialization as described by Marx – the huge movement of people from the countryside to the cities in the Western Europe of the nineteenth century. Surely, it means geographical movements, but not mainly: even if people stay in a village, they may inevitably break off with the countryside way of life even if they do not turn into townsfolk. Hence, these dwellers may be suspended in the air – but this shouldn’t been understood only as the victory of the city over the village, as the former exercised the same processes of breaching the traditional citizenship structure.

For this research it’s very important to emphasize that this process of deterritorialization – though, surely, not initialized by the leftists – was, nevertheless, greeted by them as a positive phenomenon, which should be promoted and supported by all possible means. The specific leftists’ understanding of homogenization is linked to this first image – namely, the proletarianization of society. The genuine meaning of “prōlētārius” has already been mentioned above and it should be recalled once again: it doesn’t refer to the growth of industrial labour in particular, but rather to the increase of the masses of people, who cannot identify themselves with any position within the process of social (re-)production. The proletarians are not a class in the strict sense, because their solidarity is derived not from the fact that they occupy the same position, but due to the fact that they haven’t got a social position at all (these ideas can be found in the writings of Jacque Ranciere and similarly in the Empire by Hardt and Negri). Hence, the proletarians are those who have got only a negative quasi-unity due to the fact that they haven’t got a positive, substantial one.

If, then, the proletarians are those who carry the hopes and beliefs of the leftists, it’s not surprising that here we find a strong correlation with the subjects, mentioned above, – the proletarians inevitably, by definition, bring about a dilution of the inner structure of the social organism. The penetrability of boundaries and the management of differences are both the conditions and the consequences of homogenization, understood as proletarianization. And it can be argued that this homogenization brings about the permeability not only of class difference, but also of other cultural and social differences.

So, it’s time to ask by what means the leftists managed to promote such processes. And the answer is, if not paradoxical, then surely surprising – these movements didn’t necessarily have to persuade or to force the masses or the people to participate in the development of homogenization. In fact, the latter was one of the most essential features of modernity – that’s why the leftists were actually the avant-garde of history: it’s not because they brought about the new age for humankind, but rather they helped to accomplish those features, which were essential for their own age, namely, modernity. Surely, to ground this conviction, we should suggest a certain understanding of the modern age – but there are some theoretical trends which are very close to these ideas. For instance, Marcuse, Horkheimer, Adorno etc. can be mentioned here as the relevant thinkers who linked the previously existing leftist trends and revolutions to the implementation of modernity, which, to be accurate, restricted by them to the ideology of the Enlightenment.

There can be another example – the ideas of Amadeo Bordiga, the Italian political leader, a public figure and thinker, maybe not well-known, but still relevant. He pointed out that all the important leftist revolutions of the twentieth century took place in the countries where absolute monarchy hadn’t been replaced by the constitutional forms of power. The correlation is very clear – the latter promoted the growth of homogenization (the best example here is Great Britain), the result of which was the huge number of proletarians in all the senses of this word – therefore these countries were ready for an industrial breakthrough. The absolute monarchies, on the contrary, couldn’t let homogenization happen, as it would have been self-destructive for them. And only when the gap between the highly industrialized countries and the backward ones became enormously large, did the latter try to initialize industrialization. The communist and socialist revolutions in the twentieth century, the anarchists’ strikes in Russia, Spain etc. were successful as they suggested direct homogenization, which was not restricted by any instances, yet this was absolutely necessary to overtake the industrialized countries.

 

Differences, technology and history – the leftists’ approach

 

There appears the next stage of our reasoning: to comprehend the history of the leftists, one should link their “epistemological” stances to scientific rationality and the technical industry. It wouldn’t be difficult to notice that the dissimilation of boundaries and differences becomes possible only owing to the rise of the Modern science and technology. But while this thesis finds no objection, the traditional way of its development seems to be unsatisfied, as it implies comprehending the technical industry and science as machinery. Obviously, all the changes in the modern societies of the past centuries have happened through machinery (railways, military machines, the network of mass media etc.), but not due to it, as it is the appearance of the machinery itself that should be explained. If we comprehend technology as the set of the machines and tools, we would be able to investigate only the permeability of the political and/or geographical boundaries. But to show how and why the cultural and social differences and boundaries have been dissimilated requires more thorough examination of what technology means.

It seems that the best way to examine technology is its comprehension as the exercise of certain dispositions to reality. Again, here we come close to the notion of “epistemology”, captured as certain Denkstile or Denkmodelle. Identically with the previous notes on leftist epistemology, it should be noticed that some ways of understanding the social reality are not derived from it (at least, not only) but also help to form it. This thesis doesn’t take us into the world of fantasies, but rather intends to emphasize the active, constructive dimension of our reasoning. At the same time, these technical dispositions are not genuinely just some theoretical concepts – they can act very effectively even if they are implicit, and, moreover, even if they are not rationally conceptualized.

Among classical examples of this specific approach to technology were the ideas of Frankfurters, mentioned above. But the limitations of their conceptions lie in their political engagement. By that I don’t suggest comprehending their positions as totally insincere, gravitating to the leftists’ criticism, levelled against the contemporary mode of production. Rather, I tend to show that their positions are very ambiguous – to level criticism against contemporary social trends one should be explicitly aware of what is the position from which criticism is raised. Concerning the Frankfurt school, it slightly becomes clear that their critical position lies nor far from the traditional way of intellectual comprehension, existing in Modern society after the Enlightenment. Therefore, by their very existence, their critical ideas pose the social institutions of Modernity, which are negated by the content of these ideas. This is the essence of the engagement, mentioned above, and though it doesn’t make the conceptions of the Frankfurt school less evaluable, one can be sure that their thoughts on Modern technology will demonstrate a tendency to the Modern mode of criticism.

For a thorough analysis of the technical civilization, I’d prefer to turn to the thinker who was much more than sceptical and critical of Modern science, but who, paradoxically, presented the exemplary comprehension of its dispositions. This is Heidegger, whose analyses of technology and Modern science suits very well the stances which were demonstrated in this discourse. It may be proved very well that the features of the leftists, which we have discerned earlier, may be traced to the disposition of technical thinking, represented by Heidegger – first of all, Gestall and Unternehmen, as the essential features of modern technology and science.

The dimension which can be useful here is the question of time: it can be shown that in order to promote the negation of the transcendent order, penetrability of the boundaries, predictability of reality and the homogenization of society, the leftist had to change their own understanding of historical time – it would have to stop to bring unpredictable changes. Hence, time should turn to an absolutely countable one – Heidegger showed that in this case the calculation of time equals predictability. Identically, in order to find out the laws of nature, modern science – as Heidegger showed – must turn into a countable one.

Levinas, following in Heidegger’s footsteps but going beyond, also provides us with a deep insight into the essence of technology. To comprehend this insight, one should give an account of the strong impact which Levinas’s views on subjectivity had on the matter of technology. That’s why, by the way, his theory is so opportune for us – while we try to show that technology is not something external to us, something meant-to-be, but the certain Denkstile, our way of looking at things, Levinas points out that the technical worldview is intrinsic to subjectivity on the whole[16] – it is the principle of its functioning.

In his early work Time and the Other, Levinas shows that the subject is not the prior reality – neither in a phenomenological, nor in a transcendental mode. It is the derivation from the anonymous process of existence that should be honoured by the title of the prime reality. But to say that is to say it in a language that is totally alien to the French philosopher. He avoids nouns and the substantialistic – so to say – way of speaking. To say “existence” is to indicate something stable, some thing, while this “primary reality”, this “there is…” is before any thing. That’s why Levinas prefers his own linguistic invention, which sounds “l’exister”, “the existing”.

In this pure acting, suddenly the process of hypostasis happens when the subject appears – why it happens Levinas doesn’t know, and in fact he doesn’t care, as he says “metaphysics knows no physics”. But this subject appears not as something independent from “the existing”, but as a result of the desire to captivate it, to appropriate this “l’exister”. When it “there is…” previously anonymous and un-private becomes some object of privatization, the subject appears.

But, Levinas continues, while subject becomes the master of its “l’exister”, it reciprocally becomes its slave a priori: the subject exists only due to its lashing together with “there is…”. Hence, the subject is doomed to return permanently to its “the existing” and take care of it, to bear the burden of responsibility for it. We can’t be irresponsible, even if we try to, we are doomed to be preoccupied with our existence, and we can’t get rid of it, because if we try that, we’ll die – it is analytically clear.

But the subject simultaneously tries to live, to be and, on the other hand, to become oblivious and drowsy, feel free from the permanent care of one’s existence, or, to put it in the other words, one longs for the satisfaction of one’s desires (because it is what makes existence one’s own thing), but at the same time, to satisfy all of one’s desires is to become dead. Remembering Baudrillard in this response allows us to say that the subject seeks for the opportunity to be dead and alive at the same time, looks for some after-life. One of the tricks which the subject uses here is the matter which is of main interest for us here – technology.

 

In the situation of the specific need one must subdue the space, which detaches us from ourselves, overcome it and take the thing, in other words, work by ourselves. In this sense, “he who does not work, neither shall he eat” is an analytical reasoning. In the tools and its production an unrealizable dream is pursued – to erase any distance. In the wide range of the contemporary tools, viz. machines, it is much more striking that they are assigned to annihilate labour, rather than to be the implements – it is the very way that Heidegger restricted his analysis of the technology.[17]

 

Hence, technology is the tool to annihilate the distance which separates us from the satisfaction of our desires. But this distance can be described not only in spatial terms, but in temporal terms as well – exactly what Levinas does when he proceeds in his Time and the Other. Time brings us something unpredictable, threatens our satisfaction and – in the long run – threatens the very principle of the (re)production of subjectivity: it questions whether we really possess our “l’exister” or it’s just a temporal illusion. Hence, technology – both as the mental disposition and its phenomenological embodiment (i.e. machines) – tries to annihilate time and, following Levinas, otherness, only brought about by time.

Concerning the leftists, all previous reasoning can be summed up in this way – the inclination, which the radicals showed towards technology, can be explained as the result of their desire to complete history and establish societies and cultures, built on manageable differences and borders without any transcendent orders. Levinas just shows why the penetrability of borders is important for this task and why technology should be mentioned here – the management of borders correlates with the rush of the subject for greater sovereignty over its own existence and doing that is possible by the means of technology.

 

Conclusion

 

And in the end, a conclusion can be made: throughout their history, the leftist movements haven’t brought about the new age; they have rather helped to fulfil the features which have been essential for western modernity as such. These features include the strong belief that the social and the cultural need not and must not be comprehended as being governed by any of the transcendent orders – whether Nature or God. In order to deconstruct ideologies and social/cultural bodies, established on the assumption of the priority of transcendence, all differences and borders must be deconstructed – from the differences between feudal and capitalistic estates to the differences between genders, ages, work and leisure, the public and the private etc. Finally, history and temporality must be deconstructed – as the foundations for all transcendent orders. So, to complete the historical process hasn’t been a goal for the leftists, rather it has been the means. Paradoxically, being well aware of historical matters and issues, leftists in their epistemology (disposition or Denkstile) have always tried to annihilate temporality as such, to annihilate the unpredictability it brings about. It is this disposition in the leftists’ experience that I characterized as “the lack of historism”.

Its contemporary meaning now becomes evident: technology as the means by which the deconstruction of temporality was to be carried out is flourishing nowadays. It’s not only about all those inventions and machines which surround us in contemporary culture – from iPads to spaceships and satellites. Rather, it concerns the ways we act in this social and cultural world – we long for the abolition of all distances, which tell our desires apart from the things to satisfy them. And the main distance is temporal – hence, today we successfully continue the project once launched by the leftists: to establish sa ociety and culture deprived of unpredictability, realized by time and history.

Taking, for example, the crisis in which the EU found itself in the spring of 2010, it may be argued that it is one of the most evident illustrations to the things which have been discussed above. The attempt of the political authorities to gain control over the financial flows illustrates the inner contradiction which marks European modernity in general – on the one hand, to be free from the oppression of the transcendent orders, the Subject must pass through all the borders and differences, but, on the other hand, the permeability of the borders threatens its own sustainability. Levinas is important for us here as he shows that if there is no difference which we, as subjects, cannot overcome, then we are doomed to be alone in this world and the only practice which is left for us is to consume.[18] Following Freud, Baudrillard and Stigler, we can affirmatively state – to consume unlimitedly is to be dead: “As soon as the libidinal energy of individuals and groups is hegemonically made to detour towards objects of consumption, all other objects of the libido—particularly those which permit the constitution of a civilization by supporting sublimation—are disinvested and seriously threatened. Thus the family and, more generally, education, schools, and knowledge in its totality are threatened, as are politics, law, and all the sublimities of the mind which are the fruit of what the Germans call Bildung”.[19]

Hence, the very existence of European modernity is highly contradictive – its financial foundations (i.e. capitalism and the free market economy) are not something external to the political institutions (parliament; a democracy based on the mechanism of representation; the welfare state and so on). Capitalism as the process of the growing permeability of borders and the homogenization of differences is the inner mechanism of the political institutions of the European modernity. It is controversial to think, like Nicolas Sarkozy does,[20] for example, when he assumes that political sovereignty can save capitalism by adjusting it to some normal schemes, because it means that political authorities should attempt to reject their own foundations – the turning of the borders and differences into permeable ones. As it has been argued, this process is as common for capitalism as it is for politics, that’s why the sovereignty of modernity just hasn’t got the proper ground to withstand Raubtierkapitalismus – capitalism (either tamed or wild) is its ground.

So, the crisis can be viewed as the decision of capitalism to get free from the oppressive restrictions of the political authorities – because there can’t be modern politics without capitalism, but there can be a capitalist market without modern sovereignty. As Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri argue, on the certain stage of the evolution of modernity, capitalism did need political authorities, but then, when capitalistic relations had become self-sufficient, these political institutions became a kind of obstacle: “The transcendence of modern sovereignty thus conflicts with the immanence of capital. Historically, capital has relied on sovereignty and the support of its structures of right and force, but those same structures continually contradict in principle and obstruct in practice the operation of capital, finally obstructing its development. The entire history of modernity that we have traced thus far might be seen as the evolution of the attempts to negotiate and mediate this contradiction. The historical process of mediation has been an equal given and take, but rather a one-sided movement from sovereignty’s transcendent position towards capital’s plane of immanence”.[21]

No wonder that gazing at all these crises, one can have the constant feeling of déjà-vu, of going round and round – it can be explained as the result of European modernity (in its political form) rejecting itself (by imposing limits for accumulation and consumption) and saving itself (as the modern political subjectivity, again). On the one hand, the subject becomes the greater authority in the world, the author of its own reality, but then here comes the claim to put limits to its powers and this claim comes from… the subject itself.

The real alternative lies not in self-restriction – it always ends up in the burst of consumption: the more severe the restraint, the more explosive the consumption. Levinas clearly states out what can be the ground opposite to the unquenchable lust of modernity for power and authority. This ground is the commitment to the very fact of the existence of the Other – the One who involves us into an asymmetrical connection: we can never appropriate it, here is the limit to the powers of the Subject. And one of the most important and constitutive modes of the manifestation as well as the production of otherness is time and historicity, especially as the future, always unpredictable and ungraspable.

The importance of the leftists’ experience, then, is obvious – throughout their history their attempt to end history has resulted in a certain kind of society and culture: they haven’t completed history, but they have built a very strong illusion of the successful realization of this idea. All the examples of contemporary technology and its influence on our life can be understood as the seduction of the distance between our desire and its object – and this distance is primarily temporal. Hence, we can reach an obvious conclusion – the idea of predictable temporality, once demonstrated by the leftists, is spreading all over the world, threatening the relations of solidarity and the modes of creativity, as Stigler has shown.

We can’t say what is to be done, but the least we can do is step outside from the stereotypes, which mislead us in our actions, and try to critically comprehend the world which we live in – and the example of the leftists’ management of time, temporality and historicity can well be the clue to the way to a greater understanding of who we are, what situation we are in and what we should do.

 

 

References

Baudrillard, J. (2006) Symbolic Exchange and Death, SAGE, London;

Bauman, Z. (2007) Liquid Life, Polity Press, Cambridge, Malden;

Braithwaite, T. 2010, “Obama hammers the banks”, Financial Times, 22 Jan. p. 10;

Dauvé, G. & Nesic, K. (2003), Solidarités sans perspective & réformisme sans réforme. Available from URL: http://troploin0.free.fr/ii/index.php/textes/21-solidarites-sans-perspective-a-reformisme-sans-reforme, [Accessed 1 June 2010];

Jan Dams, V. (2010) Neue Regeln für die Banken Available from URL: http://www.welt.de/debatte/kommentare/article6076159/Neue-Regeln-fuer-die-Banken.html [Accessed 1 June 2010];

Hardt, M. & Negri A. (2000) Empire, First Harvard University Press, Cambridge, London.

Levinas, E. (1987) Time and the Other, PA: Duquesne University Press, Pittsburgh;

Mannheim, K. (1985) Ideologie und Utopie, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt-am-Main;

Marx, K., Engels, F., (1969) Werke, Band 3, Dietz Verlag, Berlin/DDR;

Nicolas Sarkozy claims the US can ‘save capitalism’ by better regulation, The Guardian, 29 March 2010, p. 20

Popper, K. (1971) The Open Society and its Enemies. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey;

Riegert, B. (2010) EU muss handeln. Available from URL: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5513161,00.html, [Accessed 1 June 2010];

Stigler B. (2007) Constitution and Individuation. Available from URL: http://www.arsindustrialis.org/node/2927 [Accessed 1 June 2010].

 

 

Notes