Htrdoxtian Communiques

The message is the message.

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The Hidden Abode of Materialist Production

In Transcritique, Karatani invokes Volume III of Marx’s Capital to point out that in everyday life within capitalist society, economic activity appears to be simply about profit (price of was is produced minus cost price). He goes on to say that “[t]hus the insistence of neoclassical economists that the concepts of value and surplus value are false is in total accord with the everyday consciousness of the agents.” (TC p. 242)

Kanishka Goonewardena, in a piece analysing Karatani’s The Structure of World History, quotes a passage from Volume I of Capital, where Marx speaks of the “hidden abode of production” which many do not know about, given the “noisy sphere” of “the market or the sphere of circulation.” This clamorous market is where most people live in their “everyday consciousness.”

It strikes me that this move of positing and then examining a “hidden abode” can be applied to the materialist universe, which is indeed a “noisy sphere” which is often the sum total of one’s everyday consciousness. What is the obscured space where the spiritual underpinnings of materialist life are quietly produced and reproduced? Theological reflection can be of some help here, but ultimately such an investigation can best be carried out at the level of -- to quote the 12-step writer Thomas E. Powers -- a “great experiment” which explores “the possibility that God can be known.” Mainstream religious practice can certainly be of help here, but only, I think, if it is accompanied by an experience of the heart.

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The Ars Theologica (and, indeed, the Philosophical Task) as the Discernment of Situations

“Each of the two languages—grace/pardon; gift/power—is itself a comprehen- sive way of describing what God does when he unites us with Christ. And the theological art—the real ability to divide law and gospel—lies in knowing when one language is appropriate and when the other.”

-- Gilbert Meilaender (1998) “Reclaiming the Quest for Holiness” Lutheran Quarterly, p. 491.

The concept of paradox, although liberating when compared to monism or the enslavement of one concept to another, can lead to stasis and dead ends. Where ambiguous co-existence fails, discernment is absolutely necessary.

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Incarnation and Redemption in Anglo-Catholic Political Theology

The late priest-theologian David Nicholls argues that there are two tendencies in Anglo-Catholic political theology, the incarnationalist and the redemptionist. The first he associates with, inter alia, the Lux Mundi school and their kenotic theology. This gradualist, world-affirming Christian socialism he derides as naïve, for it does not give sufficient attention to the destructiveness of humans and our need for redemption, matters which those in the redemptionist strand such as J. N. Figgis and Conrad Noel recognised and made central.

There is, I believe, a certain vectoral dimension to Nicholls’ distinction. Incarnationalist political theologies stress a movement downwards, of service, weakening and rendering vulnerable. Redemptionist political theologies, on the other hand, have an upward motion whereby flawed and rapacious beings are lifted up into the sphere of glory. The former also appears more autonomous -- we appear to be able to choose the downward path -- whereas the latter can only take place if there is a heteronomous power which acts outside of us.

However, the pitting of these two trends against each other is ultimately an incoherent move in light of the New Testament narrative. For without the incarnation there would have been no possibility of redemption, and without redemption the incarnation would have just been akin to the stories of royals putting on the clothes of commoners and venturing out into a “lower world,” before returning surreptitiously to the higher realm. Thus, even though we have gained much from the tireless labours of those who have opted to emphasise one or the other, at the day’s end we have to hold both together, at least in a productive tension if not in some neat synthesis or harmonisation.

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Some by Dan Berrigan, RIP (1921-2016)

In loving memory—Mitchell Snyder

Some stood up once and sat down, Some walked a mile and walked away. Some stood up twice then sat down, I’ve had it, they said.

Some walked two miles, then walked away, It’s too much, they cried. Some stood and stood and stood. they were taken for fools they were taken for being taken in.

Some walked and walked and walked. They walked the earth they walked the waters they walked the air.

Why do you stand? they were asked, and why do you walk? Because of the children, they said, and because of the heart, and because of the bread.

Because the cause is the heart’s beat and the children born and the risen bread.

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The Experience of the Trinity

At the core of the doctrine of the Trinity is not some elegant idea or propositional dogma but a very real human experience which has three components. These are: firstly, the warming of the heart by the Holy Spirit; secondly, the appreciation of the glory of the Father which is the foundation of reflection on God (theology); and lastly, the kenosis of the Son which leads to incarnation and service. These are often experienced in series rather than all at once, and there is no set order to their manifestation, but the unity of the three is central and unmistakable.

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Foucault as Exemplar, not as Prophet

“We should not be surprised, or excessively censorious, if Foucault’s analyses don’t predict or explain what has happened in the penal sphere since his time. The history of our present is our job, not Foucault’s. Foucault may still be able to help us, but by helping us to help ourselves.”

-- Colin Gordon (2016) “A Comment on Fassin and Chatterjee, available here.

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Fr Kelly on the Practical Impact of a Particular Philosophy

“I admit that a great deal of philosophic writing simply puzzles me. I am not greatly interested to know what a clever man can do with a theory. I do want to know what it is doing with him, and will do with other people when he and they use it. I want most of all to know what it can do for me.”

-- Herbert Hamilton Kelly SSM (b. 1860, d. 1950) 1960. No Pious Person: Autobiographical Recollections. Edited by George Every SSM. pp. 53-54.

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One

“I have always believed that if I was very fortunate in this life, I would be blessed with one question, one guiding thread that compelled me to inquiry, unsettling me in my all too convenient presuppositions, awakening me to my greatest and most profound knowing.”

-- Leslie Jaye Kavanaugh, The Architectonic of Philosophy, i.

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Alliances on the and of the Left and Right

Some left-wing anti-capitalists who fall on the libertarian side of the left spectrum (e.g. market anarchists) are more open to collaborating with other anti-statists including anarcho-capitalists in their bid to abolish the state, while left-wing anti-capitalists who fall on the statist side of the left spectrum (e.g. state socialists) are more open to collaborating with other statist and market-sceptical folk including social democrats in their bid to abolish the market.

It is clear from the preceding statement that the alliance of libertarians (comprising both the left and right wings of the libertarian movement who are united in their hatred of the state) is more radical than the alliance of statists (comprising the anti-capitalist but statist far-left and the pro-capitalist but market-sceptical centre-left who are united in their hatred of the market). These alliances, from the perspective of the far-left, are based on whether one identifies the state or the market as the primary force which upholds capitalism.

Interestingly enough, the libertarian left is less likely to collaborate with state-sceptical centre-right conservatives, while the statist left is far from keen to have anything to do with far-right statists. Speaking now from an electoral perspective, placing to one side grand coalitions of the centre-right and centre-left, these two groups of the right -- the statist far-right and the state-sceptical centre-right -- have shown a tendency to become allies despite their contrasting views on the role of the state, as various coalition governments in Europe have demonstrated. If the two alliances described in the preceding two paragraphs are united in their hatred of, respectively, state and market, what is the foundation of the alliance between the state-sceptical centre-right and the statist far-right? There appears to be little other than their combined hatred for the left and their shared social conservatism which leads to a dislike or hatred for some marginalised groups which the left is concerned about, e.g. immigrants and minorities of various kinds.

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Full Autonomy in Learning Now

The pedagogue who believes that learning must first proceed through a period of hierarchical instruction before it can be released into autonomous self-education is akin to the orthodox Marxist who believes that a coercive dictatorship of the proletariat must precede the withering away of the state.

Against this stagist view of pedadogy and politics, the anarchist or radical democratic educationist believes we must start how we mean to go on. Autonomy has to be practised now or else it will be relegated to a future which is indefinitely postponed.

Under present conditions full autonomy in learning is only permitted within the formal educational system for those who manage to enter its “final stage,” that is, doctoral-level study. There is a simple -- if far from easy -- alternative to climbing this ladder of divine ascent, namely walking away from it and embracing the fullness of autodidactic life in the present.

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Andre Gorz on Why Cuts Will Never Bring About Anything like the “Big Society”

“[T]he development of a public space of autonomous activities may give rise to a limited reduction in the service and provision requirements of the welfare state. In other words, when free time ceases to be scarce, certain educative, caring and assistance activities and the like may be partially repatriated into the sphere of autonomous activities and reduce the demand for these things to be provided by external services, whether public or commercial. The opposite development is, on the other hand, out of the question. An expansion in the sphere of autonomous activities cannot, by definition, come about as a result of a policy which reduces state provision and state services, thus leaving those social strata least able to do so to fend for themselves. The expansion of a sphere of autonomy always presupposes that, time no longer being counted, individuals have chosen to repatriate into the domestic or microsocial sphere of voluntary co-operation activities which, for want of time, they had abandoned to external services.”

-- Andre Gorz (1989) Critique of Economic Reason, p. 169.

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As a historian, I am very suspicious of anything which pretends to be totally new. If I cannot find precedents for an idea, I immediately suspect that it is a foolish one. If I cannot find anyone in the past with whom I am acquainted, and in my fancy can discuss with him what surprises me, I feel very lonely, a prisoner of my own present-day and parochial horizon.

Ivan Illich (1981) ‘Research by People’ in Shadow Work, p. 79.

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To hell with the future! It’s a man-eating idol. Institutions have a future… but people have no future. People have only hope.

Ivan Illich, quoted in Illich and Cayley (2005) The Rivers North of the Future, p. xix.

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William Morris, Double to Marx

“[A]s people freed from the daily terror of starvation find out what they really wanted, being no longer compelled by anything but their own needs, they would refuse to produce the mere inanities which are now called luxuries, or the poison and trash now called cheap wares. No one would make plush breeches when there were no flunkies to wear them, nor would anybody waste his time over making oleo-margarine when no one was compelled to abstain from real butter. Adulteration laws are only needed in a society of thieves - and in such a society they are a dead letter.”

-- William Morris (1884) “Useful Work versus Useless Toil,” available here.

“Morris’ critique of capitalism arose out of his direct experience of artistic production. To me he is a sort of double to Marx. If Marx offers a critique of exchange value, Morris approaches capitalism through a critique of use value. For Morris, the divide between useless luxury for the ruling class and poorly made necessities for the working class was in itself an indictment of the system of organising labour that produces such parallel forms of non-value.”

-- McKenzie Wark (2015) “The beauty of the commons,” available here.

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"Communism is in fact the completion of Socialism: when that ceases to be militant and becomes triumphant, it will be communism."

William Morris (1893) “Communism.”

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The Prophet and the Politician

“Democracy needs Don Quixotes, with their ethic of ultimate ends, and Sancho Panzas, with their ethic of responsibility. It needs actors and institutions whose distinctly opposed moral and political competencies are at their best testy, at their worst nasty. The strategic and moral question is, which should predominate in a democracy? In extraordinary situations Michnik chooses Marlene Dietrich, but he regularly votes for Sancho Panza. ...

Democracy is a contradiction and a paradox. Without heroism, public virtues cannot be sustained; they gradually deteriorate into egotistical calculi of social, economic, and political self-interests. The individual gets replaced by the self. And yet as every liberal disciple of the Enlightenment and foe of Nietzsche knows, the charismatic hero abhors, in fact is incapable of, democratically appreciating the deficiencies of average people.

Michnik responds to this 'dilemma' in a Weberian spirit. All historical experience, says Weber, 'confirms the truth that man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible. But to do that a man must be a leader, and not only a leader but a hero as well, in a very sober sense of the word.' In short, democracy needs 'ordinary heroes.'”

-- Ken Jowitt (1998) "In Praise of the Ordinary: An Essay on Democracy," in Michnik, Letters from Freedom. 

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“Actions create dreams, and not the reverse.”

“Perhaps the greatest change can be detected in Marx’s trajectory after the Commune — a change that takes the paradoxical form of both a strengthening of his theory and a break with the very concept of theory. The Commune made it very clear to Marx that not only do the masses shape history but in so doing they reshape not just actuality but theory itself. This is, in fact, what Henri Lefebvre meant when he talked about the ‘dialectic of the lived and the conceived.’

The thought and theory of a movement is unleashed only with and after the movement itself. Actions create dreams, and not the reverse.”

-- Kristin Ross (2015) “The Meaning of the Paris Commune,” Jacobin, available here.