The Marginality of American Communism
by the Geese Editorial Team
The marginality of American communism is probably its most distinguishing feature. Somehow, after over a hundred years of “doing the work,” it seems that none of our communists have realized that overturning all social relations and history hitherto might not be a simple matter of “just doing the work.” The common sense we find among communists is an ideology not far off from the ideology found on the shelves and for-you pages of young aspiring entrepreneurs (“hustle”, “grind”). The difference between communists and them however is that at least some of the entrepreneurs are successful. How ‘communist’ one is, is determined by one’s productivity. It is an odd sight considering how nominally averse the left is to this sort of thinking, all the more-so when they are so vocal about this aversion. It is a situation that forces one to ask “just how ideologically (and philosophically) ‘independent’ are the communists, really?”
Anyone familiar with the work of Marx can immediately tell you that this ‘hustle’ organizing culture does not originate in his work and practice, nor in the work or practice of any other communist figure in history. So where does it come from? I would posit that it comes directly from liberalism, that it is an expression of economism. In the same way liberalism pretends the homeless can climb their way out of their desperate predicament with enough industrious work and a deep reserve of will, the communists posit we can climb our way out of our desperate predicament with enough elbow grease, and enough will. In this connection we begin to suspect that American communism, despite its flowery verbiage, has very little claim to independence, in both the ideological and practical sense. It, no matter how radical the rhetoric or how distant it keeps itself from mass political activity, seems to be nothing more than an appendage of liberalism—a mere skin tag on its torso (not its face, for that would imply it receives attention). With this unsightly analogy explicated, we begin to notice that the ‘independence’ of American communism is a mere (verbal) claim, one that can only account for formal relations,(FN: Two-Tactics) and not concrete historical ones; for if it were to account for the latter, we would begin to see our practice for the dead-end that it is.
The dead-end practice in question is that of activism. I attack activism not because the activists are ‘bad,’ (far from it) but because the success of the socialist movement is wholly dependent on breaking the ideological chains keeping ‘communism’ in lock-step with the liberals. Now, what exactly is ‘wrong’ with activism? On the moral level, absolutely nothing is “wrong” with it; nobody will deny that you are a ‘good person,’ or assert that you are doing anything morally incorrect. The problem with activism arises when the communist confuses activism with the task of undertaking revolution—when, in lieu of actively undertaking the task of building the communist party, they submerge themselves in all sorts of scattered activistic adventures—organizing and joining unions, housing organizations, mutual aid, protests, picking up trash (Christ), canvassing for social-democrats and pretending to be one of them, etc. Communists will rotate among these handful of ‘radical’ movements, hoping that their presence puts in a ‘good word’ about their political views, and attracts people to join whatever sect they may be a part of. The economists, as Lenin put it, “bow to spontaneity,” hoping to “lend the economic struggle a political character.” Not realizing that this not how it works, and with full confidence in the advice of the older ‘organizers,’ they end up, as communists, being given a totally economic character, and are reduced to functionaries of the economic struggle they nominally hope to ‘politicize’ (FN: J.R.).
Essential to the activist habit is the undecided and wish-wash nature of their worldview, which is liable to fly back and forth between the most mechanistic determinism (“the economic struggle will become political as long as we intensify it”), and the most opportunistic voluntarism (“...as long as we ‘intensify’ it”). This is in large part a result of a vulgar base-superstructure theory; one that privileges the base over superstructure, leading to a world-conception that understands the superstructure as an auto-reflection of the structure, thereby negating the ‘autonomy’ of politics and culture, and their abilities to effect change upon the ‘economic base.’ Because the ability of these things (politics and culture) to effect both itself and the structure is denied (most of the time implicitly), their worldview has a hard time cognizing those moments when politics and culture, as a result of their own activity, do change things. The structure acts as a “hidden god,” as contra-posed to the “appearance” of superstructure (FN: p.138), which is presented as impotent in the face of “material conditions.” Not included in “material conditions” is ideology, thought, the subjective experience, etc—in considering these factors the economists have no choice but to fall back on idealism in order to reconcile these factors. In the face of iron “historical laws,” the activist subscribing to this framework has no choice but to try to change something “out there,” the “material world”—for this would lead supposedly to a change in thought. Perhaps a raise will do it, or perhaps some groceries—hell, maybe electing a local social-democrat will give us some cred!—as long as it is a communist procuring these things, it necessarily follows that those who receive will follow suit in the realm of ideology: for their “material conditions” have been altered!
This is nothing less than the anarchist idea of ‘propaganda by the deed,’ an idea that has infected Marxism with notions of spreading the ‘good word’ (gospel) of socialism, and that is often confused for the Leninist notion of bringing socialism “from without.” In fact, it is merely an expression of that transactional vulgar materialism in which something is done in the “material world,” and as an output, we get an alteration in the “ideological” one. The economist mechanically separates ‘the material’ and ‘the ideological,’ and it is forgotten that popular beliefs are themselves material forces that are able to be altered in ways much broader than this narrow [material→ ideological → material…] schematic.
The entire operation is purely educative, i.e. purely propagandistic. Propaganda of the deed is of course such, but so is propaganda ‘by the word:’ the presentation of communism as an ‘alternative’ that we can ‘choose,’ that we can back up with evidence and ‘concrete examples.’ Micheal Parenti’s books and speeches are emblematic of this purely educative character; communism is posed as a standalone abstract object, which was then “applied” to countries and because of that, this-or-that outcome occurred. Never is communism posed as the outflow of living history to the American viewer or reader, which it must be if it is to articulate and express the activity of millions of people here in America. This is the key to the communist movement’s marginality: its inherent anarchism—its educative character; the fact that, as it operates, it can only seek to educate the mass of the dominant parties, it has a purely parasitic relation to them; for if there was no other party to educate, what use would this ‘debunking’ and ‘debating’ have? The communist subculture is structurally dependent on the dominant parties—if we were to remove the dominant parties from existence tomorrow, American communism would not come to the fore; it would cease to exist entirely. It is like a leech sucking blood from a massive host, except that its feed is not blood, but the fact that it can hit you with a “gotcha!” (Backed up with facts and evidence, of course!)
All the activist can hope to do is ‘demonstrate.’ They try to demonstrate that they are ‘good’ by going out and feeding poor people, they try to demonstrate that they ‘care’ by organizing a union, they try to demonstrate ‘the new world we’re trying to build’ by picking up trash. So on, and so on. Demonstration takes for granted that you are talking to the unconvinced, without which there would be no one to listen and nothing to demonstrate. One is made acutely aware of this educative/marginal (equivalent here) character when one finds themselves in a space full of fellow socialists and communists, and all anyone has to say are things everybody already agrees upon—the speaker seems to be speaking to non-socialists, as if the whole room wasn't already on the same page. The speaker acts as if they have to win the whole room over with new facts and new moral outrages. Most who show up to a meeting or two and never appear again were likely just privy to this pattern.
Sitting around the table, the activists sermonize to one another over the moral indignation of capitalism, as if they weren’t all in the room for that very reason—it is as if the speaker is convincing everyone to stay. They don’t have much to say, for their economist outlook only asks one question: who profits? They produce an answer: ‘it must be the ruling class!’ They cannot be wrong, but their answer has little to no practical or political significance, no lines of action are opened up, and, once again, the marginal character of the whole operation is put on display: who is this even addressed to? Perhaps we should take to heart the old adage that “no-one can discredit revolutionary Social-Democracy as long as it does not discredit itself,”(FN: Imperialist Economism) for maybe then communists will stop blaming their marginality on everything but themselves, and their purely educative, leech-like ‘political’ existence.
Socialism in this context is reduced to meaning the abstract good, a general sense of collective enthusiasm, and a righteous indignation against the elite. But this model is not exclusive to socialism alone, but characteristic of most ideology. It is not a specific response to existing conditions, but an abstract answer to an equally abstract question.
Activism, since based on an abstract idea of socialism and not a concrete historical movement in the country it operates in, disdains any real theoretical debate, preferring instead to maintain a sort of hollow unity based on moral indignation; and indignation they hope to reinvigorate with every ‘educational’ event the activist organization holds. They hope you walk away more determined than you already were, that capitalism and capitalists are the bad guys, and that we are the good guys. Activism cannot help but do this, since the cohering force for the activist organization is not living political struggle, but rather, a longing for the people to struggle for something they are not currently struggling for—for them to change course.. Lenin noted this feature as a fundamental aspect of economism when he noted that “the majority of the Economists look with sincere resentment (as by the very nature of Economism they must) upon all theoretical controversies, factional disagreements, broad political questions, plans for organizing revolutionaries, etc.” (FN: WITBD p.23). Why is this resentment for theoretical debate fundamental to the activist-economist worldview? Because the basis of the activist organization lies not in political change, but organizational homeostasis. The activist organization must be able to maintain itself under the pressure of naturally arising disagreements. This homeostatic prerogative expresses the activist conception of political change more generally as well, in that it sees political change as the accumulation of supporters, rather than an intervention in mass political practice. Politics, they posit, is accessed once they have enough supporters to qualify as “mass,” even though the activity they hope to access and influence is already as massive as it can get, and every supporter they come across is already set in motion. But we will explore this aspect of their activity later.
The regime of activism-economism suppresses dissent by creating an organizational-cultural aversion to meaningful debate; letting democracy be suppressed not by ‘higher forces’ (though this certainly happens quite often) in the organization, but by ‘self-policing’ members who do not wish to disturb their own peace or the comfort of the status quo, who, in step with the activist organization, indulge themselves on the greatness of their successes, yet never dare to question the overall methods and prerogatives of the organization. It becomes sensitive, and sometimes even dangerous, to ask “are we doing the right thing?” It is always assumed that the organization is engaging in the right activity, and that advancement is just a matter of intensifying that activity—of ‘educating’ more people with their propaganda. Never is the general activity of the organization called into question, and it is assumed that all there is to do is to continue what they are doing now, but more. The last thing the activist organization needs is a political debate, since if it were to come to any concrete political position beyond the most vague subscription to an abstraction, it would be forced to reevaluate its entire modus operandi—and that will not make activists feel good about themselves!
The aversion to meaningful debate or the taking up of concrete political positions is not a separate issue with activism from others stated above; in fact it is fundamental to the ‘movements’ anarchist-educative-marginal character—an expression of it! Communism, as of now, does not locate its basis in political struggle in the United States, it locates its basis in the realm of abstraction, i.e. the realm of pure theory devoid of contact with that theories’ particular manifestations. Theory and practice are two separate objects to the economist, so when they try to make the trip between one and the other, they are methodologically stumped, and forced to try to ‘convince’ others of the validity of their theory. They forget (and in fact never realized) that theory and practice are one in the same, that real life is the purest expression of theory. This is why we find it so odd when we are called “theory heads,” or whatever nonsensical anti-intellectual name they choose to throw at us: we do not pontificate abstract notions of class, or anything for that matter, that is not tied directly to the particular social formation we find ourselves in, that is, the concrete political situation of the United States of America. We do not first locate theoretical concepts in Marx and then try to jam the circular pegs of real political struggle in the square holes of abstract theory. We understand that, upon contact with a concrete, particular situation, the hole becomes circular; only in the ideal model—devoid of the particular characteristics of any given social formation—are square holes found. If the hole is round, then the peg fitting to it will be round as well. In this lays the distinction between “application” and “concretization” (FN: Good for the Gander): application means fruitlessly jamming the square peg into the round hole, concretization, on the other hand, is the recognition that the square peg was designed to be shaved into a round one the entire time. The task for communists in the United States is this and only this: to make “communism” into a concrete position, so when someone chooses to call themselves a “communist,” it automatically situates them in the matrix of American politics(FN: Superpolitics). This is achieved when these words are no longer heard: “I guess I’m a communist, but I don’t know enough.”
Communists in America seem to have an inbuilt inability to translate the abstract into the concrete. It is this shortcoming in particular that holds them back from winning over their close friends, or even their parents, to their position. Their communism does not organically arise out of any struggle actively undertaken by American society. The question of class conflict is posed abstractly. No empirical investigation is needed in order to put forth the propositions they put forth; what communists say come from the books, not real social activity, and is completely uniformed by the concrete struggles taking place in the society they claim to have any relation to. Instead, every concrete struggle is reduced to the terminology of the activist’s preferred ideology. The proposition that it is the “masses alone who make history” is totally neglected, for if we were to take it seriously, our inquiry would start with a look at “premises now in [American] existence.” Fundamental conflicts cannot be presupposed abstractly—they can only be talked about in language formed in the process and course of a specific, concrete conflict. In other words, for us, in language borne of American political life and experience. American, French, and English Marxists need to talk respectively in ways which are American, French, and English. The fact that all three refer to the same body of scholarly facts and concepts serves as an indicator that the question of concretization has not been seriously considered. Successful political movements express themselves in terms that conform to the characteristics, philosophic outlook, and general experience of the nation they operate in—they are concrete.
There is a passage in The Holy Family in which Marx and Engels make the connection that the French political ‘idiom’ represented by Proudhon ‘corresponds’ with the movement of German classical philosophy, the former being a ‘translation’ of the latter into ‘French.’ The ‘idiom’ which was in Germany philosophical and speculative, was in France a juridical and political one. The Italian poet Giosuè Carducci captured the the Franco-German translative relationship as such:
“A King lost his head to Robespierre,
Kant sent God reeling through the air.”
As noted by others (FN: Open Marxism), this thought was borrowed by Carducci from Heinrich Heine, who was also not the originator of the idea. The idea can be found in Hegel’s Lessons on the History of Philosophy,(FN: Open Marxism) in which he says that “the philosophy of Kant, Fichte, and Schelling contains, in the form of thought, a revolution,” and that what “erupted in Germany as spirit and as a concept” was in France demonstrated as “effective reality.” To Antonio Gramsci “this passage of Hegel seems very important as the ‘source’ of the idea expressed in the Thesis on Feuerbach that ‘the philosophers have explained the world and the problem now is to change it.’ ” Further, “philosophy must become politics to be true, to continue to be philosophy: ‘tranquil theory’ must be ‘executed practically,’ must become ‘effective reality.’”
“Philosophy must become politics to be true, to continue to be philosophy.” Looking over the corpse of American Marxism, here we find the fatal wound: Marxism has remained the mere plaything of an isolated subgroup of intellectuals, who, rather than finding bearing in the real political struggles that millions of Americans participate in everyday, find bearing in abstract theory, the only concrete manifestions of which are movements that have lived and died long ago in lands far, far away. “Marxist-Leninism” vs “Marxism-Leninism-Maoism” vs “Mao Zedong Thought” vs “Trotskyism” vs (insert this or that foreign and irrelevant political movement)… can we get our heads out of our asses? Nobody cares. Even if this or that historical trend may be “relevant today” (the favorite cop-out of our historical artifacts we, for some reason, call “communists”), nothing holds us back from sublating the thought into our own, in order to create an organic, uniquely American communism. The modern (proletarian) revolution acts in the spirit of creating its own name, its own signifiers, and it, by its very nature, “can only create its poetry from the future, not from the past.” The revolutionaries of the modern day cannot rely on “superstitious regard for the past” which only serves to “deaden their awareness of their own content” (FN: 18th Brumaire), the function of which is to avoid the difficult task of political concretization, i.e. ‘translation.’
What is Organizing?
Geese carved out its space in American communist discourse through our critique of the instrumental conception of organizing, and of the party. The critique begins in a sort of unconscious manner in my previous article, in which I assert that any new political view cannot be posed as a ‘rational alternative’ to ‘what is,’ but as only a continuation and culmination of ‘what is’ and what ‘has been;’ that politics is historically constructed. A few weeks after our initial release on April 7, P.K. Gandakin released an article called “Good for the Gander!” in which our critique of the instrumental conception of organizing is for the first time consciously laid out, as well as the first mention of concretization made—which as time went on, after the release, became more and more central to our thought.
This article, as time went on, became Geese’s most politically defining article, in that it outlined in broad strokes our conception of the political party and what it ‘means’ to “organize” as a communist. I hope to expand upon the content of the article here, in pursuit of elaborating further and making clearer our conception of politics. However, we cannot answer the question “what is organizing?” without at the same time elaborating at the same our conception of the political party more broadly. This should be kept in mind as we initially take a look at Gandakin’s article, and move to an exploration of this question in more detail, however implicit some of it may be in our initial exploration.
Responding to the charge that our position is that “the communist movement needs to be raised to a higher level in national politics,” P.K. spends the next five pages picking this idea apart, and in doing so, lays out Geese’s critique of the instrumental conception of organizing, i.e. activism. The initial error P.K. identifies here lays in confusing the “communist movement,” which he calls a meaningless and empty abstraction, with the actual movement toward communism, which appears to our communists to be nothing other than ‘liberalism’—something which needs to be “moved away from” in their view.
The second error P.K. highlights is Berkman’s belief that Geese thinks anything ‘needs’ to happen—we do not believe in necessity; but this topic is besides the point being discussed here, so we will save that for another day. Of most interest here is his third point in which the word ‘raised’ is italicized, stressed, and cannons let loose upon. The paragraph in full:
Third, Geese does not believe the movement needs to be raised anywhere, because raising is not the task. The conception of the Party (or the ‘movement’) as a formal organizational body composed of individuals brought together by a shared ideology, etc. is an activistic and academic understanding of the Party. It conceives of the Party’s task as convincing individuals through propaganda or appeal to their rational interest, or by building ‘good will’ in communities through organizing, activism, mutual aid, etc. It pretends activists are the only meaningful element in social life; it’s a Florence Nightingale-flavored Blanquism.
Fundamental to the aforementioned “activistic and academic understanding of the party” is the illusion that there is anything at all to be raised in the first place. The political activity of millions of people does not need to be ‘raised’—it exists at the pinnacle to begin with; that of making world history. What would this raising consist of anyway? ‘Educating’ the liberals? Going from junior partner to senior partner by ‘educating’ them? All communists imagine is ‘educating.’ Being an expression of living social practice? Don’t bother! It won't conform with their protestant hustler work ethic!
It is always funny to see Marxists rail on and on against ‘great man theory,’ asserting verbally that the “masses make history,” and then proceeding to espouse and live a sort of ‘great group theory’ in practice—centering the activity of dedicated activists and organizers as the motive force of social change. Just because there is (barely) more than one of you does not save you from the fact that it is just a slightly altered form of great man theory. “The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history” is a line all too often forgotten by our so-called “historical-materialists.” While parading slogans such as this around, their practice continues to portray exactly the opposite conviction: “we, the dedicated activists, are the motive force in the making of world history; the masses role is to join us, in a secondary supporting role, because it seems we need their support in achieving our goals.” The masses do not begin to make history only after attaching themselves to some intellectual grouping (let alone the most isolated one in our entire society)—those political groups that do ascend to hegemony do so not because the people ‘support’ them, but because that group expresses their living practice, independent of the ‘supporters’ knowledge or ‘support.’ We must reject the idea that people are just rational choosers of abstract political doctrines.
The activistic mindset understands political work as a sheerly technical process that is achieved through the correct actions and decision, i.e., effective organizing, pamphleteering, correct coinciding with rational interests, etc. But this treats the existing political structure as an arbitrary and essentially neutral field (—rather than as a “super-politics”!). Liberalism, e.g., is treated as popular because the people have been convinced of it through news media, or because the Democrat Party has access to so much funding, etc. Historical materialism inverts this relationship: because liberalism as a politics is able to effectively play the role of structuring and expressing the mass practice of concrete social groups that exist in a concrete historical formation, it consequently (as a logical consequence rather than a historical or temporal one) also dominates the ideological superstructure, possesses the ability to direct the distribution of social surplus, etc. The origin of the power of the governing class (i.e., the social group that directs the state) is not in the mere possession of that power per se; the state, rather, is how the totality of political practice necessarily designates which ideology and social group accesses institutional power.
In other words, the state is nothing more than the institutional brute fact of a classes’ dominance. It is not an empty office that happens to be occupied by a certain class—class dominance creates for itself the throne it occupies.
If history is principally determined by intellectual groups with sections of the ‘masses’ attached and in a secondary, supporting role, then it might be fair to say that the political structure is an “essentially neutral field.” But as I attempted to highlight in one of my previous articles in which I investigated the political shifts of the mid-19th century, the field is not neutral at all—it is determined by a super-politics, i.e. “the totalizing reference point at the heart of any given political order and which every political agent is articulated through.” In short, the concept of super-politics undermines the implicit voluntarism found in most American communist conceptions of political parties: the idea that groups show up to politics with a set of ideas, and with enough proper organizing, with enough door-knocking, flyering, conversations with neighbors, etc., they propel themselves onto the national stage. If this is the field of politics, then following naturally is the tendency to see politics as a purely educative venture, of door-knocking, of flyering, of conversations with neighbors, of ‘propaganda of the deed.’ Because politics is structured according to the super-politics of the day, politics is not a simple matter of sharing one’s convictions, but rather of expressing concrete historical practices.
In a conversation some years ago, before the idea of Geese came about, and while we were all still in the CPUSA, fellow editor J. Ryder was saying exactly this; that it is not the amount organizing, pamphleteering, or canvassing that the Democrats do that puts them in the position of power, but rather that they are able to articulate the mass practice of millions of people. In response, one of our local bureaucrats, also a prominent ALU organizer, responded in absolute indignation, scolding our friend with appeals to their ‘organizing experience.’ “How could you say that?! I have been organizing for 10 years! The Democrats rely on on-the-ground organizers to stay relevant! Who are you to tell me that?!” These types truly and honestly think that communism—the elevation of the entire human species to a higher and more total form of civilization—is achieved by putting your head down and “doing the work.” They believe that the people are on the “wrong” track, and that they will be the ones to put them on the right track, but only if they “do the work;” as if the people were cohered into the Democratic Party orbit by the action of some organizers! It is a sad sight to see that this voluntaristic nonsense passing for Marxism nowadays.
They don’t realize that the people are already, and always have been, on the track, and it is a matter of giving them consciousness of what they are already doing—we will never tell the world to cease what it is doing, nor can we!—the communist’s job is to tell the world what it is already actively undertaking every day, to help the world articulate its own activity to itself. P.K. continues:
This point makes clear the importance of the displacing of emphasis from the communist movement to the proletariat as a whole. There is nothing the communist movement can do to ‘rise’ to a higher level in national politics. If we agree that the masses make history, consistently following this thesis means that the masses are already, right now, making history. Revolution cannot be conceived as the top of a ladder with multiple steps that you can sequentially climb through instrumental action—not a matter of moving from a sect, to a large sect, to a small mass party, to a big mass party, etc., but as being tied to and determined by the relation of the Party to national political life qua mass political practice.
We see now that the ‘organization’ that communists must undertake is, although partially a matter of organizing an organization, much broader than that. It is a matter of making communism into the logical conclusion of American life; of expressing organic practices that, every day, animate politics, and translating them into a vision of tomorrow’s America—in the same way the Democrats express a vision for America (not abstract liberalism), and the Republicans express a vision for America (not abstract conservatism). Concretization means that when we go up on the stage, on television, on social media, etc., we no longer proclaim fidelity to an abstract ideology named ‘Marxism’, we instead proclaim fidelity to a vision of our nation that we, as the American communists, desire. The fact that the vision is communist is not because we are communists, but because the real resolution of the social contradictions of a particular society is the actual content of any particular transition to communism.
To see ‘organizing’ as the organization of a series of formal arrangements between individuals and groups is to fail to see that the only thing that can possibly ‘call forth’ a new political party is the mass practice of millions of people—it is to fall for the bourgeois notion of ‘getting what you want when you put your mind to it.’ We cannot will the party into existence through enough ‘correct’ decisions, the same way a homeless man cannot simply become a millionaire by ‘putting his mind to it’ and making enough ‘correct’ decisions.
Instrumental action is not how the Bolsheviks, or the German SPD or KPD, or Mao’s CPC, or any party ever in the history of humanity has ever become a meaningful political force. The Bolsheviks became the dominant party in Russia in 1917 because they were able to effectively articulate a concrete ideology capable of structuring and guiding the political practice of the Russian proletariat in its relation to national political life, not because they did a bunch of mutual aid and flyering. “Bread, land, peace” trumps organizing every time.
The instrumental conception of political action precludes the idea of concretization, since the steps it believes itself to be taking toward its goal are informed solely on the idea of sharing something with the people, on ‘teaching’ them something—that thing being Marxism in the abstract. Imagine if the Democrats went around trying to teach everyone the theories of Voltaire and Rousseau! Marxists forget that Marxism is worthless unless it is translated into the concrete—unless it is able to articulate the activity of the social formation it wishes to change, unless it is related to the specific practice of a people.
In fact, Gramsci examined this trend under the name of “Byzantism” in his Prison Notebooks. He describes it as “[t]he regressive tendency to treat so-called theoretical questions as if they have value in themselves, independently of any specific practice” (p.200 Gramsci). I would turn the word ‘specific’ on its side if I could, in order to emphasize this point all the more—that concretization can only take place in the realm of the specific. Only in relation to the activity of a specific social formation can a theoretical assertion find its political validity:
“In short, the principle must always rule that ideas are not born of other ideas, philosophies of other philosophies; they are a continually renewed expression of real historical development. […] Identity in concrete reality determines identity of thought, and not vice-versa. It can further be deduced that every truth, even if it is universal, and even if it can be expressed by an abstract formula of a mathematical kind, owes its effectiveness to its being expressed in the language appropriate to specific concrete situations. If it cannot be expressed in such specific terms, it is a byzantine and scholastic abstraction, good only for phrase mongers to toy with” (Ibid, p.201).
The world has a point when they criticize Marxists for being phrase mongers—you think that criticism arose out of nowhere, that it fell out of a coconut tree? The world sees that the American, French, and English Marxists say the same things, that their “politics” amounts to nothing more than toying with some phrases that seem to come out of left field. The distinction between application and concretization is certainly subtle, but it is essential! And it is in this distinction that Geese sets itself apart from the rest of the American communist milieu in regards to the question of “organizing;” we do not think we need to “apply” Marxism—that would make us an externality!—nor is it a matter of “reinterpretation,” for this only shows a lack of conviction.
What it means to organize as a communist is to do what every successful political movement has done: translate the original body of thought into the language of the situation—forging a concrete vision of our countries’ future. Politics is historically constructed, and political movements cannot, and never will be, be matters of posing alternatives with rational argumentation and evidence. The Communist Party is not ‘organized’ by activists into the status of Party, what communists need to be organizing is the ethical-politcal conditions for the emergence of such a party to emerge, a “zeitgeist” if you will. Communists need to be the organizers of the concrete communist position, proclaimers of a new vision, the executioner of the days of “not knowing enough” to be a communist, and concretizers of a vision that goes beyond fidelity to an abstract doctrine, the loud-mouthed evangelists of tomorrow’s America.
Notes on The Prince
“In what will the history of a political party consist?” was a question asked by Antonio Gramsci to himself as he sat in that cold fascist jail cell. In order to answer the question, he had to also answer the question of what the political party actually is.
Will it be a simple narrative of the internal life of a political organization? How it comes into existence, the first groups which constitute it, the ideological controversies through which its programme and its conception of the world and of life are formed? In such a case, one would merely have a history of certain intellectual groups, or even sometimes the political biography of a single personality. The study will therefore have to have a vaster and more comprehensive framework.
What does he mean by a “vaster and more comprehensive framework?”
The history will have to be written of a particular mass of men who have followed the leaders of the party, sustained them with their trust, loyalty, and discipline, or criticized them “realistically” by dispersing or remaining passive before certain initiatives. [My emphasis]
I want to draw attention to the last clause, which I have put in italics. What does this mean? I have been pondering upon this line for weeks and every day it acquires new life and meaning. Put simply, it means that this “mass of men,” regardless of their affiliation with the party as a formal organization, is an essential component of the party’s history, and, more importantly, the passivity with which these organizations are greeted by their social group is, moreso than anything else, the organizations’ most defining features. This will make more sense in a moment, however. “But will this mass be made up solely of members of the party?” he asks. He answers, and in doing so begins to elaborate what it means to ‘organize’ in the political—and not activistic—sense.
Clearly it will be necessary to take some account of the social group of which the party in question is the expression and the most advanced element. The history of a party, in other words, can only be the history of a particular social group. [My emphasis]
The history of the party, therefore, is not the history of this or that organization styling itself as a communist party, but the history of the social group as a whole. The history of the ‘Communist Party USA’ is not the history of The Communist Party, it is the history of a sect. The history of the communist party will be the history of all subaltern groups in American society—every group that has, is, and will push itself to the political surface through struggle.
When we see sects undertaking initiatives to “channel support” or “create enthusiasm” over certain topics, it is to, first of all, imply—and in some ways to admit to—the organization’s marginal character. It is to maintain that marginality consciously, in keeping the organization focused on topics that the activist organization is already aware nobody is talking about, and ultimately it betrays the sect’s purely parasitic relation to the dominant parties (and thus to actual life as well), it expresses for all to see the sect’s educative conception of politics, in which the dominant parties attained their status by sharing their own Micheal Parenti-esque videos, or something of the like.. Gramsci continues:
But this group is not isolated; it has friends, kindred groups, opponents, enemies. The history of any given party can only emerge from the complex portrayal of the totality of society and State. Hence it may be said that to write the history of a party means nothing less then to write the general history of a country from a monographic viewpoint, in order to highlight a particular aspect of it. A party will have had greater or less significance and weight precisely to the extent to which its particular activity has been more or less decisive in determining a country’s history. We may thus see that from the way in which the history of a party is written there emerges the author's conception of what a party is and should be. [My emphasis]
The political party, far from being a mere organization, must be nothing less than our country’s history embodied. All roads, all stories, all strands, must lead conclusively to the party, and nothing else. In recognizing such a fact, the political party, and the organization of that political party, becomes so much more than simply putting together a group of people, it becomes an epic narrative—one in which nothing else can be deduced, and no other course considered even remotely viable, except for the creation of the communist party, and by extension, revolution. The political party is living, walking history, and can be nothing but. An organization does not climb up the proverbial ‘ladder’ to such a status—it either is, or it isn't. Further, the party is not a mere organization dedicated to carrying out the revolution, an external cause of revolution—the party, rather, is the revolution itself; for to organize the party is nothing less than to carry out the revolution.
This may seem like an empty phrase designed to sound poetic and inspiring, but it is far from that; the co-equivalence of revolution and Party is a structural feature of the vanguard Party, and more broadly, of the foundation of a new force—the new state.
Machiavelli asserted that it was necessary for a new prince—in pursuit of the goal of founding of a new state (Italy in his case)—to use his own forces, to recruit his own army (completely made up of his own subjects), etc. Beyond being a mere maxim for military success, this assertion was in fact a deeply political point, but one only able to be understood if Machiavelli’s politics are understood as well. In brief, Machiavelli was a nationalist, who wished to see his Italy united under one prince. However, he understood that no prince ruling at his time could be the prince to unite Italy, for they were all essentially marked by their ‘oldness,’ their feudal heritage—hence why The Prince focuses not on princes in general, but on the new prince. All ‘advice’ in the book is for the new prince, the prospective unifier of Italy—everything one reads in The Prince needs to be read with this in mind—hence why Louis Althusser characterized Machiavelli as the ‘philosopher of beginnings.’
Machiavelli tells this prospective Prince that it is necessary to arm the people, to recruit from the population, not just for the benefit of genuine loyalty (it must be borne in mind that Italy at this time was loaded with mercenaries and foreign troops, so this was of course a concern), but, most importantly, for the fact that the very act basing one’s army on the people, on civilians, is an essential moment in the building of the nation—of Italy. The construction of the army is not, for Machiavelli, the simple construction of an external means (You need an army to unify a country?! No shit!), but an essential moment in that very unification. In the words of Althusser: “the forms of army recruitment and organization have the effect of making the end internal to the army itself, [...] (the) creation of the army is already an accomplishment of the goal. Not only are the means not external to the end, but the end is internal to the means” (p.88-89).
The communist party built in ‘pursuit’ of social revolution, like the army built in pursuit of Italian unification, must be in itself an expression of its ends. There is no first building a party, and then carrying out revolution, for this implies that there are steps and stages to the process. We owe it to this fact that the “Communist Party” of the United States of America is not a party, nor the “Party” for Socialism and Liberation, nor the “Revolutionary” “Communist” “Party.” These are all sects with no basis in history or in politics; their only basis being the intellectual exercises of a subset of marginal intellectuals. Their emergence is not an expression of history, nor is their emergence an expression of “the real movement which abolishes the present state of things,” or anything ‘currently in existence.’
If communism is going to be something that ‘flows out of history,’ it needs to, in some sense, exist already. The revolution must already be in progress, for if the revolution is posited as something that occurs ‘later,’ only after we reach a nebulous certain point (“critical mass”), we end up betraying a voluntarist conception of politics, one in which the political field sits neutral and ready to be ‘taken’ by whoever does the ‘best organizing.’ Derivative of and worse than this, we end up leaving the listener with the same reservations as they have always held, “that it sounds like an impossible task.” The sense of powerlessness so fundamental to the people’s condition under the regime of capital is retained within this conception of the party and of politics. (FN: See IPP) What will it mean, then, for communism to ‘flow out of history?’ The definitive answer would be able to carry us into tomorrow; the answering of this question is the main task of our movement today. For now it suffices to say that recognizing that communism must flow out of history, and that it cannot be a ‘debate point’ if we seek to make it real, are the prerequisites for the answering of the question. The building of the communist party is not the creation of an external means to an end, but a process internal to the end; the end in itself. And it must be remembered that the communist party is not built ‘from the ground up’ by a sectarian intelligentsia—that it can only be brought into being by the ‘merging’ of the communist intelligentsia with living history, i.e. “premises already in existence.” The first step in the direction of this task is breaking the stranglehold that bourgeois concepts have over the communist left—the execution of the bourgeois concept of ‘practice,’ and the resurrection of the Marxist conception. Let us take seriously the proposition that claims that it is the masses who make history, and them alone.
