Roy Bhaskar’s essay, “Critical Realism, Social Relations and Arguing for Socialism” found in the collection Reclaiming Reality, acts as both introduction to the volume and as an attempt to articulate the relationship between epistemology (specifically, his own) to politics (specifically, socialist). He writes,
I take it whatever our politics, in the narrow party or factional sense, socialists can agree that what we must be about today is the building of a movement for socialism – in which socialism wins a cultural-intellectual hegemony, so that it becomes the enlightened common-sense of our age.
He adds that this project requires a philosophical basis,
We need to take philosophy seriously because it is the discipline that has traditionally underwritten both what constitutes science or knowledge and which political practices are deemed legitimate.
Finally, he leads up to the point at hand:
But they [critical realists] hold that we will only be able to understand – and so change – the social world if we identify the structures at work that generate those events or discourses. Such structures are irreducible to the patterns of events and discourses alike. These structures are not spontaneously apparent in the observable pattern of events; they can only be identified through the practical and theoretical work of the social sciences.
For the most part I’m with him. I’m even willing to overlook the strange locutions such as “among radical-chic intellectuals the dominant intellectual ‘fashionmeter’…”. But, where I get confused is when he says things – based on the foundation laid above – like “projects of human self-emancipation.” What could it possibly mean to speak of contrasting terms, like “non-human other-emancipation”? Perhaps Carl Schmitt’s space invaders are here to liberate us rather than to enslave us?
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I think this idea that we need to understand how the world works significantly undercuts the claim that socialists need to form themselves into a movement to take intellectual hegemony. With Foucault, I would see the lessons of the twentieth centur as being that that kind of project doesn’t really work. Specifically, I would say it’s either just completely failed, or become hopelessly co-opted/corrupted. There are so many movements trying to forge a united socialist movement, and none of them are getting us anywhere. In any case, it seems to me like this attempt to compete head-on with the advertising industry is doomed to fail. I’d say, again with Foucault, that the only thing you should try to do is ruthlessly criticise the present and see where that takes us.
This is the problem that I’m becoming increasingly sympathetic with – and, indeed, it’s one that you’ve avoided here. Critique requires, for lack of a better term, an imaginary dimension: the possibility that things could be otherwise. That otherwise, broadly speaking, could be worse or better. Presumably, one wants the better rather than the worse. This implies a distinction between, on the one hand, the present and its other and, on the other hand, a good other and a bad other. We’re left in a position that requires a normative judgment that is anything but “Something else, please!”
By your standards, the gulag is better than capitalism because, at least, it isn’t capitalism. Now, this reads as a joke – and it is – but the gulag is, indeed, ‘a ruthless criticism of our present’ that has ‘taken us somewhere else.’ But, of course, once in the gulag we could say, “Please, something else!” and, there we have it, American capitalism again. There is no basis in your criteria for anything other than fleeting personal preference.
Now, we know it isn’t as crude as that. Foucault tells us in “What is Enlightenment?” the normative ground of his project: to escape the self-incurred tutelage. That is, the project of autonomy. He quickly starts to sound like someone speaking canned platitudes about “human self-emancipation”!
Of course, this leaves the question open – still – regarding non-human other-emancipation.
Erm . . . that’s a bit of a caricature of what I said Craig. I’m not implying that anything is better. Absolutely not. I’m taking what I take to be a pure Foucaudldian line (I’m writing up, so at present me and Foucault are pretty indistinguishable for me). Foucault says we should just criticise any reality, as an ongoing process. So we’re not going to get behind a positive reality that could organise a gulag in the name of defending itself.
“I only propose therefore this single imperative, but this will be categorical and unconditional: never do politics” (Sécurité, Territoire, Population, p.6).
Mark, I’m fully behind Foucault’s concept of critique; it is, afterall, essential to how I understand democracy. My point vis a vis Foucault (and you) is somewhat different and, it seems, you aren’t interested in picking it up: go ahead and critique without advocating a programme; demand change without suggesting a course; but recognize the serious risk you face when you demand change – you might get something far more horrible than what you are critiquing. Hence, the importance – in my position, as well in Bhaskar’s although his words and concepts are different – of a ‘democratic imaginary’ of some sort. As much as I despise Habermas, his crypto-normativism charge hits you right between the eyes! And it is a serious charge that is not reducible to “Well, who is going to be theoretical vanguard of the left: post-structuralism or critical theory?”
Yeah, but then what’s the programme? Erect a utopianism and get everyone to believe in it? That’s a bad programme, because it presupposes the actual situation. Habermasians are the worst utopians (Foucault calls Habermas a utopian actually, and rightly so) because they in my experienced are obsessed with the ideal speech situation and furthering it and thus totally ignore the political realities. I had this with a Habermasian friend over the Mohammed cartoons – the guy was completely blind to realities like Islamophobia because for him it was all about creating an utopian public sphere.
I think you are imputing too much into the imaginary, here. This, again, is Bhaskar’s point: Bhaskar is not advocating a particular brand of socialism or what a socialist society would look like. He is advocating, however, the attempt to create socialism as a viable option; that is, something that people can look at and say, “Why, yes, I am a socialist.” Such that someone could run for the Presidency of the United States and openly call themselves socialist – similarly for England or Canada or what have you. At present this is impossible!
Perhaps weirdly, contrary to the common use of the term, Bhaskar is advocating a socialist fundamentalism: on the one hand, a vision of socialism that all socialists can agree to factions notwithstanding and, on the other hand, a belief and conviction that socialism is fundamentally correct, that is true, despite the variety of forms it may take and its having not existend yet.
There’s nothing ‘utopian’ here. There isn’t a planned, detailed vision of the socialist society. There is no five year plan. But there is an image of a concrete alternative to capitalism – the same one you refuse to admit having when you, yourself, critique capitalism.
Well, I guess here is where I do break free of Foucault, in that I do identify as a socialist, precisely around Kurt Vonnegut’s definition, which was something like building a society in which everyone felt a sense of self-worth. But I remain dubious about attempting to establish this as a hegemonic concept, both in terms of possibility and desirability! Not that it wouldn’t be desirable to flick a switch and have everyone saying they’re socialists, but actually that’s a huge social shift, which can only occur complicatedly, and we’d have to watch how things unfold and deal with the realities. Bhaksar’s stuff, in sum, sounds like prattle to me.
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