Revolution Isn't Perfect - It Is Necessary
From The German Ideology and Mao to Identity and Revolution Today
Morning Comrades.
I have been catching up with two pieces of work that I have not touched for some time as I felt that their insights and provided tools have become increasingly relevant for us going forward, two from Marx ( A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy & The German Ideology ) and Mao ( Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan ) to be specific. The later provided the title for todays dispatch and Marx’s “Critique” is particularly relevant as it relates to today’s question of identity.
To start though, and this is the last week in which you’ll have to read about this, the publishing schedule for this newsletter is changing as of February. Everyone will get one newsletter a week for free, potentially two depending if I feel the need for it. The patrons to this project will receive an additional dispatches, more in depth / analytical / practical with regular free art, there is no stuff out there amazingly, to go along with it. I will reduce the monthly subscription fee down to 5USD to make this more accessible - I hope - and if you are so inclined, you can jump on this today, as you get a free two week trial as it is:
Messy Revolutions & Ideology
There is absolutely no way I can the current flood of thoughts in regards to these texts and their relevance into this newsletter today, so I will get into them in greater detail over the course of this week but the core essence of where I am going to with, is a continuation of my critique of individualism/identity trumping over materialism and the necessary reversal thereof.
Mao has always been a prolific doer on top of being a thinker, the actual organizational, revolutionary and often violent work leading up to the Communist Revolution in China is breathtaking in its clarity and scope, but specifically the Hunan Report is relevant, today to start with. In this report, Mao stated that:
"A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another."
It is not so much the focus on the reference to violence that I want to focus on today, but rather Mao’s realization that in face of the material realities, the sheer level of violence the Chinese Peasantry was subjected to prior to the Revolution demanded action rather than the party and bullshit that is often demanded in the bourgeoise experience. Similar to the identity affirming party and bullshit that is absolutely required to survive in the 21st Century Western Capitalism and its focus on Bullshit Jobs, rather than doing. It is easier to demand ideological purity, both in the sense of the academic nonsense you have to project to attain a PhD, for example, and ideological identity purity on that same note when it is all propped up by a monetary and power system that isn’t interest in wealth distribution but maintain its chokehold on the working classes. In today’s experience where the numbing availability of drugs via consumption in all forms for the working classes are becoming unattainable, the social currency of “purity” is the last vestige of top-down economics. Hence, Mao’s insights here being of incredible value - as it stands today, in the work that we are all doing, there will be no perfect Socialism and those asking for it, are our enemies. Socialist revolution and post-capitalist future building is messy, complex and nuanced work - that is good btw and definitely not a critique. What is “right” to do is never easy, but necessary. Not everything will turn out the way many “revolutionaries” want them to because that is the reality of our material conditions. Nevertheless and utterly so, this process of revolution(s) are necessary.
That brings us to Marx, not in the historical sense but how his analysis is relevant to us today. Two quotes to work from:
Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established , an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.
------ The German Ideology, 1845
This is particular relevant to only to the above interpretation and relevance of Mao’s work but about what we are doing today. A lot of people, especially those terminally online, will have opinions about what is what, what it isn’t and will aim to build a “followership” for a lack of a better word to mobilize for whatever purpose. In on itself, relatively irrelevant to be honest but for the sake of today’s communist pep talk, let’s focus on Marx and Engels clearly stated here. “Communism” isn’t a state of affairs, an immoveable object, reality, anything tangible to attain, to work for, to receive but far more importantly, a movement, and this is where the key lies. This then refutes this the bourgeois mode of individual identity as social worth, because “being” and “identifying” are not doing. You can claim to be “a” all day long, if you actions, specifically your actions that influence and change the material reality of your community and beyond, do not have any actual impact, it becomes irrelevant. Plainly speaking, specifically in our so heavily propagandized identity shaped world, you have to move to abolish the present state of things, you have to do, not be. I will spend some more time on this topic this week but for today, that leads to the last quote that has been living rent free in my head these past days and that is:
"The mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political, and spiritual processes of life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but on the contrary, it is their social existence which determines consciousness."
This relates to the question of action vs. identity in the following. Your material conditions, how you live, eat, the stresses and pleasures resulting from these and so determine your lived and perceived experience, your identity as such, and not vice versa. You can proclaim to be a circus clown all day long, but the rent due at the end of the month determines that you have to do something else that actually pays said rent. That determines your lived and perceived reality. The reason I bring this up is solely to cement the point of this dispatch today, it is doing that is necessary, the being arrives from that - and these days that is for a large part of the west, upside down. We can talk about the “internet” all day and what it has done to people, and I do think this is a large part of it, but if you take one insight with you from today let it be this. What you to be, you have to do. It’s doable, it’s messy, might even be violent but then all change is. The point is to do what is right and not what is demanded.
Messy, Revolutionary Love to you all.
Yours,
V.