💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › jason-mcquinn-critical-self-theory.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 11:26:07. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Critical Self-Theory Author: Jason McQuinn Language: en Topics: Anarchism, critical theory, Modern Slavery, Enemy Combatant Source: Enemy Combatant Pamphlet
Today, as ever, any genuine theory of living – of authentic engagement
in the social world – must begin with the subjective, with the point of
view of the necessary subject of that life. Thus, any genuinely
revolutionary theory must be at the same time self-theory – a theory of
how to live everyday, of how to struggle with the reigning structures of
misery and their deceptive appearances. Any effective self-theory must
clarify and define at least a few of the most important key concepts
necessary for such a theoretical comprehension of the modern world. Most
of these concepts are in no way new. They can be found wherever people
are attempting to grasp the nature of their world and change it. But the
general use of these concepts is more often than not ambiguous,
mystified, and deprived of any radical incisiveness. Because of this,
these concepts need to be constantly rediscovered and reinvented in the
dialectical movement of our everyday lives in the history we are making.
Through such rediscovery and reinvention we must construct a living
vocabulary of shared concepts with which we can collectively grasp our
real conditions as they are lived, concepts which will arm our theory by
increasing the precision of its aim and power of its impact.
“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas:
i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the
same time its ruling intellectual force. The ruling ideas are nothing
more than the ideal expression [both in form and content] of the
dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships
grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class
the ruling one, hence the ideas of its dominance.”
“There they flaunt their sensitivity, ranting in private against theory
as being something cold and abstract, and lauding ‘human relations.’”
“Man, your head is haunted; you have wheels in your head!”
Human life without theory is impossible. Between the conception of a
desire and its satisfaction always stands the human activity necessary
for the unification of that desire with its object. In every case this
necessary activity has two coincident aspects – the practical and the
theoretical. These aspects are not strictly separate and totally
different; but rather they are intertwined and can be best conceived as
simply crystallizations at different points of the same unitary human
activity.
All practical activity (or at least that which occurs above the level of
purely reflexive behavior) expresses theory. A trivial example might be:
you can’t go downtown without having some idea, or theory, of where
downtown is.
All theoretical activity is at the same time practical. Even the most
contemplative interpretation of the world has innumerable, practical
consequences – including for instance, and often most importantly, the
adoption of a stance of passive suffering of the fortunes and
misfortunes of that world.
Unavoidably, the conception of a theory unrelated to any practice, and
of a practice unrelated to any theory is itself a theoretical
construction which contains a very definite relation to practical
activity. Theory is inseparable from practice just as the
objectifications of theory are inconceivable without the activity of
their production and use.
Yet, for many, if not most people, “theory” seems alien, because for all
of us “theory” has usually meant having our thinking done for us by
ideologues and authorities – by parents, priests, teachers, bosses,
politicians, experts, counselors, etc. As a result the theory we use in
our everyday lives to realize our desires, our self-theory, has
generally become artificially split into two fragments whose forms
reinforce and help reproduce each other.
On the one side we often appropriate whole, as if it is our own thought,
an ideology (or religion or even a few fragments of the ideologies) we
say we “believe in”. This becomes what we tend to consciously identify
as our core philosophy, religion, ideology or theory of the world. For
many people this core will be identified as something like Science,
Marxism, Christianity, Humanism, Capitalism, Socialism, Islam, Buddhism
or similar things. These ideologies or religions tend to be abstract,
idealist, and rigid. On the other hand, we allow the more immediately
practical side (the everyday life side) of our self-theory to remain at
a level of unconscious assimilation and use. It appears as such a
“natural” expression of “the way things are” (i.e. as “common sense”)
that there seems to be no need to question its origins, its basis, or
its relation to us. All too often this side of our self-theory is never
consciously identified as theory at all.
The thought of most people oscillates between the two poles of this
split in our thinking. The theory thus expressed can be classified
according to the usual (or average) place it occupies in the continuum
between the two poles. Some people tend to be more ideological in their
thought. They attempt to situate themselves in some kind of more or less
theoretically coherent relation with their world as a whole; but they
usually attempt this by forcing their entire lives to revolve around
some abstract “beliefs” (two obvious examples include fundamentalist
Christians, most of the various Marxists – especially members of all the
putrid Leninist, Stalinist, Trotskyite or Maoist sects).
Other people tend toward un(self)conscious self-expression; they take
the world as it superficially appears to them for granted as if it were
an humanly unchangeable environment and try to get by on an absolute
minimum of personal thought. They usually function almost entirely
within terms of the images and slogans which are systematically
force-fed to them by mass media and all the dominant institutions whose
propaganda seems so nearly inescapable (the churches, government,
schools, corporations, etc.). When they are forced to think about their
lives, their thinking always remains fragmentary and incoherent since
they really have no conscious idea of where they stand in relation to
the totality of society, its institutions, or the natural world.
In the end, wherever a person’s mode of thinking might be classified on
this continuum, by default, one way or another, that person’s thinking
is largely done for him or her by others.
All the thoughts which unreflectively seem so natural, all these
beliefs, tend to express the needs, principles, and social relationships
of the dominant modes of organization of our society at the same time as
they tend to deny the subjective reality of those who hold them. As such
they are essentially expressions of what is best termed “ideology”.
Ideology always expresses a defense (whether explicitly or implicitly)
of our social alienation. In our present epoch it functions largely as a
defense of the closest thing we have to a worldwide system of domination
and exploitation – capitalism – by propagating justifications for most
forms of hierarchical organization and commodity (buying & selling)
relationships.
It assumes that the basic forms of the existing political-economy, and
of social relationships in general, are purely natural facts rather than
products of human social activity within history which are potentially
subject to rationally determined changes.
In our era ideology nearly always constitutes a theoretical acceptance
at some level of the logic of capital (the alienation of our
life-activity sold within a hierarchical social system). As such,
ideology can be characterized very simply as the form taken by
capitalism in the realm of thought. It is as if capitalism were thinking
up its own justifications through us. Indeed, it is as if the bodies of
human beings were not only the tools and resources capitalism needs for
the reproduction of its physical social relationships (corporations, the
institutions of private property, cops, courts, laws, etc.), but it is
as if our minds have largely become appendages of this system, also.
Because ideology is always the form taken by alienation in the realm of
thought, the more alienated we are, the less we understand of our real
situations. The less we understand where we are and what we are really
doing, the more we allow our lives to be determined and controlled by
the dominant institutions, and the less we really do exist in any
meaningful way as ourselves. And the less we assert our own autonomous
existence, the more palpable an existence is taken on by capitalism, by
the frozen images of our roles in all the various social hierarchies and
transactions of commodity-exchange. It is as if all previous genuinely
human communities have been invaded, taken-over by an alien race of
body-snatchers, and been supplanted by an entirely different and
vacantly hideous form of life.
The split or separation involved in our self-theory (mentioned earlier)
is actually a split in ideological self-theory. It is a reflection in
thought of the basic split in our own daily life-activities between the
more immediate personal reality we live and experience as our own every
day, and the more abstract and alienating ideological reality which we
have allowed ourselves to be enclosed within. It reflects the conflict
between our most intimate and genuine desires, and the alienating social
context which always seems to confront them.
Instead of a transparent relation between an individual and his/her
world in which the individual is a conscious subject with the world
constituting the objects of desire, there is a mystified relationship.
The actual social subject displaces his or her own desire with those of
a theoretical abstraction which demands submission to its desires. And
this abstraction is at the same time the projection of the real
domination of the individual subject by capital onto the realm of myth,
metaphor, or superstition. Without realizing it, human beings consent to
being taken-over and used, as the tools of God, or Progress, or
Historical Necessity, or the Market, Authority, Democracy, the Dollar,
etc. And for most people, this actually means allowing themselves to be
torn in many different directions by several (or even scores of)
different demands seemingly mad by such abstractions. In such a
situation can it really be any surprise that most people are so totally
confused about nearly everything?
Ideology includes all such theories of human activity in which ideas
seemingly escape their real connections with the subjective human world
from which they must arise and are instead perceived as purely
objective, ahistorical, and either of higher value than our own personal
values, or else as value-free entities moving according to their own (or
according to non-human “natural”) laws. Inevitably, these ideological
abstractions actually come to rest in an unconscious, unperceived, and
mystified relationship with the world they are used to attempt to
comprehend.
The resolution to the dilemma posed by the split which accompanies all
instances of ideological theory is the dialectical path toward unitary
thought – critical self-theory. Critical self-theory attempts to restore
the alienated, isolated individual to a position as a real social
subject in the life of the world. It maintains a constant awareness of
its own relation to its origins in individual subjectivity and to the
objects it wishes to comprehend.
In contrast to ideological theory, which tends to ignore or suppress any
awareness of our experience in institutional domination and
exploitation, critical self-theory locates itself directly in these
conflicts as the theory of all the real elements of opposition to
authority, alienation and exploitation. While ideological theory arises
from the nature of capitalist society as its positive expression,
critical theory arises as its negative expression, the expression of all
the forces working towards its supersession. This means that critical
thought “is the function of neither the isolated individual nor of a sum
total of individuals. Its subject is rather a definite individual in his
real relation to other individuals in groups, in his conflict with a
particular class, and finally, in the resultant web of relationships
with the social totality and with nature. The subject is no mathematical
point like the ego of the bourgeois philosophy; his activity is the
construction of the social present.” (Max Horkheimer, Critical Theory,
pp. 210-1)
Critical self-theory is thus not based upon any narrowly political, or
economic, or any other fragmentary opposition to the status quo. Its
basis is immanent in all human activity – within every individual and
social group – since within every contradiction in every person and
social group, capitalist society contains the seeds from which a
rationally constructed, free human society cold one day bloom.
First and foremost, critical self-theory is the unitary body of thought
that we consciously construct for our own use. We construct it when we
make an analysis of why our lives are the way they are, why the world is
the way it is, and when we simultaneously develop a strategy and tactics
of practice – of how to get what we really most desire for our lives.
Those who assume (usually unconsciously) the impossibility of realizing
their life’s desires, and thus of fighting for themselves, either end up
fighting for alien ideals or causes (as if they were their own), or
remain the relatively passive victims of the illusions and deceptions of
others. The critical theorist “goes through a reversal of perspective on
his life and the world. Nothing is true for him but his desires, his
will to be. He refuses all ideology in his hatred for the miserable
social relations in modern capitalist-global society. From this reversed
perspective [it is easy to see] with a newly acquired clarity, the
upside-down world of reification [the “thingification” of aspects of
daily life], the inversion of subject and object , of abstraction and
concrete. It is the theatrical landscape of fetishized commodities,
mental projections, separations, and ideologies: art, God, city
planning, common sense, ethics, smile buttons, radio stations that say
they love you, and detergents that have compassion for your hands.”
(Negations, Self-Theory, pp. 4-5)
When such a person can no longer go on living according to the dictates
of such insanity, when every compulsory role becomes too absurd to
perform, each constraint and alienation required by the hierarchical
capitalist organization of social relations is felt sharply as what it
really is – a negation of personal subjectivity and life, as a situation
that must be undermined and subverted. The critical theorist constantly
feels the need to confront and change the system that destroys him or
her each day.[1] The method of critical self-theory is dialectical and
contrary to the dualistic and one-sidedly analytic[2] methods of
positivist and ideological theory which always pose every problem (and
thus their solutions) in terms of two abstractly separate and mutually
exclusive choices. The philosophical basis of critical self-theory lies
in a radical phenomenology and its origins from the fundamental fact of
our live experience, contrary to the ontological dualism[3] of
ideological theory.
Whereas ideological theory must always remain dualistic on its most
important level, incorporating the division between individual subjects
and their alienated social structures as a completely unquestioned and
unconsciously held assumption, critical self-theory attempts to show the
real relatedness and unity of its elements – how one side of an abstract
separation can never exist without the other. Thus, where ideological
theory holds that value and knowledge are always separate entities (and
strives for “objectivity”), critical self-theory reveals that all
knowledge is social and historical, and that it is always humanly
generated for a purpose (or constellation of purposes), even if those
purposes remain unclear to its creators. Critical theory reveals value
is always immanent in human knowledge. It demonstrates that there are
inherent values in the choices of which questions to ask, how to frame
them, the criteria for satisfactory answers, the range of acceptable
methods for finding such answers, etc.
And where ideological theory insists on the fragmentation,
specialization and compartmentalization of knowledge, critical
self-theory is always unitary. It picks out and employs all the most
worthwhile formulations of ideologies (their partial truths) while
rejecting any useless or irrelevant aspects along with the ideological
core. The partial truths which are thus appropriated, along with other
new observations, are then synthesized with the current body of one’s
critical self-theory to form a new totality. Critical self-theory is a
continually evolving attempt at the conception of theoretical and
practical unity. It is a dynamic totality under construction, always
dialectically transcending (abolishing yet preserving) itself.
Self-demystification and the construction of critical self-theory don’t
immediately eradicate one’s alienation. Unfortunately, the world of
alienation goes right on reproducing itself each day. But it is a start
on the road towards the individual and collective self-activity required
for that eradication.
Alienation must first be perceived and understood before anything very
coherent can be done to eliminate it. This means that everyone must
become his or her own theoretician. We must all cease to allow others to
think for us. We must criticize all thought ruthlessly, especially our
own. Instead of allowing the reference point for our lives to always be
somewhere else, we must become the conscious centers of our own critical
self-theories. Once all the layers of ideological mystification are
peeled off, we are laid bare to ourselves, and our relations to other
people and to the universe can be made progressively more transparent.
We can then see that all the unnecessary and mystifying abstractions
were only projections of our own individual and social powers, our own
alienated powers and the powers of other people just like us.
The only really critical self-theory exists where no morals, abstract
ideals, or hidden constraints cloud the air. It facilitates our unity
with others as individuals who are conscious of our desires, unwilling
to give an inch to mystification and constraint, and unafraid to act
freely in our own interests.
[1] Anyone who sets out to change the world soon finds that she or he
can’t accomplish much in isolation. The basic structures of our world
that need to be changed are social – the organized, largely
institutional, relations of people to each other, as well as their
bodily foundation (anchoring) in socially-produced habits, and
personality and character structures. The only way they can be changed
radically is through movements of common communication and committed,
yet autonomous participation in the project of individual and collective
self-transformation and self-realization. One can only change one’s life
radically by changing the nature of social life itself through the
transformation of one’s social world as a whole, which requires
collective efforts. And one can only change the world as a whole
beginning with one’s own life, as well.
[2] The fetishization of analytic method always functions to conceal a
dualistic metaphysic. The mere act of conceptually breaking down
(analyzing) specific processes and objects is not in itself the major
problem here. It is the treatment of specifically one-sidedly analytic
methods as if they (and their hidden metaphysical assumptions) are the
only or most true methods of examining the fundamental nature of things
that coincides with the demands of ideological theory. For example, a
rigid belief in the absolute truth of mechanical, atomistic philosophy
will usually accompany (no matter how much it may be denied) the
fetishization of an analytic method focusing on the breaking down of
objects into discrete parts which are then conceptually reunited by
solely speculative cause-effect relations. Another example might be the
fixation on an analytical method based upon systems orientation. In this
case, the mechanism becomes somewhat more subtle, but a dualistic
metaphysic based upon the concepts of systems, feedback, and homeostasis
(or levels of stability) takes the place of atomic particles and a
cause-effect model with similar end-results. The structures of different
languages shape the range of possibilities for certain types of thought.
English and the other Indo-European languages encourage cause-effect &
actor-action-receiver thought patterns as a direct result of their
subject-verb-object or subject-object-verb sentence patterns. In the
same way, the types of analytical methods (in fact, based upon
analytical metaphors) that we choose shape the range of possibilities we
are able to use for understanding our world. Once we become fixated upon
one method as the only correct method we lose the ability to distinguish
what that method can reveal to us from what that particular method at
the same time conceals from us. We end up directly confusing the
metaphor for the structure of our world with predictably bizarre
results.
[3] Ontological dualism is the conception that existence is
fundamentally dual, or split in two, in nature. It is the archetypal
metaphysical conception that Being is fundamentally divided into two
ultimate parts which can never be resolved into one. It is the necessary
basis for all dogmatism and ideological theory.