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*Also, "why dialctics is not vacuous"
Great men
"The bourgeoisie may well admire the great men of today, it sees itself reflected in them. . . . Vogt has got a life-size portrait of himself in the Gartenlaube. He has become a proper porker in the last few years, and looks fine." (Engels to Marx, http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867/letters/67_04_27.htm )Marx and Engels had a sardonic view of the question of "great men." In his book on the "Class Struggles in France," Marx said that if there were no great men on hand, an epoch would create them for great events. Larger class forces at work in society require representatives. It is not that individuals do much good or much harm: class struggles do."For him, M. Proudhon, every economic category has two sides — one good, the other bad. He looks upon these categories as the petty bourgeois looks upon the great men of history: Napoleon was a great man; he did a lot of good; he also did a lot of harm." (Marx, "The Poverty of Philosophy," http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/ch02.htm)
MIM has already pointed out that Marx specifically disowned the persynality cult. I have a few more comments on the usefulness of persynality cults."[Marx may have been the person to coin the now commonly used term 'personality cult.'] . . . "Neither of us cares a straw for popularity. A proof of this is, for example, that, because of aversion to any personality cult, I have never permitted the numerous expressions of appreciation from various countries with which I was pestered during the existence of the International to reach the realm of publicity, and have never answered them, except occasionally by rebuke. When Engels and I first joined the secret Communist Society we made it a condition that everything tending to encourage superstitious belief in authority was to be removed from the statutes. (Later on Lassalle exerted his influence in the opposite direction.)"
Karl Marx, "Letter to W. Blos," November 10, 1877
Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd ed. NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1978, p. 521.
For Marx, historical idealism, the idea of history created by "great men," was the view of the bourgeoisie. Hence, for such a view to have a progressive role, it must be where the bourgeoisie has a progressive role.
When Stalin and Mao had their photographs plastered everywhere larger than life in the Soviet Union and China respectively, the people who saw them came out of feudal conditions, especially Mao's people. Putting up a poster of Mao or Stalin raises for ordinary people a natural comparison with religion.
Here it is possible to begin a fantasy that maybe this Stalin or Mao guy or even Kim Il Sung might be better than my priest and god. Such a fantasy is a good thing in the development of a people that has yet to break with the most stultifying forms of religion.
The bourgeois academics all scorn those who wrote from prison to Stalin or his associates, often asking for release from prison. It is very popular for the bourgeoisie to laugh at those who wrote to their executioners. Yet, even among the simplest people writing such letters was a step forward. Even the most complex such as Bukharin also wrote them.
In fact, the bourgeois historians have to admit that Stalin, Molotov etc. often did intervene in individual cases described in letters, particularly when they felt they knew something about the context. People did get out of prison, have their party cards restored and so on from writing "on high." So it is not even totally funny for someone about to be executed to write to Stalin. It was an advance from praying to gods.
Then there is the question of class. If a persyn has been a slave or serf or has come from such a family, how does one begin to think of oneself and go beyond just duties imposed by rulers. Here again, bourgeois individualism plays its role. This Mao guy on the poster in fact overthrew the rulers, and hence the duties that go with those rulers are no longer in place. Even if we accept a simplistic bourgeois story that it was one man who created the Chinese Revolution, it will tend to start a process of thinking that it is possible. Fatalism becomes unjustified. It is not Jesus on the wall but a man alive and part of a revolution. So if those individuals could do something to change circumstances, how far is it to go from that to saying that others could do the same thing?
Then what about gender. Now people are not to be treated like yaks, bought and sold. Marriage is no longer just a duty. Even in China it was supposed to be for romantic love. If that poster on the wall causes a fantasy, it plays its role. If it is a direct fantasy, such as this Mao guy is better than the spouse I was arranged to be with--then that is good, in that context. If it is a fantasy even more derivative, such as "I wonder what kind of womyn succeeds in attracting a Mao," this again is positive. Even falling in love with someone's political line is a step up from feudalism. The context is coming from onerous duties without any sense of marriage for reasons of one's own. The bourgeoisie excels in promoting its own interests, but that can be positive for some people.
It is difficult for some in the West to imagine, because capitalism has been in place hundreds of years there. However, there are to this day in the Asian countries including the richest, people who are in arranged and semi-arranged marriages. Moreover, there are many people trying to appear "modern," but who in fact used a pretty arbitrary match-maker to create a family. They know they should not appear arranged and so the match-maker is an in-between solution, not completely individual. The heavy hand of duty makes its way all the way from Korea to Turkey.
The bourgeois libertarians see only one role for the Mao posters--a sense of Mao's omnipotence that will crush their exploiter plans. They fear the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Yet it is inevitable that posters of Mao will be taken in multiple ways, mostly not those ways in which bourgeois individualist writers try to propagandize us.
On the other hand, in the West, we have had individualism a long time. What we really need is a party that teaches the people how to think of probability.
Chance, accident, probability--Marx, Engels and Darwin
"Men make their history themselves, but not as yet with a collective will or according to a collective plan or even in a definitely defined, given society. Their efforts clash, and for that very reason all such societies are governed by necessity, which is supplemented by and appears under the forms of accident. The necessity which here asserts itself amidst all accident is again ultimately economic necessity. This is where the so-called great men come in for treatment. That such and such a man and precisely that man arises at that particular time in that given country is of course pure accident." (boldface mine) (Engels, http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/letters/94_01_25.htm )
In his day, a man named Duhring drew much attention from Engels. Duhring claimed to be a socialist opposed both to dialectics and Darwin--no accident MIM would add. Darwin and dialectics go together.
"'In our view what is specific to Darwinism, from which of course the Lamarckian formulations must be excluded, is a piece of brutality directed against humanity,'" said Duhring. (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch00.htm) On this Duhring agreed with the creationists and also followers of Islam today.
Darwin himself said that even the onset of farming came from an accident:
"Such habits almost necessitate the cultivation of the ground; and the fi rst steps in cultivation would probably result, as I have elsewhere shewn, from some such accident as the seeds of a fruit-tree falling on a heap of refuse, and producing an unusually fine variety."(Darwin, "Descent of Man," Chapter 5)
In the introduction to his most famous work, the word "chance" occurs shortly before his discovery of "natural selection."
"As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be NATURALLY SELECTED."(Darwin, Origins of Species)
Darwin gives us an example of how beetles survive and again it's about the "the best chance of surviving":
"For during many successive generations each individual beetle which flew least, either from its wings having been ever so little less perfectly developed or from indolent habit, will have had the best chance of surviving from not being blown out to sea; and, on the other hand, those beetles which most readily took to flight would oftenest have been blown to sea, and thus destroyed."(Darwin, Origins of Species)
If we go back and look at what Engels said about "pure accident" above, we see that Darwin and Engels coincide. Those opposing dialectics have since always opposed Darwin, whether they know it or not.
Darwin looked at chance systematically and it is that same approach that is going to enable socialism and the advance to communism. We simply have to get past the diversions from this great task still in front of us.
The individual political leader is an accident, produced by greater forces of history. Likewise, the beetle that survives is the one that by chance did not have wings that would blow it out to sea. There is no need for tales of heroism by the individual beetle surviving. What there is a need for is seeing the struggle there, the transition from now to the future and factors that help at the margin.
Today we are having a big struggle over the principal contradiction globally. Most calling themselves communist are saying we have to win Amerikkkans over to total revolution including reproductive "choice" and do not agree with Mao that the struggle between imperialism and oppressed nations is principal. They would never in a million years agree to a campaign to tell the crusty Bush voters that Iran has a pro-life stance. The reason is that they do not think at the margin, a hangover from the times when it seemed like the European proletariat was going to bring down everything all at once. Now that we really have to come up with some way of stopping the war against Iran short of all-out revolution that is not happening our critics are stuck completely. Like MIM today, Darwin saw a struggle where having imperfect wings could be an advantage for some beetles, a deciding factor in struggle for survival. Here, Iran has a pro-life stance about where many in the U.$. pro-life movement would like to be. Our dualists and eclectics are unwilling to enter the struggle at that level.
Dialectics is about struggles in given circumstances. Questions about cause and effect without the given circumstances are meaningless. In another circumstance, having better wings would enable a beetle to survive. In the case Darwin looked at, it did not. The interconnectedness of life is therefore crucial. As MIM pointed out before, there is also no point in asking if bacteria would be better off if they had opposable thumbs. Such a question is nonsense but possible and even a matter of scientific integrity in some situations to those without dialectics.
Channel flippers
When we think of people who consider themselves not much different than yaks, because they come from conditions of slavery or feudalism, we look at bourgeois individualism one way. Yet what Marx always stressed about life in advanced capitalist society is that individualism and stories of great leaders mislead the masses and cause them to think that individuals make history for them, when what they really need to figure out is how to make history themselves.
Now in the imperialist countries when someone puts up a poster of an individual, the impact is a crucial transition, a co-optation. It is only one step from exalting the image on the wall of an alleged political leader to exalting Michael Jordan on the TV screen. Then after we have exalted a politician and basketball player, then why not a singer, movie star and finally just a porn film actor such as Jenna Jameson. The international proletariat needs the imperialist country communists to move into the world of the image about as much as a hole in the head.
Individualism under capitalism has no progressive role to play and ultimately the persynality cult leads to pornography in fully bourgeois society. We need to understand this connection between individualism and pornography. There is a competition in the realm of the image that we need to be aware of and utilize but not be sucked in by. We could spend all our time putting out perfect posters of individuals with a just-so style and image. MIM would prefer to take out an ad on the back of Playboy Magazine. We acknowledge what is going on and we will intervene in the realm of the image, but we are striving to introduce struggle.
What is missing from image consumers is the class struggle. Once we make that transition to image of a leader on the wall, we are ready for TV. Then we are ready for life in the image as opposed to life in the struggle. Channel changing is next.
Once we have made the transition to loving the image and style above the substance, we are ready to hit that remote and become channel flippers. The channel flipping generation produced the MTV generation, where life is just a jumble of images.
It is crucial to understand that this is not up to us one way or another. When people meet MIM or other activists of the struggle, the inevitable interaction is at the level of the image for the vast majority of people. It is actually better NOT to know what MIM leaders look like to avoid that. We can ask, "why did you want to know that?" "Who wants to know that?" Likewise goes the fascination with biographies. Yet this is exactly what is done, even with a bullshit righteousness. People know well that the best-selling biographies are pornography, but still even alleged communists persist on this track. It's one thing where people know they are using biography as pornography and therefore possibly mastering gender dynamics. It's another when we allow ourselves to be sucked into spontaneity on the question. If we must, then use pornography, but we should not be sucked in on terms other than the ones we actively made.
People who put in the time to put up web pages often do not put in the struggle to figure them out. So a common practice is to create a web page and then link to all other web pages that call themselves "socialist" or "communist." It's like having a TV with multiple channels.
In all honesty, the channel flipper will tell us they like what we do, but don't ask us to differentiate and struggle. When we ask, "hold on there (on our channel) long enough to actually take action," our channel flipper becomes uncomfortable, and assumes this is some kind of authoritarianism, sectarianism or other problem. The real problem is the Liberalism of the channel flipper. People have become comfortable as passive consumers, even if that consumption includes MIM materials. Without studying the difference among channels or web pages, there is no reason to pick one or another and then take action on that basis. On TV, the question is settled by who does the best ads and those who do the best ads have the best endorsements from the people with the most style.
MIM shows you a CIA document and a CIA agent. MIM shows you an FBI agent, an admitted informer. There are two possibilities. One is to take action either for or against. Another is to flee to the world of the image, again to benefit the status quo. In fact this is what most people consuming MIM do. They see exactly what MIM is talking about. They consume that and then they go and consume the exact opposite. "Yes, you MIM people are worthy of being in our MTV video. No don't ask us to kick out the FBI, CIA, fascists, cops etc. They're going to be in it too and not as people being swept into the dustbin of history."
So this is a distinction we are making. We don't want to be the greatest image itself, but we will ride the images of others. You want an image, here: Michael Jordan is drawing traffic to the Internet today or maybe it is Tiger Woods or if we can ride Jenna Jameson's fame, we'll do that too. But that makes it even better, because people will know that MIM did NOT prepare Jenna Jameson's or Michael Jordan's image. That was done by someone else. Yes, we have much material that can and will be used as some kind of passive consumption material. It cannot be escaped and in fact we also utilize tactics to increase that passive consumption. What is really radical though is where people intervene and take a stand, to go from consumption to action.
Art in imperialist countries may be more tightly tied to gender oppression than to class for most dynamic questions, questions of dialectics and struggle. Most of what we see on the TV and movie screens or even in music is not anything but the leisure life of the exploiters. Some will fight to bring the class struggle to the TV, to televise the revolution. Another consideration though concerns our attitude toward art generally. Perhaps the un-style paired with the latest style is the way to go for us. That way people know that one piece is for the image and another is not--if that is possible.
This is a tough question, whether we are preparing a psychological state of mind equivalent to sugar to let the medicine go down like revgraph at irtr.org says or whether we are really just standing in someone else's shadow on stage and hoping some spotlights shine on us for a minute. Can we really integrate a sugary style with substantive work or must the two stand apart starkly in ugliness, style for its own sake on the one hand and class struggle on the other. Mao believed the enemy could sugar-coat its bullets, but can we do the reverse and what about our friends. It seems when we are speaking of friends, again one could ask about sugar-coating or one could worry about absorption into dynamics centered on image. For most people, we know we are not going to win either way. There is obviously some kind of satisfaction from the world of the image and we need a theory of how best to disrupt it. There is a lot of talk about participatory theater for instance, but people rarely participate in their own art. Perhaps the best part is not actually the revolutionary's drawing itself, but getting other people to hand it out with you. The solution may be the same as for spectator sports--having people do their own.
Adding another 100 channels to the television is not going to make people better off. We need to be done with the logic of "choice," like the choice to have babies from incest. Sometimes "simplification" is better than "choice." Now getting people to participate in television might be good or even better yet, forget television completely and take up other forms of art.
Mao said to make the old serve the new. This may tend to make artists think that there is nothing new in proletarian art, but on the other hand, there are some specifically new aspects to seeing imperialism as composed of a majority exploiters and fully decadent. Politics and history are always changing, so to that extent participatory art is always new.
Regardless, the proper question is not what leader to follow in the imperialist countries, not if we want to go beyond capitalism. The question is what class struggle do we want. A leader can help in that decision but not by sucking people into the world of the image. We aim at disruption. If our reviews caused people to see their video games in a different light, then that is one kind of disruption. Conversely, it would be a challenge to come up with art that itself left people with a different sensibility about bourgeois art and the politics that goes with it.