Overthrow

(Article originally published in issue 3 of Intransigence; arguments stolen from Gegenstandpunkt) So long as the working class allows its dependence on money, and all the horrible results that flow from that, to be understood as the basis of life, the explanations and criticisms we communists make will never be well-received. Before 1989, if any person criticized capitalism, the usual refrain was, “Well, if you hate it so much, why don’t you go to Russia or Cuba and see how it goes?” This was apparently such a zinger it got used well after the Soviet Union had dissolved. I vividly remember back in 2006 arguing with a civics teacher in high school. At one point she became rather irritated by my persistent criticisms of capitalism, and told me to fuck off to the USSR. “You should probably know the Soviet Union hasn’t been around for a few years now,” I responded, after which she me told to shut my mouth or risk getting kicked out of class. Today, the refrain is, “well, what’s y...

On my way home from work, I was listening to NPR. The Christmas season always brings a charity boom. NPR tells its listeners that they have a chance to "help", to do something heart-warming. If the listener makes a donation, then NPR will donate to a regional food bank. One can apparently make a double whammy: with a small donation, you can fulfill your civic duty and help those in need. Donate a small amount, and the hungry will be given a few meals. NPR reports on and presents the various cases of misery as mere "bad luck" stories. It's not only the hardworking who are forced to make choices between medicine or a car payment and putting food on the table who suffer from poverty, but also children and the elderly. NPR reports all kinds of cases of misery. The bills came in and one had no money. A son gets addicted to drugs and it takes everything from the family. On and on. Two things are striking: on the one hand, the way poverty is treated as if it...

I saw a Jacobin article recently that summarized the thinking of the left. It basically said: when people ask us where we will get the money to pay for Medicare for All and more social programs, they are just trying to distract us and demoralize us. The important thing is to win power and then we will deal with those questions later. These leftists don't want to ask about what the power consists in and what it's used for. They don't want to ask why so many people are complete ly destroyed and unable to afford basic healthcare. They don't want to ask what kind of economy needs massive social programs (hint: one that presupposes massive poverty). They don't want to clarify anything about the state and its basis. They don't want to think about the blackmail power of the capitalists that the whole system is based on. It's just like: "we will tax the hell out of them!" But then you have to ask: what will you do so that they invest? Without investment, n...

When one criticizes Law and Order or the state, one inevitably hears the question: "yes, but don't we need rules?"  One must first point out a conflation that takes place here. Rule and rules are different. We don’t know any good purpose that rule serves. Law and order is imposed by force and backed up by overwhelming violence. When we talk about a communal voluntary economy without being ruled, the criticism of communism is that we need rules: if there are no traffic laws, then people crash. If there aren't rules about temperatures to store food at, then people get sick. This sort of rebuttal confuses rule with conventions and agreements for living life in an expedient or rational manner; it has nothing to do with force and the violence to implement it. All the rules that are forced on us in a bourgeois democracy are looked at as useful conventions that make life possible. This is a big mistake. There’s a big difference between driving on the right side of the r...

One thing which I've been thinking about lately is the idea of limitation, commitment, and creativity. It's a common prejudice that limitations are a bad thing and that they stifle creativity or achievement. It's something that runs counter to freedom, which in the popular mind is just self-evidently a good thing. One should be able to do what they want when they want in whatever way they see fit. One hears something like, "endless possibilities are good". One is supposed to have the world open and the horizon clear in every direction, and then this fosters creativity. Or if not that, then the idea that if you have possibilities open, then this is how things are accomplished. It's a common thought that it would be bad if possibilities were limited. One hears it about consumer goods: "how horrible if only there were one or two brands of flour! What if one couldn't choose between sony or yamaha stereos!" One often hears this as a justification to...

[Translation of an October 26, 2017 lecture held in Bremen, Germany by GegenStandpunkt] 1. The idea of a UBI is based on mistakes about wealth production in capitalism. We want to show that the idea for improvement behind unconditional basic income (UBI) testifies to and originates from the contradictions and conflicts of capitalism, but is quite deceived about them. This will be a critique of the way UBI is thought about. The theoretical claims on which the UBI proposal is based are high. After all, advocates for this idea have come to a systematic finding about this society in terms of the relation between productivity, progress, and unemployment. The claim connected with this idea is by no means modest. It says that this idea makes it possible to curb poverty and eliminate the threat of poverty. We maintain that it is based on a false theory about this society.

Everyone is familiar with the refrain that there is a right to resist tyranny. If a government is tyrannical, then the people have the right to resist it or overthrow it. The doctrine of the "right to resistance/overthrow" contains a contradiction that is worth thinking about. The rights that people are never squeamish about praising as "natural" actually have to be conferred upon the people by the sanction of a public law granted by a state. However, if the state then turns around and says, "well, this is really tentative upon the whims of the people we rule over", then this completely undermines the basis of law. In other words, the most authoritative legislation (a constitution) would contain within itself a denial of its own supremacy and sovereignty if the right to resistance were actually enshrined and taken seriously, not just as a sop to popular stupidity. It's a basic tenet of liberalism -- and doubtlessly many other ideologies --   that...

In democratic societies it is a common canard that the rule of law is something positive. Let's reflect on this praise of the rule of law/limited government. Why is rule of law usually praised? It's thought of as a restriction on arbitrary rule, a restriction of state power. The state's not allowed to do whatever it wants. Those in power aren't allowed to do whatever they want to   their subjects. This is seen as progress in comparison to the monarchies of yesterday where the rulers' subjective judgment was the basis of rule, not written down laws. So, what can we say about this argument? Is that the truth of the matter? The state is praised for having a limitation placed on it. First off, ask yourself: who's doing the restricting? The state itself is doing the restricting through its checks and balances. Imagine, "listen: my brain comes up with the laws, my mouth tells you them, and my fists enforce them! My different parts keep my power in check! Not...

Tertullian (160A.D. to 200A.D.), and many of his Christian predecessors and contemporaries saw the need to differentiate themselves from the Pagan philosophers of Greece. Christians, in Tertullian's eyes, are the heirs of the exclusive majesty and transcendence of the God of Isreal. There was a clear and present sense of suspicion among the early Christians toward the Greek Pagans, who wielded the power of “trickery” with ease, i.e. reason and the art of dialectic. The Pagans were considered conveyor belts of a dangerous energy that could lead one astray from the path of righteousness into a nothingness. Many early Christians believed it was necessary to defend their religion and beliefs against attacks made on it by non-Christian thinkers, and to show that true wisdom was to be found in Christian teachings rather than in the teachings of the Pagan philosophers.             Perhaps one reason for this early-on perceived need t...

 " Criticism that struggles with its opposite remains dogmatic criticism, as for example in earlier times, when the dogma of the Blessed Trinity was set aside by appealing to the contradiction between 1 and 3. True criticism, however, shows the internal genesis of the Blessed Trinity in the human mind. It describes the act of its birth. Thus, true philosophical criticism of the present state constitution not only shows the contradictions as existing, but clarifies them, grasps their essence and necessity. It comprehends their own proper significance. However, this comprehension does not, as Hegel thinks, consist in everywhere recognising the determinations of the logical concept, but rather in grasping the proper logic of the proper object" --Marx "Apart from anything else, philosophy with us is not as it was with the Greeks for instance, pursued in private like an art, but has an existence in the open, in contact with the public, and especially, or even only, in t...

            Stanley Rosen argues in the Prologue of his book, Plato's Sophist: The Drama of Original and Image , that there are essentially two contrasting approaches to Plato's dialogues: the dramatic and ontological. The dramatic perspective, according to Rosen,   “regards the dialogue as a unity, and more specifically, as a work of art in which the natures of the speakers, as well as the circumstances under which they converse, all play a part in the doctrine of philosophical significance of the text” (Rosen 1). The reason for adopting this approach is due to the “dialogue form itself” (Rosen 1). The dramatic perspective finds that something important is missing when Plato's dialogues are cut asunder into propositional fragments, and reduced to technical and philosophical statements that are then understood in an ad hoc fashion. It is upheld, by those who ascribe to the dramatic reading, that these technical propositions...

In Plato's Sophist, the Eleatic Stranger sets out along with Theaetetus to disclose the Sophist. Socrates puts the first important question to the Stranger: are the sophist, statesman, and philosopher one, two, or three kinds? The Stranger responds that they are three; albeit he tells us that is is a complicated task to clarify the distinctions. At first glance, this does not seem to be worth much consideration. However, it is worth noting that the Stranger is a follower of his “father” Parmenides, who upheld that all being is one. In his poem, Parmenides states, “And it all is one to me” (6). Already by the Stranger's answer it is intimated that he may have substantial differences with Parmenides. The Stranger thinks that what he must argue may look like an attempt to kill his father, figuratively speaking (241d). Socrates, too, is a follower of Parmenides. Socrates believes that that which truly is, are things that are not coming into existence or fading out of existence bu...

                Part 2 of Rousseau's Second Discourse recounts the transition from nascent to modern man. A large duration of time, Rousseau argues, separates the falling away of man's natural condition as a primitive animal from the transition into modern civil society. Rousseau sets out to posit from a single origin the “slow succession of events and knowledge” that leads to the present state of civil society. Because there are gaps in the historical account of man's anthropology, Rousseau's account attempts to rationally reconstruct what must have happened or what would make the most sense. Since certain historical facts are missing, a philosophical or speculative account must take its place. Events are thus laid out in “their most natural order” (Second Discourse 142). We will here attempt to lay out the order of these events as Rousseau presents them: from natural savagery into conjugal society (the fami...

  “It simply no longer occurs to us that everything that we have all known for so long, and all too well, could be otherwise” (Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics    56; see also Heidegger, PR   81)

My affections are now less directed towards particular individuals. The object of my love is the entire human race, though not, of course, as we so often find it, namely in a condition of corruption, servility, and inertia. I love the race of coming centuries. For this my deepest hope, the faith that keeps me strong and vital: that I might stir the seeds of change that will ripen in a future age—Holderlin             Alexis De Tocqueville in his magnum opus, Democracy in America , is concerned, among many other things, with the corrosive and debilitative effect of radical individualism on true individuality. Tocqueville warns of the negative effects of a mass democratic culture that breeds monadic, isolated individuals who are weak and lacking in values. But just as much, Tocqueville in the first volume warns of the tyranny of the majority. Tocqueville only dedicates one very brief chapter of the subject of pantheism. Howe...

All too often one hears from conservatives the boring cliche about privileged revolutionaries who sit around in coffee shops doing nothing. How could they ever organize a revolution? Those incompetent idiots who sit around talking ideas all day! Their pie-in-the-sky Utopian whining will go nowhere! I say: never underestimate what creative and liberated chaff can do. When Victor Adler objected to Berchtold, foreign minister of Austria-Hungary, that war would provoke revolution in Russia, even if not in the Habsburg monarchy, he replied: "And who will lead this revolution? Perhaps Mr. Bronstein [Trotsky] sitting over there at the Cafe Central?" Can you imagine the look on his face when 1917 broke out?

In beginning of Discipline and Punish, Foucault uses the example of the execution of Damiens the regicide that took place in 1757 in order to draw attention to the way power was exercised in monarchical societies. Damiens is publicly and brutally tortured before being drawn and quartered. Punishments of the sort given to Damiens represent, according to Foucault, the “economy of punishment” under Monarchical regimes. Today's readers experience a sense of terror and disgust at the inhumane manner in which Damiens was punished/executed; yet Foucault wants to note the way Damiens' peers would have found his execution satisfying and perfectly acceptable.             Under monarchical power, the form punishment takes is primarily meant to safeguard the power of the king, who is the sovereign-- the one who makes the law, and who makes exceptions to the law. To commit a crime under the monarchical regime is to attack the power of the...

Foucault in section 2 of his introduction in The History of Sexuality: Volume 2 argues against the view that there is a fundamental break between the paganism of antiquity and the Christianity that followed. Certainly there are important differences between the epochs, but they are not exactly what we might expect. Foucault rejects the view that “sexuality is a constant.” He does not see a complete continuity between the two epochs, but there are important concepts which both hold in common – though these concepts or categories undergo change. He examines some historical texts, and comes to the conclusion that there are areas in these societies, or “forms of problematization,” that make the accepted picture hard to believe. Foucault focuses on four main areas to make his case: 1) the expression of fear, 2) a model of conduct, 3) the imagine of a stigmatized attitude, 4) an example of abstinence.              For the first...

According to Plato, the soul and body were two distinct entities with distinctive natures. This is the infamous “mind-body dualism.” The soul is naturally opposed to the body and its appetites. The ancient Greeks gave preference to the soul over the body, which was considered to be merely a distraction, annoyance, and fetter to the pursuit of the Truth. Plato compares the body to a cage that traps the soul. The body is greedy and selfish because of its needs and desires; as soon as the body's desire is quenched (hunger, for example), the body gives rise to another desire. Simmias summarizes this view while talking with Socrates, “The body keeps us busy in a thousand ways because of is need for nurture” (Plato 66c). The body constantly begs for attention: it must be fed, bathed, and rested. The Greeks do not consider the body evil. The body -- its desires and functions – are viewed as natural. The bodily pleasures, because they are natural and part of the human, are to be controll...

            Hegel presupposed that the readers of his day were familiar with what he calls the “method of science” which was developed in his works Logic and Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences (Hegel 1; 36). One cannot understand Hegel's Philosophy of Right without first understanding the method that guides the work. One must notice that it is not “a” method, but the method. In Hegel's view, the nature of reality is contradictory, dynamic, and fluid. But from the chaos and flux of reality, the underlying laws can be discovered and understood. There are an extraordinary amount of places where this can be seen. One such example of this is the economic sphere. Hegel writes, “Political economy is the science that starts from this standpoint; it's task is to exhibit the mass-relationships and mass-movements in their qualitative and quantitative determinacy and complexity” (Hegel 152). Hegel attempts to explain the developments o...

159, p. 1 – Marx first critically reviewed Hegelian philosophy of law in 1844 in Paris, his results were published in the newspaper Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher. His review of Hegelian philosophy led him to realize that laws aren't to be understood as coming into being by their own accord or as the development of the human mind in general (Hegel's Geist or absolute spirit), but laws have their basis in real life, the material conditions of life. Hegel, following the 18 th century French and English economists, called this “civil society.” The structure of civil society, for Marx, is to be found by examining political economy, or economics. Marx was forced into exile by the French statesman Guizot, and had to continue his studies in Brussels, where he ended up arriving at the general thrust of his critique, which became the guiding idea of his work. The main thrust is that when it comes to social production, humans   enter into predetermined relations that aren't of...

pp .44-50 44. P. 1 -- The will, which all rational beings have, is the part of the mind that has the capacity to establish its actions in harmony with laws. If the laws used to determine or decide upon which actions to take are objective and based upon reason alone, then the laws are called a “purpose.”   What Kant dubs “the means” is   the possible actions one could take to achieve an end or purpose (as opposed to doing something for its own sake, for the sake of duty). The will can base its actions from either the subjective purposes or objective purposes. On one hand, the subjective purposes for willing an act can be thought of as   the consequences or rewards of an act (and thus changing with each individual). On the other hand, the objective purposes hold true for all rational beings and are not variable, ie they hold good for all times, places, and rational beings and thus should be the ground or foundation upon which moral decisions are based. The subjective grou...

Heidegger discusses four different ways in which the word “world” has been used. The first definition is that of traditional philosophy, “'World' is used as an ontical concept, and signifies the totality of those entities which can be present-at-hand within the world” (BT 93/65). Traditional philosophy has only investigated the present-at-hand objects within the world. They view the world as a set of undifferentiated things – matter or stuff -- situated within objective space.   By present-at-hand, Heidegger means objects that are immediately present to consciousness. Put more abstrusely: specific equipment or tools which have been yanked (de-worlded) from the totality of equipment and thus become self-contained or looked at in isolation by Dasein (human beings). In the present-at-hand mode of Being, equipment remains unused during observation. By observing the present-at-hand Dasein inevitably enters into a detached theoretical/philosophical/scientific mode of Being. Think...