18 Mar And then…part 3

It would be a shame to shake our heads and assume that there is nothing left to learn from the early philosophers of Marxian theory. It is rather odd that they are rarely mentioned in books dealing with social movement theory – whether they are single-authored or great tomes of several authors’ works. There is an historical specificity to each of their arguments, to be sure, but there is also a kind of a-historical dilemma embedded in their theses. At the root of all of them is the quest to understand the conjuncture of spontaneity, mass movement and organization (or party).
Rosa Luxembourg, perhaps more than anyone, held a deep belief and hope for the proletariat. Her vision of class consciousness spanned across nations to embrace all working class people. This notion was further examined by Lukács as he explored new concepts of freedom. Their arguments are not antithetical to each other; rather, represent the growing recognition of the unifying thread that could stretch beyond the imagined boundaries of the bourgeoisie. Fanon began to explore this thread as he lamented,

“National consciousness is nothing but a crude, empty fragile shell. The cracks in it explain how easy it is for young independent countries to switch back from nation to ethnic group and from state to tribe – a regression which is so terribly detrimental and prejudicial to the development of the nation and national unity” (Fanon, 1961 [2004]: 97).

And yet, one of the greatest complaints against Fanon is his argument that there is a need for a national homogeneity. The argument raised by Homi Bhabha is that Fanon is hopelessly outdated, perhaps even dangerous in his ideas. While it would be a stretch to say that this is an outdated reading of a reading, I would argue that, as with violence, he over-simplified his argument. To call for a national homogeneity is not to say that everyone needs to follow a stricture of racial or ethnic sameness. At the same time, he was not necessarily trying to infer that all people are the same (to preclude all forms of delineation). Rather, he was overstating the role of class consciousness, for in his work, the ‘classes’ that he spoke of were the colonized and the colonizer. Through this distinction, he could draw a once-colonized nation full of people into a new recognition as having a shared history of oppression and exploitation. Today, we are still struggling with these questions as we wade through stories of genocide and ethnic cleansing in the news. It brings the question around, then, to the role of the vanguard, political party or organization in educating the proletariat (or, in general, the oppressed).

For Luxemburg, her faith in the natural evolution of the class consciousness of the proletariat was a given. The role of the party was merely as the light showing the way toward greater consciousness among the proletariat. But through the 20th century, Marxian thinkers began to look for a more guiding role. Lenin believed, in fact, that the proletariat would never succeed without the thrusts of the vanguard party upon the proletariat of proper indoctrination. However, his particular brand of inculcation has, for all intents and purposes, failed. For Lucács, the party’s role was one of support and guidance as it, too, grew with the ever-evolving needs and theories of the proletariat. In his thesis, the party was the embodiment of the proletariat – the concrete realization of the class consciousness, itself. Fanon, also, posited a thesis of self-education, but a self-education that seemingly grew out of the complete disentanglement from the Manichaean system that separated the urbanites from the rural masses. It was through those drifters who were untethered, floating between the two faces of colonialism that the beginnings of the consciousness of the people would begin to flourish. But at the same time, he pushed for a broader education in order to temper the hundreds’ of years of suppressed anger and violence so that the movement would not merely be fueled by hate. It was his firm belief that the education must come from within the oppressed groups, but that the education would begin with those who are first able to reach a state of consciousness, separate from any pragmatic economic concerns. But these leaders did not merely spring upon their new consciousness out of nothing, for it is through the collective memories of the rural populations that the reminders of the original heroes of the anti-colonial movements are recanted.
Today, we struggle with the same concerns around education. In the past 20 years, the biggest shift in attitude has been through D/development theories. There has been a slow dawning of the consciousness of the top-down, heavy-handed sort of D/development praxis. Through this rising awareness has come the drive for participatory action – work that is driven by and facilitated by the people who will be most affected by it. This is the kind of self-reflexive work that requires adaptability, much as Lukács posited.
Each of these authors has helped draw the arguments around the movement into the foreground, evolving and nuancing the arguments as they have rolled through time. Today’s movements would sorely miss the passionate discussions that have formulated our consciousness. In saying that, I believe that there is still much to be learned from the early Marxian theorists – even by those who are not Marxian in practice or name. The greater human struggle against structural violences, no matter what their ilk, is still faced with the same questions that early Marxian thinkers struggled with in the context of class.