Badiou & Nepal: Battlegrounds Over Communist Reconception

Nando wrote the following piece as a commentary on Stephen Mauldin’s Badiou 101 for the RCP,USA.

By Nando Sims

Clarity writes a single sentence comment:

“It should be made crystal clear that Badiou has explicitly renounced any adherance to Marxism as a system of thought.

This raises a question of fact, but also a more interesting question of method.

On the question of fact, David gets right to the point:

“Whether Badiou has – explicitly – renounced Marxism as a system of thought, I don’t know. It is obvious however that his that his thought is only tangentially related to what traditionally has been known as ‘Marxism’.”

Of course, that depends on how you define Marxist. Some suggest that our definition of Marxism should allow Badiou’s work to fit inside. But for now, my reading suggests that Badiou’s writings are not an elaboration, application, or development of Marxism-as-I-understand-it.

Badiou is developing a different philosophy — emerging out of a history of Maoism. This is a communist theory, but seems clearly not Marxist.

Next Question: What Do We Have to Learn?

Now that initial observation still leaves us with the less obvious question of method. What do we DO with a communist philosophy that is not Marxist?

And why, for example, does Clarity think this has to be “crystal clear”?

As a child, I would come back from play and sometimes have just met a new friend. My European grandmother (who would visit from time to time) would always ask “Is he Protestant or Catholic?” She thought it had to be crystal clear. She never said why she asked that question. But that too was crystal clear. For her, some crucial lines were already drawn (and had been drawn for centuries).

For me the more important question is: What do we have to learn from this work? What do communists and revolutionaries have to learn from this non-Marxist communist philosopher?

And it is (of course) just a subset of the larger question: What do we have to learn from anyone?

And there is a related more political question: What openings can a non-Marxist communist philosopher help make, what space and hearing in this world can he help generate, for communist revolution generally?

There is one position that says (simply): We have nothing to learn.

It works like this: We have our form of Marxism, it answers the key questions of philosophy (and politics and more), and if someone backs up, and over several decades tries to make a new run at communist philosophy, we have nothing to learn here. On the contrary, it is harmful. It is inherently a false start from the beginning. And to the extent that it comes up with something new, different from Marxism — well, it can only be false, misleading, distracting, confusing.

Why talk about Badiou, when there is so much within Marxism we have not talked about yet? Why welcome young intellectuals coming to a form of communism through Badiou (it is asked jealously) when we have our guys who are so clearly underappreciated?

It is the kind of framework that (I assume) leads Arthur to write after John’s post:

“I haven’t read Badiou or Zizek and scanning previous related threads has not inclined me towards taking the trouble. This review does convince me to at least take a look, though its still not a high priority for me and will take some time.”

And then to bob up half a day later and write:

“I’ve now spent a few hours on Badiou and Zizek (mainly Zizek because less boring). Not convinced the quickie does extract an essence. Equally unconvinced there’s much of an essence to extract at all.”

(It is like saying, “I’ve been in Thailand half an hour now. Christ, this place sucks.” Or, “I spent the afternoon studying Buddhism, why would anyone embrace this stuff?” Or “I read an essay on Marx in high school, what a loser!” I particularly enjoy that Arthur spend a couple of hours with both Badiou and Zizek — why waste time when you can squeeze out two verdicts in one afternoon!)

And I imagine many people reading this are aware of how influential that kind of closed thinking is among people who consider themselves communist rebels (and even “scientific”). It is why Clarity didn’t feel the need to say more than one sentence. He didn’t need supplement his statement of “the fact” with any discussion of its implication — because the implication is in the air, in the religious training.

And this is why (I believe) Stephen sweetly asks “Do you think there is a ‘Marxism’ that is a closed system of thought?”

Because if you are embedded within a closed system (even if you label it “Marxism”), then all you need to know about Badiou is whether he is your kind of Marxist or not.What else do we really need to know? Right?

If your playmate is the wrong religion, no good can come of this.

Blinking in the Bright Light of the Outside World

I have a rather different view.

When I left the RCP, I did not know who Badiou was. I don’t believe i had heard of him. I had heard of Zizek for only one reason: he had written an introduction to a book featuring Avakian. Obviously I popped out of a political culture where a very narrow sliver of Marxism is promoted as a closed system.

After spending more than a few hours over the last years reading (not just one or two philosophers — but generally catching up on a whole world of thinking) like I was some communist Rip Van Winkle… I discovered (yes) that Badiou is not a Marxist (that took about fifteen minutes). I also discovered that I am rather unlikely to become a “Badiouist” in any sense — i have some rather deep differences in both politics and philosophy with his work (which emerge in a primitive way at my still primitive level of engagement).

But I have also found parts of his work, insights, new ways of thinking, approaches — that are very thought-provoking and perhaps valuable. I don’t have final verdicts on this (my thoughts are still being “provoked”) and I am in no particular rush to reach final verdicts. I am much more in the stage of absorbing and thinking about this — and preparing to discuss here on Kasama.

But I am far enough along that i want to deal with this question of method.

Is This a Matter of Privilege

Bob H writes:

“I’m curious why the Kasama site has given such prominence to Badiou and Zizeck. While I find Zizeck’s essays thought-provoking and original, I don’t get a sense of a major paradigm shift in theory. Is it because Avakian has dismissed “the Derridas” that continental thought attracts ex-RCPers?…So I’m curious about the basis for the rather privileged position that Zizeck and Badiou get from the site moderators as key towards a new synthesis. It doesn’t seem to be because of a superiority of predictive or explanatory power of their theoretical structures. Or am I missing something obvious here?”

This is a fair question.

First, I think there is a misunderstanding: I don’t believe there is any intention to “privilege” either Zizek or Badiou.

What we are fighting for here is merely the right to creatively engage the thinking of our time. And this is a fight against a very cloistered and dogmatic conception of Marxism and of how Marxism develops. It is a fight that is necessary merely to clear the ground for a serious discussion of what our communist theory should be, and what role the works of many different contributors will be.

That fight has broken out both over Badiou, and over the Nepali Maoists — and so (here on Kasama) we are addressing larger issues by discussing the rather sordid assault on Badiou and the Nepali Maoists.

And (to be clear) we are addressing the polemics of the RCP not because they (or their specific polemics) are influential. They are not. But because there is within those polemics an articulation of inherited dogmatic views that have been and are quite influential among communists world wide (and here I don’t mean just Maoists either).

There is a whole legacy of narrowness that needs to break down if we are to make any progress.

And it is not surprising that the fight has broken out over Badiou and the Nepali Maoists:

Badiou has opened a door, inviting a new generati0n of intellectuals to re-engage the “Communist Hypothesis” in the midst of a sudden global capitalist crisis. And the Nepali Maoists have emerged as the first communist movement to congeal a broad popular support and bring its revolution to the brink of (possibly) seizing power.

The first reintroduces philosophical consideration of communism in the public realms of theory, and the second reintroduces a political communism with the dignity of immediate and practical actuality.

And, for dogmatic communists who have lived cut off from creativity or mass engagement — all of this gives rise to confusion, fear and even jealousy.

We will have to engage both Badiou and the Nepali Maoists critically (and many others I won’t list…) in the process of forging a new communist coherency. We will have to engage our own inherited communism too, deeply. And the experience of socialist revolution in the 20th century (which Badiou one-sidedly considers “failure”).

And so, our momentary focus this week here on Kasama is not an attempt to stack the outcome by privileging a few thinkers from the start. It is a particularly sharp engagement over Badiou and the Nepali Maoists because those are two of the places this larger fight has broken out.

We will also have to engage those who have been introduced to a philosophical communism by Badiou and Zizek and others — but who have not yet considered the necessity of fusing the “idea of communism” with the living class struggle for power and liberation.

The Bushiness of Marxism

One of the issues here is the very right to engage someone like Badiou.

In the mind of some (expressed in our discussions here and in the polemic of the RCP) Badiou and those “like” him can be easily identified as “harmful” and therefore quickly lightly. And the method is on display. And underlying this, is an assumption that there is really no need to step outside a very very narrow framework to learn and assumilate from others– and to challenge our own deeply held views.

When the history and development of communist theory is explained — its family tree often is presented as rather linear. Most family trees are bushy. But modern Marxism is described as if it is a rather straight-line descent: Marx to Engels to Lenin to Stalin to Mao (and beyond). And each thinker supposedly took the inherited Marxism of his day, and applied it to new conditions and developed a new “contribution” to the ongoing development.

And this is not just a theory of history, but a model offered to the rest of us. Because (by extension) we are supposed to take our most current, inherited-form of Marxism (as a whole, as a given, in its most advanced “synthesis”) and appreciate it, and go out and promote it (not something else). And defend it against “deviations” which always appear, like the devil, lurking at every hand, in so so many forms.

But in fact, this history and model is impoverished.

Just one place to unravel that is to ask: How much of Mao’s innovations to communist theory came by bringing in traditional Chinese thinking into Marxism (especially on dialectics, but not just there)? How much of Mao’s thinking was influenced by the powerful currents of pragmatism that shaped his generation of Chinese revolutionaries (in the 1920s)? And how much was Mao Zedong’s synthesis a collective process?

Or another question: What was the influence of Althusser or world-system theorists on the 60s generation of American Maoists? Or of Stephen Jay Gould in the decision by some American Maoists to reject the “inevitabilism” that is so strong within inherited Marxism? Or Jorge Palacios of the Chilean Maoists — what was his contribution to the creative spots of “Conquer the World”? What was the debt to the communists of Peru on the question of building urban political base areas (a la Raucana) or the idea to treat “combativity” as a school of revolution? And what is the methodological result of not routinely making such influences explicit — in how we view the creation of communist theory?

Or let’s ask: What was the attitude of Marx and Engels toward the non-marxist thinkers of their time — Darwin, for example. They polemicized with the non-Marxist communist theorist Duhring, but hailed the non-Marxist communist philosopher Dietzgen for his independent work.

Just a few examples…. among many. But you find out that Marxism is in fact more bushy and complex in its descent — not just a linear hand-off from each genius-of-the-epoch to his successor.

And what you discover is that Marxism (at least when it is creative) is not closed — even though some of its histories (like Mao’s Immortal Contributions, or Harvest of Dragons) treat it that way — as a road with three or four main “milestones” each defined by the name of one great thinker.

And we can also ask: what happens when Marxism is treated non-creatively — as if it were a closed system?

There are anecdotes where Soviet scientists were asked to refute Bohr’s quantum physics and Einstein’s theory of relativity — because (the logic said) these theories contradict our existing version of dialectical materialism, so they must be wrong, so it is the job of communist scientists to refute them. And the implications of suggesting that they could NOT be refuted in this way were dangerous. Scientists who opposed Lysenko’s official “Marxist” (and false) theory of biology did not fare well.

You can enclose your thought in a bubble, and venture out to demand that it be made “crystal clear” whether this or that thinker is a Marxist — because (if you are enclosed in a bubble you call “Marxism”) that is the only question that really matters, right?

What if Marx Had Not Created Marxism….?

A thought experiment: If Marx had not given communist theory a major starting foundation (if he had died as a child, for example)…. what would communist theory have come to look like? If communist theory had not initially emerged in Germany (influenced by Hegel and Feuerbach and the whole stream of philosophy that Marx studied), but had (instead) emerged in say Japan, or South Africa, or China, what would it look like? If it has not emerged in a single robust form in the nineteenth century, but taken a number of sharply competing forms and philosophies….. what would our assumptions be?

There is accident and contingency in the world.

And I suspect that if communist theory had emerged somewhere else, it might have looked radically different. It still would have been (one way or another) a communist theory, it would be grappling with the same world (the same realities, the same historical epoch, the same planet, the same structures of economics and society). But it might well have looked different in many (even fundamental ways) — even while the objective nature of reality would have inevitably pulled its development toward some similar themes (classes, the nature of capitalism, the quetions of transition to a new society globally, etc.)

And, in some ways, reading Badiou has been like reading a communist theory that feels as if it comes from a different water fountain. The familiar is unfamilar, the assumed is suddenly not assumed.

Of course, that is not literally true: Badiou is part of the same broad river of philosophy that Marx swam in. And Badiou did not emerge separate from modern Marxism (but out of a long engagement with Marxism in its French Maoist forms.)

But Badiou proposes a theory of “multiple of multiples” where Marxism has posited a theory of dialectics. He has proposed a theory of event where Marxism has groped for a theory of conjuncture. He has posited a concept of different “truth processes,” where some forms of marxism have announced a series of increasingly more scientific syntheses. (And like any work of translation — you discover that the concepts and words aren’t “equivalent” or parallel — you can’t just conceive of it as a series of comparable discrete fragments to compare and contrast.)

And, to me, this is not a binary situation where we either become Badiouists or else reject Badiou as un-marxist. (What an impoverished view of our options that is!) When Einstein emerged in physics, we were not forced to drop Marxism and become Einsteinians — and that is really not the question when we study Einstein (or string theory). And that binary view of things has (in many ways) impeded the ability of some communists to learn from developments in others spheres (like natural science) or the work of other non-Marxist thinkers in political and philosophical spheres, or even the work of Marxists who are not in the line of linear descent (how many know about Vigotsky?).

The question really is: at a moment where our particular inherited Marxisms are showing strains, and revealing some real voids and problems… what can we learn here from other engagements with communism and the revolutionary process? How do we actually learn from communism’s own history? Do we intend to have a creative approach to Marxism itself or not?

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