On Praxis

For anybody, such as myself, who has wondered where the term 'praxis' derives from and why it has played such a central role in Marxist studies, I offer the following brief overview.

According to Gajo Petrovic's entry in the Dictionary of Marxist Thought (1983) the Marxist usage of this term comes out of the Greek tradition and refers to Aristotle's tripartite division of human activity. In Aristotle's formulation there exist three basic activities that define human beings: theoria, praxis and poiesis. Each of the three kinds of activity had a separate goal. Theoria was a practice resulting in the knowledge of truth. Poiesis was a practice resulting in the production of an external object. Praxis was a practice resulting in the action itself. According to Aristotle praxis was an activity that developed the actor, or subject, rather than the object. He used this kind of activity to discuss the practice of politics or ethics, and praxis likewise carried with it a form of knowledge different than theoria--one wonders whether he considered praxis to be guided by a specific techne (or 'know-how') that was different than the techne of poiesis. It was only later during the Middle Ages that the specificity of praxis was reduced to merely the application of theoria, the model most commonly accepted today.
How does Marx conceive the relationship between these three kinds of activity? According to Jorge Larrain, "[w]hat men are coincides with their practice" (42). This surpasses the distinction Aristotle makes between praxis and poiesis. Larrain explains: "For Aristotle praxis was immanent activity whereas poiesis was activity whose end was external. Marx unifies both aspects so that practice appears as activity which produces an external object and simultaneously expresses the subject itself" (n.18: 217). This interpretation of Marx's usage of 'praxis' (in the Theses on Feuerbach, for example, although it is the concept behind what C. J. Arthur calls mankind's 'practical activity' or what we might call labor (qua in-itself, or unalienated), which Marx refers to throughout his oeuvre) makes sense to me because it does not fall into the trap of mistaking 'alienation' (Entauesserung) for 'objectification' (Vergegenstaendlichung). It also emphasizes that 'practice' is a conscious activity and expressive of 'human essence' (i.e. species-being) while allowing for that 'essence' to be, in turn, altered by ensuing praxis. However, how does one relate this notion of praxis to theoria? Gramcsi, following Antonio Labriola, refers to Maxism as the 'philosophy of praxis' (partially because that has a specific meaning, partially because he had to code his writings while in prison). If praxis carries its own kind of knowledge, how then is (or must) it be shaped by theoria, in Marxist sense? It is easy enough to follow the logic of What is to be Done? and argue that praxis, if it results in a knowledge, is of a 'spontaneous' kind and must be aided or circumscribed by 'socialist' theoria, produced by a different kind of practice. This leaves me cold for several reasons, besides the fact that it seems to replicate an elitist 'inside/outside' conception of socialist politics.

I'll leave this question unanswered.

On the 'revolutionary' character of the NSDAP (briefly)

I'd like to jump ahead several years for a moment and briefly consider the overal trajectory of the NSDAP during the 1920s. Some historians have spoken of the 'revolutionary' nature of the Nazi movement as a means of highlighting its 'radical break' from republican values. Others have rejected such a viewpoint, arguing instead that the Nazis incorporated various aspects of much earlier nationalist, right-wing groups and therefore should be understood in relation to more longstanding values and pre-existing political associations. The question comes doen to one of imagined continuity, whether or not Nazism--both in an ideological and organizational sense--reflects a subterranean element of German (or even European) history or it it is fundamentally unique and contingent upon a specific socio-historical conjuncture. (Of course there are those interpretations that posit Nazism as an essential aspect of modernity or the German character, but I do not place much faith in these readings.) Some more recent studies have taken a more dialectical approach to the question, translating it from 'either/or' to 'both at once'. Jeffrey Herf's book Reactionary Modernism (1984) is an exemplary model of this approach, recasting older discussion of the post-WWI 'conservative revolution' in a broader cultural dimension. Before Herf even, historians with a pronounced Marxist leaning, such as Tim Mason, had already started to put forward analyses that accounted for how the NSDAP could be both committed to maintaining inherited power structures--if only to better bend them to accomodate their own political goals--as wells as promote a complete reorganization of society. In his essay "Legacy of 1918 for National Socialism" Mason does not discuss this seeming contradication as I have formulated it, but he does touch upon it tangentially in a description of how Hitler combined two contradictory historical explanations for the empire's collapse in November 1918.
In speeches during the late 1920s-early 1930s Hitler employed the popular Dolchstoß, or 'stab-in-the-back' thesis for the collapse that was popular amongst the political right and was originally forumlated almost simultaneously with Germany's capitulation to the allies. According to this view, it was because of various 'anti-German elements' at the home front who sapped necessary support from the military that the country lost the war. Working-class parties and organizations were systematically scapegoated, as were 'foreigners', Jews and unconventional groups (homosexuals, etc.). On the other hand, Hitler traced a longer, more structural explanation for the collapse that emphasized urbanization, moral decline, materialism and the weakness of the imperial ruling class.

(more to come)

Extended Exegesis on Eberhard Kolb's The Weimar Republic.

As part of my study on the Berlin Dada movement I have had to conduct a far amount of research on the German revolution of 1918-1919. Several books have been helpful in this area. One of note is Eberhard Kolb's The Weimar Republic, part of the Routledge companion series to History. Kolb offers a general historical overview of the period with extremely useful maps and graphs, as well as a concluding section that discusses questions of historiography. In chapter two of this section, "The revolutionary origins of the Republic," Kolb outlines the major shifts in how historians have described the birth of Weimar since the end of WWII. His outline offers much food for thought.

According to Kolb a consensus was reached among historians after the conclusion of WWII regarding the German revolution and that this dominated the debate until the late 1950s. Emphasis was placed on the role of the German Social Democratic Party and their democratic credentials. It was argued that the party provided a democratic bulwark against the threat of the far-left and did the best it could given the overall situation it faced at the time. This line of reasoning partially reflected post-WWII political agendas. It buttressed the 'continuity' argument the Federal Republic of West Germany used to connect the newly founded state to the earlier republic of Weimar and thereby depict the Nazi period as a regrettable historical aberration. It also retroactively aligned the defenders of the Weimar Republic with the Federal Republic's anti-communist stance. Kolb does not explain how this worked out at the time, which, in my mind, raises some question, given the fact that Adenauer and the Christian Democrats not only were opposed to reaching out the SPD after the war but continued to castigate their 'communist' past--at least until 1959 when the SPD repudiated their Marxist heritage at the Bad Godesburg conference. Kolb does note, however, that the consensus view inadvertently supported a 'Marxist-Leninist' assertion that the radical left-wing of the revolutionary movement could have overthrown the National Assembly in 1919 had President Friedrich Ebert not called in the Freikorps.

In East Germany this line was de rigueur. Following doctrines first laid down by the Comintern during the late 1930s, the Social Democrats were categorically condemned for their 'counter-revolutionary' actions during the late teens and early 1920s. Before 1958, however, there were differing accounts of the November revolution. This was rectified by a number of theses laid out that year. Officially, the German revolution was defined as "a bourgeois-democratic revolution, carried out to some extent with proletarian means and methods" (150). Marred by ambiguity, this definition nevertheless touches on some very interesting questions about how we, and especially Marxists, talk about 'bourgeois' versus 'proletarian' revolution and whether it is always the class which benefits from a mode of production that is responsible for constructing it. Marx's 18th Brumaire and the theory of 'Bonapartism' seems to call such a mechanical conclusion into question, as does, in terms of Germany specifically, the work of Geoff Eley and David Blackbourn--I refer to their book The Peculiarities of German History, which critiques the once-popular Sonderweg thesis from a perspective sympathetic to Marxism. The biggest problem with the DDR's line was that it elevates the 'militant Marxist-Leninist party' to the sole determining force of history. Basically, the DDR historians argued that a revolutionary situation existed during the winter of 1918 but that the 'subjective element', i.e. proper organization around a revolutionary party, was lacking. Thus the revolution failed. This view remains influential to this day, particularly among current revolutionary groupings.

During the late 1950s and into the 1960s scholars turned away from their narrow focus on party politics and instead turned to look more closely at the workers' and soldiers' councils that sprang up after WWI and were the true loci of the revolution. Prior to this the councils had largely been viewed as inherently left-wing and proto-Soviet (in the bad sense), but as scholars examined them more in-depth they found that a significant amount of inner turmoil existed within these democratic bodies. They also discovered that, contrary to popular belief, the councils were largely dominated by the SPD, USPD and even bourgeois parties, not the Spartakists, who only had representatives in a few councils in the major cities. These facts refuted both the views of the 'Marxist-Leninist' historians and those who dismissed the councils as hotbeds of Bolshevism. Empirical studies showed that large sections of the working-class were radicalizing outside the control of revolutionaries. This suggests that, although they may not have been leading the movement, consciousness was moving toward the left. Kolb refutes this and is quick to assert that the votes by the council delegates in favor the National Assembly prove that the majority of delegates were for parliamentary democracy over a state closer to the 'Russian' example (153). This, I would argue, is a tendentious conclusion. It does not take into account the SPD's machinations to ensure that the vote would go their way, nor does it adequately consider the gap between the delegates support for the assembly and their simultaneous support for reforms that the SPD-led government was unwilling to grant. It begs the question: what did 'parliamentary democracy' exactly mean to these delegates?

Analysis of the the councils also suggested that their formation occurred in stages. In the first stage, immediately after their initial formation in November 1918 to the election of the National Assembly on January 19, 1919, the councils, Kolb claims, 'co-operated loyally' with the 'revolutionary' government and leaders of the councils saw them as temporary institutions that would give way to a parliamentary government rather than become long-term political institutions conferred with the power of the state. After January 1919 Kolb speaks of a second stage that lasted through the spring of that year (a period of mass strikes throughout the country). Kolb refers to a 'rapid radicalization' within the councils during this period, fueled by disappointment with the speed of reforms. Members began to turn against the government and the government resorted to armed confrontation to stem the radicalization, which, as usual happens in such situations, only spur it further. This radicalization was accompanied by a growing mass movement outside the councils. Kolb writes that it was only during this second phase that a 'councils ideology' emerged, i.e. the idea that the councils could serve as a permanent institution of class struggle or future state. This movement was dominated by USPD forces, although the KPD played a role as well--keep in mind that the USPD would split little more than a year later and the left-wing join the KPD.

As Kolb reports, the new information on the councils has led many historians to conclude that there was no imminent danger of a second 'Russian revolution' in the winter of 1918 and that the threat of the far-left was greatly exaggerated. This argument has an interesting component. Many historians now criticize the SPD for not sticking to its principles but instead succumbing to an irrational fear of Bolshevism. They blame Ebert and the leadership of the SPD for bringing into play reactionary forces that they could have sidelined had they been confident enough to question the strength of the far-left. In many ways this new line of reasoning serves as a kind of 'self-critique' of Social Democracy, holding accountable those who would sacrifice principles in the face of extenuating circumstances. Kolb insists that this revised view not be conceived as a 'third way' in discussion of what kind of government could have come out of the revolution had those in control made different decisions. To do so, he maintains, would give credence to the possibility of a 'dictatorship of the proletariat', a potential he believes has no historical grounding whatsoever. It is hard not to view the argument in this way, however, posed as it is in a 'what if' manner. While a full-blown socialist revolution may have been an unrealistic possibility in the winter of 1918 it makes more sense to me to delve further into the upsurge of radicalization during this period and chart its shifts than to return to a narrative that returns to a narrow focus on the efforts of a single party attempting to reign in a situation they could not control except by breaking with every conviction they ever held.

Althusser Abstract

The following is an abstract for my paper on Louis Althusser's initial theory of ideology and its relationship to the de-Stalinization process occuring concurrently in the USSR. The working title of the paper is: Stalinist Humanism: Louis Althusser's Reformulation of the Marxist Theory of Ideology and the Dynamics of De-Stalinization. Although I am not quite happy with how the most recent draft turned out and would like to revise several section--particularly my discussion of ideology and an overview of the Sino-Soviet conflict--I decided to turn the paper into my professor, take a grade, and move on with other work. I still believe the final form of the paper will provide some insight into Althusser's thought and open up some aspects of his work that have remained in the dark or at least undeveloped. It explores the historical context of Althusser's rejection of humanism and posits some political ramifications of his choices, both of which, I feel, are important for developing critiques of the methods that dominate academic departments today.


After the death of Stalin in 1953 the international communist movement faced a crisis of legitimacy that affected communist parties around the world. After rising to power over the course of a few years Nikita Khrushchev sought to assuage this crisis by casting the USSR in a 'humanist' light that would assist the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in moving past the acknowledged criminality of the Stalinist period. Khrushchev's reforms ushered in a period of relative liberalization and significantly altered, at least in word, the USSR's relationship to the US and its Western European allies. Changes promoted by Khrushchev also affected communist intellectuals, who were no longer obligated to conform to Stalin's definition of Marxism outlined in the 1938 History of the CPSU (Short Course) and instead began to establish new orientations of their own. One such figure is Louis Althusser, philosopher, teacher and member of the Parti Communiste Français (PCF) whose work during the 1960s is considered by many to be one of the most important reformulations of Marxism since the 1920s. Althusser's writings on the concept of ideology have been particularly influential and are read today by students of critical theory. Although scholars such as Gregory Elliott and Perry Anderson have traced Althusser's work back to the historical context in which it developed, important lacunae remain to be explored. The relationship between the de-Stalinization process initiated by Khrushchev in the USSR and Althusser's theory of ideology is one example. My paper examines this relationship by focusing on Althusser's 1963 essay "Marxism and Humanism" and the way in which Althusser constructs his notion of ideology in this essay by analyzing the rise of 'humanism' in the USSR. I argue that Althusser's theory of ideology is one key aspect of the philosopher's broader attempt to chart a middle course between the anti-Leninist positions of the 'socialist humanists' who broke completely with the communist parties to formulate a 'new left' orientation and the ultra-left position of the Communist Party of China (CPC) who accused the CPSU of backsliding and colluding with its 'imperialist' enemies.

A Quick Quote out of Russia

A quotation from a famous, perestroika-era Russian playwright named Alexandr Gelman that appeared in a recent article by Michael Kimmelman, the NY Times lead art critic, struck me the other day as being germane not only to the current situation facing artists in Russia today but to the history of art in general. In response to Kimmelman's pondering over the increasingly volatile relationship between artists and the Kremlin Gelman muses: "The less democracy, the more cultural figures matter. If the tendency against democracy continues, cultural figures will gain more influence." Later Gelman concludes: "It's a disgrace for Russia that writers would replace political parties...But maybe that is what will have to happen." This is, interestingly enough, precisely the situation that existed in 19th century Russia under the Tsar. Because all oppositional political discussion was, in effect, silenced by the Tsar's censorship regulations and his police forces (both open and secret), most progressive ideas were disseminated through literature. In the absence of any true public sphere of political debate, writers such as Alexander Herzen, Vissarion Belinksy, Mikhail Bakunin and Nikolai Chernyshevsky embodied the progressive forces of their era because they took up pressing social issues in their work and attempted, at times, to put themselves in the service of the people. That this notion of 'the people' turned out to be little more than an abstraction when put into practice partially explains the failure of these artists to turn their ideas into reality. None were effective politicians, primarily because none could conceive of revolutionary change as being more than an ethical program or a sectarian, putschist movement (e.g. the Decemberists). The rise of Marxism in Russia amongst the intelligentsia would, of course, change all this.

Outside of the Russian context I think Gelman's comment also provides food for thought in relation to the historical rise of the bourgeois in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Memorializing Politics

Artist Mark Wallinger won the 2007 Turner prize yesterday (the UK's most important contemporary art competition) for his installation State Britain, a meticulous re-creation of the signs, objects and debris that formed anti-war activist Brian Haw's one-man protest against the escalation of the 'war on terror' before it was demolished by the London police in May 2006. Haw began his protest directly across from the houses of parliament in 2001, before the US invasion of Iraqi, but subsequently condemned the British government's involvement in the war and later occupation, as well as highlighting local socio-economic struggles. (I saw Haw's ramshackle outpost when I was in London in 2003 and remember how popular it was with tourists.) After passing the 'Serious Organized Crime and Police Act,' which forbids all unauthorized demonstrations within a kilometer of Parliament Square, Haw's belongings were taken and destroyed. Fortunately, Wallinger had taken hundreds of photographs of the
encampment before the material was confiscated. Working with a team of assistants, Wallinger produced replicas of all the material Haw had amassed, all the signs, all the flyers, even the stove that Haw used to make tea. These replicas were then installed in early 2007 at the Tate Modern, half of which just so happens to lie within one kilometer of Parliament Square. As art, its seems, Haw's protest could live on in a way it could not as a demonstration.

This paradoxical situation is apparently one of the reasons why State Britain was awarded the 25,000 pound prize (just over $51,000). According to the Guardian Unlimited the Turner judges praised the work for its 'immediacy, visceral intensity and historic importance,' and noted its combination of 'a bold political statement with art's ability to articulate fundamental human truths.' What 'truths' exactly is not clear, but it seems that Wallinger's piece is championed both for its ability to explicitly present a political view as well as distance itself from this view. This seemingly contradictory quality is nothing more, however, than an objective fact: the original political view is Haw's, not Wallinger's. Wallinger has merely appropriated Haw's political view and placed it in a new context, an art gallery (in a museum). Cut off from its original context and isolated within the gallery, the materials are no longer seen entirely in terms of their content, i.e. what they say or the message they try present. Within this new context the formal qualities of the materials take on a new found importance. Suddenly how the message is presented and the kind of materials used to make this presentation dominate the discussion, since it is precisely these formal qualities that allow us to step back from the particular content of the original protest and instead address the universal content that lies within the artistic copy. Adrian Searle, art critic of the Guardian Unlimited, said something much the same when he wrote in a Jan. 16th review of State Britain that "By bringing the protest inside an institution, Wallinger gives us a chance almost to freeze it, presenting it as a simulacrum of itself."

The formalization of Haw's protest does not, however, empty it of all political content or value. Ben Street, writing in Artnet back in Jan., argued that Wallinger's installation functions as a memorial, "a monument to the idea of public protest against the war." Street, I think, has the right idea in comparing State Britain to a memorial rather than a ironical appropriation piece à la Richard Prince. Yet, as Street writes, this memorialization of Haw's protest generalizes his demonstration for a specific demand (an end to the occupation of Iraq) into the unspecific idea of public protest. Street goes on to say that "the survival of Haw's camp as art object and its death as protest are one and the same." This perhaps overly fatalistic conclusion assumes that the formalization of Haw's protest (i.e. its being made into art) equals the complete decontextualization and depletion of his message. In a partial sense, of course, Street's conclusion is valid. But the fact that Haw's message is presented in the Tate Modern at all is important insofar as it reflects a growing recognition of the anti-war movement and a broader shift in public discourse. It is politically significant that Wallinger's work has been awarded the Turner prize even if its own political value is limited or questionable (I think it is both).

What are the limits of Wallinger's 'bold political statement'? First of all, the formalization and decontextualization of Haw's protest is not solely the result of moving the protest into an art gallery but is instead an integral aspect of Wallinger's appropriation. Part of the problem is that Wallinger has mistaken 'bold political statements' for politics. Reproducing the statements and placards of a demonstration does not equal a demonstration, both in terms of political effectiveness and 'boldness'. That the Turner judges have incorrectly taken Wallinger's attempt to be both engaged and aloof as evidence of his ability to both make a 'bold political statment' and a work of art that articulates 'fundamental human truths' is only a further indication of the artworld's blind obedience to political abstractions. Second, the appropriation of Haw's protest in the name of art and the subsequent celebration of this act confirm the broad consensus amongst artists and critics today that art, by definition, is the posing of questions. Wallinger's installation raises a lot of questions, so the reports say, and that makes it effective art. That art has primarily become a means of asking critical questions about society without having to provide any answers is both the result of historical development and the misguided belief that art has no laws of its own. Art has always reflected society, never directly, but always in an oblique way. Yet it was only with the rise of modernism that artists begin to consciously address social issues in their art, either directly or indirectly (or even, one could argue, unconsciously). Today, on the other hand, art is social commentary since no one is certain anymore whether it can be defined in terms of formal charateristics. What remains from older, modernist traditions of art is the belief that art requires no justification for its existence outside of itself. Thus today we get art that asks questions, art as social commentary but without any requirement to justify itself or ground itself in reality.

Berlin Dada Abstract

I am posting an abstract I wrote for the Berlin Dada project. Much of this information already appeared in an earlier post, but I have condensed it and more or less laid out my argument.

Abstract:

Generally speaking Berlin is recognized as having been the most 'political' of the regional centers of the international Dada movement. Whereas a wholesale rejection of 'bourgeois' culture and its vapid aestheticism was more or less the common program of Dada, only in Berlin was the movement's cultural politics deliberately linked to revolutionary socialist politics. Prominent Dadaists such as George Grosz, John Heartfield, and Wieland Herzfelde joined the German communist party in 1918 and strove to align Dada with the broader struggle to win the working class to socialism. This politicization of Dada should come as no surprise given the fact that it occurred during a period of heightened political and social struggle when many artists in Germany were radicalized. Nevertheless, there is little or no consensus amongst art historians as to how we are to conceive the relationship between the Berlin Dadaists and their social context. What role did their art play in their politics? What role did their politics play in their art?
I will address these questions by focusing on Berlin Dada's relationship to the contemporaneous Proletarian Culture movement (known as Proletkult) in the recently formed Soviet Union. Proletkult, which began as a cultural and educational organization independent of the Soviet government, agitated for a complete renunciation of 'bourgeois' culture and the fostering of a new culture built upon a pure proletarian ideology. This call for the immediate implementation of a cultural revolution as a buttress or even a necessary prelude to the political and social revolution spread throughout Europe soon after the Bolsheviks took power in November 1917 and influenced several left-wing artist groups. The Berlin Dadaists saw the theory of Proletkult as means of transforming their rejection of art into a cultural revolutionary project.
To better explain this transformation I will first discuss how Dada came to Berlin in 1917 and was swept up in the prelude and aftermath of the revolutions of 1918 and 1919. Second, a look at how the Berlin Dadaists responded to the Proletkult movement and began to assert themselves as 'revolutionaries'. Third, I will take the First International Dada Fair mounted in 1920 as indicative of the limits of Berlin Dada's cultural politics. Finally, a comparison of Berlin Dada and the expressionist movement, which many also saw as a revolutionary art movement. The problem of Berlin Dada's politics is as much a historical issue as it is a methodological issue. While some art historians view Dada's rejection of aesthetic value and the objet d'art as being inherently political, I base my analysis on the contention that there is no revolutionary art. Political value is not an inherent attribute of art or some aspect of an art work's form; rather, whatever political value a work of art may have is in relation to a broader political context, and the effectiveness of that value is in relation to a broader political struggle. Thus, rather than investigating the 'radicality' of formal innovations, my paper provides insight into how the Berlin Dadaists reacted to a revolutionary situation they could not control and did not comprehend.