Taking Aim, redux

(The following is a response to the article ‘Taking Aim’, which appeared in the second issue of ‘Letters’, and was, itself, a response to the newspaper ‘Assuming Hostilities’.)

‘Pro-revolutionary’, so far as it has been used in different contexts (‘Internationalist Perspectives’, the above-mentioned ‘Assuming Hostilities’, ‘Letters Journal’, the various reiterations with a far more impoverished understanding of this concept on Infoshop.org and elsewhere), is always a misuse, is always impoverished, for as long as the concept functions, the milieu must exist.  To reflect upon definitional modalities of this existence is still shaped and structured by a normal functioning of those who haven’t the capacity to effect revolution due to a lack of structural positionality and chance. Even with auto-critique, self-analysis, experiential decoding, our functioning and praxis is defined –tangentially, obliquely, aloof from, or overdetermined by- and shaped from the confines of the milieu; no amount of redress, other than the milieu’s abolition, will affect this existential displacement.

If what is at stake is understanding the unconscious insurrectional capabilities of the for-human (of human community, Gemeinwesen), than neither definition matters, not to those who know nothing of ‘revolutionary theory’ or for those with an expressed fidelity towards the absolute abandonment and destruction of capitalism yet haven’t the material capacity to enact a praxis of the encounter-towards-rupture.

We are all pro-revolutionaries [1], and to take fright over another’s use of the term is at best a concern over intentions, at worst the necessity of imposing an ideological constraint. The proposed shift in dialogue, if realized, would be inconsequential, as whatever hegemonic input called for in demanding this shift is to simultaneously –openly avowed or not- demand an ideological cohesion amongst those who are by definition not in the position to effect revolt and rupture.

Why this religious conviction concerning the end-for-itself (communism)? If the agency to effect revolt (for or against conditions) is always there [2], always occurring – though one has to distinguish between revolt and struggle, for the latter feigns a historical telos of the revolution marked by additive ingredients of little situations, of the Symbolic [3] arising everywhere, when in reality the Symbolic is nowhere – than why be concerned about the simple procedure of declaring our own desires positively, when the work-of-the-negative finds such concerns to be infantile? We mustn’t ever call for ideological cohesion, and if this call is in place from those who recognize the most our own lack of agency, then something suspicious and contrived is afloat.

…

“What grand understatement when the author of Assuming Hostilities writes that “every revolution has been made not simply by those who label themselves with this or that ism”!  What delusions of grandeur! Those who are most conscious, that is, desirous of revolution, are those who from the start impede and restrict revolution by means of their leadership and influence (or actual wielding of power).”- Taking Aim

…

“The use of the prefix ‘pro’ with reference to the consciousness and activity of communists as distinct to that of the proletariat marked for Monsieur Dupont a profound pessimism with reference to the self-evaluation of optimistic revolutionary ideologies – and was specifically theorised to mark precisely the split between consciousness and capacity… [rather than] a concretised relation to an idealised future event” – one_shoe

Delusions of grandeur are endemic to those who consistently declare without refrain to see revolution in sight, but more important is the differend [4] between two conceptions of consciousness and agency in tandem here.

“Those who are most conscious, that is, desirous of revolution, are those who from the start impede and restrict revolution by means of their leadership of influence”

“The use of the prefix ‘pro’ … was specifically theorized to mark precisely the split between consciousness and capacity… [rather than] a concretized relation to an idealized future event.”

The two quotations in perspective point towards an incommensurability; for the first, recognizing agency (as potential leaders) in the position of those with consciousness, and in the latter, between that which recognizes an immediate parallax between consciousness and agency (capacity) -a stance which maintains that pro-revolutionary or not, an understanding of revolt in advance gives us nothing concerning a concretized revolution.  In the first quotation a direct relation to a concretized revolution is stated (we who are conscious of the revolution could actually, no, will undoubtedly have an impact, shoddy though it may be), while in the second, it is explicit that having consciousness (‘pro-revolutionary’) has nothing to do with capacity (with concretizing revolution).

A recognized strata of those who are more or less conscious of the desire for revolution is unimportant; invariance isn’t indicative of a potential for usurping leadership but rather an acknowledged imperative that the old mole or pure immanence is “an innate spontaneity, an immediate insurrectionary upsurgence” [5].