The Stupid Christ (Part 3)

The poem "The Stupid Christ" has been a launching point for the previous two entries in this series, and like this entry, has been appropriated for segue to commentary on discussions by Marxists about religious faith. This discussion has specifically focused on what has been seen as the revolutionary message of St. Paul: on philosophical wagers on faith; not a theist faith, but an atheist faith. My investigations have been about Alain Badiou on this line in his very influential work St.Paul: The Foundation of Universalism. Articles by a number of writers offering critique and review of this book are being quoted in these blog entries, using excerpts, and then extrapolations from the mind of the poet.

So far this has been speculation on the nature of the Christ Event itself, but the purpose today is to double down on the wager. This is what the Marxists are doing I think. The Christ Event is taken as a paradigm of what Badiou terms the Event, the genesis of a Truth Procedure that is proposed as the the essence of revolutionary practice. This atheism is not a betrayal of Christ, it is an expansion of His meaning for the subjectivity of humanity. To begin, from Savoj Zizek in his In Defense of Lost Causes (Pg 176):

“The first thing we must do is to fully endorse the displacement in the history of Marxism concentrated in two great passages (or, rather, violent cuts) : the passage from Marx to Lenin, as well as the passage from Lenin to Mao . In each case, there is a displacement of the original constellation: from the most advanced country (as Marx expected) to a relatively backward country—the revolution ‘took place in the wrong country’; from workers to (poor) peasants as the main revolutionary agent. In the same way as Christ needed Paul's ‘ betrayal ‘ in order for Christianity to emerge as a universal Church (recall that, amongst the twelve apostles, Paul occupies the place of Judas the traitor, replacing him!), Marx needed Lenin's ‘ betrayal ‘ in order to enact the first Marxist revolution: it is an inner necessity of the ‘original’ teaching to submit to and survive this ‘betrayal’; to survive this violent act of being torn out of one's original context and thrown into a foreign landscape where it has to reinvent itself—only in this way is universality born.”

Orienting Badiou’s interpretation of the text of St. Paul to Marxist revolutionary practice I will simply provide excerpts from two articles that most explicitly undertake this review and critique of Badiou’s book.

The first article is by the writer John Steele published at the blog Kasama:

Alain Badiou: Another Take on Revolutionary Theory

“.. Badiou’s background is within Marxism and Maoism. international communist movement as it had emerged that far), has reached a point of 'saturation' as he terms it, and that a new beginning – a new truth-process, as he calls it – is necessary..

.. Alain Badiou has developed a distinctive philosophical system His view of ethics revolves around understanding how to have 'fidelity' to powerful breaks with conventional thinking, and militantly pursue those breaks as far as they can go – in theory and practice.. such a rupture or Event is the start of a process which changes both the world and the people involved in it, and creates and synthesizes new truths. The Event is the starting point for both a Truth-Process and a Subject, in Badiou’s terminology. (The Subject is not the particular person, but all who participate in the Truth-Process.)..

.. Badiou is examining Paul as an archetype of militancy – as a person with ‘Fidelity’ to a world historic ‘Event’ and the ‘Truth-Process’ emerging from it (in this case, a resurrection [undocumented to be sure] and a certain universal set of messages that were unprecedented for their times.)..

Badiou says he wants to trace the connection, embodied in Paul,‘between the general idea of a rupture, an overturning, and that of a thought-process which is this rupture’s subjective materiality.’

.. It’s the connection, in other words, between an Event and the Truth-Process and the Subject which are both born out of it. The ‘militant figure’ is the militant of a truth-process and part of a new subjectivity. (Subjectivity in this philosophical sense does not mean, as in Maoist usage, being un-objective or anti-scientific. It means in this case, being a new subject (or part of a new social subject), a newly defined and awakened actor on the social stage and within the new process of truth-formation.)..

.. What Paul contributed, Badiou believes, is the insight and practice of separating truths (and truth-processes) from their particular historical context. Badiou opposes this to the contemporary practices of dissolving truths into forms of cultural, linguistic or historical relativisms.

..‘Capital demands a permanent creation of subjective and territorial identities in order for its principle of movement to homogenize its space of action’..

.. A new truth-procedure, Badiou believes, will on the one hand interrupt and disrupt the repetition of the same which is the logic imposed by capital. On the other hand: although the eruption of new truth is a singular process,‘its singularity is immediately universalizable.’..

.. In other words: a truth-process originates in a particular event, breaking out at a particular time and place; but the process is one which brings into being new truths which are universal, or which can be universalized. So the truth-process also breaks with particular identities and relativist logic..

'What are the conditions for a universal singularity?’It is precisely on this question that he thinks it’s helpful to look at Paul, because this is his (Paul’s) question. The question, rephrased in Badiou’s terms, is this:

'What is the relation between the supposed universality of the postevental truth (that is, what is inferred from Christ’s resurrection) and the evental site, which is, indubitably, the nation bound together by the Old Testament?’

This becomes for Badiou a general question about the relation between the old and the new, after the occurrence of an event.. event is singular and unique: it breaks with the boundaries and categories of the situation out of which it erupts. But the event marks the beginning of a truth-process, which is a process of creating universal truths.. But Badiou also wants to stress what is something like the reverse process: how the truth which is essentially universal, traverses the differences and particularities of the world:

'With regard to the world in which truth proceeds, universality must expose itself to all differences and show, through the ordeal of their division, that they are capable of welcoming the truth that traverses them.’

This becomes one of Badiou’s chief themes in this book: the way in which new universal truths ‘traverse’ or travel through and incorporate the differences and particularities of the world.

'It is in fact the search for new differences,’ he says,‘New particularities to which the universal might be exposed, that leads Paul beyond the evental site properly speaking (the Jewish site) and encourages him to displace the experience historically, geographically, ontologically. Whence a highly characteristic militant tonality, combining the appropriation of particularities with the immutability of principles, the empirical existence of differences with the essential nonexistence, according to a succession of problems requiring resolution, rather than through an amorphous synthesis.’

Badiou then quotes Paul from Corinthians I (First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians, in the New Testament):

For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all, that I might win the more. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win the Jews; to those under the law, I became as one under the law—though not being myself under the law—that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law—not being without law toward God but under the law of Christ—that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all men.’ (Cor. I.9.19-22)

Badiou says: This is not an opportunist text, but an instance of what Chinese communists will call the mass line, pushed to its ultimate expression in serving the people. It consists in supposing that, whatever people’s opinions and customs, once gripped by a truth’s postevental work, their thought becomes capable of traversing and transcending those opinions and customs without having to give up the differences that allow them to recognize themselves in the world.’

.. a revolutionary militant or cadre. You have been grasped in your life and activated by a great eruption in the world.. have entered into a process of synthesizing and recognizing and establishing new truths in the world, a process which is not just yours, but yours along with many others.. the truth has to be made real in the world, not by opposing itself abstractly to the differences and particularities of people and groups, but through them. This would be what the mass line is about, as Badiou is interpreting it here.

'From the masses, to the masses’ – taking ‘the ideas of the masses’, synthesizing them through the universal truth in a way that does not dissolve their particularity, and bringing them ‘back to the masses’.”

Orienting Badiou’s interpretation of the text of St. Paul to Marxist revolutionary practice I am providing excerpts from two articles that most explicitly undertake this review and critique of Badiou’s book. The first was John Steele’s article above. The second is an article written by Roger Whitson in the online publication Politics and Culture:

Alain Badiou's St. Paul - St. Paul: The Foundation of Universalism

.. "Badiou's book forms a group with a number of critics, including Slavoj Zizek and Antonio Negri, who understand the use of religious language and religiosity in establishing a new type of revolutionary potential. For Badiou, Paul is not the father of Christianity as a metaphysical project. Rather, Paul is a revolutionary anti-philosopher of the event... Paul is a Christian insomuch as he participates in the Christ-event, insofar as he participates in the collective effort that politicizes the resurrection of Christ as something that can organize the multitude towards revolution. Baidou's book is a strange rethinking of collectivity.. a prophetic intratemporality that locates Paul as a contemporary figure currently helping us participate in resistance against oppression.. Badiou makes it clear early on that he cares little for the religious implications of his book..

.. 'Basically, I have never really connected Paul with religion. It is not according to this register, or to bear witness to any sort of faith, or even antifaith, that I have, for a long time, been interested in him’

For Badiou, the importance of Paul lies in how he makes us think about the event in general…

.. 'If today I wish to retrace in a few pages the singularity of this connection in Paul, it is probably because there is currently a widespread search for a new militant figure'..to use the past to produce a future against and ultimately beyond capital.. what Badiou would call a universal singularity with each believer participating in it.. believer forms a radical community that has no laws and is entirely subjective..

Towards metaphysics and capital, the truth procedure can only offer indifference… It is not as though Paul condemns Jewish Law, he just does not pay much attention to it. In this not-paying attention to, Badiou marks what could be the most potent revolutionary stance: an absolute exodus.. In-difference would not only mark a rejection of difference, but would also include a construction of being and the event focused around and inside of difference-in-itself. Difference would thus reject the static and standard identity networking of capitalism, and instead open itself up to fidelity as repetition, as a revolution that seeks a perpetuation of the event in its rejection of what Badiou calls the ‘automatism of desire'.. The static repetition of the law seeks an absolute harmony with earlier images of the event. This automatic repetition Baidou calls ‘sin'.. automatic desire can do nothing but prolong the reign of the law.. Autonomous desire is sinful, for Paul, not because it transgresses-but because its transgression is naïve, nostalgic, and impotent..

In-difference is needed for Badiou because it makes this non-contradictory difference possible in revolutionary thought. It is a non-dialectical movement that shatters any normalizing conception of difference as a networked reality under Jewish law. Fidelity to the event marks, thus, a constant moving away from the processes that would construct a singular truth or a singular law or even a singular difference. The event can only be called attention to in this moment of in-difference; and this in-difference, for Badiou, marks the only possibility for a revolutionary understanding of universalism..

The invocation of Paul by Badiou shows just how revolutionary this kind of thinking can be. Paul's image is already incorporated into an extremely complicated capitalistic apparatus, one that is becoming more and more global. Fundamentalisms--Jewish, Islamic, and Christian--all attempt to produce a radical alternative to global capital. By structuring their reaction so dialectially, though, fundamentalisms succeed only in reproducing the very structure they seek to disrupt… Love is the word Badiou uses to signify the opening of universalist revolutionary practice. This practice does not replace law with lawlessness, but sees itself beyond itself. The Law returns as a beyond of the law, the community returns as a beyond of the community, love returns time and time again--but beyond itself. Revolution, likewise, moves beyond itself in an act that serves to perpetuate what it is:

[T]he impetus of a truth, what makes it exist in the world, is identical to its universality, whose subjective form, under the Pauline name of love, consists in its tirelessly addressing itself to all the others, Greeks and Jews, men and women, free men and slaves’.. To be militant is to be universalist is to be a lover; it is to address oneself to all singularities in-differently. For it is within love, and it is here that we see yet a further affinity that Badiou might have with Che Guevarra and Paulo Freire, that the process of the truth event comes to be what it is: not in a static repetition, but in a absolutely dynamic mobility that revolutionizes itself in its perpetualizing existence.”

The Stupid Christ

when you felt forsaken
you knew us best..
it was after all then
you were a stupid christ

you were damned lucky son .
for that bit of the story
nailed that way . . .
complaining about it .

the guy next door knew more
you finally got it straight maybe
seeing him there .
hanging just like you .

dear sweet jesus .
you never left the cradle really
your ascension .
was barely an elevation

so when I used the mallet
saving an extra nail
pounding through . . .
both feet at once .

making sure to shatter
the joints in your wrists
to finish at last .
the manifest trinity .

not leaving one arm dangling
I was the worst of us
so my personal sorrow ended
thanks to you . . .

having finished .
what father wanted
completely . . .
for life eternal

for we the holy ghost

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The Stupid Christ (Part 2)

The title refers to the poem opening the first entry, a poem which is no way written in bad faith. We didn’t want to try to interpret it, but we did examine its mathematics. Still, it was hard to ignore it had something to do with religion. It ends up, though, that religion has had no small part in discussions by Marxists. This discussion has had a lot to do with St. Paul and philosophical wagers on faith; not a theist faith, but an atheist faith. My investigations have been about Alain Badiou on this line in his very influential work St.Paul: The Foundation of Universalism.

I provided, in the earlier piece, commentary on an excellent article by Adam S. Miller - An Interview with Alain Badiou : “Universal Truths & the Question of Religion”. It provides a detailed review of Badiou’s book and quotes from the text extensively. In breaching a concept of universalism, Badiou is actually leading to his special concept of the “Event” which is a central tenant of his philosophy. It’s far from a traditional concept of universalism; Badiou extends the meaning of universalism most pointedly in stipulating the role of indifference. However, in Badiou thought, this going beyond evident differences and separations does not mean the formation of a new separate particularity. His perspective is clear in his reading of the text of St. Paul:

“You have to understand that there is something in the becoming of a truth that exceeds the strict possibilities of the human mind. There is something in truth that is beyond our immediate capacities. In a new truth there is something that is beyond the established differences between languages and facts”

This is an astounding statement for me. There is the individual, as I understand it, which is subjectivity in the coordinates of the pre-evental situation (in the case of St. Paul, before the crucifixion and resurrection), the state of an individual’s mind. Not transcending this state, but within this state, is the potential of an expansion of the pre-evental situation by a process of faith; not in an external god, but in participation in the truth of a novel event in the universal field of subjectivity. As for Badiou, this is a vision of revolutionary praxis, action based on fidelity to the truth of an emancipating event. Badiou’s philosophy brought many questions to the mind of the poet:

Is the intuition operating in a poem universal subjectivity and does creativity in the poet exceeds the immediate capacity of his mind? Did Christ at last contract into the coordinates of humanity’s limits in his day, such that he and his Father were not one? In putting him to death did the protagonist of the poem initiate participation in the event of Christ’s resurrection? Was this an event for the eternal life of the Holy Ghost? How could the poet possibly know?

“The Stupid Christ”

when you felt forsaken
you knew us best . .
it was after all then
you were a stupid christ

you were damned lucky son .
for that bit of the story
nailed that way . . .
complaining about it .

the guy next door knew more
you finally got it straight maybe
seeing him there .
hanging just like you .

dear sweet jesus .
you never left the cradle really
your ascension .
was barely an elevation

so when I used the mallet
saving an extra nail
pounding through . . .
both feet at once .

making sure to shatter
the joints in your wrists
to finish at last .
the manifest trinity .

not leaving one arm dangling
I was the worst of us
so my personal sorrow ended
thanks to you . . .

having finished .
what father wanted
completely . . .
for life eternal

for we the holy ghost

Its no simple thing to understand the philosophy of Badiou, the treachery of language is indeed a barrier for accessibility to his ontology. He hopes to help us with mathematics: his well known aphorism “ontology=mathematics”. There is a lot of active commentary on Badiou at the blog The Parallel Campaign, this one from the contributor Brian proves very useful:

Badiou and Saint Paul

Ironically, here at this posting I am thinking about how to make Badiou’s engagement of St. Paul more accessible through his mathematics while Brian opens his entry with how he:

“..will attempt to make some of his more abstract and mathematical concepts more accessible through an engagement with Badiou’s own work on Saint Paul..”

Still, Brian’s objectives coincide with mine. What he chooses to call ”material faith” is the same dog in a different color, atheism. The truth procedure in fidelity to an event is inexplicable and free from the coordinates of current power, law, action based on faith in the truth of the event: an event which has happened, spoken of by Badiou in the unique grammar of the French language, in the future anterior, that the event will have been true. Brian explains as follows the two points he will examine:

“.. first, the initially strange sounding concept of the possibility of a material faith, and the consequences of such a faith, which is a truth procedure which founds a universal truth. Second, a truth procedure, which founds such a universal truth, is governed by a fidelity, or faith, to some event that has ‘happened’. The inexplicable nature of this event means that the procedure operates without reference to any rule, or law. These are two common themes within the letters of Saint Paul; the superiority of faith over works and that faith operates free from the law. In a sense, one of Badiou’s aims is to wrest religion’s final defense from it; the invocation of faith, and make it operate in a wholly material fashion, devoid of all theological reference..”

Brian continues with some discussion of Badiou’s anti-theological stance, but I already discussed that in the statement I quoted at the beginning of this post. What I want to focus on is the implications of “ontology = mathematics” as being all about the creation of novelty. So I continue with the excellent outline of Badiou’s application of set theory, what..

“.. Badiou succinctly calls his ‘wager’: that the One is not. Anything that counts for a One, or a unity is not, the correlate of this is that what is, is pure multiplicity, or pure difference. This is the root of Badiou’s anti-theological stance, which he equates [theology] with any system of thought that has as its fundamental ground of existence in some unity, be it a transcendent omnipotent entity, or the unity of some impersonal vital force that somehow permeates all reality..”

In the first posting on “The Stupid Christ”, we looked at a very careful distinction made between the “individual” and the “subject”. The unity is that of the subject that permeates the individual, or to look at it in reverse, the individual is superimposed on subjectivity. I am curious to know if this concept of superimposition doesn’t itself exceed the authority of Badiou! The individual in fidelity to an event is engaged in a truth process. The truth of the event is about subjectivity in excess of an individual human mind prior to the event. The process is an expansion of individuality in a situation that will have already been true. There is never anything impersonal involved.

Ours is a world of individual people, a multiplicity in the set of humanity. It is a unity in its superimposition on subjectivity. We experience we are individually different; I tend to believe in my own individuality as having a relationship with world unity different than that of Adolf Hitler and Jesus Christ for couple of contrasting examples. What I think is that Badiou, in contrasting individuality with subjectivity, makes a wager not on reality as we experience it as being unity precluding any excess of subjectivity, but a wager that individuals experience only multiplicity in a field of subjectivity, subjectivity being a greater unity already true but exceeding the capacity of thought by individual minds at any point in time-space, in the coordinates of thought in other words. The Parallel Campaign article does not say what I am saying necessarily, or even what Badiou is saying, but that’s what I get in the passage quoted, saying Badiou uses..

“.. the very language of a wager on multiplicity, as opposed to unity.. this pure multiplicity is completely unordered and un-orderable, it cannot be taken as a unity or totality; it is therefore inconsistent multiplicity. That which can be unified, or counted as one, is consistent multiplicity.. Badiou states: ‘what must be said is that the one, which is not, exists solely as operation. Or; there is no one, there is only the count-for-one.’ This count for one presents what has been counted to consist as a unity, what has been gathered together to form a one, but this pure operation has, as yet nothing to operate on. It is the foundational step of applying this pure process of naming to inconsistent multiplicity that grounds all possible systems of related and consistent unities. This operation when applied to what is, inconsistent multiplicity, can present, as consistent, precisely nothing. All that appears, or is presented, is the pure operation of gathering..”

This above is the author’s very useful segue into discussion of Badiou’s application of set-theory, which continues on the one founding axiom that existentially asserts the existence of a set..

“.. the empty set axiom. All the other axioms state how to manipulate sets which have already been given. The empty set has its own special symbol Æ, but is in essence simply a pair of empty braces {}, nothing but the presentation of the operation of gathering, or drawing together as a one. It is also possible, within this theory, to show that all other sets can be generated from this one set through the application of the remaining axioms..”

What is said in the article after that suggests that Badiou uses “the Void” to mean inconsistent multiplicity. Consistent multiplicity is the illusion of unity in the “count-for-one”. Consistent multiplicity is what is presented to the mind. I read this meaning in that part of what is said:

“.. the Void as Badiou sometimes calls it, cannot be presented, but it founds all possible presentation. The empty set is therefore what Badiou calls a pure, or empty name, it is not the presentation of the Void but its name. Therefore inconsistent and consistent multiplicity are linked through this axiomatic naming through the application of the count for one, the empty set sutures the presentation of consistent multiplicities, which are not, to inconsistent multiplicity, which is: Æ, the empty set, is the proper name of being. It also has a strange universal property; it is included in every set but never belongs. Therefore every set represents the void, but it is never presented and its universal property does not amount to much, it is simply the representation of nothing..”

In the framework of my thesis, the relationship of the individual to subjectivity as I understand Badiou, the Void is the unknowable excess of subjectivity over the individual mind as yet not seized by the truth of an event or as yet still in the process of fidelity to the truth of that event which in resulting expansion of an individual mind is known as having been true. The Subject is the source of the “foundational naming” in the statement found in the article text:

“This foundational naming is a decision taken in the face of the void, an empty naming which makes consistent construction possible. All such foundational elements will always be essentially empty; therefore any regressive philosophy that attempts to understand itself through an ever more thorough examination of its foundations will fail.”

Another way I would state this: no matter how deeply we may analyze our individual self, my thoughts of myself, as distinct from the world I know, the thoughts of the world not myself, there is operation of the Subject in excess of my thought. Consider this in reading the text:

“.. In being capable of examining anything, one must have already understood the situation in order to orientate oneself towards what is being examined. The horizon of a situation cannot itself, as horizon, be bought into the foreground and examined: it is the condition of possibility for making things present.. “

This is where we get to the part of working from the foundational axiom of set theory, the empty set, to what can been known in its generation of additional axioms. In doing so it is very important to keep in mind what Badiou said about the empty set having a “strange universal property; it is included in every set but never belongs”. For example , continuing in the article, Brian offers us a very good illustration of the following additional axiom:

“.. although every element that belongs to a set is also included as a subset in it; it is not true that every subset is itself an element of the original set..”

The example given is a group of people in a room. Taken together they form a set, precisely of all the people in the room belong to the set, contributing a number “n” of elements that belong to the set. This set can, however, be divided into a number of parts such as the subset of men or women, etc.. Brian says correctly that the number of such sets computed from the elements that belong to it is precisely “2n”. Perhaps it would have been better to add that the number of subsets not only exceeds the number of elements, but always includes the empty set.

Badiou places key significance on subsets not belonging to sets but rather their being included in sets. I want to keep in front of us the fact that the empty set is also included as a subset of every set though of course it contributes no elements that belong to it. As one may suspect, I gather this excess relates to the excess of subjectivity over the thought elements belonging to an individual mind. We are examining not only the fact that not every subset is an element of the original set, but also what I see as Badiou’s assertion that the actually existing material elements of a set, its existing situation as he says, has inherent possibilities for novelty in the greater, but not transcendental, field of subjectivity.

Along with my caveat, the logic holds in the creation of a new term we will be employing “re-presentation” as discussed in the article we are reviewing:

“.. What a subset does, in relation to a situation, is to re-present a part of it, therefore the totality of such subsets is a re-presentation of the situation taking into account all the possible ways that it might appear..”

The set of all subsets, is called the power set of a set, the power set. Re-presentation of the elements in a set situation with their inclusion in subsets is strictly calculable as “2n”, but we need to consider that “n” may be a finite number or it may be infinite, such as in the set of all natural numbers. The finite is said to be determinable, it has an intuitively obvious meaning as to all possible arrangements of the elements in this situation. A set of infinite elements however is in-determinable. With Badiou, with his philosophical assertion of the possibility of the Event, situations that are in-determinable are potentially capable of novel re-presentation of the presented elements of the set.

Badiou considers any political situation as in-determinable, his is not a philosophy of determinism. I think this means the present coordinates of power, the law, may always be providing consistency, foreclosure against the Void, asserting measure to the un-decidable excess of the power set and establishing the political situation; but the elements of the political situation are always open to novel re-presentation. I am immediately reminded of Lenin’s distinction between formal and actual freedom. We may have formal freedom to act within the law, but actual freedom is a challenge to that authority. “For what?” will always be the question, but actual freedom, to be that, cannot be foreclosed.

How does all this operate in Badiou’s depiction of St. Paul? How does the text of St. Paul relate to Badiou’s Event? I return to the text of the article which leads into this discussion with yet another rendering of the mathematical concepts, the distinction between constructible and non-constructible sets:

“.. how can novelty be created, or generated? It is clear from the above model of how a consistent world operates that everything possible has already been accounted for. Badiou does not want to seek novelty in changing the situation.. Any such operation from ‘outside’ the current consistent world would be an unwarranted appeal to some transcendent factor.. One of the key ways of limiting the state of a situation is to only allow sets which have an intentional definition; they are sets which can be constructed according to some rule or law. The simple rules of construction which at a finite level can easily calculate all the possible permutations a finite set can be consistently modified to work on infinite sets, but it is no longer clear that this process of calculating permutations will actually exhaust all possible compositions of infinite sets. This difference is recognised by the two categories of constructible and non-constructible sets.. If a situation is governed by a state which only allows constructible sets, then a non-constructible set, although composed of the same material elements of the situation, will not be represented as a possibility of the situation, it will be invisible. The existence of such sets can only be asserted to exist; one must have a belief in them, and a faithful fidelity to the consequences that such a belief will deploy. This is what occurs in a truth procedure, stemming from the declaration of an event, which is simply the assertion that a number of non-constructible sets exist as possibilities of the situation. This fidelity to an event will force the language, or representation, of the situation to operate in a new way which will extend its usual functioning, such that it will begin to incorporate and make visible the consequences of holding such an event as true. The only way for this to happen is to investigate the situation element by element, and ask whether each element belongs to the non-constructible sets we are asserting exist. Every element must be investigated as the non-constructible set has no rule or condition that might include, or exclude any element in advance of an actual immanent investigation. The full sequence of these investigations constitutes an extension of the original representational range of the state of a situation; to such an extent that it can now consistently operate ‘as if’ the non-constructible set belonged to the representation of the situation.. By investigating an infinite set, element by element, it is clear that a truth procedure is an infinite affair; any finite portion of this procedure can constitute a subject. An individual will simply be the notion of someone defined entirely by the legalistic definitions deployed in the state of a situation, be it their physical materiality, their belonging to a certain community or country etc. In other words, an identity centred on some definable trait, what such an individual is capable of is to be traversed by a truth procedure; that is to be taken up by it, such that his identity is shifted away from a comfortable constructible identity and moves toward a faith in a non-constructible, unstructured event..”

Badiou depicts Paul’s fidelity to the event of Jesus Christ’s death resurrection as a Truth procedure. Brian’s article paraphrases Badiou’s book:

“Paul becomes a subject in his fidelity and faith to the event of Christ’s death and resurrection, and this is manifested in his wondering militant preaching of the Gospel, not only to fellow Jews but also to the Gentiles. The message must be truly universal, as the event held to introduces a number of non-constructible elements, which if adhered to as true requires that this ‘message’ must be taken to all elements of the situation. In this case the situation is that of social world of the Roman Empire, and the preaching of the Gospel must be carried out as a systematic militant investigation of every element of that situation. No group can be assumed to belong to this truth in advance, according to some condition such as the laws governing Judaism, nor can any group be excluded in advance due to any condition.. Paul’s relation to the law, and the message that Christ’s death and resurrection brings to the law. The discussion on law is taken up in Paul’s letter to the Romans, where the law is seen as death, and that which introduces the possibility of sin. This is the life of the flesh, and for Badiou is the simple animal life that we lead as mere individuals, living only according to specified rules and laws equates with the controlled representation, or state of a situation. Such laws can either be fulfilled or negated, and their very invention leads to a desire to violate and transgress them. Such transgressions do not challenge the law, but merely affirm their status and justify the need for their existence. Law and transgression form a neat binary relation. Both of which can be easily formulated in the language of the situation in terms of a condition, and the negation of that condition.. The event for Badiou, in this case the death and resurrection of Christ, is not illegal in this sense, the event’s non-constructible elements are invisible to the legal constraints of a situation, the law lacks the ability to be able to properly talk about an event; it can neither affirm nor condemn it. But also Christ’s resurrection is a resurrection into life. The death to sin and the life of the flesh does not mean an eradication of law and sin, but only that through a faith and fidelity to an event one operates according to faith and not according to law. One can only investigate a situation’s elements according to a non-constructible set if one holds that this set exists, as no proof as to its non-constructible nature can ever be given. What this new life according to faith does is to transform and extend the situation, to add something truly new, to create something new from the given material. There is no intervention, or addition of new material from outside, this novel transformation happens immanently through the faith in an event which disrupts the relation between the horizon of a situation and what can appear within that horizon. The resurrection and life according to faith is a true life, a life that is truly creative as it deploys the consequences of an event and transforms its situation. This life of faith proceeds in a lawless fashion, distributing its message in a universal way to the furthest reaches of a situation..”

It’s a poem, so its hard to say, I don’t know. Maybe the protagonist of our poem is one hell of a sinner, the worst of us, a responsible worker justified in the eyes of the law and completing what the Father, the Void, wanted completely. Maybe our sinner is a vehicle of the Holy Ghost, as we are in this situation, in our situation with death, with our exhausting the possibilities of sin. Maybe the ghost is the invisible element extending the situation, ending our personal sorrow. Maybe it’s a novel expansion to the subjectivity of Christ resurrected in eternal life as we act from faith in that truth, dying to the limits of our individual situation, its formal freedom. Maybe we are actually free not just clinging to our individual freedom alone, but deciding that we are the world, that that is how it is for us.

Blog Guide: A discussion of blog features and primary topic content may be found at the initial entry. The first few entries give a good idea of how best to use the blog, especially for the tagging and social bookmarking at my external Delicious site, and for instructions regarding the Stefandav TV widget.

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The Stupid Christ (Part 1)

The Stupid Christ


when you felt forsaken
you knew us best . .
it was after all then
you were a stupid christ

you were damned lucky son .
for that bit of the story
nailed that way . . .
complaining about it .

the guy next door knew more
you finally got it straight maybe
seeing him there .
hanging just like you .

dear sweet jesus .
you never left the cradle really
your ascension .
was barely an elevation

so when I used the mallet
saving an extra nail
pounding through . . .
both feet at once .

making sure to shatter
the joints in your wrists
to finish at last .
the manifest trinity .

not leaving one arm dangling
I was the worst of us
so my personal sorrow ended
thanks to you . . .

having finished .
what father wanted
completely . . .
for life eternal

for we the holy ghost

One shouldn’t really comment on the intuitive realm of poetry, on what it means for example. Without interpreting one may simply observe a mathematical structure: 9 parts, 33 lines, 6 beats to a line, 198 beats, 1+9+8 = 18 = 1 + 8 = 9, the trinity remains in the trinity of the trinity. Boldly speaking though, this is a resurrection. The trinity is incorporated in the expansion. The law was three, six was a revolution, 33 another, 198 another for the complete situation of the poem.

Of course we are dealing with more than number. Some beats have syllables and these form words and words illicit memory associated with meanings, whatever meanings have been gathered by the reader, from experience with those words in our participation in humanity. Its not too great a leap to presuppose the topic of the poem has to do with religion. However, religion for the vast majority of us has been sutured to an ideology of transcendent operation on the human experience.. but that’s not what this poem is expressing, its not what was being expanded in my mind in its first manifestation some decade ago or in its various resurrections. The idea of a transcendent being, a god, is the theist wager, the theist faith. Rather, my wager is atheist.. but this does not preclude faith in the implications of the advent, or simply the event of Christ.

Presently the poem, at this the annual holy season, finds a mind engaged in political revolution and its really quite interesting to me how it plays. As will be discussed, the implications around the question of religion are of no small import to philosophy, the philosophical examination going on in Marxist revolutionary circles. This has found particular focus in consideration of the biblical text from St. Paul by a number of thinkers. I am reading Alain Badiou’s book “St.Paul: The Foundation of Universalism”. The present series of entries take up his ideas in some detail as discussed in several articles. We will be returning to the significance of mathematics as you will find, and probably I will venture unwisely into the meaning of that poem.

We will begin with an interview with Alain Badiou from which I have provided excerpts and commentary – of course I recommend the entire interview (which by the way has Badiou’s own opinion of the difference between his own project and that of Savoj Zizek, which I have not addressed here):

Interview with Alain Badiou: “Universal Truths & the Question of Religion”

Adam S. Miller, Journal of Philosophy and Scripture

Adam Miller has done such a praiseworthy job of analysis and review of the book. Early on he selects a number of statements from the first chapter, beginning with the way Badiou distances himself from theology (excerpts):

“My goal is only to read exactly what Paul has said. So my reading of Saint Paul is absolutely on the surface of the text.. does not involve faith or the church. It is, strictly speaking, a relation to the text of Paul and nothing else.. reading of Paul as something like a testimony about a new conception of truth. I read Paul not at all as a sacred text, as a revelation or something religious. Instead, I read Paul as a text about a new and provocative conception of truth and, more profoundly, about the general conditions for a new truth.”

The next part of Miller’s review begins to listen to what Badiou means by universalism:

“ ‘The Foundation of Universalism’ is a provocative subtitle.. to be more precise, the foundation of an explicit conception of universalism.. the formation of a new conception of what universalism is.. For me, something is universal if it is something that is beyond established differences. We have differences that seem absolutely natural to us. In the context of these differences, the sign of a new truth is that that these differences become indifferent. So we have an absorption of an evident natural difference into something that is beyond that difference.”

In breaching a concept of universalism, Badiou is actually leading to his special concept of the “Event” which is a central axiom of his philosophy. First of all, more from Miller’s review - quotes from the book about examples of the meaning of universalism and the role of indifference:

“A striking example.. the creation of a new physics by Galileo.. completely new conception of movement in which the difference between concrete, natural movement on the one side and mathematical analysis on the other side becomes indifferent. This happens because Galileo declares that the world itself is written in mathematical language. The old difference simply loses its pertinence.. Traditionally, universalism is conceived as the realization of a universal judgment about some real thing.. Universality as a judgment is something that you can find from Aristotle to Kant to analytic philosophy today.”

Badiou is not speaking, however, in the traditional way about universalism:

“My conception is, on the contrary, a creative one. Universalism is always the result of a great process that opens with an event. To create something universal is to go beyond evident differences and separations.. But the fact that with a new truth there is always something like the becoming indifferent of some evident differences is, in my opinion, very important. It is true in the example of Galileo. It is true in all the examples of a new truth.”

Applying this conception to a reading of St. Paul:

“Paul, of course, knows perfectly well that there are people who are Jews and people who are Greeks. But the new truth exceeds the evident difference between the Jew and the Greek. We can only completely receive a new truth by going beyond such differences. But this does not mean for Paul that they need to change their customs and practices. Instead, there is a becoming indifferent to this difference.. is certainly something like an anti-Semitism in primitive Christianity, but not in Paul. Paul is only saying that something that constitutes a difference in his world becomes indifferent in light of the new event”

This going beyond evident differences and separations in Badiou thought does not mean the formation of a new separate particularity, rather:

“the question of separation belongs to the question of universalism. There is not, in my view, necessarily a contradiction between the two.. The formation of a new particularity, a new closed group, leads exactly, for example, to anti-Semitism.. For Paul, there is certainly a kind of separation necessary for his universalism because we have separated ourselves from the old man. We have, out of this separation, a newness of life. But it remains a universalism because there is no limit to this separation, there is no closure.”

One sees in Badiou, his philosophy on universalism, this process generated by world revolutionary events a special conception of subjectivity – and he finds this as well in his reading of Paul :

“there is, for Paul, in the process of universalism, something like division but this is a division internal to the subject itself. It is not an external division between the subject and others, but a division within the subject. Every subject has to cross a sort of intimate division between the old man and the new man, between the power of death and the power of life”

Adam Miller in his review may not have entered into this concept in the way I have exactly – I mean the idea in Badiou that I have absorbed in reading him regarding the distinction of the individual and the subject of universalism. This has been intimated in the selections above and also in:

“.. there is also always a risk that this separation may become closed and turn universalism against itself. This is always a risk. This is true not only in the religious field but also in the revolutionary field.. But there is never the pure opposition of universalism and separation because there is something like the becoming separate of a universalism.”

There is the individual, as I understand it,that is subjectivity in the coordinates of the pre-evental situation, the state of an individual’s mind. Not transcending this state but within this state is the potential of an expansion of the pre-evental situation by a process of faith, not in an external god, but in participation in the truth of a novel event in the universal field of subjectivity. I think this what Badiou means when he says:

“You have to understand that there is something in the becoming of a truth that exceeds the strict possibilities of the human mind. There is something in truth that is beyond our immediate capacities. In a new truth there is something that is beyond the established differences between languages and facts”

I wonder if the intuition operating in a poem is universal subjectivity and if creativity in the poet exceeds the immediate capacity of his mind? Did Christ at last contract into the coordinates of humanity’s limits in his day, such that he and his Father were not one? In putting him to death did the protagonist of the poem initiate participation in the event of Christ’s resurrection? Was this an event for the eternal life of the Holy Ghost? How could the poet possibly know?

Blog Guide: A discussion of blog features and primary topic content may be found at the initial entry. The first few entries give a good idea of how best to use the blog, especially for the tagging and social bookmarking at my external Delicious site, and for instructions regarding the Stefandav TV widget.

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In Defense of the Deadly Jester

Obviously I write a lot with reference to two Marxists: Alain Badiou, a much respected French thinker prolific over the last 40 years; and Savoj Zizek, who seems to be either loved or hated, a cultural phenomenon who has been described as "the 'Elvis' of Cultural Theory". I have alluded to but not addressed adequately as yet his last major work "In Defense of Lost Causes" and now already he has produced along with seemingly endless articles a new book "Violence" which takes up certain themes introduced in that prior work. Zizek's style is one laden with ironic humor. Just recently he was vehemently attacked by the left publication The New Republic where he was labeled "The Deadly Jester". The critical response to this attack from others the leftist community, Zizek's intellectual fans and those who may not consider him such a superstar, but nonetheless find him provocative and important, has been very interesting and fun to follow. I felt that some coverage of this debate would be informative and revealing as to why the "wild-eyed Slovanian" is such a draw.

Both Badiou and Zizek are of the Marxist school related to "structuralism" and the line of the political philosopher and Marxist Louis Althusser. Also they both are aligned with the extremely influential psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan who made certain critical developments from Freud. Badiou doesn't seem to have much to say about Zizek, but Zizek more than infrequently launches his expositions from the ideas of Badiou, with his own inimitable twists. The relationship of Badiou and Zizek thought is very complex but over simply put: Badiou's revolutionary "Events" that occur historically, periodically, are vehicles of virtual "Truths" that in a creative process produce "Subjects" who in fidelity to that "Truth" engage in actions that give actuality to there having been the "Event"; while Badiou posits that such "Events" are not logically predictable nor can they be perpetrated by pre-evental subjects (since in his view such subjects do not yet exist), Zizek,as I understand him, engenders a concept of revolutionary practice by individuals engaging in recovery of as yet actualized truths that remain virtual following historical developments he considers lost causes worthy of re-invigoration. This is why, I argue, Zizek is experienced as so confrontational, why there is so much conflict around his work.

I think this is illustrated by the uproar around the article in The New Republic from which I provide some excerpts. Here Zizek's views on violence, though seen as cleverly clad in highly entertaining humor, are condemned as the guise of a "deadly jester":

The Deadly Jester - by Adam Kirsch

".. the only true solution to the 'Jewish question' is the 'final solution' (their annihilation), because Jews ... are the ultimate obstacle to the 'final solution'.. Zizek worried that the normalization of torture as an instrument of state was the first step in 'a process of moral corruption: those in power are literally trying to break a part of our ethical backbone.' This is a good description of Zizek's own work. Under the cover of comedy and hyperbole, in between allusions to movies and video games, he is engaged in the rehabilitation of many of the most evil ideas of the last century. He is trying to undo the achievement of all the postwar thinkers who taught us to regard totalitarianism, revolutionary terror, utopian violence, and anti-Semitism as inadmissible in serious political discourse. Is Zizek's audience too busy laughing at him to hear him? I hope so, because the idea that they can hear him without recoiling from him is too dismal, and frightening, to contemplate."

You should read the entire article first, but this excerpt gives you an idea of the author's position. We will get several more quotes from the article if you look at some of the replies in other publications by other authors taking issue with the allegations of Kirsch. Yes, Zizek is confrontational, some say obscenely so, find him "dirty" even. Zizek's "anti-Semitism" is but one of the Jester's deadly ideas according to Kirsch, but I thought it was a pretty good starting point. So it is apropos to start the counterarguments with the following from the progressive Jewish left publication, Jewcy (excerpts):

In Defense of Zizek

Nowhere is the problem with Kirsch's analysis more apparent than in his attacks on Zizek's recent book 'Violence'.. He tells his readers that Zizek means to tell us that "resistance to the liberal-democratic order is so urgent that it justifies any degree of violence." Not so. The author is very clear. He says that his intent is to expand our conceptual understanding of violence beyond it's more obvious eruptions. He wants to explain violence not as merely the act of violence with which we're most viscerally and morally aware (what he calls 'subjective' violence), but more thoroughly--as inclusive of the network of relations and circumstances that make that violence possible (he calls this 'objective' violence). Sure Zizek quotes Lenin's directive to "Learn, learn, learn." That doesn't make him a Bolshevik.. but the difference between an honest reader of Zizek and a detractor on a mission is that the reader would deal with what comes after.. that this point is raised primarily to discuss what's wrong with terrorism"

The article in Jewcy gives a very good overview of Zizek's ideas on the topic and at one point makes the definitive point:

"Through disparate and disjointed (often repetitive) volumes and lectures, the most unifying thread in Zizek's oeuvre is the fearlessness to say what dare not be said. To leave open the horizon for saying the unsayable and doing the unthinkable. It's inevitable that if you say that you have a fascination with the Jewish state as the living exemplar of the violence involved in all state creation, someone is going to call you a racist. So Zizek calls himself a racist first as a joke, much as a Jew who mocks himself by bestowing slurs upon himself before the anti-Semite does. Zizek and any serious reader knows the statement is anti-statist, not anti-Semitic."

By far the best analysis of the debate over the article by Kirsch is found at the blog Larval Subjects to which contribute a number of scholars. The text below links to one of the entries therein that in turn will lead you to several other pieces:

More Reflections on Zizek and the New Republic Article

"Žižek is a consummate ironist with all of the problems attendant to irony as a.. rhetorical maneuver Žižek strives to effect a sort of transcendence of reigning conditions and ideology, introducing new alternatives into the social system. In this respect, Žižek’s texts can be thought as not unlike Plato’s famous allegory of the cave (which Žižek often references), where the participants, the interlocutors, cease playing the ideological game (trying to name what image will appear on the wall next), and instead leap into an entirely different game.. I attempted to argue that where Badiou’s political strategy consists in the affirmation of an undemonstrable event and the truth-procedures that follow from that declaration, Žižek’s political strategy consists in trying to force the event, to produce the event, or in opening a void space within the hegemony of the ideological structure where new alternatives become available."

Another excellent blog I like to follow, Perverse Egalitarianism, has another view on the article, one by no admirer of Zizek, but nonetheless highly critical of the article:

The New Republic (Finally) Reveals What Zizek "Really Believes"

"An article from the next The New Republic on Zizek finally puts all things Zizek in their places and reveals the secret of “what Zizek really believes” - intrigued?.. He [Kirsh, the NR writer] was being dishonest. What Zizek really believes about America and torture can be seen in his new book, Violence Zizek does not have readers, like other writers, readers who might agree with one point and disagree with another, Zizek has admirers, we are told, who expect a certain type of Zizekian gesture every time they see his name in the print. I am not an admirer of Zizek, I can barely count myself as an attentive reader of Zizek, but certainly I don’t think that he is as useless and laughable (and dangerous) as Kirsch presents him to be. I am also pretty sure that this reaction to Zizek, however belated on Kirsch’s part, is exactly the calculated reaction Zizek expects and provokes. Why? How would I know? I’m not Adam Kirsch, I have no idea what Zizek 'really believes'.”

Well, that's a good one. But what about people like me, who do read and admire Zizek - despite my age I confess to be what somebody somewhere writing about Zizek's avid readers derisively calls a Zizek "fan-boy"? A really nice rejoinder from another blog, I Cite, in conclusion:

I Cite: Quick and Dirty: Zizek and NR

"So what, then, is worth considering in the NR piece? Our enjoyment of Zizek.. addresses a point readers of Zizek should acknowledge: our enjoyment. Do we make excuses for it? Or maybe do we acknowledgment as an element of all theoretical and philosophic work.. There is no such thing as pure reason; the very drive for purity produces a stain of enjoyment. To express this stain is not to excuse the obscenity but to acknowledge it, to grapple with it, to hear its call and feel its unbearable pressure.. We might laugh about it. This laughter expresses our unease and discomfort with those obscene dimensions of life we hate to acknowlege, cannot excuse, and must not avoid. The ostensibly pure condemn this expression, and use this condemnation as proof of their purity (a smugness long characteristic of the NR and its writers). But this does not mean that the rest of us can or should write off their remarks as not getting the joke. It's not a joke."

Blog Guide: A discussion of blog features and primary topic content may be found at the initial entry. The first few entries give a good idea of how best to use the blog, especially for the tagging and social bookmarking at my external Delicious site, and for instructions regarding the Stefandav TV widget.

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Revolution of the Mind (Pimping Transformation)

The idea is at the beginning of each month I say something about what is going on with this blog. A few choice words will be followed by a convenient menu of the entries on the corners, the various accumulator sites displaying the goods, so the Johns cruising in their new Praxis (Janes too of course) can pull over for a look. Employing Madison Avenue - sex and money. Well, not the money part, but sex you can at least use words. Last month I used "Adults Only", this month "Pimping Transformation".

Transformation... "I can't give it away on 7th Avenue".. I'm shattered. I been talking Alain Badiou on the Communist Hypothesis:

"What is the communist hypothesis? In its generic sense, given in its canonic Manifesto, ‘communist’ means, first, that the logic of class—the fundamental subordination of labour to a dominant class, the arrangement that has persisted since Antiquity—is not inevitable; it can be overcome. The communist hypothesis is that a different collective organization is practicable, one that will eliminate the inequality of wealth and even the division of labour. The private appropriation of massive fortunes and their transmission by inheritance will disappear. The existence of a coercive state, separate from civil society, will no longer appear a necessity: a long process of reorganization based on a free association of producers will see it withering away."

All I wrote about, and most of what I read about in the last month was the Maoist debate in Nepal. Why? Will the Nepali Maoists manifest a novel form of communism in their vision of a people’s republic? There is nothing about this vision that a priori precludes the possibility of revolution against the logic of class despite the obvious dangers. We are in a completely different historical period calling not for a victory of the hypothesis as it existed and ultimately succumbed in prior phases, but as it calls for practice in the context of conflict between old and new theory in the modern context. I built up for three entries to making this statement. I made it in reference to a description of the historical development of the Communist hypothesis by Badiou.

What I am pimping here is something novel. Its a very strong argument, considering the evidence of history, that human nature exists such that it precludes the possibility of actualization of the Communist hypothesis. The only answer to this I see is that human nature is not in a finished condition, that it holds potential for transformation such that the hypothesis may be actualized in successive approximations. Nothing new in this idea itself - it may be the old saw "a better world is possible".

What is novel nonetheless is the nature of the new approximation. To be explicit, I am pimping a revolution that is something more than taking control of certain geographical regions through armed rebellion, though this may open an opportunity such as in Nepal, rather there needs to be a transformation of some critical mass in the minds of the people, a literal transformation of human nature. Given the current coordinates of global capitalist power it need be a global enterprise against imperialism. A taking of control to establish the opportunity by armed rebellion is obviously highly problematic. I am in fidelity to the revolution on an ideological basis.

"Revolution of the Mind" is about the task in the world today. A task Badiou asserts can occur "through the combination of thought processes—always global, or universal, in character—and political experience, always local or singular, yet transmissible, to renew the existence of the communist hypothesis, in our consciousness and on the ground." In an earlier entry on the reforms of the current Chinese regime the critical point was on Badiou's formulation for actualizing a novel direction for world communist activism: "it will involve a new relation between the political movement and the level of the ideological—one that was prefigured in the expression ‘cultural revolution'..the proposition that the subordination of labour to the dominant class is not inevitable—within the ideological sphere."

At the beginning of last month I expressed some intentions regarding topics for future posts. Not knowing exactly, I projected it would surely include taking up themes in Alain Badiou's Logic of Worlds and Savoj Zizek's In Defense of Lost Causes and his recent extension of a certain line in the book Violence. Certainly the ideas of Badiou were deeply in play in the discussions on the Nepali Maoist debate. This was followed by participation in several of the commentary exchanges going on at various blog sites. At the same time I have been reading more but not writing as yet about Badiou on St. Paul as a revolutionary icon. Very recently I became involved in discussions started by a critical review of Zizek by the New Left Review. This has led me to the immediate intention of further introduction of Zizek, why he is an important cultural theorist and how his practice relates to that of Alain Badiou. Then also at some point it will be very useful for my own further understanding to go more deeply into Zizek on how to read the psychoanalyst Jaques Lacan.

Here is the history so far through last month:

• ▼ November (4)
  • The Maoist Debate in Nepal - Part 3
  • The Maoist Debate in Nepal - Part 2
  • The Maoist Debate in Nepal – Part 1
  • Revolution of the Mind (Adults Only)

• ▼ October (8)
  • Chinese People: "The Regime is Corrupt"
  • McBama? No, the Communist Hypothesis
  • Alain Badiou Weighs In
  • Lenin and the October 2008 Bailout (3)
  • Zapatista! Mexican Army Attacks Civilians
  • Lenin and the October 2008 Bailout (2)
  • Living in China - Rediscovering Mao
  • Lenin and the October 2008 Bailout

• ▼ September (5)
  • Maoist Revolution in Nepal (Plus Preamble)
  • Alain Badiou - Allegiance to the Truth Event
  • Stefandav TV - Sidebar Widget Instructions
  • Zizek: "A Plea for Leninist Intolerance"
  • Blog Introduction

Blog Guide: A discussion of blog features and primary topic content may be found at the initial entry. The first few entries give a good idea of how best to use the blog, especially for the tagging and social bookmarking at my external Delicious site, and for instructions regarding the Stefandav TV widget.

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The Maoist Debate in Nepal - Part 3

Part 1 of this series of entries provided back ground on why there is fear the Maoists are merely engaging in a strategic process aimed at ending parliamentarian government and creating a communist party state. At the same time it was pointed out that in the ranks of the Maoists, is another fear of a reactionary or reformist “Maoist” controlled country that leaves Nepal subjected to an elite class within the coordinates of global capitalist power. The first aspect of my opinion was that those who are rebellious have already jumped to the conclusion that they have the right to rebel and it would be better to continue vigilance at this point about whether the path being proposed by Prachanda and Bhattarai is merely a quantitative accumulation based on the collaboration with existing parliamentary power or whether it engenders a qualitative leap in its application of Marxist theory (the theme of my analysis of current events in Nepal has been developed in the context of theoretical questions, specifically with reference to the ideas of Alain Badiou on Mao’s fidelity to the communist hypothesis).

Writing Part 2 coincided with a stunning development: announcement of a unified statement by the Maoist’s that, although they are participating in the institution of a democratic republic, the question of a single party people’s republic is to remain open. I went into some articles and opinion that were quite rancorous by those opposed to the Prachanda/Bhattarai line. The synthesis of the two sides of the debate, as I discussed, seemed a resounding defeat for these opponents. At the same time it was noted that the new position may prove problematic in garnering international support. As anticipated, the present entry is to take a closer look at the positions of those advocating an immediate move to a people’s republic, and also return to my thesis: the Nepal Maoist’s application of theory in contradiction with practice may prove to be an event ushering in a novel phase of Maoism, a new phase in evolution of the communist hypothesis that might be the kind of event anticipated by Badiou’s analysis of prior periods of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist history as indicative of needing a new manifestation of fidelity .

I will proceed in Part 3 by examining a series of articles by prominent Maoists who are to lesser or greater degree suggesting a theoretical argument counter to the new government’s performance, to the theory in practice as “Prachanda Path”. Most interestingly, we will see these propositions are not actually as “hardline” as they have been portrayed by many. In fact, it may become clearer why the recent synthesis has occurred. Finally, we may see the concept of “people’s republic” itself as subjected to a radical transformation.

The article below was written by Kul Prasad KC “Sonam”. He was one of 11 Maoists released from Indian prisons in 2006 during the negotiations of the ceasefire between the Royal Army and the Maoists insurgents at that time. Subsequently he has been the CPN (M) State Committee head for regional restructuring on the basis of ethnic autonomy for the Seti-Mahakali region. Excerpts are provided:

The CPN (M) Debate: Revolution or Reform

"Nepal is still in a semi-colonial and semi-feudal state. No drastic change has occurred; there can be no change in contradiction in the political situation until there is a fundamental change in the mode of production.. still the same solutions; national and sovereign independence against semi-colonial domination.. the feudalistic mechanism still exists.. everything is taking place under the global programme of imperialism.. we should.. build an anti-imperialist front.. strengthen the concept of Coordinating Committee of Maoist Parties and Organizations of South Asia (CCOMPOSA).. against Indian intervention and for a comprehensive front against American Imperialism.. develop the concept of struggle for national liberation.. not only.. point of view of building a united front, but also from the point of view of an ideological and political united front.. we have established the Federal Republic of Nepal. However, it is not clear whom the republic serves.. increasing role of foreign powers.. show that the contradictions are not being solved; rather they are sharpening.. have already reached the theoretical decision that the proletarian class cannot be victorious until and unless it develops the best military and ideological tactics.. debate is on ideology.. debate.. over Marxism or reformism.. forms of tactics because the previous movements of the proletarian class have.. collapsed.. when they have obtained power.. to analyze and synthesize it from the point of view of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.. does it fit with Marxism.. or has it served reformism.. continuation of the great debate between China and the USSR after the death of Stalin.. the dialectical process and method should be applied. ."

The analysis by “Sonam” is well balanced in my opinion because it does not condemn the prevailing Prachanda/Bhattarai line outright, yet it states clearly there has not as yet been a fundamental change in the mode of production. It is true, so far the contradiction is not being solved and the focus must be on this in the ideological debate and its dialectic with practice in the days to come. The first part of this series went into some detail on the nature of this dialectic according to Alain Badiou. Development of these ideas for the Nepal context is the objective of the present post. First, however, it is important to add to the context with some of the main concerns that have been voiced from among many text resources from those who, unlike “Sonam” have already concluded that the Prachanda/Bhattarai line is essentially corrupt – I summarize the points:

1. The policy of wooing support from the World Bank and other capitalist investors, including China, will ultimately go the way of many other neocolonial projects of the global elite class in many places in the rest of the world. Underdevelopment will be the result, not development: it will create the same result in Nepal – neoliberal colonization and preservation of semifeudal poverty.

2. Prachanda/Bhattarai practice is packaged as anti-feudal and in support of industrialization, but the real aim is to attract foreign investment in energy and other key sectors, only resulting in foreign, imperialist domination and exploitation rather than an anti-imperialist line.

3. Building infrastructure (roads, bridges, hydroelectric projects, etc.) will really be targeted to promote the colonial export of people, products and tourist services and to import foreign-made industrial goods to Nepal . Worse, better infrastructure will be employed militarily by imperialist powers to suppress the revolution.

4. The policies outlined in Bhattarai’s budget planning will result in the loss of revolutionary peasant advances in agrarian development initiated by their taking control of lands and property from comprador bourgeoisie and feudal landlords – a contradiction of the theory and practice demonstrated by Mao in China. Rather the new policy is about pooling domestic and foreign capital; about establishing credit-based capitalist debt and interest system that will serve instead institution of subjugated rural cooperatives.

5. These practices, Maoist in name only, will never lead to a people’s republic; they will entrench the democratic parliamentary republic of the reformist type with promotion of the purchase of foreign goods and consultancy – in short an elitist power system for the bourgeoisie class. This will be supplemented by an emphasis on technical education initiatives (though needed), but will neglect education of the proletariat about the imperialist roots of social problems.

Those points summarize pretty well I think the fears of the “hardliners”. Here is some of the kind of international press releases on which they base their condemnation:

Prachanda Seeks Mega Investment in Nepal

Prachanda: Public-Private partnership (PPP) Best Model for Economic Development

But wait. What is really interesting is if you look at what Mohan Baidya “Kiran” and Chandra Prakash Gajurel are actually saying in more detail. Kiran as you may recall is the prominent leader whose paper was synthesized with the position paper of Prachanda a few days ago – the result being a unified front which leaves open the question of an eventual people’s republic. Both Kiran and Gajurel had been pushing for an immediate move to the people’s republic rather than the continued collaboration in multi-party democratic republic development. Their leadership in this respect has fueled the “hardliner” perception and tagged them with this moniker. Further analysis shows that they do not consider themselves as “hardliners” in the sense they have been perceived. This may begin to make clear why the recent synthesis has been possible between sides of the debate.

First, consider the November 6 interview with Kiran I found published in Nepal Mountain News (excerpts provided):


Changing party tag an irrelevant issue: Mohan Baidya “Kiran”

"I feel that conspiracies are on to foil the Maoists’ established credentials.. specifically the revolutionary ideology of the Maoists is being targeted deliberately.. if one talks on ideological grounds he or she is labeled as a hardliner.. [There is a kind of competition among the Maoists and the UML in removing Maoist's name from the party tag].. As far as the UML is concerned, I personally feel that it is not even a Communist party.. However, in our case changing the party tag is irrelevant and illogical.. For us, Maoism is the party’s identity.. The political situation is such that it demands debates and discussions. That’s all.. we need to continuously rectify our mistakes as there is the concern among our supporters whether the party is deviating away from its prime ideological premises.. It is my belief that Democracy as such needs to be redefined in the Nepali context.. No compromise should be made on our ideology---this is what I believe.. [on his personal evaluation of the government performance].. It will only become a premature evaluation. We want to move ahead, yet we do not have the needed absolute majority. Old mindset prevails in the bureaucracy. Nevertheless we are determined in our set objectives."

Now consider what was said by Gajurel a week earlier. C.P. Gajurel, 59, is a politburo member and chief of the foreign affairs bureau of the CPN (Maoist) party. (excerpts):

Gajurel: on Multi-Party Democracy and Armies

"We feel that the performance of the government has not lived up to the party’s hopes. Because it is a coalition government, it hasn’t been able to work according to the policies of our party. . There is a mistaken belief that multi-party means parliament, the parliamentary system means democracy, and that no other form of democracy exists in the world.. But there are many political systems in the world that are not parliamentary but have multi-party competition.. In our multi-party system, there will be competition between parties.. It’s not necessary that, like in parliament, there has to be an opposition party and a ruling party. . In fact, there is no provision for an opposition in the interim constitution. Only after the Nepali Congress decided to stay in opposition did we decide to allow for it.. The state can’t just stop some parties from competing just because it wants to.. We haven’t deviated from our core ideology. . Our central committee took a decision to enter government.. it is true that this is a new exercise. Such an exercise hadn’t occurred in the world communist movement.. As communists, we define our party as one of unity in opposites. It is not monolithic. The different opinions in the party struggle against one another, and the party gains direction through this struggle.. The ‘Federal Democratic Republic’ line was definitely useful in bringing an end to the monarchy and establishing a republic. But do we now move forward or consolidate this form of republic?.. But has the Indian republic been able to solve its problems?.. We have to do better than that.. Now it is said that a ‘People’s Republic’ is a communist republic. But it is not communist. Neither is it socialist. It is basically a bourgeois republic, but it has many elements of socialism.. We want to move forward so that we don’t return to a feudal-type, capitalist-type of republic.. In that system not everything will be nationalized. Some elements will of course be nationalized, but private property and industry will exist.. bourgeoisie will be protected. The objective is to develop national capitalism. [on integration of the NPA and the PLA armies].. even though we had reached agreement in the past with the United Nations and other parties that integration would take place according to the Security Sector Reform (SSR) model, the Nepali Congress is bent on promoting the Disarmament, Demobilisation and Rehabilitation (DDR) model.. all verified Maoist combatants should be integrated into the Nepal Army (NA)."

Clearly, both Mohan Baidya “Kiran” and C.P. Gajurel in their recent statements demonstrate they are not Maoist “hardliners” in the sense they have been portrayed by those intent as Kiran says “to foil the Maoists’ established credentials.. specifically the revolutionary ideology of the Maoists”. Rather, as Gajurel says the Maoists lead by Prachanda “took a decision to enter government.. it is true that this is a new exercise. Such an exercise hadn’t occurred in the world communist movement.. ”. Yes, both Kirin and Gajurel are critical of the government’s performance so far, but Kirin has characterized this as nonetheless a “premature evaluation” – yet the “situation is such that it demands debates and discussions”. There is no dismissal of the fears of those who are indeed “hardliners” ready to revolt against Prachanda. As Kirin states “there is the concern among our supporters whether the party is deviating away from its prime ideological premises..”.; or Gajurel “different opinions in the party struggle against one another, and the party gains direction through this struggle..”. The real “hardliners” point to Kirin and Gajurel’s call for a “people’s republic” as soon as possible, to “move ahead” (Kirin), rather than “consolidate this [parliamentary]form of republic” (Gajurel). They are obviously thinking this call is a preservation of the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist line against Prachanda’s apparent reformism. How then are they to think of Gajurel saying the people’s republic called for “..is not communist. Neither is it socialist. It is basically a bourgeois republic, but it has many elements of socialism.. ”? Instead, this explains the capacity for the Maoist leadership to form a unified front.

The point needs to be made, I think, that as Kirin says “Maoism is the party’s identity..”, that when Gajurel says the Nepali people’s republic is not to be communist, this is a kind of hyperbole. It is not communist in the sense of communism’s prior history. It is better characterized as a novel form of communism in which as he says “there are many political systems in the world that are not parliamentary but have multi-party competition.. In our multi-party system, there will be competition between parties.. It’s not necessary that, like in parliament, there has to be an opposition party and a ruling party. .”. Is there not the idea that communism should be both egalitarian and inclusive of all people. Does it really necessarily call for the elimination of the functions of the bourgeoisie in a form that is not exploitive of others? Consider the definition of the communist hypothesis as defined by Alain Badiou that was taken up in some detail in a prior post:

"What is the communist hypothesis? In its generic sense, given in its canonic Manifesto, ‘communist’ means, first, that the logic of class—the fundamental subordination of labour to a dominant class, the arrangement that has persisted since Antiquity—is not inevitable; it can be overcome. The communist hypothesis is that a different collective organization is practicable, one that will eliminate the inequality of wealth and even the division of labour. The private appropriation of massive fortunes and their transmission by inheritance will disappear. The existence of a coercive state, separate from civil society, will no longer appear a necessity: a long process of reorganization based on a free association of producers will see it withering away."

The question remains. Will the Nepali Maoists manifest a novel form of communism in their vision of a people’s republic? There is nothing about this vision that a priori precludes the possibility of revolution against the logic of class despite the obvious dangers. We are in a completely different historical period calling not for a victory of the hypothesis as it existed and ultimately succumbed in prior phases, but as it calls for practice in the context of conflict between old and new theory in the modern context – Badiou:

"In many respects we are closer today to the questions of the 19th century than to the revolutionary history of the 20th. A wide variety of 19th-century phenomena are reappearing: vast zones of poverty, widening inequalities, politics dissolved into the ‘service of wealth’, the nihilism of large sections of the young, the servility of much of the intelligentsia; the cramped, besieged experimentalism of a few groups seeking ways to express the communist hypothesis . . . Which is no doubt why, as in the 19th century, it is not the victory of the hypothesis which is at stake today, but the conditions of its existence. This is our task, during the reactionary interlude that now prevails: through the combination of thought processes—always global, or universal, in character—and political experience, always local or singular, yet transmissible, to renew the existence of the communist hypothesis, in our consciousness and on the ground."

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