15. January 2022
The Ideological Decay of Imperialism
The ideological decay
of imperialism is expressed in an ever increasing bourgeois ideological
degeneration in the most extreme forms of individualism. This has two principal
tendencies.
The “Left” Form of
Bourgeois Idealism
The “left”1 form of
bourgeois idealism has its expression in so-called Identity Politics,
Cancel-Culture, Decolonization, etc. The problem is that our comrades do not
understand the process of this degeneration. This process of degeneration has
an origin in the Frankfurt School, but more specifically in Michel Foucault and
Discourse Analysis.
From the Enlightenment to Discourse Analysis – A Brief Historical Overview
The basis or
fundamental methodology of postmodernism is Discourse Analysis, which was
decisively shaped by Michel Foucault. However, this methodology has its origins
in the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment philosopher Baruch de Spinoza2 developed three
basic rules in his “Theological-Political Treatise” as early as the late 17th
century, using the example of the treatise of the Bible, which is very similar
to Discourse Analysis in their principles.3 In the same
writing, he also establishes the following principles:
“So the universal rule in interpreting Scripture is this: attribute nothing
to Scripture as its teaching unless we have understood it as clearly as
possible from the history of Scripture.“4
“I have also shown that God’s divinity can’t be proved by miracles. . . . So
the divinity of Scripture can only be established by the fact that it teaches
true virtue, and this can only be established by Scripture itself. If we
couldn’t do that, our acceptance of Scripture as something divine would have to
come from a great prejudice. Therefore, the only place to look for knowledge of
Scripture is in Scripture.“5
Here an idealistic
understanding of written documents (be it also the Bible) is shown, because the
text in itself accommodates the doctrine which is drawn from it, detached from
the historical reality in which it was created. In addition, it is openly
declared that the correctness of the document does not require any practical
proof (“miracle”) and the knowledge does not come from practice, but from the
written text – that is, the theory – itself.
The basic rules of the
handling of texts established by Spinoza were taken up by the concept of
“Immanent Critique” put forward by representatives of the “Critical Theory” of
the Frankfurt School. One of the most important representatives of the
Frankfurt School was Theodor Adorno6, who also devoted
himself to “Immanent Critique”. In this concept, the main focus is on
criticizing texts and their statements by checking the statements of a text for
consistency, or for insufficient justification of theses and the like. What
further emerges here is a strong detachment from practice, since it is no
longer about proving the correctness of a statement with actual results (i.e.
in practice), but the question of argumentation comes to the foreground. This
concept has strong overlaps with Deconstructionism7, but is clearly a
continuation of Spinoza’s rules of writing treatises.
After Adorno’s death,
Jürgen Habermas8 was one of the
foremost representatives of the Frankfurt School; together with others, he
advanced the so-called “Consensus Theory of Truth.” This concentrates on
attacking the criterion of truth. Thus, here too, it is not practice that is
declared to be the criterion of truth, but the argument. Whether an assertion
is true, is to be worked out by the “best argument”, which also means that just
no examination must take place in practice, but, after the “perfect argument”
is found, insight is to be exercised by all sides and the agreement takes
place. In this way the truth shall have been found. He formulates it like this:
“The idea of truth can only be unfolded with reference to the discursive
redemption of claims to validity.“9
In this process,
especially with the emergence of imperialism, the increasing degeneration of
bourgeois ideology, and its close connection with the Frankfurt School, becomes
apparent. This was decisively shaped, and the division of Germany after World
War II, directly promoted by Yankee imperialism.10 The
corresponding confusion thus caused in the revolutionary movement in this
country, by the fact that the Frankfurt School found many adherents among the
radical petty-bourgeois intellectuals,11 ultimately
serves to preserve, the dying system of, imperialism.
Ideas closely related
to, or at least similar to, those developed by the Frankfurt School, especially
in its late stages, were then also found in Michel Foucault and his development
of so-called Discourse Analysis.12 In its essence,
this represents a counterpart to materialist dialectics. Discourse analysis
starts from the concept of the so-called “discourse”, therefore it is first
necessary to get an overview of this concept, which namely does not have a
clear definition and is mostly confused especially in the bourgeois-political
public (“Public Discourse”):
“The term ‘discourse’ in the Anglo-Saxon language means a simple
conversation, a conversation between different people. In French and Romance
languages, ‘discourse’ (‘discorso’) is a common term for a ‘learned speech’, a
lecture, a treatise, sermon, lecture and the like. For some years now, the term
‘discourse’ has also appeared in everyday German, usually to refer to a
publicly discussed topic (e.g. the discourse on higher education reform), a
specific chain of arguments (e.g. ‘the neo-liberal discourse’) or the
position/statement of a politician, an association spokesperson (such as ‘the
trade union discourse’) etc. in a current debate, sometimes also to speak of organised
discussion processes. Nevertheless, ‘discourse’ as a non-scientific term is
much more familiar in English and French, and its scientific career is largely
based on these understandings of the term. Yet ‘discourse’ is also understood
in very different ways in the social sciences and humanities. This applies both
to the theoretical conceptualisation with regard to discipline-specific
research interests and to the methodological implementation in concrete
research projects.“13
Important for the
development of Discourse Analysis is the so-called Language Theory of Ferdinand
de Saussure (1967), who was formative for the philosophical school of
structuralism and post-structuralism. We will not go into these two in more
depth here, but in summary and outlined in simple terms, (post)structuralism14 is about using
discourse to discover abstract and objective rule structures in language or in
the use of signs (“symbolic order”).
“The starting point for the development of structuralism is the reception of
the language theory of the Geneva linguist Ferdinand de Saussure in the French
social sciences and humanities, mediated by the ethnologist Claude
Lévi-Strauss. Saussure developed a scientific concept of language that
understands it as a system of signs – the “language” – that underlies concrete
speaking and writing, i.e. the practical use of language by individuals. This
language system is understood as a historically evolved social institution –
comparable to the political system or the law – whose genesis can be traced
back to the linguistic interactions within a language community. However, it is
an emergent phenomenon that has emerged as a whole from the sum of individual
contributions, without being identical with them.“15
For a better
understanding and greatly simplified, Discourse Analysis could thus also be
called “Language Analysis”, whereby the methodology of Discourse Analysis differs
significantly from conventional linguistics. For the concept of Discourse
Analysis is based on the fact that language creates (or “constructs”, to use
the academic term) reality and interprets it on the basis of its symbolism and
signs. This already makes it clear where today’s
Political-Correctness-Linguistic-Acrobatics have their roots. But back to the
Discourse Analysis. The French intellectual and pillar saint of Postmodernism
Michel Foucault already developed this method significantly in his work – even
if he claimed the opposite – applied it and helped it to previously
undreamed-of prominence, especially with his work “Archaeology of Knowledge”.16 But in order to
fully understand the purpose of Discourse Analysis and its background, it is
necessary to take a brief look at Foucault’s biography.
The French
intellectual was a direct disciple of Louis Althusser17 and in turn
influenced well-known representatives of postmodernism, such as Jacques Derrida18. For a time in the
1950s, he was a member of the Communist Party of France (CPF), which was
already walking on revisionist paths. Here, however, he was expelled (or left)
because of his homosexuality. This event in Foucault’s life has a special
significance in shaping Discourse Analysis. As already described, Discourse
Analysis assumes that language creates reality; accordingly, it is not
important what someone does or represents in practice, but what he says. Thus,
Foucault could also claim to be something he was not: namely, a Marxist (even
if he later moved away from this).
But the whole degeneration of this individual was most evident in his
position on paedophilia. He was of the opinion that children could have
consensual sexual relations with adults and, together with other French
intellectuals, campaigned for their legalisation.1920 In March of this
year, the publicist Guy Sorman came forward and accused Foucault of abusing boys
aged eight to ten in Tunisia in 1969.21 22 Even if these
accusations have not been conclusively proven, they fit all too well into
Foucault’s degenerate world view. This also shapes his oeuvre, with a multitude
of writings dealing primarily with the question of sexuality. His four-volume
work “Sexuality and Truth” also includes two books entitled “The Use of Lusts”
and “The Confessions of the Flesh”. This focus on the question of sexuality is
echoed, among other things, in today’s widespread identity politics, which also
places a strong focus on this question, but more on that later.23 Incidentally,
Foucault destroyed his first book that was to become part of the work, entitled
“History of Sexuality”, during an LSD trip to Death Valley in the USA.24 25 Foucault also
made longer lecture trips to the USA in the 1970s and 1980s, before his death.26 It is no
coincidence that discourse analysis also began to spread from here, i.e. linked
to Yankee imperialism from the beginning. The significance of Foucault in
today’s academia and bourgeois social sciences are abundantly clear, or as one
of those same academics himself put it: “[…] Foucault’s conceptual and methodological suggestions are everywhere to
be grasped with one’s hands.“27
After this brief
outline of Foucault’s life and above all his (post-)work, we will now delve
deeper into his methodology of Discourse Analysis, which was a necessary
prerequisite for today’s postmodernism. Since, as already mentioned, this is
already a highly intangible and arbitrarily interpreted term, it is necessary
not to endlessly explain the differences between the various interpretations of
the term and the methodology, but to bring them together on their general
commonalities and subsume them accordingly28 so that we do
not lose our orientation in an equally academic “discourse”. The intangibility
and sponginess of Discourse Analysis also finds its origin already in Foucault,
who “[…] famously liked to describe his work
as a ‘toolbox’ from which the respective analyst should borrow the instruments
useful to her at will.”29 Thus, from the
pragmatic point of view alone, there is an extremely eclectic basis.
When reading
Foucault’s “Archaeology of Knowledge”, it becomes clear how this work was
formative for the creation of Discourse Analysis. What he calls “archaeology”
is nothing else, because in the work he describes his procedure for analysing
the different discourses, in this context the idealistic nature of this method
also becomes apparent. For history is analysed on the basis of ideas. Let us
remember that materialism understands consciousness as a reflection of objective
reality that exists independently of man, while idealism claims that the world
exists as a reflection of consciousness. The latter applies to Foucault’s
“archaeology”, which above all tries to trace the history of ideas from which
reality is formed or “constructed”, i.e. idealism. Thus, it leads to the
investigation of “systems of thought”:
“Again, one can determine a system of thought only starting from a certain
set of discourses. But this set is treated in such a way that one seeks to
recover, beyond the statements themselves, the intention of the speaking
subject, his conscious activity, what he has wanted to say, or even the
unconscious play that has come to light against his will in what he has said or
in the almost imperceptible fractures of his manifest words; in any case, it is
the reconstruction of another discourse, the recovery of the silent, murmuring,
inexhaustible speech that animates from within the voice that is heard, the
recovery of the small and invisible text that passes through the interstice of
the written lines and sometimes overturns them. The analysis of thought is
always allegorical in relation to the discourse it uses.“30
Foucault takes the
same line with his phrase (or “slogan”) about the “death of the author”. By
this he means that every written word, every text, did not originate
(independently) from the author himself, but that the thinking and writing of
the author himself is already shaped by his own life, by his own accumulation
of knowledge, which in turn was written by other (older) authors, who in turn
received their knowledge from other authors and developed it based on it. In
sum, then, it is said that there is no truth, but only a concatenation of
different observations and interpretations, and that our idea of an author with
his own thoughts who could mirror the world objectively (or come close to
objectivity) is false.
This sentence by Foucault
about the “death of the author” is a good introduction to understanding
postmodernism. He separates the text from the author, which means it is only
important what is said, not who says it. Just as he tried to solve the dilemma
of his own miserable individual. The social practice of class struggle is
separated from theory. “Language creates reality” means in the beginning there
is theory31 not practice,
the Marxist epistemology is turned upside down and this is simply pure
idealism. With his “archaeology”, Foucault creates a kind of “historical
idealism” that is completely opposed to Marxism, even if he tries to put on
some Marxist masks.
Before we look at the
Postmodernism that emerges from Discourse Analysis, however, let us look at one
of the contemporary applications of Discourse Analysis in social science in
order to better understand the subjectivism inherent in this method. In the
study of history, discourse analysis assumes that history is “doubly mediated”.
This refers to mediation, on the one hand, through sources (meaning people
present or alive at the time who write about the event or period in question)
and, on the other hand, through its representation (meaning history books,
etc.), in the form of “sign systems”. This basic assumption leads to the
conclusion that history is always “constructed”. In the consistent continuation
of this concept, this means that there is no real factual historiography. Here
it is visible how this method wants to give itself a dialectical face, because
that historiography is shaped by the class that writes history, i.e. rules, is
correct, so that the illumination and interpretation of historical events is
different, is correct. Or as a truism puts it: history is always written by the
victor.32 Nevertheless,
there is an objective history33, that does not depend
on how the subjective perception of individuals was, that does not depend on
their “narratives” (a term that is gaining strong weight in postmodernism). For
even though it is consistent with dialectics to examine the inherent
contradictoriness of things, this does not mean that there are no overarching
truths and (historical or social) laws that exist independently of people’s
cognition. It is because they exist and emerge from material facts that it is
precisely a materialist dialectic. Discourse Analysis, on the other hand, slips
completely into metaphysics. It regards things (or ideas, or ideas and their
material basis) as isolated from one another, to such an extent that a
historiography that elaborates laws of development becomes completely
impossible; it degenerates into a kind of ultra-subjectivism. How this
manifests itself in the communication of historical knowledge can be
impressively observed today in recent historical documentaries in which, apart
from a loose description of historical events, the main focus is on describing
different individual fates that occurred in this historical period and were
handed down, for example, through diaries, which are sometimes more, sometimes
less connected with the formative events of the historical period. Since these
individual fates are often portrayed by actors in a very emotional way, one
gets the impression that one is watching an episode of “Game of Thrones” or a
medieval (or other human epoch) soap opera. What one actually learns about the
historical development of human society and how this is connected to the
overall development is not really clear in this respect, even if the interest
of some viewers is perhaps increased by this form.
Now that we have
described discourse analysis in its general, common features as well as its
practical significance, we move on to the postmodernism that follows from it.
Postmodernism – an Idealist Philosophy of a Dying System
Postmodernism emerges
from the metaphysical method of Discourse Analysis and Foucault’s “death of the
author”. Because of the diffuseness and arbitrariness with which Discourse Analysis
works, postmodernism itself is fragmented into almost innumerable individual
directions, so it is necessary not to get lost in the innumerable individual
directions in which every academic makes his or her mark, so it would be
impossible to identify any philosophical direction at all and to grasp it in a
concentrated way; instead, it is necessary to summarise the commonalities of
all these directions and currents and to develop the critique of them.
Otherwise, it would be an exercise akin to shadow boxing. Here we refer to
postmodernism as part of the rotten philosophy of the dying imperialist system
and not to the so-called “postmodernism” as a period of bourgeois
historiography, this term is already over 150 years old, postmodernism on the
other hand is a relative new creation of bourgeois academics.
Francois Lyotard
published his book “The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge” in 1979.
In it, Lyotard postulates the “end of the grand narratives” for philosophy,
art, culture and the social sciences. His thesis in condensed form was apt:
“Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward
meta-narratives.“34
By meta-narratives,
Lyotard understands the Enlightenment, idealism and historicism. By idealism,
however, Lyotard does not comprehend philosophical idealism as the
philosophical counterpart to materialism, but rather “self-consciousness after Hegel”, which leads to an “ideology of
wholeness”. In other words: Lyotard flatly rejects universally valid truths
(and consequently also Marxism) by rejecting the concept of idealism. The same
is true with regard to his understanding of “historicism”. At the same time,
Lyotard rejects continuous development or “progress”, specifically any “utopia, freedom and socialism”.35
Instead, postmodernism,
as an academic discipline, focuses entirely on language or so-called language
games and at the same time rejects all concepts, views and (in general)
ideologies that believe they can objectively understand, describe, prove and
thus practically change the world in the best possible way by means of
empirical methods and theoretical concepts. According to postmodernism,
everything in the world is subjective and ultimately a series of different
“narratives”, i.e. a concatenation of subjective views.
After this brief
overview of the origins and the basic theses of postmodernism, we now come to
summarise some of its central aspects. As I said, the aim here is to grasp the
different, almost indefinable forms of this idealistic philosophy in their
intersection in order to make them comprehensible in this way. Central aspects
of postmodernism are:
First. Advocating a
radical pluralism that expresses itself in making “dissent” an inviolable
sovereignty, since it is “structurally anchored in speech”. This means that
different opinions and positions stand “ineffaceable” next to each other, which
in turn means that unity on a question is impossible. In addition, not only is
the struggle of opinions (contrary to the Marxist principle of unity and struggle:
unity – struggle – higher unity; corresponding to struggle as absolute and
unity as relative) trivialised, so to speak – i.e. a subjectivist and one-sided
focus is placed on the simple opposition or juxtaposition of ideas – but also
that these ideas, positions, opinions all have the same right to exist, all are
fundamentally equally legitimate. Hence the great emphasis that postmodernism
places on communication, everyone should / must tell their “narrative”, but
since all opinions are fundamentally equal, this also means that no opinion
will ever prevail (proof in practice doesn’t count anyway), which results in
the negation of development, although struggle is supposedly being waged, which
is anti-dialectical in its essence, since it negates the never-ending
development through the struggle of contradictions, as Lyotard has already
done.
Secondly. Strong
emphasis on emotionality. Which takes the position of a result and a cause at
the same time, for the negation of the objective dialectical materialistic
consideration of different positions. Postmodernism has thus created a
tautology36 that allows it
to negate the existence of a higher level of truth on the basis of a person’s
feelings. For, because a higher truth does not exist, an opinion can also be
rejected or negated on the basis of another person’s feelings. In general
negation, that on the basis of practice as a criterion of truth, a higher truth
must be recognised. The dog bites its own tail. A person’s feelings are
declared to be an argument, who doesn’t know it who has once moved within the
“left scene” when the political discussion is suddenly neutered because it becomes
uncomfortable for someone.
Thirdly.
Ultra-individualism. If the individual and his or her supposed subjective needs
and sensitivities are in the foreground, a vulgar “me-me-me mentality” follows.
In particular, it is felt impossible to dedicate oneself to a higher cause that
is more important than one’s own ego, which also means not exposing oneself to
the hardships of struggle that this noble goal requires, e.g. an organization
based on democratic centralism in which one only has as much say as one is actually
willing to work for (not only in word but also in deed).
These are some of the
most important core elements of postmodernism. From the comments already made,
it is clear how it opposes dialectical materialism (and its application to
history) and evokes a crass idealism that has nothing whatsoever in common with
the reflection of material reality. He tries to create a new reality from his
idea of the world by focusing especially on language, but language does not
create material reality.
Comrade Stalin
develops the following in this regard: “Language exists, language has been created precisely in order to serve
society as a whole, as a means of intercourse between people, in order to be
common to the members of society and constitute the single language of society,
serving members of society equally, irrespective of their class status. A
language has only to depart from this position of being a language common to
the whole people, it has only to give preference and support to some one social
group to the detriment of other social groups of the society, and it loses its
virtue, ceases to be a means of intercourse between the people of the society,
and becomes the jargon of some social group, degenerates and is doomed to
disappear.“ Comrade Stalin does not deny that “everything in the world has a
class character” when he states: “It is no secret to
anyone that the Russian language served Russian capitalism and Russian
bourgeois culture before the October Revolution just as well as it now serves
the socialist system and socialist culture of Russian society.“ Further: “What object would there be in calling “water,” “earth,” “mountain,”
“forest,” “fish,” “man,” “to walk,” “to do,” “to produce,” “to trade,” etc.,
not water, earth, mountain, etc., but something else? What object would there
be in having the modification of words in a language and the combination of
words in sentences follow not the existing grammar, but some entirely different
grammar? What would the revolution gain from such an upheaval in language?
History in general never does anything of any importance without some special
necessity for it. What, one asks, can be the necessity for such a linguistic
revolution, if it has been demonstrated that the existing language and its
structure are fundamentally quite suited to the needs of the new system? The
old superstructure can and should be destroyed and replaced by a new one in the
course of a few years, in order to give free scope for the development of the
productive forces of society; but how can an existing language be destroyed and
a new one built in its place in the course of a few years without causing
anarchy in social life and without creating the threat of the disintegration of
society? Who but a Don Quijote could set himself such a task?“37
Postmodernism in Practice
Since human society in
itself, like everything that exists, is moving matter, postmodernism cannot avoid
practice. However, from the pure idea, it tries to “construct” reality with the
help of language, which means that practice is not the criterion of truth, but
merely a sign of whether the idea has already been fully realised. Based on
postmodernist thinking, it then follows in practice that the problem is not
mainly class struggle, because where there are no “meta-narratives”, classes do
not exist as the main form of division in society, but a “new” form of social
order is fantasised.
This is expressed in
the question of “Empire” and “Multitude” by Antonio Negri38 and Michel Hardt39 – it is
important to draw this connection. And let us remember: Foucault originally
comes from the revolutionary movement, Negri and Hardt come from the autonomous
movement and Negri is often wrongly attributed a connection to the Red
Brigades.
Then comes the
Tripple-Oppression-Theory. This spread at the beginning of the 90s in the
so-called autonomous left in the FRG, it came from the USA in its beginnings in
the 70s, spread mainly through the petty-bourgeois feminist movement also in
Europe and was also connected with groups that led armed struggle and with
revisionism. According to this theory, there are three forms of oppression:
race, gender and class. And there is no difference between them, i.e. a woman
(any woman) is just as much a revolutionary subject as a proletarian man and
therefore these forms of oppression must be fought simultaneously. In the book
“Three to One”, this theory is summarised as follows:
“It is not the separateness of oppressions that is essential, but their
articulation to each other. None of them is completely reduced to another or
completely appropriated by others; they form a coherent reality. The model of a
network of domination is not bad as an aid to imagination:
The meshes of the net are wider (metropolis) or tighter (tricont). The
threads are older (patriarchy) or newer (capitalism). More stable (in the FRG,
for example) or weaker (in Central America, for example). The threads form
different knots (racisms are connected to capitalism differently than
patriarchy, etc.) and the web is repaired and rewoven by some (capital, state,
whites, men) to tie up others (women, blacks, workers) and they tear it as best
they can.
The notion of a net-like domination, in which top and bottom are preserved
in each thread and knot, but no sole cause, no main contradiction is
presupposed anymore, also touches the question of the revolutionary subject.“40
The influence of
postmodernism, with its negation of materialist dialectics, is already evident
here. Everything is equally important, you don’t have to find out the principal
side of a contradiction, but strike hard everywhere at the same time. In the
revolutionary movement in the FRG, this theory finds its expression until today
in the slogan “unite struggles”. The “equally important” struggles would have
to be waged simultaneously and then these “partial struggles” could be linked.
But in the end, everyone is individually at the mercy of their oppression. But
this takes us in circles and the logical consequence of this theory is
intersectionality, which in part leads to an absurd competition to see who is
most oppressed due to different “mechanisms of oppression”.
The
Triple-Oppression-Theory was followed by people like Judith Butler41 who put the
question of “gender” on the agenda. While the Triple-Oppression-Theory still
talks about patriarchy, Gender-Theory is no longer about patriarchy, but about
sexism, i.e. the question of gender as an idea, not a material reality. The
term “sexism” is a substitute for patriarchy. Whoever uses the term sexism
negates patriarchal oppression, because it is not about the oppression of women
by men, but about the oppression of all forms of “genders”, which again are
only “constructs”.42 So they only
exist on the basis of the idea created before.
This gender theory
then plays a crucial role in what comes with LGBT etc.. It culminates in the
identity politics that are so widespread today and are now wildly discussed
even in bourgeois circles, which also brings up a whole range of different
concepts. This also brings up the questions of decolonisation or post-colonialism
or “Black Lives Matter”, which includes much of this thinking. The
unintentional founder of postcolonialism studies was Edward Said with his
well-known work “Orientalism”. He sees the cause of the oppression of
semi-colonial and semi-feudal countries in an ominous “Eurocentrism” that would
separate the Orient from the Occident through its “Western science” and exert
dominance especially through its language. Accordingly, one would have to
“decolonise”. The problem with this decolonisation is that it negates real
existing imperialism. For its problem is not to promote the national liberation
struggle of the oppressed nations, but above all to change the ideas of the
people in the imperialist countries, that is, to impose change on the basis of
ideas. In the same breath, the peoples of the oppressed nations are also denied
the right to the actual solution to eliminate their exploitation and
oppression. This is because they are not allowed to turn to or apply Marxism,
since this too is supposedly informed by the Western Enlightenment. Following
the postmodern premise of the elimination of “meta-narratives”, the universal
applicability of Marxism is negated. This, incidentally, has shown itself to be
particularly vivid and indispensable to the liberation struggle in oppressed
nations; the victorious revolution in China is the best example of this, but
also the liberation struggle of Korea and Vietnam and today’s people’s wars in
Peru, India, Turkey and the Philippines put the post-colonialists in their place.
For we recall one of the basic theses of Marxism: the problem is not to
interpret the world, but to change it. The communists enforce Marxism by
changing reality, and people’s war is the most radical form of changing matter.
And thoughts are also matter. What the post-colonialists say is that
decolonisation is an ideological struggle, a “cultural struggle” in other
words. In political practice, this then leads to discussions about who is
allowed to say what. Suddenly, the communists and progressive forces in the
imperialist countries are no longer allowed to show solidarity with the
struggles of the peoples of the oppressed nations, are not allowed to use
slogans in their languages because that would allegedly be “cultural
appropriation”. At the same time, the concept of “communities” is being
advanced, then there is the African community, the Latino community, the
Kurdish community, etc., etc. But this concept creates or “constructs”
something that does not exist in this way at all, because it ignores the class
differences within these alleged communities, but even among Africans, there
are bourgeoisie, petty bourgeois, workers, intellectuals, etc. These often do
not have very much in common. These often do not have much in common (in
addition, there is no such thing as “the Africans”). Among them there are
different ideological and political opinions, different class interests, class
sentiments, class positions and world views, there are fascists, communists,
progressives, etc. among them. There are atheists, Christians, Muslims,
agnostics, etc. among them. What is then made the characteristic of the
association here is what is actually not supposed to play a role: The origin or
the alleged “race”, the skin colour.
The Rollback in the Women’s Movement
The harmful and
reactionary influence of postmodernism or identity politics is also leaving its
clear mark on the women’s movement. In the emergence of the progressive women’s
movement, especially in the 1960s, one of the central points was the negation
of the traditional role of women. One should no longer wear a bra, shave one’s
legs, accept “female” role models or ideals of beauty. Although this movement
was strongly influenced by the petty bourgeoisie, the communist parties also
had their influence here. Postmodernism then says that all this, the role of
women in society, gender itself, are all constructs. As described above,
Gender-Theory emerges, in which the question of an allegedly constructed gender
plays an important role.
This leads to a
problem in identity politics today, because if there is no biological sex, what
defines what a woman is? The answer that identity politics arrives at is: woman
is whoever is or looks “female” (or simply claims to be a woman). The struggle
of the women’s movement used to be that these differences in appearance should
not exist. You can see this in how “flirtatious” the women comrades were in the
Cultural Revolution. They had the same cap and the same jacket as the male
comrades, a slightly different haircut perhaps and sometimes a skirt, but that
was it. And that was a good thing. They then also did the same jobs as the men
and were in no way inferior to them.43 This is the
Marxist understanding of women’s liberation. Today with identity politics, a
woman is defined by whether she moves, dresses and makes up like a woman. A
transsexual man who claims to be a woman is celebrated as a woman because he is
“feminine” and moves, dresses and makes up like a woman. This has negated the
whole struggle for women’s liberation of the last decades, thus plays a
backwarded role in the women’s movement. On top of that, one idea of identity
politics is that a marginalised minority can take degrading and stigmatising
terms and reinterpret them to their liking, “positively occupy” them. This
leads to the fact that suddenly there are people in the women’s movement who
claim that when women call each other “whore” or “bitch” all the time, instead
of slapping pimps and patriarchal pigs on the head, this is part of women’s
liberation. This postmodernist position, which emerges from Discourse Analysis
and grants language the ability to create reality, is then also expressed in
gender language acrobatics with all their asterisks, colons and Internal-I What
does this lead to? To a change in the situation of women? To the destruction of
patriarchy? Unfortunately not, because that requires the struggle against the
imperialist system. What it actually leads to is the eternal academic
discussion about which spelling would be the most “inclusive” in order to make
women “visible”, but in reality it does not advance the fight against
imperialism and patriarchy one step, but instead the women’s movement is
further fragmented and those who do not use the proper “gender” become the
preferred target of moral apostolic rebukes. If women are to become truly
“visible”, then they themselves must ensure this in direct militant action,
guided by the ideology of the proletariat.
Finally, to summarize:
To realise its idea, postmodernism has given birth to identity politics. Better
said, identity politics is the next step in the increasing decay of bourgeois
idealism in its “left” manifestation, as an expression of the ideological decay
of imperialism, in a long strand of increasing decay. It is idealist because,
in the tradition of Discourse Analysis and postmodernism, it puts the idea
first and not the actually existing material reality of human society, which is
being transformed by the class struggle. Today, when alleged communist groups,
organisations and parties adopt aspects of this bourgeois idealism, it is
nothing other than revisionism. For they smuggle bourgeois points of view into
the ideology of the international proletariat and thereby reject it as a
self-contained, harmonious system, all-powerful because it is true.44 True because it
is confirmed in practice over and over again.
The “Right” Form of Bourgeois Idealism
Having discussed the
“left” form of bourgeois idealism, we now come to the other side of the coin,
the “right” form45. This is expressed in
a resurgence of religious obscurantism (religiosity is one of the feelings of
the masses that we must explicitly respect in order to change them in a long
ideological struggle). It is important to emphasise here that we are talking
about imperialism as a world system. Because we can see how massive campaigns
are being carried out in the oppressed nations in this sense – there is the IS
(Islamic State/ISIS, translators note.) especially in Arab countries, Modi in
India, especially the evangelicals in Africa and Latin America. All these
forces have – despite their obvious differences – one big thing in common: they
correspond (more or less and more or less obviously) to the interests of
imperialism by dividing the national liberation movement, this is so even
though parts of these forces are at a certain moment put in a position by
“coincidence and necessity” (mainly by the shortcomings of the communists, who do
not correspond to their role and tasks) to be at the head of the national
liberation movement and to lead at that moment the anti-imperialist struggle of
the masses. Their greatest common denominator is anti-communism or
anti-materialism. This circumstance is also concreted here in the FRG in our
neighbourhoods, the workers’ neighbourhoods, where all these forces have their
effect.
We have to understand
this religiosity as obscurantism, i.e. the purpose to keep people deliberately
ignorant, often but not always, combined with the belief in an inexplicable
higher power, such as a “god”. This obscurantism is not only expressed in
religiosity, because fewer and fewer people are members of the large church
congregations (in the FRG mainly of Protestant and Catholic origin).46 But at the same
time, homeopathy is sold in pharmacies and the health insurance companies in
Germany pay for it to a certain extent.47 The
manufacturers of the remedies, which demonstrably have no medical effect,
receive support not only from the ranks of the Green Party48, but also from the
top floor of the Ministry of Health. Jens Spahn, for example, decided not to
abolish the coverage of homeopathy by health insurers; he could, but he won’t.49 And as I said,
homeopathy means that it is not medicine and it has been proven that it doesn’t
work. Nevertheless, this obscurantism is an accepted part of society and even
gets support in its propagation by the highest levels of the German government.
The so-called “New Age”, the esoterics, compensate – perhaps not in the number
of their members or followers, but in their work more than enough – for the
loss of paying church members in the political sense.
How religiosity is
spread and promoted can also be seen in the USA, where anyone can found a church
and then not have to pay taxes. And it goes so far that the negation of the
right to abortion is brought forward, more and more and more. Examples of this
are among others countries like Poland, the USA and so on. By the Catholic
Church above all, but in conspiracy with the Protestant Church and its most
radical offshoots, the Evangelicals. For example, the Catholic Church has
formed joint hospitals with non-Catholic providers and there, as a
“compromise”, the right to abort is then abolished.50 In the
Malteser-Diako-Klinikum, Germany’s first ecumenical hospital, a merger between
the Malteser Franziskus Hospital and the Diakonissen Hospital in Flensburg, no
abortions are performed, according to a report in the “taz”.51
Obscurantism is also
spread by the so-called conspiracy theories, which exist in the most diverse
forms. UFO myths and so-called “Urban Legends” of all kinds, which are also
actively spread and are an accepted part of society, and are currently
particularly popular. Exemplary are the UFO myths, which are now no longer
presented as mere theories or possibilities in various TV formats, but as cash.
The TV series “Ancient Aliens” stands out in particular here; it is now in its
16th season with 193 episodes. In Germany it runs on the channel KabelEinsDoku
up and down. It has been produced since 2009, which means that this trash has
been broadcast for twelve years. The basic premise, regurgitated in every
episode, is that aliens have repeatedly visited Earth in the past and that all
ancient cultures were founded or influenced by them. Their anti-materialism is
also more than obvious. For like religions, these theories claim that the basic
premise of human society lies not in the contradictions of society itself, i.e.
class struggle, but that a higher power had to intervene from outside to bring
human society to the point it is today. This is just as obscurantism and
sometimes comrades make fun of it, but it is the ideology of imperialism and it
is also propagated by the highest echelons of Yankee imperialism, as only
recently former US president Obama, through some nebulous comments, again
triggered a debate about aliens visiting Earth, which was even dealt with in
official government document.52 53
This is the “right”
form of bourgeois idealism, which, just like its “left-wing” variation, negates
any kind of materialism.
The Response of Revisionism and Opportunism
What is the response
of the revisionist and opportunist of any kind, if they are not anyway
supporters of postmodernism and identity politics? Their answer is to uphold an
extremely mechanical materialism. And this has been expressed very clearly in
the pandemic, but also before. What did Greta Thunberg, the Jeanne d‘Arc of the
climate movement, say: “Listen to the scientists”54? That means forget
the class struggle and listen to the scientists, they are supposed to exist
detached from the class struggle and their ideas should not have the stamp of a
class. But that is not how the world works. And what are we experiencing now in
the pandemic? Drosten, Lauterbach and all their names are sitting there
dictating how we should live. And what are large sections of the youth doing?
Instead of rebelling, they join in. That is “Listen to the scientists”. What is
Zero-Covid? Also “Listen to the scientists”, it’s the call “Forget the class
struggle and listen to the scientists, they’ll show you the way!” But in human
society, their ideas are also linked to the interests of different classes,
accordingly we cannot and must not forget the class struggle.
The task, accordingly,
is not to uphold “materialism” but DIALECTIC MATERIALISM, as we show in this
account of the decomposition of the ideology of imperialism. This misery that
imperialism has created for itself, the flags it has raised because it is a
dying system, these are flags that do not even have anything to do with
enlightenment. But our task is not to raise the flags of enlightenment against
it, not to come with Diderot, but with Marxism, today Marxism-Leninism-Maoism,
Principally Maoism with the Universally Valid Contributions of Chairman
Gonzalo, i.e. Gonzalo Thought. That is, we must show the strength of Marxist
philosophy and its vitality, that it is not a mystery but belongs to the
masses. Just as the Chinese comrades have done in many dozens of written
examples in which the workers, peasants, soldiers show how they apply
dialectical materialism to their reality in order to change it further.55 The classics
have armed us accordingly for this and comrades must accordingly master, above
all, Chairman Mao’s works “On Practice” and “On Contradiction” like the ABC and
this must be passed on to the masses.
Identity politics,
conspiracy theories or “listen to the scientists” are expressions of the rot,
the decline, the decay of imperialism, they are expressions of its backward
ideology and nothing new. The new must replace the old. Accordingly, Marxist
philosophy will replace bourgeois philosophy. This is a law, but it requires
efforts that have to be made, and what a joy it is to sweep away all the
reactionary dirt, the great heap of rubbish, with an all-powerful, because true
and ever more true, scientific ideology.
1 Nota bene: Left
does not correspond to our understanding of the characteristics of imperialist
bourgeois ideology, it is a certain variation, according to a vulgar
understanding, attributed to what is colloquially called the “left (scene)”.
For the most part, it is something that corresponds to that faction of the
imperialist bourgeoisie that is generally based on the state monopolies. For
our readers, this section is the much more comprehensive one, because what is
dealt with just here unfolds clearly more influence.
2 Baruch de
Spinoza, “Treatise on Theology and Politics“, 1670
3 Ibid
4 Ibid
5 Ibid
6 Theodor W.
Adorno, formerly Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund (1903 – 1969); German philosopher,
sociologist, music philosopher, and composer.
7 Deconstructionism
or deconstruction refers to a set of currents in philosophy, hermeneutics,
literature and linguistics, coined by Derrida as a term for a procedure of
analysis of texts: “What I call deconstruction […] is […] not a method, nor a
scientific critique. […] Deconstruction presupposes the transformation of even
the concept of the text and of writing.” (Derrida)
8 Jürgen Habermas
(born 1929); German philosopher and sociologist, second generation of the
Frankfurt School
9 Jürgen Habermas,
„Wahrheitstheorien“, 1973; our translation
10 In 1931, the
foundation assets of the Institute for Social Research / Instituts für
Sozialforschung (IfS) were transferred to the Netherlands, and the headquarters
moved to Geneva in 1933. In the further course, the IfS moved first to Paris,
then to the USA. Horkheimer rebuilt the Institute for Social Research there at
Columbia University in New York. Adorno and Horkheimer returned in 1950 and the
IfS was rebuilt with money from the Yankees and the FRG. Cf. Emil Walter-Busch:
“Geschichte der Frankfurter Schule. Kritische Theorie und Politik”, 2010
11 Today’s
so-called left scene in Germany is fundamentally a student-dominated movement
in its entire character, and the ideas of the petty-bourgeois intellectuals
have a corresponding effect here.
12 Even though he
did not claim the term Discourse Analysis for himself, it is he who produced
and clearly shaped the basic features of this methodology.
13 Reiner Keller,
“Doing Discourse Research: An Introduction for Social Scientists“, 2011; our
translation
14 Post-structuralism
is the term used to describe various approaches and methods in the humanities
and social sciences, in particular the view that language does not represent
reality but constructs it, based on or referring to deconstruction and
discourse analysis.
15 Reiner Keller,
„Diskursforschung – Eine Einführung für SozialwissenschaftlerInnen“, 2011; our
translation
16 see Marianne
Pieper: „Especially the reception of Michel
Foucaults work made the term “discourse” popular in human and social
studies.”, in „Diskursanalysen – kritische Analytik der Gegenwart und
wissenspolitische Deutungsmusteranalyse“, in „Foucault: Diskursanalyse der
Politik – eine Einführung“, 2006
17 Louis Althusser
(1918 – 1990); French philosopher, murdered his wife and couldn’t remember it,
teacher of Alain Badiou, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Maurice Godelier,
Nicos Poulantzas and others.
18 Jacques Derrida,
(1930 – 2004); French philosopher, known as founder and main representative of
“deconstruction”
19 theguardian.com,
„Calls for legal child sex rebound on luminaries of May 68“, 24 February 2001
20 zeit.de,
„Gabriel Matzneff: Es war verboten, zu verbieten“, 22 January 2020
21 see spiegel.de,
„Intellektueller wirft Michel Foucault Kindesmissbrauch vor“, 07 April 2021
22 „der Freitag“,
15/2021: „Foucault verbieten?
23 This has its
echoes in the revolutionary movement as well, because some comrades keep
centring strongly on the question of sexuality.
24 deutschlandfunkkultur.de,
„Kalifornischer Roadtrip zum Death Valley: Michel Foucault auf LSD“, 02 June
2019
25 tagesanzeiger.ch,
„«Der Himmel ist explodiert, und Sterne regnen auf mich herab»“, 02 June 2019
26 faz.net,
„Foucaults Vermächtnis: Fortan wird er die Wahrheit sagen“, 12 February 2009
27 Hans-Herbert
Kögler, „Michel Foucault“, 2004
28 According to the
Duden: “to subordinate to a generic term, to
classify under a category; to group under a subject”. In Marx’s works,
categories of human activity and society are described as “under capital”
because subsumption (meaning subjugation, domination, subordination) describes
a process in which concrete labour is subsumed under the valorisation process
of capital.
29 Hans-Herbert
Kögler, „Michel Foucault“, 2004
30 Foucault,
„Archaeology of Knowledge“, 1969
31 I.e. ultimately
God or some other superhuman, supernatural, metaphysical entity, in convergence
with the Christian creed “In the beginning was the Word […] and the Word was
God. All things came to be through the Word, and without the Word nothing came
to be that has come to be.”, Gospel of John
32 see Bertolt
Brecht in „Die Verurteilung des Lukullus“, 1938/39: „Yet the victor always writes the history of the vanquished. The racket
disfigures the features of the slained. The weaker leaves the world and the lie
remains.”
33 On the basis of
the materially existing society, i.e. outside of and independent of the
consciousness of the individuals at the level of development of the productive
forces and the resulting social relations of production, the resulting division
of society into classes, because it is not social consciousness that determines
social existence, but the other way round. Marx thus settles accounts with Hegel’s
idealist dialectic.
34 Jean-François
Lyotard, “The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge”, 1979
35 Ibid
36 In “logic” a
generally valid statement, e.g. “If it rains, it rains”.
37 Stalin, “Marxism
and Problems of Linguistics“, 1950
38 Antonio Negri
(born 1933); Italian political scientist
39 Michael Hardt
(born 1960); U.S.-American literary theorist
40 Klaus Viehmann
et all, „Drei zu Eins“, 1993; our translation
41 Judith Butler
(born in 1956); U.S.-American philosopher
42 In recent years,
the concept of patriarchy has also become widespread again in the
petty-bourgeois feminist movement in the FRG, not least because of the struggle
of the proletarian vanguard in forming a proletarian feminism as a demarcation
from the other currents in the women’s movement. However, in these mostly
petty-bourgeois-academic circles, the term was reinterpreted in a postmodernist
way, so that supposedly patriarchy now no longer stands only for the oppression
of women by men, but generally for the oppression of the different “genders”.
43 see among others
Claudie Broyelle, „Die Hälfte des Himmels – Frauenemanzipation und
Kindererziehung in China“, 1974
44 see Lenin in: “The Three Sources and Three Components of Marxism“, LW
Volume 19: ”The Marxist doctrine is
omnipotent because it is true. It is comprehensive and harmonious, and provides
men with an integral world outlook irreconcilable with any form of
superstition, reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression.”
45 Our comment on
“left” also applies accordingly at this point.
46 The abuse
scandals that keep piling up, especially in the Catholic Church, and the way it
deals with them contribute to this general tendency.
47 In the FRG,
numerous health insurance companies subsidise the purchase of homeopathic
products. The “German Central Association of Homeopathic Doctors” lists 80
health insurance companies on its website. The DHU, the battleship of the
German homeopathy lobby (Deutsche Homöopathie-Union DHU-Arzneimittel GmbH &
Co. KG, part of the Schwabe Group, sued among others Stiftung Warentest and had
the publication of the book “Die Andere Medizin” (“The Other Medicine”), in
which DHU products and other pseudo-medicines are described as ineffective,
banned, paid among others for character assassination campaigns against
journalists and medical practitioners; cf. sueddeutsche.de, “Schmutzige
Methoden der sanften Medizin” (“Dirty methods of soft medicine”), 30 June 2012)
provides a list of 65 health insurance companies on its website.
48 The Green health
politician Kordula Schulz-Asche described homeopathy as “complementary
medicine”, which is “an important addition to orthodox medicine”. See
aerzteblatt.de, “Spahn does not want to touch homeopathy at health insurance
costs”, 18 September 2019
49 aerzteblatt.de,
„Spahn will Homöopathie auf Kassenkosten nicht antasten“, 18. September 2019
50 usatoday.com,
„Worried about abortion laws? Catholic hospital mergers also seen as threat to
women’s health care“, 27 December 2019
51 see taz.de,
„Keine Abtreibungen in Flensburger Klinik: Fusion mit Folgen“, 04 November 2019
52 tagesschau.de,
„Was der Senat über UFOs wissen muss“, 25 June 2021
53 swr.de/swr2,
„Sogar Obama glaubt an UFOs“, 08 June 2021
54 theguardian.com,
„‘Listen to the scientists’: Greta Thunberg urges Congress to take action“, 18
September 2019
55 see among others
the writings “One splits into two” and „Philosophy is no Mystery“