{"id":3338,"date":"2022-04-01T13:16:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-01T18:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/?p=3338"},"modified":"2022-04-12T13:18:53","modified_gmt":"2022-04-12T18:18:53","slug":"consciousness-is-essential-why-the-death-of-the-left-is-consequential-a-rejoinder-to-benedict-cryptofash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/?p=3338","title":{"rendered":"Consciousness is essential \u2014 why the death of the Left is consequential: A rejoinder to Benedict Cryptofash"},"content":{"rendered":"\n


Chris Cutrone<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Platypus Review 145<\/a><\/em> | <\/em>April 2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BENEDICT CRYPTOFASH CRITICIZES me for using the \u201cLeft\u201d as a concept for its alleged idealism and metaphysical essentialism.[1]<\/sup><\/a> But by identifying the \u201cLeft\u201d with a group of people, e.g. members of Jacobin<\/em>\/DSA et al., Cryptofash reifies the phenomenon of the Left, and in the worst possible way, by personalizing it. But even in colloquial discourse it is well understood that Left and Right represent principles not people. This is why someone who was a Leftist can become a Rightist: he can change his mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Left is not a thing but rather expresses a process; moreover the Left refers to the tendency or force of a historical process. Aaron Benanav criticized Platypus for its preoccupation with the Left rather than with class \u2014 similar to the criticism of Platypus by my old ex-comrades of the Spartacist League[2]<\/sup><\/a> \u2014 and referred as Cryptofash does to the Left as the Left-wing of capitalism, as if this disqualified the concept.[3]<\/sup><\/a> But Marxism always considered itself to be the consciousness of the historical tendency of capitalism that pointed beyond it and that was necessary in order to actually get beyond it. For instance, Lenin considered the Marxist approach to socialism to be overcoming capitalism on the basis of capitalism itself. But that tendency was self-contradictory in that it pointed both further beyond capitalism but also back to the reconstitution of its historical roots in bourgeois society \u2014 the society of labor. The modern labor movement of the proletarianized working class was itself the core engine of capitalist development, driving the industrial development of production, which contradicted and undermined and destroyed its bourgeois social relations, producing crisis. The problem with the present Left \u2014 and for the past hundred years \u2014 is that it no longer expresses the emerging and developing consciousness of the subject of a historical tendency \u2014 proletarian socialism \u2014 but rather the memory of something that proceeds today seemingly objectively \u2014 without a corresponding political movement aiming to go beyond it. In the absence of such a subjective consciousness of history as a phenomenon in practice, capitalism itself appears to regress.[4]<\/sup><\/a> This regression is something that can be observed in both long-term and short-term political processes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my previous article in this thread, I tried to explain very briefly the mind of original historical Marxism as a political movement.[5]<\/sup><\/a> I will now try to illustrate the point with the example of the leader of Jacobin<\/em>\/DSA, Bhaskar Sunkara, who recently took over the historically progressive liberal Nation<\/em> magazine. Sunkara has apparently changed since he published an article in The Nation<\/em>, \u201cReclaiming Socialism\u201d (2015), in which, under the influence of my teachings in Platypus, he cited Ko\u0142akowski\u2019s \u201cConcept of the Left\u201d to justify his political vision.[6]<\/sup><\/a> Back then, Sunkara\u2019s influences were Lenin and Kautsky (from \u201cwhen Kautsky was still a Marxist,\u201d as Lenin put it[7]<\/sup><\/a>). But this is no longer the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More recently, Sunkara claimed that he was less a follower of Kautsky than of Ralph Miliband. This is in keeping with the 2017 statement written by Vivek Chibber to distinguish Jacobin<\/em>\/DSA\u2019s perspective from that of the Marxism of Kautsky and Lenin, \u201cOur Road to Power\u201d \u2014 by contrast with Kautsky\u2019s 1909 The Road to Power<\/em>, which Lenin followed in the Revolution of 1917.[8]<\/sup><\/a> I addressed this on the 150th<\/sup> anniversary of Lenin\u2019s birth, to which Sunkara and Leo Panitch replied, defending Miliband\u2019s \u201cMarxist\u201d bona fides<\/em> against my characterization of him as a \u201cliberal\u201d \u2014 a proponent of a liberal democratic road to socialism, very much like the reformist Revisionism of Eduard Bernstein et al. from more than fifty years earlier.[9]<\/sup><\/a> Miliband\u2019s idea, with which Sunkara, Chibber and Panitch agreed, was that the capitalist state could not be overthrown and replaced by the working class\u2019s own organizations in the dictatorship of the proletariat, but had to be worked through existing liberal democratic electoral means to a potential transformation of society \u2014 the endless dream of reformist social democracy (through the Democratic Party of all vehicles!) that has ensnared the Millennial Left like the generations before them. Most recently, Sunkara said that socialism was probably ultimately impossible in the U.S., but at least some \u201csocial democracy\u201d was possible, by which he meant public sector and welfare state expansion.[10]<\/sup><\/a> This was an abandonment of Marxist ideas, or at least of their current relevance politically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps Sunkara thinks he has remained consistent, but there seems to be some change of mind. Perhaps not in principle \u2014 perhaps he still finds socialism desirable but not possible, and ultimately not necessary to meet the needs of the present \u2014 but certainly in terms of practical politics and what he takes to be the \u201cart of the possible,\u201d which is the essence of politics. In so doing, he has abandoned the Left\u2019s role in pushing \u2014 and transcending \u2014 the envelope of possibility and realizing hitherto unrealized potentials, not even necessarily in changing society but merely in renewing the Left and socialism or Marxism as a political tendency. Sunkara has abandoned the task of building a socialist party. Instead, Sunkara et al. among the Millennial Left have fallen back upon the dead traditions of the past post-Marxist \u201cLeft\u201d \u2014 accepting and reinforcing the liquidation of proletarian socialism over the course of the past century, since Lenin\u2019s time. This is why and how it takes the form of calls for a \u201cnew New Deal\u201d etc.[11]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This downward trajectory in perspectives is a significant degeneration of consciousness on the part of a key leader of the Millennial Left. Five years ago I called it the death of the Millennial Left, in its liquidation into the Democratic Party.[12]<\/sup><\/a> It has only grown worse since then. I take Cryptofash\u2019s objection to \u201cLeftism\u201d to be a symptomatic phenomenon of the same degeneration, but one which throws the baby out with the bathwater, in rejecting Jacobin<\/em>\/DSA\u2019s road back to the Democrats. Cryptofash derogates consciousness by calling it \u201cidealistic\u201d and \u201cmetaphysical,\u201d an \u201cabstract\u201d and so supposedly unreal \u201cessence.\u201d But then one must ask what the purpose of Cryptofash\u2019s own writings is. What is the point of his arguments if all that matters is \u201cmaterial reality\u201d? Indeed, in prioritizing empirical reality over consciousness, Cryptofash follows the present dead \u201cLeft\u2019s\u201d lead into accommodating the power of the status quo, abandoning the consciousness of how it could and should be changed \u2014 first of all, how the present \u201cLeft\u201d must be fundamentally changed. Cryptofash\u2019s \u201canti-Leftist Marxism\u201d merely strikes a pose against the \u201cLeft.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marx followed Kant and Hegel\u2019s \u2014 modern German Idealism\u2019s \u2014 and bourgeois thought\u2019s more general sense of the task of \u201cconsciousness\u201d as the necessity of freedom: the struggle for freedom is motivated by consciousness of necessity. And the highest necessity is not base \u201cmaterial\u201d need \u2014 the animal survival of the workers \u2014 but rather freedom<\/em>: the necessity of changing the world, specifically of overcoming capitalism. It was a matter of Rousseau\u2019s \u201cgeneral will\u201d of society as more than the sum of its parts in the wills of its members, Kant\u2019s \u201ctranscendental subject\u201d of freedom, and Hegel\u2019s \u201cobjective mind\u201d (Geist<\/em>, Spirit) as it develops in history. Marxism\u2019s consciousness of \u201ccommunism\u201d was more specifically \u2014 and empirically \u2014 that of a political outlook and strategy for pursuing it and the reasons for this historically. Marx did not invent communism, which predated him, but critiqued<\/em> it. Marx\u2019s was moreover a \u201chistorical\u201d critique of existing society in the contradictions of capitalism to be overcome, a \u201chistorical consciousness\u201d or \u201cconsciousness of history\u201d and its tasks: why socialism or communism arose as an ideology in the very specific phase of history in the Industrial Revolution. Marx thought that the world had only to recognize what it was struggling for in order to realize it.[13]<\/sup><\/a> Marx found the existing communist consciousness of his time to be lacking: its call to abolish private property resulted in a reification of labor rather than its overcoming, especially since capitalism itself already abolished private property.[14]<\/sup><\/a> But he thought that proletarian socialism as a movement was capable of learning the bitter lessons of its struggles \u2014 why it remained trapped in its opposition to and within capitalism. This learning process was the subjective factor of history. But what can be learned can also be unlearned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cryptofash exhibits a striking \u201chistorical\u201d liquidation of the historical, reducing things like the splits of Marxism in revolution and civil war as mere \u201ccontext,\u201d which ends up affirming whatever happened. \u2014 I am reminded of my late professor Moishe Postone saying that capitalism will be overcome when it is good and ready, despite what the Left wants or thinks. The Marxist critique of history is lacking. The fact is that the workers\u2019 movement for socialism has up to now failed, and this has affected history. The issue is the objective vs. subjective character of the proletarianized working class in capitalism. \u2014 In his last interview before he died, Postone claimed that we were presently witnessing the historical liquidation of the working class.[15]<\/sup><\/a> But for that to actually happen would require a subjective political act, leading to actually overcoming capitalism, since capitalism can objectively by (Marx\u2019s) definition not do without workers. As long as there are desperately poor people willing or able to have their labor exploited, capitalism will continue \u2014 until the workers themselves put a stop to it. There is a necessity of politically achieving the dictatorship of the proletariat.[16]<\/sup><\/a> Communism as the \u201creal movement of history\u201d according to Marx is not merely an objective but a subjective issue: \u201ctheory gripping the masses\u201d as a \u201cmaterial force\u201d[17]<\/sup><\/a> also means the masses grasping theory \u2014 or at least a political ideology. That\u2019s the role of the Left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Antonio Negri had an idea that we were already living in communism but just didn\u2019t realize it.[18]<\/sup><\/a> But the point of the Left is to realize it \u2014 not in the sense of just an idea or change of \u201cconsciousness\u201d in the colloquial sense, but a critical theory helping make it happen in reality, in practice. The working class won\u2019t be able to do so without a Left, without a theory of what they are trying to do in practice. Cryptofash\u2019s desire to proceed separately from and in opposition to the Left, and without the necessity of Left theory and ideas, expects communism to happen on its own \u2014 with people as not the subjects but the objects of history. But people have perspectives and ideas, and those ideas and perspectives matter. We cannot afford to abdicate on helping to provide them. They are affected by the history of the Left and the historical self-liquidation of Marxism, which is not merely past but a continuing obstacle to the future.[19]<\/sup><\/a> The Left\u2019s corpse is not something we can ignore.[20]<\/sup><\/a> We must remember history. | P<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/sup><\/a> \u201cThe Left is not the Right,\u201d March 10, 2022, available online at <https:\/\/antileftistmarx.substack.com\/p\/the-left-is-not-the-right>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/sup><\/a> See \u201cPlatypus Group: Pseudo-Marxist, Pro-Imperialist, Academic Claptrap,\u201d Workers Vanguard<\/em> 908 (February 15, 2008), available online at <https:\/\/www.icl-fi.org\/english\/wv\/908\/ysp-platypus.html>, where they wrote that \u201cFor Platypus, the fundamental social divide is not the class struggle of proletariat vs. bourgeoisie, but an amorphous and classless contest of \u2018Left\u2019 vs. \u2018Right\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3]<\/sup><\/a> See Benanav\u2019s remarks on the panel discussion \u201cProgram and utopia,\u201d Platypus Review<\/em> 58 (July 2015), available online at <https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2013\/07\/01\/program-and-utopia\/>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[4]<\/sup><\/a> See The Decline of the Left in the 20th<\/sup> Century: Toward a Theory of Historical Regression<\/em>, Platypus Review<\/em> 17 (November 2009), available online at <https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/the-decline-of-the-left-in-the-20th-century\/>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[5]<\/sup><\/a> \u201cThe Left is a concept \u2014 but social revolution is not: A response to \u2018Benedict Cryptofash\u2019,\u201d Platypus Review<\/em> 143 (February 2022), available online at <https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2022\/02\/01\/the-left-is-a-concept-but-social-revolution-is-not-a-response-to-benedict-cryptofash\/>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[6]<\/sup><\/a> The Nation,<\/em> 150th<\/sup> Anniversary Issue 300.14 (April 6, 2015), March 23, 2015, available online at <https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/archive\/red-any-other-name\/>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[7]<\/sup><\/a> \u201cI. In What Sense We Can Speak of the International Significance of the Russian Revolution,\u201d in \u201cLeft-Wing\u201d Communism: An Infantile Disorder <\/em>(1920), available online at <https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/archive\/lenin\/works\/1920\/lwc\/ch01.htm>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[8]<\/sup><\/a> Jacobin<\/em>, December 5, 2017, available online at <https:\/\/jacobinmag.com\/2017\/12\/our-road-to-power>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[9]<\/sup><\/a> See my \u201cLenin today,\u201d Platypus Review<\/em> 126 (May 2020), available online at <https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2020\/05\/01\/lenin-today\/>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[10]<\/sup><\/a> \u201cThe Promise (and Limits) of Social Democracy,\u201d The Jacobin Show,<\/em> June 6, 2021, available online at <https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kLl2fAydnhE>. \u2014 Actually, I don\u2019t know when and where Bhaskar said this exactly; I couldn\u2019t find it when looking for it now. Perhaps it was something I dreamed in the haze of the COVID pandemic lockdown. But I\u2019m pretty sure he said it in some context or other, and it struck and stuck with me. See also \u201cBiden Offers Fiscal Liberalism, not Social Democracy,\u201d Jacobin Show<\/em>, June 7, 2021, available online at <https:\/\/youtu.be\/uTBGqc0O3oI>. ADDENDUM (4\/1\/22): I finally found it!  In the Bard College Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities talk of March 2, 2021, \u201cTough Talks: Bhaskar Sunkara,\u201d Sunkara said that, \u201cPerhaps we will fall short of our loftier ambitions [of socialism], but we will still manage to win a more just United States that will at least have Medicare for All, and a living wage for all, and the chance for decent work for all,\u201d online at <https:\/\/youtu.be\/UpJ9iqvIdmY>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[11]<\/sup><\/a> See my \u201cThe end of the Gilded Age: Discontents of the Second Industrial Revolution today,\u201d Platypus Review<\/em> 102 (December 2017 \u2013 January 2018), available online at <https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2017\/12\/02\/end-gilded-age-discontents-second-industrial-revolution-today\/>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[12]<\/sup><\/a> See my \u201cThe Millennial Left is dead,\u201d Platypus Review<\/em> 100 (October 2017), available online at <https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2017\/10\/01\/millennial-left-dead\/>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[13]<\/sup><\/a> See Marx\u2019s September 1843 letter to Arnold Ruge, \u201cFor the ruthless criticism of everything existing,\u201d in The Marx-Engels Reader, <\/em>ed. Robert C. Tucker, 2nd<\/sup> ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1978), 12\u201315, available online at <https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/archive\/marx\/works\/1843\/letters\/43_09.htm>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[14]<\/sup><\/a> Marx and Engels, \u201cII. Proletarians and Communists,\u201d in Manifesto of the Communist Party <\/em>(1848), available online at <https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/archive\/marx\/works\/1848\/communist-manifesto\/ch02.htm>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[15]<\/sup><\/a> \u201cMarx in the Age of Trump,\u201d Vienna Humanities Festival: Hope and Despair, September 17, 2017, available online at <https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=OJIaze-C2Qs>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[16]<\/sup><\/a> See my \u201cThe dictatorship of the proletariat and the death of the Left,\u201d Platypus Review<\/em> 141 (November 2021), available online at <https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2021\/11\/01\/the-dictatorship-of-the-proletariat-and-the-death-of-the-left\/>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[17]<\/sup><\/a> Marx, \u201cContribution to a Critique of Hegel\u2019s Philosophy of Right<\/em>\u201d (1843), available online at <https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/archive\/marx\/works\/1843\/critique-hpr\/intro.htm>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[18]<\/sup><\/a> See Michael Hardt and Negri\u2019s books Empire<\/em> (2000), Multitude<\/em> (2004) and Commonwealth<\/em> (2009) where this is elaborated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[19]<\/sup><\/a> See my \u201cRemember the future! A rejoinder to Peter Hudis on \u2018Capital in history\u2019,\u201d Platypus Review<\/em> 8 (November 2008), available online at <https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2008\/11\/01\/remember-the-future-a-rejoinder-to-peter-hudis-on-capital-in-history\/>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[20]<\/sup><\/a> See my \u201cVicissitudes of historical consciousness and possibilities for emancipatory politics today: \u2018The Left is dead! \u2014 Long live the Left!,\u201d Platypus Review<\/em> 1 (November 2007), available online at <https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2007\/11\/01\/vicissitudes-of-historical-consciousness-and-possibilities-for-emancipatory-social-politics-today\/>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Cutrone Platypus Review 145 | April 2022 BENEDICT CRYPTOFASH CRITICIZES me for using the \u201cLeft\u201d as a concept for its alleged idealism and metaphysical essentialism.[1] But by identifying the \u201cLeft\u201d with a group of people, e.g. members of Jacobin\/DSA et al., Cryptofash reifies the phenomenon of the Left, and in the worst possible way, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[47,35,16,6],"class_list":["post-3338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays","tag-47","tag-lenin","tag-marxism","tag-the-platypus-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3338"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3339,"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3338\/revisions\/3339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}