(Pt. 2)
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Are we then required to subject ourselves to the harsh, challenging living conditions in order to cancel the debt we feel to people who have themselves been structurally, routinely and regularly exploited and disenfranchised by the very system which has benefited some of us, in different ways?
Some Marxists intrigue me for the position they take on this issue. Often, they claim a practical fidelity to their principles, while their principles virtually complicate any attempt to practically realize them in nonviolent or tempered forms. An ideologically infused, systemic and totalizing critique, for such a person, may even become a bulwark against any action, as taking ‘smaller’ steps to ameliorate economic depredations seems to pale in comparison to something so grand and important as uprooting and overturning an entire system’s inequalities or exclusions. In response, one might ask: What is the relevant system and scale? How can we confidently define it and attribute determinative agency to it? These are important questions. And, in response, I might be accused of conflating or simplifying positions or generalizing across different Marxist ideologists.
In whatever case, the issue remains: how can one maintain a systemic, totalizing critique and not act in other ways to arrive at its outcomes, the eventual amelioration of inequalities produced by capitalism? Are these habits in contradiction or opposition? Is the contradiction material or insignificant? I contend that it is significant, that it sheds light both on the challenge for the Marxist in pursuing the end goal of their theoretical view of how society should operate and how we should arrive there in light of the prevailing conditions of production and such a theoretical path closes off, obfuscates or renders seemingly inconsequential any other, more immediate, focused or targeted efforts to the point of rendering their own theoretical positions practically insignificant.
I don’t make these statements lightly, as they have frustrated, depressed and challenged me and continue to do so, informing and shaping my own decisions and activity. They are, nevertheless, real and we must all face and cope with them, every day, forever, as much a part of the absurd conditions of existence (and our political economy) as anything else.
But, then, I ask myself: “who am I to make such judgments for any anyway?” and “What if they,” (whoever they are) just for example, “do make good on some of these promised revolutionary ventures?” And to generalize even further, “what is the relationship of any opinion ‘we’ have to those around us?” In a few short moments, the moral swamp deepens and becomes murkier, as it is no longer clear who bears a ‘more’ moral mission (or, alternately, how we might navigate these dilemmas at all), while the traditional ethical interpretive framework of intention-action-possible consequence, remains only so helpful in addressing and heading off such questions. Such a framework doesn’t even really consider who should be invested with the power and right of being the judge, in addition to other issues of calculation, of discrete separation of activities into these categories as well as so many other things.
One of my immediate intuitions is that there isn’t a tangible or apparent final judgment to be found here, and consequently, no judgments absolutely better than any others, just a variety of arguments, some with better justification and others with worse justification (or a justification that isn’t apparent, isn’t made public or isn’t clear or completely articulated). We live in a world that contains an environment of evidence and possible opportunity, and the fact that it is up to us to both act and judge complicates both activities, when we lack some kind of recourse to a higher power, in the case, which increasingly it is, in many circles that we refuse to ascribe to a laid out religious doctrine (but still maintain a respectful position to it). MLK evaded this problem of moral foundation by citing god and the divine law as the ultimate litmus test for any terrestrial practice or policy; but we simply no longer have that formerly-widely-consented to privilege any longer.
Living in an unprecedented age where meaning is uprooted and floating, inscribed in our human practices and reinforced by our own actions and beliefs, we must find alternative sources for justifying our own actions, and, as I see it, the only possible solid alternative is a kind of fidelity to a human community that involves both immediate and longer term investments of power, effort, service, finance and care to what we do have. This conclusion doesn’t answer the question entirely, but it does shed light on some of its complexities, which is perhaps all we can really do now.
And yet, another position remains. I cannot help but think that any position that places one more immediately in the fray of appreciating and addressing inequality and injustice deserves greater attention and appraisal, no matter what it is. This course of action doesn’t accept any categorical inhibitions that cast any and all such work in a nonconstructive pall. It prioritizes confronting present conditions and expediently working to create more fair, less unequal arrangements from them. Again, the issue of standard persists, but in this position, one may more comfortably admit that much of what today happens may have positive outcomes that are yet undiscerned but that any action whatsoever that refuses the Economists promise of a better world later on is worth considering.
As well, there are likely to be contradictions and conflicts between the various attempts to address these issues (not to mention the various definitions, interpretations and narrativizations of them, which I will get to in a later post). True, the particular actions need to be scrutinized, but I contend that we nevertheless need action and reflection; and if we lose the balance or lose a sense of the immediacy, then we lose any hope of ever addressing the issues themselves. The Economist’s prediction lives nowhere but in our imaginations, but we do not want our own fidelity to our fellow humankind, to social justice and making fairer the world to be made of the same stuff.
If nothing else, it is worth noting how our own morality is a problem for us, and has been, for so long. It even provides a kind of comfort, really, to see that what we’re working on has been worked on and will likely continue to be. Nevertheless, we must maintain fidelity both to the present and what is not present, and to this we hopefully can work towards.
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Bearer of Pity 