diff --git a/kritika_ideologije.md b/kritika_ideologije.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..76d9783 --- /dev/null +++ b/kritika_ideologije.md @@ -0,0 +1,204 @@ +--- +title: "Kritika ideologije" +... + +## Strategija + +::: {lang=en} +> Like any authentically revolutionary thought, Marx's is driven to destroy what +> already exists in order to build in its place something which does not yet +> prevail. So, Marx's thought has two sides which are distinct from one another +> yet also make up an organic whole. One is the 'ruthless criticism of all that +> exists: in Marx expressed as the discovery of the mystified procedure of +> bourgeois thought and thus as the theoretical demystification of capitalist +> ideologies. The other is the 'positive analysis of the present: which, with +> the maximum level of scientific understanding, brings the future alternative +> to our present. One is a *critique of bourgeois* ideology, the other is a +> scientific analysis of capitalism. These two moments in Marx's oeuvre can be +> understood as both logically divided and chronologically successive from the +> *Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right* to *Capital*. This does not at all +> mean that they always have to repeat this division and succession. When Marx +> himself looked at classical political economy and went back along the path +> which had already led him to discover certain general abstract relations +> through his analysis, he well knew that this path was not to be repeated. +> Rather, it was necessary to start out from these simple abstractions -- the +> division of labour, money, value -- in order again to reach the 'living +> whole': the population, the nation, the state, the world market. Thus, today, +> once we have reached the point of arrival of Marx's oeuvre -- that is, Capital +> -- we need to take it as our starting point; once we have arrived at the +> analysis of capitalism, it is this analysis from which we must build again. +> Now, research around certain determinate abstractions -- alienated labour, the +> modifications that have taken place in the organic composition of capital, +> value in oligopolistic capitalism -- should be the starting point for arriving +> at a new 'living whole': the people, democracy, the political state of +> neocapitalism, the international class struggle. Not by chance, this was also +> Lenin's path, from *The Development of Capitalism in Russia* to *The State and +> Revolution*. It is also not by chance that all bourgeois sociology and all +> reformist ideologies of the workers' movement follow the opposite path. +> +> But all this is still not enough: even if we grasp the specific character +> which *the analysis of capitalism* should today assume, we also simultaneously +> need to grasp the specific character that the *critique of ideology* should +> assume. And, here, it is useful to start out from a precise presupposition, +> deploying one of those tendentious exaggerations which are a positive +> characteristic of Marx's own *science*, stimulants to new thought and to +> active intervention in the practical struggle. This presupposition is that +> *any ideology is always bourgeois*, because it is always the *mystified +> reflection* of the class struggle on the terrain of capitalism. +> +> Marxism has been conceived as an "ideology" of the workers' movement. This is +> a fundamental error, since Marxism's starting point, its birth certificate, +> was always precisely the destruction of *all* ideology through the destructive +> critique of all *bourgeois* ideologies. A process of *ideological +> mystification* is only possible, indeed, on the basis of modern bourgeois +> society: it has always been and continues to be the *bourgeois* point of view +> regarding *bourgeois* society. And anyone who has looked at the opening pages +> of *Capital* even once can see that this is not a process of pure thought +> which the bourgeoisie consciously *chooses* in order to mask the *fact* of +> exploitation; rather, it is itself the real, objective process of +> exploitation. That is, it is itself the mechanism of capitalism's development, +> through all of its phases. +> +> For this reason, the working class does not need an 'ideology' of its own. For +> its existence *as a class* -- that is, its presence as a reality antagonistic +> to the entire system of capitalism, its *organisation* into a revolutionary +> class -- does not link it to the mechanism of this development but make it +> independent of and counterposed to it. Rather, the more that capitalist +> development advances, the more the working class can make itself *autonomous +> of* capitalism; the more accomplished the system becomes, the more *the +> working class must become the greatest contradiction within the system*, to +> the point of making this system's survival impossible and rendering *possible* +> and thus *necessary* the revolutionary rupture which liquidates and transcends +> it. +> +> Marx is not the *ideology* of the workers' movement but its *revolutionary +> theory*. This is a theory born as the critique of bourgeois ideologies and +> which must make this critique its daily bread -- it must continue to be the +> 'ruthless criticism of all that exists: A theory that came to constitute +> itself as the scientific analysis of capitalism and that must, at each moment, +> feed on this analysis, must at times identify with it when it needs to make up +> the lost ground and cover the gap, the distance, which has opened up between +> the development of things and the updating and verification of research and +> its tools. A theory which lives only in a function of the working class's +> revolutionary practice, one that provides weapons for its struggle, develops +> tools for its knowledge, and identifies and magnifies the objectives of its +> action. Marx has been and remains the *working-class* point of view regarding +> *bourgeois* society. +> +> But if Marx's thought is the working class's revolutionary theory, if Marx is +> the *science of the proletariat*, on what basis and by what paths has at least +> one part of *Marxism* become a populist ideology, an arsenal of banal +> commonplaces to justify all possible compromises in the course of the class +> struggle? Here, the historian's task becomes enormous. Yet it is obvious that, +> if ideology is a part, a specific, historically determinate articulation of +> the very mechanism of capitalism's development, then the acceptance of this +> 'ideological' dimension -- the construction of the ideology of the working +> class -- can only mean that the workers' movement has itself become, as such, +> a part, a *passive* articulation of capitalist development. That is, it has +> undergone a process of integration into the system. This integration process +> can have various phases and levels, but it nonetheless has one single +> consequence in provoking different phases and different levels -- that is, +> *different forms* -- of that *reformist* practice which ends up today seeming, +> *in appearance*, implicit in the very concept of the working class. If +> ideology in general is always *bourgeois*, an ideology of the working class is +> always *reformist*: that is, it is the *mystified* mode through which its +> revolutionary function is *expressed* and at the same time *inverted*. +> [@tronti2019workers, 5-7] +::: + +::: {lang=en} +> Today's situation returns us continually to this attempt, in ai1 ever-harsher +> way. For now we face not the great abstract syntheses of bourgeois thought, +> but the cult of the most vulgar empirical trivia that has become capital's +> praxis. No longer the logical system of knowledge, the principles of science, +> but an orderless mass of historical facts, of fragmented experiences, of great +> *faits accomplis* that no one has ever thought about. Science and ideology +> again merge with and contradict one another, but no longer in a +> systematisation of ideas meant for eternity, but rather in the day-to-day +> happenings of the class struggle. And this struggle is now dominated by a new +> reality that would have been inconceivable in Marx's time. Capital has placed +> the whole functional apparatus of bourgeois ideology into the hands of the +> officially recognised workers' movement. Capital no longer manages its own +> ideology but has the workers' movement manage it in its stead. This 'workers' +> movement' thus functions as an ideological mediation internal to capital; +> through the historical exercises of this function, the entire mystified world +> of appearances that contradict reality is attached to the working class. That +> is why we say that today the critique of ideology is a task internal to the +> workingclass point of view, and has only in the second instance to do with +> capital. The political task of a working-class auto-critique must question the +> entire past historical course of the workers' class struggle and do so +> starting from the current state of organisation. In the present, the working +> class does not have to criticise anyone outside of itself, its own history, +> its own experiences and that corpus of ideas that has been gathered together +> by others around it. [@tronti2019workers, 163-164] +::: + + +## Teorija + +::: {lang=en} +> With [the concept of ideology] intellectual forms are drawn into the dynamic +> of society by relating them to the contexts that motivated them. In this way +> the concept of ideology critically penetrates their immutable semblance of +> existing in themselves, as well as their claims to truth. In the name of +> ideology, the autonomy of intellectual products, indeed the very conditions +> under which they themselves become autonomous, is thought together with the +> real historical movement of society. These intellectual products originate +> within this movement, and they perform their functions within it, too. They +> may stand in the service of particular interests, whether intentionally or +> not. Indeed, their very isolation, through the constitution of an intellectual +> sphere and its transcendence, is, at the same time, identified as a social +> consequence of the division of labor. [@adorno2022contribution, 19] +::: + +::: {lang=en} +> With the dynamization of the contents of the mind through the critique of +> ideology, one tends to forget that the theory of ideology is itself subject to +> the same historical movement; that, if not in substance, then nonetheless in +> function, the concept of ideology transforms through history, and the same +> dynamic governs this. What is called ideology -- and what ideology is -- can +> only be perceived insofar as one does justice to the movement of the concept; +> this movement is at the same time one of its objects. +> [@adorno2022contribution, 20] +::: + +## Tehnologija + + + + + +--- +lang: sl +references: +- type: book + id: tronti2019workers + author: + - family: Tronti + given: Mario + title: "Workers and capital" + translator: + - family: Broder + given: David + publisher-place: London + publisher: Verso + issued: 2019 + language: en +- type: article-journal + id: adorno2022contribution + author: + - family: Adorno + given: Theodor + title: "Contribution to the theory of ideology" + translator: + - family: Bard-Rosenberd + given: Jacob + container-title: "Selva: a journal of the history of art" + issue: 4 + issued: + season: 3 + year: 2024 + page: 19-33 + language: en +# vim: spelllang=sl,en +...