Being a communist in 2012

Al Jazeera.com, 9 febbraio 2012

Being a communist in 2012 is not a political choice, but rather an existential matter, writes Santiago Zabala.

Barcelona, Spain - Being a communist in 2012 is not a political choice, but rather an existential matter. The global levels of political, economic and social inequality we are going to reach this year because of capitalism's logics of production not only are alarming, but also threaten our existence. Unfortunately, war with Iran is likely to begin, public protest might increase throughout the West because of government austerity programmes, and these very disorders will probably be suppressed with sophisticated high-tech weapons.

These issues are existential; that is, they touch our Being. And as philosophers (sometimes called the "shepherds of Being"), we must fight against Being's ongoing annihilation. Certain contemporary philosophers ignore this vital matter in favour of technical, artificial or analytic problems not only because of the short-term profit they can obtain from them, but also because they are themselves already annihilated, an annihilation brought about by their obliviousness to existential questions, the question of Being.

This question is still crucial for philosophers, because it characterises all the other problems, and it determines them. For example, the solution to most technical problems are already available in the prejudices, history and culture that characterise a thinker's life, but the technical philosopher forgets that his life is the fundamental starting point for his investigations. This is why so few analytic philosophers comment on great sociopolitical events such as 9/11 or the current economic crisis: they believe philosophy has nothing to do with our existence in this world.

However, for readers of Al Jazeera still interested in the existential nature of philosophy, where our own Being is always at stake, communism might become a way to return to philosophy's original sociopolitical task. After all, it should not be a surprise that distinguished contemporary philosophers who focus on existential matters (such as Alain Badiou, Gianni Vattimo and Slavoj Zizek) have also reconsidered the meaning of communism for this new century.

While some might argue that it is not necessary to turn to communism in order to recognise these existential emergencies, it might turn out to be a useful practical theory given the meaning it has acquired today. As the late French philosopher Jacques Derrida explained, communism, together with Being, is a remnant of the past, the specter of a conquered fear overcome by Western capitalism and the artificial annihilation of philosophy.

It is precisely in its great weakness as a political force that communism can be recuperated as an authentic alternative to capitalism. But the fact that it has virtually disappeared from Western politics, that is, as an electoral programme, does not imply it is not valuable as a social motivation or alternative. The point I wish to make is that being a communist (or a protester) today is not only necessary given the existential threats posed by capitalism, but also actually possible because of the failure of Soviet communism.

Contrary to the opinion of most disillusioned Marxist, it is just this historical defeat that constitutes communism's greatest possibility to redeem itself not only as a political force, but also as the salvation of human beings in the 21st century. Instead of pursuing once again the contest against capitalism for unfettered development, weak communism can now embrace the cause of economic degrowth, social distribution and dialogic education as an effective alternative to the inequity that global capitalism has submitted us to.

This is probably why Eric Hobsbawm has suggested that the communism of the 21st century must become first and foremost a

critique of capitalism, critique of an unjust society that is developing its own contradictions; the ideal of a society with more equality, freedom, and fraternity; the passion of political action, the recognition of the necessity for common actions; the defence of the causes of the poorest and oppressed. This does not mean anymore a social order as the Soviet one, an economic order of total organisation and collectivity: I believe this experiment failed. Communism as a motivation is still valid, but not as programme. (E. Hobsbawm, "El comunismo continúa vigente como motivación y como utopía," interview by Aurora Intxausti, El Pais, April 12, 2003)

The weakened communism we are left with in 2012 does not aspire to construct another Soviet Union, but rather proposes democratic models of social resistance outside the intellectual paradigms that dominated classical Marxism. These paradigms have been overcome because Marxism has gone through a profound deconstruction that has contributed to dismantling its rigid, violent and ideological claims in favour of democratic edification. Being weakened from its own scientific pretexts for unfettered development allows communism to finally unite together its supporters. But who and where are the supporters of a weak communism?

As I have explained elsewhere with Gianni Vattimo, the remains of communism are constituted of everything that is not framed within "the iron cage of capitalism," as Max Weber used to say, that is, at its margins. These are the slums, underdeveloped nations and un-useful shareholders who, despite the fact they represent three-quarters of the world's population, are being annihilated existentially through economic and military oppression.

In response, social movements, especially in South America, have begun to fight back by electing their own representatives (Lula, Morales, and many others) in order to defend the Being of the weak and apply much-needed social reforms. As it turns out, the shapers of these new political alternatives have managed to defend not only their own existential interests, but also our own through the pressure they have recently exerted against a military intervention in Iran or the WB's economic impositions.

These democratically elected governments show an alternative model that the West could follow in order to escape the ongoing annihilation of human Being. It is interesting to note how the mainstream media portray as "communist" the OWS movement and the Spanish indignados for their anti-capitalist demands - although it is not entirely accurate. In doing so, they are trying not only to mock these protesters' demands, but also to annihilate their view from the consent of public opinion. Being a communist in 2012 is a way to avoid being annihilated, a way to escape the annihilation of Being in the world.

Santiago Zabala is ICREA Research Professor at the University of Barcelona. His books include The Hermeneutic Nature of Analytic Philosophy (2008), The Remains of Being (2009), and most recently, Hermeneutic Communism (2011, co-authored with Gianni Vattimo), all published by Columbia University Press. His webpage is www.santiagozabala.com.

Santiago Zabala: "A Philosophy for the Protesters"

A Philosophy for the Protesters

The OWS movement grew out of the philosophical paradox that our financial system could not contain flaws.

Santiago Zabala, Nov. 30, 2011
AlJazeera.com

Barcelona, Spain - A few weeks ago, after participating at a conference at Stony Brook University in New York, I went to Zuccotti Park to see and support the protesters there. A few months earlier, I had done the same thing, but in Placa de Catalunya in Barcelona; in both parks, where similar dissatisfaction with our world order was being expressed, the only thing I could think of was the actuality of Karl Marx's words of 1845: "Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it". How can these words still be valid today? Is there a philosophy for these protesters?

Regardless of all the great work that philosophers have done since Marx, this change has still not come about. The reason does not rest in philosophers' inability to interpret correctly, but rather in their desire to interpret correctly. The inability to effect change that concerned Marx cannot be attributed to interpretation but to the truth that interpretation seeks, that is, to descriptions. Descriptions demand the imposition of certain truth and the conservation of reality, the status quo. Interpretation, on the other hand, constantly makes new contributions to reality, constantly produces change. Marx's call to change the world should be read against those philosophies incapable of producing change, those that sustain the current constitution of society, politics and, most of all, the economy. These philosophies are primarily practiced in the United States under the name of "metaphysical" or "analytical" philosophy, and star representatives include, among others, Robert Nozick, Francis Fukuyama and John Searle. While Nozick and Fukuyama defend neoliberalism and its triumph over history, Searle (who was honoured by George W. Bush in 2004 with a National Humanities Medal) focuses on a defence of reason and objectivity and so acts to conserve the current condition of the world.

In the midst of our global economic crisis, which sees financial centres such as Wall Street occupied by protesters who call for change, Marx's statement points out that we are still framed within the thought system that sustains the crisis, but it also demands a change in thought, that is, a philosophy for these same protesters. This philosophy is available and is called hermeneutics, the philosophy of interpretation that runs proximally through history from Aristotle and Augustine to Paul Ricoeur and Hans-Georg Gadamer. Although Plato in the Ion presented hermeneutics as a theory of reception and practice for transmitting the messages of the gods of Olympus, it soon after acquired a broader philosophical significance, suggesting alternative vital meanings for world, thought and existence. Thus, its most important living representative, Gianni Vattimo, recently pointed out how "whoever does not succeed in becoming an autonomous interpreter, in this sense, perishes, no longer lives like a person but like a number, a statistical item in the system of production and consumption". The protesters and movements that arose in Spain last spring and have now spread throughout the world are the incarnation of these autonomous interpreters determined to overcome the economic impositions established by our governments. But what grants them this determination is not possession of a higher truth than the one espoused by the bearers of power, but rather the idea of an alternative and socially balanced organisation of wealth, that is, a different interpretation of the world.

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But the parallel I am trying to establish between our protesters and the philosophy of interpretation does not rest simply on their demand for change but also on the condition in which they find themselves. Both the protesters and hermeneutics exist at the margins of society, as a sort of discharge of capitalism, on the one hand, and a second-rate philosophy, on the other. This marginalised condition is a consequence not of political or theoretical inconsistence, but rather of their vital ethical demands. Like Marx, hermeneutic thought and the protesters pose a radical demand for change. Rarely do people comfortable in their lives propose a different interpretation of reality, but when they do, it becomes politically revolutionary because it opposes the objective state of affairs that conditioned his previous existence. The demands of our protesters in Barcelona, New York and Sydney vary from equal distribution of income, greater social services, to reduction of corporations influence on politics, but this does not indicate they are conflicting, confused, and anarchic but that they are all hungry for change. But why is hermeneutics the most appropriate philosophy for these protesters who seek to change real economic policies?

Joseph E. Stiglitz

If hermeneutics can become the philosophy of our protesters it is not only because it shares a discredited condition, revolutionary goals or ethical resistance, but also because it suggests that human coexistence is possible without imposed truth, that is, a single global financial system. After all, according to Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, and other distinguished economists, it is just this belief in a global economy that drove us into financial crisis in the first place. The IMF, WB and ECB are founded on a "pensee unique," that is, an ideology of perfection, rationality, and self-regulation where flaws, frictions and failures cannot even be taken into consideration. Imposing as truth the specific economic policies of these organisations is to the life embodied by our protesters, a life that shows different and differently vital cultural and economic demands. Hermeneutics, then, is one of the few philosophies that reflects the pluralism of our postmodern societies because, like truly democratic procedures, it includes and allows structural changes to take place every time citizens demand them. Ignoring these demands for change overlooks new, different, and vital interpretations and also ignores the 99 per cent of the population that is now demanding them and the change they can effect.

Santiago Zabala is ICREA Research Professor at the University of Barcelona. His books include The Hermeneutic Nature of Analytic Philosophy (2008), The Remains of Being (2009), and, most recently, Hermeneutic Communism (2011, co-authored with Gianni Vattimo), all published by Columbia University Press. His webpage is www.santiagozabala.com

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.