It is quite strange that I choose a quote referencing dialectics, especially Hegelian dialectics, one that, in the very next sentence, goes on to say that every transitory phenomenon ascends to a higher plane; this truth is, of course, final, absolute, and sacred. Of course, Engels, along with Marx, is a communist, a negator of all currently existing conditions. Except social relations, production, industry, property, organisation, the state (for a time), etc.,

Now, who else other than Marx and communists could go so far into the wilds of negation? Certainly not the Holy Family, those Bauer brothers who claimed,

Obviously, Marx overcame this dribble of philosophy, and by doing what? That’s right, proclaiming a positive thesis. Pledge your support However, even if we ignore this and utilise some very strong dialectics to beat our opponent into the ground, then we arrive at an even more disturbing conclusion. Marx, along with the Bauers, the Russian Nihilists, and even the Nazi Party, all aimed at the negation of the ‘present state of things.’ Once again, they still retain a semblance of the underlying conditions; it merely negates this or that existing thing. No one can negate a non-existent thing. So, too, one cannot claim to negate the present state of things while retaining its form; this social arrangement is oppressive, alienating, decadent, reactionary, etc., but this social arrangement is perfected, final, progressive, etc. This or that version of the thing is bad, but the thing itself is neutral, and we will retain it and make it good. This “philosophy” or non-philosophical praxis is nothing other than a repetition of an idealist or Platonic understanding of negation. Plato claimed that Non-Being or negation is nothing but change within the same genus. Thus, to negate, to say something is not big, is still to mean it is small or the same size. Additionally, if one were aiming to negate or alter the present state of things, one would aim at the not-now. Leave a comment Let us take an example or several. The liberal voter obviously wishes to negate the ‘present state of things.’ Their party isn’t in power; the present state is awful. However, one could claim I am being disingenuous. Obviously, the present state isn’t all bad; there is still the opportunity for their party to be in power through liberal means. Sure, but Marx’s “system” is currently available through revolutionary means. Additionally, Marx aims to negate a lot more than the liberal voter: morality, nations, class, markets, etc., but again, he wishes to retain and transform other aspects of present existence. But, you might respond, Marx doesn’t desire a specific outcome, merely the negation of the present state; he, like Pisarev, cries out, "What can be smashed must be smashed. Whatever withstands the blow is fit to survive; what flies into pieces is rubbish. In any case, strike out right and left, no harm can come of it." It is not enough to merely reform within the system; the system itself must change. Of course, we will retain ‘systems.’ Here we simply have a changing of the guards, one master for another; something that Stirner, Lacan, and Foucault have all commented on at one point at another. Political replacement, or what Stirner calls the ‘storming of heaven’, is critiquing and destroying the previous heaven simply to create a new one in its place. In Stirner's example, he actually uses religion; that is to say, the Romans replaced the Greeks, the Christians replaced both the Jews and Romans, the Humanist "revolution" replaced God with Man, etc. And thus, we land here in the realm of politics today, in which capitalism replaced feudalism and how some want socialism to replace capitalism. This is to say that a select few, or perhaps many more, wish to see the previously set up "utopia" of liberal capitalism replaced with a new "utopia" of various socialisms. Whether this is done via reform or revolution matters little to me; the principle is the same: our religion and heaven are ultimately the best possible outcome, and everything should be done to reach it. As such, the individual has fallen into an eschatology (the end of the present age). And all they need to do is follow the eternal word of our Saviour and all their teachings, and we will have heaven on earth. As such, you should vote for this, strike here, revolt there, and in the worst circumstances, you should give up your life for the cause and die in a bloody revolution. Pledge your support And it is revolution that we are mainly looking at here, to turn back to Marx, specifically the churchly fervour of revolutionaries, We must not only act politically, but in our politics act religiously, religiously in the sense of freedom, of which the one true expression is justice and love. (Bakunin, 1842). A religion of revolution in which the Nicene [Nihilist] Creed reads, What can be smashed must be smashed. Whatever withstands the blow is fit to survive; what flies into pieces is rubbish. In any case, strike out right and left, no harm can come of it. (Pisarev, 1862). To their most extreme ideologue Sergey Nechayev, The revolutionary is a doomed man. He has no private interests, no affairs, sentiments, ties, property nor even a name of his own. His entire being is devoured by one purpose, one thought, one passion – the revolution. (Nechayev, 1869). The revolutionary, then, is the ascetic Christian who only has a purpose, the founding of God's kingdom, in serving the revolution. The revolutionary who, in their strive for the ideal, repeats the Christian sentiment of providence and eschatology. Now, the joke here is that the Nihilists were anything but religious. However, it is quite strange that the Christian is solely God's child and has their purpose in furthering God's "providence" upon the earth. Nechayev has boiled and distilled down the concept of revolution, plain and simple. Revolution (like any alien cause, really) disregards anything particular, anything individual and says you are this subject; you are an object for use. As Stirner says "Over the gateway of our time stands not the Apollonian slogan 'Know thyself,' but 'Actualize yourself!'" Which is really to say, forget yourself, it doesn't matter. Your only purpose is to be actualised, utilised to further something else, something alien. Even a future idea of utopia or "the right" political system asks of you. You are a worker and need to become class-conscious in order to bring about communism. Oh, as a worker, well, good thing I'm not 'actually' a worker; I'm just me. Again, we have the singular category that is used by political systems: you are something general, not something individual. The revolution, no less than religion, demands that I obey so I can reach a glorious heaven, in one, actual heaven, the other political heaven, communist, anarchist, or democratic utopia. If only I just follow along and forget my private interests, “Down with the egoist who only thinks of himself!”. Again, your personal life is forfeit for the furtherance of the state or the revolution; you are nothing but a tool. Share The revolution or "subsequent" society (which, as we have seen, has never amounted to the promised utopia) cares very little for you; the ends justify the means. Now, the turnaround is reform in which the "means" are, in fact, the driving force. However, once again, the ideologues can really only speak to the "target" population and thus never to you as an individual with all your private interests. Even if we did gently coast into the utopia of free-market capitalism, social democracy, better capitalism, fascism, anarchism, theocracies, libertarian socialism, back to feudalism, monarchism, syndicalism, totalitarianism, etc. I could go on, then what happens to all the people that want something other than what you want? Will they go away? Well, you could easily say we won't tolerate them, we will kill them, etc. But this has yet to happen in history. Let alone the fact that all previously existing systems have never been argued for in any political work. Surely, one would be opposed if that was the position in contemporary society; it may well be the main reason we are longing to change and revolt. Question: is there any ideological work that argues for today's society? Is there any person who wants to do actually nothing politically? And says, yes, right now is perfect. I doubt it because everyone is constantly disagreeing that even today's liberal capitalism is still far off any actual liberal capitalist idea of perfect. And so, if you come along with your [insert ideology here], are you sure that you won't run into the same problem? On top of this, we haven't even gotten into the main problem of political change; that change itself doesn't solve the underlying problem. Political thinkers exist under what Foucault calls an episteme, or what Stirner calls a 'fixed idea'; you think that politics must exist, and thus you critique particular forms of politics. x is bad, but my y will be fantastic. What if the problem is politics itself? Would you ever critique the idea of politics or only certain forms of politics? You can't escape the boundary; you are stuck within the ‘fixed idea'. The same principle made the scholastics only philosophise about Christianity; they couldn't think about anything else. All you can think about is what "political system" will be best, not what will be best. As such, all your philosophising ends up with is the best of the worst. A simple "changing of the guards". You rail on about how this political system is bad; I don’t like this master, oh, but this next one will be great. All you are doing is reproducing the conditions that led to the problems in the first place. Now, Newman's point on revolution is that it leads to power vacuums (even anarchist revolutions) and ends up with a new system of power. Unlike Engel's critique, the revolution itself is not just a form of power; it reproduces power. Newman here discusses the anarchist critique of Marxism in return; he says, "As anarchists showed, Marxism falls into the trap of the place of power because it thinks it can transform society without transforming the structure of authority; because it seeks merely to put another agent in the position of authority - the worker in place of the bourgeois. 'And this is why,' as Lacan says 'all he has done is change masters.' (Grigg, Seminar XVII Ch2: 6)." (Newman 2004). Leave a comment The complete turnaround (or perhaps obvious critique) of this is that without action, you will end up reinforcing the existing power structure. Without striving for even the best of the worst, you may be stuck with the worst of the worst. As such, without collective action, either through reform or revolution, you will end up with the current situation. What is funny is that the revolutionaries critique the reformers with the same argument; someone like Marx argued that social democracies or "worker" focused policies were designed to slow or prevent the coming revolution and thus reinforce capitalism. On the other hand, reformers argued that revolutions will never come to pass, and thus, waiting around for the right conditions will also reinforce the current situation. Lastly, both sides rail against individual action as it will never spontaneously lead to a change in situations. To begin, I wish to look at the Marxist again. Marx argued that due to the material contradictions of capitalism, it would dialectically pass into revolution and the next stage of historical systems. As such, the forces of history will spontaneously lead to a revolution. Lenin then argued that a spontaneous revolution would never come to pass; as such, the historical forces were not enough. It must fall back on human actors. Benjamin's critique of historical materialism is that it is an automaton with a human actor hidden inside. This is to say that the tremendous teleological "end of history" of Marxist analysis is none other than a "want"; it is not inevitable if it needs a push. As such, the Marxist critique that reform only slows the revolution has no grounding. On the turnaround, we have had revolutions, and thus the reformer's analysis that revolution will never come to pass is equally ungrounded. However, as we have seen, just because it is possible doesn't make it justified. However, is it change that we are seeking? Do we only want to oppose the current system? As I argued above for revolution, which we should also call a 'reformist' position, or as Stirner says, change has been only reformatory or corrective, not destructive or consuming and annihilating. The Revolution only aims at combatting this or that existent, to be reformative. However, I have railed against revolution for long enough above. While I fundamentally connect it to a position of 'reform', it is different to what is usually understood to be reform only in its conception of methods. If you look at the Protestant Reformation, you will find that for 1000 years, figures tried to alter the Catholic church to no avail, of course, and you could then argue that it was only through 'revolt' or separation that allowed 'religious freedom'; and yet you would be mistaken if you found this to be freedom, it was only the freedom of 'religion', or rather the removing of barriers towards religion. It allowed individuals a direct connection to God, i.e., Protestantism. In this, it only strengthened religion, and thus in no way could it be seen as anything but a 'reformation', changing the old condition of religion to the new one. It in no way removed the religious connection. Pledge your support In the same way, reform aims to replace the old or current political disaster with a new one, except that it doesn't think the new system will be a disaster. It cannot escape 'the political'; it can only critique this or that politic. As such, because it cannot escape politics, it requires the tools of the political system, the state (here, we must also include the Marxist). According to reformers, the state is seen as a neutral tool for political change and thus can lead the political system anywhere. Contrary to this, the anarchists also see the state as neutral. But, now, it is a source of power and oppression and cannot be utilised to benefit the oppressed because it isn't connected to any particular interests except its own. On the other hand, to the Marxist, if particular interests determine the state, then the state is essentially a bourgeois state, an instrument of class domination, and thus needs to be destroyed as part of a socialist revolution. However, Marx also contends in places that the state has relative autonomy, as can be utilised by the proletariat in their revolution. However, as I said, reform is separated from revolution, but not in terms of its opposition to rapid change or violence; I am sure these differences do, in fact, matter, but they stem from a common source. Reform is seen as 'practical.' But, those who are practical are too busy being comfortable with their 'individual' affairs, their bourgeoisie affairs. They cannot see the 'higher' human question of freedom and thus cannot participate in the revolution but merely intend to seek a paltry freedom that is 'given' to them by the existing order. It is handed to them, the ass in the lion's skin, or perhaps the dog who, while "free", is still dragging the chain with it. If you participate in the system and seek practical change, the order will 'give' it to you only in return for doing as it asks. Let us look at freedom of the press; if the government does not allow it, what then will you do? Will you aim to reform this government? How will you extoll the virtues to the voting public of a free press without a free press? Or, as Stirner says, As a “request for a right,” even as a serious demand for the right to a free press, it presumes the state to be the giver, and can only hope for a gift, an authorization, a top-down enforcement. The reformer lives their life entirely contained within the boundary of the state and the existing order and can in no way ask for gifts; the people won’t know how to use the gift as long as they regard the state as a truth: how could they question the state that gave them this gift? The liberal, or rather reformer, who utilises the liberal democratic system (to escape it) argues that their approach, while not ideal, is at least practical. They pursue incremental change through the established mechanisms, which ignores the fact that those mechanisms are designed to prevent change; or, as Edgar Bauer claimed, "To be practical is to be dependent on the system that punishes you," He insists. It "binds you to the enemy." Governments and constitutions only represent the conditions that established them; you cannot generate progress or even new "rights" (if that is your thing) under a system that merely organises existing rights. If you reform the state, then you only reform the original underlying conditions. Lastly, it should be said that simply rejecting or ignoring the positive outcome does not deny that there will be an outcome; it just holds off a private sphere of ‘sacred’ or religious mysticism in which the ‘outcome’ is unknown - “No one knows the hour upon which I come” - No one can really say if the negation of the present state of things (without communism as an ideal; even though the full negation is the ideal) will lead to a repetition of power relations and politics because no one knows what it will bring on; obviously not what we have now, like food, oh I mean, beds, no I mean children; hmm these things aren’t negated, but oh well, we only meant negating the bad things in the present…