Totalitarian
12th March 2003, 04:41
An interesting article below on the practise of revolution, and the hardest struggle of all, that which takes place within your own mind.
http://www.deoxy.org/rst.htm
Any system of ideas with an abstraction at its center--an abstraction which assigns you a role or duties--is an ideology. An ideology provides those who accept it with a false consciousness, a necessary component of which is other-directedness. This leads those who accept the ideology to behave as "objects" rather than "subjects," to allow themselves to be used rather than to act to attain their own desires. The various ideologies are all structured around different abstractions, yet all serve the interests of a dominant (or aspiring dominant) class by giving individuals (though the term hardly seems appropriate--"members of the herd" is perhaps more accurate) a sense of purpose in sacrifice, suffering, and submission.
Religious ideology is the oldest example: the fantastic projection called "God" is the Supreme Subject of the cosmos, acting on every human being as "His" object.
In the "scientific" and "democratic" ideologies of "free enterprise," capital investment is the "productive" subject directing world history--the "invisible hand" guiding human development. In order to prosper, the early capitalists had to attack and weaken the power that religious ideology once held. They exposed the mystification of the religious world and replaced it with the mystification of technology and commodity capitalism, wherein Profit becomes the Supreme Subject of the cosmos.
The 57 varieties of leninism are "revolutionary" ideologies in which the Party is the rightful subject entitled to dictate world history by leading its object--you, the proletariat--to the promised land through replacement of the corporate-capitalist "free enterprise" apparatus with a state-capitalist leninist apparatus.
The many other varieties of dominant ideologies can be seen daily. The new forms of religious mysticism help to preserve the status quo in a round about way. They provide a cheap and tidy way to obscure the vacuousness of daily life and, like drugs, make it easier to live, or rather exist, with this emptiness--and so prevent us from recognizing our real roles in the functioning of the socio-economic system.
All of these ideologies differ in the specific sacrifices they demand of you, the object, but all are structured in the same way. All demand an inversion of subject and object; things, abstractions, take on the human attributes of power and will, while human beings become things, tools to be used in the service of these abstractions (God, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the fatherland, etc., etc.). Ideology is upside down self-theory. It fosters acceptance of the separation of our narrow, daily lives from a world that appears totally beyond our control. Ideology offers us only a voyeur's relationship with the life of the world.
http://www.deoxy.org/rst.htm
Any system of ideas with an abstraction at its center--an abstraction which assigns you a role or duties--is an ideology. An ideology provides those who accept it with a false consciousness, a necessary component of which is other-directedness. This leads those who accept the ideology to behave as "objects" rather than "subjects," to allow themselves to be used rather than to act to attain their own desires. The various ideologies are all structured around different abstractions, yet all serve the interests of a dominant (or aspiring dominant) class by giving individuals (though the term hardly seems appropriate--"members of the herd" is perhaps more accurate) a sense of purpose in sacrifice, suffering, and submission.
Religious ideology is the oldest example: the fantastic projection called "God" is the Supreme Subject of the cosmos, acting on every human being as "His" object.
In the "scientific" and "democratic" ideologies of "free enterprise," capital investment is the "productive" subject directing world history--the "invisible hand" guiding human development. In order to prosper, the early capitalists had to attack and weaken the power that religious ideology once held. They exposed the mystification of the religious world and replaced it with the mystification of technology and commodity capitalism, wherein Profit becomes the Supreme Subject of the cosmos.
The 57 varieties of leninism are "revolutionary" ideologies in which the Party is the rightful subject entitled to dictate world history by leading its object--you, the proletariat--to the promised land through replacement of the corporate-capitalist "free enterprise" apparatus with a state-capitalist leninist apparatus.
The many other varieties of dominant ideologies can be seen daily. The new forms of religious mysticism help to preserve the status quo in a round about way. They provide a cheap and tidy way to obscure the vacuousness of daily life and, like drugs, make it easier to live, or rather exist, with this emptiness--and so prevent us from recognizing our real roles in the functioning of the socio-economic system.
All of these ideologies differ in the specific sacrifices they demand of you, the object, but all are structured in the same way. All demand an inversion of subject and object; things, abstractions, take on the human attributes of power and will, while human beings become things, tools to be used in the service of these abstractions (God, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the fatherland, etc., etc.). Ideology is upside down self-theory. It fosters acceptance of the separation of our narrow, daily lives from a world that appears totally beyond our control. Ideology offers us only a voyeur's relationship with the life of the world.