encephalon
19th February 2006, 07:24
This is something I've been thinking about recently, but unfortunately the following is merely a kind of "introductory rhetoric" concerning where I'm coming from, without any of the actual concrete ideas other than siezing the production of the means of production.. that is, there aren't any ideas on how to go about doing this (although I think it's already beginning under our noses).
I'm mainly curious if anyone has had any similar thoughts about this, or what disagreements there might be. And before anyone complains about the "age" metaphor--call it bigoted if you want. If you think a ten year old is going to understand the world as does an eighteen year old, 30, 40, etc. then I don't know what to tell you. I don't think complete consciousness comes at birth, and I don't think it does all the time for everyone today, including adults. I'm not here to argue about that.
In any case, the rhetoric. Any opinions on the idea itself would be greatly appreciated, as I've lately become consumed by the idea...
-=-=-=-=-=-
The Revolution never began or ended, but merely became conscious of itself in the late 18th century. Halfway through the 19th century, it was then Marx and Engels who, bound by the infancy of revolutionary consciousness, first formulated its conscious direction. And so has each successive generation been bound by its period in the development of revolution itself, thinking that the revolution will forever be young, forever be stuck in the age in which its inhabitants find themselves. Continuously believing they were on the cusp of revolution, they had all failed to realize that they were in the midst of it.
And so the institutions, the constructs, the theories built in every age were necesarily toys of the epoch that bore them.
But as the revolution ages and matures, incrementing through each new development of production, so too does the revolutionary consciousness. Just as a child suddenly bursts into awareness; just as the burgeoning adult first realizes the true extent of his age and the bewilderment he now feels over having once thought he would always play with blocks; just as the adult, faced with his own extinction, finally sees his existence as one long struggle to live--so too has the revolution aged and epiphanied, and began to understand that its struggle does not start and end in a single age, but spans entire histories. Never did we think the struggle would take so painfully long.
But we are no longer plagued with believing that we shall always play with those toys we once understood as the essence of our lives. We have reached an age in which our thoughts become crystalized. No more shall we naively believe that our world will change in the steps we daydreamed in our childhood. Our material world changes in ways we could not have ever foreseen, and with it so too has the environment that cradled us.
We now understand the pains of growing: the mistakes, the naivety, the triumphs and disasters--but not in vain. For it is now that our consciousness has solidified. We now see the integration of history, from the birth of our consciousness to the confusion of confronting our own maturity--our disarray upon seeing how wrong many of our childish assumptions were, but how right other assumptions were more than we ever imagined.
We had toys and we had tools, and some in-between.
Our task is to sort these out and move forward again, but no longer as children of revolution. We have grown beyond the toys of our past, and as we look back upon them fondly we push forward into the future: a new period of the revolution, our consciousness coming full circle. The revolution has confronted its childhood, rejected its present and now steps forward as an adult intent upon siezing the struggle for life it once believed over.
Grown, we are now unsheathed from our chrysalis: Awareness emerges. Awareness of our past, present and future; and awareness of what now must come to pass. We laugh, and wonder how we could have misinterpreted it so many years before: to win this struggle, we must sieze the means of production.
Infantile, we once believed we could merely assume the roles of our fathers and mothers--capital and capitalism--and with those factories forge ahead to a new world. As children, we believed in the eternity of the production process to which we were born to inherit. We believed, with all of our childish enthusiasm, that we could build rockets with hammers and nails. In the careless bliss of our youth, we imagined that we could pull those books and newspapers from the shelves of our parents and replace them with books and newspapers filled with our own ideas, and so then would the world reflect our ideas as it seemed the world had reflected those ideas we intended to replace. Innocently, we believed that the world reflected those ideas in books rather than those books reflecting the ideas of the world. Our underdeveloped consciousness could not imagine that our books were in turn reflective of our age, even though our historical upbringing was based on that very fact.
No, we cannot build rockets with hammers and nails. We must first develop the production of drills and steel.
Nor can we replace the books in our library with those to our liking, and believe that the world will change through them. To change the books, we must change the world that creates them.
In short, we must not sieze the means of production of our fathers, or we are doomed to become them: building the future with hammers and nails. To change the books in the library, we cannot use the same press. The books we intend to write must not be of the present, but of the future: we must sieze the production of our means of production. To revolutionize society, to push it towards freedom and equality, we must revolutionize the production of society.
That which is produced is wholly dependent upon the means used to produce it. Just as capitalism could not be built with serfs and horses, we cannot produce a new world with an assembly line. Such means will produce capitalism, no matter what the ruling class may call the product. As the bourgeoisie revolutionized the means of production beyond the capacity of feudalist society, so too must we revolutionize the means of production beyond the sphere and capacity of capitalism.
This is the lesson we forgot in our childhood amongst our dreams of building rockets. This is the lesson we must now learn anew. We may have learned the hard way, but it is unimportant as long as we have learned. If we have not learned, our struggle is lost.
The question of our age is not how to sieze the means of production, but how to sieze the means of producing the means of production itself--and in turn the world.
I'm mainly curious if anyone has had any similar thoughts about this, or what disagreements there might be. And before anyone complains about the "age" metaphor--call it bigoted if you want. If you think a ten year old is going to understand the world as does an eighteen year old, 30, 40, etc. then I don't know what to tell you. I don't think complete consciousness comes at birth, and I don't think it does all the time for everyone today, including adults. I'm not here to argue about that.
In any case, the rhetoric. Any opinions on the idea itself would be greatly appreciated, as I've lately become consumed by the idea...
-=-=-=-=-=-
The Revolution never began or ended, but merely became conscious of itself in the late 18th century. Halfway through the 19th century, it was then Marx and Engels who, bound by the infancy of revolutionary consciousness, first formulated its conscious direction. And so has each successive generation been bound by its period in the development of revolution itself, thinking that the revolution will forever be young, forever be stuck in the age in which its inhabitants find themselves. Continuously believing they were on the cusp of revolution, they had all failed to realize that they were in the midst of it.
And so the institutions, the constructs, the theories built in every age were necesarily toys of the epoch that bore them.
But as the revolution ages and matures, incrementing through each new development of production, so too does the revolutionary consciousness. Just as a child suddenly bursts into awareness; just as the burgeoning adult first realizes the true extent of his age and the bewilderment he now feels over having once thought he would always play with blocks; just as the adult, faced with his own extinction, finally sees his existence as one long struggle to live--so too has the revolution aged and epiphanied, and began to understand that its struggle does not start and end in a single age, but spans entire histories. Never did we think the struggle would take so painfully long.
But we are no longer plagued with believing that we shall always play with those toys we once understood as the essence of our lives. We have reached an age in which our thoughts become crystalized. No more shall we naively believe that our world will change in the steps we daydreamed in our childhood. Our material world changes in ways we could not have ever foreseen, and with it so too has the environment that cradled us.
We now understand the pains of growing: the mistakes, the naivety, the triumphs and disasters--but not in vain. For it is now that our consciousness has solidified. We now see the integration of history, from the birth of our consciousness to the confusion of confronting our own maturity--our disarray upon seeing how wrong many of our childish assumptions were, but how right other assumptions were more than we ever imagined.
We had toys and we had tools, and some in-between.
Our task is to sort these out and move forward again, but no longer as children of revolution. We have grown beyond the toys of our past, and as we look back upon them fondly we push forward into the future: a new period of the revolution, our consciousness coming full circle. The revolution has confronted its childhood, rejected its present and now steps forward as an adult intent upon siezing the struggle for life it once believed over.
Grown, we are now unsheathed from our chrysalis: Awareness emerges. Awareness of our past, present and future; and awareness of what now must come to pass. We laugh, and wonder how we could have misinterpreted it so many years before: to win this struggle, we must sieze the means of production.
Infantile, we once believed we could merely assume the roles of our fathers and mothers--capital and capitalism--and with those factories forge ahead to a new world. As children, we believed in the eternity of the production process to which we were born to inherit. We believed, with all of our childish enthusiasm, that we could build rockets with hammers and nails. In the careless bliss of our youth, we imagined that we could pull those books and newspapers from the shelves of our parents and replace them with books and newspapers filled with our own ideas, and so then would the world reflect our ideas as it seemed the world had reflected those ideas we intended to replace. Innocently, we believed that the world reflected those ideas in books rather than those books reflecting the ideas of the world. Our underdeveloped consciousness could not imagine that our books were in turn reflective of our age, even though our historical upbringing was based on that very fact.
No, we cannot build rockets with hammers and nails. We must first develop the production of drills and steel.
Nor can we replace the books in our library with those to our liking, and believe that the world will change through them. To change the books, we must change the world that creates them.
In short, we must not sieze the means of production of our fathers, or we are doomed to become them: building the future with hammers and nails. To change the books in the library, we cannot use the same press. The books we intend to write must not be of the present, but of the future: we must sieze the production of our means of production. To revolutionize society, to push it towards freedom and equality, we must revolutionize the production of society.
That which is produced is wholly dependent upon the means used to produce it. Just as capitalism could not be built with serfs and horses, we cannot produce a new world with an assembly line. Such means will produce capitalism, no matter what the ruling class may call the product. As the bourgeoisie revolutionized the means of production beyond the capacity of feudalist society, so too must we revolutionize the means of production beyond the sphere and capacity of capitalism.
This is the lesson we forgot in our childhood amongst our dreams of building rockets. This is the lesson we must now learn anew. We may have learned the hard way, but it is unimportant as long as we have learned. If we have not learned, our struggle is lost.
The question of our age is not how to sieze the means of production, but how to sieze the means of producing the means of production itself--and in turn the world.