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Från Jaime Sempruns The ghost of theory

Any revolutionary theory worthy of the name must provide an explanation for social reality that is at least plausible, and must identify what must be fought against in order to transform that social reality. The criterion of truth applicable to such a theory is not exactly of the scientific type: it is not enough for it to be “pertinent”, or to fit the facts; it must also crystallize discontent and dissatisfaction and suggest ways they can be used. One can see that nothing like that exists today. Even those attempts at theoretical explanation that are not simply absurd or ridiculously arbitrary are nonetheless incapable of pointing to a practical goal, even a distant one, or of saying where to concentrate forces, no longer for the purpose of shaking the foundations of established society, which is collapsing on its own, but in order to confront this collapsing society with a collective activity that has some chance of putting an end to the world’s devastation.

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Such a critique, however, must necessarily remain quite disarmed with respect to pointing out how this “center” should be attacked, since, by describing industrial society as a closed world in which we are imprisoned, it correctly insists on the fact that industrial society is a terrible world whose center, properly speaking, is not located in any particular place because its circumference is everywhere: we are in contact with it at every instant (22) (here we shall encounter, in an inverted form, another very old and very striking metaphor). Unless we persist in postulating the existence of a class, the proletariat, whose central position in production constitutes it as the revolutionary subject, it is hard to see, in effect, if we coldly consider the coherence of the coercive force imposed by the industrial system, what could put an end to the latter apart from its self-destruction, which is certainly fully underway, although still distant enough from a hypothetical terminus. And in this case, the question arises concerning the resources—and not just natural resources—that humanity will have at its disposal, after so many years of disaster, for the reconstruction of the world on different foundations. In other words: in what condition will men find themselves, in what condition are they now, after all the things they have worked so hard to inflict upon themselves, and after having been in the process desensitized to enduring them all? One could maintain that an exacerbation of the catastrophe will sweep aside all the preconditioning and will galvanize the best energies of humanity or that it will on the contrary precipitate, under the reign of panic, the collapse into barbarism. One could conjecture and dogmatize on this topic for as long as one likes and never escape from opinions, beliefs or “personal convictions” without foundation or depth. If no theory can reasonably answer this question, it is only because it is not a theoretical question, although it is the crucial question of our time.

Thus, since the theoreticians are in reality, as I have pointed out, just as defenseless as ordinary people when it comes to formulating hypotheses concerning the consequences, even the most immediate, of the ongoing disaster, it is hardly surprising that their writings have something ghostly about them, all the more so when they adopt a venerable tone of absolute certainty for the audience. (Ghosts, as everyone knows, like to cover themselves in rusty armor. (23)) Unable to conceive of a future of any kind, they almost totally lack the quality which imparts consistency and bite to a revolutionary theory: the tension of collective activity and the search for practical mediations, strategic reflection with regard to precise time periods, the ability to connect every conflict with a universal program of emancipation. And if all of this is lacking, it is not—in any event not always or primarily—as a result of some particular intellectual deficiency, but because the social and historical terrain on which such a theoretical intelligence could be born and could unfold has disappeared from under our feet.

No one knows for sure what is going to pounce upon us from the jungle of the present, from the unpredictable combinations of an unprecedented chaos. Theoreticians, however, distinguish themselves in this respect, and the more “radical” they are the more they stand out in this regard, by the undisguised satisfaction with which they speak of crisis, of collapse, and of death-throes, as if they possessed some special certainty about the course of a process which the whole world hopes will come to a decisive conclusion, an event that would once and for all elucidate the obsessive enigma of our time, whether humanity sinks or is compelled to save itself. This dispossessed hope, however, forms an integral part of the catastrophe which is already upon us, and the first task of critical theory is to break with this hope, refusing to entertain all sorts of contemplative hopes, like the kind that Jappe entertains, for example, when he speaks of the vacuum created by the implosion of capitalism that is ripe for “the emergence of another form of social life”, or like the kind offered by Billeter, who speaks of the “event”, of the “unforeseeable moment when something new suddenly becomes possible” and when critical musings finally have some usefulness; or even of the kind spoken of by Vidal, though a few stages lower, with regard to “the labor of various generations” that it seems we shall have the pleasure of facing so that the “antiglobalization movement” can “define, in a more or less libertarian [sic] way, the terms of a new social contract” (not even a much longer time frame would suffice for such a “movement”, as the way it has begun to develop has nothing to do with critical consciousness, and if it is a matter of feeding ideological pap to the most left-wing elements of the “Another World Is Possible” crowd, Negri has already taken care of that).

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At the end of our Observations on Genetically Modified Agriculture and the Degradation of Species, (25) we said that the only way to escape from “the closed world of industrial life” was to “cultivate one’s garden”. If we ignore the stereotypical snide remarks of the sub-Marxist progressives and the jackasses who seem to fear “the return to animal traction” more than anything else, this formulation has generally been taken as a simple little pirouette, a makeshift chosen due to an inability to elaborate a more ambitious program. However, if one subjects it to a thorough examination, without looking at it through “radical” lenses, it was a program of the most ambitious people, to take it both literally and figuratively; even hearkening back to the “garden of Epicurus”. But since it is proper to begin by considering the meaning of the word garden in its botanical sense (because, as Epicurus correctly stated, “The beginning and the root of all good is the pleasure of the stomach. Even wisdom and culture must be referred to this”), I will conclude by saying that a good handbook on gardening, along with all the critical considerations that the exercise of that activity requires (because in this respect as well the hour grows late) would undoubtedly be more useful for getting through the impending catastrophes than any number of theoretical writings that persist in calmly pondering, as if we stood on solid ground, the why and the wherefore of the shipwreck of industrial society.