(Pt. 2)
...
Are we then required to subject ourselves to the harsh, challenging
living conditions in order to cancel the debt we feel to people who have
themselves been structurally, routinely and regularly exploited and
disenfranchised by the very system which has benefited some of us, in
different ways?
Some Marxists intrigue me for the
position they take on this issue. Often, they claim a practical fidelity
to their principles, while their principles virtually complicate any
attempt to practically realize them in nonviolent or tempered forms. An
ideologically infused, systemic and totalizing critique, for such a
person, may even become a bulwark against any action, as taking
'smaller' steps to ameliorate economic depredations seems to pale in
comparison to something so grand and important as uprooting and
overturning an entire system's inequalities or exclusions. In response,
one might ask: What is the relevant system and scale? How can we
confidently define it and attribute determinative agency to it? These
are important questions. And, in response, I might be accused of
conflating or simplifying positions or generalizing across different
Marxist ideologists.
In whatever case, the issue
remains: how can one maintain a systemic, totalizing critique and not
act in other ways to arrive at its outcomes, the eventual amelioration
of inequalities produced by capitalism? Are these habits in
contradiction or opposition? Is the contradiction material or
insignificant? I contend that it is significant, that it sheds light
both on the challenge for the Marxist in pursuing the end goal of their
theoretical view of how society should operate and how we should arrive
there in light of the prevailing conditions of production and such a
theoretical path closes off, obfuscates or renders seemingly
inconsequential any other, more immediate, focused or targeted efforts
to the point of rendering their own theoretical positions practically
insignificant.
I don't make these statements lightly,
as they have frustrated, depressed and challenged me and continue to do
so, informing and shaping my own decisions and activity. They are,
nevertheless, real and we must all face and cope with them, every day,
forever, as much a part of the absurd conditions of existence (and our
political economy) as anything else.
But, then, I ask
myself: "who am I to make such judgments for any anyway?" and "What if
they," (whoever they are) just for example, "do make good on some of
these promised revolutionary ventures?" And to generalize even further,
"what is the relationship of any opinion 'we' have to those around us?"
In a few short moments, the moral swamp deepens and becomes murkier, as
it is no longer clear who bears a 'more' moral mission (or, alternately,
how we might navigate these dilemmas at all), while the traditional
ethical interpretive framework of intention-action-possible consequence,
remains only so helpful in addressing and heading off such questions.
Such a framework doesn't even really consider who should be invested
with the power and right of being the judge, in addition to other issues
of calculation, of discrete separation of activities into these
categories as well as so many other things.
One of my
immediate intuitions is that there isn't a tangible or apparent final
judgment to be found here, and consequently, no judgments absolutely
better than any others, just a variety of arguments, some with better
justification and others with worse justification (or a justification
that isn't apparent, isn't made public or isn't clear or completely
articulated). We live in a world that contains an environment of
evidence and possible opportunity, and the fact that it is up to us to
both act and judge complicates both activities, when we lack some kind
of recourse to a higher power, in the case, which increasingly it is, in
many circles that we refuse to ascribe to a laid out religious doctrine
(but still maintain a respectful position to it). MLK evaded this
problem of moral foundation by citing god and the divine law as the
ultimate litmus test for any terrestrial practice or policy; but we
simply no longer have that formerly-widely-consented to privilege any
longer.
Living in an unprecedented age where meaning is
uprooted and floating, inscribed in our human practices and reinforced
by our own actions and beliefs, we must find alternative sources for
justifying our own actions, and, as I see it, the only possible solid
alternative is a kind of fidelity to a human community that involves
both immediate and longer term investments of power, effort, service,
finance and care to what we do have. This conclusion doesn't answer the
question entirely, but it does shed light on some of its complexities,
which is perhaps all we can really do now.
And yet,
another position remains. I cannot help but think that any position that
places one more immediately in the fray of appreciating and addressing
inequality and injustice deserves greater attention and appraisal, no
matter what it is. This course of action doesn't accept any categorical
inhibitions that cast any and all such work in a nonconstructive pall.
It prioritizes confronting present conditions and expediently working to
create more fair, less unequal arrangements from them. Again, the issue
of standard persists, but in this position, one may more comfortably
admit that much of what today happens may have positive outcomes that
are yet undiscerned but that any action whatsoever that refuses the
Economists promise of a better world later on is worth considering.
As
well, there are likely to be contradictions and conflicts between the
various attempts to address these issues (not to mention the various
definitions, interpretations and narrativizations of them, which I will
get to in a later post). True, the particular actions need to be
scrutinized, but I contend that we nevertheless need action and
reflection; and if we lose the balance or lose a sense of the immediacy,
then we lose any hope of ever addressing the issues themselves. The
Economist's prediction lives nowhere but in our imaginations, but we do
not want our own fidelity to our fellow humankind, to social justice and
making fairer the world to be made of the same stuff.
If
nothing else, it is worth noting how our own morality is a problem for
us, and has been, for so long. It even provides a kind of comfort,
really, to see that what we're working on has been worked on and will
likely continue to be. Nevertheless, we must maintain fidelity both to
the present and what is not present, and to this we hopefully can work
towards.
...
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