In today’s world, classical theories of Marxism are not effective tools to analyze the historical and social changes. Contemporary world is the world of transformations and emphasize much more on the mixture and unpredictability in society; and everyday life becomes a more dynamic, pluralistic, contested sphere; and expresses a range of highly differentiated meanings. It is no more possible to describe it as homogenous whole that resist for a communal identity or ideology; individuals increasingly shape their own identities through reflexively social practices. Hence in order to understand the society and its transformation, we should study on the routines, everyday practices, ways of doings and operating and power relations within these practices rather than economic base, and relations of production at the institutional level. I am going to explain Agnes Heller’s notion of Objectivation in everyday life and then the importance of New Social Movements as a more fashionable – desired way of resistance rather than proletariat resistance in itself.
“Objectivation” in and for itself
As I understand from my readings, Orthodox Marxism is located at the centre, has the dominant power of the sacred reference; and interprets Marxism as the science of the society. Then manipulates historical materialism to discover the laws of history and societies; hence in a narrow sense, classical Marxist theories explain the modern capitalism in the world that we live in. So, the analysis of capitalism works like an historical analysis; but the problem is this analysis of capitalism has become an analysis of whole humanity, -pure theory and illogical practice-. Revolutionary shift from capitalism to communism is not an outcome of an ethical or philosophical choice but rather an inevitable step, works like a destiny for humanity. This is a vital point for me to criticize classical view by giving references to Heller.
Agnes Heller, Marxist critical theorist (lets over stigmatize her, she was Hungarian and Jewish) and Hegelian philosopher, argues that rather than existing area of exploitation and oppression, everyday life is an area of contestation and struggle, through which individuals reflexively define themselves, their relationships to others. Individuals have power to reproduce or reshape their place as an outcome of their active participation and differentiated lifestyles in EDL, thus when we question about EDL this will allow to question about the whole society and power relations.
Heller tried to problematize the link between alienation, social reproduction, and humanization & democratization of EDL. As a Marxist theorist, for Heller, capitalist division of labor, the hegemony of bourgeois ideology were regarded as barriers to the development of critical thought, the rationality of intellect, that leads individuals to challenge dominant norms and rules, individuals turn increasingly inwards focusing only upon themselves, their own EDLs and final products instead of the complexity of the processes. In my opinion what makes Heller more crucial and different than Orthodox Marxists is her emphasize on morality; and she argued that social fragmentation, particularizm eroded the collective morality, thus prevented collective action. Heller examined the alienated human potential by working on objectivation and argued that the solution can only be found by criticizing the practices of everyday life, which is colonized by the institutions. Objectivation in itself is the backbone of EDL, works as a guide, an index; and individuals internalize this framework by using everyday language, tools, norms & rules. Objectivation for itself underlines the fragmented and heterogeneous structure of the EDL. While the former legitimizes the EDL, second one makes us to think critically on EDL and open the path for freedom. I exemplified Heller work because bottom up theory is the lack of traditional Marxism which regarded individuals as invisible actors and values, beliefs and customs as irrelevant.
“Men make their own history” (Touraine, 1981)
In contrast to the proletariat’s movement, NSM do not seek to control the state; and instead display new forms of democratic organization; also they have raised awareness of the common problems facing humanity by rejecting authoritarianism.
Newly emerged global actors -such as anti-racist groups, LGBT organizations and environmental groups- are active participants of NSMs. I think that their goals are different and more moral form traditional socialist movements. First of all they are not rooted in the working class; and their interests can not be reduced to their class interest; indeed they have radically redefined class. Secondly, each individual has power to write his-her own history and social movements represent the organized collective behavior of actors to control their own historicity. The movement of 19th century can not be regarded as a social movement since the strategy, direction of every move and result was deployed, and was known by Orthodox Marxist theorists. Since Orthodoxy constructs itself on the historical engineering to control the predictability of history; underlying mentality is to know today, to predict the future through the interpretation of similar mediums. Like a fortunetelling to learn about the curse of the history; and this is the teleological assumption of Orthodoxy.
What is ideology? Is it purely false consciousness of the proletariat, who are not aware of their own historical role? What about the importance individual desires, or the determinant role of particular ideas? If the revolutionary process from capitalism to communism is historically over determined, then how could we talk about the role of individual? Is there any “good” ideology? Was the ideology of bourgeoisie good enough when it resisted to the feudalism? Class conflict or any social conflict can not be reduced to the struggle between owners of the means of production and exploited workers, as in the Marxist analysis. The concept of class is challenged by culture and identities; and economic determinism is no longer effective to understand the nature of the struggles of diverged identities’ interests. New struggles do not merely focus on issues of income, or political representation and therefore these struggles are defined as social or cultural. Resistance is now visible in the streets; it is not the proletariat’s collective action but the small battles that will transform society by destabilizing coercive state and delegitimizing its dominant discourses of power. To understand the nature of resistance we should look at the micro level resistances, and tactics that create alternative sites of equality.
Looking for a better life
With the demise of communism in Eastern Europe and then the collapse of Soviet Union in the late 1980s, Marxism has experienced a shift toward newer forms of multicultural approaches basically on identity politics. If the aim of Marxism is to reach a better life, then Marxism should continue to be theoretically productive, providing critical insights on the multiple problems and crises with globalization. EDL is a crucial field for Marxist theory to deal with the unintended problems of globalization such as ecology, terrorism, and the proliferation of new forms of identities. EDL is not just an area of production, and reproduction. It rather includes the ways of governing the society, and the repetitive character of EDL embodies power relations and therefore when we understand the nature of the repetitions and the micro level naturalized power relations, we will be able to solve the complexity of society and historical transformations.
Yorum Gönder