You and Erik are thinking about what the study of history is or should be. The question interests us because we think in terms of radical change and because we entertain the question whether the way things are going now is inevitable or natural. I like the bracing Marxist perspective which proceeds from the realization that nothing in this stage of development is natural, and that phony science only gives it a false appearance of inevitability.
Take Alain Badiou’s Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil: “The modern name for necessity is, as everyone knows, ‘economics.’ Economic objectivity—which should be called by its name: the logic of Capital—is the basis from which our parliamentary regimes organize a subjectivity and a public opinion condemned in advance to ratify what seems necessary. Unemployment, the anarchy of production, inequalities, the complete devaluation of manual work, the persecution of foreigners: all this fits together as part of a debased consensus regarding a state of things as changeable as the weather (the predictions of economic ‘science’ being still more uncertain than those of meteorology), yet apparently shaped by inflexible and indeterminable external constraint.” (pp. 30-31)
I would hope that no one reading this can fail to recognize that Badiou is merely stating the obvious: all political issues are now reduced to economic issues, yet the so-called science of economics is less reliable than the weather report, though it determines directly or indirectly unemployment, insecurity, society, and the devaluation of work, and, as a backlash, the persecution of foreigners. The captains of finance capitalism dictate austerity and mass firings, while lavishly rewarding bullshit jobs and dividend maximizers. The oppressed crew of the ship reacts by casting the momentarily idle, the supposed stowaways, and the unwanted passengers overboard. All in the name of what is economically necessary. Yet the pseudo-science of economics offers no guide for the future and is increasingly prone to shipwreck.
But this doesn’t make dialectical materialism any more scientific. You only dress up the historical wish in the cloak of a dialectical necessity. The more often our “the-end-is-near” prophets and Marxist dialecticians get it wrong, the surer they are that they get it right. The Neoliberal economists tell us: this time, these times, are different. The prophets shout next time will be different. Better to say: this is what we want; these are our principles. We should stop trying to hitch our wagon to the universe or history. Navigate by our principles toward the green shores of universal humanity where the economy exists to serve human life, not the other way around. But recognize that our hands and our minds are the only guide and motor. Isn’t this Marx: human beings make their own history under given conditions. Educating people about the conditions is essential.
Badiou is a strong antidote to much that the Left has made into an article of faith since the collapse of communism: He is against the reification of “difference” as the basis of “multiculturalism,” (a commodified tourist morality); and against the whole derivation of political ethics from the status of victimization. Badiou wants an ethics based on the pursuit of the Good: an active rather than passive understanding of the human condition. What unites us all is truth. Truth is only truth if it is true for everyone. But truth no more exists in the abstract than scientific laws are inherent in the phenomena they (accurately) describe. Truth is embodied in the “procedures of truth”: in the pursuit of scientific method or in being true to a principle or a loved one.
Signed,
Andrew (Weeks)
Normal Thoughts 