Common Sense Is Always Reactionary

7 Days 3 November 1971 1Man is always Selfish' You can’t change Human Nature Geoffrey Nowell Smith analyses such proverbial wisdom and concludes Common Sense is always Reactionary Correct ideas, says Mao Tse-tung, do not criterion o f how things fit with the ways of. Robinson Crusoe the class sense o f the petty bourgeoisie fall from the sky: they are formed by social looking at the world that the present phase The original concept o f common sense was Common sense, then, retains the class character practice. What is true of correct ideas holds of class society has inherited from the based on the belief that there exists an imprinted on it from the outset. As a philosophy it also for ideas in general. No ideas fall from preceding one. understanding of the world which is “ common” in is also bolstered up by academic philosophers. In the sky. They are all rooted in given the sense o f natural to everybody. It was part o f the eyes of English philosophical orthodoxy Popular thinking historical situations. They all represent, or the belief in Universal Reason, the ideology of a especially, common sense is the H oly Grail o f This may seem a brutal way o f stating the truth itself. The world is as it must be. It can only reflect, certain forms of past or present class that was contesting the “irrational” question. After all common sense does consist, at institutions o f Church and King. It was also part be as the English language (as spoken in O xford) practice. But the relationship is often a least in part, o f the popular thinking o f the and parcel o f eighteenth-century individualism and tells us that it is. Every mystified formulation that complex or confused one, and rarely as oppressed in opposition to the ideologies o f their has crept into the English language to describe a simple as the case pin-pointed by Mao oppressors. A philosophy of common sense has • bourgeois reality, as seen by the bourgeoisie, is Tse-tung as the ideal: correct ideas in a also served a positive function historically in the sanctified as for ever inviolate. The idea that the correct social practice. battle against the worst forms of reaction, notably world appears to us as it does only as a result o f a Marxists have often seen the ideological struggle at the time o f the French Revolution and in early long process of integrating various forms of in terms o f a wrestling match. On the left, in the radical thought in Britain. thinking about the world into a single fabric of But was it common sense, as we understand the red corner, dialectical materialism; and on the language, and that this fabric may have to be torn term today, that had this positive role? And is this right. .. This is a fallacious and dangerous image. apart to allow new conceptions to develop, has The enemy o f a theory or a doctrine is never a so-called “ common sense” really to be identified never been heard of in those bastions of reaction. rival or competing theory but is the world o f social with the thinking o f the people in rebellion against Common sense is good enough for them, so it can practice in which that theory is rooted. The battle oppression? In a historical perspective, the answer be good enough for the people too. o f ideas can be engaged at a refined level, one must be no. theory against another. But this is only a minute We tend to think o f common sense as a Mirror of society aspect o f the struggle. For in general the enemy permanent feature o f our thinking about the Common sense is neither straightforwardly the camp is composed not o f one theory but of world. But this is true only the extent that there class ideology of the bourgeoisie nor the several. Furthermore these are not so much have always been forms of popular thinking and spontaneous thinking of the masses. It is the way a theories as such but ways o f thought formed from these forms have rarely been revolutionised but subordinate class in class society lives its have gradually evolved into each other, shedding a mixture o f different elements which serve to subordination. It is the acceptance, by the some beliefs and adding some new ones. But the connect these theories to a day-to-day practice. The street-promenade. The gentleman gives the subordinate class, o f the reality o f class society content of these beliefs has changed, and will lady the inside of the walk. seen from below. As soon as the exploited realise continue to do so. In the seventeenth century it Roots of religion that their oppression is not a natural fact but was common to believe in witchcraft and to Marx himself was well aware o f the complexity o f the belief in a “ natural man” who, if left to appears as natural only through the medium of a believe that the sun went round the earth. Both o f the situation. His critique o f religion is a case in himself and uncorrupted by existing social forms, mystifying use o f language — common sense — beliefs were reasonable ones. They provided a point. Marx saw religion not as an arbitrary, would automatically develop the right ideas about they challenge it. Why is it common sense that a more plausible explanation o f the world than did metaphysic dreamed up by some armchair the world. But just as Robinson Crusoe, on his capitalist “ deserves” a return on money invested, the available alternatives. But neither belief was philosopher, nor as an ingenious deception desert island, “ spontaneously” develops a when capital as such in point o f fact produces abandoned without a struggle on the part o f the exercised by the ruling class on the masses, but as nothing? Why is it the case that women “ must” be defenders o f the old conception, and it took a long primitive capitalist mentality, so both Universal a form o f thought which had deep roots in the time for new scientific conceptions, developed in Reason and “ natural man” acquired from the start ‘‘feminine”, when the attributes of so-called spontaneous experience o f the mass o f the people. opposition to common sense, to be integrated into a distinctly middle-class character. femininity bear only the most tenuous relation to The combination o f elements which go to make up ordinary thinking and become part o f the common It is not just that the content o f common sense the biological datum of being a woman? These are religious thought has its origins ultimately in the sense of the latter world. beliefs belonged to the middle class. The fact is, indeed “ facts of common sense” because they real world. Religion is one o f the ways in which only the bourgeoisie could have invented such a have a certain validity as a mirror of the way people live in an illusory relationship with reality, concept. For the bourgeoisie is the only class in society operates. But no class conscious worker or the illusory “ spiritual aroma” o f a contradictory As we Sow, we Shall Reap. history for whom individualism is an article of Inember of women’s or gay liberation could world. faith and which has a vested interest in seeing itself submit to them as truth. To paraphrase what Marx The religious aroma has for the most part in individual rather than class terms and thus as originally wrote about religion, the struggle against (Festival of Light notwithstanding) been the embodiment o f all mankind. common sense is indirectly the struggle against the deodorised by advanced industrial capitalism. The From the outset the abstract and individualistic world o f which common sense is the passive struggle against religion is no longer the necessary conception o f common sense ran headlong into a reflection. starting point o f cultural revolution. Platitude, not contradiction. What the eighteenth century We have to struggle against language, against its mystery, is the present enemy o f critical and mistook for universal common sense had no well-worn metaphors about black and white, scientific thinking, and o f a revolutionary practice. correspondence with actual thinking. The masculine and feminine, noble and common. Even Religion has been replaced by common sense. development of thought is a social phenomenon more we have to fight common sense with a and not the product o f an encounter between a conception of the world which is radically Everyday ideas and No Nonsense disembodied mind and a previously unthought- antagonistic to everything common sense stands But the lesson o f Marx’s critique of religion Poverty, Squalor, Intemperance and Crime. about reality. The mind is not just a blank sheet for. should not be overlooked. Nor should the on which the truths o f “ common” sense can be connection between religion and common.sense as; imprinted. The common sense that the bourgeoisie Down with Common Sense it was implied by Marx and more explicitly exalted was what they considered “ reasonable” . It is a great mistake to think that common sense developed by the Italian marxist, Antonio will reform itself on its own. The heroic days are Gramsci. Common sense is so often invoked as ‘Stand on Your Own Two Feet’ long past when common sense could be seen as the being the ultimate no-nonsense conception of Part o f the ambiguity inherent in this concept language o f progressive values against the mystique things, ilien to all forms o f religious and o f common sense has survived to this day, though of feudalism, and as the language o f science against metaphysical speculation, that the association may in a form that is far less heroic.

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