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The Twilight of Vanguardism

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The Twilight of Vanguardism The Twilight of Vanguardism Revolutionary thinkers have been saying that the age of vanguardism is over for most of a century now. Outside of a handful of tiny sectarian groups, it's almost impossible to find a radical intellectuals seriously believe that their role should be to THETHE TWILIGHTTWILIGHT OFOF determine the correct historical analysis of the world situation, so as to lead the masses along in the one true revolutionary direction. David Rolfe Graeber (born 12 February 1961) is an American anthropologist and anarchist. On June 15, 2007, Graeber accepted the offer of a lectureship in the anthropology department at Goldsmiths College, University of London, where he currently holds the title of Reader in Social Anthropology. He was an associate professor of anthropology at Yale University, although Yale controversially declined to rehire him, and his term there ended in June 2007. Graeber has a history of social and political activism, including his role in protests against the World Economic Forum in New York City (2002) and membership in the labor union Industrial Workers of the World. He has written the books Towards an Anthropological Theory of Value , Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, a n d Possibilities: Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion, and Desire. He has also written the articles “Anarchism in the 21st Century” (with Andrej Grubacic), “The New Anarchists,” “The Twilight of Vanguardism,” “The Shock of Victory,” “Army of Altruists,” and “The Revolution in Reverse.” VANGUARDISMVANGUARDISM Irvine Infoshop http://irvineinfoshop.wordpress.com http://www.myspace.com/irvineinfoshop irvineinfoshop (A) riseup.net by David Graeber The role of indigenous peoples in turn leads us THE TWILIGHT OF VANGUARDISM back to the role of ethnography as a possible model for the would-be non-vanguardist revolutionary intel- Revolutionary thinkers have been saying that the lectual--as well as some of its potential pitfalls. age of vanguardism is over for most of a century now. Obviously what I am proposing would only work if it Outside of a handful of tiny sectarian groups, it's was, ultimately, a form of auto-ethnography, com- almost impossible to find a radical intellectuals bined, perhaps, with a certain utopian extrapolation: seriously believe that their role should be to a matter of teasing out the tacit logic or principles determine the correct historical analysis of the underlying certain forms of radical practice, and world situation, so as to lead the masses along in then, not only offering the analysis back to those the one true revolutionary direction. But (rather communities, but using them to formulate new visions like the idea of progress itself, to which it's obvi- ("if one applied the same principles as you are ously connected), it seems much easier to renounce applying to political organization to economics, the principle than to shake the accompanying habits might it not look something like this?"...) Here too of thought. Vanguardist, even, sectarian attitudes there are suggestive parallels in the history of rad- have become deeply ingrained in academic radicalism ical artistic movements, which became movements pre- it's hard to say what it would mean to think outside cisely as they became their own critics (and of them. course the idea of self-criticism took on a very dif- ferent, and more ominous, tone within Marxist polit- The depth of the problem first really struck me ics); there are also intellectuals already trying to when I first became acquainted with the consensus do precisely this sort of auto-ethnographic work. But modes of decision-making employed in North American I say all this not so much to provide models as to anarchist and anarchist-inspired political movements, open up a field for discussion, first of all, by which, in turn, bore a lot of similarities to the emphasizing that even the notion of vanguardism style of political decision-making current where I itself far more rich in its history, and full of had done my anthropological fieldwork in rural Mada- alternative possibilities, than most of us would ever gascar. There's enormous variation among different be given to expect. styles and forms of consensus but one thing almost all the North American variants have in common is Note: This essay was delivered as a keynote address that they are organized in conscious opposition to during the "History Matters: Social Movements Past, the style of organization and, especially, of debate Present, and Future" conference at the New School for typical of the classical sectarian Marxist group. Social Research (www.newschool.edu/gf/historymatters for more Where the latter are invariably organized around some information) Master Theoretician, who offers a comprehensive ana- lysis of the world situation and, often, of human history as a whole, but very little theoretical reflection on more immediate questions of organiza- tion and practice, anarchist-inspired groups tend to operate on the assumption that no one could, or prob- ably should, ever convert another person completely to one's own point of view, that decision-making structures are ways of managing diversity, and there- fore, that one should concentrate instead on main- taining egalitarian process and considering immediate questions of action in the present. One of the funda- mental principles of political debate, for instance, is that one is obliged to give other participants the benefit of the doubt for honesty and good intentions, whatever else one might think of their arguments. In NON-ALIENATED PRODUCTION part too this emerges from the style of debate con- sensus decision-making encourages: where voting The historical relations between political and encourages one to reduce one's opponents positions to artistic avant gardes have been explored at length by a hostile caricature, or whatever it takes to defeat others. For me though the really intriguing questions them, a consensus process is built on a principle of is: why is it that artists have so often been so compromise and creativity where one is constantly drawn to revolutionary politics to begin with? changing proposals around until one can come up with Because it does seem to be the case that, even in something everyone can at least live with; therefore, times and places when there is next to no other con- the incentive is always to put the best possible con- stituency for revolutionary change, the one place on struction on other's arguments. is most likely to find one is among artists, authors, and musicians; even more so, in fact, that among pro- All this struck home to me because it brought home fessional intellectuals. It seems to me the answer to me just how much ordinary intellectual practice-- must have something to do with alienation. There the kind of thing I was trained to do at the Uni- would appear to be a direct link between the experi- versity of Chicago, for example--really does resemble ence of first imagining things and then bringing them sectarian modes of debate. One of the things which into being (individually or collectively)--that is, had most disturbed me about my training there was the experience of certain forms of unalienated pro- precisely the way we were encouraged to read other duction--and the ability to imagine social alternat- theorists' arguments: that if there were two ways to ives; particularly, the possibility of a society read a sentence, one of which assumed the author had itself premised on less alienated forms of creativ- at least a smidgen of common sense and the other that ity. Which would allow us to see the historical shift he was a complete idiot, the tendency was always to between seeing the vanguard as the relatively unali- chose the latter. I had sometimes wondered how this enated artists (or perhaps intellectuals) to seeing could be reconciled with an idea that intellectual them as the representatives of the "most oppressed" practice was, on some ultimate level, a common enter- in a new light. In fact, I would suggest, revolution- prise in pursuit of truth. The same goes for other ary coalitions always tend to consist of an alliance intellectual habits: for example, that of carefully between a society's least alienated and its most assembling lists of different "ways to be wrong" oppressed. And this is less elitist a formulation (usually ending in "ism": i.e., subjectivism, empiri- than it might sound, because it also seems to be the cism, all much like their sectarian parallels: case that actual revolutions tend to occur when these reformism, left deviationism, hegemonism...) and two categories come to overlap. That would at any being willing to listen to points of view differing rate explain why it almost always seems to be peas- from one's own only so long as it took to figure out ants and craftspeople -- or alternately, newly pro- which variety of wrongness to plug them into. Combine letarianized former peasants and craftspeople -- who this with the tendency to treat (often minor) intel- actually rise up and overthrow capitalist regimes, lectual differences not only as tokens of belonging and not those inured to generations of wage labor. to some imagined "ism" but as profound moral flaws, Finally, I suspect this would also help explain the on the same level as racism or imperialism (and often extraordinary importance of indigenous people's in fact partaking of them) then one has an almost struggles in that planetary uprising usually referred exact reproduction of style of intellectual debate to as the "anti-globalization" movement: such people typical of the most ridiculous vanguardist sects. tend to be simultaneously the very least alienated and most oppressed people on earth, and once it is I still believe that the growing prevalence of technologically possible to include them in revolu- these new, and to my mind far healthier, modes of tionary coalitions, it is almost inevitable that they discourse among activists will have its effects on should take a leading role.
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