Into the Wild Badiou, Actually Existing Maoism, and the “Vital Mix” of Yesterday and Tomorrow Bill Martin KASAMA ESSAYS FOR DISCUSSION Bill Martin is a philosophy professor at DePaul University in Chicago; author of nine books, including Ethical Marxism: !e Categorical Imperative of Liberation (2008) and Marxism and the Call of the Future: Conversations on Politics, History, and Ethics (co-authored with Bob Avakian, 2005). Current projects include A Debriefment of Maoism: Alain Badiou and the Renewal of the Communist Hypothesis, and !is Bullshit Society: An Experiment in Truth and Social !eory. Bill is a participant in Kasama, a project of communist reconception and regroupment. !is essay was first published March, 2010, at khukuritheory.net, a site for the radical reconception of revolutionary theory Published as a Kasama Essay for Discussion pamphlet April, 2010 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States Licence. Feel free to reprint, distribute or quote this with attribution. Kasama is a communist project that seeks to reconceive and regroup for a profound revolutionary transformation of society. website: kasamaproject.org email: [email protected] 80039_r4 04.10 Contents INTO THE WILD: Badiou, actually-existing Maoism, and the “vital mix” of yesterday and tomorrow .............. 5 1. Into the wild ............................................................... 8 2. Fear and trembling .......................................................... 8 3. It will eat you up: resentment ................................................ 13 4. Responsibilities of philosophy ............................................... 14 5. Of standing and drawing lines ............................................... 18 6. “Taste this, it’s terrible!”, or, Death to the philosophers ........................... 22 7. Debriefment and beyond, I: the vital mix ...................................... 29 8. Further into the “vital mix” idea: particularities and methodological questions....... 37 Works cited.................................................................. 49 Appendix: Dear Professor Badiou: About the RCP Assault on Alain Badiou, Philosophy And (Ultimately) Communism Itself.... 51 Rearguard and Ugly ........................................................... 52 Asked To Engage He Who Does Not Engage..................................... 53 Needing to Reconceive and Regroup............................................. 54 Not a Deep Enough Break ..................................................... 54 Is Our Needed Synthesis a Philosophy or a Science? ............................... 56 Bad Methodology............................................................. 57 Is Badiou a “Marxist”? ......................................................... 58 3 4 INTO THE WILD: Badiou, actually-existing Maoism, and the “vital mix” of yesterday and tomorrow By Bill Martin “!e task facing us … is to bring the communist was released Presented in this first issue of Demarca- hypothesis into existence in a different modality tions is a book-length analysis of the ideas of Alain Ba- from that of the previous sequence; this is why our diou. I will come back to this text at the very end of research is so complicated, so erratic, so experimen- this article, but my main goal here is to present some tal.” (Alain Badiou, !e Meaning of Sarkozy, p.115; thoughts subsequent to my response (“Dear Prof. Ba- word order altered) diou”) to the RCP’s earlier, “draft chapter,” on Badiou.1 Can we fashion an approach to the communist However, this article is a very long “postscript”! My project that allows us to sift through certain experi- aim is to not only dissect some bad methodology and ences and ideas and evaluate them without becoming to carry forward the larger project of the debriefment stuck in a backward-looking posture? Can we forge of Maoism, but even more to lay some ground for the some new roads, or find these roads, or perhaps let next steps that need to be taken, practically and theo- these roads find us, without entirely forgetting some of retically. Let me be clear: the next steps also need to be the places where we have been? Can we truly go some- taken even as the debriefment unfolds, otherwise we place new, “into the wild”? will get stuck in this project of debriefment. For those of us who want to set out on this jour- However, let me say at the outset that (and this ney, and who see the necessity of it, it might help to is a topic covered in more general terms below), this have a “workbook” of sorts (or several of them). Our approach in which there is no basic respect for intel- theoretical work in this phase cannot help but be a bit lectuals, and especially not for philosophers and for the “raw,” which is not to say that we should not aim for history of philosophy, this approach of only reading a as much refinement as we can attain along the way. particular contemporary philosopher with no inten- But the point is that it is “theory” done “along the way,” tion of being open to learning anything, but only with in something closer to “real time,” what Edward Said the aim of picking him or her apart, this approach is called “traveling theory.” odious and needs to be rejected by anyone who hopes Two somewhat rough-and-ready terms that I would to contribute to radically changing the world. like to introduce in what follows are “actually-existing !ere are some who do not see this project of “de- Maoism” and the “vital mix.” I will also introduce the briefment” as a particularly important task, especially term “socialist hypothesis,” in contrast to Badiou’s term, some who supposedly moved beyond this stage of the “communist hypothesis.” I hope that these terms things long ago. Perhaps this question doesn’t “divide will help our work and that they might gain some cur- rency. During the (long) process of completion of this 1. “Dear Professor Badiou: About the RCP Assault on (ridiculously) long piece, the first issue of the RCP’s Alain Badiou, Philosophy And (Ultimately) Communism It- announced “online theoretical journal,” Demarcations, self ” was first posted on kasamaproject.org in April, 2009. It appears here as an appendix beginning on page 51. 5 into two,” exactly, but there are at least two important and the history of socialist states, but also says that “it aspects to it. !e aspect which I would take as principal, should be understood that in one form or another we or that I try to take as principle (though I probably fail shall retain the theoretical and historical teachings that in this respect here and there), is taking it as baseline issued from the first sequence [the Paris Commune and that Maoism generates a “problematic” (as Althusser Marx’s naming of the proletariat as the “central void” of called it) from which we communists need to advance. capitalism] and the central function of victorious disci- !at means building on the positive experiences, and pline that issued from the second” [from the Bolshevik understanding and criticizing the problems, and ask- Revolution to the Chinese Cultural Revolution; this is ing what it means to go forward from a certain place also from !e Meaning of Sarkozy, p.114]. We need to or a certain trajectory. !is also means considering the understand what it would mean to take both sides of contributions of Maoism after Mao. !e problem is Badiou’s formulations (putting certain things—essen- instead one of creating a framework where the really tially “presentations and modalities of the communist important contributions can be carried forward. hypothesis”—in the past tense, and yet also affirming !is also means understanding better some of the them, not abandoning fidelity to them) and to under- problems and contradictions of those contributions. stand them not only dialectically, but also fundamen- By contradiction in this case I mean places where there tally in terms of discontinuity rather than continuity. is a definite advance, but where there is also a cost, and !e other aspect of debriefment, which, as I’ve the cost is not understood or recognized. !e key ex- said, I hope to keep secondary but may fail at doing ample of this kind of advance in the history of the in- so here and there, is that some of us need to get some ternational communist movement is the establishment things out of our systems, so to speak. For those of you of socialist state power itself. who weren’t around the RCP for long periods of time, I !e related methodological question that is central realize this can be annoying. I think there is more here to how we deal with the “Maoist problematic” concerns than simply an exercise in looking backwards, I think continuity and discontinuity, whether we need a new it goes to some things that we don’t want to repeat in synthesis that has continuity as its principle aspect, or our efforts of regroupment and reconception. But, if whether we need something really new. you can’t accept that, then, I don’t know, I suppose you Clearly, the RCP is unable to really deal with this should just look away. !ere are some lessons to be as the central question (and this inability is what gen- learned about how we can really have effective organi- erates, ultimately, all of the methodological difficulties zation without being merely sectarian, and about how of Avakian’s New Synthesis, including the silly ones, intellectuals and artists can actually play a vital role in such as constant self-referencing); however, 1) there radical social transformation, and furthermore how, if are many others (within the various