The veil is torn, the empire is crumbling, fortunes are being lost, powers are being overthrown! The beautiful stories we were told are revealed for what they were: pure ideology justifying the unjustifiable domination of the powerful. This is no reason to believe in nothing anymore, or to believe that ideas rule the world, and to fall back into the same rut by simply switching from one ideology to another, just as blind and barbaric.
Instead of getting lost in the sky of ideas, we must take advantage of the crisis and the bursting of the financial bubble to return to reality, to come back down to earth, to the critique of everyday life, and therefore first and foremost of work, which occupies a large part of it. We must not give up on taking our revenge or on continuing the emancipation of humanity, but we will not get out of this by making reckless promises or dreaming of utopias. It is by focusing on what constitutes the very experience of life, in the exploration of possibilities, with all its contradictions and disappointments, its ups and downs, its shadows and lights, its strengths and weaknesses.
Contrary to all idealism and simplistic visions of humanity, political action cannot do without a clear awareness of its practical objectives, as well as its objective constraints. Even if it is not in vogue, we do not need a re-enchantment of the world, but rather a solid materialism that is not reduced to some dogmatic reductionism devoid of all spirit, but understands the dynamics of material and historical processes in their cyclical or dialectical changes, their transitory and conflictual nature.
Similarly, we must not limit ourselves to isolated elements or facts, but must have a global and macroscopic vision, taking into account overall movements, the circuits involved, effective totalities, and the systemic nature of material flows with their “cybernetic” regulations. Organisms, like organizations, are as material as the elements that constitute them, social relations and vital resources are just as real as individuals themselves in a kind of economy of material exchanges that must extend to ecological interactions and what can be called both an ecology of practices and dialectical materialism, where action transforms the actor, where the producer produces himself in a recursive or autopoietic process.
Dialectical materialism is not a determinism of matter but of action or subjective resistance that cannot do without us. It simply determines our room for maneuver and the direction in which we can attempt to exert influence according to the urgencies of the moment. It is the prerequisite for the effective transformation of our social conditions. So, just because there are cycles, that doesn't mean we should be overly cyclothymic and swing from depression to euphoria or vice versa! We must always try to keep a level head and take a reflective, somewhat countercyclical stance. In periods of depression or political and social collapse, the most important thing is precisely to understand the cyclical nature of the economy and history so as not to lose all hope and to prepare for new victories in the next cycle. Needless to say, no one ever believes this, and outside of periods of upheaval such as the one we are currently experiencing, linear conceptions of history dominate, whether they be of continuous progress or of an impending catastrophe against which we can do nothing, having become mere spectators of our own lives. There are indeed times when nothing is possible, when we suffer defeat after defeat, year after year. In the absence of collective action and favorable power relations, the struggle is then mainly ideological against defeatism and the dominant ideology. We should not conclude from this that only ideas matter, or only good intentions or moral condemnations...
Once the situation turns around, for objective reasons, and social movements regain momentum, the most urgent task is no longer to mobilize, but to avoid empty rhetoric and move away from ideology and groupthink, which can be very dangerous. At this point, we absolutely need to have a clear idea of the goal to be achieved and the alternative to be built based on the possibilities of the moment and the historical configuration. Mistakes are costly, but this is where an idealized conception of humanity inevitably leads to failure, if not worse. It is vital to base ourselves on an anthropology that is not too far removed from reality, just as we cannot base ourselves on an economy that is not sustainable. It is impossible to imagine an ecology that is not material, but materialism is a requirement of simple political realism.
What is lacking in ecology and anti-globalization is not only the materialism of defunct Marxism, but perhaps even more so the dialectic, which is conspicuously absent from humanist discourse and political strategies. A just anthropology is a dialectical anthropology that must account for the contradictory characteristics of humanity, not just the individualistic homo economicus of liberalism, nor just the communal man, homo sovieticus, but both liberal and communist, one might say, with both anarchist and fascist tendencies, in any case a homo sapiens who is also homo demens, moving from laughter to tears and a little more complex than all the pious or repulsive images we are given.
Finally, once we are committed to the alternative, while we must remain vigilant to cyclical or dialectical reversals, the most important thing in achieving our goals becomes the ability to self-criticize and correct our mistakes in order to take experience into account and not get bogged down in our prejudices or in the dogmatism of any ideology. This is the next stage, which we can call the cybernetic stage, although it is the most maligned, remaining largely unknown and left in the hands of irresponsible technicians. However, it is essential in all things to adapt to the terrain, to adjust to reality, to have feedback on the effect on the cause, that is, to have feedback loops and not to be overly self-confident, blind to the consequences of one's actions. The world really exists, and it is really that we must change it.
To change it, we undoubtedly need to have an idea, but the idea is only valid if it comes from reality itself and its glaring injustice: it is the crooked stick that wants to be straightened, said Ernst Bloch (it is the clearing of Being, said the other). It is simply a matter of internalizing the external and externalizing the internal, of reducing individual and subjective problems to objective collective dysfunctions, of determining the inner purpose by the external reality that it lacks and towards which its desire directs it. To do this, we cannot neglect power relations, material circuits, and systemic constraints where information flows control the flow of materials and energy. It is not enough to have beautiful ideas; they must work, circulate, and be able to spread everywhere. It is for all these reasons that André Gorz could only draw the wealth of possibilities from a careful critique of actual experiments and their capacity to form a system, a very modest approach that is the opposite of “thinking by system,” simple moral principles, or an ideal vision outside of history.
It is too little known, but dialectical, ecosystemic, and cybernetic materialism is the key to effective revolutionary politics that changes the system of production, far from any revolutionary extremism or romanticism. It is a question of knowing how to take into account the movement of the negative, which starts from the ideal (and its social determinations) and materializes dialectically in a feedback loop of effect on cause, where the idea is shaped by the resistance it encounters, and where, therefore, it must partially contradict itself. We must not hide the disappointment we may feel each time, or even the irritation we feel in the face of this harsh reality that resists us and hurts us cruelly. However, the experience of existence is nothing other than the test of facts, the learning of experience where we lose our illusions and correct our misconceptions, but this is how the mind realizes itself in confrontation with materiality, adjusting to the terrain in all its living complexity, which can only be understood by transforming it.
Perhaps the most difficult thing, however, is to admit our original disappointment, where existence is experienced as desire. Everyone seems so happy, good citizens and full of good feelings. It seems that I am the only one who is not up to the task and not participating in the party! It must be said that we would certainly be ridiculed if we admitted our shortcomings in this way. We prefer to compete in our pretensions and in a form of positive thinking or Coué method so widespread in American companies. It seems that we only have regard for the small number of winners, stars, and dominant figures (even in alternative circles, often!), while the vast majority are losers. The democratic attitude does not consist in glorifying the people but in siding with the rejected and the weak, such as the proletariat and the excluded. It would therefore be much better to admit all our failures and acknowledge our weaknesses, which make us all brothers more surely than our good intentions, embarked on the same adventure, grappling with the same contradictions and facing the same problems. There is no point in showing off, pretending to know everything, playing the saint, setting ourselves up as models, sages, or masters! We should know how ignorant we can be, how unwise and weak, which is the only way to do a little better, but it is certainly not enough to criticize alienation in order to get rid of it. We are not heroes, no, at best we are magnificent losers!
When the first riots break out, nothing is decided yet, but it is better to know that there is no reason for things to go well, either with others or among ourselves. We will have to do our part, but we cannot expect too much from a transformation of the world, except perhaps to seize by chance an opportunity that will probably not come again for a long time! In any case, we must not be too naive: the collapse of the system is not there to please us; it brings us brutally back to reality. Life is a tough test where we experience all our limitations and the loss of our illusions. While there are a few unforgettable moments, the gap between our dreams and the harshest reality seems inevitable when, as Romain Gary said, “maternal love is a promise that life cannot keep.” Far from being the pleasant comedy devoted to entertainment that consumer society offers us as a spectacle to foist its adulterated goods on us, there is a tragic dimension to life, beyond even its sad end, a dimension that is not only impossible to eliminate but which is in fact its whole value!
This is the paradox that must be emphasized in conclusion: the harshness of life, its disappointments and remorse cannot be eliminated because they are not at all a regrettable anomaly but rather what gives value to our human existence, our political existence and our desire for recognition rather than animal pleasure. This does not mean that we should accept our fate passively, quite the contrary, since it is the meaninglessness of the world and its injustice that we must actively overcome each time and which give all their weight to our actions! The world of life is neither that of immobile eternity nor that of immediate satisfaction, but one of duration and uncertain evolution. What place would we have in a world that turns without us and arouses neither indignation nor resistance? What would a life won in advance, as already lived, be? Would it be worth living if there really were a way of knowing how to live?
We are always emerging little by little from darkness and ignorance. Reality is always disappointing, with the probability of entropy, but recognizing this, by expressing the negative, already allows us to overcome it and perhaps bring about the improbable. Recognizing this gap between words and deeds, between being and ought-to-be, is to transform the negative into the positive. This is not only the condition for immediate success, but even more so for long-term viability. It is quite simply the experience of life, of the reality of a lack or an encounter, of a self that must come to terms with a non-self. This is what is at stake in the test of a reality that eludes our desire, a non-sense to which we must give meaning, a meaning that can only be found in the past history that we must continue by actively participating in the adventure of humanity. This history, full of sound and fury, is undoubtedly always a hard collective learning process, but we must believe that we can learn from the past and that we will not repeat the same mistakes, already tried so many times, indefinitely. To do this, we must not go back to the most simplistic demagogic ideas, but rather study the revolutionary phenomena of the past a little more closely, with all their excesses!
In these troubled times, we need radicalism, but that should mean not giving in on the truth! The truth is revolutionary because it undermines all powers, all authorities, even “revolutionary” ones, but that is no reason to fall into skepticism or relativism, let alone dogmatism or blissful optimism. It is always the same answer that philosophy gives to both the sophist and the believer, that of critical thinking, science, and history, of what can indeed be called dialectical materialism: neither the renunciation of truth nor blind certainty, and it must be said that the experience of history does not allow us to hope that things will go smoothly and that we will avoid the spiral of violence.
All this will seem very untimely, unfortunately, too far removed from the crowd movements that occupy the scene. We will not avoid extremist ideologies, running through every possible error one after the other. The ordeal is only just beginning, and it will be a tough one for our intelligence. We can take comfort in the knowledge that the truth cannot be suppressed for too long and that it always triumphs in the end. In the meantime, our follies may still cause many massacres. In these times of historical upheaval, we can always hope that everything will work out in the end, but it is better to expect the worst...
