Alain Badiou's Theory of Revolutionary Change

Palgrave Macmillan, 2009

Challenging contemporary academic and intellectual culture, Patrick McGee writes experimentally about a series of thinkers who ruptured linguistic and social hierarchies: Marx, Nietzsche, Wilde, Lawrence, Gramsci, Wittgenstein, Bourdieu, Derrida, and Badiou. His method combines analysis, memoir, and polemic and is aimed particularly at students and teachers in the field of cultural studies. Influenced by Alain Badiou's Logiques des mondes, McGee uses his personal relation to theory and its institutions, not excluding his own ressentiment, to explore how thought enters a "common" existence as an event that can transform the individual life by transforming a world.

Gorbachev’s coming to power in the Soviet Union in 1985 had a serious corrosive effect on the world philosophical community’s interest in Marxist Philosophy. This is dramatically testified by the number and percentage of the publications on or related to Marx, Engels, Lenin and dialectical materialism among all publications recorded in Philosopher’s Index over the last decades. (This is a follow-up of my previously published note, "Is Marxist Philosophy Withering Away?", also available in this site.)

2014

In the 1840s Karl Marx wrote that social revolution would involve "carrying out the thoughts of the past," in which "humanity begins no new work but consciously completes the old work". The role of revolutionary thought for Marx, in other words, involved drawing attention to how past revolutionary tasks were failing to be worked through in present political practice; of understanding the reasons why theory and practice had changed and, in turn, how this understanding could be advanced towards the (present) completion of the (old) revolution. Later, for Lenin and Luxemburg, political disputes in the Second International revolved around the failings of revolutionary practice. Luxemburg and Lenin seemed optimistic about revolutionary thought being carried out by the practices of mass political movements for socialism. They assumed that workers could act as “socialist theoreticians” while participating in revolutionary politics. In the 1960s, figures like C. Wright Mills retrospectively assessed the emergence of the intelligentsia as “distinct and historically specific,” locating the political role of figures such as Lenin and Luxemburg as a phenomenon of the development of modern society. But Mills was wistful: he recognized that political-intellectual figures like Luxemburg and Lenin were missing in his time. What does the current role of intellectuals say about the historical disappearance of the kind of political possibilities Mills had in mind? While the separation of revolutionary thinking and politics might seem more distinct in the present, with "theory" being relegated to universities, and "practice" to social movements, it seems increasingly common for academic work motivated from the Left to blur the boundary between theory and social movements. While this state of affairs may seem to approach the sentiment articulated by Luxemburg, that there be nothing separating theoretical issues from the people struggling to overcome their condition, it does so without the emergence of corresponding political practices that would transcend the present. Alternatively, other currents of theory, among both independent intellectuals and organized political tendencies, seem completely severed from everyday social practice and so harmless as subcultural activities. Theory today seems to either assert the primacy of practice, leaving no recourse but to take up practical discontents as inalienable in thinking, or is so entirely cut off from practical concerns that it seems sustainable only in the academy. Revolutionary thinking, no less than revolutionary practice, seems hard to locate in the present.

2016

Marx’s thought is being reappropriated and reinterpreted by a new generation of activists in their own struggles. This entails a return to Marx, a return that is never simple or innocent, for it demands the abandonment of a “dogmatic” approach to the texts and the willingness to strive in the present for an understanding of Marx’s analyses of capitalism.

The Marx and Philosophy Review of Books, 2016

This book is, in many ways, a noble and impressive attempt to get to grips with one of the central issues in Marxist thought, namely the question of the mechanics of political change itself. Specifically, Coombs is keen to overcome the apparent incommensurability that exists between those theories that explain the dynamics of the continuous development of historical epochs, and those that focus on the discontinuous and revolutionary events that disrupt this evolutionary progress. The question that animates this book is whether it is possible to develop a science of history that can account for both the continuous change that we call 'history' and the discontinuity of those ruptures we call 'events', without inadvertently prioritising the former and ending up with a naïve theory of determinism and without accidentally prioritising the latter and collapsing into the depths of unknowable indeterminacy.

Marx and Marxism. Rutgers University. , 2016

Sean Sayers gives an outline of the present situation: some features of capitalism have changed and some of its essentials have to be rethought. But in our times the dynamic of the capitalist system has again shown its " hostile and alien " traits. On the other side Marxism and the left have suffered a " setback of historic proportions " and revolutionary forces are scarcely in sight. But the need for an alternative social system comes to the fore and the " conditions that must lead to change are evident ". From this approporiate standpoint looking back and around the world, the question arises: What is Marxism? Sean Sayers indicates or sketches " a concrete and complex historical tradition with different schools and theories ". In the context of this primarily descriptive characterization the existing of " different, often conflicting " positions is mentioned. But the author tries to avoid controversies about right or wrong-except an indication of Soviet communism as an " empty and rotten shell "-and recommends that it's better to be cautious and try to " unite " approaches as far as possible. It seems, that in this general view upon different and maybe further emerging forms of Marxism something remains underexposed: The real, unavoidably and never ending need for an earnest dispute about Marxist or Socialist ideas, practices and experiments of the past and in the present, in order to learn for now and avoid errors, mistakes and, last not least, gigantic failures, which occurred in this history. Because of this I think: The picture of Marxist schools and theories as a " flourishing tree " seems to be a bit of simplifying or too optimistic. Let's concede, it's more or less impossible, for example, to demand more disclosure about controversial Marxisms, about the economic system of the USSR or the meaning of " Socialism " today from such an overview and with respect to the given occasion. But problems like this are lasting and may confuse, whether we speak about them or not. For me, always involved in controversies, it seems necessary to remember this. Isn't the definition of the present situation not also a theoretical problem? I would like to make this more precise in two points: A more generalizing view of modern " capitalism " runs the risk, to miss the situation as a multdimensional period of transition. In this regard Marx gave more concrete advises than the notion, that a conflict between productive social forces and " the confines of the capitalist system " is raising. Indeed: " Positive factors must also be present ". Marx noticed: When the world market or, how it is called today, globalization is realized, the elements or the configuration of an alternative system will crystallize as a more or less latent reality. This will exist inside and against the hegemonial formation and thus all contradictions get activated and push for solutions. This specific view of the current situation has enormous consequences for Marxist theory and practice: A new era of transition is opended and a new constellation of contradictions occurs. It not only provokes a comeback of an idea, but means a turning point for this idea and the related practice too. Hereupon my second point is: The current situation implies an ultimate challenge to Marxism, to find an advanced form, which enables to deal with this multidimensional, with forces and possibilities charged, and to a specific degree open situation. This means in particular, to activate not only analytical and critical functions of theory, but also an overall utopian inspiration and concrete conceptualization of praxis.

Journal of Social Sciences, 1997

isl lhoughl. 1'hr Nc•ow('l/t' l'hilt•M•phi.-e nwrged a.s 11 by• product()(!Uctl ttisi$. "fbe ~~tlf•Jtyled n..-w phil(os(•pllus fn.lllit3lly dca oultttd all (Clfmll of ManiJm as a "philo-'O• ph y or dom in.atioft.-The "llhockiug .. QOVdt yo(their "uew"' phit.;,t()phy w:u-t>eliewd to mlllk thr "eud" of M~onis:m in f'nnce. But what wa.f "•tw • in l.he Nt•tHvolle Phiif'sophU!? Wh y did il filii to emerge v: adil'1i1Kiive ,;chool or thougtll? If Mau ut mort. 111 the.,.,_. phi/(Oscoplu•n and lhe media faafvtt&.cloOu.nccdin lhe mid•I970s • ..-•l•yt:~uldn'llht nr.•• pltiiMOf'hJ e.uape !hf"• fate M •• tphi'tn<'tal phe ug mtt~olt? Were tlu;."ewpii//(>&'Qphtl'1 1"tll.surulCf~(l(ld, ill¢0n"telly ia• •erpreced.«hdly re•d?Ofthey slrnply fa iledcoprovidt. a ~oo ottp~uaJ frar~~work ((>I' th euadtrsta~tt.ling 01 hum3tl £O<:ioety a t tltl.sf m dt $1~1{''! Tbe CUrTetlt a•ticte attt •npu to a.at~r someofthete qut.stioat. I France is a counlty where Marxism, in one fonn or another' has provide(!. a dominwll fr.une of reference for wort in philosophy. sociology. and the "human sciences .. ever since lhe end of World WarTwo. 1 Ouring the nrstlwo dc:<.:ttdes afcer the war tbe grip of Marxism on the minds of Pren cb iotc llectunls wQs "'ittuniJy complc1e. Marxism became. in Jean-Paul Sarlfe's words. Lhe "unsurpassable h ori~nn" oft be age and. in• deed. remained so even as it was reinterpreted in lig. ht of existeodalism. surre.:\lism. Saussuriansuuctumllinguistics. and even Freudian psy• cbology. This explains wby even :l celebrity like Raymond Ar(m, nr nth cr unti•oommunist I !linkers like Furet, DiJmont, and Cas:toria<lis were almost entir' e ly without inOueo-ce among their fellow French intellectuals in lhe postwar decades. as was explicitly signified in the-say• ing" Better wrong with Sanre than right with Aron."'

Transmodernity Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso Hispanic World, 2011

Journal of Historical Sociology, 2021

Revolutionary theorists are currently immersed in a critical debate about the future of the field. Allinson has argued that a fifth generation of revolutionary theory has passed us by without our noticing, while I have contended that it is revolutionary theory's fourth generation that is decidedly imperilled. Ritter and Beck-for their part-contend that we should reject the very idea of theoretical 'generations', and instead think of progress in revolutionary theory as a series of ongoing and settled debates about certain key topics. The pair contend that revolutionary theory has reached a consensus on two core debates: defining our object of study and determining appropriate methods. Contrary to this position, I argue that while there is much to praise about rejecting generational imagery, doing so necessarily entails that we also critique the self-proclaimed 'fourth generation' with which such imagery is intertwined. Furthermore, I argue that there does not yet exist consensus among revolutionary theorists about a single definition of revolution, or on the question of which methods to use. Finally, I call for a regeneration of revolutionary theory which moves genuinely beyond the generational mythologies of the past.