The Limits of Sanderismo

Or why necessity, Hegelianism, or even "hipsterism" and "workerism" misses my critique of St. Bernie

When the premises of a critique of a person’s position are wrong, all subpositions derived from that premise, correct or not, are irrelevant. Still, this comment is reasoned enough that I can make some useful clarifications about my positions and my logic.

Let’s break this down: To what I think Kneal is responding to here. I have critiqued the analytic Marxists (G.A. Cohen, Jon Elster, Vivek Chibber, etc) and structural Marxists (Louis Althusser, Nicos Poulantzas, Pierre Macherey, etc.) for trying to write out the Hegelian methodology in Marx. This was not a claim about the world itself; this was a claim about presenting the methodology of Marx. My discussion of Marx’s methodology was never a statement about the truth of Hegelianism. Here lies another problem: “Hegelianism” is not a singular thing that can be asserted to lead to unitary logic like this—most Hegelians did not arrive at Marx’s conclusions about the worker despite anything implicit in Hegel’s master/slave dialectic (which as far as I can tell Marx never even alluded to) or unhappy consciousness.

”…then how is your promotion of Hegelianism vindicated?”

This is fallacious, but to be fair in the post the commenter is referring to, I didn’t state what I was vindicated about; the vindication was about my critique of Bernie Sanders and the likelihood of “insider/outsider” strategies to shift the Democratic Party in the US. There was nothing about teleology in this, nor was my critique that Bernie wasn’t “Marxist” enough or “Workerist enough” (although the article I was responding to DOES imply the latter, and I will get back to that). Indeed, when I did critique Bernie’s policies specifically, it was that he used policies promoted by left-wing and liberal advocates of using Modern Monetary Policy for a jobs plan, but rejected the logic of MMT, that his policies were too simple and could easily be recuperated, that he lacked leverage within the Democratic party even when he had key committee postings, that if he ever won the Presidency, he would have a much harder time than even Trump in changes its habits from the top as the Democratic party was heavily invested in official state and quasi-state institutions like long-standing NGOS and universities.

That said, to be fair, you can’t know this from my note, even after reading the context of the article about Bernie Sanders’ rightward draft. What I specifically felt vindicated about was the two structural problems: Bernie Sanders wanted a workers’ movement that could help him get past the structural limits placed on workers in the neoliberal arrangements of capitalism, thus enabling a “workers’ movement” with real political power to be born anew. The problem with this is obvious: it requires a worker’s movement to already exist (if latently) to create the political conditions for a… worker’s movement as a result of Bernie’s candidacy. It is very close to a circular line of reasoning. The second structural critique, from 1930s-to-2010s, the Democratic party had the working poor in its coalition, at no time after, say, 1948 was the bulk of the Democratic party’s coalition in power made up of “working people.” Trying to make the Democratic party’s coalition that of working people because “working people like Bernie” has two problems: it makes points of popularity with points of leverage. The various interests and classes which supported the Democratic party historically have been varied and, from William Jennings Bryan’s liquidation of the People’s Party into the Democrats to the New Deal and then the Popular Front in the wake of World War 2, the Democratic party tried to incorporate more and more of the “broad masses” in its coalition. To make a super-complicated history short, the Democratic party relied on institutions of the post-war consensus well beyond a post-war consensus, and thus never built up para-institutions to thrive when it was out of governmental favor. For a figure like Bernie Sanders, this creates two limitations for leverage: 1) popularity is limited since the right-leaning elements of Democratic coalition can more easily leave the coalition and still have political influence, and 2) there was no outside apparatus with sufficient resources to protect his politicians from donors and the influence of cultural politics. This is where the circularity of the first critique became vicious: even if AFL-CIO-affiliated Unions truly represented the bulk of the working class, their leadership had been in the same bind as Bernie Sanders since the 1960s and their leaderships complicity with a capitalist state in the prior period is part of what made them unpopular in the 1970s.

You will note that none of this assumes a teleological emergence of workers’ movements from necessity. What is the necessity here? Is it crisis, immiseration, the self-organization of the workers in factories, etc? To use Marxist verbiage, we see counter-tendencies to every one of these mechanisms of emergence: Immiseration, there is evidence that the poorest workers have never been the ones to lead movements, and even Marxist strategists recognized this by the time of the Second International. Marx even hinted at the problems here with his focus on the “advanced” elements of the proletariat, although he didn’t often comment on what he meant by “advanced,” thus allowing it as a weasel word for Marxists in the future to consistently “move the political subject.” Crisis? Well, the business cycle has led to depression and recession cycles, but the political order of capitalism has been remarkably adaptable in changing its style of management. Self-organization of the workers in factories? The social skilling of factories has been, frankly, subsumed by automation, which requires worker specialization but pushes workers into auxiliary roles in the logistics, the service sector, skilled elements of production, and lower-level management.

Back to the comment: “If economic subjugation does not teleologically incite and model political participation without cultural organization, then it follows that political expenditure must rely upon leisure expenditure.” It actually doesn’t follow because this statement has an excluded middle. Furthermore, I understand the verbiage in this sentence, and it does have cognitive meaning, but its terms are vague. “Political” and “cultural” organizations are posited as being inherently separate. I would NEVER assume that. Even most early Marxists didn’t assume it, hence the focus in multiple Marxist movements on either class social and cultural hegemony or in developing proletarian cultural formations. In fact, in my study of dual power organizations, I pointed out that political formation required “cultural” subjects. The issue is that I also think the difference between culture and politics is largely an illusory one. But even if I didn’t think that, it would still be an excluded middle fallacy to assume that the division was either/or as stated in the comment.

‘… where workers are much freer to model political behaviors(yet also free not to, which means politics may not be constrained by the Marxian emphasis on “social necessity”).”

There are a bunch of problems with this statement. “Social necessity” in Marx tends to be limited in use as a measure of the average amount of labor time required to produce a commodity under current conditions of production, and this time determines the commodity's exchange value. It is not a limit of the general society outside of commodity production. “Material conditions” tends to be the vague word Marx uses to refer to both social and physical limits on social development. Now, there are other uses of necessity in Marx, particularly early Marx, such as the famous line from the German Ideology,

The Necessity of the Communist Revolution

Finally, from the conception of history we have sketched we obtain these further conclusions:

(1) In the development of productive forces there comes a stage when productive forces and means of intercourse are brought into being, which, under the existing relationships, only cause mischief, and are no longer productive but destructive forces (machinery and money); and connected with this a class is called forth, which has to bear all the burdens of society without enjoying its advantages, which, ousted from society, is forced into the most decided antagonism to all other classes; a class which forms the majority of all members of society, and from which emanates the consciousness of the necessity of a fundamental revolution, the communist consciousness, which may, of course, arise among the other classes too through the contemplation of the situation of this class.

(2) The conditions under which definite productive forces can be applied are the conditions of the rule of a definite class of society, whose social power, deriving from its property, has its practical-idealistic expression in each case in the form of the State; and, therefore, every revolutionary struggle is directed against a class, which till then has been in power. [4]

(3) In all revolutions up till now the mode of activity always remained unscathed and it was only a question of a different distribution of this activity, a new distribution of labour to other persons, whilst the communist revolution is directed against the preceding mode of activity, does away with labour, and abolishes the rule of all classes with the classes themselves, because it is carried through by the class which no longer counts as a class in society, is not recognised as a class, and is in itself the expression of the dissolution of all classes, nationalities, etc. within present society; and

(4) Both for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is, necessary, an alteration which can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution; this revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.

In a 1975 article on the issue of “necessity” in Marx and Marcuse, Donald Lee wrote about the last claim on “neccessity”:

It seems immediately obvious that there are three possible interpretations of that term "necessary": ( 1) that a revolution is historically determined, i.e., inevitable, or (2) that a revolution is hypothetically imperative, i.e., if one wants to achieve the establishment of a new society, he must follow a particular procedure (but then again, of course, he may not), or (3) that a revolution is categorically imperative, i.e., one ought to pursue the revolution because it is morally obligatory to establish a new society and revolution is morally the best or only way to achieve that end. Some combination of these meanings is probably intended in the particular claim above, but in numerous other instances in both the early and the later works of Marx and Engels, mannd.

What is difficult to find is a clear-cut case of usage in the third-the moral-sense. The issue here is important because, not only have Western critics of Marxism such as Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper generally attacked Marx's historical theory with regard to his predictive claims of the historical inevitability of communism, but they were not at fault in doing so, since the influential followers and expounders of Marx in the last century, Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin, and Stalin, have for reasons of praxis, emphasized the inevitability of the victory of socialism.

It is only in the last three decades that a few Marx scholars, lead by Marcuse, have rediscovered the humanistic aspects of the early Marx and attempted to reinterpret the whole corpus of Marx in the light of those early works seen as foundational to the whole. In doing so, they have aroused the wrath of the mainstream of "orthodox" marxism, whose reply is that the young Marx represents the immature Marx, and only the later, largely economic, and more "scientific" works representthe genuine Marx.

It is true that Marx in his later works ceased using the moralistic, prescriptive terminology of his early works and turned to more "scientific" sounding descriptive terminology; thus he arrives at "laws" of "inevitable" historical development. The term "necessity" in the later works is used in the sense of historical inevitability¹

There is an entire disputed literature of disputed hermeneutics and historiographies on the meaning of “necessary” in Marx. Many different schools of thought, including elements of the structural and analytic Marxists, emerged largely in a university context in Europe to address these ambiguities. That said, when going back to the debates between different Marxist groups in the 1920s and 1930s, the debate about inevitability or common ruin was a key focus. Everyone from Lenin to Hal Draper wrote about it.

What isn’t clear is how the teleology would work “materialistically.” As Hegel’s teleology developed from metaphysical and theological notions that were notedly absent in Marx. Donald Lee proposes a solution or, at least, an aphoria:

Even in the early works, we have only hints at what the future of man might be like, for communism is ‘. . . the necessary actual phase of man's emancipation and rehabilitation. Communism is the necessary form and dynamic principle of the immediate future but not as such the goal of human development-the form of human society.’ If communism is to be only a transitional phase to man's future, what is that future to be? Is there a goal of human development? The answer of the early Marx is that we cannot know, for we are chained by"necessity"; only those who have been freed from those chains and whose senses have been reformed will be able to decide. Communism is to be the resolution between "necessity" and "freedom." Man, free, unalienated from himself, from Nature, and from his fellow men, is the creature who creates himself in his free productive activity.

It is, Marx says, "necessary to humanize man's senses and also create a human sense corresponding to the entire wealth of humanity and nature." If we do not yet have that "human sense" then how can we know what it is we must create, and how can we know how we would act in our freedom once we had it? The answer can only be Platonic, that in some sense we must already know what we do not know, or we could not know what is lacking in ourselves which must be developed. There must be, in Aristotelian and Hegelian terms, a "telos" toward which human nature tends in its efforts to overcome its inadequacies. When Marx posits that an "animal produces what is necessary" while man produces as a man only when he produces freely, he is speaking in teleological and moral terms, for men in capitalist society generally do not produce freely, but are practically reduced to animals.

Marx's ideas are here very Kantian: men ought to produce freely; men ought to treat each other as ends-in-themselves. Now let us return to the three senses of "necessity" we originally posited: (i) historical inevitability, (2) the hypothetical imperative, and (3) the categorical (moral) imperative. Marx and Engels do not distinguish these three senses of the term, but it is important for us to distinguish these usages in order to understand Marcusens interpretation of Marx and Engels.

It was pointed out to me that when Marx and Engels use the term "necessity" in the second sense, that of the hypothetical imperative, it is usually to speak historically from the viewpoint of some third party, such as the bourgeoisie or Utopian socialists; such hypothetical imperatives were not in accord with the inevitability of historical necessity.²

So there is no “socially necessary” teleology of work itself that would make that would be the singular reading the commenter is referencing, as if it was an obvious interpretation.

Back to the original comment in question:

“Therefore it follows that those with greater leisure allotments invest and waste more toward politics than workers who our society places a prohibitive burden upon, and your dream of politics without an excess toward “hipsterism” may be unrealistic in the contemporary context”

Now, this may be a fair response to the article, I said “vindicated” my view of a decade. That said, I NEVER use terms like “hipsterism.” But again, now that I have clarified what I was critiquing Bernie Sanders on, let’s get to what I agreed with Davide and Stephanie Tinsley about: “The Bernie movement has moved to the right so much in the past 10 years it’s really incredible.” I thought this was structurally the most likely outcome for the reasons that are “game theoretic,” not “Hegelian” or even “Marxist.” I agree that logical drift would be towards political novelty that people with the ability to invest in politics would do.

But even if I were speaking from a Marxist point of view solely, it doesn’t mean I endorsed all of Tinsley's (and maybe Davide’s) implications. I agreed with the question raised by Tinsley: “My question is: do we really need bourgeois and aristocratic twenty-somethings dressed in designer boho-chic to lead the charge against the very system from which they largely benefit?” That is a valid question, and the answer to that is not clear. Not just because Bernie’s appeals to them violate some crucial element of “Marxism,” but because frankly, these appeals by Bernie haven’t worked even when draped in populist rhetoric. There seems to be a hard limit to what Sanders can do, even though he has been consistently fairly popular.

However, there is a lot that I disagree with Tinsley about:

Coachella is not a cultural reference most people in any American hood or rural town would understand, nonetheless care about. None of these artists (no, not even Neil Young or Joan Baez) appeal to today’s working class voter, even if their lyrics are supposedly speaking to them.

I knew plenty of “working class” people—wage earners who made less than 10 dollars an hour in 2009, when I followed such things—who liked this music, but they didn’t confuse it with politics. I spent a few days talking to Union workers about philosophy, specifically electricians and concern riggers. Only some of whom were college-educated. I find this just as cultural as critiques of hipsterism implied in Tinsley. Now, I don’t know Tinsley’s class background, but her website says she is “…a writer and filmmaker from Chicago, Illinois. She graduated from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2020 with a BA in Film & TV and a minor in Art History.”³ In short, this is a veiled critique of the class Tinsley currently operates in. This is fine, but it is culturalist, and it seems to speak to a nebulous class unity of cultural identification of “working class” that I don’t have any data to support. Tinsley’s doesn’t offer any evidence for this assertion either.

So I am not trying to purge the “hipsterism” from the movement. I am not even sure I understand what that means. As Bernie Sanders tries to get leverage over his party, he will most likely do so in the ways Tinsley condemns. He has to; it’s the party he is in. You can say he lost his plot, but in some ways, the plot is a structural limitation of the Democratic party as much as a personal failing of Sanders. Her answer is not structurally likely within the Democratic party:

The left needs a new generation of political figures who are unabashedly common. Activists who can empathize with the poor and working class—not sympathize. Compelling speakers who don’t talk down but who speak across and whose words uplift the communities at the bottom of the socioeconomic hierarchy. I don’t know where these bold, authentic and captivating leaders are right now, but I know for damn sure they are not, have not, and will never be at Coachella. Look elsewhere.

This would be nice, but can these people at the bottom of the socio-economic hierarchy fund campaigns? Not alone, so even if someone was doing exactly what Tinsley wanted, those same candidates would have to do the kinds of things Bernie Sanders is getting critiqued for. Still, despite the artistic-rentiers on artistic-rentier symbolic violence in her article, her fundamental question remains. Why is Sanders doing this now? Is his goal to make a workers’ movement or to gain leverage in the Democratic Party? Well, the answer seems to be both, but it has been successful at neither. Sanders can’t have skin in the workers’ game anymore and skin in the Democratic party’s game if the goal is an individualistic attempt to change the party by running for the executive or by passing the torch to someone young and popular to do the same. Particularly as AOC has spurned a lot of para-institutions that could have leveraged, like the Democratic Socialists of America. Is DSA ideal for this? No. But it was an actual institution that wasn’t an NGO with millionaires on the board or a university institution whose very existence was due to the Cold War largess that is actively being rolled back now.

Does this vindicate “my defense of ‘Hegelianism’?” No, but Hegelianism has almost nothing to do with why I felt that way. Can we purge hipsterism from the movement? No, no more than we can purge cultural workerism from people who are in the strata of society they are constantly critiquing. There are reasons these kinds of cul-de-sacs exist, and just complaining about them doesn’t change that.

1. LEE, D. C. (1975). The Concept of “Necessity”: Marx and Marcuse. The Southwestern Journal of Philosophy, 6(1), 47–53. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43155014

2. ibid.

3. https://stephanietinsley.com/