Praxis philosophers & the disintegration of Yugoslavia

I have blogged about the Yugoslav Marxist Humanist Praxis philosophers and documented their work on my web site:

Yugoslav Praxis Philosophy Study Guide

Among Marxist humanists, critical theorists, and other anti-Stalinists, the Praxis School was in the forefront and a pole of attraction world-wide. It is also known that, sadly, their politics disintegrated along with Yugoslavia and that their leading proponents, most shockingly Mihailo Marković, were swallowed up by nationalism. Apparently there was a dimension of the inner tensions in Yugoslavia reflected in the persons of the praxis theoreticians that was not grasped by foreign enthusiasts. This article documents the dynamics of the depressing devolution:

Secor, Laura. “Testaments Betrayed,” Jacobin. “How Yugoslavia’s vibrant Marxist humanists morphed into right-wing nationalists.” Adapted from:

“Testaments Betrayed: Yugoslavian Intellectuals and the Road to War,” Lingua Franca, 1999.

Here we have a bone-chilling historical lesson in the failure of reason to be actualized in society even by its foremost representatives. This is a sobering lesson in how precarious are the prospects, if not altogether impossible under prevailing conditions, for achieving a rational society. Uneven distribution of resources, power, and loyalties foster eventual destabilization. In Yugoslavia, the uneasy balance between centralized power (dictatorial or not) and regional/national/ethnic autonomy was totally fractured, with lethal consequences. In the USA, scarcity is entirely artificial, and so barbarism must be perpetuated by even more irrational means, fueled by uneven social development, irreconcilable differences among the population, and the exploitation of competing demographics and ideologies.

The Praxis School developed general, abstract conceptions with global appeal, and also had specific objectives in reforming the Yugoslav social system. But the world view and social theory that they developed could not sustain their political practice once the social basis for it was obliterated. They have left us with advanced general ideas of continuing relevance, but if they, faced with social disintegration, could not sustain a corresponding political practice, then what hope is there for us, in a politically regressive and rapidly degenerating social order, where ideas are not valued by anybody, to actualize our most advanced rational thought and create a reasonable society?

Christopher Caudwell on religion as static imagination

I have blogged here before about Christopher Caudwell. As I also mentioned, I used the title of his essay collection Studies in a Dying Culture (1938, followed by Further Studies in a Dying Culture, 1949) as the title of my podcast/radio series and one of my blogs.  Here is an interesting quote on religion from Caudwell's correspondence:

As I see it, religion undoubtedly represents very strong emotional realities, but they only become religion by religious people’s making them static, i.e. by demanding that their formulations (angels, salvation, heaven, hell, God, etc.) represent actual existent entities with the same reality of existence as matter. It is just this static formulation which is the core of any formal religion (Buddhism, Christianity, Mohommedanism). Separate that out and what have you left? Primarily two currents. One: art, or ‘poetry’—The fluid emotional experimenting with illusory concepts drawn from reality, either felt as illusory, as in our civilised age, or felt as real, but unconsciously acknowledged as illusory by the very fluidity of treatment, as in Greek myth (not Greek religion). The other current is sociological, and is symbolical of the tremendously powerful and emotionally charged currents that hold a society together, and express, in a subtle instinctive way, the fact that though individualities, we yet have a real being in common: buds of the same tree. We are not completely divided by ‘The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea.’ The power of this bond is expressed in the attitude of men to a drowning stranger, a ship in distress, in time of war, and so on. You may feel a sociological conception of religion arid and empty of content. So do I, but that is because we are children of a civilisation that necessarily sees society as linked primarily by money exchanges, I mean sees that intellectually, whatever we may sometimes feel emotionally. The first criticism of Communism is always that men would never do their best work for society, regardless of income, and this expresses perfectly how debased and empty of content our conception of social relations has become. But the Greek citizen, or the merest tribal primitive, would see nothing strange in our conception of the society as the basis of religion. To him the city or tribe is joined with religion’s bonds; and even to‑day, when religions are so palpably failing, we see, in Italy and Germany, how men are bowled over by the sociological as opposed to the theological element of religion, in however questionable a guise it comes.

But why not leave it at that, you may ask, and, seeing religion’s aesthetic and sociological credentials, say ‘Pass friend, all’s well?’. Just because religion, to be religion, formulates its sociological and aesthetic beliefs in terms of science, of external reality. So that on the one hand art is held back from developing, made to accept the outworn forms of yesterday, and, on the other hand, man, mistaking social relations for divinely ordained permanences, is held back to the social groupings of yesterday. So the Greek, cramped into the City State, was torn by internecine warfare and fell victim to the barbarians he despised. So we, with our national formations, and national churches, are involved in imperialistic wars, in which ministers preach from the pulpit the divine approval of a just war. And it is no answer to say that genuinely religious people are pacifists, for we can only take religion as it appears, and to do otherwise is to mean by the adverb ‘genuinely’—‘religious in a way we approve’, which, from a historical view­point, taking religion as it has manifested itself, turns out to be not religious at all, but people who put social reality before theological formulations—heretics, prophets, and rebels.

SOURCE: Caudwell, Christopher, Letter to Paul [Beard] and Elizabeth [Beard]. 21 November 1935 (from London), in Scenes and Actions: Unpublished Manuscripts, selected, edited, and introduced by Jean Duparc and David Margolies (London: New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986), extract: pp. 220-221.

65th anniversary for Rootless Cosmopolitans!

Today was one of my two candidates for the establishment of a Rootless Cosmopolitans Day. "Rootless Cosmopolitans" was a Stalinist code word for Jews, marking a deadly turn in the nasty anti-Semitic history of almost the entire life span of the Soviet Union. The USSR, already gripped by Stalinist paranoia in the purges of the 1930s, took an even more paranoiac ultra-nationalist, xenophobic turn following its victory over the Nazis, mimicking their bigotry, scapegoating, and destructive cultural policies (the era of Zhdanov).  This ultranationalist, anti-western campaign against "unpatriotic" "cosmopolitan" elements began in 1946 (August 14, in Pravda), and on December 22, 1948, it was specifically tied to Jews, in this speech:

A. Fadeev: "O nekotorykh prichinakh otstavanie sovetskoi dramaturgii" [On Several Reasons for the Lag in Soviet Dramaturgy], Literaturnaya gazeta (Moscow), 22 December 1948, p. 1.

And from there, it only got worse, leading to a murderous campaign against Soviet Jews terminated only by Stalin's death.

Aside from the fact that the anti-Semitic campaign is today eligible for Social Security, it remains relevant. Eastern Europe is a worse anti-Semitic sewer today than it was under Soviet rule, reverting to its prior glorious heritage. But it is also not a dead issue in the USA, for countless Americans are locked in rigid racial/religious categories and simply cannot understand, even when they are not overtly hostile, those sneaky, slippery, chameleon Jews, especially the secular ones, that elude fixed categorization. They don't understand the firmly religious/ethnic ones very well, either.

So rootless cosmopolitans, stand proud, say it loud, and fuck 'em if they can't take a joke!

My other choice for Rootless Cosmopolitans Day is July 27, on which day in 1656 Baruch Spinoza, blessed be he, was expelled from the Jewish community, thus becoming history's first rootless cosmopolitan in theory and in practice.

REFERENCES:

"From Anti-Westernism to Anti-Semitism" by Konstantin Azadovskii and Boris Egorov in Journal of Cold War Studies, 4:1, Winter 2002, pp. 66–80.

"About one anti-patriotic group of theatre critics," Pravda, 28 January, 1949, p. 3.

Rootless cosmopolitan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kwame Nkrumah's ideology: sources & contradictions

McClendon, John. "On Assessing the Ideological Impact of Garveyism on Nkrumaism: Political Symbolism Contra Theoretical Substance," APA Newsletter on Philosophy and the Black Experience, vol. 2., no. 2, Spring 2003, pp. 61-72.

A positive spin on Nkrumah's cited influence from Marcus Garvey is often cited, but Nkrumah's final rejection of Garveyism is almost always conveniently omitted. McClendon searches for the root of Nkrumah's world view. He goes back to Nkrumah's early engagement with Christianity, evolving from Catholicism to Protestantism, and an inherent tension with African traditionalism even when the two coalesce. McClendon claims that Christianity is ineluctably tied to European imperialism, but find that what it shares in common with African traditionalism is philosophical idealism.

Doctrinaire Christianity, as the cultural expression of Western imperialism, insists on not only conferring the religious judgment that African traditionalism is a form of animistic paganism but also levies the imperialist (cultural) judgment that African traditionalism is primitive. The cultural imperatives inscribed in the Christian missionary movement works hand in glove with the political economic aims of Western imperialism. The common aim continues, for both the Christian missionary and the colonial mercenary, in terms of absolute rule over Africa. Thus colonial domination includes spiritual, cultural and above all political economic control. In light of these contradictions, Nkrumah, as a formally educated (or Western trained) African, attempts to find suitable philosophical resolution wherein the affirmation of African identity is on African rather than Western terms.

And:

The import of Nkrumah’s sustaining of African traditionalism resides in its function as the basis of African humanity. The very nature of being human is mediated through the particularity of African traditional culture. Universality, on these terms, cannot be abstracted from particularity. The particular is always an instance of the universal for Nkrumah. [. . . . ] Though Nkrumah explains this humanist aspect of African traditionalism later in Consciencism; as we shall see, it is an integral part of his worldview from his start as a student in Ghana.

Nkrumah considers African traditionalism to be intrinsically humanist and socialist as opposed to Christianity, and effectively anti-imperialist.

McClendon also seeks to know why Nkrumah would resort to Ethiopianism. The answer can be found in its opposition to anti-African redemptionism which imposes itself on African culture, a stance inherited from 19th century black nationalism. Garvey's adherence to redemptionism proves a sticking point for Nkrumah.

Garveyism serves as buttress for Nkrumah’s assault on cultural imperialism and, in turn, Marxism-Leninism provides a theory of anti-imperialism. Together they expand his nationalism beyond African traditionalism because they engender an appropriately suited nationalism i.e. a modern nationalism capable of confronting and combating national oppression and colonialism. Therefore, the content of Nkrumah’s socio-political philosophy is fashioned by a dialectical relationship between his African nationalism (at substance African traditionalism) with the critical infusion of Garveyism and Marxism-Leninism.

Crucial to Nkrumah's development was his decision to study in the USA instead of Britain. It was an expression of his anticolonialism, yet Nkrumah found himself neck-deep in American apartheid. Furthermore, Nkrumah was irritated with the pervasive bias of Western education. At Lincoln University, Nkrumah was able to imbibe the highest achievements of Western thought and to pursue African history at the same time in association with Black American scholars.

Nkrumah also held Western education amenable to amalgamation with traditional African culture.

These are the roots of Nkrumah's future Consciencism.

My thesis that Nkrumah’s nationalism is in substance African traditionalism is not to claim that his nationalism is reducible to traditionalism. Nkrumah in dialectically incorporating Western culture into African traditionalism recognizes therein the omnipresence of cultural crisis. Nonetheless, the task of forging a modern nationalism can only come by virtue of this crisis, the necessary birth pains for a new African civilization.

Others, such as John H. Clarke, never understood or appreciated Nkrumah's attempted synthesis.

In the USA, Nkrumah was directly connected to the Garvey movement. But the Garveyite movement appears to have inspired Nkrumah only on an emotional and symbolic level, while Nkrumah was intellectually influenced by Marxism. It is also noteworthy that the long time domination of pan-Africanism by Americans, redolent of redemptionism, eventually shifted to a greater dominance of an African leadership. And Nkrumah could not accept Garveyite redemptionism, nor his compromises with imperialism, not to mention Garvey's pro-capitalist and fascist ideology.

McClendon addresses Appiah's notion of intrinsic racism, associated with nationalism, and questions whether this is applicable to Nkrumah's conception of Pan-Africanism, as Appiah charges. But "Appiah fails to recognize the import of Nkrumah’s distinction regarding Black and African nationalism."

COMMENT: McClendon's contextualization of Nkrumah's developing ideology is eye-opening. It's been decades since I read Consciencism, but it never occurred to me to pursue it in this fashion. My memory has dimmed, but as I recall, the book opened with a concise, exceptionally articulate argument for materialism, followed by a lame attempt to make modern socialism congruent with traditional African society. I also think that one edition of the book includes an appendix giving a vacuous and pretentious argument for African liberation using the symbolism of set theory. And the very notion of coining a new philosophy just to call it African struck me as even pettier than the crypto-nationalism of big-time communist dictators like Stalin and Mao. Consciencism is not a real philosophy but an ideology with a philosophical component in it, i.e. the materialist component. But McClendon's essay explains how such an ideology came to be.