A Quiet (Personal) Revolution

In 2009, Mark Fisher published Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? where he wrote that “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism.” Amongst many other things (including a critical viewing of Disney Pixar’s WALL-E), Fisher updates historical materialism for the modern world. If our experience is formed by our material conditions, as opposed the Hegelian notion that ideas form our conditions, then so too must our mental health be driven by the structural issues inherent in unchecked neoliberalism. This isn’t driven by precarity alone; no, to Fisher, capitalism even codes our desires, our identities. It would be PescatarianIn one of my corners of the Dark Forest, I asked how one would say “fisher-esque”, the best response was pescatarian.

to say that capitalism colonizes subjectivity, which is to say it even defines how we define ourselves. It enforces a normative form for the self—one we could never obtain—while also trapping us, leaving us incapable of seeing an alternative.

About 30 years before that, Deleuze wrote about the “Oedipal Triangle” which—as he and Guattari were wont to do—was used as a illustration for the normative power of Freudian psychoanalysis, the State, and the family—three sides, completing the triangle. An Oedipalized individual is under the influence of these three forces, he is formed by them into a “productive member of society”. This the the delineation of the same forces that Fisher wrote about in Capitalist Realism. Deleuze and Guattari, however, could imagine an alternative, which they deemed the Schizophrenic—the anti-oedipus—he is untethered, free in thought and will, he’s a nomad following a line of flight. D&G wrote lyrically, like a fever dream, about an alternative to the normative forces of capitalism and its epistemological gangsters. They gave this radical state of being many names: the body without organs, the schizophrenic, the nomad. D&G wanted to eke out an archetype without overcoding it, to try and say how something felt without saying what it was. It’s helpful to think of their writing like poetry because this is its task: expressing the inutterable, leaving the ripples of a vibe on the surface of thought. The strictures of writing about the ineffable prevented them from saying in clear terms what an alternative would be, but nevertheless, they spent much of their careers vacillating around the idea that there was one, and that its pursuit was the pursuit of freedom.

About 70 years before that, Tolstoy was writing about these normative forces as well, briefly in On Anarchy, but extensively in The Law of Love and the Law of Violence. He was on the heels of Engels’ and Marx’s writings on anarchy and communism, he was vehemently anti-war, and he found himself trying to reconcile his reading of Jesus’ teachings with the hermeneutics of the Church. His reading was radical and resulted in his excommunication. In Tolstoy’s mind, the very ontology of the State is violence, while at the same time, the prevailing message of Christ is in dialectical opposition to that: a message of anti-violence, of love.

What we would call today Trotskyist—the belief that when the proletariat revolution has succeeded, there will no longer need to be a State—is not dissimilar, structurally, to Tolstoy’s vision. In The Law of Love and the Law of Violence he wroteThe Law of Love and the Law of Violence

:

[T]he eternal spirit that penetrates each and every one of us in unity and fills us with the ambition to attain that which we ought; it is the same spirit that urges the tree to grow towards the sun, the flower to drop its seeds in autumn, and which urges us to strive after God, thereby uniting ourselves. [..] Salvation does not lie in the rituals and profession of faith, but in a clear understanding of the meaning of our life.

In On Anarchy, he elaborates on what he believes the pursuit of that meaning leads toOn Anarchy

.

But what should be done, I do unmistakably know. And if you ask: “What will happen?”, then I reply that good will certainly happen; because, acting in the way indicated by reason and love, I am acting in accordance with the highest law known to me. [..] To use violence is impossible; it would only cause reaction. To join the ranks of the Government is also impossible—one would only become its instrument. One course therefore remains—to fight the Government by means of thought, speech, actions, life, neither yielding to Government nor joining its ranks and thereby increasing its power.

To Tolstoy, the armature of revolution is love.

As I mentioned above, around this time Marx wrote about the end of the State post-revolution, wherein the proletariat seize control from the bourgeoisie and eradicate the idea of it. Marxism, in its original form, was teleological; the goal wasn’t to simply raise up the proletariat and defeat the bourgeoisie, it was to erase class altogether. I won’t elaborate much further on Marxism here, as thousands of gallons of ink and millions of bits have been spilled on the topic (the four thinkers above and few dozen between them notwithstanding) but I wanted to underscore the Marxist idea of permanent revolution because it’s crucial to our quest. It’s a key precept in Marxian logic and its modern, most orthodox adherents. Materially, it refers to the fact that a socialist revolution requires an interminable revolt against the forces of capitalism, a vigilance unending. I’ll leave it there for now, but the takeaway here is that the only successful revolution is one that goes forever.

Just shy of two millennia before that, Jesus was giving warnings about what happens when these normative forces are met with resistance.

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.

What Jesus is saying here isn’t about violence, it’s about radicalismI think an alternative reading could be the “Armor of God” where the sword is the Word, but this works too: Jesus’ message of radicalism is polemical, an inherent source of division.

. The sword isn’t literal, it’s a metaphor for division: the two references you find at this verse in the NRSV are Luke 12:51-52Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three[.]

, and Mark 13:12, both of which state the division literally.

Let’s take it a little further. The most on the nose example has to be Acts 2:44-45Just as Marx said about 2000 years later, “from each according to his ability to each according to his need.”

:

All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.

Jesus’ teachings were radical in nature, he was aware of this radicalization, and he talked about it directly. Unfortunately for Christian Nationalist weirdos, Matthew 10:34 isn’t a call to arms; it’s a warning about the effects of committing to a cause, because he knew these effects have no limits. As the story goes, the Romans left it up to his own people to decide his fate, and they chose to kill him for his aberrations. He knew what would happen, and tought that message of love and community anyway. It is through Tolstoy that I begin to see that Jesus’ message is the missing alternative. A quiet revolution.

Mia Hansen-Løve’s wonderful film Things to Come is about this quiet radicalism that I’m circling here. The film follows a middle-aged high school philosophy teacher, Nathalie, whose life is turned upside down when her husband decides to leave her. The most affecting part of the film, though, is the thinking she does as she reorients after this change in her trajectory. This culminates in a debate with a former student who’s hit the eject button on life by joining a commune in the mountains. She sees him as having a selfish and impotent vantage on radicalism. After seeing a copy of Ted Kaczynski‘s manifesto on his bookshelf, she tells him, “I hope you place more value on human life.” While pushing against those normative forces, yes, her student did so while denying the responsibilty he had to his fellow man. Why turn yourself inside out if you’re the only one to benefit from it?

Radicalism is the reification of an absolute ideology. As we get older, or at least as I get older, that conviction is alloyed by nuance—black and white become grey through dilution. This does not pollute utopia’s purity nor does it change our (again, my) fundamental belief about what’s necessary to get there, but it does ground my expectations in the material. That’s what Hansen-Løve is trying to communicate through Nathalie. As you reach middle age, you have two choices—quiet radicalism made intergenerational by conferring a moral system and its sources to our children or to others’ as an educator, or to eject and start an anarchist commune in the mountains. We valorize the latter but it’s the former that gives me hope. That moral system must be one rooted in brotherly love, turning towards one another, and a constant vigilance for care. This requires the permanent revolution of the self. When our material conditions impel us to individuate, there is revolution in community.

This alone is needed, will be successful. That is all I have to say.

And this is the will of God, the teaching of Christ. There can be only one permanent revolution — a moral one: the regeneration of the inner man. How is this revolution to take place? Nobody knows how it will take place in humanity, but every man feels it clearly in himself. And yet in our world everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself.