1: The contemporary discourse of the heretic is a petty-bourgeois discourse because it locates itself according to an imaginary where a genius intellectual is undermined by the collective of a church. Here, class struggle, a collective process of knowledge, and an engagement with the truth-value of the heretical pronouncement is judged as less important than an individual's supposedly unique ideas. It is presupposed that these ideas have been deprived of autonomy by an already-existing knowledge formation: the church. This already-existing knowledge formation's meaning is less important than the fact that it excludes its critic––the heretic––which is enough to valorize this critic as a heretic. For example, if an individual questions the "truth" of the labour theory of value, and is put in their place by Marxist academics, then this individual becomes the heretic and the Marxist academics the church. It doesn't matter if the latter is itself fighting against hegemony; the discourse of the heretic only requires that this supposed "church" exclude an individual genius.
2: The valorization of the heretic intentionally ignores the content of the proclaimed heresy; it is simply enough to proclaim that one is a heretic on the basis of a presumed exclusion, never mind the substance of this exclusion. Hence we are given an ahistorical narrative about the history of actually-existing heresies within religious knowledge formations. After all, there have been multiple heresies that have not possessed any useful content––not every heretic was a Copernicus, a proclaimed genius who was excluded because they were true––and we can in fact list off a number of heresies and heretics that were no more or less insightful than the church that excluded their ideas. Manicheanism was a heresy that was also a dead end for thought; Audianism was a useless anthropomorphism; Catharism hated the material world more than traditional Catholicism; Jansenism over-valorized destiny; Giardano Bruno was a mystic who desired to substitute an esoteric understanding of faith for the exoteric––a typical elitist gambit… The vast majority of heretics were simply trying to reconfirm their faith while simultaneously, and often quite awkwardly, undermining the core tenets of the same faith. The medieval heretic was thus, by-and-large, formally akin to the political opportunist: they were rightly treated as deviationists by the knowledge structure they sought to undermine even though, in most cases, their intent was to reconfirm this knowledge structure. The fact that their church cast them out does not mean that there was any value in their ideas since the content of these ideas speak for themselves.
3: The distance between the heretic and revolutionary is illustrated precisely in the experience of post-medieval heresy according to the gap between Martin Luther and Thomas Muntzer. Whereas the former was a heretic par excellence––he proposed a heretical interpretation of doctrine, he faced censure from establishment religion, he insured his excommunication––the latter transformed the heresy into a concrete political programme that rejected the class rule of priests and princes. Here, it is interesting to note that the paradigmatic heretic actually sided with the ruling class against the revolutionary who had transformed heresy into a doctrine of class struggle: Luther, the heretic, sided with the state of affairs and demanded that the peasant movement Muntzer, the revolutionary embraced, be suppressed in the interest of business as usual. Heresy thus becomes a particular imaginary of rebellion that belies often belies its actual manifestation: it is a rebellion in thought rather than action; it remains on the plane of challenging doctrine rather than the material basis for said doctrine. Since the heretic is defined by their revolt in thought, and this revolt is always particular, it is a far cry from a universal demand for thorough revolution.
4: The imaginary of the heretic appeals to individuals who wish to believe that their ideas possess worth in the face of criticism: the presumption of heresy, treated as a value, thus functions to ignore criticism without recourse to argument. Someone who has convinced themselves that they are producing unique ideas, that their thought is singular, can use the discourse of the heretic to avoid criticism. Here it becomes less important that this supposedly "heretical" set of ideas possesses significant content; all that matters is that it has classified itself in opposition to an imaginary "church" and this opposition alone is treated as the guarantee of truth. "I am undermining the knowledge formation of church x," is the presumption, "and thus my heretical status means that my ideas possess value." But if this was the case than Jansenism possesses intrinsic value simply because it was classified as heretical. Even worse, if we generalize the "church" to mean anything and everything that is critical of "heretical" revision, then opportunists such as Bernstein are correct insofar as they are "heretics" struggling against the "church" of the knowledge formation of Marxism: the content of their ideas is less important than the possibility that their revisionism was a moment of heresy. In this sense the narrative of a church that forecloses upon heretical knowledge becomes a false analogy for every idea that revolts against an established knowledge formation. Six-day creationists can thus identify themselves as heretics set against a "church of evolution"––irregardless of the fact that they proclaim fidelity to a religious (and thus, by definition, non-heretical) order––and thus pretend that their anti-scientific ideas are correct insofar as they have been deemed heretical by scientific truth procedures. Ben Stein's reactionary documentary, Expelled, is paradigmatic of this kind of thought.
5: Indeed, the most pernicious reactionary ideologies persist according to discourses of heresy. Mens Rights Activists declare themselves heretics opposed to an imagined feminist "church" that has supposedly seized power. Online fascists use a Matrix idiom to refer to themselves as "red pillers"––heretics against the established "blue pill" reality, individuals who are aware of some secret truth. White supremacists take bastion in the fantasy that they are resisting an anti-racist order that has become a politically correct establishment. Nick Land and his ilk intentionally use the terms "Cathedral" and "church" to refer to a fantasized order of progressives who oppose Land's appeal to an absolute, backwards order. The heretic is an abstract rebel that does not have to possess its own politics; it is simply a cipher of all that is foreclosed by knowledge formations and truth procedures.
6: The heretic is akin to the maverick rebel. That is, the heretic's value is located in their individual resistance to any collective structure. The meaning of this collective structure doesn't matter; it just needs to be a complex assemblage that, by legislating thought, produces, according to this valorization of heresy, individuals who reject this legislation. The content of such legislation matters less than the individual heretic's revolt; the judgment is always regional. For instance, if a very particular political science department happens to be "Marxist" in some form, then this is enough to declare a non-Marxist scholar working within this context––even if he is a reactionary––a heretic and thus imbue him with value. The fact that Marxism is not considered legitimate by bourgeois power does not matter; only its apparent regional authority is enough to provide an outlier, within the region where it exercises some kind of influence, the right to label themselves heretic and thus imagine they are rebelling against a hegemony that is, in fact, not hegemonic.
7: To categorize oneself as a heretic is to enshrine the values of the order that is being violated. It is these orders that use the language of heresy––of betrayal, because this is what it means––to condemn their critics. The value of those heretics that provided us with scientific truths is not in their heresy but in the fact that they were not, according to another point of view, simply heretics: they were correct; another worldview would not classify their thought as heresy. For example, the reason we value Copernicus is not because the Catholic Church called him a heretic but because, in his time, he was correct. If the same Church did not call him a heretic we would still accept that he was correct. His heresy had nothing to do with the value of his knowledge production; all it does is inform us of the ways in which a particular ruling class resisted scientific insight.
8: Any viable and progressive political project must necessarily legislate against potential heretics. The Catholic Church was not "wrong" to legislate against those who violated its order according to its rationale for existing. Those of us who think it should not exist, however, should also reject its authority to determine who is a heretic and what is heresy––the judgements that determine heresy are based on a recognizable authority, on the right to condemn a traitor. But any political formation, regardless of the content of its politics, will do the same: the meaning of these heresies will change according to political fidelity.
9: The revolutionary necessarily parts way with the heretic. In some cases the heretic will prosecute the revolutionary because, while the heretic celebrates transgressive thought they usually have o patient for material transgression––i.e. the rejection of the state of affairs defined by class power. Inversely, then, in moments of revolution the revolutionary will necessarily suppress the heretic who, similarly, bases the "heretical" form of their thought according to a rejection of revolution and thus a headlong embrace of reaction.
2: The valorization of the heretic intentionally ignores the content of the proclaimed heresy; it is simply enough to proclaim that one is a heretic on the basis of a presumed exclusion, never mind the substance of this exclusion. Hence we are given an ahistorical narrative about the history of actually-existing heresies within religious knowledge formations. After all, there have been multiple heresies that have not possessed any useful content––not every heretic was a Copernicus, a proclaimed genius who was excluded because they were true––and we can in fact list off a number of heresies and heretics that were no more or less insightful than the church that excluded their ideas. Manicheanism was a heresy that was also a dead end for thought; Audianism was a useless anthropomorphism; Catharism hated the material world more than traditional Catholicism; Jansenism over-valorized destiny; Giardano Bruno was a mystic who desired to substitute an esoteric understanding of faith for the exoteric––a typical elitist gambit… The vast majority of heretics were simply trying to reconfirm their faith while simultaneously, and often quite awkwardly, undermining the core tenets of the same faith. The medieval heretic was thus, by-and-large, formally akin to the political opportunist: they were rightly treated as deviationists by the knowledge structure they sought to undermine even though, in most cases, their intent was to reconfirm this knowledge structure. The fact that their church cast them out does not mean that there was any value in their ideas since the content of these ideas speak for themselves.
3: The distance between the heretic and revolutionary is illustrated precisely in the experience of post-medieval heresy according to the gap between Martin Luther and Thomas Muntzer. Whereas the former was a heretic par excellence––he proposed a heretical interpretation of doctrine, he faced censure from establishment religion, he insured his excommunication––the latter transformed the heresy into a concrete political programme that rejected the class rule of priests and princes. Here, it is interesting to note that the paradigmatic heretic actually sided with the ruling class against the revolutionary who had transformed heresy into a doctrine of class struggle: Luther, the heretic, sided with the state of affairs and demanded that the peasant movement Muntzer, the revolutionary embraced, be suppressed in the interest of business as usual. Heresy thus becomes a particular imaginary of rebellion that belies often belies its actual manifestation: it is a rebellion in thought rather than action; it remains on the plane of challenging doctrine rather than the material basis for said doctrine. Since the heretic is defined by their revolt in thought, and this revolt is always particular, it is a far cry from a universal demand for thorough revolution.
4: The imaginary of the heretic appeals to individuals who wish to believe that their ideas possess worth in the face of criticism: the presumption of heresy, treated as a value, thus functions to ignore criticism without recourse to argument. Someone who has convinced themselves that they are producing unique ideas, that their thought is singular, can use the discourse of the heretic to avoid criticism. Here it becomes less important that this supposedly "heretical" set of ideas possesses significant content; all that matters is that it has classified itself in opposition to an imaginary "church" and this opposition alone is treated as the guarantee of truth. "I am undermining the knowledge formation of church x," is the presumption, "and thus my heretical status means that my ideas possess value." But if this was the case than Jansenism possesses intrinsic value simply because it was classified as heretical. Even worse, if we generalize the "church" to mean anything and everything that is critical of "heretical" revision, then opportunists such as Bernstein are correct insofar as they are "heretics" struggling against the "church" of the knowledge formation of Marxism: the content of their ideas is less important than the possibility that their revisionism was a moment of heresy. In this sense the narrative of a church that forecloses upon heretical knowledge becomes a false analogy for every idea that revolts against an established knowledge formation. Six-day creationists can thus identify themselves as heretics set against a "church of evolution"––irregardless of the fact that they proclaim fidelity to a religious (and thus, by definition, non-heretical) order––and thus pretend that their anti-scientific ideas are correct insofar as they have been deemed heretical by scientific truth procedures. Ben Stein's reactionary documentary, Expelled, is paradigmatic of this kind of thought.
5: Indeed, the most pernicious reactionary ideologies persist according to discourses of heresy. Mens Rights Activists declare themselves heretics opposed to an imagined feminist "church" that has supposedly seized power. Online fascists use a Matrix idiom to refer to themselves as "red pillers"––heretics against the established "blue pill" reality, individuals who are aware of some secret truth. White supremacists take bastion in the fantasy that they are resisting an anti-racist order that has become a politically correct establishment. Nick Land and his ilk intentionally use the terms "Cathedral" and "church" to refer to a fantasized order of progressives who oppose Land's appeal to an absolute, backwards order. The heretic is an abstract rebel that does not have to possess its own politics; it is simply a cipher of all that is foreclosed by knowledge formations and truth procedures.
6: The heretic is akin to the maverick rebel. That is, the heretic's value is located in their individual resistance to any collective structure. The meaning of this collective structure doesn't matter; it just needs to be a complex assemblage that, by legislating thought, produces, according to this valorization of heresy, individuals who reject this legislation. The content of such legislation matters less than the individual heretic's revolt; the judgment is always regional. For instance, if a very particular political science department happens to be "Marxist" in some form, then this is enough to declare a non-Marxist scholar working within this context––even if he is a reactionary––a heretic and thus imbue him with value. The fact that Marxism is not considered legitimate by bourgeois power does not matter; only its apparent regional authority is enough to provide an outlier, within the region where it exercises some kind of influence, the right to label themselves heretic and thus imagine they are rebelling against a hegemony that is, in fact, not hegemonic.
7: To categorize oneself as a heretic is to enshrine the values of the order that is being violated. It is these orders that use the language of heresy––of betrayal, because this is what it means––to condemn their critics. The value of those heretics that provided us with scientific truths is not in their heresy but in the fact that they were not, according to another point of view, simply heretics: they were correct; another worldview would not classify their thought as heresy. For example, the reason we value Copernicus is not because the Catholic Church called him a heretic but because, in his time, he was correct. If the same Church did not call him a heretic we would still accept that he was correct. His heresy had nothing to do with the value of his knowledge production; all it does is inform us of the ways in which a particular ruling class resisted scientific insight.
8: Any viable and progressive political project must necessarily legislate against potential heretics. The Catholic Church was not "wrong" to legislate against those who violated its order according to its rationale for existing. Those of us who think it should not exist, however, should also reject its authority to determine who is a heretic and what is heresy––the judgements that determine heresy are based on a recognizable authority, on the right to condemn a traitor. But any political formation, regardless of the content of its politics, will do the same: the meaning of these heresies will change according to political fidelity.
9: The revolutionary necessarily parts way with the heretic. In some cases the heretic will prosecute the revolutionary because, while the heretic celebrates transgressive thought they usually have o patient for material transgression––i.e. the rejection of the state of affairs defined by class power. Inversely, then, in moments of revolution the revolutionary will necessarily suppress the heretic who, similarly, bases the "heretical" form of their thought according to a rejection of revolution and thus a headlong embrace of reaction.
This article mirrors much of my own experience growing out of conservative Christianity and towards Marxism. I passed through a phase of self-proclaimed heresy that you deftly describe. Ultimately, the Unitarian tradition in particular romanticizes religious anti-orthodoxy regardless of its actual content, partly as a way of claiming a tradition of martyrs for itself. Michael Servetus, the Socinians, etc. My wish to be heretical was a way of distancing myself from my old tradition but did not serve any positive purpose because it was simply self-righteous and isolating rather than liberating. Good write-up.
ReplyDeleteWell at least someone found this interesting! This really manifested because of my annoyance at Laruelle going on and on about heresy in a book I was reviewing, reminding me of people in different departments claiming they were the "heretics" of some "big church" marxism, as if this was enough to make their theoretical commitments correct. But then, after reading it last week where it had been written to point 6, I wondered whether it would just be too damn obscure to throw up here.
DeleteIs it therefore incorrect to say that the political and social implications of the religious beliefs(specifically the practical conclusions of these) within the heretical communities did not concretely imply "material transgression"?
ReplyDeleteNot simply because they were "heretical"… What I meant here by "material transgression" was a crossing of the line from the heretical to the revolutionary. Even in a small sense… What made Copernicus important was not that he was a heretic but that his "heresy" was scientifically significant and literally undermined Church dogma for the betterment of society. As opposed to heretics like, say, Bruno who was an occultist and whose beliefs, if they hadn't been classified as heretical, would not at all transgress a mystified world order.
DeleteHey JMP,
ReplyDeleteAs a Leftcom it would be great if you could tell me your opinions or maybe even write an article on Left communism/Ultra Leftism. You seem to be relatively critical and nuanced so it would be great to hear your point of view on the matter.
Thanks alot
First of all, my thoughts on left communism should be pretty much implicit in so much that I've written; particularly in The Communist Necessity. The next problem, though, is what such an article would consist of: the original left communists (such as Bordiga, etc.), those left communists who take their cue from the Situationists (or the SI itself), Dauvé and the post-Dauvé leftcoms (i.e. Endnotes), the Tiqqun and Invisible Committee types, the autonomists (some will place themselves in a leftcom tradition, others won't), whatever is on libcom? The problem, here, is that while some leftcoms will claim all of these tendencies are "left communism", others within these tendencies may not and focus on the very real differences. Like the traditional leftcoms I know from Montreal, who I met back when I was giving a talk at MNB, gave me a journal that possessed an orthodox fidelity to the "left communists" of Lenin's day and that's about that. They really didn't like newer tendencies…
DeleteAlso, as an aside, I have written on "ultra-leftism" before because I actually don't think it's a very good term, these days, where according to opportunists everything that's even the slightest bit militantly communist is "ultra-left". Also, aside from some good sections in that piece by Lenin (the only piece by Lenin that opportunists love, while rejecting everything else he wrote), LWCID, history has shown that Pankhurst was correct.
Oh I forgot to ask if you could provide your viewpoint on the state capitalist theory on ml states and why they were socialist. Maybe even write an article idk.thanks
DeleteBeen a while since I read all the debates about state capitalism, but as to why I believe that there were periods where the Soviet Union and China were socialist I think I mention this kind of thing at multiple points throughout this blog by holding that socialism, not being communism, is where the proletariat is in command of the bourgeoisie – that is just a reversal of the same class antagonism of capitalism – the dictatorship of the proletariat. Of course there are tons of semantic arguments as to why the DoP isn't socialism, and all rely on quote mongering, as an argument on some old post with someone went on forever. I also tend to hold to the position that socialism is also a transitionary social formation, kind of like mercantilism was to capitalism, but I ping-pong back and forth between this. Maybe I will write an article here on this in more detail but, to be honest, I don't really have a lot of energy to write the kind of thing that requires the academic attention that I would prefer to spend on my academic career.
DeleteHowever many would claim that these states weren't examples of dotp because of a lack of elections to democratically elected members of the communist party by the workers, and the abolishment of the soviets.
DeleteAre you trolling for an argument, here, in a comment string? One of the reasons I showed a lack of enthusiasm to respond was because this was my suspicion. And really, I have no idea why you think: a) a dictatorship of the proletariat has to have elections (there are entire historical debates about whether this is necessary); b) why you think that the leadership within the party didn't in fact go through political changes due to their own electoral mechanisms at different points (there's a reason Stalin won out over Trotsky, because the majority selected him, just as there's a reason that Mao won out in China but then lost at certain moments as well, losing his position for a time). As for the abolishment of the soviets, I'm quite happy to agree that the process that followed from this abolishment did indeed lead the CPSU down the path towards capitalist restoration. Here, as noted, I'm in agreement with Bettelheim about this where he pretty much said the same thing.
DeleteBut let me put it another way… If you're going to claim that actually existing socialisms weren't good examples of the dictatorship of the proletariat because of a lack of party elections [don't resort to the vague "many" because there are always "many" on various sides of a debate], and use this as some example of how they were "state capitalist" you immediately run into this problem: the false association of party elections with socialism when, as reality should tell you, self-proclaimed capitalist nations use internal party elections, and party versus party elections, as part of business as usual. Hence, voting is not tantamount to socialism, and all you've done is produce a red herring that has nothing to do with whether these states were socialist or not.
DeleteNow I'm open to the argument about whether or not the proletariat was able to participate in any significant way in its supposed dictatorship, but elections aren't really the best way to discuss this because, as aforementioned, capitalist states also use elections to justify bourgeois power. Whether or not the party of the CPSU under Stalin had any internal democracy actually doesn't get around the possible problem of whether or not this party really represented proletarian dictatorship if the masses outside of this party were not part of these internal decisions: it would still be a "party of the general staff", which was Stalin's conception of it, and that top down approach, even if it had a good electoral practice within its ranks, is something I would actually say is a problem.
Which brings us to China on the eave of the Cultural Revolution. What we have here is a temporary reversal in the concept of the party as the general staff because the masses were exhorted to bombard the party headquarters and, for the first time in socialist history, you have a situation of mass participation that is far beyond anything formal electoral politics could ever produce. All serious academic examinations of this period break down into the four camps: the first, and the most cold warrior, is a conspiracy theory that claims that all of this chaos was secretly controlled by Mao, as if he was a god-like puppeteer that could do what no person ever could do, and organize every political group and line unleashed in the GPCR to fight it out with perfect Machiavellian precision (and to do what, really, considering that eventually he died and his political line was defeated); then you have the more sober cold war historians who think that the problem with Chinese communism was precisely this chaos mob rule, the so-called "tyranny of the majority", where thousands upon thousands of people rampaged and murdered each other because they were essentially barbaric and because people cannot be trusted to function outside of a proper rule of law; then there is the Meisner-esque approach that claims that, in the midst of a political line struggle, Mao and his allies sought help from the masses but then backed away and, seeing the stability of the country fall apart, had to reign things in; and finally there is the Hinton-esque approach that argues that the line struggle was such that Mao never backed away but that the political lines kept battling it out and that, eventually, Mao's enemies won and the Cultural Revolution was ended because of the victory of the capitalist roaders who would eventually take China into state capitalism. Whatever the case, you have a situation where the masses are mobilized in far greater numbers, and in far more chaotic but liberating ways, then what could ever be accomplished through internal party elections… and isn't the point to mobilize the masses?
[cont/]
DeleteSo getting back to the point: workers can participate, en masse, in bourgeois elections and still elect bourgeois parties, so this tells us nothing about socialism; the dictatorship of the proletariat can be a top down, general staff affair that produces an autocratic socialism, but calling this "state capitalist" doesn't follow because the political convention of democracy is not intrinsically socialist; there can indeed be an autocratic socialism that will open the possibility of capitalist restoration, but it is not clear that this can be defeated simply by an electoral mechanism––it needs a larger mass mobilization, something like the GPCR.
I apologise if I came across as a troll. It's just im very conflicted between choosing maoism or left communism and wanted another pov on it. Sorry.
DeleteNo problem: sorry for assuming you might be trolling. It's always difficult to tell and, in my defense, I have been getting more trolling than useful comments in the past year. I hope that the longer responses I provided, that really questioned the whole election thing, were useful. Let's just say that, in my opinion, left communism is interesting philosophically but is useless when it comes to revolutionary theory. I'm of the opinion that any theoretical tendency that did not develop through the practice of actually making revolution fails to satisfy the main qualification of Marxism: class struggle, making revolution. Thus, it is about as useful as Kantian ethics or any utopian socialism. Maoism, however, is a theory that has developed because of the experience of two world historical revolutions, the successes and failures of these revolutions, and is the theory behind the mobilization of multiple people's wars today.
DeleteAt the end of the day, though, I don't think ideology is about "choosing" like you're at a store, although most people like to put it that way, especially on online forums. Getting involved in some sort of class struggle project in your social context and finding ways to connect with the masses is a better teacher than reading ideological debates on x or y issue. Also, while I will defend MLM to the death and am involved in MLM political work, I also have no problem in the real world working with people who are left coms or anarchists or whatever in united fronts and such as long as they are actually working for the same goal. A left com active in struggle alongside me is more valuable than an internet Maoist who just argues MLM theory.