Since the publication of this Open Review edition of the first draft of this book manuscript, the manuscript has been significantly revised and has now entered production with Columbia University Press. Please search here soon for information on the publication of the book, Critique & Praxis.
Conclusion
In the end, there isn’t one generalizable answer to the question “What is to be done?” There are, instead, situated answers that bear unique GPS codes and date and time stamps. The desire for a single answer is misleading, and reconstructed critical theory must avoid it.
Critical theory instead must offer unique answers en situation. This is a radical departure from the tradition of critical theory, a tradition that was historically so much more foundational. Class struggle, it turns out, does not operate everywhere. The state is not always the enemy. A vanguard party is not necessarily appropriate. Leaderful—or for that matter, leaderless—is not always the right answer. Nor is non-violence. What is called for today are specific answers to the question “What is to be done?” in every location around the world. And each answer must bear its seal of time and space.
We live in what many consider to be a post-revolutionary age—post-revolutionary, in the sense that the time of grand revolutions and national liberations is behind us. But this idea that we are past revolution is myopic. The notion that the modern concept of revolution is behind us, or that the revolutionary ideal is too exigent, is deeply misleading. The fact is, revolutions are occurring all around us. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the capitalization of Russia are revolutionary. The current neoliberal turn in China is revolutionary. The Brexit break and rise of an alt-right movement in Germany, France, Italy, Hungary, Poland, and elsewhere in Europe is revolutionary. The consolidation of executive power in Turkey is revolutionary. The rise of a right-wing, neoliberal, and Christian-conservative populist movement in the United States is revolutionary. The problem is that we never see the revolutions coming, we hardly feel them when they are taking shape, we tend to identify them only in the rearview mirror. But revolutions are everywhere around us.
A revolution—or rather counterrevolution—is happening right now, under our eyes, in America. It is tearing down an embattled and wounded social welfare state and replacing it by a greedy state that functions predominantly by redistributing government largesse to a defense and national security constituency; eviscerating public education and replacing it with charter and private schools; Christianizing our way of life—constraining women’s reproductive choices, reestablishing patriarchy, reinforcing extreme and capital punishments; silencing and punishing dissenting voices, multiculturalism, and racial, ethnic, sexual, and political difference.
Entangled in the snare of the present, blinded by the seeming necessity of our existing institutions and political arrangements, few can even imagine the extraordinary political transformations that lie ahead. But they undoubtedly will be great—some even unimaginable today, just as democratic elections must have appeared unimaginable in feudal times or in the ancient régime. It is today practically impossible to imagine, in North America, something different than a liberal democracy, but surely that time will come.
Fearing the unknown, many of us cling to the modicum of political stability we have, trying not to challenge or rock things too much—even when the status quo is so appalling and intolerable. Many hardly believe in the possibility of a radically different future. This is not new. Few foresaw the French Revolution. Practically no political scientist predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall or the collapse of the Soviet Union. No one forecast the Arab Spring. Most of us were surprised by the Brexit vote, and stunned by the election of President Donald J. Trump.
These upheavals—upheavals so unexpected, they were not even predicted by the experts—are precisely the product of the endless and relentless political struggles that mark our political condition. And they have dramatic effects on the prospect, for each and every one of us, of realizing our ideals and values. They severely affect the human condition, liberty, equality, solidarity, our well being, our welfare, even our lives.
And everything we do—every choice we make, every action we do—affects these struggles and upheavals. This is the unbearable and daunting truth. Unbearable, indeed. Agonizing and excruciating. The burden is almost too much to bear—which is why so much of the history of political thought has been consumed with futile efforts to derive principles or schemes or structures that would lighten the load. That would allow us to go on with our lives. How futile, though. How counter-productive! As if institutional arrangements or legal regimes could solve our problems, when it all instead comes back to who we are and what we do—each and every one of us. No, the challenge is daunting. Almost overwhelming. But we have no choice.
A reconstructed critical theory must confront our political condition and challenge the intolerable in these critical times. Faced with the utter singularity of the battles, it must respond coherently and en situation. Through contextualized critical praxis, it must lay the groundwork for equity, compassion, and respect.
Theory and tactics: A pure theory of illusions entails a pure theory of values that demands a pure theory of tactics. This is critical theory and praxis for the twenty-first century.
