Thread by @deontologistics

I was quite pleased with this as a brief summary what I take to be the most counterproductive arguments made on the political left. However, it might be worth elaborating on them a bit, so a new thread is needed.

https://twitter.com/deontologistics/status/1339008636794904576

What these arguments have in common is that they're quick and easy discursive tactics which foreclose much better discursive strategies. They are most often used unthinkingly, but there are theoretical positions that transform such *local* tactics into *global* strategies.

Let's begin with the tactic of *naturalisation*. I've explained the problems I have with normative naturalism as a general position elsewhere (deontologistics.wordpress.com/2019/10/06/tfe…), but it's worth analysing the trap involved in even implying some form of it by accident on the local scale.

So, say one wants to defend gay rights. One reaches for the easy argument that: i) (some) people are born homosexual and that, ii) because no one should be punished for something they have no control over, iii) we must legally accommodate their sexual inclinations/behaviours.

One's opponent then says: "Of course it's not their fault that they were born broken! This is precisely why we need to show compassion and fortitude by renewing our efforts to *fix* them!" It turns out that the brute fact of birth is not enough to counter *pathologisation*.

So one responds by arguing that not only are (some) people born homosexual, but that this is a *natural* state found everywhere in nature, and should be accepted on this basis. One transforms a natural fact, into a natural norm. Congratulations, you've walked into the trap.

One's opponent can then accept one's framing, admit that there is such a thing as 'natural homosexuality' whose parameters must be negotiated (e.g., permitting it within *normal* constraints: monogamy/reproduction), and in doing so disconnect this struggle from parallel ones.

One has earned a consolation prize whose dimensions can still be haggled over, but in doing so one has abandoned *solidarity* with any other prohibited/pathologised way of life, be they closely related (e.g., polyamory) or not (e.g., neurodiversity).

One can aim to strategically leverage such consolations by ratcheting from one to another in the long liberal march to total mutual recognition, but it tends to involve starting from scratch and building new coalitions time after time, as the newly naturalised bow out.

Strategic solidarity is much to be preferred.

A further caveat here: I'm *not* opposed to pathologisation in principle. There are natural states which *aren't good* in a variety of ways. I just don't think nature tells us which states are good and which aren't. This means there's another easy tactic we should avoid here.

And if one wants a concrete example of the divide and conquer dynamics enabled by the #bornthisway line, look no further than recent fractures in solidarity between LGB and T movements: lgballiance.org.uk

There are a lot of ways in which this too easy tactic gets elevated into an overarching theoretical strategy, ranging from fully explicit metaphysical (and theological) defences of normative naturalism to more insidious crypto-naturalisms. They're all selling magic beans.

Let's turn to the *eschatology* of capital. I've already rejected specific errors, such as conflating capital and money (deontologistics.wordpress.com/2019/09/30/the…), articulated a way of thinking about capitalism's end (deontologistics.wordpress.com/2018/02/18/oft…), and the future as such (deontologistics.wordpress.com/2016/08/20/pro…).

However, as with the tactic of naturalisation, it's important to say something about how the *local* tactic of inflating the *abstract* structural role of capitalism in arguments against it forecloses strategic options in *global* debates regarding *concrete* political action.

Let’s say one wants to make a moral/political argument that *something* needs to be done about some aspect of the rises in economic inequality during the ‘neoliberal era’, such as stagnating wages, inflating costs for housing, education, childcare, or progressive precaritisation.

How the relevant issue is *explained* will frame the options for action, and control the flow of the debate. This allows one to make tactical errors by appealing to easy explanations of economic problems that relinquish control over practical debates about political solutions.

The more one *abstracts* from the explanatory details by subsuming them within a larger economic phenomena (e.g. financialisation) or a more pervasive underlying cause (e.g. neoliberalism), the more easily one is trapped in more difficult debates about larger *concrete* changes.

To take some extreme examples, one might abstract away from the details of: i) the postwar influx of women (back) into the workforce by merging patriarchy and capitalism, or ii) changes in the composition of capital by appeal to a generic tendency of the rate of profit to fall.

In either case, one invites mealy mouthed responses from one's opponents wherein they accept the *normative force* of one's worries, but deny that any *political restitution* is possible given the scale of the concrete changes ones abstract explanation implies.

Lazy explanations license corresponding failures of imagination, insofar as they tacitly admit that any practical plan must begin by imagining a *complete* transition from patriarchy/capitalism as an outcome of strategic action. This imaginative possibility is then foreclosed.

Lazy explanations of the complex internal workings and variant historical manifestations of capitalism, not to mention their relations to other systemic structures (e.g., patriarchy, colonialism, etc.) enable the discursive gestures that establish and maintain capitalist realism.

To be clear, I'm not saying that normative critiques of capitalism (or other systemic structures) need to always be accompanied by maximally detailed accounts of it as a complete system and its historical evolution. That would be a horrible burden of proof to put anyone under.

Rather, I'm trying to say that we should make sure not to *put ourselves* under such a burden of proof when arguing with those who delight in agreeing with such normative critiques while denying the call to action they are supposed to represent.

The problem is that so many people who learn these critiques only really rehearse them in a setting in which their peers are in sufficient agreement with them not to respond in this way. They train their critical reflexes like martial artists who will never see a real fight.

It should thus not surprise us that certain schools of critique end up as ineffective in open debate as many schools of martial arts in open competitions. Or that they find similar ways to preserve their delusions regarding their critical superiority.

What does this have to do with eschatology then? Well, political eschatology is what happens when one responds to defences of capitalist realism by accepting the limitations on imagination it maintains. This may feel empowering, but it is at best a power fantasy.

One has perhaps acquired some unassailable moral authority, but at the price of giving up any pretense that one (or worse, anyone) has any actual power to bring about the required economic changes through strategic political action. One has become a priest, not a politician.

Tactics ossify into performances. Explanations degenerate into doctrines. Both thought and action are impoverished as they lose their connection to the practical problems that constrain them. Positive political *strategy* has become negative political *ritual*.

Ultimately, the end of capitalism (or whichever systemic mode of oppression one is concerned with) becomes an advent that can only be anticipated and engaged with through political rituals that have been abstracted from their original tactical context (e.g., demonstrations).

Now, as scathing as this sounds, I don't mean to suggest that this is always or even often very harmful. It's fine for people to exit debates about political strategy and only pursue those normative questions that articulate our hopes (if not what we can realistically hope for).

There will always be some discursive space for completely theoretical negative critiques that refuse to be drawn into questions of possibility, probably, or practicality. Critical theory is here to stay.

Not everyone should become a politician, be they an academic balancing theoretical explanations and practical proposals from the comfort of their armchair, a professional advocate invested in the workings of democracy, or an everyday activist organising on the meanest of streets.

We should merely be extremely suspicious of those who aim to have their cake and eat it: hoarding moral authority by somehow being more theoretical than the most ivory tower academic, and more practical than the most engaged of street level activists. Priests pretending politics.

To close, I'm under no illusions about my own perennial impracticality. I'll most likely never make any significant contribution to positive political debates about strategies for realising concrete improvements to the world as it is, nor matter how radical or miniscule.

But I can call out counterproductive attempts to contribute to these debates when I see them, and maybe give people the resources to do the same. There is enough of the Priest in me to manage that.

For those looking for some more concrete examples of the tendencies I have in mind, I recommend this piece, which does a really great job of describing a logic common to several different strands of political thought: metamute.org/editorial/arti…

I'd also recommend this piece by China Mieville, which tries to formulate an 'apophatic Marxism' by explicitly appealing to the resources of negative theology. I'm happy to say I detest this sort of thing, no matter how much I like Mieville's other work: salvage.zone/in-print/silen…

Negative theology never helped anyone *do* anything, even if it has helped a lot of people *not* do a lot of things.