Revolve or break?
In 1843, Karl Marx replied to a letter from Arnold Ruge. The immediate context of the letter is the banning of the Rheinische Zeitung by the Prussian Government, of which Marx was the editor. I cannot find Ruge’s letter, but Marx quotes it sufficiently to gather the gist of their disagreement. Marx wrote:
I assure you, even if one has no feeling of national pride at all, nevertheless one has a feeling of national shame […]The mantle of liberalism has been discarded and the most disgusting despotism in all its nakedness is disclosed to the eyes of the whole world.
That, too, is a revelation, although one of the opposite kind. It is a truth which, at least, teaches us to recognise the emptiness of our patriotism and the abnormity of our state system, and makes us hide our faces in shame. You look at me with a smile and ask: What is gained by that? No revolution is ‘made out of shame. I reply: Shame is already revolution of a kind; shame is actually the victory of the French Revolution over the German patriotism that defeated it in 1813. Shame is a kind of anger which is turned inward. And if a whole nation really experienced a sense of shame, it would be like a lion, crouching ready to spring. I admit that in Germany even shame is not yet felt; on the contrary, these miserable people are still patriots. But what system is capable of knocking the patriotism out of them if not this ridiculous system of the new cavalier.
Ruge, clearly, disagreed with Marx that ‘national shame’ might produce a revolution. And, Ruge was right - not simply because of the course of subsequent events in Germany, but also because the very capacity to experience ‘national shame’ assumes a bond, a patriotism however scandalised and affronted or, rather, whose very ability to be scandalised is premised on this bond.
However, there are a couple of things worth noting about this brief exchange of letters. The first is that Marx talks about “anger turned inward”, that shame is “already a revolution of a kind”, and perhaps he is right. Not in the sense that the concept of revolution marks a break, but in the sense that it posits a return, a turning back, going in circles, if you will.
The second point is this: the ‘break’ that Althusser, among others, suggested between the ‘early’ and ‘late’ Marx - the break with Hegel - begins within the very context of this frustration with the dialectical circle of ‘national shame’. To be sure, Althusser situates the break much later, with Capital. But in 1843, Marx is also writing the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, “The Jewish Question”, and other attempts to settle with Hegel, going back but also going beyond. Here, Marx begins the search for a break not just with Hegel, liberalism, idealism and related as Marxologies have given an account of, but with the sense of national shame, of the affective terrain of nationalism (and the state) as the lever of a revolution, and searches for an understanding of revolution that might be something other than a turning around in dialectical circles.
And, Marx goes - as it was once called - into exile.
However that may work out, and essentially these points of marxological hermeneutics can’t amount to much more than speculation, this seems to me entirely unhelpful. What does ‘national shame’ mean? Does it mean that one identifies with a nation and feels ashamed for the state’s actions? Or does it mean one is ashamed of identifying with a nation? Or does it mean that the nation, collectively, is ashamed? And so on, permutation after permuation. After all it could be a simple statistical fact that many people in a nation are ashamed, or it could be something more mythological, or it could be that ideology has seized on shame, etc… The problem here is altogether obvious, and it is that Marx is talking losely, he hasn’t explained what he means.
As for the reading, I find it implausible for a number of reasons. First this would antedate the 1844 manuscripts, and leave very little from which Marx could have changed his mind; secondly I don’t buy the Althusserian dichotomy, except insofar as Marx took a turn towards a Hegelian position of more intense faith in the dialectic, greater authoritarianism and greater emphasis on collective agents; and thirdly, it seems to me this would make some of Marx’s saying regarding the 1848 revolutions more or less incomprehensible. You also make it seem like Marx chose to go into exile.
But let’s not toy around, huh? The point here is that you want to argue that people in advanced so-called democracies have no responsibility for the actions of their governments. This is what is at stake. It seems to me that such an idea would be wrong even if democracy were to be merely one huge scam, since the people of these territories are in a position to coerce the states that organize over them, if they choose to do so. In fact, people have unusual degrees of freedom in the advanced countries, which set about doing some horrible things in the names of their populations, who are in a far better position to do something about it than, say, the inhabitants of Basra, Saudi Arabia or Haiti. They certainly have an eminent right to intervene in their government, and their failure to do anything about it should be a source of immense shame. The costs of dissent are miniscule, and little happens. Whether the results of action in this case would be reformist or revolultionary seems to me to be a point of theology; obviously if you intervene in the nation state for internationalist reasons, that’s not exactly the reproduction of nationalism.
TCO [November 1, 2005 @ 5:02 pm]
Oh, please, Thiago. This is you, again, getting irritated because I’m picking on democracy. Take a deep breath, because I’ve much more to say about the topic.
I have no intention of arguing that people are not responsible for the actions of governments, which are, last time I looked, made up of people. I do, however, think that national shame is both a prevalent response to particular things - say, the internment camps - and that it reasserts the very problem which establishes, say, the internment camps. I think it’s a dead-end, a sterile (if indignant) repetition of one’s belonging.
So, unlike what you imply here, I don’t for a moment believe that if one removes national shame as the affective trigger for protest that protest is no longer possible. Just like I don’t for a moment believe that opposition to the current political system can be assembled by claiming that there is no authentic democracy in existence.
And where do I make it sound as if Marx opted to go into exile? What are you on? Both you and I know that Marx was hounded out of Germany and then Paris. Did you need me to write a short biography so you wouldn’t have the opportunity to sublimate your irritation at my views on democracy into trivia?
If you want to know what I meant from a minor remark about exile, then ask. In any event, I was thinking that ‘exile’ always supposes the possibility of a return. He returned to Germany briefly in 1848, but not for very long. And it’s that experience of a closure, the failure of the much-heralded revolution of 1848, that becomes apparent as Marx’s more regularly accounted for break with Hegel. As for when the ostensible break occured, assuming that one grants such an instance, you might want to notice the word “begins”. You might also want to lay off the caffeine.
s0metim3s [November 1, 2005 @ 10:12 pm]
Someone who may not be your cuppa, Larry Hirschhorn, has some really good stuff on the importance of shame to the process of splitting. Hirschhor is a consultant who uses psychoanalysis in organizational settings. LIke I said, not your cuppa. The book is called, The Workplace Within. Another book that is useful, to me, was Eli Sagan’s discussion of the difference between guilt and shame. With guilt, you have the recycling, he argues, with shame, you don’t.
I wrote about it at bit at Bitch | Lab:
It’s a shame
I guess I tend to disagree. I think shame, as opposed to guilt, can be a productive/generative process — at least on an individual level. All bets are off when it comes to organizations, states, nations, and other forms of collective identity, I guess, since I”m not one to believe that these are, in any sense, merely individual-like pscyhes writ large.
The Bitch
Bitch | Lab
Bitchier. Raunchier. Wonkette with attitude — for the feminist left.
(jiss amusin’ myself!)
Bitch [November 2, 2005 @ 7:02 am]
I give up. You say everything, and nothing.
TCO [November 2, 2005 @ 8:21 am]
I’m not dismissing shame, or guilt for that matter where guilt is involved. But national shame is a really specific kind of thing.
s0metim3s [November 2, 2005 @ 10:48 am]
… is national shame?
I’m not sure, but hopefully Angela will write more about. She wrote a post about this topic, starting with a letter from Marx to Ruge.
I’d like to hear more about the idea. I’m not completely sure I follow, but I think it’s a…
What in the hell ... [November 2, 2005 @ 3:33 pm]