Ungrounding
Posted: April 16th, 2020 | Author: buenravov | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: critical theory, Deleuze, grounding, neoliberalism, philosophy, society | Comments Off on Ungrounding
An old argument, poorly articulated and predominantly dull, is lurking in the minds of the frightened ruling class’ representatives. It claims that the so-called proletariat is striving to replace them in their role as rulers of the world. I will not commit myself explaining its origin and how various leftist movements have benefited or suffered by their acquiescence with it. However, there’s something of importance in it, which deserves further examination.
Proletariat’s ultimate goal is, the story goes, to dominate the world in general and bourgeoisie in particular. Just as the gods in ancient mythology spend their time drinking a drink reserved exclusively for them, the same goes for the rulers of the world. Hither, following the argument’s implications, at stake in the class conflict is the very activity which defines those in charge. And if that activity, echoed by the gods, is drinking, then it follows that the struggle’s end is the right to leisure, since the latter implies the former.
Still, we might say (following Deleuze’s analysis from ‘What is Grounding?’) that rulers end — i.e. leisure — must become infinite, inesse, in order to do good to its subjects. Once the gods (rulers of the world) quit drinking (leisure), they would no longer be gods (rulers of the world). Deleuze sees drinking as a natural end in itself. It most definitely is, but the same goes for the more general term leisure, under which drinking is ordinated. However, let’s repeat it for the sake of clarity — the natural end must transform into an infinite task. Thus the bourgeoisie is bourgeois as longs as its natural end (leisure) reveal itself — to whom? We are left only with the proletarian — as an infinite end. Thus the proletarian is the one who denies the transformation of bourgeoisie’s leisure into an infinite task. Moreover, he’s anti-capitalist as long as he’s maintaining this stance. This makes sense only if we assume (the right to) leisure to be, by definition, a natural end and, for that matter, a universal one.
But here we encounter a different problem from a different perspective — from the bourgeoisie’s perspective. We must ask ourselves — especially if we aren’t a bourgeois — do they feel as devoted to leisure individuals? Absolutely not! I dare you to ask one of them and report back. For the sake of argument, I’ll assume you’ve done it. Their money, they must have replied, came from “hard work and sweat”? They are, as a personal description, “workaholics”? I’m sure they’ve said knowing leisure only because have seen it exercised by their employees? And I guess (don’t eat me alive) from their perspective, it’s somehow true. What we see as their infinite leisure is, from their view- or standpoint, a hard-working going on. I’ll suggest then, that what we deal here with is monadological — not just an ideological or purely dogmatic — standpoint that reveals as much as possible according to its structure, according to its functionality and, most of all, according to its telos. In other words, this standpoint projects without only what it possesses within.
Furthermore, we might argue that “the condition” of the bourgeois and —on a higher pale — this of the petty-bourgeois, are just as dialectical as this of the proletarian. In other words, their nature’s condition is dualistic. On the one hand, the proletarian condition is overwhelmed by labour itself, including by the institutions and instruments which were successfully implemented to control and exploit his labour. On the other, its vital impetus comes from its relation with the real doing (in the highest sense of real, which capitalism allows us to imply when it comes to labour), its connection with nature, the others, the class’ organization and so on. Likewise, the bourgeois condition is dually overwhelmed. On the one side, by the proletariat itself, who’s jogging the state, unionizing, following its course in the class struggle. On the other, it’s overwhelmed by the market, the way it functions and the promise it makes, mostly to the petty-bourgeois: “I’ll crush you as harder I can, the moment I can”. Thus the effort not to be crushed by the market is, in the final analysis, bourgeois’ job. That’s what he calls “hard work”. As Lefebvre puts it, the bourgeois’ consciousness is a private one, its life is a private one. It’s the socio-economical relations, therefore, which determinate how the world would reveal itself to each class, subclass or even group, through different perspectives or standpoints. The bourgeois:
is not aware, or is only partly aware, of being deprived. He tends to become withdrawn and to conflate his ‘deprivation’ and his property, for the two go together: he thinks he owns his self, his ideas, his life, his family, his country, just as he owns his material ‘assets’. The deprivation of the working class is rich in possibilities. For the individual proletarian to become conscious of the proletariat as a class, of its social reality, and thus of society as a whole, of its action, and therefore of its political future, is to have already superseded the proletarian condition. It is to have achieved a great and true thought: that of the social and human totality, of creative labour. On the other hand, the petty-bourgeois and bourgeois who discover self-consciousness, but fail to reject the self (as they would if they came over to Marxism) become remote from this great truth; they stop being able to see man, society and human labour in their totality. Rather than superseding deprivation, they withdraw into a ‘private consciousness’; unless, that is, they are sufficiently aware and lucid to create a political machine designed to extend their control – and their spiritual and human poverty. ((Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life; “Marxism as Critical Knowledge of Everyday Life”; Verso Books.))
We see now how come — from the proletariat’s standpoint — the bourgeoisie’s doing, their so-called “hard-working”, to seems like leisure transformed into an infinite end. It’s because it’s not, inesse, creative labour. Their infinite task, i.e. resisting the market, is incapable of delivering a holistic picture both social and natural world’s complexity. But it’s also an unnatural end, presented as natural and transformed into an infinite — and ultimately universal — task. The whole chain, which later penetrates history, is thus broken. Bourgeoisie’s private consciousness refuses to raise the present condition of mankind to the level of history. However, it’s precisely this task of resisting against the chaotic and impersonal market which is the grounder of our contemporary existence. “So when does the problem of grounding become philosophical?” — Deleuze asks and continues — “From the moment when the grounder [i.e. the gods, the rulers, the bourgeoisie] proposes infinite tasks to us as something to be realized in this world itself”. Meaning in a world other than the one in which the gods dwells; a world in which labour is performed and understood as a specifically determinate (both for the existence of the worker and the resistance of the market’s promise) activity. But the case isn’t simply about proposing, it’s about imposing it. It’s about the imposition on the whole of us of this rare and narrow, private standpoint — totally unnatural in its core, namely resisting something which, by definition, must resist us.
Our present situation, the pandemic and the following crisis, reveals before us the extent to which the unnaturalness of this — inherent to capitalism — “infinite” task deprives us of the ability to satisfy our natural ends. Surviving, and anything it implies, is the most natural of all ends. Therefore, it’s the grounding of capitalism which needs to be rethought. The proletariat doesn’t need to become a ruler of the world, it just needs to unground what is, at this point, absolutely missgrounded. It’s this illusory and falsely infinite task which needs to be uncovered as finite and conditionally determinate.
We need new grounds, which themselves would need to be grounded deeply into the natural ends.
The ground itself must be grounded.
