“Magical Marxism – Subversive Politics and the Imagination” by Andy Merrifield, 2011
Given the relative weakness of Marxist movements in advancing actual class-struggle right now, I read books that might provide 'new' ideas, tactics or strategies. This is one. I'm no fan of magic, a gauzy, idealist contraption if there ever was one, but perhaps there is something here. After all, given the magical role of religion, the emotional wealth invested in politics, the power of myth, play and other cultural forces – facts, reason, science, history and theory don't have as good a chance in this scenario, especially alone against material power.
The book first reads like a mash-up of the magical realism of “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel Garcia Márquez and the Situationism of “The Society of the Spectacle” by Guy Debord. If this is too heady for you, you can quit reading. He does make an early observation in the book that many more people than we think understand the present social structure and economy to be corrupt and terminally flawed. They know it but don't say it out loud. They evince this understanding in many ways, through many different forms and actions. The conquest of capital and commodification has moved from the factories and workplaces into the homes of the population, infecting social life and most know it - even “in their beds.” He's making the point that instead of some intense, simple and singular Party understanding, any revolution will entail a broad front of actors, eventually across the world. You just have to know which ones are going forward and which ones are going backasswards.
Merrifield quotes not just Marxists like David Harvey or Henri Lefebvre, but the Invisible Committee, the Surrealists, Lautréamont, Wordsworth, Freud and so on. In this vein he approves of Luxemburg's criticism of Lenin's hostility to spontaneity and instead supports 'left libertarianism' – whatever that is. Mariátegui touches on this issue with his promotion of 'myths of revolution and collectivity' as antidotes to capitalist realism. Mariátegui advanced the concept of 'mistica' which Merrifield and others endorse. Discovering the roots of the future society in the present might also help, and there are many. Perhaps a more full-blooded and modern vision of future socialism than the one left by Marx is necessary. No one leaves a sinking ship to jump on a lifeboat they know little about ... and whose most well-known artifact is Stalin.
Anyway, it's not clear what 'magical Marxism' really is as a practical reality except Merrifield's fever dream, a form of literary criticism or a plea to 'act,' not watch. Maybe its a form of anarchism or anarchist collectives, of 'liberated zones,' of protest culture, of cooperatives and communes, of counter-culture, of personal confrontations, of sabotage. I should note that Marquez's book was partly published by the literary wing of the CIA while Debord's tiny organization fell apart in 1972. Not encouraging developments.
The Invisibiles
At one point Merrifield discusses 'neo-communism' and the 'Imaginary Party,' based on the book “The Coming Insurrection.” As he excitedly put it in 2011: “Everybody agrees, current society is about to explode.” He added that it's about “a non-class based Marxism.” Well, France didn't explode in an insurrection in 2011. It did result in police raids on a farmhouse in Tarnac and the arrest of a number of anarchists for 'sabotage.' Merrifield goes on to discuss the 'Coming Community' which seems to be what he's trying to get at under the avalanche of literary verbiage. What follows are many ritual nods to the increasingly isolated Zapatistas and a widening of the notion of the proletariat.
Merrifield says that “alliances across the globe are forged through an emotional connection, through anger, pain, sympathy, admiration, etc.” He likens this to the rhythmic pulse of music. But what happens when the music stops? Where's the 'Invisible' Committee now? Certainly we have seen recent world movements come and go – against the WTO and World Bank, against the Iraq war, for the Arab Spring, for Occupy Wall Street, for BLM, for women in Iran, now, though its not over, for Palestine. Every country has experienced something like this. Yet they mostly fade away, leaving a residue of organization, experience and memory, but not one of sufficient weight. This is why 'the movement' cannot be everything and organization and goal nothing.
The Solution?
So how does Merrifield insert his 'Coming Community' into this scenario? He thinks the revolution will break out in the cities, on a geographic terrain, involving many strata. There is a history of this in the various Communes, central squares and general strikes, but now with the technical aid of the cell phone – which he thinks is borning a “Fifth International.” In this context he praises anarcho-communist hackers and claims the working-class is passé. This 'either/orism' seems a clear academic error of undialectical thinking, especially as the world's proletariat has only gotten larger. So what the hell is he talking about? His solution is “autogestion” - defined by the dictionary as “workers' self-management” or a 'self-managed economy' – yet always through a 'post-Marxist” Marxism. This is similar to the position of Richard Wolff who thinks socialism will come through Spain's cooperative Mondragon et al. I suspect Merrifield would extend this method to rural areas too. He endorses Local Exchange Trading – basically a barter/potlach system outside of the money economy. - something proletarians have participated in since day one. This is his way out of Kafka's maze.
Merrifield understands that negation is the stuff of radical politics – but “it is not the stuff dreams are made of” - citing some ideas of Hardt and Negri. As such Marxism has to illustrate a positive move towards emancipation and liberation, not just continual negativity and 'exposure' – in other words a Blochian “militant optimism.” As Marx pointed out, imagination is a form of labor and if you let it whither and die, the future dies, your children die, your dreams die. An example is the endless highlighting of government or press hypocrisies that confirm what everyone already knows. This is something you see on FB© all the time. As we might say in the factory, “Duh! No shit, Sherlock.”
Merrifield makes the valid point that human labor, nature and capital have now produced enough knowledge, skills, machines and 'things' so that every social need can be fulfilled across the world. Some environmental solutions are still needed, as this was written in 2011, but generally we do not need to wait for the next iPhone or gadget to 'proceed,' for the 'productive forces' to mature, for labor to be lessened, for the bosses to be expropriated. Have we reached the peak that Marx predicted, now just waiting for the 'machinery' to be seized by the proletarian population? Certainly there are many indications that the situation is actually over-ripe and even rotting.
Merrifield ends with a meditation on poetry, butterflies and owls, which might appall the realistic socialist. There's even the need to turn to 'black magic,' so it seems things are getting desperate. At the time he wrote this Merrifield was living in the center of France in the Auvergne, having lost his academic job. Auvergne is full of forests, old mountains and hot springs. As a socialist geographer, this might be why he added 'the right to the land' to 'the right to the city' in his portfolio. And perhaps this rural environment prompted something less 'citified' in him. No doubt we are all citizens of the places we live or have lived, and the more variety, the better. This book acts a bit like that, dwelling in a place that not everyone has visited. Merrifield seems to be some kind of anarcho-communist in this book, part of a broad anti-capitalist front, a front that is moving towards a new society down many paths, around many corners, through many experiences and under and over many barriers. Given the threats we face, we will need all the aid we can get.
Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms: “Marx Dead and Alive” & “Beyond Plague Urbanism” (both by Merrifeld); “Society of the Spectacle” (Dubord); “The Coming Insurrection,” “David Harvey,” 'magical realism,' “The Damnificados” and “Nazaré” (magical realism, by JJA Wilson); “Mariategui or Mariátegui” “Right to the City,” “Beach Beneath the Street,” “Wageless Life,” “Hardt" or "Negri,”
And I got it at the University of Georgia College Library!
Athens / Clarke County – one of the 10 most unequal counties in the U.S.
Red Frog
January 20, 2024
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