Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

Ken,

I was going to write that. Anarchism has suffered what linguists call pejoration, that is, a semantic shift for the worse. It shares that fate with words such as "rhetoric" (which is now understood in popular usage as mere fluff), sophistry (which used to mean the art of persuading convincingly), obsequious (which went from "obedient"--with a tone of approval-- before the 16th century to "showing respect for the dead" in the 16th century, and now to servile), etc. The other day, I was talking to someone I thought had some familiarity with Marxist theory about anarcho-syndicalism and he thought the concept meant workers' lawlessness!

Farooq

Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Journalism & Emerging Media
School of Communication & Media
Social Science Building 
Room 5092 MD 2207
402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University
Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com
Twitter: @farooqkperog
Author of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World

"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will

On Wed, Jan 31, 2018 at 4:01 PM, Kenneth Harrow <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:

Dear obi, the anarchism I am alluding to was the political movement of the 30s, especially in the Spanish civil war; not anarchism in general. It is a leftist, non-vanguardist movement, embraced by camus.

It sounds as though your notion of the vanguard is a version of the elite? Not saying it is a bad thing, but I like more the ways movements gather together people to collectively move rather than being directed from above.

I know at the level of the nation the collectivity is too large, but there is still a large difference at play here.

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Rex Marinus <rexmarinus@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wednesday 31 January 2018 at 14:45
To: ken harrow <harrow@msu.edu>, usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

Obi Nwakanma

 

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kenneth Harrow <harrow@msu.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2018 3:13 PM
To: usaafricadialogue
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

One more for the good guys:

"Following his writings, it would seem entirely plausible to claim that Gramsci's vision was not one of an ultra-centralised oligarchic vanguardist party (although he certainly advocated a high degree of ''democratic centralism'') but a broad-based mass socialist party consolidating the most combative and critical elements in society (particularly from the working class), ''rooted in everyday social reality and linked to a broad network of popular structures (eg. the factory councils and soviets)''. (8) This is a conception of a dialectical unity of politics and economics, a working thesis compatible with a democratic political strategy, although Gramsci was insufficiently consistent and clear on the question of the relation between the macro-structural prefigurative struggle and micro-level transformation of human relations – destruction of undemocratic authority structures, hierarchy and rigid division of labour, both inside the revolutionary party and the social and work processes. »http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1555

ken

 

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Rex Marinus <rexmarinus@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 30 January 2018 at 21:56
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

Reformists will need a "talented tenth," and the revolutionary alternative will depend on a "revolutionary vanguard." Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Gramsci, C.L.R. James - all the theorists of power and society were clear about it. The "single leader" was the Stalinist heresy that created the profound contradiction of the Russian revolution, and what Stalin did was to embark on a murderous terror campaign that destroyed the vanguard and moved for the kind of power that  concentrated authority on "the leader." CLR James in fact demonstrates the same contradiction in the Black Jacobins, in pointing out that the Haitian revolution was compromised with the rise of Toussaint as the single iconic, and symbolic leader, and subsequently, when the council of Generals chose Dessalines as "the leader." Leadership that regenerates the moral purpose of a society is driven by consillient force, not by "A  GOOD LEADER."

Obi Nwakanma

 

 

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Farooq A. Kperogi <farooqkperogi@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2018 11:20 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

Even when I used to be a doctrinaire Marxist, I also struggled with the praxis and moral propriety of vanguardism. As you said, a select elite few can't possibly embody and give expression to the aspirations of the masses of the people. Nevertheless, the masses, who are often diffident and fatalistic, need to be prodded to shake up the system. And there lies the tension in Marxian epistemology: the notion of an inexorable, deterministic imperative that will propel the masses to take their destiny into their own hands and the reality that the masses need a vanguard to raise their consciousness and to help them extirpate an oppressive system. This tensile epistemological stress is at the core of Laclau and Mouffe's notion of the "double void" in Marxist thought.

 

But wherever one stands in this debate, it would be escapist to imagine that a leaderless, self-propelled change is possible.

 

Farooq 


Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Journalism & Emerging Media
School of Communication & Media

Social Science Building 

Room 5092 MD 2207

402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University

Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com

Twitter: @farooqkperog

Author of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World

"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will

 

On Tue, Jan 30, 2018 at 4:37 PM, Kenneth Harrow <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:

Well, vanguardism is one approach—lenin over Trotsky, or over the socialists. Me, I favour socialists, or better still the anarchists of the 30s.

I always took it that the vanguardism of the communists was their worst mistake.

Mistake under stalin

mistake under mao

mistake corrected over and over by Gramsci, by Raymond Williams, by some other notion of consciousness besides that of the elite few who claim to know what the masses don't know

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "Farooq A. Kperogi" <farooqkperogi@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 30 January 2018 at 13:38
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force

 

But even in revolutionary thinking, which requires the extirpation of the old order for the inauguration of a new one, you need a vanguard, and all vanguards are led by someone. Either way, you can't avoid coming to terms with the instrumentality of leadership in bringing about systemic changes.

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