Babble, , On Neel's Theory of the Party
So I just read through Theory of the Party from Phil A. Neel and it's weird how outlining how to commodify something is seen as a good contribution to Marxist thought. Like, the piece seems to explain mechanisms that would successfully commodify Mao's mass line into what I might call platformized communism, which might be described as communism that sees its role as practicing its -ism within platforms, not, y'know, doing communism. Maybe that'd be better named platformalized communism, but the concept is the pertinent part.
Also, the just… affect… of the writing. Is a lot. Gigantic heapings of rhetorical melancholy are a way to set a mood, which is… well I guess that is what most introductions are for in academic-style texts, these days, but I don't like it. I'm busy imagining history as a "carboniferous bonfire," as prompted by the text, I don't know if I can do that and qualify the logic of the arguments, in their own terms.
I will say, the establishment of melancholia as the necessary conditions for these productive practices is… hella in-line with Han's leftist melancholic hope. Which, fair, it's all in line with Hegelian dialectics. But I don't understand, I guess, where the confidence is that whatever missing piece is being posed by whichever author is THE missing piece in redeeming humanity. I also just don't like the unquestioned assumption that humanity can be, or even needs to be, redeemed.
Like, is it just a given that any reasonable human practice is oriented toward redeeming us against… ???… and if you do otherwise you're… well, I don't know how to talk about this stuff without leaning heavily into Christian terms, and it all gets very complicated and, in a certain way, uninteresting. If all this is just finding the steps to Grace, and there's no ambiguity in where or what Grace is, or even if it exists, then all things reduce toward a person's subjectivation being their salvation, and that's just… hideously boring.
But going back to the original post: What's the plan here? Outpace the contemporary global kyriarchy's industrial production of memes? First, that seems lofty. Second, what does that on its own accomplish? Not make possible, but accomplish? Because to accomplish it, you're providing a grammar that makes it trivial for existing systems to massively scale their ability manufacture propaganda, making your own goals significantly more difficult to achieve, and as providing this grammar is the means of achieving those goals, you induce and pursue a paradox.