Endless Rain into a Paper Cup

The text below is my response to a thread in Marxmail where one of our comrades suggested that we leftists should appear in the forums of conservatives to take on their political discourse rather than carrying on an inconclusive dialogue between ourselves:

If the politics was a field of quest for truths it could be reasonable for us to come forward in right-wing forums to reveal the contradictions of their discourse and the limits of their reasoning. Remember G. W. Bush’s recent statement regarding the National Intelligence Estimate report which brings forward the reality that Iran has no program to acquire nuclear weapons: "The NIE doesn't do anything to change my opinion about the danger Iran poses to the world.” Politics is the battleground of power where the measure of truth is the struggle itself. For instance, Democrats of US had not lost the 2004 election through their lack of skills for delicate political debates. Contrary, they were so skillful in the art of disclosing absurdities of the Bush administration, they eschewed the drudgery of physical labor to transform the political debate to ad hominem. As Marx asserted once, “Theory is capable of gripping the masses as soon as it demonstrates ad hominem, and it demonstrates ad hominem as soon as it becomes radical.”

When I first began to read the works of Karl Marx (my adventure has started with the 1844 Manuscripts), I got so excided that whipped me to run amok for spreading the ideas of the most well-known thinker whose theories are living in the shadow of his commonly distorted reputation. I delivered never-ending monologues (!) to every single person that I met from diverse backgrounds of society in cafés, beer pubs, billiard halls, family meetings and friendly parties and even to the taxi drivers (I gave up the latest practice when I came across the most strange taxi driver, an anarcho-capitalist who suggested that we must privatize everything when we were passing in front of the residence of Prime Minister of Turkey). Although I attracted a decent attention among the people who have leftist credentials, I didn’t manage to persuade single conservative whether he or she is an islamist or a nationalist to the theory of Marxism. Moreover, I didn’t manage to convince even my intimates to read the Manuscripts at least. I tried everything just to run against the tough walls of indifference. It is not for the reason that I wasn’t capable of overcoming the sloppiness of their political discourse. Rather, I was skilled enough to analyze their contradictions effortlessly which led me to miss their truths. The most recent instance took place while I was conversing about the Kurdish question of Turkey with my brother who has apparent nationalistic tendencies. In the most fervent moment of our quarrel, he blared, “Why are you always taking the side of our enemies?” I told him that I am not prone to taking sides, just investigating the truths. Then he clearly reminded me the genuine political struggle: “To hell with the truths. I want to talk about our truths”.

In the moderation principles of Marxmail it says that, “We also welcome non-Marxists who come to the list in a respectful attitude, desiring to learn more. However, if you have decided for yourself that Marxism is wrong and that your purpose on the list is to struggle to convince others of that, you should not subscribe.” What an intolerant forewarning which exposes the hegemonic attitude of Marxists to prohibit inconvenient critiques. Like high-school debate teams, wouldn’t it be entertaining to wrangle with the absurdities of rightists to demonstrate the world that we Marxists have unshakable tools for evaluating incidents of politics. But the problem is too much political discussion alone results in a power failure of theory to become a material force. So what was the effect that converted John Lennon from writing songs like “Across the Universe” inspired with Transcendental Meditation? How could the indifference of a man to the words that “are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup” so nothing’s gonna change his world was transformed to an iconoclastic voice in the song of “God”? The key line is “The dream is over” which implies a state of flux in the truths of Lennon incited by the consequences of the Vietnam War, etc.

If we really believe that we can sell the truthful words of class struggle without an inclination towards ad hominem, for instance, to an ordinary manager of Fortis Bank, a creative director of an advertising company, a nationalist undergraduate student who is only capable of rationalizing his limitations via alien conspiracy, etc. we should revise our well-intentioned rational idealism which fails to notice that how a theory becomes a material force. Karl Marx strived not only for introducing the hypocrisy of political economy but also materializing the truth of working class as a subject of the communist revolution: proletariat.

In my opinion, rather than desperately striving to prevail over our dissidents with endless rain of words we should keep the track of social incidents that probably have the propulsive energy to beget ruptures in the hegemonic truths and look for ways to organize people whose truths are naturally contradictory with the ruling class. I am not referring here to new forms of vanguard parties since vanguardism neglects the spontaneity of truth process by adopting a lengthy string of predetermined missions that are more than capable of resulting unexpected interruptions in actual improvements.

The announcement of “The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims” is besides an appeal for voicing our truths explicitly. I think it is more important for us to concentrate our energy to publish our aims rather than rehearsing the myth of Sisyphus by pushing the rock of criticism up to the mountain of the online forums of conservatives.