>"The perfected political state is by its nature the species life of man in
>opposition to his material lfie. All the presuppositions of theis egoistic
>life continue to exist in civil society outside of the sphere of the state,
>but as proper to civil society. . When the political state has achieved its
>true completion man leads a double life, a heavenly one and an earthly one,
>not in thought and consciousness but in reality, in life. He has life both
>in political community, wheree he is valued as a communal being, and in
>civil society, where he is active as a private individual, treats other
>mane as means, degrades hmself, to a means, and becomes the plaything of
>alien powers. The political state has just as spriritual an attitude to
>civil society and overcomes it in the same manner as religion the
>limtiiations of the profane world, that is, it must likewise recognize, it,
>reistate it, and let itself once more be dominated by it. Man in the
>reality that is nearest to him, civil society, is a profane being. Here
>where he counts for himself and others as a real individual, he is an
>illusory phenomenon. In the state, on the other hand, where man counts as a
>species being, he is an imaginary particpant in an imaginary sovereignty,
>he is robbed of his real life and filled with an unreal universality."
>What Marx intimates here is nontheless helpful. Chris B has introduced
>projection/introjection into the discussion. Here Marx seems to underline
>what is projected onto political life due to its denial and frustration in
>bourgeois civil society. It is almost as if Marx is suggesting that the
>state serves needs once met in religion itself reduced to merely a private
>affair in the secular world of money, contracts and profits.
This is difficult territory, at the edge between the idly speculative and the insightful, but the further connection that flashed though my mind here, was the Nation of Islam. I have not read all of Rakesh's posts and my recollection is that he has a particular antipathy to that organisation and I do not want to stir that all up. I want to present another angle which occurs to me is illuminated by Marx's insight. Watching and studying the NOI in its probably untypical translation to London, what struck me was how this was like a low church christian movement in Britain of 100 years ago. Remove the colour, the referenece to Islam, and here you had people showing fierce communal loyalty around spiritual values, with the economic hegemony going to small businesses and other petty bourgeois elements, judging from the advertisements in their paper. This is perhaps an example of how people look to politics for their spiritual communal life.
How much have left wingers also done that?
Late capitalist society perhaps undermines even this. We have to be aware of these pressures in marxism-space. In the early years there was intense pressure to find the spiritual home in which like people could bond. Now as lists proliferate a wider less passionate political discourse has to prevail.
I think the dynamic of global civil society is extremely powerful, and organisations like the NOI are obviously anachronistic, except that they express unfulfilled interests that still exist today. I think as the culture of civil society spreads to take this extremely abstract medium as an extreme form of it, one sees the possibility of a sort of solidarity that can occur between people who have important differences but can welcome a sensuous humanity in the other.
Chris Burford
London