first, I think there is something to be said for disavowing a certain role for theory and so-called intellectuals. ie., we can't transcend anything _in theory_, and to presume that we can or should is a conceit I would rather avoid as much as possible. our intellects are finite, not archimedean: they remain trapped in the world as it is, no matter how frustrating. this to me is also the meaning of Marx's injunction against utopianism. the pretense that one has overcome the world in theory is really the reproduction of the world in a more idealised form, shorn of the 'bad side' of a dialectical unity. which is another way of putting what you mention as the predicament of vanguardism, etc. which is also what ken was referring to as the impossibility of a separation between 'cartographer' and 'map'.
it's important to remember though, and partly why I responded to Doug's grumpy synchrony, that the world as it is not some monolithic homogeneity. there are numerous contradictions and fissures which do provide great scope for action contrary to what is assigned and presumably functional to/for capitalism. ken provides a good response me thinks, of the relation between enjoyment and politics, which can be both irritant and conveyor of integration, but is not always both in equal measure at all times.
second, the contributions, for me, of a posthumanist marxism are:
a) that the term 'the subject of revolution' is rendered instead as the ways in which revolutionary subjectivity is formed and decomposed through struggle (and not prior to it, or 'underneath' as some essence);
b) that, contrary to commonplace readings of posthumanism (by humanists), there is no 'eradication of subjectivity' but rather an attempt to locate its complex set of historical premises and results;
c) that, at the level of organisational forms, it leaves this question open to the needs of the struggle, where those needs are defined as including objectives and programmes, but also simultaneously, the need to form and enhance anti-capitalist subjects/identities and organisations;
d) it remembers that marxism and communism are committed to the abolition of the working class as a class, hence are an 'anti-identity' politics, not the promise of a fulfillment of an ostensibly true working class identity;
and, here I would reach for marxists such as Tronti and Bologna, since the question of the relation between identity in Balibar and Zizek finds (for me) a good corollary, d) it does not make the party the repository of accomplished socialist or communist consciousness, since the party itself, or rather the appropriate organisational forms, can only ever be a consequence of the state of the class struggle, of the forms of class composition. (ie., there is a class consciousness amongst the US working class, but it is a consciousness of being the _US_ working class, which surely must produce a pretty strange configuration and sense of 'exceptionalism'...) moreover, the organisation's object is always not simply this or that issue, but more centrally, the forms of subjectivity, whose horizon must be left open. this refusal of closure -- and I will even abandon a certain kind of dialectical metaphysics in favour of this (for me) central issue -- is the most important innovation of posthumanism, which is really after all a re-assertion of Marx's anti-utopianism...
thirdly, on Chaz's point about Lenin, I think maybe this is a little too mystical: a) because the Russian revolution, the soviets, etc were not a result of Lenin's decisions or theory (he and the bolshies arrive on the scene after both are in full swing) and b), because this personification of the Russian revolution in the body of Lenin, is a story written after the event. this doesn't mean that Lenin should not be given his immense due, but there are other ways of writing and thinking of him that are less mystical. moreover, and here I'm interested in Badiou's concept of the truth-event, where an event (such as the Russian revolution) re-situates a whole body of ideas into the realm of widely-regarded, self-evident truth. that to me, would be one way of thinking about the relation between theoretical practice and 'changing the world', that the former cannot, but an event certainly can transform instances of the former into truths. such a perspective might enable us to avoid the mystique of the intellect as the vanguard of events which can shift the balance of the world and change it. that mystique of leadership is one of the obstacles I think.
but then, I think that Lenin, in the theory of the party, did explicitly seek to rewrite the reality of that event as the consequence of the party and theory. taken out of its context, leninism simply reduces into a dogmatic laziness (as if the question of organisational form has already been answered) and substitutes the question of class composition into the issue of recruitment (as if the line between membership and non-membership of the party is the same as the achievement of 'true working class consciousness').
btw, thanks Chaz for the link to the photos. i'll certainly take a look.
Angela _________