From: Doug Henwood
Activistism piece
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That's right, Activismists. This brave new ideology combines the political illiteracy of hyper-mediated American culture with all the moral zeal of a nineteenth century temperance crusade. In this worldview, all roads lead to more activism and more activists. And the one who acts is righteous. The activistists seem to borrow their philosophy from the factory boss in a Heinrich Böll short story who greets his employees each morning with the exhortation "Let's have some action." To which the workers obediently reply: "Action will be taken!"
^^^^^^ CB: As John Henry put it in "Activist Materialism and the End of Philosophy " in '92:
These concerns must not be ignored. But it's time for Americans, including Marxists, to grow-up intellectually. No, we cannot lead, inspire, organize and win effective revolutionary ACTION based on the concepts and words now in the average American's vocabulary. Marx in the Theses on Feuerbach corrected the then predominant error of materialism which was the failure to treat the subject (the acting individual person) as active. Today, in America, we have all attention to action, activism, but have fallen into the error of a certain folk pragmatism, that is action, action, action without extensive simultaneous philosophical interpretation and contemplation. We should not drop the attention to action and practice as fulfillment and test of philosophical interpretation and theory, but we must pick up more philosophy.
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But is action enough? We pose this question precisely because activism seems so strong. The flipside of all this agitation is a corrosive and aggressive anti-intellectualism. We object to this hostility toward thinking - not only because we've all got a cranky intellectual bent, but also because it limits the movement's transformative power.
^^^^^^^ CB: Do you all mean without transformative theory , there can be no transformative movement ? The movement is not everything and the goal nothing.
"Revolutionary" ( despite it's ultra-left association) is still more sexy in American discourse than "transformative". Frequently, I see car ads on billboards proclaiming some revolution.