Theory necessarily fits the past better than the present, let alone the future, for, by the time theory gets worked out, at least parts of the material grounds that gave rise to action, which in turn gave rise to theory, have already melted into air. At best, theory is always a little behind the times but still lets us grasp the nature of what remains of the old grounds, and at worst theory locks its adherents into fighting the last battle, which they have already lost (if "they" in question are leftists), not the one that they should be fighting now.
On 8/31/07, Tayssir John Gabbour <tayssir.john at googlemail.com> wrote:
> "To review: Classical Marxism says knowledge derives from
> practice, guides it, and is either verified or transformed by
> it. It says production is at the root of people's consciousnesses
> but it doesn't say much about precisely how. It doesn't go into
> details of how productive influences manifest themselves in
> consciousness and thus overlooks the extents to which they often
> do not. It doesn't tell how emotional needs, creative potentials,
> previously arrived at knowledge, and previously adopted thought
> habits all subjectively affect new perceptions and analyses. It
> doesn't deal sufficiently with the ways people's subjective
> weaknesses affect their consciousness formation processes.
>
> "Like the classical dialectical methodology, the classical
> understanding of consciousness formation sees the forest, or at
> least one aspect of it, but directs attention away from the trees,
> thus often completely misunderstanding the interrelation. It
> overcomes many idealist errors but in doing so pays only lip
> service to the fact that thinking is a process involving on-going
> interactions between various aspects of people's natures, of their
> personalities, and of the contexts or things they're thinking
> about."
>
> -- Michael Albert http://www.zmag.org/WITBU/witbu07.html
As far as analysis is concerned, nowadays, the main problem is the opposite: everyone, including most Marxists, sees only the trees, each tree in isolation from others, and don't see the forest at all.
As for "emotional needs, creative potentials, previously arrived at knowledge, and previously adopted thought habits" of working people who are not self-consciously anarchist or socialist, and their "natures," "personalities," and "the contexts or things they're thinking about," most leftists are at least dimly aware of them, and some of them even intellectually understand them very well. But the problem is that an intellectual understanding of them doesn't bridge social and emotional gaps -- at all.
Nowadays, many intellectuals who are still anarchists or socialists are often rather sophisticated in the intellectual department, certainly more so than classical Marxists in attention to subjectivity, but working people generally like them _less_ today than they did classical Marxists in the past. How come? That's a question they seldom ask.
In part in criticism of the Respect coalition of the UK, Tariq Ali, who is a sophisticated Marxist, says in an interview: "For socialists the task is clear: the Muslim communities must be defended against being made scapegoats, against repression, against the very widespread representation that terrorism is proper to Islam. All that must be energetically fought. But at the same time we must not close our eyes to the social conservatism which reigns in these communities, nor hide it. We have to try to win this people to our own ideas" (" The Anti-Imperialist Left Confronted with Islam," IV Online 376, March 2006, <http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1012=>). That is all well and good, but what if people are not interested in being won over to "our own ideas," at least not wholesale, as most working people, not just Muslims, appear not to be? Then what? -- Yoshie