Anarchy?

This short piece is a response to an untitled entry of the 17th August, found in the following link:

http://anarchy4444244.blogspot.com/

The Anarchist Banker is a curious character. Rare indeed is it to find an author who so readily combines such words as 'indolent' and 'joy', or 'merrily' and 'mournfully' in order to arouse such paradoxical feelings as can only lead the reader in one of two opposite directions: either away from the text, in sheer baffled frustration, or towards it, in sheer baffled exhileration. It is a testament to The Anarchist Banker's skills as a writer that his wilful, playful self-deprecation constantly slices up his persona at every turn, carving into each fresh instantiation some brand new sign, some new allegory to cling to as he once more throws the reader into a sea of endless metaphor.



This, however, is precisely my issue with the political and ethical system at the heart of The Anarchist Banker's writing. It is a process of thought, alas, not uncommon in our society and one which I feel must be addressed if we are to continue our struggle for political and social freedom. For at the heart of The Anarchist Banker's ideological introversion lies an overwhelming, reactionary individualism, an individualism of such force that the reader cannot help but smile wryly at the thought that it is an individualism which can only truly exist in the act of self-denial ('self-negation', as he would describe it).



Let us, to begin, analyse the fundamental argument at the heart of The Anarchist Banker's latest (untitled) piece. Once stripped of all metaphor, it can, I feel, be defined like this:



i) a) Consciousness must be anterior to all words and writing, for the latter are mere expositions of thought, which stems from consciousness. Even 'unconscious' thought (and, subsequently, its literary products) is the product of consciousness, for the 'subconscious' is always subject to the 'stamp' of consciousness - that of the individual and that of the world.



b) It is by this process that we can separate the ideological rhetoric inherent in many of Carlos Puebla (an allegory, as we shall later see)'s lyrics from their artistic structure. This is a simple case of radical autonomism: whatever the singer may be singing about, aesthetic judgements of his music cannot be influenced at all by the moral content.



ii) Music is a higher form of art because it further separates man from reality, in that it is even more 'illusory' than literature. The various different sounds which together form a piece of music are, in that very process of formation, reduced to the form of allegory. The Plato-Hegelian Form of the piece of music is that which is envisioned by its creator - the artist. This is the highest form of allegory, of illusion and, therefore, of art. All subsequent sub-Forms (Forms derived from the original Form), which presumably include anything from the various instantiations of the piece by the artist to the manner in which the individual listener interprets it on each separate instantiation, are extensions of allegories - or allegories multiplied by themselves and each other. In short, devoid of ideology (here we get very Althusserian indeed), music itself can create in the listener the illusion of having it. For example, music which is capable of allegorical referencing outside of and indepent of itself ie, Cuban 'son', is anterior to any ideological influence because ideology is an ultimate product of consciousness; sound, however, is anterior to consciousness. Therefore, there can be no 'real' process by which sounds are combined to form a musical piece - such a process must be inherently illusory. However, once the piece has been instantiated, its reception will inevitably be conscious. As soon as the 'piece' is conceived of as such by the artist, it ceases to 'be', as consciousness has become anterior to it; the intermingling of ideological preconception with aesthetic response leads to ideological ideals rooted in the piece itself, as it is anterior to consciousness:



Sounds Exist - Sounds shaped together by artist with no intention other than to create a piece of art - Artist considers it 'finished' (and, therefore, a 'work' and conceives of it. It ceases to 'be' - Work Instantiated - Aesthetic Response - Aesthetic Response 'corrupted' by pre-conceived ideology - Aesthetic Judgement and Ideological Response (often linked).



iii) Thus, an individual who has never experienced a particular work of art can be said to be subsequent to it in the sense that his experience of it will be 'uninformed'. It follows that should this individual hear of the work before experiencing it, his experience of it will be 'tainted' by that previous information. Thus, no art which is spread by 'information' can ever retain its own value.



iv) As ideology, as a product of thought, stems from consciousness, it only exists in so far as an individual can conceive of it. Thus, although the act of overcoming a particular present political or ideological system can happen independently of art, whatever system is installed in its place must be the product of dreams, illusions and, ultimately, some form of art. As Revolutions imply not gradual social and political change but, instead, a total deconstuction of the current system, their end product must be Utopian. Ideology can only install the material conditions for its construction.



v) Ideology is the principal tool of revolution. The material and the ideological must be derived from the conceptual and, ultimately, from the immaterial, the realm of art.



vi) 'Artistic Forms Before Consciousness. Consciousness before Thought. Thought before Ideology and the Material'. Dreams, the artistic process and all other forms of experience not conscious of themselves are thus the route to progress. The non-existence of the material, its abstract nature is the route to regress. In some sense, an imagined revolution is far richer than a material one.



Firstly, it is important to recognise that The Anarchist Banker's reference to revolution is, by his own logic, an allegory. Just as an enquiry into the Essentialist nature of 'Forms' of music leads us far beyond Carlos Puebla, so we find behind the notion of 'revolution' the far simpler Form, 'change'. This, in turn, is a material manifestation of 'action' (follow, for instance, Zeno's paradox of the arrow. We ascribe the arrow's movement, it's change of position relative to the world, to the action of having flown from its starting to its end point), and so forth, until we arrive at the conclusion that only complete inertia can satisfy our insatiable lust for movement. The Anarchist Banker is not romanticising the idea that a Revolution can occur in a man's heart just as it can happen in (or to) a State. He is propagating a politics of inaction, of individualism (in the egoist sense, rather than the tolerant sense of individual liberty).



Let us not get bogged down in metaphysical debates, for on those very grounds The Anarchist Banker's argument appears shaky but, there again, so would any other. My concern is with the ethical doctrine that inertia is the path to freedom. Immediately, I shall present a counter argument which The Anarchist Banker would doubtlessly produce at this stage:

'Inertia cannot be the path to freedom, for ultimately the lack of political involvement of an entire population will result in anarchy, in which people will be free to oppress each other, first economically, and, eventually, physically.'

'This argument implies that political involvement is not a simple metaphor for the piecemeal alterations of a material system which bears little resemblance to the intellectual conditions of existence. Within every political system there exists oppression. 'Anarchy' is simply a state of being. Human beings are, ultimately, self-interested and will be so under any political system - indeed the very creation of political systems is simply the manifestation of a desire to prolong and comfort that state of anarchy.'

I wish to point out at this stage that I am not denying the existence of abhorrent forms of economic and physical oppression in our current political climate. However, I believe in the fundamental potential for all systems to be improved. The Anarchist Banker is quite right to point out that tyranny can only be combated by force and, as a product of that forceful overthrow, the likelihood is that that might which did the overthrowing is likely to use its 'force' as a means to establish itself. However, although economic oppression exists, we do not under a tyranny in this country. Each individual is free, regardless of the material conditions of his or her existence, to speak, think and feel without risk of punishment unless that freedom seriously threatens that of others.

It is here that I shall attack The Anarchist Banker's notion of 'freedom'. Under that faulty doctrine of Essentialism, he places the creative process before thought and, thus, removes it from any grounding in its practical consequences. For The Anarchist Banker, consciousness is a prison. I would suggest that this state of imprisonment, his 'anarchy', is precisely a result of his metaphysical detachment; for if one chooses to 'progress' into the realm of illusion and of art, then, by The Anarchist Banker's own rationale, one's main points of reference in the world are other forms of art and, thus, the total absence of all concrete individuals. In the realm of fantasy, it is natural that there can be no oppression; it is, indeed, pure anarchy.

Yet, such an illusion (I am talking here of The Anarchist Banker's own argument, not those he alludes to) ignores the pressing fact that, ultimately, abstract political ideas will impact on the individual to the extent that his 'right to Art', as I shall call it, can be negated. For if ways of 'not acting' are to be the mainstay of our politics of 'freedom', then we could finish in a situation in which those to whom 'not acting' implies an introverted retreat from society (like, I feel, The Anarchist Banker) will be ruled by those for whom this state of inertia can only be achieved through the oppression of others. Allow me to illustrate this point. Suppose I choose to wallow in inertia and to find solace in my detachment from all material things. I could hit the ground running, and attempt to detach myself in my daily life without fear of any practical or moral consequences. Suppose this were even possible, I would still not be free of other individuals; they may not oppress me physically or economically - they may not even live near me; but my prior knowledge of their existence oppresses me insofar as my sense of detachment is rooted in my previous surroundings. I can only obliterate their influence by subjugating them to the force of my own imagination, or my 'art' (something which The Anarchist Banker himself claims is impossible).

I conclude, very simply, by suggesting that the hypocritical philosophy put forward by The Anarchist Banker, the 'art' of self-negation, makes for entertaining literature but represents an inherent danger to the ethical make-up of our society. In an age in which escapism in the form of cognitive stimulae, the ease of access to information (and, indeed, the liberal employment of the term 'artist') and self-involved consumerism, we must, at all costs, refuse to delve further into ourselves at the expense of our relationships with others.