4.2 Género y discurso
4.2.1 Significados locales y proposiciones sobre género
‘Les révolutions doivent être faites dans les esprits avant de s’accomplir dans la rue.’74
Blanqui establishes the foundational role of enlightened thought and consciousness within his project from his very first writings. A short text from 1831, for instance, suggests that while the university of the Middle Ages was like ‘une oasis de liberté, réservée à la civilisation, au milieu de ces déserts de barbarie et d’esclavage’ it had since become, particularly under Napoleon, an ‘instrument de despotisme’. Blanqui therefore demands the destruction of the ‘monopole le plus odieux et le plus funeste au pays … celui qui tarit la civilisation dans sa source et qui est l’outrage le plus cruel infligé à l’intelligence humaine’. The anthropological and political assumptions behind this position are then clearly expressed: ‘Nous sommes las de cet exécrable impôt qui frappe ce qu’il y a de plus saint et de plus sacré, ce qui fait l’homme et le citoyen : l’instruction.’75 Although across his writings Blanqui often reflects on how material conditions and concerns (hunger, poverty) determine political choices and on the extent to which the coercive mechanisms of the state (the repression of popular revolts, Haussmann’s reconstruction of Paris during the Second Empire) are deployed to control and oppress the population, throughout his life he nonetheless maintains the basic belief expressed in 1831 that on the part of an unjust regime ‘il est plus facile de nous tromper que de nous abattre’.76 Human thought and consciousness, for Blanqui, are ultimately determinant of socio-political arrangements. Education and the - politically decisive – thought and reason it alone confers thus form crucial
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74 Blanqui MSS 9582, fo. 75 [1 September 1852]; Blanqui MSS 9590(2), fo. 368 [6 September 1852]. 75 Blanqui, ‘Déclaration du Comité provisoire des Ecoles’, 22 January 1831, MA, pp. 58-59.
components of Blanqui’s system. Blanqui’s voluntarism is conceived in the strictest terms as conscious volition. Political subjectivity presupposes intellectual consciousness. The collective consciousness of individuals is the essential precondition of both collective voluntary action and sustained, collective political power. The implications this has for Blanqui’s wider project and for its reconsideration today remain, however, somewhat unexplored in recent engagements with his thought.77
In this first chapter, then, we must go to the heart of Blanqui’s thought, establishing the role and meaning assigned to thought, knowledge and instruction, and the manner in which they underpin Blanqui’s conception of politics. Although this will inevitably anticipate and touch on some subsequent discussions, particularly those of Chapters 4 and 5, through reconstructing this core element of Blanqui’s thinking the chapter aims to provide a basis from which to later analyse in greater depth his project as a whole.
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77 Of the three texts featured in the ‘Blanqui’s Eternal Gap’ dossier in Radical Philosophy, for instance,
Rancière (‘The Radical Gap’) sidesteps issues of intelligence and consciousness, perhaps unsurprisingly given that his own ‘presumption of equality’ is completely at odds with the basis of Blanqui’s entire project. Bensaïd and Löwy (‘Auguste Blanqui, heretical communist’), meanwhile, do acknowledge the question of enlightened intelligence and highlight the impasse it presents for Blanqui but do not pursue the issue further. Finally, although Hallward (‘Blanqui’s bifurcations’) rightly places cognitive capacity at the core of Blanqui’s conception of humanity and society, in outlining the ‘three basic principles’ of Blanqui’s politics the intellectual consciousness presupposed in Blanqui’s conception of political volition and of Paris as the country’s leading revolutionary actor nonetheless remains largely absent.
Revolution of the intellect
Blanqui’s dualism
Blanqui’s thought is broadly underpinned by a dualism according to which nature and its governing laws are strictly separate from human thought, activity and volition.78 A
note from 1868 under the title ‘La loi, mot inapplicable aux choses humaines’ succinctly sets out the basic position upon which L’Éternité par les astres most notably would later expand. ‘Le mot loi n’a de sens que dans la nature’, writes Blanqui, in direct opposition to the ‘utopian’ socialism of Saint-Simon and Fourier and its conflation of natural and human laws. ‘Qui dit loi, dit règle invariable, immanente, fatale, incompatible avec l’intelligence et la volonté.’ There is no such thing as political, social or economic laws, for in the human realm there is only ‘de caprice et d’arbitraire … des expédients, phénomènes qui varient au gré des fantaisies et des passions humaines.’79 Unlike nature, in the human realm there is no successive development and perpetual evolution; unlike nature, in the human realm all is contingent and undetermined, all is open to movement and change, to reason and volition.80 So crucial is this dualism that elsewhere it is condensed and accorded Blanqui’s characteristic aphoristic treatment:
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78 Other readers to comment on Blanqui’s dualism include Mason, ‘Blanqui and Communism’, p. 511,
Spitzer, The Revolutionary Theories of Louis Auguste Blanqui, p. 41, and Hallward, ‘Blanqui’s bifurcations’, p. 37.
79 Blanqui MSS 9590(1), fo. 278 [n.d.]; 9592(3), fo. 146 [27 April 1868]. Cf. Blanqui, ‘L’Éternité par
les astres’, 1872, MA, pp. 370-71.
80 As Blanqui explains at length in one note: ‘Dans la nature, il n’y a point rapport de cause à effet,
mais développement successif, évolution perpétuelle … cause et effet sont là des mots vides de sens, car ils impliquent accident ou volonté, choses tout-à-fait étrangères aux phénomènes organiques, où elle n’interviennent qu’à titre de perturbation. Qu’un arbre meure debout ou tombe abattu, soit par le vent, soit par la hache, le résultat définitif reste le même. Les molécules constitutives de cet arbre retournent à la circulation générale, mais en suivant des voies différentes, déterminées alors par ce qu’on appelle une cause, simple incident toujours en dehors de l’évolution régulière elle-même. L’arbre tombé pourrit sur place, et ses principes entrent dans de nouvelles combinaisons. Si on l’a jeté bas pour un but d’utilité, ce n’est qu’une/cette destination n’est qu’éphémère. Le fagot brule, se réduit en gaz et en sols, matériaux disponibles pour une métamorphose subséquente. (La planche et la poutre), par un plus long circuit, la planche et la poutre arrivent néanmoins à la dissolution finale qui on dégage
Prétendue fatalité des lois économiques qui régissent la société. Pure impertinence. Rien de plus arbitraire et de plus irrégulier que la marche des choses humaines qui varient au gré de milliards de caprices. Rien de moins semblable à l’ordre immuable et fatal des choses de la nature.’81
Blanqui’s dualism excludes absolutely any conflation of man and nature, of human affairs and natural processes. After Rousseau, Blanqui conceives society as in no way conforming to any form of natural authority or historical tendency.82 Humans are therefore not subject to the will of a libre arbitre or greater design; Blanqui unreservedly rejects any philosophical system in which, like under God, ‘les hommes ne sont que les instruments aveugles/involontaires de ses desseins. Seul, il inspire tout, dirige tout, manipule tout.’83Conceptions of power or history within the human realm that appeal to any form of ‘force aveugle et fatale’ are opposed in the strongest possible terms.84 For Blanqui, by contrast, any given established social order is, by definition, in no way unconsciously or inevitably arrived at but, rather, consciously forged and organised in accordance with its dominant ideals and interests. (These issues will be discussed at greater length in Chapter 5.) How, then, are we to understand the open and contingent realm of mankind with its constituent battle of wills, interests and ideas as distinct from the immutable realm of nature and natural laws? How, by extension, does this inform Blanqui’s conception of political action and social change?
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les éléments divers et les restitue à la loi des transformations successives. Toute l’activité humaine tourne dans ce cercle misérable’ (Blanqui MSS 9592(3), fo. 49 [17 April 1868]).
81 Blanqui MSS 9590(1), fo. 274 [n.d.].
82 See, for example, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, trans. Christopher Betts (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2008), Book I, Chapters i-iv.
83 Blanqui MSS 9592(3), fo. 181 [n.d.].
Man is thought
‘La pensée, c’est l’homme’, Blanqui affirms.85 Mankind is, for Blanqui, defined first and foremost by its cerebral, not manual, capacities. The physical capacity and manual dexterity to build and craft is, to be sure, shared by man and animals alike. Blanqui notes how the masterly skill, geometric precision and exacting calculations of birds’ nests, bees’ honeycomb and spiders’ webs emulate if not surpass man’s ability to manipulate material. But thought and ideas alone are what make mankind.86 At a social level Blanqui takes this point of departure to its logical conclusion, in a move that has profound implications for his conception of politics as a whole. ‘C’est la Philosophie qui gouverne le monde. … Aucune société n’a vécu sur la terre, sans être régie par une Philosophie.’87 Social change occurs, then, through philosophical change. In direct contrast to the basic tenets of Marxism, Blanqui believes that the ‘vie du peuple n’est pas dans les œuvres de ses mains ; elle est dans sa pensée. La vie intellectuelle et morale est tout ; la vie matérielle une simple dépendance et un reflet.’88 Rather than anticipating or following Marx’s inversion of Hegel, Blanqui maintains with the latter the primacy of ideas and consciousness as determining material socio-economic and political reality, and not vice versa. Ideas and thought, Blanqui contends, condition political institutions, economic relations and the overall social existence of man.
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85 Blanqui MSS 9592(3), fo. 284 [16 April 1868]. See also: ‘Le cerveau seul fait l’homme, sa dignité,
sa grandeur. Il est l’organe roi, siège et source de l’intelligence’ (Blanqui, ‘Athéisme et spiritualism’, 13 December 1880, NDNM, pp. 23-24).
86 Blanqui, ‘Le communisme, avenir de la société’, 1869-70, CSI, pp. 214-215.
87 Blanqui adds: ‘Toutes les autres sciences n’interviennent dans la direction sociale qu’en modifiant on
réformer la Philosophie. … C’est la différence des Philosophies qui fait la différance des organisations sociales’ (Blanqui MSS 9592(3), fo. 384 [n.d.]).
88 Blanqui MSS 9586, fo 402 [n.d.]. See also Blanqui, ‘Candide’, 3 May 1865, MA, p. 248. On the
comparison with Marx’s assumption that ‘[i]t is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social existence that determines their consciousness’, see also Spitzer,
With these assumptions we begin to uncover some of the fundamental limitations of Blanqui’s thinking.Insofar as humanity and society are defined by their cognitive capacities and collective consciousness, the failure therein to adequately account for the material conditions, productive forces and social relations that underpin the established order will prevent Blanqui from fully comprehending the objective realities that, while not ultimately determinant, certainly shape the processes and circumstances of political action and social transformation. It will leave Blanqui unable to explain historical change outside the realm of ideas, unable to formulate a militant political project properly grounded in specific historical conditions. ‘Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please’ Marx was right to assert; ‘they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances existing already’.89 Although, as we shall see in the following chapters, Blanqui’s essential strength indeed lies in his account of how men make their own history, not least thanks to the absence of a form of historical determinism that appears in some of Marx’s own writings, his major shortcoming nonetheless remains the failure to sufficiently analyse, explain and consider the existing historical conditions through which this activity takes place.
Instruction, transformation, volition
Within Blanqui’s dualism human thought and the mind are, however, far from immaterial in any form of spiritualist sense (spiritualism is of course for Blanqui, after ‘les athées du 18ème siècle, Diderot, Helvétius, d’Holbach, Lamettrie [sic]’, the target of his atheist materialism).90 Reflecting on the relationship between thought and matter, Blanqui reasons that thought is itself a product of matter: the brain. Human
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89 Karl Marx, ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’, in Karl Marx: Selected Writings, p. 329;
translation modified.
thought is ‘une fonction de la substance nerveuse’, Blanqui writes. This leads him to dismiss as ‘[une] hypothèse ridicule’ the suggestion that human intelligence ‘pourrait exister en dehors de la matière, une intelligence infinie’ creating the material world; it disproves ‘la toute-puissance d’une intelligence divine’91 and the belief in ‘un être chimérique … indépendant de la substance nerveuse’.92 Thought, as produced by the material organism of the brain, ‘n’existe que par la matière, ne se manifeste que par la matière, ne se conserve que par la matière’, Blanqui emphatically insists.93
To this Blanqui importantly adds that thought’s material source, the brain, can in fact also be developed and perfected by thought itself.94Humans have the capacity to actively develop the brain through the practice of thinking. ‘Agir par l’instruction sur les centres nerveux, désarmer les penchants mauvais, développer et accentuer les bons, obtenir ainsi un homme renouvelé par la transformation de son organisme, une telle méthode réunit à la fois la prudence et l’efficacité’95 The political implication Blanqui derives from the basic assumption that it is ‘[l’]idée seule qui fait l’homme’ is thus significant: ‘L’instrument de la délivrance n’est point le bras, mais le cerveau, et le cerveau ne vit que par instruction.’96 Therein resides the fundamental process by which humanity can advance and progress, creating and shaping its own history by means of the conscious political subjectivity produced by intellectual development. While Blanqui, as we have seen, defines humanity primarily by its capacity for thought, he equally maintains that humanity’s capacity to change, to be perfected, is
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91 Blanqui MSS 9592(3), fo. 53 [15 April 1868]. 92 Blanqui MSS 9590(1), fo. 267 [n.d.]. 93 Blanqui MSS 9590(1), fo. 287 [n.d.]
94 ‘L’homme tient de la matière un cerveau perfectible par la réaction de la pensée’ (Blanqui MSS
9590(1), fo. 267 [n.d.]). !
95 Blanqui MSS 9592(3), fo. 217 [n.d.].!
96 Blanqui, ‘Le communisme, avenir de la société’, CSI, pp. 214-215. In 1880 Blanqui offered a
striking restatement of this basic primacy of enlightened thought and ideas within emancipatory politics: ‘Rien … n’égale cette pensée claire et profonde du matin qui sent s’élargir indéfiniment sa puissance et s’empare victorieusement de l’espace. Toutes les barrières tombent, toutes les obscurités se dissipent devant la lucidité pénétrante et ce déploiement de force ne fait que donner à l’organe une nouvelle énergie’ (Blanqui, ‘Athéisme et spiritualisme’, NDNM, p. 24).
its foremost quality, and the progress of humanity can indeed only occur through the change in humans themselves.97 Working directly from the Enlightenment tradition of the perfectibility of man, Blanqui contends that enlightened thinking itself conceives and communicates the ideas and morals capable of bringing about social change and progress.98 All humans must therefore devote their lives to developing and expanding their intellect and critical faculties.99 Blanqui often appears to present this as the realisation of humanity’s true essence. Thought and the consciousness it confers constitute the defining characteristics of humanity, comprising the – otherwise uncultivated or repressed - essence of man as cognitive, rational, empowered and unmanipulated, and providing it with the capacity for its own transformation and progress.100 To insist on the existing state of humanity, its current thought and morality, to dismiss not only the possibility but the necessity of humanity’s further progress, is nothing other than a justification of the status quo in all its injustice, inequality and irrationality. Humans beings’ dynamism and capacity for transformation are thus fundamental in the realisation of principled social change.101 Again, we might note that unlike classical Marxism Blanqui’s conception of consciousness and the political subjectivity it confers does not arise from the conditions inflicted upon the working class in the process of capitalist development –
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97 Blanqui MSS 9590(1) fo. 262 [25 August 1868].
98 See, for example, Blanqui, ‘Notre drapeau, c’est l’égalité’, 2 February 1834, MA, pp. 111-112. In this
text Blanqui claims that human intelligence discovered the principle of equality, this ‘révélation sublime’ and ‘effort sublime de l’intelligence humaine’ (ibid., pp. 110, 113).
99 Blanqui MSS 9590(1), fo. 156 [8 March 1869].
100 Blanqui wrote in 1834 that enlightened thought and work are the exclusive ‘sources de la richesse
sociale’; ‘l’âme et la vie de l’humanité’, together forming the banner of equality, contrasted with ‘oisiveté et exploitation’ of privilege. With thought and work society breathes, grows and progresses; without them society is doomed to collapse, disintegration and death. Thought and work represent ‘l’homme exalté par la pensée, ennobli par l’exercice se da puissance, l’homme dominant en maître toute la création’; idleness, meanwhile, stands for ‘l’homme inerte, n’exerçant plus ses facultés, dégradé jusqu’à l’état de brute, l’homme enfin cessant d’être homme !’(Blanqui, ‘Notre drapeau, c’est l’égalité’, MA, pp. 111-112, 115-116; Blanqui, ‘Qui fait la soupe doit la manger’, March 1834, OI, p. 291).
101 See, for example, the note entitled ‘La mobilité, Force principale de la France’, which
states: ‘Changer par intérêt personnel est d’un coquin. Changer par conviction est d’un honnête homme et d’un sage’ (Blanqui MSS 9592(3), fo. 227 [n.d.]).
even an ‘advanced’ worker can remain ‘une dupe aveugle’102 - but from enlightened instruction and thought alone. And again here we anticipate some of the basic ambiguities and tensions of Blanqui’s project. Who is and who is not capable of emancipatory action? How and when is this capacity realised? What is the possibility of self-emancipation? To these questions we shall return.
For Blanqui the inherent power of enlightened reason can only be realised in service of the oppressed multitude. As he already insisted in 1834: ‘l’intelligence … n’a de puissance réelle qu’à la condition d’être morale, c’est-à-dire utile aux masses’. Human intellect, Blanqui continues, ‘dans sa plus haute expression, ne peut pas être égoïste, car elle n’aperçoit de tendance salutaire que celle qui mène à l’égalité’.103 Enlightened thinking is bound first and foremost to egalitarianism and the protection of the weak and vulnerable. ‘La pensée’, Blanqui repeats, ‘agit en faveur de la faiblesse.’104 But as this last statement makes clear, only through its practical intervention within the material world, through its actual exercise, can this principled philosophical engagement become politically decisive, as indeed it must. ‘Dès que la pensée, en se déclarant immatérielle, cesse de s’appuyer sur sa mère,’ Blanqui warns on the other hand, ‘elle perd pied et se perd dans le vide’. Only in remaining firmly linked to materialism and material concerns, the ‘source qui seule alimente’,105 could thought fulfil its preeminent role: for humanity to make its own history.
In more practical terms how, then, can human thought serve human action as the basis of human emancipation? ‘Il s’agit de savoir’, Blanqui claims, ‘si les actions