CAPÍTULO 6 RESULTADOS
6.1 SISTEMA DE MEDICION DE LA VELOCIDAD DEL VIENTO
I shall now summarise my account of the ‘critical approach’. The first key argument of this approach is that the traditions and cultural practices which constitute the subject’s context misdirect him and veil the true nature of his relationship with the State. Furthermore, such practices not only mislead him, but in fact actively manipulate him and ‘shape’ him for political obedience. Perceiving such misdirection and manipulation in political practices and institutions, the ‘critical approach’ consequently insists that these illusions must be lifted so that the ‘true’ nature of the subject and State relationship is revealed.
This leads to the second key argument of the ‘critical approach’: the true nature of the relationship between subject and State is one of ‘oppression’. It is argued that the State attempts to repress and ‘hold down’ the subject, typically in order to maintain the dominance of one ‘political elite’ or ‘class’. Thus, it is assumed that if a State exists then subjects must be in a condition of
between ‘man’ and ‘women’ (Beauvoir, 2009:9). Out of such thought has come the argument that institutions such as the State do not just oppress a certain class but also a certain gender. Ann Tickenr has for instance highlighted how feminist scholars maintain that States ‘promote and support policy practices primarily in the interest of men’ (Tickner, 2001:21). Nonetheless it will be recalled that the purpose of this chapter is to give an illustration of the ‘critical approach’, and not to give all-encompassing comprehensive survey or history of such an approach. I therefore chose to focus on the cases where oppression by ‘class’ was featured most predominantly purely because I found it most illustrative of this approach.
oppression, and subsequently it is this understanding of oppression that must be used as a lens to survey the subject and State relationship.
The use of this lens nonetheless results in the ‘critical approach’ adopting a ‘removed vantage point’. In particular, the approach comes to the question of the subject’s relationship with the State from its assumption that the State ‘oppresses the subject’. It consequently sets itself the task of ‘unmasking’ this system of oppression. Thus this approach does not focus primarily on the subject, but rather attempts to demonstrate the ’truths’ of his situation which transcend him. Consequently, this approach must step back from the perspective of the subject where tradition and culture are taken as they appear, and consequently their ‘underlying truths’ are hidden, and instead take a ‘removed vantage point’ from which these ‘underlying truths’ may be observed and identified. This is perhaps best illustrated by Marx and his attempts to explain the relationship between subject and State using economic metatheory and historical materialism67.
This ‘removed perspective’ in Marx’s thought is particularly evident in ‘On the Jewish Question’, where Marx turns his attention towards the particular political issue of Jewish Emancipation. As we saw earlier, religious belief for
67 Nonetheless we may observe even approaches such as Foucault’s, which claim to examine ‘localised power’ and study power at its ‘external face’, nonetheless still focus not on the subject but on the ‘techniques and tactics’ of domination. It is consequently a removed historical perspective, one from which he may observe the different forms of subjugation: how they function, and the connections between them, that Foucault takes (Foucault, 2004:34).
Marx was a result of the material conditions which the subject inhabited. Consequently, solving such issues for Marx became a matter of exploring the material and historical conditions of oppression and seeking means to emancipate the subject from them. Marx therefore argues that the answer to this question cannot be found by giving the Jewish population certain rights. On the contrary, as political relationships and religious beliefs are a consequence of the oppression inherent in the capitalist economic system, one must look to emancipate all mankind from this system as a whole. Once such emancipation is achieved these other forms of oppression will subsequently disappear. Thus, Marx argues, using the term ‘Judaism’ as a symbol for capitalism as a whole: ‘Jews should not seek emancipation, but the world must seek emancipation from Judaism’ (Marx, 1992:241).
What is clear here is that Marx never attempts to understand what it means for the subject to ‘be a Jew’; he never considers the experiences that led to the subject’s faith, nor how the subject understands this faith himself and how it informs his relations with others. On the contrary, Marx asserts that the subject’s religion is the consequence of a meta-economic structure and insists that this problem can only be elevated by addressing this superstructure. Thus Marx can be said to view the problem from a ‘removed vantage’ point where the subject’s relationships are explained through superstructures. He does not take into consideration the subject’s experiences or consider his perspective.
Consequently, whatever the subject himself may understand or feel about his faith, Marx holds that the ‘truth’ behind it is always oppression68.
The consequence of this ‘removed approach’ is that the subject’s actual encounters, and the perspective he gains from these, are overlooked as the ‘critical approach’ attempts to explore and ‘unmask’ the forms of oppression which it contends constitutes the ‘truth’ of this relationship. In this way it has similar limitations to the ‘rational approach’; as it bases its approach on a prior assumption made about the subject the ‘critical approach’ overlooks the actual experiences and perception of subjects who inhabit the State.
The comparisons between the ‘rational’ and ‘critical’ approaches do not however end with the making of prior assumptions. It will be recalled in Chapter One I contended that when a subject’s perspective or behaviour did not correspond with the ‘rational approach’s’ assumption of the subject as rational it was dismissed as ‘ignorant’, and often had depreciatory labels attached to it such as ‘barbarism’ or ‘savagery’. In the same way, when the
68 There of course other examples of such thinking. We might for instance observe Gramsci, especially in his ‘pre-prison’ writings, accounts for such behaviour as paying football and taking cocaine as particular by-products of the capitalist economic system. He for instance argues that popularity of cocaine is a result of the capitalist system creating ‘people’ who have no worries or scruples (Gramsci, 1994:72). Football he argues is also a product of ‘capitalist individualism’ which seeks to accompany its ‘economic and political freedom’ with a sense of ‘freedom of spirit’ and ‘tolerance of the opposition’ (Gramsci, 1994:74). This is in contrast the Italian card game
Scopone, whose opaque rules often result in confusion and violence, which originates in countries which are economically, politically and spiritually ‘backward’ (Gramsci, 1994:73-4). What we can observe here is that Gramsci seeks to explain such behaviour by relating it to underlying economic and political orders that lie beyond the subject’s consciousness. Thus the subject’s encounters and experiences with say drug addiction or sport are overlooked as explanation for them is sought in greater forces which subjects are themselves unaware of.
subject does not behave or perceive himself as ‘oppressed’, the ‘critical approach’ claims this is because he has been deceived by the culture and institutions which veil the true nature of the State. Subsequently those who do not share the ‘critical approach’s’ central assumption that the subject is being oppressed are said to be suffering from a ‘false consciousness’.
Thus, for Marx, the person who believes in the possibility of Jewish emancipation within the State is ignorant to the ‘truth’ of the problem. The subject who does not believe that his ‘social superiors’ oppress him is similarly deluded. We may for instance observe Marx lamenting at the deluded nature of British subjects who cannot recognise that ‘aristocrats’ such as the Duchess of Sutherland oppress and abuse their tenants in exactly the same way as the American slave owner oppresses his slaves (Marx, 2007:119)69. We have also
observed how, for Marcuse, behaviour ranging from Nazism to the desire for cars and make-up was perceived as a ‘false consciousness’ cultivated in order to ensure the dependency of the subject on society. We might similarly observe Nietzsche dismissing political obligation towards the State as ‘idol worship’ and a symptom of ‘herd-mentality’ (Nietzsche 2003:75-7) 70.
69 Marx is commenting on what he believed was the hypocrisy of the ‘Stafford house assembly of Ladies’ commentating on the issue of slavery in the Southern States of America. Marx finds this hypocritical as the president of the assembly was the Duchess of Sutherland who he claims made her fortune from exploiting her Scottish tenants before forcefully evicting them from her land. Such exploitation is the same for Marx as the direct exploitation of the salve owner. However the traditions and culture of Britain veil this fact (Marx, 2007).
70 Another particularly interesting illustration of this comes from the philosophical anarchist A.J. Simmons. Simmons in particular contends that the feeling of belonging we have for one’s country of birth can be understood as a form of ‘false consciousness’ (Simmons, 1996:264).
Thus I contend that the limitations of the ‘critical approach’ stem from its assumption that the subject who exists within a State must be oppressed, and that we must use ‘oppression’ as the lens through which to survey his relationship with the State. The actual experiences and perspective of the subject are subsequently overlooked as primacy is given to understanding and unveiling systems of oppression. Furthermore, those subjects who do not believe themselves to be oppressed are dismissed on the basis that they have been deceived; beliefs that do not share the ‘critical approach’s’ central assumption that a subject existing within a State is oppressed are explained away as instances of ‘false consciousness’.