Praxis
I’m reading Society of the Spectacle, in one section of which Guy Debord contrasts (collective, not individualist) anarchists with Marxists thus.
Anarchists like Bakunin, says Debord, “have an ideal to realize.” They distinguish between theory and practice and recognize the insufficiency of the former alone, and thus Bakunin can lament after years of work that “during the past nine years, more ideas have been developed within the International [Workingmen's Association] than would be needed to save the world, if ideas alone could save it” (quoted in Debord; brackets mine). For Marx et al., in contrast, “the unitary thought of history was in no way distinct from the practical attitude to be adopted” (italics Debord’s).
Debord scorns “nonsense” like Hilferding’s notion that “recognizing the necessity of socialism gives ‘no indication of the practical attitude to be adopted. For it is one thing to recognize a necessity, and it is quite another thing to put oneself at the service of this necessity’.” (I don’t know anything about Hilferding, but Wikipedia calls him a Marxist, which makes me think all these distinctions are rather arbitrary anyway, or at least impossible for me to understand. I guess he was a “bad” Marxist, according to Debord? But to continue.) I rather agree with the last quote, though, and as much as I would like to believe in a type of “unitary thought” that seamlessly unites theory and practice, I really can’t seem to manage it. It certainly doesn’t exist in education, as far as I can tell, and my life would be a lot easier if it did.
