Part 1: Philosophy

For Philosophy

With much of the world upended, to turn to philosophy might seem like a strange move. Philosophy, the most abstract and seemingly out of touch of all intellectual disciplines, appears a strange bedfellow for a time when small fires are coming out of the ground here and there: Egypt, Chili, China, Southern Europe, India, and even the United States. For decades there’s been a philosophical slumber in the political world; a cautious balance of traditions guarded by academia and a drift across vast oceans swimming away from all the tumult raging ashore.

It’s precisely in times of great change that people turn again to philosophy. Today we stand at crossroads in world history again with the global flows of capital reorganizing, the loss of the “stability” of Western and formerly Sovietaligned powers, new struggles arising around the world, and an uncertain future both for liberation and survival at least in the world as we’ve known it. With the breakdown of the previous geopolitical balance of forces, agreements, and models, the dominant forms of thought, too, are under fire. The failures of the powerful to organize society have raised many questions about the ability of existing philosophies to account for history’s sour turns. When matters like environmental catastrophe, the potential for massive wars (and expanding areas of conflict), economic collapse, and so on are on the table, key sectors within the liberatory political landscape return to philosophy to reevaluate and seek new ways forward. The surprising popular success of Marx’s Capital in bookstores during the throes of world financial crisis explained thusly makes perfect sense. Fundamental questions are being raised, and people who normally do not engage in that kind of activity are going back to the basics and picking up whatever tools they’re aware of.

Part of the struggle for a more just society is our understanding, conception, and analysis of our reality and struggles. We don’t just reproduce ideas that we find, but we also invent new concepts, create new ways of thinking about changing reality, and propose ways of thinking to help us change the world. We make and reform methodologies, analyzes, and concepts. That is, we build theory. The framework we use to build theories is called metatheory, or the tools used to construct theory out of. It is the basic unit or vocabulary of political work—the bricks and mortar of a building, the basic conceptions that allow us to have thoughts. It gives us a language to describe our political language or thoughts with.

At this moment in history however, philosophy is an embattled territory. Science’s expanding grasp of the universe has brought within reach many things that once only philosophers considered within the grasp of raw empirical inquiry. Today it’s miraculous to look at the endurance of Aristotle’s physics within Western thought. A millennia passed before new ways of explaining physics beyond the framework laid out in Aristotle’s theories. Today imagining any scientific theory, let alone one created by a philosopher, lasting a generation would be unusual let alone centuries. Out of philosophy the sciences and disciplines were constructed and the expansion of knowledge brought about by scientific inquiry has led to rapid change in theorizing. Subsequently, philosophy has shrunk and changed, and where its borders lie seem harder to pick out than ever before—borders that are rapidly shifting and contested.

Strong anti-intellectual currents, at least in US society, make philosophy seem to many the purest form of erudite elitism and abstraction for abstraction’s sake. Purged of its empirical elements, philosophy appears to be the business of settling problems whose solutions have no outcome anyway—pure speculation and mental masturbation. None of this is aided by actually existing philosophy, which unfortunately is often characterized by feuding men at elite institutions who view their role more as gladiators for hire in an arena than as engaged citizens. These sentiments are particularly true for liberatory political thought, which draws from sometimes justified suspicions of professional intellectuals as well as from a desire to move to action without the mediation of the baggage of previous historical debates, obsessions with canonical texts, and intellectual hierarchies stacked against the exploited and oppressed.

At the same time battles are being waged over different traditions philosophers, canons, and what role previous philosophies will play in understanding the victories and tragedies of political struggle. The intellectual crises of traditional left movements with the fall of the USSR (combined with a twin threat of an insurgent and rising global anarchism eclipsing the Marxism and socialism of previous generations) have created a vacuum of philosophical space. Lineage, tradition, foundations, and starting points are being rewritten and reevaluated.

The work of French and Italian revolutionaries brought them to Spinoza as they sought to work out perceived shortcomings they encountered in applying Marxism and Marx’s Hegelianism to their experiences in Paris in 1968 and Italy’s struggles throughout the 60s and 70s. Many Maoists and Marxist-Leninists of today look to the work of Alain Badiou to provide a philosophical foundation for understanding the limitations of the official authoritarian Marxist-Leninist state experiences of the 20^th century and paths forward while still retaining the legacy of such movements. Anarchist and libertarian thinkers likewise have sought philosophical tools for elaborating their conceptions apart from the dialectics, Hegelianism, and most of all the domination of Marxism and liberalism within liberatory thought in recent decades.

From the perspective of liberation, philosophy is live territory perhaps now more so than in recent memory. Foucault, Badiou, Althusser, Negri, and Butler are examples of recent thinkers who have had influence on a wide array of relevant political issues. The importance for example of Negri and Hardt’s Empire exemplified that.[30] Its influence was grossly disproportionate to its actual content, and in retrospect can be viewed as capturing the uncertainty of the time at which people began rising up against neoliberalism while leftist dogmas one by one crumbled. With the World Trade Organization protests coming on its heels, Empire was in the right place at the right time. Often bizarre and strained attempts to apply such thinkers to concrete work speaks to the poverty of and hunger for these ideas. There is a push and pull between anti-intellectualism on the one hand, and then a poverty of theory that speaks to the moments and positions people who are struggling find themselves in without roadmaps or mentors. The gap between theory and practice is more literal than figurative.

While it is true that very few, even among hardcore political activists, look to such philosophical work, the impact of it should not be underestimated. Theory and philosophy matter in part because some people think they do. Only a tiny fraction of people engaged in Marxist struggles actually read Marx himself, but the influence of Marx and his works was massive. This is because key actors always come back to philosophy to help make sense of experiences. While the influence of theory is diffused through innumerable factors, the fact remains that philosophy is a place where important elements return to frequently and especially so in moments of change.

Philosophy does not derive its importance from the simple fact that influential (however we understand that) people use it and take it seriously. If that were the end of the story, we might simply take note of it and submit that faith in philosophy to greater scrutiny. Just because some people believe in philosophy does not ensure that it’s useful, worthwhile, or fruitful. There is something deeper going on in the ebb and flow of philosophy within society. Philosophy is not only a tool, but is also an inherent part of human life and thought.

Philosophy has no opt-out option therefore. Our mental lives are built upon philosophy and all people engage in philosophical thinking, though not necessarily as a conscious effort. It is through finding answers to other questions that philosophy rises to the surface, and when our ability to find answers in our daily lives breaks down, the underlying philosophical elements become more obvious. This is to say that there are inherent philosophical elements to all human thought.

What is philosophy then? Attempting to define philosophy is a minefield, and if done seriously, would require an entire book. Bertrand Russell underlines the trouble defining philosophy:

We may note one peculiar feature of philosophy. If someone asks the question what is mathematics, we can give him a dictionary definition, let us say the science of number, for the sake of argument. As far as it goes this is an uncontroversial statement... Definitions may be given in this way of any field where a body of definite knowledge exists. But philosophy cannot be so defined. Any definition is controversial and already embodies a philosophic attitude. The only way to find out what philosophy is, is to do philosophy.[31]

A core component of doing philosophy is looking at the underlying assumptions, structures, and values of various problems or fields of thought. There are philosophical questions for physics, sociology, art, literature, religion, the mind, space, time, and so on. Philosophy is not about topics, texts, or subjects, but rather it is a type of approach and types of questions. Traditionally the approach of philosophy is primarily aimed at exploring elements of our knowledge, evaluations, ultimate nature or being, and methodologies underlying fundamental problems. Immanuel Kant delineates the terrain well showing the wonder that philosophy can inspire in us as agents approaching a world empowered and required to inquire and intervene:

Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. I do not seek or conjecture either of them as if they were veiled obscurities or extravagances beyond the horizon of my vision; I see them before me and connect them immediately with the consciousness of my existence. The first starts at the place that I occupy in the external world of the senses, and extends the connection in which I stand into the limitless magnitude of worlds upon worlds, systems upon systems, as well as into the boundless times of their periodic motion, their beginning and continuation. The second begins with my invisible self, my personality, and displays to me a world that has true infinity, but which can only be detected through the understanding, and with which ... I know myself to be in not, as in the first case, merely contingent, but universal and necessary connection. The first perspective of a countless multitude of worlds as it were annihilates my importance as an animal creature, which must give the matter out of which it has grown back to the planet (a mere speck in the cosmos) after it has been (one knows not how) furnished with life-force for a short time.[32]

If we step back, we can discern two broad kinds of philosophical issues: descriptive and normative. Normative issues are issues of evaluations (or norms), most commonly morals and ethics, but not exclusively. Issues such as beauty, good taste, and even the rationality of judgments are forms of value judgments. It’s important to note that there is no science that could explain such problems. Science might tell us what value judgments we actually make based on the universe and our biology, but there is no science that can tell us we ought to make those judgments or not. The universe is ambivalent to those facts; we are the only ones who care. Normative questions concern what ought to be, rather than what is. Normative questions reside almost exclusively in the domain of philosophical thought.

Normative judgments, evaluations, questions, reasoning, and action guided by such are widespread and evident in our lives. This is because it is fundamentally human to have to contemplate our actions, their effect, and those of others who can decide what to do or not to do. Likewise, these judgments are contested. One generation may not even contemplate abortion as relevant to moral thinking, yet the next might be willing to kill over it. The prominent debates over how people make economic choices is an example of a philosophical normative issue; what decisions one ought to make, what purchases are rational, and so on all embody a philosophical worldview and latent value assumptions that are contested on all sides today. Though few discuss these issues as philosophy it is a debate that touches nearly all of us through the media, advertising, and education. This is the first way in which philosophy is inevitable. Because we are creatures that must evaluate actions, we are inherently tied to philosophy.

Descriptive philosophy deals with questions that try to capture elements of our world. There is more overlap here with science than with normative matters. For instance, someday neuroscience may demonstrate how the mind and body are one and the same. People can argue that different ways (and in fact the belief that science can is itself a philosophical position). The science of the mind is about explaining the data of its functioning. A robust neuroscience would be able to explain the chemistry and biology of our bodies, and through some elaborate explanation, the mental states, behaviors, and so on that humans have. Science is (roughly) about explaining data based on theories that can be reproduced through experimentation and predictions. The theory tells you how things function, and how they ought to behave given the model. There is a missing component though—neuroscience cannot tell us what a mind itself is. Science is neutral to how we understand what the mind is, except through its functioning. This is because science is about prediction over time, but not all elements of what something is will affect what it does. If the mind is purely matter or if it is ideas in God’s mind, it will behave the same from the perspective of science. Questions about the nature of things like the mind are one element of descriptive philosophy.

Consider how we attain knowledge of the nature of the mind. Whatever the mind is, whatever the account of its behavior and laws, questions abound as to how we would come to know any of this. Science provides accounts of the world as we happen to know it, but that doesn’t answer any evaluation of whether or not that process gives us knowledge, the underlying reality of our knowledge, or indeed what we are or reality is. These are philosophical issues. In general, descriptive philosophy deals with how we come to know things and the essence or being of things. Though it is less obvious than with normative questions, descriptive philosophy is an inherent component of our thought as well. Religion is an evident domain where human philosophizing becomes apparent.

Religions change, which causes philosophical explanations to shift. Some religions placed humanity within a false reality, in the belly of hell awaiting our awakening to a hidden reality. Other religious thought placed deities as the ultimate source of all knowledge, and instructed people to seek out truth through prayer and introspection alone. Religions disagreed over our connection with other humans, either wholly separating us as purely individual or autonomous beings, or placing us as actually a single being divided by illusions of separate existence from a unified totality. Religious thought exemplifies human attempts to find answers to questions that underlie our other inquiries. There is no experiment we could perform that would tell us whether or not we are in the belly of a devil. People’s aspiration to understand the knowledge and reality of the world lead them to popular forms of philosophy.

Another example of inherent philosophizing is politics itself. While much of politics falls in the normative domain, people come to form political beliefs based on a latticework of more basic philosophical positions. The debate about abortion makes this explicit. Though religion dominates the discussion, it’s worth noting that some atheists also reject abortion, and many religious people do not see abortion as murder. The basic disagreement centers on a philosophical position of what constitutes life, which is wholly distinct from scientific notions. One way to look at the debate is that there is no fact of the matter of when life starts in the sense that people care about; there are only debates about the basic conceptions of life, its value, and the meaning of our actions. Under the political issue lies questions about causality, our agency, the nature of life, and morality. These persist because they are questions that concern us, but which no amount of empirical data or experiments could help us solve. Because of our values, abortion pushes philosophical questions about life and our actions onto us. It throws us into philosophy unknowingly. The structure of our minds and world makes us face questions like these that are can’t be approached without philosophy.

With this in mind, we can say that all people engage in philosophy, though not necessarily overtly. Everyone has philosophical ideas, assumptions, and theories to explain the world. Sometimes this is manifested in religious beliefs, folk wisdom, and unconscious reasoning. At other times people put forward overt theories, though generally not as philosophy per se. In the abortion example we can see how different positions, which nearly everyone on some level has, take distinct positions on both descriptive and normative philosophy of mind, ethics, metaphysics, and life. This is distinct from making those processes conscious, codifying them, having a language specific to describe them, and so on. People may have tacit beliefs about what the ultimate reality of life is without either naming or being aware of them, and yet engage in self-reflection and change their underlying theories based on reasoning. We can compare thinking of life as the beginning of a chain of events starting at sex, the growth of a sentient humanlike being, or the moment when a new form of life is shifted from the cells of the egg upon conception. Each carries a philosophical view with associated beliefs and explanations.

Antonio Gramsci, an Italian revolutionary, made a famous distinction between good sense and common sense. For Gramsci, all people had both good sense and common sense. Common sense is socially inherited for the most part. Each individual has their own thoughts and beliefs, many of which are founded upon habit and tradition embodied in a place and their period. This is the fragmented contradictory set of philosophical thinking we all have. Good sense on the other hand is where people’s thought becomes more conscious, ordered, and coherent. Gramsci especially praised the attempts of everyday people to try and shape their thinking to their experiences. Theory moving in tandem with and influencing practice was called praxis. People have experiences, they theorize them, and those theories generate new practices, which in turn modify the theory, and so on.

While everyone philosophizes consciously and unconsciously — good sense must be cultivated. Gramsci lays out then the inherent nature of philosophy to living, and argues that we should perfect it. Yet we’re not perfecting philosophy as an abstract, but rather to fit our concrete context: our struggles, position, and aspirations both informing and being informed by our experiences. The distinction between good sense and common sense points to the reasonable notion that all people no matter their education, intelligence, or position engage in philosophical thinking though with different levels of conscious processes, specificity, and effort.[33]

People do not normally consider this theorizing or engaging in high intellectual activity, but it is. Obviously there’s a distinction between the work of individuals who spend decades working out an analyzes of their own and the positions individuals come to as a reaction to things occurring to them and around them. Yet the gulf is not as wide as might be thought. Between viewing our political mental life as purely passive or cultivated, there lies a dynamic interplay. People are not merely responsive, but also must filter their responses. Responses come through the lens of their beliefs, desires, and intentions. As people live and grow, they inevitably encounter elements of life that contradict what they think and what they have been taught. How they choose to respond to these contradictions is one path that leads to philosophical thinking, and politics is no different. We need only look at all the various shifts in discourse, surveys, and activity following the financial crisis of 2008 to see evidence for widespread philosophical thought throughout society.

A significant barrier to recognizing this ultimately comes from an excessively individualistic world view in which people form their ideas roughly in a vacuum, as though peering through the windows that are our eyes at the world outside, and only then return to social life to implement their ideas. In reality the situation is much more complex since divisions between individual and social life are incredibly blurred. People’s responses and questions do not occur in isolation. The speech, actions, and reactions of the countless others with whom we are in intimate contact (in modern cities and suburbs) influence our conscious thinking and unconscious activity. We do not ask questions out of nowhere, but rather we bring our own contributions to the experiences and options offered to us. Our own ideas and behavior inherently refer to the thoughts and actions of others in an endless spiral, each affecting one another. We all rely on, reformulate, adjust, and create theory in the course of our lives in order to understand our world, our position within it, and the best course of action for us. Philosophy is not alien or external to us. These are underlying issues inherent to being the thinking creature that we are, and they are both inescapable and completely widespread throughout our societies. Philosophers may have the distinction of being called such, but it is only because they have a discipline, tradition, and institutions that support their titles and work. We are all philosophers.

This isn’t to diminish the unique contributions individuals make, nor the idea that people can innovate and create genuinely new ideas. It is simply to acknowledge that we can’t make sense of any aspect of human mental and social life without referencing the lives, thoughts, and relationships with others. From this perspective, the universality of philosophical thinking is a consequence of the philosophical thought of all of us united in complex networks throughout societies. Intellectuals with texts, theories, and work are one manifestation of that broader social process at hand. Yet more fundamentally it is the inherent process within us all that makes theories possible.

Moves to Deflate

Yet one might ask if philosophy actually adds anything to our thoughts. Is it simply a trick? A mental trap? The ordinary language philosophers argued as such, claiming that philosophical problems develop out of snares in ordinary use of language that philosophers take out of their use-context to generate their quandaries. In some instances, they sought to reduce philosophical problems to linguistic, semantic, or conceptual problems. Wittgenstein, for example argued:

[Philosophical problems] are solved…by looking into the workings of our language, and that in such a way as to make us recognize those workings: in despite of an urge to misunderstand them. The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have always known. Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.[34]

This approach can reduce philosophical questions to puzzles that fall out of the questions or problem itself. Philosophy then does not actually change our course, but instead only helps us explain away the problems that come out of our language. For example, take the issue of truth. Deflationism about truth similarly attempts to deflate or eliminate the philosophical tension about the nature of truth through an account that is about language and our use of the concept.[35] Deflationists argued that to say that “grass is green” is true, we are simply saying “grass is green.” Truth adds no new content to the sentence, but can be a useful way to use language as a shorthand for repetition. In doing so, they reduced the problem of truth to a syntactic one, and showed that the ability to assert sentences using truth as a tool played a role.[36]

This move was quite pervasive in the field in an earlier era and parallels popular ideas about the irrelevancy of theoretical issues. At its most extreme this approach rejected the relevance of philosophy altogether. Extrapolating, we see that if such questions are merely semantic tricks which add no new content to our understanding of questions, then what bearing could they have on anything of substance? Even if we inherently end up philosophizing, this doesn’t show that it has any use beyond the curiosity of the theory-phile.

First, it’s worth considering that philosophy for its own sake has an inherent good. It may be good for people engaging in inquiry to test their minds, more deeply analyze assumptions unexamined, and develop abilities within the philosophical realm that help with analysis and reasoning that are more applied. Philosophical practice could be a type of mental exercise to build abilities one wouldn’t otherwise get. The process alone can improve us and benefit us.

Yet, broad skepticism concerning the importance of all philosophical inquiries is hard to sustain. For one, large sections of contested social life are imbued with purely theoretical questions. Ethics is an obvious example. It is not that there are timeless and unmoving ethical contents that philosophy merely tries to reconcile with our intuitive beliefs and practices. Instead, ethical sentiments have both apparent universals and historical and sociological variation. The values of the ancients are not necessarily the values of today. Whether we ought to have values different than our own is a philosophical problem. Historically humanity has been repeatedly wrong concerning ethical judgments, particularly concerning the lower orders of society, the dominated, and the exploited. Euthanasia, racism, sexism, and countless forms of dehumanization point to the contextual and changing nature of values. There is no way of approaching these questions, which are clearly vital, without philosophy in one form or another.

Beyond ethical issues there are always fundamental assumptions beneath all forms of thought that are likewise contested. Psychology, politics, sociology, the sciences, and literature all have their philosophical bedrock they are built upon. In the literary arts, for example, growing interest in language, globalization, and broad cross-linguistic trends led to an examination of the notion of translation. Translating works of literature is common, and when reflected upon choices around translation show elements of artistic creation. For translators of literature, concepts like meaning, intention, form, and esthetic judgments form the core of their activity. Each discipline and human endeavor has its philosophical issues like translation in literature.

Physics would appear to be the most solid of all subjects. Yet, physics is beset by methodological issues raised by theories that explain the behavior of subatomic particles. Quantum mechanics and string theory are two examples of theories that provide answers that contradict basic beliefs we have about what it means to be an observer, how we come to have knowledge about observed phenomena, space, time, and motion.[37] Hard problems in the physical sciences that contradict what we believe about the world can lead to philosophical investigations, which likewise can generate new research. It is no accident that many of the great scientists themselves were invested in philosophical debates of their time, such as Einstein with the logical positivists and Newton with the rationalists and Neo-Platonists.

The problem of consciousness in recent time is one example of an issue raised by philosophers, drawing from neuroscience, which has been taken up further by neuroscientists for new kinds of research. Philosophical interest in the raw experiential sense of “what is it like” has led to investigations and model from cognitive scientists and neuroscientists.[38] Philosophers of mind draw from new research to help find those boundaries as well: where does our concept of consciousness meet with what we know about the brain? Philosophy can help us with roadblocks in other domains, and it also provides the underlying basis for doing work in other fields, which can help or hinder our understanding of that work (such as conceptualizations of things like time, causation, perception, and so on in physics). Discipline-specific philosophical problems reflect the ethical, metaphysical, and epistemological quandaries of their domain. At the same time, they raise the underlying general philosophical problems they draw from and contribute to. Philosophy is perhaps less of a separate sphere or brand than a type of activity exhibited in broad swaths of human life with associated content and questions.

In politics, consider the role of philosophy in major world events. Marxism in the political world became one of the most influential currents in history. Marxism likewise arose partly from debates within the Hegelian societies, which in turn were debates generated by disagreements over history, knowledge, and the ultimate nature of subjectivity and reality. This isn’t to abstract away the role of history and struggle in forming political currents, but just to raise the relevancy of a philosophical element among others. All major political thought has found its grounding in philosophical problems concerning a few key questions: ethics, agency, knowledge, and society. Political problems are ones that address us both as members of societies and as agents within the world. It is unavoidable that there be deep questions about the direction, foundation, and justification for our judgments, a path to a good society, and how we come to have our beliefs about political questions. This is even truer for any critical politics. Rejecting doing philosophy within liberatory thought means embracing exclusively what we happen to believe or practice without reflection. If the present order is rejected, then the ability to deflate philosophical problems about politics becomes problematic as intuitive political philosophy is often based upon a corrupt material and moral order.

Looking to science, politics, and even literature, philosophy raises elements both of thought and practice that can contribute to changing activity and generating new ideas. As experiences generate new ideas, we respond to the ideas and create new forms of practice. This relationship is complex and not obvious, but it points to a deeper analysis of the role of philosophy beyond mere semantics. If we accept that there are philosophical questions of substantive content and that these are unavoidable at least on some level, then additional questions are raised.

Good Sense and the Professionals

Our world thus reflects our inherent philosophical beliefs, and when our beliefs change they can reshape the world (though not necessarily directly or simply). Philosophy, as we discussed, helps us when our thoughts hit limits. Particularly in times of turmoil, philosophy is turned to for help. But what are the consequences of having it be the domain only of philosophers? That is, if only professional philosophers do philosophy, how will that affect our own thinking?

If we refuse to engage in it, we cede that territory to others and often others who may or may not have our best interests in mind. Philosophy as a professional field relies upon a series of elite institutions to fund, train, and employ their staff. The politics and dynamics of academic employment is sordid enough to raise questions about the ability of professional academics to generate tools for people trying to better their lives and societies. Their institutions are largely run by elite intellectuals who uphold philosophy as the property of fulltime academics, which serves a hierarchical social organization that continually places the thinking of what is best for society into the hands of the few. Immense social pressure exerted through competition, funding, and the moderating effect of employment judged through ability to publish has deeply conservative effects on every discipline in academia. On the one hand there is a steady stream of trivial technical work aimed at securing and maintaining one’s employment, and, on the other hand, strong defense of the existing power structures in one modified form or another. This is merely to say that professional institutions reflect the power dynamics within society as a whole. Privilege and power get disproportionate voices and have extensive means to reproduce ideology throughout society, academia included.

By failing to take up the theories that are continually pushed upon us, and questioning our own, we allow leaders (either of movements or of dominant society) to often decide key questions for us that not only can impact the underlying theories, but often day-to-day strategies and tactics of struggles for liberation. For instance, contemplate writings and coverage of things like the foreclosure crisis in the United States. Through the media, academic publications, think-tanks, and government reports various positions on resistance, the problem, and potential solutions are developed. People interact with these through points of intersection in their daily life: their union, church, school, workplace, television, associations, and political affiliations. These positions are developed largely by people who have direct investment in the maintenance of the system through the funding of their employment, and the simple fact that it is working for them. Consequently, institutions of the powerful tend to set the debates. In the case of foreclosures key actors like SEIU, the Democratic Party, and a network of non-profits tied to foundation grants or unions led to focusing on the defense of private property of individuals rather than questioning capitalist housing itself that turns people’s homes and neighborhoods into commodities which has generated countless similar crises.

While this does not mean that it’s not possible for such people to be critical, on a broader social level it is true that perspectives that protect the dominant view are consistently overrepresented and defended by professional thinkers. This translates into people seeking to remedy the problem looking towards official channels set by the dominant power holders.

Dissidents do exist of course. Yet still too often we are lacking a vehicle for independent thought. Meanwhile, hostile perspectives that seek to maintain the status quo are able to use a monopoly of professional intellectuals to move concrete philosophies in everyday life that serve their interests, often against the interests of the great majority. This is not to pass judgment on those individuals or to reduce their positions to their social class, but rather to raise the issue that allowing for a whole realm of human mental life to be dominated by professionals or even to write it off is to passively accept the reproduction of the ruling ideology on fundamental questions for people trying to enact change. If we want to see critical perspectives, especially those of the dominated, we have to independently intervene and create philosophy with wider participation.

Recognizing the role of philosophy in our lives begs for another approach. The division of labor between thinkers and workers, the academies and society at large should be questioned. There should be an effort to expand working intellectual life, and to deepen both the capacity of people to engage with philosophy in their daily lives. Obviously not everyone will become a philosopher and write theories, but everyone can learn to think philosophically, question dominant philosophical thinking, and develop their own positions. Everyone, though particularly liberatory movements, should engage in questioning and developing theory in the course of their actions. There’s no reason to assume this is only a matter of individual education and willpower, either. Our education system pushes us to think individualistically in a way that doesn’t reflect how people learn. Scientists most evidently do not do research in this manner. Collaboration and collective projects are at the heart of their practice, beyond some base level of mastery that all scientists much engage on their own. If we recognize the potential for people to learn collaboratively with common aims and interests, the possibility of a popular intellectual life informed by people’s aspirations could be a tangible reality.

This is not a call for everyone to sit, as Descartes did, in front of a fireplace contemplating the mysteries of the universe. That is fine and often fulfilling to many, yet it is different from what we have been discussing. Within us, philosophy grows and develops, tracing the arcs of our lives and our beliefs. Theory and philosophy are not islands to which we swim only when things have gotten rough on the mainland. Our theory is not simply internal to us, but it additionally undergirds the rest of our activities and thinking. Theory evolves with our experiences. Humans are biological creatures with an endowment that shapes our thought through our genetic legacy, yet it is an open process. As we grow, change, struggle, and thrive, our ideas about the world change with our experiences. Living in cities and experiencing the technological revolution of mass communication, for example, certainly altered the way humans thought about their lives, families, work, and so on. In actual fact, theory and practice do grow together.

The best, of course, is when our theory and our practice move together organically, learning from practice and creating new theory, and the theory generating new practice. This is sometimes called praxis. Praxis is an ideal we aspire to. That is, that we should make our philosophies explicit, question them, weigh them against our experiences, and reformulate them so we have more tools to keep doing what we think is the best thing to do. This intentional, conscious process can help us think more clearly and learn from our mistakes. Action is more than our conscious intentions, and yet at the same time this doesn’t invalidate the usefulness of trying to achieve a praxis.

Philosophy as something inherent to our mental lives, something within reach of all, can be liberating both in understanding these points and in applying them. The universality of philosophy within society doesn’t mean that we should diminish nor exalt explicitly- theoretical texts like this one. Instead, it is to recognize that philosophy is the domain of all people irrespective of their intelligence, gender, class, race, or position. In societies based on domination the alienation from philosophy is apparent. It is also a grave mistake to look at such activity as alien to the oppressed and the sole property of elites. There is no option to avoid doing philosophy; there is only a choice to do it well or not.

This isn’t to say there aren’t barriers. Today’s society is built on divisions that try to enforce the ownership of theoretical thought by professional intellectuals. Anti-intellectualism is ultimately self-defeating. In the course of this struggle we have to be creative and find new ways to do philosophy—a philosophy of collective creation and a liberatory philosophy. Simply wishing philosophy to be popular is not enough. We can’t merely overcome these issues by manipulating the terminology or method to be more accessible, while people continue to experience the limiting and alienating effects of capitalist work and all its stupefaction of everyday life. Just as artistic creation has been stolen from the public and relegated to a spectacle by professionals reproducing artistic commodities for the market, so philosophy often has been chained to an exploitive system of thought. We need to seize philosophy again, see what we have available to us, and discern how we can recreate it for our own purposes.

Metapolitics

Issues inherent to ethics, social justice, biology, science, and societies are confronted through the course of the arguments working from emergence to agency. Though we’ve been speaking about philosophy in general, much of this work takes on critical political philosophy specifically. In this sense it comes from the perspective of a critique of today’s society alongside aspirations for a fundamentally different social order. The main focus of such is with political questions, and specifically with the underlying method and framework for doing politics.

Political questions can be divided into two different levels of analysis. One the one hand are raw political questions like: Is abortion wrong? Is it just for starvation to exist? What is the best form of governance for society? These questions deal with content and specific issues within a broader framework for political debate. This is simply politics or perhaps social questions. Answers at this level address assertions, such as “Abortion is morally permissible because it is not murder, and therefore should be socially permitted by law.”

Beneath these is a different type of questioning, questions about the underlying methodology and theoretical foundations for asking any political questions at all. This is the metapolitical. Metapolitics deals with the fundamentals that make settling political questions possible. For example, we might ask what the notion of a polity is altogether. What methods yield political truths? What distinguishes the political from other categories like the social or biological? Metapolitical inquiries provide answers not to political questions, but rather to the underlying concepts and structures upon which political questions are built. All political actors have latent philosophical foundations that they use to understand and guide their struggles. Ethical, social, and philosophical beliefs form the core from which people create their ideas for a political path to the world they seek, and an understanding of the current one. Metapolitical theories then give us the tools with which we build our theories.

This does not mean that when people come to political conclusions and take part in political acts that take sides they are explicitly thinking first of their metapolitical assumptions and then second working out a response. Metapolitics is a level of analysis, a place where questions of a certain sort can be asked. Anyone who engages in political life (which means social life in general and not merely conscious political activity), engages in metapolitical thought. The reasons are the same as for the universality of doing philosophy. Since we are creatures with minds and live in societies like we do, metapolitics is an implicit and unconscious element of human social life. We can attribute metapolitical assumptions to people either by their thoughts and expressions or by their actions. Human nature, for instance, often plays a strong role in political theory. Most people likely have thoughts about human nature, make judgments based on it, and indeed shape their lives in relation to perceived nature in people. Yet what about the concept of human nature itself? What is it? Answers to these questions are metapolitical; but simply by having belief about human nature, people have tacit commitments to ideas about nature itself.

Besides latent thoughts, there is as well conscious metapolitical thought. This is also universal, though not in an obvious form. Because of the dominance of professional intellectuals and the sequestering of their thought to institutions, such as academia, think-tanks, NGOs, and so on, metapolitical activity of nonprofessionals is not widely recognized. Yet people do come to change their beliefs about fundamental ways in which society operates and how to effect change. People come to believe or stop believing in the ability of individuals to fundamentally control the course of history. People come to see institutional structures of power or capital as determining agents controlling all society independent of the individuals involved. People become cynical of the potential for escaping the invariable dominance of human nature corrupting all social life. Within these attitudinal responses to political events, people take on political positions proper, but also are changing their underlying assumptions about how societies operate, and forming new opinions based on this.

Simply making our internal process conscious doesn’t guarantee it will help us either though. Most of human mental life is unconscious anyway, and being conscious of underlying assumptions does not necessarily allow us to escape pervasive errors or introduce new ones. Engaging in explicit metapolitics as this work is intended to do is simply to add to our capabilities and experience as people trying to work critically within a process for liberation. The explicitness is not a holy grail, nor is it a standalone solution. It is one part of our political activity, among many. The relative importance of this is an open question. Realistically, it is likely to help us through addressing real underlying issues, but it also does not have any great privileged status that invalidates other elements of political life. The contestation of theory, practice, intuition, creativity, emotion, reason, and so on reflect the divisions within society that try to advertise and monopolize their dominance alongside the struggle of individuals and institutions within this system. More collaboration, humility, and respect for the plurality of contributions is sorely needed. The crisis in political thinking is unfolding rapidly in an evolving world, making rethinking foundations for political inquiry more relevant today than ever.

Method and Content

Anarchism is not, as some may suppose, a theory of the future to be realized through divine inspiration. It is a living force in the affairs of our life, constantly creating new conditions. The methods of Anarchism therefore do not comprise an iron-clad program to be carried out under all circumstances. Methods must grow out of the economic needs of each place and clime, and of the intellectual and temperamental requirements of the individual. –Emma Goldman.[39]

One approach to doing politics centers on the nature of political methods. Some radicals have proposed viewing political methodology as the fundamental basis for politics. Within the Marxist tradition one school of thought used methods as what defines Marxism. For example, Karl Korsch[40] argued that:

‘Scientific socialism’ properly so-called is quite essentially the product of the application of that mode of thought which Marx and Engels designated as their ‘dialectical method’… Only those who completely overlook that Marx’s ‘proletarian dialectic’ differs essentially from every other (metaphysical and dialectical) mode of thought, and represents that specific mode of thought in which alone the new content of the proletarian class views formed in the proletarian class struggle can find a theoretical-scientific expression corresponding to its true being; only those could get the idea that this dialectical mode of thought, as it represents ‘only the form’ of scientific socialism, consequently would also be ‘something peripheral and indifferent to the matter,’ so much so that the same material content of thought could be as well or even better expressed in another form.[41]

Since this position is about how we carry out politics altogether, it is a metapolitical position, though one that attempts to sidestep doing theoretical work in a way. The popularity among political thinkers in discussing method and political-struggle-as-method warrants investigations of the problem. What is method? What is content? What relationship is there between theory and method?

Alongside issues with philosophy sits the problem of methods. Methods are

not simply a section of theoretical issues. In their rawest form, methods are systematic ways (and associated conceptual tools, analysis of such, and so on) of trying to achieve something. Methods involve steps, sequences, and instruments for carrying out practices in some form or another. This is often obscured in metapolitical discussions of method, which more frequently focus on hazy notions of frames, world-views, and perspectives as methods. Hard cases make bad law, so let’s take up more concrete notions of method.

The scientific method is one of the most tangible examples we have. In a nutshell, the scientific method consists of research, posing a hypothesis or something we propose in order to test it, conducting experiments, and drawing conclusions. The parts are related, but also related in the sense of moving through the steps in a direction. Methods have elements of theory or concepts and elements of construction or process. From another perspective, the scientific method is about systematically weighing certain kinds of beliefs (scientific ones) against their ability to predict real world events.[42] There are past evidence, hypotheses, future experiments, and/or predictions we test them against. Each component is related and serves to gain our object (knowing what’s right or not). Likewise, there’s a process we go through.

The scientific method was practiced throughout history before being codified as the method of science. There were experiments, hypotheses, and people went through similar steps to draw conclusions about the world. This isn’t to say people always intuitively engaged in the method, but people certainly formed hypotheses, conducted experiments, and used the data as the judge of their beliefs.[43] A method then is not only something we consciously follow or even understand, there’s also an unconscious practical element to it that our theory of methods tries to codify and capture.

At the same time the production of the theory of the scientific method gave scientists further tools for doing their work. Armed with a way to understand that work, future scientists inherited an understanding of how to account for existing data (research) as well as future data (experiments) in a way that can be reproduced, thus verifying hypotheses. The theory posed a challenge; run your belief through this course of tests, and the likelihood of it being true is high. That common ground allowed for collaboration, evaluation, and assessing scientific work. With set rules of the game open to all, it forms a shared way of hashing out our beliefs not just as individuals but also collectively. It created the backbone then not just of specific theories, but for how science as a collective activity of humanity would develop.

The first thing we should take from this is that theory (or philosophy) and methods are not identical. Theories are not necessarily organized into methods, and methods are more than just specific theories. The scientific method was practiced in various forms before it was theorized, systemized, or institutionalized. Likewise, methods themselves have theoretical components. There are the steps, sequences, relationships among the elements (hypothesisevidence-experiments-conclusions), and importantly practices. There’s theoretical work and there’s methodological work; related but distinct. The scientific method commits people to theories about evidence, experimentation, predictions, inference, time, observation, and so on. There may be many positions compatible with a method, but it is not theory-neutral.

Sometimes people try to argue that theory is a waste of time and that instead we should focus on strategy and methods only (or worse, just do what’s most immediate). It should be clear why this is a false dichotomy. Theory is inherently a part of methods. Without reflecting on our underlying assumptions (and theories), people tend to reproduce uncritically the dominant schools of thought of their time. While somewhat inevitable, accepting assumed theory robs us of tools to critically assess our work via our methods.

The example of the scientific method clarifies what use theory can have. By creating a method, with associated theorizing, the scientific method was able to blossom and expand the scope of inquiry. Though any method we might want to consider may be in existence already producing fruitful activities, the story doesn’t end there. By creating overt methods (through engaging in theoretical or philosophical accounts of both existing processes and ones that we want to exist), we gain extra tools to do what we want to do. Making things explicit lets us evaluate our underlying assumptions, identify problems, and experiment. It gives us more space to try new things and figure out what’s ultimately driving us forward or holding us back.

This is all true independently of the fact that explicit theorizing isn’t the be-all and end-all of doing good work. Method is judged not by our conceptualization of it, but by the sum functioning of getting us what we want. Theory has a role there, but only as a component of the total effort. We don’t get to opt out of theory, but likewise we can’t only do theory and believe that we have a method.

Methods for Liberation

What about methods for liberation specifically? Understanding the differences and relationships between philosophy and methods, and their respective uses, leads us to further questions. Radical thinkers have often sought to cast their traditions as ultimately reflecting a methodology of struggle rather than an ideology. Emma Goldman is one example of this within anarchism. Goldman was an Eastern European immigrant radicalized by her experience of life in the United States. She came to be one of the foremost radical voices of her day for not only anarchism, but also the liberation of women and the struggles of workers. George Lukacs is another within Marxism. A participant in the Hungarian insurrection, he was a one-time dissident Marxist who later joined the officialdom, repudiated his own ideas, and ultimately became a faithful defender of the orthodoxy of the Soviet Union. The young Lukacs argued that Marxism was not a set of theses to implement as a canon, but instead a method for coming to conclusions.

Orthodox Marxism… does not imply the uncritical acceptance of the results of Marx’s investigations. It is not the ‘belief ’ in this or that thesis, nor the exegesis of a ‘sacred’ book. On the contrary, orthodoxy refers exclusively to method. It is the scientific conviction that dialectical materialism is the road to truth and that its methods can be developed, expanded and deepened only along the lines laid down by its founders.[44]

Since Lukacs and Goldman, many thinkers sought to elaborate and sometimes place method at the center of radical work. Yet what does this mean? What does such a method look like? Lukacs says such a method is the scientific conviction—which we can only interpret to mean a belief that is evaluated against evidence rather than faith.

Goldman’s quote at the outset of this chapter goes perhaps more deeply in placing the implementation of the method into the context of the people carrying it out. It varies based on the environment it is realized in. These were ideas also raised by Errico Malatesta, the Italian revolutionary electrician and theorist of anarchism whose participation in the movement led him to organizing and participating in revolts across Europe, the Americas, and Africa.[45] Malatesta took such a position in discussing how an anarchist society would develop economically through a series of experiments varying with local context. Kropotkin himself argued similarly in describing the function of anarchist society.[46]

If we understand methods to be a set of practices in sequence with associated theoretical assumptions, there is good reason to be a skeptic about the use of methods that are in currency among some radical thinkers. For instance, consider the differences between Lukacs’ method and those of the anarchists discussed above. Lukacs centers his ideas on method on notions of dialectical materialism, and the teachings of its founders. What would those steps be and how could they be understood to follow a systematic pattern? Understanding in any usable way how dialectics are a method to draw conclusions is notoriously obscure. Whatever use of dialectics there is, there’s a looseness about method being employed here.[47] Compare this to Goldman’s notions or Malatesta conception of creating a just economy based on experimentation in a postrevolutionary moment. The anarchist conception of method embodied here is about implementing libertarian practice with libertarian means. Sometimes this is partially characterized by having one’s means match one’s ends. This is much more methodical than what Lukacs is proposing. There are theoretical commitments (ethics, notions of practice), a series of strategic and tactical proposals, and a method for how to relate them across time.

There is good reason to be skeptical in general about what Lukacs calls a method at all. If it is taken at its crudest, one would have to try to extract sequences from dialectics. One approach would be trying to reduce phenomena to their contradictions and look to a synthesis in some complicated manner. Lukacs and most Marxists would likely reject this as a crass deformation of their ideas, though it is often what the Stalinist orthodoxy (and notably the overwhelming majority of Marxists throughout history) tried to pass off as their dialectical science for decades. On the other hand, a broader approach of defining the dialectical method as looking to multi-level changing processes across time is not a method. It’s much more of a framing for problems, or a set of vocabulary and ways of thinking that we can use. Used in this way, Lukacs gives us more of a theoretical perspective than a method. There’s a laxity here about what counts as a method. A method is not simply a way of looking at things and broad lessons to learn from. Indeed, when most write about “a Marxist method,” they in fact do not mean a method at all, but instead a collection of ways of framing things, question-posing, and assumptions that have no clear methodology. In practice this is evident. The rarity of people able to understand and apply a dialectical or Marxist method makes its obscurity and difficulty applying it clear.

Historically there was a strong strand of thought, determinism, that made methods appear perhaps more important than they are. Many Marxists and a few anarchists (such as perhaps Kropotkin) followed the belief of the inevitability of their future society. The victory against capitalism was seen as being secured by natural economic laws governing society. Believing that such laws guaranteed ultimate victory led to privileging methods both for interpreting history and in trying to act. If historical fate secures victory, then theory as well as action are somewhat less important than our method for understanding and proceeding with the inherent laws that are already unfolding. Analysis (and methodology of analysis) would have a higher place than actually trying to solve problems and intervene since we already know the outcome.

Determinism pushes people towards passivity, since the inevitability of victory problematizes which, if any, actions are necessary. At its worst it provided justification for religiosity towards the actions of its adherents, often at the same time they perpetrated great crimes of history.[48] Today determinism has fallen out of style, perhaps in part because of the historical failures of the Marxist-Leninist states and the seemingly never-ending human tragedies of the 20^th century and beyond (fascism, ethnic cleansing, religious and nationalism terrors, life in the capitalist peripheries, and so on). Whatever history’s course, it doesn’t seem to be headed step-by-step towards paradise.

Based on the previous discussion, we should be skeptical of a strong way of interpreting those ideas in general. Anarchism for example is more than simply a method for achieving anarchist goals. If different radical philosophies are only methods, then they run up against the problem that they contain within their methods underlying theories, and theories that go beyond the steps and process of their method. The vision, goals, and assumptions of all radical projects commit us to doing theory in one form or another. Methodology is also important, but doesn’t allow us to evade theory as methodology itself has its own theoretical work.

Stepping back a bit allows us to extract truths from these ideas. A more charitable way of reading it, perhaps, is less as a way of rejecting theory altogether (in favor of pure method), and instead that radicals do not hold their theoretical forefathers as pure truth-bearers. Everything is on the table. People set out from the path of their inspiration, but the ultimate judge of the beliefs is our practices. These impulses are broadly correct and useful. While we may not be able to circumvent politics or theory by focusing on a pure methodology, methods are clearly important. Against dogmas and stagnant ideologies, looking to methods and practices gives us ways to discuss and test our ideas in the political world. In this way, methodology-centric politics does stress important elements of political work.

A Liberatory Method

What about a liberatory method? What would a method of liberatory thought entail? What makes a method liberatory in the first place? A liberatory method should contain a few key elements: the techniques and methods, the aim and scope, and evaluations. Here libertarians have elaborated considerable work. Tactical elements, the objects of libertarian struggle, and truth have been explored by the tradition. Yet explicit discussions of the method are unfortunately rare and unsettled.

First, there is the scope of the libertarian’s objectives. There is no single theory of such, and indeed it is contested. One central theme is that of libertarian struggle as being defined not by particular institutions, but through the relationships of those struggling to the power relations they are combating or new powers being constructed. Libertarians do not seek to rid us of injustice simply by attacking the existing State as an institution, but rather by transforming the relationships between those in power and those suffering the consequences of illegitimate power. The construction of liberatory answers is therefore based on contextual historical and regional circumstances. Social relations of power vary, and thus particular solutions reflect the historical, objective, and subjective features of the problems posed. The libertarian struggle is defined by its material circumstances, its participants, and their place in history. There is neither a timeless central framing (good vs. evil), nor is it only defined through central institutions like particular states or capitalists. Noam Chomsky puts forward a definition of anarchism quite close to this view in his introduction originally to Daniel Guerin’s book, Anarchism:

At every stage of history our concern must be to dismantle those forms of authority and oppression that survive from an era when they might have been justified in terms of the need for security or survival or economic development, but that now contribute to---rather than alleviate---material and cultural deficit. If so, there will be no doctrine of social change fixed for the present and future, nor even, necessarily, a specific and unchanging concept of the goals towards which social change should tend.[49]

Emma Goldman likewise emphasized the relativity of the application of an anarchist method in the quote at the outset of the chapter. This isn’t to say simply that there is a plurality of different ways anarchism could manifest, but rather that methodology gets its life directly through its struggles. If we think in terms of what Chomsky writes, the method is worked out based on the oppressions and illegitimate authorities that people seek to dismantle. The doctrine is understood through application of the method to the reality of the rebels seeking liberation, and not merely through attempting to codify it or imposing a set of beliefs to a subservient reality.

Secondly, there are the actual tactics and techniques inherent to the method that define it. Typically, anarchists focus on tactics, and usually direct action, directly democratic assemblies, and horizontal delegation. Using these ways of solving problems is supposed to bring us towards the anarchist ideals. It is not simply the targets (the State, capital, oppression, and so on), nor a decentralized and historically rooted application. Inherent to the method itself are certain practices that make it anarchist. There is a relationship between the ends (goals) and the means, and the means are secured by choice of tactics. Direct action and direct democracy are themselves thought to deconstruct statist relationships within those struggling. Horizontal structures begin to rebuild power relationships on an anarchist basis.

This framing of the issue is not completely right though. At the core it seeks to express the idea that a libertarian method uses libertarian means to libertarian ends. This connects the third piece. There is a core set of values that helps us choose our tactics, evaluate struggles, and analyze our situation. Yet in the second component of the method, people often put forward structures or forms of tactics. Direct democracy is a structure in which decisions are made, but not necessarily the relationships or decisions of those people. Direct action is a type of action carried out by people, but it is not necessarily direct action to libertarian ends by people with libertarian intentions. Direct action can also be used to different ends—authoritarian and repressive ones like radical fascist actions. Using libertarian means will not necessarily bring us libertarian outcomes.

Consider when hierarchy emerges from horizontal structures. There are many mundane examples. Formal democratic procedures don’t bar people from dominating through other means, such as charisma, social connections, education, or knowledge. Fascist groups use direct action to attack immigrants, queers, and leftists. People can use informal hierarchies and re-create bureaucracies in directly democratic councils to dominate. Horizontal delegation can be manipulated through networks of power, which can be utilized to carry out agendas against minorities or even majorities. For instance, a militant racist and anti-communist in the US military developed a concept of leaderless resistance against a potential soviet invasion. Louis Beam, a Ku Klux Klan leader, took this up and argued for decentralized cells organized without higher bodies:

An alternative to the pyramid type of organization is the cell system. In the past, many political groups (both right and left) have used the cell system to further their objectives. Two examples will suffice. During the American Revolution “committees of correspondence“ were formed throughout the Thirteen colonies. Their purpose was to subvert the government and thereby aid the cause of independence. The “Sons of Liberty“, who made a name for themselves dumping government taxed tea into the harbor at Boston, were the action arm of the committees of correspondence. Each committee was a secret cell that operated totally independently of the other cells. Information on the government was passed from committee to committee, from colony to colony, and then acted upon on a local basis. Yet even in these bygone days of poor communication, of weeks to months for a letter to be delivered, the committees without any central direction whatsoever, were remarkable similar in tactics employed to resist government tyranny. It was, as the first American patriots knew, totally unnecessary for anyone to give an order for anything. Information was made available to each committee, and each committee acted as it saw fit. A recent example of the cell system taken from the left wing of politics are the Communists. The Communist, in order to get around the obvious problems involved in pyramidal organization, developed to an art the cell system. They had numerous independent cells which operated completely isolated from one another and particularly with no knowledge of each other, but were orchestrated together by a central headquarters. For instance, during World War II, in Washington, it is known that there were at least six secret Communist cells operating at high levels in the United States government (plus all the open Communists who were protected and promoted by President Roosevelt), however, only one of the cells was rooted out and destroyed. How many more actually were operating no one can say for sure.[50]

This did not make Beam’s ideas liberatory obviously, no more than others using decentralized organizations to authoritarian ends. While a libertarian methodology is necessary to achieving equality and liberty, it isn’t sufficient. Structures and forms alone don’t come with automatic guarantees. You may utilize a libertarian method and still produce new (or old) forms of destructive hierarchy.

Using libertarian structures certainly will help us. Direct democracy likely minimizes potentials for authoritarian abuse. All things being equal direct democracy is better than directives from dictators or the aristocracy of representative structures. Direct action does have an inherent liberatory potential as well. Acting directly means cutting out the mediation from our lives: representatives, bureaucrats, recuperative institutions, and so on. Yet this is different from identifying our goals with the structures that can help us achieve those goals. What makes something liberatory is its recognition of the capacity of people to self-govern, implement egalitarian social relations, or whatever. The content of our goals is served by structures, but structures and means provide no guarantees that we will achieve them. There is another component missing here.

This is another way to say that there is also a need for content in the radical project of transforming society. On the skeleton of our method and tactics, we build it up through putting the flesh of content on the bones. Anarchism can be liberatory not only because it uses direct democracy to achieve its ends, but also because of its ends: organization of society’s products for all, self-organization, cooperative labor, and a holistic development of individuals for their own chosen ends (to give potential examples). Tactics are applied to ends; ends aren’t automatically generated by tactics. This cuts both ways for instance between different trends in the libertarian world: social anarchism and insurrectionary anarchism. Militancy itself isn’t inherently liberating, even decentralized or popular militancy.

Likewise, popular democracy can just as easily produce authoritarian consequences as liberatory ones. There is no reason to assume that struggles against authority towards a better social order could be divorced from the ethical content of such aims. It is easy to forget that libertarian means can be directed at contradictory ends, like when people use process and spaces for their own emotional needs against the collectivity. Without such, we rely upon either a belief in the inevitability of our victory, or that the means themselves inherently produce just and good outcomes. Both beliefs are false since what produces injustice and hierarchy is not simply how they are achieved, but also why. Part of structures and social relationships are the ideas and goals of the people within them.

There are lessons we can extract from the exploration of methodological thought in whatever form. First, the emphasis on the historical nature of liberatory thought is critical. Often philosophies are thought of as things that are contemplated, laid out, and brought back to the world to be debated and in some manner implemented. Perhaps in other less concrete fields this can seem more plausible, but in the social world it is patently impossible. The issue involves both time and space. Concepts, institutions, and actors do not remain the same across time. People who expend their time, for example, in order to live are not the same in every age. A slave, peasant, worker, and a subsistence farmer all expend time for their ability to live, but the social relationships that define their work change across the ages. This change is both defined by the society they grow up in, and the time period they exist in. An emphasis on understanding our ideas through method helps keep us grounded in analyzing these factors. If we seek liberation, what does that mean in this environment for these people with this situation and this history?

Secondly, these accounts highlight the way in which a theory of practices can guide us towards our aims. It is not merely getting to the gates of power that matters, but the process and tools by which we got there. A putsch is different from a popular uprising. The sequences of events that produces putsches and popular uprisings have historically meant a great deal in terms of the ability of rulers or would-be rulers to stem the tide of popular power. And as another example: wining the freedom of political prisoners through taking action versus it being granted by the courts acting on a purely legal basis is different. Process is an inherent part of liberatory politics—not merely outcomes.

Lastly, the content of our struggles combined with our methodology are what makes struggles liberatory or not. Liberatory methods are grounded in the conjuncture of those struggling, are based on liberatory processes, but they also are directed at liberatory content. This content must also be fought for, and is not contained within the fight itself (even if it’s suggested). By honing in on content one can see that within liberatory methods there is still a struggle for liberation. That is, the struggle is not merely between liberatory methods and other methods, but within libertarian struggles there are other tendencies that lead us away from our goals. Those battles are fought largely around content.

When past thinkers honed in on method they unearthed strong relationships among history, aims, and tactics. This is a relevant insight today. It is clear however that something deeper is necessary as well. Part of the task of building a liberatory thought and practice is elaborating a method that incorporates within it a positive content of liberation, and harvests the material reality of its application at the same time. Such a method connects the relationship between social forces and our orientation as agents figuring out what to do in a constantly changing world. The tools extracted in the course of this inquiry will give us insights into some of the contradictions seen already: how hierarchy can emerge from anti-hierarchy, how dispositions and intentions relate to beliefs and desires, and where motivation fits in.