For reasons to do with the way the media functions in democratic capitalism as a state apparatus,* this apparatus only allows communists to appear in the media as ‘shouty humanists’, in other words they must seem to place sentiment and moralism before science, and passion and emotionalism before reason, entirely going against the grain of classical Marxism. This is of course a way to prove in practice to the audience all the usual falsehoods about communists, from the mild reproaches of them being well meaning but inevitably wrong idealists to always angry totalitarian dictators.
This strategy has
worked very well for the bourgeoisie for years now, even to the extent that
leaders of most of the western communist parties usually follow this rule, and such
conforming individuals are able rise to the top of these parties for this
reason. The question is how this happens; there are two essential ways that
such eventualities come to be: The first is by the simple process of reward and
punishment, those individuals who follow these rules are rewarded by the
system, mostly obliquely, and given more airtime and so on and thus seem more
apparently successful than their opponents. Secondly, there is an unconscious following
of these rules in the general sense, with persons with affective practices that
behave 'obdiently' felt to be more socially positive. The latter is because of the underlying
alienation from labour in capitalism.
Any Marxist will know
that Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Mao, were fairly personable people in terms of
their personalities. They were witty, highly intelligent and had the ability to
write many books. They were theorists of communism but also studied the contemporary
philosophy and sciences and were up to date with the most advanced scientific
theories in diverse fields. Marx for instance could both read, speak, and
translate on sight multiple languages. Of these figures, only Lenin and Mao became
the leaders of actual political parties.
However, since this
time, such individuals have, I think, been prevented by various means. To start
with, in politics in general there has been a pervasive anti-intellectualism
and suspicion of those who ‘know stuff’ in favour of those whose demeanour is more
spontaneous and passionate. For instance, there has been, e.g. in the UK, on
the left Arthur Scargill (miners leader), and Neil Kinnock, and currently in France
there is Jean Luc Melenchon of LFI, or there was Georges Marchais of the PCF.
In all these cases their political positions have been presented in the media in
shouty humanistic terms (I am aware that Kinnock was hardly a communist of
course). We could of course debate
whether these individuals were sincere or not, but really this is not the
point. Also, one must be aware of politics in at least more than one democratic
capitalist country to truly see how this is a pattern, a technique.
- The media has been a
modern technical mass media since at least the rise of the Nazis, and it
has been able to use mass techniques and has a lot of practical knowledge based
in how to sway feelings, and make it seem as though certain things and
positions and people are popular, and they are capable of pushing certain
things that they as a class want, but can make that pushing seem like audience
pull, as if it is the democratic will of the authentic masses. The new social
media despite its great promise has only made this more intense through the constant
intervention of troll farms and biased computerized algorithms.
This brings me to the
concept of Affective Practices and to the idea of contradiction within an
affective practice. Which means, whilst it is possible for a person to express
ideas that are rational or Marxist, it is at the same time possible for this
same individual to behave affectively in a manner that goes against this. I
would venture to say that this is even the norm for most of the media figures
on the political left who get near to socialism.
The techniques of how the
bourgeois class deal with this problem of appearance, and what is essentially the
process of political branding involves a body of knowledge that has been built
up over decades in the apparatuses of the media which they either own or direct
via the state.
* The theory of the
media that allows me to say these things (rather raw and newly formed I admit) I have worked on elsewhere, likewise
the concept of alienation that I am using here can be read about and is
supported in my book Aesthetics & Alienation. Note that here I have only been
able to say these things in a schematic fashion, unfortunately
Gary Tedman
