Miao Cuicui: Subject and Revolution: The Evolution and Development of Theoretical Themes in Western Marxism

Based on the differing social realities and historical tasks they face, Marxist theory has manifested distinct research themes in the East and the West. The practice of socialist states in the East emphasizes objective law, historical necessity, and the scientific nature of Marxism, whereas Marxist theory in Western capitalist countries emphasizes subjective agency, social criticality, and the humanistic nature of Marxism. Although Marx called for the proletarians of the world to unite in proletarian revolution, Western Marxists—confronted with the reality that proletarian revolution failed to occur in advanced capitalist countries—have re-examined modern capitalist society and conducted new explorations into the path of revolution and the question of liberation. Focusing on the themes of the subject and revolution, Western Marxism has gradually formed a trajectory moving from the awakening of a missing class consciousness to the critique of ideological state apparatuses, and finally to the reshaping of new revolutionary subjects.

The Historical Emergence and Actual Dilemma of Proletarian Revolution

In the era of early capitalism, the relationship between capital and labor was the axis of the entire social system, and the relationship of exploitation and being exploited between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat was the most typical and salient social relationship. Only by using violence to overthrow all existing social systems and "overthrowing all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, forsaken, and despicable being" can the proletarians construct a new order and attain freedom and liberation. This inevitably requires the proletarians of the world to unite, "to form the proletariat into a class, overthrow the bourgeois supremacy, and conquest of political power by the proletariat."

However, during the stage of state monopoly capitalism, capitalism did not perish but rather flourished, while the socialist Soviet Union met with disintegration. In this context, the Western liberal democratic system, in a "posture of victory," announced to the entire world the "end of ideology," the "end of history," and a "farewell to the proletariat" ^[1]. For a time, it seemed as though humanity had lost its revolutionary dimension. In fact, the regulation and rule of Western capitalist countries, represented by the United States, have never left us; though revolution seems to have exited the stage, it remains embedded within the problems of the New Era. As Žižek remarked, one should not ask the stupid question, "Is contemporary revolution still meaningful?"; one should ask the opposite: "What is our predicament today?"

Philosophical Reflection and Re-planning of the Revolutionary Path

As previously stated, after Marx, Western Marxists faced the situation where proletarian revolution had failed to occur. They re-examined modern capitalist society in an attempt to find a realistically feasible new path distinct from traditional Marxism. Accordingly, Western Marxists opened a trajectory leading from the awakening of a missing class consciousness to the critique of ideological state apparatuses.

After the Russian October Revolution, Marxists in Europe believed that the reason why proletarian revolution was delayed in Europe was not that the historical process was immature, nor that material conditions for revolution were lacking, nor that the proletarian revolutionary subject was absent, but rather that the proletariat lacked revolutionary consciousness. Georg Lukács utilized the theory of "reification" to open the logical entry point for awakening the class consciousness of the proletariat. He distinguished class consciousness into "psychological class consciousness" and "imputed class consciousness." The former is an unconscious class consciousness: "class consciousness—viewed abstractly and formally—is at the same time the class-conditioned unconsciousness of one's own social, historical, and economic position." In a state of unconsciousness, even if the bourgeoisie and the proletariat actually exist, they cannot fundamentally achieve a high degree of self-awareness regarding class consciousness. Lukács believed that it is the latter—imputed class consciousness—that truly needs to be awakened. How, then, is the true class consciousness of the proletariat awakened? Lukács argued that within the reified structures and systems of capitalist society, only by becoming fully conscious of the existing reified structures can proletarian class consciousness be awakened. Only by reaching theoretical self-awareness regarding the reification of existing society, and only when society possesses consciousness, does it become possible for the proletariat to lead society. He emphasized that the proletarian revolution is "not only in the field of political power, but simultaneously in this struggle for social consciousness."

Antonio Gramsci also believed that the key to the proletarian revolutionary struggle lay in striving for ideological hegemony. However, facing the Fordist production system, he proposed a line of thought different from Lukács’s theory of the total reification of capitalist society; instead, he continued Marx's division of productive forces and relations of production, distinguishing industrialism from capitalism. Industrialism belongs to the category of the state within civil society: "In actual reality, civil society and the state are one and the same; it must be recognized that laissez-faire is also a 'regulation' introduced and protected by the state through legislative and coercive means." This is not merely an economic activity, but "a purposeful, deliberate policy." "State = political society + civil society," where one is the state apparatus of violence or political-legal apparatus (political society), and the other is the state cultural apparatus or ideological apparatus (civil society). Political society occupied an absolute dominant position in pre-capitalist states, whereas civil society possesses formidable power in contemporary capitalist countries. Gramsci hoped to utilize the "war of position" to gradually master ideological hegemony, thereby forging a path for revolution in Western Europe different from that of the Russian October Revolution.

In the 1930s, with the implementation of the "New Deal" in the United States and the rise of the Nazis in Germany, capitalism entered a new stage. The state apparatus fundamentally controlled everything via a powerful logic of totalization. Ideology, as a potent force of the state apparatus, obscured and strangled class consciousness, and proletarian revolution was temporarily shelved. Under the total rule of capitalism, European Marxists were no longer keen on proletarian revolution and exhibited a mood of revolutionary pessimism. However, the Frankfurt School stood out, maintaining a revolutionary character through its sharp "Critical Theory." In Dialectic of Enlightenment, Horkheimer and Adorno critiqued the culture industry and mass culture of capitalist society. They revealed that the essence of the culture industry is identical to that of popular music: both belong to the mode of mechanized reproduction under the control of the ideological state apparatus. "The culture industry has disclosed the secret of style, which is obedience to the social hierarchy." Faced with everything provided by the culture industry in the age of mechanical reproduction, the masses are neither able to refuse nor capable of avoiding the control of the culture industry. It can be said that it is precisely the culture industry and mass culture promoted by capitalist society that have deprived people of their subjective consciousness and creative capacity.

Herbert Marcuse launched a challenge against the capitalist ideological state apparatus from the perspective of a critique of science and technology. He argued that science and technology, as politicized instruments of rule, perform an ideological function, resulting in "one-dimensional thought." In contrast, Jürgen Habermas believed that the technical-mechanical system is "neutral"; faced with the tendency toward the "colonization of the lifeworld," humanity still possesses the potential to break its shackles and achieve liberation. The slogan "science and technology are the primary productive forces" ^[2] emits a signal: science and technology may become a potential for liberation. Habermas argued that the medium of "language" in the "cultural reproduction" of the lifeworld possesses agency, reflexivity, and coordination; he further proposed "discourse ethics," thereby making it possible for people to rid themselves of the domination of the "material reproduction" of the "system" and its media.

However, neither the negative critical theory of Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse, nor the constructive discourse theory of Habermas, could fundamentally shake the ideological state apparatus. The root cause is that cultural critique or ideological critique lacks the practical power to shake capitalist society. Therefore, the theoretical theme of revolution shifted from the critique of ideological state apparatuses to the reshaping of new revolutionary subjects to find the new practical forces that support revolution.

Multidimensional Perspectives and Contemporary Reshaping of the Revolutionary Subject

Amidst the wave of post-industrialization, the Western Radical Left—while inheriting the research methods of traditional Marxism and the previous theoretical frameworks of Western Marxism—has made new judgments regarding the changing situation, opening a new intellectual landscape. Radical thinkers such as Alain Badiou, Antonio Negri, Michael Hardt, Paolo Virno, Slavoj Žižek, Giorgio Agamben, and Kojin Karatani have emphasized micro-radical politics in the era of late capitalism, consciously transcending the "theoretical horizon of cultural critique and repositioning the question of revolution as the core issue from the perspective of political philosophy." The central question of revolution has shifted from inquiring into the absence and origin of proletarian class consciousness toward the question of how to reshape a new revolutionary or political subject. If the working class of early capitalism was the subject of transforming the capitalist order, then in the contemporary era, what forces can become the new subject to shake the established order? The reshaping of the new subject by contemporary left-wing scholars mainly presents four paths.

First, focusing on the sphere of production. Negri and Hardt in Commonwealth and Virno in A Grammar of the Multitude all champion an autonomous subject—the "Multitude"—and explore a revolutionary path of autonomy and "exodus." They argue that in the era of post-Fordist capitalism, small-scale flexible operations dominated by immaterial production will gradually replace mechanized large-scale production dominated by material production. This change highlights the non-quantifiable, immaterial affective dimension of life, which possesses "common" characteristics. However, capital embeds itself in the political sphere and conspires with political and legal power to constitute a social order of powerful identity—the "Republic of Property." Capitalist identity (homogeneity) will corrode the affective commonality; only a multitude possessing highly differentiated or "singular" characteristics can possibly resist the totalizing project of capital, exit from the social order of identity constructed by capital, and realize the autonomy and creation of the living subject.

Second, focusing on the sphere of consumption. Kojin Karatani, in Transcritique and The Structure of World History, advocates for a "consumers’ association movement," using the freedom to refuse to buy to resist capitalism. From the perspective of modes of exchange, he points out the asymmetrical relationship between commodities and money: money can be exchanged for commodities at will, whereas commodities cannot. He further notes that while workers are passive when holding commodities, they are active when holding money. So long as consumers refuse to shop, the circulation of capital will break; this means consumers possess the freedom lost in the sphere of production, regaining the initiative and obtaining the possibility of ending capital. Compared to strikes, boycotts seem more effective; compared to producers, consumers seem to possess more resistance. To this end, he advocates for the consumers of the world to unite to jointly oppose capitalism.

Third, focusing on the sphere of daily life. Giorgio Agamben, in Homo Sacer and State of Exception, isolates "bare life," indicating that we must remain constantly vigilant against and resist the arbitrary operations of sovereign power. From the structural perspective of "the law and the exception to the law," he identifies the current mechanism of sovereign power: the state suspends the law by declaring a state of exception, gradually degrading citizens—who have the dual protection of politics and law—into bare life devoid of any political protection. Once a person is reduced to bare life, they are like a guinea pig, able to be killed or requisitioned by sovereign power at will. Most frightening is that this state of exception is tending toward normalization. Therefore, in daily life, we must always remain alert to and resist sovereign power and its declarations of the state of exception.

Fourth, focusing on the political sphere. Alain Badiou, in Being and Event and Logics of Worlds, proposes that a subject faithful to the "Event" breaks old capitalist modes and constructs new communist modes through key events that actually occur. In his view, contemporary capitalism is pathological, characterized by the prevalence of material homogenization and spiritual standardization. Events—possessing characteristics of rupture, contingency, uniqueness, intangibility, and unknowability—can exactly cause political reality to rupture with the old situation and turn toward a new one. Only when a subject manifests within a specific event and remains faithful to it is it possible to establish a new starting point, open a new horizon, and open a brand-new space for the politics of liberation and communism.

The construction of the political subject by the contemporary Western Radical Left aims to use the differentiation of the subject to oppose the identity (homogeneity) of the capitalist social order. In essence, they all focus on independent individuals without domination or a center, failing to truly realize the enlightenment, realization, freedom, and individuality of the individual. Only by casting the individual into the social totality of humanity, and by casting personal freedom into the historical process of the proletariat’s self-liberation and the liberation of all humanity, can the reversal of power and the rebirth of the subject be achieved on the basis of the unity of individuality and humanity. Only then is it possible to find the true force for transforming the world.

(The author’s affiliation: School of Marxism, Sichuan University)