In the Leninist conception of politics, the necessity of formal discipline is grounded only in the situation’s historical irregularities, and on the infinite diversity of singular tasks.
That being said, if party discipline is genuinely political (as opposed to being the network of interests responsible for socialising a State bureaucracy) does it, strictly speaking, constitute a bond? I seriously doubt it, and this doubt is, for me, the product of experience. For the real substance of political discipline is quite simple the discipline of processes. If you have to be on time for an early morning meeting with two factory workers, it is not because the internalised superego of the organisation assigns you to this task, nor because the social, or even convivial, power of the bond renders you susceptible to the perverse charm of tedious obligations. It is because, if you don’t, you lose the thread of the process through which generic singularities partake of your own experience. And if you are obliged not to indulge in frivolous gossip about your political practices while attending a dinner party, this is not because of some ineffable, masochistic relation that ties you to your organisation. It is because the normal social bond that encourages you to be effusive muddies the clarity of unbinding which, at the furthest remove from irresponsible commentary, you work away at with the same professional precision as a scientific researcher (just as this researcher will not deem this dinner party the most appropriate place to detail the mathematico-experimental dimensions of his problem).
A genuinely political organisation, or a collective system of conditions for bringing politics into being, is the least bound place of all. Everyone on the ground is essentially alone in the place of all. Everyone on the ground is essentially alone in the immediate solution of problems, and their meetings, or proceedings, have as their natural content protocols of delegation and inquest whose discussion is no more convivial or superegotistical than that of two scientists involved in debating a very complex question.
Anyone who considers the agreement on truth resulting from such debates intrinsically in terms of terror will prefer the mildness of the bond and the cushion of scepticism. One shouldn’t blame politics for what ism in actual fact, the result of a personal preference for the bound outpouring of the ego. By contrast, true instances of politics tend to manifest this faint coldness that involves precision.
No comments:
Post a Comment