Bullshit conjecture from a philosophy nerd: my hatred for philosophy and why it matters

Before we start I need to discuss the perfect specimen of clickbait that is the title of this essay (and no the irony is not in fact lost on me); I do not “hate” all of philosophy. Epistemology, phenomenology, ethics and analytical philosophy are all important and impactful fields of study and hence will not be the main focus of this “critique” (Although I will touch on them later). The main point I'm trying to make, what compelled me to write this piece as the first installment of BCFAPN was my general anger and disappointment with the state of political discourse especially on the left (that sentence sounds a bit right-wingy but i assure you this “critique” is coming from an ostensibly leftist perspective).

With all the preamble over i will now give you the central thesis of this text:

Stop reading so much theory and do something you dumb fuck

I say this while being an avid reader of political science and the stereotypical “coffee shop revolutionary” so understand when I call you, the potential reader, an ineffective bitch that applies to me just as much as it does to anyone in the audience.

At this point i suspect many are thinking

“The first duty of a revolutionary is to be educated.”

As was said by a rich Argentine man whose name i cannot remember :). I have to say I agree with him whatever his name is. In order to be an effective political force you need to be educated, you need to understand who you’re fighting and what you are fighting for. what you don't need is to be a philosopher!

Let me rephrase, the average lib-soc/An-com in coming to believe the ideas with which they are identified has learned enough “theory” to be politically useful.

The wanna-be-politician™ does not benefit meaningfully from reading “The Sublime Object of Ideology” and sitting around a table talking about it. Neither dose the politically active college student.

I want to make myself entirely clear. I don't think it's bad to read Das-Kapital or to have conversations on how we should make the revolution happen. I am talking to a very specific subset of people who cancel collaborations, stop organizing and refuse to build coalitions because they are too busy debating whether government in any form is acceptable, by all means an incredibly important conversation to be had but in the current political climate, it doesn't matter. In recent years the right has successfully built a political coalition at an scale never before seen, the incredible success of the right's tactics is undeniable. With all this apparent i feel compelled to ask if there exists a way to defeat the right-wing coalitions taking over the world as we speak, that does not in essence equal building a broad left-wing coalition including figures ranging from the (and yes saying this pains me too) establishment liberal to the most militantly antifascist political actors we have access to, the way i see it there is no other way.

With all that said, let me make what is so far my first (coherent) argument in defense of my admittedly preposterous claim. Internal consistency does not matter; not while we have not so much a loaded gun but an entire arsenal of nuclear missiles pointed at us from all sides. Today I believe the first duty of the revolutionary is not to pursue the “revolution” directly but to stay alive! The second duty she holds is to resist the constant forces of fascism at a personal and interpersonal level. Just as the effectiveness of the French resistance would have been drastically lowered if they had set their goal as building the “ideal” world rather than working together towards their shared goal of resisting the Nazi takeover of their nation, The American leftist for example shouldn't be talking about the details of a state that doesn't yet exist while ICE is detaining random brown people for just existing. To focus prematurely on our end goals we disallow ourselves the coalitions we need.

As a point of caution we need to remember the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. Coalitions are useful as long as they are useful and no more. For example I would never consider collaborating with the very much fascist supporters of the shah in opposition to the IRI government. Rather what I'm referring to here is a collaboration with those who are at least progressive in nature.

There exists another reason people overly engage in theory, the outdated Belief in debate. The uncomfortable truth is we cannot change the world with debate (insofar as the change would entail “converting” fascists), this is not a war we can win with rhetoric we need direct action. To resist we need to forget the bullshit liberal belief in the system as sacred and do something radical. It is this system that gave way to fascist in the 21st century. As Marlon craft said “it aint a system if one guy can stop it”

Today isn't the time for dialectic, it's time for action!

-hopefulldoomer