Against Political Heroism

 

A hero is an object of admiration.  Admiration is an emotion.  As human beings, we have all kinds of emotions, including, occasionally, admiration.  This is normal and healthy and probably inevitable and I have no problem with people experiencing the full breadth of their emotions.  I'm not trying to get you to feel guilty about any of your emotions - although guilt is an emotion as well, and it's fine if you're feeling guilt.  Feel whatever you feel.  I merely encourage you to be honest with yourself, and acknowledge that admiration is an emotion you feel, and it is nothing other than an emotion.  More importantly, don't base your politics on heroism.  Instead, use cold, scientific analysis of political economy to determine the most effective strategy.

You can't really control your emotions - not completely.  If you feel admiration bubbling up within yourself, allow yourself to feel it, fully.  Don't be dishonest with yourself in either direction - that is to say, don't be dishonest by pretending you don't feel what you feel, but also don't lie to yourself and tell yourself that this is more than a feeling - a feeling which will eventually pass, or at least evolve, as you learn more about the person who is the object of your admiration.  Above all, don't pretend to feel an emotion that you don't actually feel.  

All too often, this is what political movements engage in: they have their heroes, their patron saints, looking down on them from heaven, for whom every member of the movement is expected and compelled to feel a deep and abiding admiration - or at least to pretend to feel this kind of reverence.

Incidentally, I have a question about this emotion called admiration: is it a positive emotion, or a negative emotion?  That is, is it a pleasant emotion, or a painful emotion?  It seems to me that it's complex, and difficult to place neatly in either category.  Admiration is a bit like nostalgia.  In an earlier essay I wrote that nostalgia is "misplaced cruelty."  Etymologically, nostalgia means "the pain of homecoming."  Like nostalgia, admiration has warm and fuzzy associations, but deep down there is something painful about it, too.  To admire someone is to put them above oneself, and so to acknowledge one's own fallabilities and insufficiencies.  It takes courage to admire someone openly, for at the heart of admiration is a profound vulnerability.  I would even go so far as to say that I admire people for admiring people.

(Heroism even has a Platonic, philosophical dimension.  One's constellation of heroes stand as mediating signs for the Form of the Good.) 

Having heroes is a form of hope.

So when I say that I oppose political heroism, I am not saying that I am dogmatically, moralistically opposed to all heroism or all admiration.  I am critiquing something much more specific.  

(If I have any advice on the order of this broader question of heroism, I would merely encourage people to be a little more creative about their heroism.  Sure, if you want, go ahead and admire the Great Figures of the past, those who have had books written about them and speeches given in praise of them and statues sculpted of them - the ones we quote, often without understanding, and nod very sagely at each other.  But also... find some heroes around you, working at the local diner, or in the supermarket, or in the sewer, or in the home.  Find some aspect of a person that no one else has noticed and write an ode.  That's all perfectly fine, and healthy, and laudable - but it has nothing to do with politics.)

I am not opposed to heroes as such.  But I do criticize the heroism industrial complex. 

Ironically enough, anarchists are especially given to the practice of political heroism.  Sometimes it seems that the recitation of the litany of anarchist saints is the only thing separating the anarchist from the typical liberal activist.  I'm as guilty of this as anyone else.  People like to feel that they are part of a tradition, a heritage - no one wants to feel alone - and so they will read their anthologies of Malatesta, Durruti, Goldman, de Cleyre, etc., etc., etc..  And that's perfectly fine.  (Autonomedia literally comes out every year with a calendar of "Jubilee Saints".  At least they have the honesty to admit that they are indulging in this kind of thing, and so far as they keep their tongues firmly planted in their cheeks, I have no problem with that.  Hell, I've bought the calendar a few times.)  

But political heroism, which is a subspecies of political romanticism, is no substitute for the scientific analysis of political economy.  Admiring a political theorist is not the same thing as doing the work of political theory, just as admiring a mathematician is not the same thing as doing math.  

Political heroism is a specific practice.  The most formal theoretical treatment of political heroism - "Eroismo" - comes from that old hyper-fascist, Julius Evola, who, among many other works, wrote "The Forms of Warlike Heroism" (Sulla Forme Dell'eroismo Guerriero), where he writes about how "War breaks the routine of the comfortable life; by means of its severe ordeals, it offers a transfiguring knowledge of life: life according to death."  (Shades of both Bataille and Foucault, who sought out a "limit experience" in revolution.)  Similar sentiments are expressed throughout the fascist literature, for instance in Carl Schmitt, especially in his famous work, "Political Romanticism" (Politische Romantik, 1919/1925).  Schmitt apparently intended the extended essay to be read as a critical attack on political romanticism, but in truth Schmitt himself was the epitome of the political romantic, in both senses: he politicized romanticism, and he romanticized the political.  (Writers like Schmitt fail to grasp how fundamentally boring politics is.  What they lack is materialism.)

Political heroism can be seen as a reactionary counter-current against the broader historical tendency toward criticism and critical thought - a yearning to return to the pre-critical, to abject reverence and selfless devotion: a politics of love.  As such it is fundamentally irrationalist.  It denies that it is possible for value and meaning to self-posit from reason alone, and rather insists that they can only derive from some prior authority.  To succumb to political heroism is to perceive mythos as prior to logos.  (Thus Schmitt's emphasis on, and need for, sovereignty: sovereignty is ultimately mythical.)  People turn to political heroism out of a profound, heartfelt need for reassurance.  We do not seek the hero merely because he protects us from the external enemy; even more, he protects us from our own internal doubts.

But even beyond this mythical and irrationalist aspect, political heroism can be read as a reactionary counter-formation, a false solution to a very real problem: namely, the deep threat that the social division of labor poses to autonomy.  As societies grow in size and economic development, narrower and narrower specialization of roles and tasks becomes possible, creating and necessitating greater interdependence.  The industrial revolution accelerated this process, rendering every human activity into a kind of assembly line.  Now no one can be an expert on everything, which means no one can be an authority on everything.  (One particularly powerful vision of backward-looking dissidents of modern capitalism is the figure of the "Renaissance Man" who could still be an expert on everything.)  We all depend on each other, which makes sovereign decision-making impossible, undermining the liberal dream of the independent individual.  The hero is the imaginary figure of our own desired and yearned-for individuality (and thus courage, strength, and self-reliance) projected onto a real, historical and contingent person. 

Of course it is not just nazis and fascists who dabble in these fantasies like lovesick teenagers.  We in the liberal west have our comic books and movies and rock concerts.  And political heroism has defined the Leninist world as well, who desire their own universal authorities, the experts on everything.  This, too, is a form of reactionary conservatism.  Marx himself, of course, warned against the "Personenkultus" - the cult of personality.  In a letter to Wilhelm Blos, dated Nov. 10. 1877, he says that his aversion to Personenkultus was so strong that he avoided all press and personal recognition during the period of the International, and only joined the communist movement on the condition that they remove all "statutes that would promote the superstition of authority."  And yet, this "superstition of authority" persists.  (And yes, I recognize the irony that I am perpetuating this appeal to authority by quoting Marx.)  Most Bolsheviks and post-Bolsheviks spend most of their time trying to prove that their heroes were right and every scientist or artist or philosopher who said anything else was wrong.  What they think they are accomplishing with this, I have no idea.  The real movement to overthrow the existing order requires the relentless criticism of all that exists, including all of our most cherished historical theorists.

Political heroism can function as a kind of escapism.  All too often, when people tell you to "read theory" (well, first of all, notice that they tell you to read theory, to passively consume theory, and not to do theory, to work on theory, to contribute to theory - they are asking you to be a spectator to theory), they are not advocating for theory at all, but rather for political heroism, which functions as a substitute for theory, as an excuse for not doing the hard work of theory.  What they really mean is: worship this hero with me, drift off back into the past with me, fantasize with me, and perhaps, at most, help me to rationalize, to justify, and to ignore that which I was already doing.  Help me put off criticism for a few moments.  Again, this might be largely harmless, so long as we recognize it for what it is: namely, entertainment.  Political heroism is a fandom, a paracosm, a construct of consumerism and branding, not unlike Star Wars, Harry Potter, Pokemon, Warhammer, or J.R.R. Tolkien's imaginary worlds.

That said, there is one surefire cure for political heroism: learning about your heroes.