From Philosophical Research
Prototype notes
- Does anti-essentialism apply to Trotskyists? / Is it possible to identify "a regular Trotskyist, not an evil one"? / Can a trustworthy Trotskyist exist? / Are there Trotskyists who are safe? -> sub-case of: Trotskyism jamming proposition. I have been building this ontology project and book tentatively assuming the answer is yes — that Trotskyite conspirators and Trotskyists are in fact two different things and if you are in the position of Stalin's government it's theoretically possible to take any other countable instance of Marxism and sort out which people in it are going to give you trouble and which ones you need to pull out of it to help you form a Lattice across Marxisms and unify all the different named Marxisms into an International.
Related[edit]
- Badiou doesn't understand Rhizome because he fails to apply anti-essentialism [1] / Trotskyism always contains initially unknown sources of division (specific example; process Deleuze caught and Badiou overlooked) -> (prototype notes lost due to computer crash; second attempt)
finally, the first thing anyone has said about Badiou that I actually understand. Deleuze has this model that a body of people is kind of this perpetual, inseparable unity of opposites where unknown information trapped in individuals can always bubble out quark style creating larger effects. (he calls this "multiplicity instead of a void".) Badiou has a model where change appears through the separation of objects that flee a larger unified object. ("negative" cut-outs that flee the "One" or "the trunk".) Badiou's model looks better on the surface as far as the results of things, because it acknowledges that groups of people can split into separate countable objects, a thing which really does happen. but ultimately the schizoanalysts might be right in slamming him for this because the part of the whole that flees into a new object still always has to come from somewhere. there does sort of have to be a collection of unknown information or at least heterogeneous information inside the larger group that allows for causal behavior that splits it into two groups.
so Badiou is probably wrong. I'm not sure Guattari and Alliez necessarily have the right angle to properly criticize why. but I'll let them have that anti-essentialism can theoretically apply to anything.
let's look at a somewhat silly scenario. The Fourth International is in session. Trotskyists have been drifting apart into "Zinovievists" and "Cannonists" and have started fighting each other over what is the correct approach to positively transitioning countries out of Bolshevism without it falling apart. according to Badiou, the two groups fleeing each other along their preferred path is the change that occurs. but that change had to have come from somewhere. according to Deleuze, who has a model of change starting at individuals and fairly strictly believes in anti-essentialism, the ability to take all Trotskyists and find the ones with the correct ideas is always there. there are big problems with Deleuze's model at other times, but this miraculously happens to be one of the moments he's kind of right.
Badiou's "damning error" is quite an interesting subject in the context of Marxism, because while it's become a running joke that some forms of Marxism are just terrible about dividing, Badiou's attempt to coerce division into a large countable object is a reminder that there are actually a few situations where Trotskyists dividing is not a bad thing. one of the times it would be okay is if a group of Trotskyists sifts out a collection of theorists that actually have a better answer, and then somehow listens to them. the problem is usually that they divide but then they can never figure out which one of the halves had the right answers, and then of course they just keep accusing each other of various kinds of bad behavior. it's a very hopeful thing for Trotskyists to remember that actually, if they would calm down, they might have somebody capable waiting within either their theorists or associated workers, and the process of forming different questions or models within a party and quickly running whatever tests are available to find the best one might be able to sift out what the next iteration of the party will be and keep it from falling apart. if Trotskyists would just learn about filtration I feel like there would be fewer problems and it would be way easier to put people of different regions together knowing about each other's issues and build the gigantic formations they always want to build.
Ideologies[edit]
