7
As long as there remains a relative exclusion from the TCM universal’s power of disposal and pleasure purchasing power (a complete exclusion is impossible), the significance of the political event par excellence, the revolution, will endure. The MTT does not formally exclude revolution. The energy of the revolution, however, is limited. Although it cannot be formally excluded, its significance becomes phantasmatic. There have been four revolutions (the French, the Russian, the Chinese and the Cuban).1 All other similar events such as uprisings and putsches are merely reminiscent of these. What in recent decades has been referred to as ‘revolution’ does not truly merit the name.
Revolution consists in the discovery and imposition of a political principle (the unity of fraternity, equality and liberty). In order to impose such a principle, it is necessary to use the energy of the TCM universal. Marx knew this. He recognized that the bourgeoisie was a revolutionary class, with which the universal topography began to unfold.2 In Marx’s view, the revolution and its international mission was to benefit from this development. On the basis of rather obscure (messianic) presuppositions, he maintained that the energy of the revolution was greater than that of the TCM universal and that it would ultimately overturn the TCM unity with the help of the latter itself. This view proved to be mistaken. The revolution was ultimately unable to assimilate the energy of the industrial revolution. Instead, it was the TCM universal that made use of the revolution (i.e. socialism in general) to expand its universal topography.
Under the normal conditions of the TCM universal, revolution is no longer possible. Its material realization in the political sphere is conditioned by a finite number of possibilities in the I-M-M. The revolution is not infinitely repeatable. Its political determinations have been exhausted in four events. There will nonetheless come a time when the originary revolutionary intention will resurface.
This revolution can only be triggered by the most extreme crisis of the TCM universal, i.e. not by a so-called financial crisis that only serves to quicken the movement of capital. The most profound crisis will only emerge when the immanence of the universal is shaken by external factors such as water, oil, or raw material shortages, or by a global virus, an ecological catastrophe, or a sharp rise in sea levels (a ‘climate catastrophe’). When the economic difference between rich and poor leads to a critical mass of the population being cut off from basic goods, the demise of pragma-politics through a violent uprising will be at hand. The fight for a place in the sun will then take on a quite literal sense. At this point, the social differences that have been levelled out in the TCM universal will turn into visible power differences. States will vainly attempt to use the instruments of their monopoly on violence to protect or benefit the rich. The precondition of the last revolution: an apocalyptic reduction.
A previously hidden chain of determinations will now come to light. The collective’s sole concern will at first be simply to escape the disaster. Marx will have been proved right. Intellectual dissatisfaction has never produced significant change. Before the eschatological revolution can take place, inescapable hardship will have to hold sway.3
Revolution is now only conceivable in the form of an apocalyptic reduction. And since this reduction will have to take place against the backdrop of the TCM universal, the revolution will be universal, and of universal significance. Yet this significance will no longer be as strongly ideological as the French Revolution, for example, but rather material. Furthermore, since in the apocalyptic reduction it is the future itself that will be at stake, it will be difficult to coordinate the various revolutionary events. The revolutionary future will be a future at the limit of the future. The space of the MTT will first be transformed into a topography of scarcity, and then into one of loss. Once again, it will above all be a question of staving off hunger and thirst.
The TCM universal drives this revolution forward insofar as it declares the revolutionary a thing of the past. This movement accords with the conditions of the MTT. Through its continual deferral, the universal annihilates the future. This annihilation cannot be experienced by the universal subject, since she only reckons with her own limited lifetime. Yet the materialistic character of the apocalyptic reduction consists precisely in the fact that this very reckoning will necessarily herald the revolutionary act.
The determinations of the apocalyptic reduction are already at hand. The processes that will lead to it only need to be carried through to their end.
Notes
1 A number of other historical events have of course been described as ‘revolutions’, from the Glorious Revolution and the American Revolution to the many revolutions of the late twentieth century, such as Ukraine’s Orange Revolution. Some even regard the demise of the German Democratic Republic as a revolution. In the present context, however, only events that result in profound societal transformations will be considered political revolutions. Such transformations cannot be observed in the above events. The collapse of the GDR did of course transform East Germany, yet 1. this collapse manifested itself as a liberation of the country for capitalism (not exactly a revolutionary process, at least in the political sense), and 2. the West was largely unaffected by this new addition to its ranks.
2 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’, in Collected Works, vol. 6 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), 482–90.
3 Cf. Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2015). Klein’s text calls for ‘radical changes on the social side, as well as on the political, economic, and cultural sides’ (24). In broad terms, it describes the problem as follows: we are currently confronted by determinations that can be regarded as signs of a global climate catastrophe. There is an obvious link between these signs and ‘capitalism’, i.e. a particular way of managing resources. For the pragmatist Klein, the problem does not seem insoluble: ‘Can we pull it off? All I know is that nothing is inevitable’ (28). Along with the abolition of private road traffic, Klein discusses potential changes in our energy usage and modes of energy production, and speaks of ‘reining in our own overconsumption’ (413). She is nonetheless unable to offer an other concept of capital. Furthermore, Klein contends that an insight into what awaits us will be sufficient to motivate the ‘radical changes’ she has in mind. Indeed, ‘mass movements of regular people’ (6) may emerge on the back of this insight alone. Yet without the painful experience of catastrophe, the emergence of such movements would seem unlikely. The relevant con-sequences of the TCM universal have not yet unfolded fully. In the face of the climatic changes ahead, even Klein predicts social unrest (‘the private militias are already mobilizing’ [9]). Furthermore, she of course affirms a possible link between the climate catastrophe and established economic paradigms: ‘The kinds of transformations discussed in these pages […] would get to the root of why we are facing serial crises in the first place, and would leave us with both a more habitable climate than the one we are headed for and a far more just economy than the one we have right now.’ To speak of a ‘more just economy’ is nonetheless to go astray. Once the present form of capital has led to a catastrophe, it will have proved to be ineffective. What we will then require is not a ‘more just’ economy, but a more effective one. Finally, the Naomi Klein phenomenon clearly shows that such a form of critique has become anachronistic. Klein herself is a star – and during a public appearance in Berlin stressed that she was in no way wholly against capitalism, but only against its deregulation …