The Mass Line and Theories of Knowledge
In What is to be Done, Lenin asserted an essential truth of Marxism: “[w]ithout revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement.” Despite its truth, this declaration by Lenin gives rise to critical questions communist militants must address. What is theory? How does it relate to lived experience, if at all? How can theory be distinguished from line? Finally, and perhaps most importantly, how is theory taken up by and developed by the masses?
The mass line is the principal mechanism for unleashing the theoretical and political capacities of the masses. The mass line is a complex, dialectical [driven by the interplay and resolution of opposing forces, KP] process by which the party and the masses act upon one another to develop increasingly advanced ideas and practices. The mass line is the process of gathering the scattered ideas of the masses, concentrating them into more scientific forms of thought, and finally returning these ideas to the masses so their political and theoretical capacities become increasingly advanced until they reach the point where the masses can act upon, surpass, and eventually abolish the party.
That said, there is an apparent tension between the need for theoretical practice which necessarily occurs at a certain level of abstraction and the need for the mass line to combat commandist [top-down leadership that dictates to the masses, KP] errors that isolate communist militants from the masses. Far from creating an impasse for communist theory and practice, this contradiction has potential to be immensely generative. Sitting in the space it creates provides an opportunity to explore questions of knowledge production, elaborate on the distinction between theory and political line, and to distinguish the mass line from liberal platitudes about “centering marginalized voices.” Further, it demands a critical engagement with the work of Sylvain Lazarus whose theory of “politics in interiority” [politics thought purely from within itself, apart from state and economy, KP] is an alternative, though inadequate, framework to approach the questions addressed by this essay.
Where do Adequate Ideas Come From?
A key insight of Spinoza is that developing adequate knowledge of a thing requires developing a knowledge of its causes. This necessitates breaking from sense-perception as a basis for understanding. In the introduction to the first volume of Concept and Form, Peter Hallward writes, “Science can only begin with a principled break with experience and ‘sensory knowledge,’ [an epistemological rupture] that enables a rational, self-rectifying explanation of problems that are not given in or even accessible to lived experience, however ‘intimate’ or ‘authentic’ its phenomenological elucidation might be.”[1] Sense-perception cannot be the basis for adequate knowledge because it generates knowledge only of effects without an understanding of the causes that produce these effects. It lends itself to partial and confused notions of the world that are susceptible to error.
Empiricism is the epistemological [concerning the nature and sources of knowledge, KP] view that knowledge is principally derived from experience rather than from reason. Empiricism is any doctrine that conflates real objects with corresponding objects of knowledge. The real object and the object of knowledge are absolutely distinct. The real object is a thing that exists independently of our understanding whereas the object of knowledge is a theoretical construction through which knowledge apprehends that thing. “Knowledge… never confronts a pure object which is then identical to the real object…” because our perception of real objects is always already mediated by structures of apprehension.[2]
The form of knowledge production that is theoretical practice occurs entirely in thought even if this process is overdetermined [shaped by multiple interacting causes rather than one, KP] by structures and processes existing outside of thought.[3] The raw material of theoretical practice is not the sensory experience of real objects, but objects of knowledge. Concepts, which cannot be obtained through sense perception, are how we grasp these objects of knowledge. They are theoretical constructs that make real objects intelligible. Concepts make it possible to understand structures and mechanisms of social reality in all of their complexity and overdetermination.
Time in the historical sense, for example, is not a simple continuity marked by various but distinct periods. Rather, the structure that determines social life is a complex process with a peculiar temporality produced by ruptures and the torsion between different levels of the structure. Each of these levels (e.g., the mode of production [a society’s way of organizing economic life, e.g. feudalism or capitalism, KP], ideology, politics, etc.) has its own temporality meaning that even a historical break in an essential section of the structure, such as the transition from one mode of production to another, does not give rise to a historically unified “present.”[4] The structurally dominant level of the structure has no omnipresent essence even after such a break. This break may impact other levels of the structure, but there is no 1:1 correspondence between the temporality of the dominant level of the structure and that of subordinate levels. These subordinate levels have their own temporalities and may lag behind or even precede a rupture in the dominant section. The empirical, or ideological, conception of time cannot explain the dogged persistence of the old subsequent to a rupture in one or more levels of the structure.
The purpose of theoretical practice is to generate adequate ideas. An adequate idea is the knowledge of an object or phenomenon not only of its present characteristics, but also of its causes and course of development. Adequate ideas arise only from conceptual knowledge derived from theoretical practice involving a certain level of conceptual abstraction. Understanding the nature of a thing and assigning it to a category of other substantially similar things requires developing abstract concepts. Without abstraction, one gets lost in an endless array of singular instances between which no meaningful comparisons can be drawn. For example, the failure to recognize post-Mao China as capitalist in essence because it is superficially distinguishable from more classical models of capitalism reflects a failure to generate conceptual, abstract knowledge of the core functions and dynamics of capital.
Before laying out a definition of theoretical practice, it is essential to give a definition of practice in general. Practice is “any process of transformation of a determinate raw material into a determinate product, a transformation effected by a determinate human labor, using determinate means.”[5] For Althusser, the most important element of practice is the labor of transformation, not the raw materials or the product of such practice. Each society has a large number of distinct practices that form a complex unity determined in the final instance by economic practice. At its outset, theoretical practice transforms the ideological products of existing ‘empirical’ practices, i.e., people’s concrete activity, into scientific knowledge.
Asserting the primacy of practice over theory as if there is a clean separation between them is not as simple as it seems. As Althusser demonstrated, knowledge production is itself a practice and there is always already knowledge at play, however inadequate, at the outset of any practice. We need theory as a mechanism to ensure our practice is producing the effects we think it is and that these effects are actually what we want. Further, “[n]o mathematician in the world waits until physics has verified a theorem to declare it proved… the truth of [a] theorem is a hundred per cent provided by criteria purely internal to … mathematical practice.”[6] Sciences provide their own criterion for determining the validity of the knowledge they produce. Marxism is not “true” because it has been successfully applied. On the contrary, it has been successfully applied because it is true. It affirms its validity using its own criteria. As militants, we must abandon the empiricist insistence on treating theory as a mere set of hypotheses in need of verification by political practice.
From Theory to Line
Theory is the mechanism by which one develops an understanding of structural causality [how a whole system, not a single factor, produces its effects, KP]. In other words, theory provides tools to make sense of how large social systems produce, or cause, their effects. For Althusser, there are no single, direct causes such as the economy, but an overdetermined structure that, as a whole, produces historical effects. Although this structure is principally determined by economic life, this level of the structure is determinant only in the final instance that never arrives. Other levels of the structure have degrees of relative autonomy that are shaped by, but also shape, the economy. Conjunctural analysis [study of a specific present moment and its balance of forces, KP], on the other hand, is the application of theory to a concrete situation. Conjunctural analysis helps us understand the particular arrangement of structural instances, contradictions, and social forces at play in the here and now. This distinction between structural and conjunctural analysis produces the distinction between theory and line, between Marxist science and political prescription.
“To think in the conjuncture means to think within the conjuncture and its determinations… and to submit oneself to its tendencies and dynamics. It also means to think objectivity as singularity, as singular case and as urgent exigency dictated not by abstract theory but by the questions posed by political practice.”[7] Conjunctural analysis first requires taking stock of all the determinations in a concrete situation. Taking such an inventory is insufficient on its own, however. One must also determine the contradictory unity of these forces and determinations. It is from this unity that the political problem of a conjuncture and its solution is posed[8].
Although there are universal laws governing capitalism in its abstract form, there is no predetermined path from the present to communism. Militants must think under their respective conjunctures. Each conjuncture will produce distinct answers to the questions of “what is to be done?” and “who are our enemies and who are our friends?” These are the principal questions whose answers constitute the core tenets of a political line.
For example, the principal task of the current conjuncture in the United States, the formation of a communist party-of-a-new-type [a disciplined revolutionary vanguard party in the Leninist sense, KP], is posed by the present state of proletarian disorganization in the face of an increasingly unified ruling class under the aegis of fascism. This party will be an exceptional organization starting from nothing, meaning it will not arise from any currently existing political formation, and will be able to identify and mobilize the forces necessary to carry out the struggle for communism.
The relationship between theory and conjunctural analysis is dialectical because even in the conjuncture, the economic level of the structure, however overdetermined, is always determinative in the final instance. To think conjuncturally is not to think a nominalist [treating only individual instances as real, denying general categories, KP] plurality of cases, but rather to think how, in a concrete situation, the “universal” laws of a dominant structure play out. While a degree of autonomy between theory and line is essential, one cannot sever the link between them. Political intervention and the formation of a corresponding line are not “some messianic creation of a new political configuration ex nihilo…” [ex nihilo: out of nothing, KP] Rather, a political act enables a fresh encounter between already existing elements in a situation.[9] At the same time however, the singular circumstances in which political sequences unfold can generate universal truths that transform the theoretical terrain.
The Theoretical Basis of the Mass Line
Mao condensed the theory of the mass line into a simple expression: “from the masses, to the masses.” This expression makes dialectical Lenin’s famous thesis “without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement.” It transforms the relationship between the party and the masses into a contradictory unity rather than a one-way street in which the party is the arbiter of revolutionary theory that imbues the working class with its infinite wisdom.
Mao conceived of the mass line as a mechanism for party cadre [trained core activists and functionaries, KP] to take the “scattered and unsystematic” ideas of the masses and to transform them into concentrated ideas that are then brought back to the masses in a more advanced form. According to Mao, if these new, more advanced ideas resonate with and are taken up by the masses, their political and theoretical capacities will become more acute in turn. Mao further establishes that a failure to incorporate the masses in theoretical and political work is a cause of bureaucratism [rule by a detached administrative apparatus, KP] within the party.
There is, however, a critical distinction between applying the mass line and tailing the masses and their pre-scientific ideological thought. The implication of the critique of empiricism above is that the adequacy of the knowledge generated by the mass line is not derived from the lived experience of the masses. Calling for the application of the mass line is not equivalent to liberal exhortations to “center marginalized voices” as if marginality alone enables one to pierce the veil of ideology. It is a call to unleash the massive creative capacity of the masses in a scientific form.
The knowledge derived from lived experience is stuck at the level of the imaginary, i.e., inadequate knowledge, because it takes what is at face value. It does not generate knowledge of the causes of the world as it exists. As demonstrated by Lenin, the spontaneous “political” thought of the masses is not revolutionary, but reformist, economistic [limited to bread-and-butter economic demands, KP], or utopian even when they are organized in trade unions.
The mass line also cannot simply be a tool used to verify and correct the party line. If it is worth anything at all, the mass line must entail theoretical practice by the masses themselves that exceeds the production of mere aggregate accounts of their lived experiences. Mass social movements outside of the party must be turned into knowledge processes with “new forms of militant research.”[10]
The masses are more than capable of developing their theoretical capacities and using these capacities to describe their conjuncture and advance their political practice. That said, the early theoretical work of the masses is unlikely to be particularly advanced because it takes as its starting point theoretical practices that principally use lived experience, i.e., ideology, as its raw material. However, as these early theoretical products are taken up by the party and returned to the masses in more advanced formulations, the masses will then be able to continue their theoretical practice using improved raw materials: increasingly scientific ideas. As this process continues, the masses may even begin to develop ideas that exceed the theoretical level of the party that will a.) force a change in the party line, and b.) mark a critical tipping point where the party slowly starts to become superfluous.
The Cultural Revolution marked a critical juncture in the development of communist theory and practice. It was the most advanced application of the mass line in history that, despite instances of depoliticized factional violence, revealed the immense theoretical and political power of the masses in the midst of a revolutionary sequence. The Cultural Revolution had two high points: the Shanghai Commune and Shengwulian. These two episodes, however brief, were instances of independent mass political mobilization that subordinated the power of the party-state to the revolutionary initiative of the masses. Shengwulian in particular was marked by a high level of theoretical development among the masses. An example of the potential of the mass line, Shengwulian’s advanced theoretical level was spurred on by the left wing of the party’s insistence on mass mobilization but ultimately surpassed the theoretical development of the party itself. Unprepared for such a thorough assault on bureaucratic rule, even the left wing of the party blinked and gave way to the re-establishment of bureaucratic rule.
In the wake of the Shanghai Commune, Mao led the retreat from the chaotic height of the Cultural Revolution by authorizing the use of force by the People’s Liberation Army (“PLA”) in its efforts to end factional fighting and to restore order. These efforts sought to remove political power from the masses and place it back in the hands of the party and the PLA, primarily by imposing the three-in-one Revolutionary Committees. The Revolutionary Committees were tripartite bodies consisting of representatives of the mass organizations, PLA officers, and party cadre. Ostensibly an even playing field, these organizations were in reality dominated by the PLA. Forms of political mobilization that operated at a distance from the state were denounced as “ultra-democracy” or “anarchism.”
A notable exception to this demobilization was the emergence of the Hunan Provincial Proletarian Revolutionary Great Alliance Committee, a mass organization better known as Shengwulian: an emergent political coalition that arose primarily from a convergence of various factions operating under the moniker of “Xiang River Storm and Thunder.” Shengwulian was an attempt to resist efforts by the party to subordinate their independent political organizations to the formation of a “Preparatory Revolutionary Committee.”[11]
As highlighted by Yiching Wu in The Cultural Revolution at the Margins, Shengwulian opposed this imposition of order and creatively reinterpreted the official doctrine of the Cultural Revolution by invoking the Paris Commune as the model of popular power and positing a “new bureaucratic bourgeoisie” that had to be defeated to establish a communist society.[12] Shengwulian’s theoretically advanced nature was demonstrated by its analysis of “the discrepancy between the movement’s proclivity for attacking individual officials and its radical revolutionary rhetoric, arguing that the major conflict in China was not between Mao’s supporters and the revisionists, nor between the proletariat and the remnant of the propertied classes, but between a collective red capitalist class and the people as a whole.”[13] This marked an advancement from a politics based on personal grievances to one based on “a more general political critique.”[14]
It is worth quoting Yiching Wu at length to distinguish between the rightist line of the party and the emancipatory, “ultra-left” line put forth by Shengwulian:
“Mao had indeed stressed the corruptibility of cadres and their progeny, who he believed might evolve into a new privileged stratum or ruling class. But Mao insisted on differentiating the majority of good cadres from the bad ones. For the young Hunanese critics, this formula was far from satisfactory. In their view, what was at issue was neither the hidden landlords or capitalists conspiring against the revolution nor the cadres degenerating into the enemy of the revolution. The main challenge facing the Cultural Revolution was decidedly not purging individual bureaucrats but rather the removal of the new ruling class produced by the very social formation spawned by the revolution.”[15]
Tragically, Shengwulian’s “ultra-leftism” was vindicated by history. The re-establishment of party authority at the height of the Cultural Revolution set the stage for the explosion of capitalist social relations in China following Mao’s death.
Mass Line or Anthropology of the Name?
In Anthropology of the Name, Sylvain Lazarus, a militant thinker with origins in the French Maoist scene of the 1960s and ‘70s, presents his prescription for incorporating the thought of people into political activity. Although they set out to address similar concerns, the mass line and the anthropology of the name are ultimately incompatible with one another.
In Anthropology of the Name, Lazarus sets out to “clarify the subjective within the subjective… rather than call on objectivist or positivist referents.”[16] For Lazarus, politics is irreducible to the space of science; it must be thought in its singularity, meaning that politics cannot be considered an expression of social structures, forces, dynamics etc. Politics can either be in the place of the state (i.e. politics in exteriority) or in the order of thought (i.e. politics in interiority). Lazarus provides a sprawling definition of statism concerned not only with politics that seek state power as their objective, but also modes of politics that attempt to create a co-thinkability between objective knowledge and subjective prescription, or to use his terms, politics in exteriority. Lazarus states “the subjective does not reflect material conditions of existence; it is not in a dialectic with the objective, neither is it a consciousness ‘of’”[17] Lazarus sets out to develop an understanding of politics on the basis of “what one can do oneself,” and not simply in an “against that which one struggles.”[18]
At the core of Lazarus’ project are his “two statements:” 1.) “people think;” and 2.) “thought is a relation of the real.” Although his initial statement may seem banal, the unthinkingness of people is a presumption generally at play in contemporary politics. Perhaps the most prevalent example is the insistence on “good governance” conducted by “qualified” individuals with expertise in this or that area of statecraft. The implicit assumptions of this fixation on expertise are three-fold: 1.) the objective of politics is the technocratic maintenance of the status quo; 2.) ordinary people are incapable of independent political initiative; and 3.) the place of politics is exclusively within the state.
Importantly, the statement “people think” does not refer to a notion of the people. Such a reference would be objectivist or statist in its framing for Lazarus. To say “people think” is not to look to a certain class or other grouping of people to see what they think, but rather a “certain indistinct” which “designates a ‘there is’ which is required in an approach that is neither historical nor objective.”[19] For Lazarus, there is no pre-ordained bearer of revolutionary politics such as the working class. Lazarus insists that politics in interiority is always a singular rupture from what presently exists. The social base for such a rupture is radically contingent and is not pre-determined by any structural antagonism or teleology [the assumption that history moves toward a predetermined goal, KP].
Lazarus goes on to explain his “second statement” that thought is a “relation of the real.” For Lazarus, the real is what is at stake in a given situation. In politics, what is at stake is the task of imposing a political prescription, or in other words, an intervention that creates new possible ways of being. “People think” is “subject to the constraint of Statement 2, Thought is a relation of the real. Postulating a capacity of people to think is valid only if what is thought in this thinking is a relation of the real. Statement 1 collapses without Statement 2. Without Statement 2, we remain in the realm of representations, of opinions and of the imaginary…”[20]
Even with these interrelated statements, however, Lazarus does not provide us with tools to escape the imaginary. For Lazarus, politics in interiority is of the order of thought and is a condition of the subjective that is only thinkable within itself and without reference to outside doctrines. Politics, says Lazarus, must be thought without relation to the state or economics in order to be a field proper to decision.[21]
As discussed above, however, there is always a dialectical link between theory and line, or “science” and “prescription” in Lazarusian terms. Without recourse to theoretical and conjunctural analysis, there is no basis for asserting that a purported novelty prescribed in the thought of people is in fact a qualitative departure from the status quo at all. Without these tools, one cannot even ascertain what overdetermines the thought of these people. Further, some combination of theory and ideology is always already at play at the outset of any practice. Without deliberately assuming a position within theory, one necessarily operates in the terrain of ideology, or the imaginary to use Spinoza’s term.
One need not abandon theoretical and conjunctural analysis on the grounds that they do not provide a crystal ball. Rather, recognizing that every political intervention seeking to meaningfully rupture from the “there is” is a wager does not mean militants should not avail themselves of a thoroughgoing analysis of the structure and conjuncture to make determinations about the potential lynchpins of capitalist society. Undergoing such analyses is of the utmost importance. Without doing so, militants have no choice but to tail the masses in their rudimentary political prescriptions. This is a counterproductive, and ultimately condescending position to take in relation to the masses, who as discussed above, are capable of immense theoretical inventiveness, particularly when in dialog (or in contradiction) with party cadre.
Conclusion
Theory and the mass line are a contradictory unity of opposites in which each aspect acts upon and transforms the other. In confronting the tension between the two, we discover that what first appears as a logical contradiction is in fact a dialectically productive site of inquiry. The necessity of theory doesn’t necessarily lead to a detachment from politics or the masses, just as the mass line does not preclude rigorous theoretical work. Rather, the objective is to sustain a dynamic relationship between the two without erasing their fundamental distinction.
Critical reflection on Sylvain Lazarus’s Anthropology of the Name further reveals the necessity of theoretical work when engaging in political interventions among the masses. Although they are capable of immense theoretical and political innovation, the masses’ spontaneous thought is generated by their sensuous knowledge of the world and typically operates at the level of the imaginary until it is confronted with more advanced forms of theoretical knowledge. It is through this encounter with theoretical knowledge that the masses become aware of the causes of their sensuous experience and begin to engage in their own theoretical work that can unleash their creative powers.
[1] Peter Hallward, “Introduction: Theoretical Training,” in Concept and Form: Key Texts from the Cahiers pour l’Analyse, ed. Peter Hallward and Knox Peden (Verso 2012), 11.
[2] Louis Althusser, “From Capital to Marx’s Philosophy,” in ReadingCapital, trans. Ben Brewster (Verso 2015), 43.
[3] Althusser, “From Capital to Marx’s Philosophy,” 42.
[4] Louis Althusser, “The Object of Capital,” in ReadingCapital, trans. Ben Brewster (Verso 2015), 251.
[5] Louis Althusser, For Marx, trans. Ben Brewster (Verso 2005), 166.
[6] Althusser, “From Capital to Marx’s Philosophy,” 61.
[7] Panagiotis Sotiris, A Philosophy for Communism: Rethinking Althusser (Haymarket Books 2021), 466-67.
[8] Louis Althusser, Machiavelli and Us, trans. Gregory Elliott (Verso 1999), 18-19.
[9] Sotiris, A Philosophy for Communism, 478.
[10] Sotiris, A Philosophy for Communism, 522.
[11] Yiching Wu, The Cultural Revolution at the Margins: Chinese Socialism in Crisis (Harvard University Press 2014) 154-55.
[12] Wu, The Cultural Revolution at the Margins, 146.
[13] Wu, The Cultural Revolution at the Margins, 170.
[14] Wu, The Cultural Revolution at the Margins, 171.
[15] Wu, The Cultural Revolution at the Margins, 183.
[16] Sylvain Lazarus, Anthropology of the Name, trans. Gila Walker (Seagull Books, 2015), 1.
[17] Lazarus, Anthropology of the Name, 3.
[18] Sylvain Lazarus, Can Politics be Thought in Interiority, 110
[19] Lazarus, Anthropology of the Name, 6-7.
[20] Lazarus, Anthropology of the Name, 7.
[21] Lazarus, Anthropology of the Name, 47.
