Hegel, Part 10a
Corporate image of a collaborative project
Living Communism
Bourgeois propaganda would have everyone believe that communism is an
impossible utopia, and that class relations, as we know them now, which Karl
Marx referred to as "bürgerlichen Gesellschaft" ("civil society" or more
literally, "bourgeois society") are all-pervasive in human society, to the
exclusion of every other kind of social behaviour.
But, on the contrary, the development of class relations and the State
(which as Lenin says, is not only the inevitable product of such relations,
but also the proof of their irreconcilability) did not expunge all previous
forms of human relation.
Humans already had language, and language is a powerful, stateless system.
It has no fixed centre. It is communistic.
There are many other examples of communistic human relations which have
survived, like language, and which remain as the bulk of our social fabric.
There are even some apparently new kinds of communistic social structures
coming out, such as the Internet.
What Andy Blunden has done is to begin to theorise the communistic patterns
of social activity, mediated by artefacts, that characterise human social
existence in general.
This is the on-going body of humanity upon the back of which the class
struggle is carried, for the time being, like the cross of Christ.
Andy Blunden's book (from which these excerpts, downloadable via the link
below, are taken) is called "A Critique of Activity Theory". It is concerned
in part with Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, or "CHAT", but we can pass
over the specifics of "CHAT", and look at what Andy means by "collaborative
projects" in these chapters.
Collaborative Projects and Artefacts
Collaborative Projects are how people do stuff. Even capitalist companies
are collaborative projects.
One characteristic that Andy Blunden identifies is that collaborative
projects are always mediated by an artefact, or artefacts. Artefacts are
things made by people; but words are also artefacts, by the way.
What Andy therefore begins to theorise is the social place of things, or
goods, made by people. This is different from the understanding of such
goods as being commodities, which is all that capitalism can manage to see
them as.
Another insight of Andy's is the way that collective agency is both
expressed, and also formed, within collaborative projects. We may say that
we are humanists, believing in the rational free will of social beings. But
how does this actually proceed? Andy provides a description, rooted in
politics, philosophy and educational theory.
Our own method, following Paulo Freire, is to have dialogue involving two or
more people, centred on a "codification', which is an artefact (text or
image). This conforms to the structure of a "Collaborative Project".
But the aim within this course on Hegel is not necessarily to follow Andy
into educational theory. The aim within this particular course is to
consider what may already exist under the shell of the class-divided
bourgeois State, so that what will remain, if and when that State withers
away, can be apparent to us now, today.
What is the living communism of today? This is the question that is being
answered by Andy Blunden's writings sampled here.
· The above is to introduce the original reading-text: Collaborative
Projects, 2011, Andy Blunden
<https://sites.google.com/site/cu2012courses2/22-hegel-dialectics-logic-and-
right/22102%2CAndyBlunden%2CCollaborativeProjects%2C2011.pdf?attredirects=0&
d=1> .
· A PDF file of the reading text is attached
· To download any of the CU courses in PDF files please click here
<https://sites.google.com/site/cu2012courses/> .
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