mass consciousness or individual consciences?

i think it would be nice to continue with the rousing theme of 'getting rid of leftist ideas that were never any good anyway'. i'll return to some comments of tom's, in response to hal draper: give me a break that i never really got round to dealing with.

tom wrote:

You say you reject the idea of ‘mass consciousness’. I find this startling. How do you explain events in history? Is history the product of minority action? ‘Mass consciousness’ does not mean ‘everyone thinks the same’ but that a militant majority takes action in its own interest.

perhaps we are talking about different things here. i find the idea of mass consciousness a frightening one. we are all different, sometimes radically so, and the idea that a majority of people have the exactly the same interests is a massive oversimplification of what is usually an organic situation with considerable variation. the idea that there can be a single political scheme or single action that will be in the interests of a mass is, in my opinion, dangerous. what normally happens is that the mass works in the interests of its leader. if the individuals that tom would describe as constituting a mass are acting on their own initiative for their own interests they do not, in my opinion, constitute a mass at all. that doesn't necessarily mean that they will not cooperate in order to achieve their different goals - often this is the easiest way of getting the job done (mutual aid as kropotkin termed it) - but it does dispel the myth that the situation is one of 'mass consciousness'. mass consciousness, to me, implies the mass psychology of fascism (or red fascism), where people are rigidly hierarchised and have set roles within a machine-like society. as such i oppose mass psychology of any kind. likewise, any attempt to characterise history or the present in the grossly simplistic and deterministic language of mass psychology is something i see as deeply worrying.

The corollary of your position leads exactly to the sort of criticisms that Draper makes. You seem to be saying ‘political leadership’ is inseparable from an ‘elite’. The idea that leadership = elite is just as well evidenced by the actions of so-called-anarchists as it is by so-called-socialists.

yes, a political leadership is an elite. that is why i reject it. let everyone be their own political leader. any political leadership that is privileged over other people in terms of its powers will become oppressive. the idea that power corrupts is not particularly controversial, although perhaps the term consolidated power roles would be a more accurate substitution for the word power. there is no such thing as an anarchist leader, as i'm sure tom is aware. so-called-anarchists implies that they do not really follow the ideas of anarchism, in which case we shouldn't consider the merits or faults of anarchism based on their activities. draper's idea, or what i gather from it, is that the best way of combating this hierarchy forming is through democratic (mass) voting. such systems are, however, open to massive subversion by those in existing positions of power, and would only serve to produce new leaders, and new masters for the slaves below.

If you consistently judge your political actions by the response they get from 'real' people you have more idea of what needs to be done to achieve your objective (revolution?).

again tom seems to fall into the trap of resorting to mass psychology and the problems inherent within it. who are these 'real' people (i note that he puts the term in quotes as if he is unsure about what it means!) ? what defines them? there is no such group as real people (presumably we would have to contrast them with unreal people - any ideas for whom they would be?) it is ridiculous to rely on a fictitious spook for feedback. why individuals shouldn't judge their actions by their own intellectual and emotional appraisal of the outcomes of those actions, rather than constantly submitting to a concocted external moral authority?

this is where the real revolution lies. in each individual realising her/his own ability to act and interact with the world, and giving up all illusionary 'cops in the head' like religious ideas, party doctrine, and mass psychology.

I could never satisfy myself with single-issue campaigning and actions as an ends in themselves.

nor could i. but i see these campaigns as rational bases for collective action. everyone has different ideas about strategies of overcoming oppression, and the party framework is hopeless in dealing with this. anarchists have similar ideas about the way in which action should occur, but because we are all different, different ideas about where these actions are needed at any given time. the freedom of temporary association seems an excellent way to tackle different issues without straightjacketing people into accepting a whole program for social change. whilst there is a real danger of single issue campaigns evading politics, i think that possibility can be avoided as long as links are made from the issue to others.

I hope that everything I do is in an effort to get as many people as possible acting in their own interests – I think this is a point of difference.

i disagree. i would describe the above as one of my aims in political activity. the point of difference is that i assume that each individual is unique with a unique psychology, and that everyone's interests are different. as such, the autonomous individual is the best judge of their own interests, and such autonomy and defiance of mass psychology is to be encouraged. anything less than this, like draper's call for more democratic systems of leadership, is simply a call for 'bigger cages, longer chains'. that is something that is certainly not in my interests.