Editor’s Note: After the original version of this article was posted, the Editorial Board received a criticism from another Pressworker about the clarity, structure, and content of this piece. It was reviewed by the plenary board and determined that these criticisms had merit. As a result, the article was submitted to a new round of edits. This version includes those edits.
When communist artisans associate with one another, theory, propaganda, etc. is their first end. But, at the same time, as a result of this association, they acquire a new need — the need for society — and what appears as a means becomes an end.
Karl Marx
Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.
Groucho Marx
One of the most destructive trends encouraged by capitalism is the ideology of “rugged individualism.” Under the dominion of Capital, each person is forced to act as a discrete economic unit, fighting with other discrete economic units (you know, what we regularly call “people”) for a slice of a pie that isn’t big enough to go around. “It’s us,” says the logic of Capital, “against the world.” This economic war of all-against-all has inspired a whole library of apologetics. Bourgeois philosophers make their excuses for the brutality of the system they support by telling us that if only everyone looked out for themself and pulled hard on their bootstraps, there would be prosperity enough for all. They tell us to look after our neighbors by looking after ourselves. Then, when looking out for number one turns out to be insufficient to overcome the economic walls built up by the owners, when it doesn’t bear fruit, they tell us “It’s because you didn’t work hard enough, it has nothing to do with systemic oppression and marginalization.”
In reality, it is impossible for a person to live without or “against” society; it is only through our relationship to society that we are able to understand ourselves as individuals at all. Any emancipatory project must encompass the fundamentally social nature of the human person as both the source and culmination of liberation.
But we are entering a period of dawning class consciousness. One of the best ways to feed the hunger for answers that accompanies this new awakening is through the study of historical revolutionaries and revolutionary projects.By studying the words of those who once engaged in the same struggle for liberation, we can root our activity in the rich soil of the historic class struggle.
So, we read, and we learn. Perhaps at first, we do so alone, but at a certain point theory must meet practice. Solidarity — the act of standing up for someone, of standing with someone, not because of any personal relationship but based solely on their need as a person — is the ethos of the revolutionary movement. But solidarity that remains a theoretical ideal is not solidarity at all; it is a kind of mock-solidarity, a cold simulacrum, a lifeless statue. To move from theory, from study, to practice, to action, we must make the intermediary step: theory-as-act. The study group, socialized study, is the next step in that journey. Working together through a dense political or philosophical text strengthens our understanding, and it strengthens the social bonds that capitalist society attacks through alienation, individuation, and atomization for the purposes of extracting profit.
In his collection of teachings, Only Don’t Know, Zen Master Seung Sahn speaks of the liberatory power of “together-action”:
Together-action is like washing potatoes. When people wash potatoes in Korea, instead of washing them one at a time, they put them all in a tub full of water. Then someone puts a stick in the tub and pushes it up and down, up and down. This makes the potatoes rub against each other; as they bump into each other, the hard crusty dirt falls off. If you wash potatoes one at a time, it takes a long time to clean each one, and only one potato gets clean at a time. If they are all together, the potatoes clean each other.
In the study group we help each other to shed the hard crusty dirt of capitalist ideology more effectively than any of us could alone.
The form and structure of the study group provide fertile ground for cultivating the growth of a radical political movement. In a society that is so hostile to revolutionary politics, the study group is a venue for making connections with other people who are working for the same end. The connective power of the internet is fantastic and is particularly important for comrades who have circumstances that preclude them from participating in-person. However, it is also important to physically come together with people in a local community, reaching out to break down the walls of isolation that capital so implacably builds.
Building or finding a study group may seem like an intimidating task. Luckily many radical texts and resources are available online for free. Sites like marxists.org are an excellent resource for accessing classic texts from Marx, Engels, Lenin and more. Additionally, you can use the resources on unity-struggle-unity.com. Your group is welcome to read and discuss the articles posted at the Red Clarion or as a source for material to help with local outreach. Our Guide to Study Groups is a fantastic resource to start out with. You can also correspond with us — many of our Pressworkers have experience forming study groups, and can suggest starting points for delving into these expansive resources.
It can sometimes feel daunting and isolating living in a society dominated by people who not only don’t care about anyone but themselves, but teach us that we should do the same, that we should shrug off our basic humanity. Worse, they tell us that this cruelty is what makes us human. We cannot give in; we cannot allow ourselves to believe the lie that we are each alone, that we stand against the world on our own two feet. A radical political project must make clear from the start that we are in and for the world. It is only by relying on each other that we have a chance at saving the world. A study group is an excellent place to start.
