# What could Radical Anarchism learn from Mythology?



## William Howard 2 (Oct 16, 2017)

A recent discussion caught my interest on Libcom.org, a Marxist and Anarchist resource, about communication. These guys are amazing. They are the only ones I can tell that is doing a serious examination of there style of writing and outreach, and how effective (or not) it is. They are trying to figure out how to get the message across to people who aren't familiar with the theoretical "academic" Marxism and motivate others to action. This had me seriously reconsider my own approach and the implications of all there conclusions. The URL to the specific conversation can be found here: http://libcom.org/blog/capital-cant-be-reasoned-importance-affective-politics-19092013

So what does that have to do with mythology? Unlike the Marxists my focus is ancient philosophy, so I understood that this gap between us and our audience goes way further back then they realized. The systematic breakdown of "trying to get others to listen to us" is the art of persuasion developed by the Sophists of Greece, who wrote volumes on the subject. 

This had me consider a contemporary element of the Greeks, the Myth. In a sadly overlooked passage, Plato writes in his Republic about how myths have a profound and deep allegorical meaning. However, he warns that this deep meaning should not be taught to children because they would not understand it. But, he wrote, that this method of simplifying information will keep children engaged enough until the "theoretical" allegorical meaning is dripped in. 

I think we can draw some ideas from this. I mean, who hates mythology? We still talk about it. It's cool. It has swords and monsters. It has Supermen and hot chicks. This is the ancient solution to what the Marxists were saying about making theoretical things "interesting" to people who don't know about it - we give it a story, a narrative that will get people "hooked". It could explain why grossly simple solutions that the conservative right presents are so appealing to people ("the immigrants are to blame", "the lazy poor are ruining us", ect.). It frames an existence far removed from any tangible facts grounded on reality, whereas the "articulate" left focuses on a technical working of politics, but at the expense of alienating those not already convinced or well versed. 

I think a second point is that mythology has this ambiguity to it. Someone mentioned "we only care about things that have to do with us". What myths do is allow the audience to draw there own conclusions in a way that lets them take cognitive "ownership" of it and apply it to their own unique circumstance. Naturally, one would think this ambiguity would conflict with the effectiveness of spreading a specific message, which was at the heart of a specific quibble between Aristotle and Plato. But I think what's key is to have its meaning "dripped" in overtime by the authors who create or know the myths (but that's another story). Everyone has at least known someone in poverty, or someone who immigrated to a country. Scapegoating allows the population to project there own problems and life anxiety unto the victims in much the same way we project ourselves as a character in a (mythological) story (or kick our dog for something bad at work?). It strips theory out of the picture and makes the narrative more personal, more immediate, more "relatable", all because of its clever use of ambiguity. 

Something I've been stuck trying to understand is this idea of a "noble lie". I was reading through another post of a Marxist analyst who questioned the famous "99 and 1 percent" slogan as being not factually based, but, he concluded, that yes it serves a practical end of mobilizing people and as a general "tool" for understanding of current crisis of inequality. Nitpicking for him would not have helped the Occupy movement. His "noble lie" was presenting not entirely factual information as truth, using the narrative to accomplish "noble" ends ("the Occupy movement is better off with it then without" I think was his words.) 

This is where I think we have to question it's ethics. If we are creating Myths, in much the same way as the conservative right, then how are we any different? Do the "ends justify the means" of playing on peoples emotions? I was shocked to see no one really question this. 

I think this brings even another problem - is it right to prioritize the audience over the message? At what point is that message lost, much like the meaning behind the Greek Myths? In a attempt to bridge the gap between theory and practice, could the greatest alienation happen, that of Truth itself?


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## Drengor (Oct 16, 2017)

Seems to me you could avoid the above headache by focussing on educating those you care about instead of trying to come up with a story to trick kids into thinking the way you want them to. Stop trying to fight fake news with different fake news, and you won't have to fear losing sight of truth.

What exactly was this false claim about the "99 and 1 percents"?

No end justifies any means, as every means is an end in itself, and every end is simply the means to the next end. Every action must justify itself.


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## William Howard 2 (Oct 16, 2017)

Drengor said:


> What exactly was this false claim about the "99 and 1 percents"?


This is one instance I found of it mentioned, from a article called "No interest but the interest of breathing", on the same site -

One per cent away from "all in this together"

Without a sense of the contradictory, indistinct, unstable interests of self-contradictory, indistinct, unstable 'subjects', it's impossible to understand endless warfare between the merely-breathing, and therefore impossible to think of overcoming it, unless you expect this to be achieved by some supreme effort of moral will. Hence the anathema early in this article against the '99 per cent' slogan. Giving its proponents the benefit of the doubt that the percentage in question is intended as global rather than national, not 99 but 100 per cent of the world's population shares an abstract interest – or a concrete interest infinitely mediated – in the abolition of a value-form tending ultimately towards human annihilation. But the 99-1 breakdown disallows any innocuous dreaming of such things. It asserts a definite opposition – something that sounds like a class conflict, even – and names the sides. Yet these two sides are not really classes at all: they are not defined in terms of their material interaction, but demographically, i.e. by personal identities: whatever number (70 million, or 1 per cent of 7 billion?) of the wealthiest individuals against everyone else in the world. Sophisticated supporters will object that 'the 99 per cent' is 'just' a slogan, neither meant as analysis nor subject to it, but when a slogan is repeated so often it's worth considering what the exact words imply. Which in this case is, if not perfect identity of all interests within the respective '99 per cent' and '1 per cent' groups, at least relegation of 'internal' conflicts on either side to secondary, unimportant status. So that, for example, the difference between a London lawyer with a big mortgaged house (still 99 per cent) and a hedge fund billionaire with a property portfolio (1 per cent) is fundamental in a way that the difference between the lawyer and a childcarer she employs on a semi-indentured temporary visa is not. And the conflict between immigrant African workers in South African townships and the local African workers who slaughtered them in the pogroms of 2008 must all have been a tragic misunderstanding, unless it was false consciousness or an explosion of individual sin. And likewise unreal is the contradiction lived by a low-paid specialist in violent enforcement – employed, say, by G4S in an outsourced policing role or by a 'criminal' organization – as a proletarian and punisher of proletarians.

Once again, the point here is not to criticise the practices associated with the '99 per cent' slogan (and obviously not to propose its adjustment to 75-25, 50-50 per cent or any other ratio). The simple-mindedness of slogans dividing the world into identity groups (whether 99-vs-1 per cent, nationalities or 'classes' as hallucinated in cultural terms) is emphasised only because what it occludes is precisely the way contradictory interests cut across all such groupings. Only a dynamic conception of interests – one extending far beyond Graeber's 'pursuit of profit' definition, all the way in fact to his 'love, spite, pity, torpor' etc., as mediated by the crudest material need – allows some understanding of the contradictory needs, stakes or exposures intersecting in any subject position and the relations of dependence binding these contradictory elements together.


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## William Howard 2 (Oct 16, 2017)

If I run across the exact article again I'll post it. They write like. Massive essays. But it is interesting that multiple commentators do address it.


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## Will Wood (Oct 17, 2017)

Sorry, it seems every time I try and read Marxists it turns into a tome of gobble-dee-gook(a confusing mess).. I suspect myth will help you a lot more than Marxism will.. But good luck anyway..


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