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AGAINST THE LOGIC OF
SUBMISSION: Neither Intellectualism Nor Stupidity
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�� In the
struggle against domination and exploitation, each individual needs to take up
every tool that she can make her own, every weapon that he can use autonomously
to attack this society and take back her life. Of course, which tools
particular individuals can use in this way will vary depending on their
circumstances, desires, capacities and aspirations, but considering the odds we
face, it is ridiculous to refuse a weapon that can be used without compromising
autonomy on the basis of ideological conceptions.
�� The rise
of the civilization we live in with its institutions of domination is based on
the division of labor, the process by which the activities necessary for living
are transformed into specialized roles for the reproduction of society. Such
specialization serves to undermine autonomy and reinforce authority because it
takes certain tools�certain aspects of a complete individual�from the vast
majority and places them in the hands of a few so-called experts.
�� One of the
most fundamental specializations is that which created the role of the
intellectual, the specialist in the use of intelligence. But the intellectual
is not so much defined by intelligence as by education. In this era of
industrial/high technological capitalism, the ruling class has little use for
the full develop and exercise of intelligence. Rather it requires expertise,
the separation of knowledge into narrow realms connected only by their
submission to the logic of the ruling order�the logic of profit and power.
Thus, the �intelligence� of the intellectual is a deformed, fragmented
intelligence with almost no capability of making connections, understanding
relationships or comprehending (let alone challenging) totalities.
�� The
specialization that creates the intellectual is in fact part of the process of
stupefaction that the ruling order imposes on those who are ruled. For the
intellectual, knowledge is not the qualitative capacity to understand, analyze
and reason about one�s own experience or to make use of the strivings of others
to achieve such an understanding. The knowledge of intellectuals is completely
disconnected from wisdom, which is considered a quaint anachronism. Rather, it
is the capacity for remembering unconnected facts, bits of information, that
has come to be seen as �knowledge�. Only such a degradation of the conception
of intelligence could allow people to talk of the possibility of �artificial
intelligence� in relation to those information storage and retrireview units
that we call computers.
�� If we
understand that intellectualism is the degradation of intelligence, then we can
recognize that the struggle against intellectualism does not consist of the
refusal of the capacities of the mind, but rather of the refusal of a deforming
specialization. Historically, radical movements have given many examples of
this struggle in practice. Renzo Novatore was the son of a peasant who only
attended school for six months. Yet he studied the works of Nietzsche, Stirner,
Marx, Hegel, ancient philosophers, historians and poets, all of the anarchists
writers and those involved in the various newly arising art and literature
movements of his time. He was an active participant in anarchist debates on
theory and practice as well as debates in radical art movements. And he did all
of this in the context of an intense, active insurrectional practice. In a
similar vein, Bartolemeo Vanzetti, who started working as an apprentice in
early adolescence often for long hours, describes in his brief autobiography
how he would spend a good part of his nights reading philosophy, history,
radical theory and so on, in order to grasp these tools that the ruling class
would deny to him. It was this thirst to grasp the tools of the mind that
brought him to his anarchist perspective. In the late 19th century
in Florida, cigar-makers forced their bosses to hire readers to read to them as
they worked. These readers read the works of Bakunin, Marx and other radical
theorists to the workers who would then discuss what was read. And in the early
20th century, radical hoboes and their friends would set up �hobo
colleges� where a wide variety of speakers would give talks on social
questions, philosophy, revolutionary theory and practice, even science or
history, and the hoboes would discuss the questions. In each of these
instances, we see the refusal of the exploited to let the tools of intelligence
to be taken away from them. And as I see it, this is precisely the nature of a real
struggle against intellectualism. It is not a glorification of ignorance, but a
defiant refusal to be dispossessed of one�s capacity to learn, think and
understand.
�� The
degradation of intelligence that creates intellectualism corresponds to a
degradation of the capacity to reason which manifests in the development of
rationalism. Rationalism is the ideology that claims that knowledge comes from
reason alone. Thus, reason is separated from experience, from passion and so
from life. The theoretical formulation of this separation can be traced all the
way back to the philosophy of ancient Greece. Already, in this ancient
commercial empire, the philosophers were proclaiming the necessity of
subjugating desires and passions to a cold, dispassionate reason. Of course,
this cold reason promoted moderation�in other words, the acceptance of what is.
�� Since that
time (and probably far earlier since there were well-developed states and
empires in Persia, China and India when Greece still consisted of warring city-states),
rationalism has played a major role in enforcing domination. Since the rise of
the capitalist social order, the process of rationalization has been spreading
into all of society throughout the globe. It is therefore understandable that
some anarchists would come to oppose rationality.
�� But that
is a mere reaction. On closer examination, it becomes clear that the
rationalization imposed by those in power is of a specific sort. It is the
quantitative rationality of the economy, the rationality of identity and
measurement, the rationality that simultaneously equates and atomizes all
things and beings, recognizing no relationships except those of the market. And
just as intellectualism is a deformation of intelligence, this quantitative
rationality is a deformation of reason, because it is reason separated from
life, a reason based on reification.
�� While those who rule impose this deformed rationality on social relationships, they promote irrationality among those they exploit. In the newspapers and tabloids, on television, in video and computer games, in the movies,�throughout the mass media, we can see religion, superstition, belief in the unprovable and hope in or fear of the so-called supernatural being enforced and skepticism being treated as a cold and passionless refusal of wonder. It is to the benefit of the ruling order for those it exploits to be ignorant, with a limited and decreasing capacity to communicate with each other about anything of significance or to analyze their situation, the social relationships in which they find themselves and the events going on in the world. The process of stupefaction affects memory, language and the capacity to understand relationships between people, things and events on a deep level, and this process penetrates into those areas considered intellectual as well. The inability of post-modern theorists to comprehend any totality can easily be traed to this deformation of intelligence.
�� It is not
enough to oppose the deformed rationality imposed by this society; we must also
oppose the stupefaction and irrationality imposed by the ruling class on the
rest of us. This struggle requires the reappropriation of our capacity to
think, to reason, to analyze our circumstances and to communicate their
complexities. It also requires that we integrate this capacity with the
totality of our lives, our passions, our desires and our dreams.
�� The
philosophers of ancient Greece lied. And the ideologues who produce the ideas
that support domination and exploitation have continued to tell the same lie:
that the opposite of intelligence is passion. This lie has played an essential
role in the maintenance of domination. It has created a deformed intelligence
that depends on quantitative, economic rationality, and it has diminished the
capacity of most of the exploited and excluded to understand their condition
and fight intelligently against it. But, in fact, the opposite of passion is
not intelligence, but indifference, and the opposite of intelligence is not
passion, but stupidity.
�� Because I
sincerely want to end all domination and exploitation and to begin opening the
possibilities for creating a world where there are neither exploited or
exploiters, slaves or masters, I choose to grasp all of my intelligence
passionately, using every mental weapon�along with the physical ones�to attack
the present social order. I make no apologies for this, nor will I cater to
those who out of laziness or ideological conception of the intellectual limits
of the exploited classes refuse to use their intelligence. It is not just a
revolutionary anarchist project that is at stake in this struggle; it is my
completeness as an individual and the fullness of life that I desire.
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