Workers' History and Plutus
- Nathan C.
- Jan 24
- 4 min read
Prologos
In her book Speaking In Parables: A Study in Metaphor and Theology, Sallie McFague makes the argument that metaphor and interpretation, rather than dogma and static, lie at the heart of the Christian faith. There are of course those who would be sorely disappointed, upon reading, to find that Sallie McFague does not argue that we must develop well-defined, exact definitions. We do not identify the contours of the face of God in the form of the syllogism, she says, but rather, in poetry— interpretation, metaphor, poetry. In essence, at the heart of the faith which Sallie McFague recognizes as the true Christian's faith is not faith in what can be grasped at once, in God as-such, but rather, in the disclosed God-- God-for-us, or God-with-us; Emanuel.
What is of particular interest now is that, in the time of Jesus' Ministry, it was of capital interest to the Pharisees and the Sadducees that the priests be the only ones to say the Name of God. In the eventual culmination of the Pharisaical spirit, the Rabbati, there is raised even a prohibition against inquiry into First Things, that is, that which was before the Creation. The priest class is the first emergence of the capitalist, as noted by Guy Debord in The Society of the Spectacle.
The Sadducees and the Pharisees were in discord, however, on the question of Hellenization. The Sadducees were the wealthy minority that imported Hellenic ideology, while the Pharisees were purists who refused Hellenization. The Hellenic spirit was already declared, was orated in sum, as: "Dionysus is dead; long live Dionysus." Hence, Philo argues that, among the many notions about the Genesis that have been postulated at one point or another in history, he is most particularly invested in the deconstruction of cyclical, or eternal, time.
For the Sadducees and the Pharisees, it was of capital importance that we, the layman, the Gentile, the unclean, did not grasp or embrace cyclical, eternal time.
The Myth of Plutus
"A cup cannot contain anything more than its capaciousness." A name is, fundamentally, a 'cup'. It contains nothing more than its capaciousness. In the Name alone is no value at all— it is the act of naming, the precise moment of determination and transcendence, where the object that is named becomes more than capacious. Invariably, and at every turn in the labyrinth of waking life, we encounter the Named as-such, and only as-such. We encounter, in other words, a world that exists not only in-itself, but for-other— and it is the act, the moment, of naming, that gives rise to this Sense. To name is effectually to break into the openness and inward eternity of Being through the providential opportunity formed by the meeting of the This and the universal; it is like a metaphor in that through the Name we come to understand what something is confessed to be by every mind possessed of the sensus communis.
Where other projects have aimed, what they have reached for, has been attained in the perfectly plagiarized account of Plutus's rise, remission, and reprisal. The myth functions as a metaphor or a Name: by itself and in-itself, it accounts for, explains, confronts, interprets, establishes nothing. This lightfingered mythopoesis is the most inclusive and perfectly plagiarized articulation of the historical Messianic peasantry, or the workers movement. Within this articulation of the Plutus myth lies the heart of the revolution, and in the narrative of the blinded Plutus is the emergence of the symptom, the first pivot from imperialism to Empire, the second fall of man, and the death of God— all that, yes, but also the Christ-impulse, the Messianic confrontation (a pseudo-Armageddon) of the workers' movement with linear historical time, the spiritual liberation of man, and ancestral anamnesis. It is profound in its synthesis of the multiple intellectual and spiritual reconstitutions of the Messianic materialist movement.
The essence of this narrative can be hewn, like Ymir's body, into panoply forms: the second fall of man, the ascent of the idol-form in the capitalist mode of relations, the death of God, the Christ-impulse, the bondage of Rationalism in politics and in Spirit, and the liberation of man from all his oppressors.
The Manifesto page for the Blind Plutus website makes quick mention that previous revolutions have failed. As a matter of fact, there is no true failure in revolution. What was at stake with the Peasants' Revolt; what was at stake during the October Revolution; what was pronounced and lived in the Paris Commune; and what was written by Proudhon, Saint-Simon, Marx, Engels... these are the first, violent, volatile, brilliant flames lit, that would, according to Marx and Engels, inevitably consume the capitalist system, save for bits and pieces. It's true: the revolution is not many revolutions, but one revolution, eternal, cyclical; plagiarized and regurgitated ad nauseum.
I care no longer to climb. The imposing edifice of society above my head holds no delights for me. It is the foundation of the edifice that interests me. There I am content to labour, crowbar in hand, shoulder to shoulder with intellectuals, idealists, and class-conscious working-men, getting a solid pry now and again and setting the whole edifice rocking. Some day, when we get a few more hands and crowbars to work, we'll topple it over, along with all its rotten life and unburied dead, its monstrous selfishness and sodden materialism. Then we'll cleanse the cellar and build a new habitation for mankind, in which there will be no parlour floor, in which all the rooms will be bright and airy, and where the air that is breathed will be clean, noble, and alive.
— Jack London, What Life Means to Me
The successful revolution is not the rebellion that succeeds in replacing one bureaucracy with another. The successful revolution is the one that is yet to be complete, the work of God-with-us, our liberator and our redemption: the workers' movement. We are the extra hands working shoulder-to-shoulder, we are the intellectuals, idealists, and class-conscious working-men who will, at the very least, set the whole thing rocking. And there is no more meaningful course of action against the god of everything else than to revolt and try, or, in a word, to have faith. Our actions today bring to the present the actors of the past and bring from the future the possibility of conceiving of possibilities.
