2016
Below is an attempt at summarizing material concerning critical thought that I pulled together from various passages throughout the book Critical Thought in the Face of the Capitalist Hydra
Critical thought is systematic. It’s thought for changing the world.
Critical thought is a new subject for the compas. And rather than any explaining it through the ideas of famous Marxist revolutionaries, the Sup champions Sherlock Holmes and Albert Einstein as examples of critical thinkers. He celebrates them for a number of reasons:
• They systematically employed conceptual tools to prove hypotheses, despite lacking direct observation of black holes or Sherlock’s criminals.
• Instead of using certain traditions of thinking and rejecting others because they considered themselves Newtonian and Galilean, but not Pythagorean, they used the tools that best help to solve the problem at hand.
• In doing so, they refused to orient their thinking towards what would garner applause or what was most accommodating of power.
• And they surely didn’t engage in the things the Sup ridicules postmodernism for: individualism, cultural relativism, the glorification of chance mistakes, and in general allowing loads of bad information to crowd out the nuggets of good information.
But there are plenty of people systematically thinking through things – being explicit about their premises, assumptions, argumentation, and the concepts they’re using – who aren’t critical thinkers. Critical thought is systematically committed to liberation. Critical thought is thought for changing the world.
The sentinel
More than just a sexy slogan, there are a number of ways critical thinkers work to promote revolution. There’s the story of Eduardo Galeano as soccer ball retriever, which is similar to the other metaphorical figure of Luis Villoro as the sentinel, but more active. The sentinel watches out over the outside world where capitalism continues to feed a gathering storm. They observe the storm in many ways, from many levels: with a telescope to see how specific parts are developing in specific places; with an orbital telescope to see the full range of the storm in the world system; with a microscope to see how its changing chemistry is affecting its properties; with an inverted periscope to compare what’s happening in the roots with what’s happening in the air. Paying attention to the genealogical transformation of this panorama, the sentinel notes key differences and continuities and observes how the various intellectuals, politicians, movements, corporations, and other groups are acting as the storm strengthens and the sky darkens – how they contribute to this crisis, oppose it, or ignore it. The sentinel uses critical thought to interpret all this activity and reports back on key developments, but does not engage.
The ball retriever
While the sentinel is facing the outside, the ball retriever is facing inside watching our movement. If the soccer players have different positions representing different roles in the movement and the ball is the focus of the struggle that brings them together, the ball retriever springs to action when this focus goes astray, when the ball ends up down a hill, floating along the river, tangled in brambles, or in the highway. Seen in this way, critical thought serves to re-focus our efforts, to keep us true to our principles, and to keep our organizing process moving along despite distractions, conflict, danger, and confusion. It’s not an easy job, which is why the young girl named Defensa Zapatista says, “Recoje balones, no cualquiera.”
What the sentinel and ball retriever do, and what they don’t do
Neither the sentinel nor the ball retriever is trying to conquer an ideological opponent on the left. They’re not setting out to prove one tradition of critical or revolutionary thought is totally mistaken and another is totally correct. They’re also not just theorizing for theory’s sake, in a vacuum, to merely ‘get these ideas out there.’ Nor are they doing any of this as individuals.
Both the sentinel and the ball retriever are engaging what’s happening now to prepare for what’s coming next. The sentinel watches the gathering storm to see where it came from, where it’s headed, and how its turbulent weather is going to affect us. The ball retriever is keeping the ball in play so that the game can go on, so that the teams can continue playing, learning, and struggling together. Again, the sentinel isn’t spending all her time denouncing bad lookout practices or trying to convince the capitalists to quit feeding the storm. The ball retriever isn’t yelling at the goalie for allowing the ball to sail over her head and down the hill or haranguing the other ball retrievers to quit. Instead, they’re asking “Where are we going?” (which is the same as asking “Where did we come from?” and “Where are we now?”) and preparing for the struggle ahead. They’re theorizing as part of a collective effort that’s much bigger than their individuality, and as part of an effort whose means and ends are revolution.
We know through action, problems and reflection
Critical thought is also different from traditional thought in terms of its epistemology – the sources it pulls ideas from and what it considers to be good ideas. SupMoi says that mistakes are the Zapatistas’ textbook, and SupGaleano says resistance is their bibliography. This means more than just focusing our reading on social movements or giving attention to both successes and errors. It means that we learn by doing; we learn to do; and the thought of intellectuals who aren’t actively engaged in collective ‘doing’ is fundamentally limited. Campaigns, disagreements, and failed projects are on the same level as the concepts we learn in books, and we need to reflect on both to guide our movements. As familiar as we may be with concepts like hegemony, fictitious capital, or intersectionality after having read about them, we still don’t understand them until we’ve engaged these ideas in our organizing. And we shouldn’t engage them as recipes to follow or prophecies to fulfill, but instead as tools that we can pick up and put down depending on the situation. The good tools help break open holes in the wall. They help chip away from the pillars that uphold the social pyramid. But these oppressive structures are much more wily and adaptable than any wall or pyramid, and as they adapt we must also adapt both our conceptual tools and the way we put them to use.
A method for engaging in critical thought.
We frequently explain dialectical thought by contrasting it with the scientific method, but Pensamiento critico brings the two together. Like the scientific method, critical thought begins by
• choosing an object of analysis – something specific to study
• posing a question about this object – what exactly do we want to know?
• making a hypothesis that answers and explains the question – before doing any research, how would we answer this question?
• challenging the hypothesis by
o questioning its logic and assumptions
o comparing the hypothesis to what we can observe
o determining our blind spots – what’s missing – and doing more research
Testing with ideas and actions
The method of making and testing a hypothesis is similar to the scientific method, but there are also important differences. One is that our “objects of analysis” are complex, global, ever-changing aspects of the class struggle and not inert chemicals. This complexity means we can’t only use observation to test our hypotheses, but we must test them against conceptual tools that we’re confident in. What do the contradictions of capitalism tell us about it? What about women’s struggles? What about popular education? The ultimate test is what works for organizing and what doesn’t, and this caminar preguntando cuts through all the complexity to give us stark lessons.
Genealogy
Genealogy is another way difference between critical thought and the scientific method. To answer our question and make a hypothesis, we must look at our object genealogically, in the same way we learn about a person by asking for their story, then for their mother’s story, and then for their grandmother’s story. In other words: rastrear, huellar, analyze (in the specific sense of the term). This means that the “object of analysis” isn’t an object at all, but a process to be discovered. Looking backwards in time, what are the steps by which it came to be as it is now? What are the roots? Following this progression, what will it transform into in the future? This genealogy is never a simple, straightforward progression. There are no simple lines of cause and effect. Instead, in tracing the genealogy of capitalism, Zapatista women, or undocumented Albany Park residents, we must focus on the contradictions that caused the transformation. How did opposing forces shape our object of analysis? How did people try and make a bad situation less bad? How was our object of analysis changed by the greatest opposing force – the one between oppression and resistance – called ‘class struggle’?
Pushing the limits
Critical thought is also complex because it embraces uncertainty. Traditional thought either says it has all the answers or that it’s useless to ask difficult questions. But critical thought says that, in a constantly transforming world, the future is an open question and a question that must be asked. Or, like the Sup says, the future is an “etcetera”: many things you don’t know how to say. Said another way, what’s missing is missing. We’re missing the tools to answer our questions, and we can’t look for them under the sofa or in the basement because they’re not there. Our dead, who could tell us where to look, have been disappeared. Instead, we have to search for all the tools we can find and then invent what’s missing. We must
• trace the genealogy of how the current moment has come to be,
• ask how this transformation will look in the future,
• embrace the fact that we can never know for sure, and then
• make the asking itself an object of inquiry so that we can create better tools.
Critical thought means being critical of our own thought and asking
• “What do we need to know to change the world?”
• “How are we thinking?”
• “How might our thinking be flawed?”
• “How can our thinking create better tools for revolution?”
• “How can our practice teach us to think better?”
• “How can our compas teach us to think better?”
Stuart Schussler 