The Prison of Ideas and Intellectual Liberation
What we know as human knowledge is only a narrow sliver of actually existing human knowledge. What would it take to break out this intellectual prison?
There's a wealth of knowledge untranslated and inaccessible to the Western reader, from both across history and across other parts of the world during our current moment. When considering that intellectual diversity even within the Western world is heavily stifled, it’s staggering to think about how many intellectual contributions are not available to us when acknowledging all thought outside of the English-speaking canon. What we know as human knowledge is only a narrow sliver of actually existing human knowledge.
For example, anytime I come across a translation of independent Chinese political writing, like this piece I enjoyed recently, I am thrilled. Otherwise, the only insight into modern Chinese thinking comes from reading one of a very few Chinese Marxists who have been translated, most whom are no longer alive and thus do not represent exactly the conditions today, or one of many Western-welcomed English-speaking Chinese liberals, which only represent a minority of the intellectual diversity in China.
We look to platforms like Twitter, Substack, or YouTube to find alternative media for our own lives. Though these platforms are largely also regurgitating or repackaging mainstream ideas, there are pockets of thinkers who operate in unique worldviews. The average Chinese person of course also thinks, they also use social media (Weibo, Douyin, WeChat, etc.), and they also post. What do they have to say? What debates are they having? What thinkers are they drawing from? Would such thinkers have an impact on our own society?
In the rare scenario of having potential access to alternative worldviews developed by English-speaking thinkers, such as Alexandr Dugin (Russia) or Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), new barriers are created. The US banned the publication of Nkrumah’s Neocolonialism: The Highest Stage of Imperialism and sanctioned Ghana after its release. Even today, affordable physical copies of the book at hard to find.
In another popular tactic of repression, engaging with the works of many specific people becomes socially unacceptable if the US state, academia, the theory-industry apparatus, or neoliberal footsoldiers, the leftist mob, vaguely dismiss the given individual as a fascist. This especially applies to emerging working-class or non-Western thinkers who offer perspectives and worldviews counter to hegemonic neoliberal thought today.
Dugin, who is extremely popular in other parts of the world and whose ideas are arguably a good representation of Russian thinking today, is dismissed in this fashion. Ironicly, in the “ideologically repressive” state of China, his ideas are publiclly discussed. Even if the label of fascist was a factual way to describe Dugin, or anyone else, the root issue is that there is an unspoken rule of who we should and shouldn’t read. Kwame Ture made it clear that the enemy should be studied. He urged the reading of Hitler, even, to understand the differences between what Hitler thought vs. what American education has taught us about what Hitler thought (for example, most are unaware that Hitler explicitly tied Judaism to Marxism and labor power in a two-pronged attack).
The Myth of Freedom
Many make the mistake of believing that ideas flow freely, and that a idea is in a place of power or hegemony because it is a popular and correct idea. The ruling class has always controlled knowledge and it’s folly to believe that they don’t do so today. The only thing that has changed is how the ruling class controls knowledge.
Historically, it was specifically the ruling classes that contributed to written knowledge production. Study of the natural world was done by philosophers and priests, their lifestyles funded directly by mass slavery and peasantry. Landowners, mercantiles, and religious leaders had the blessing of achieving literacy, often in many different languages. This was necessary if you wanted to study existing works, before mass translation campaigns.
The historical Islamic world was unique in that most intellectual work was centered around Arabic. According to Islamic law and tradition, the Quran must be studied in Arabic, so the language followed wherever the religion went. Caliphates organized and funded translation of philosophy and science, and thus selected what is to be translated. Any philosophical tradition they didn’t like could be dismissed as heresy, unfit for translation. This isn’t too different from the models followed by the Catholic Church during feudal Europe and in the anti-communist and Orientalist West today. This is simply the nature of class society.
Of course, everyday people, the people of the earth, also engaged in questions about life, nature, and the universe. Unfortunately, many of their contributions are lost in time, unwritten and unrecorded. Further, societies that relied on a very valid transfer of knowledge through speaking, had their much of their generational knowledge violently replaced with Western liberalism (think of Indigenous societies of present-day North America). When the ruling class controls the forces of production, they by extension control knowledge production. The printing press, libraries, education, social media websites all exist or existed in the hands of a few.
Censorship at it’s Worst
Arguably, intellectual repression is at an advanced stage today. This is because there is an impression of freedom that exists within intellectual circles. However, all intellectuals must research within a socially agreed upon boundary, they must cite accepted and celebrated intellectuals to validate their own work, and if they stray too far from hegemonic thought, they have to face harmful consequences. In this interview, Ali Abunimah talks about a time when German media made the “mistake” of allowing him live on air to speak about Palestine. The producers were punished and new guidelines were put into place for future productions. All journalists must follow specific standards, lest they be fired or worse, have their careers forever tainted with the mark of “conspiracy theorist” or “authoritarian-apologist.”
Moreover, society is divided into an intellectual segment and a non-intellectual segment in which the latter relies on the knowledge production of the former. Although the latter group does contribute to knowledge production, their ideas are not recognized due to the highly controlled system of knowledge production. Ideally, the proletarian intellectuals must be recognized as intellectuals. Walter Rodney referred to such a group as “organic intellectuals.” Workers directly engage with the means of production and are thus the most inclined to observe reality objectively, as materialists. However, various ruling class ideologies are injected into them through the ruling class-owned media apparatus, ruling class-dominated religious institutions, and other institutions of civil society that workers have no control over.
This intellectual divide is not just around class lines either. As alluded to before, national exploitation also plays a role. There is the issue of translation but there is also an issue of “brain drain.” The brightest minds from the economic periphery of imperialism (colonies) are brought into the US on the grounds of diversity and inclusion, and are integrated into the Western liberal way of thinking. Many times, these intellectuals are already primed for this because they come from families aligned with national bourgeoisie of their homelands. Further, the West actively deindustrializes these parts of the world, worsening the conditions for any possible intellectual development. Intellectualism becomes increasingly concentrated in the West, and then specifically around Western ruling class boundaries. This is the intersection of national and class exploitation.
A Free Future
The ruling class doesn't need to ban books because they control ideology at the root of it all. They control knowledge production and research itself. This results in a society that can read anything and everything and still never break out of the ideology they are consumed in. Socialist intellectual revitalization must include a mass translation movement and the uplifting of thinkers who were previously suppressed by the ruling class’ education apparatus. Society must open its mind to the rest of what the world has to and had to offer, especially from it's proletarian thinkers.
To win this world and free human knowledge from the confines of what is acceptable to a small few, we must deeply understand the processes behind the enemy’s organizations, strategies, and tactics. This great lecture, “The Global Theory Industry & Left Anti-Communism,” by philosopher Gabriel Rockhill breaks down such processes.
Finally, those who are aware that a ruling class ideology even exists must recognize that they are victim to its ideological framework. We are socialized to naturally think through these frameworks even when we may think we aren’t. Breaking free from this requires intense self-criticism and actively struggling through (not passively reading about) materialist philosophies that the West actively works against. Such philosophies, such as dialectical materialism, allow us to see the world of ideologies form the outside, resulting in the possibility of achieving objectivity. If you want to struggle through such a study, see the recommended readings below:
Maurice Cornforth — Materialism and the Dialectical Method
Mao Zedong — On Contradiction
Huey Newton — Introducing Revolutionary Intercommunalism
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Another banger. This also speaks to something many of us have been saying about the reactionary chase behind “Anti CRT” legislation. When were students in US public schools EVER learning actual history to begin with? Education in this settler colony has always been used as a weapon against proletariat uprising, the only way to make that not true is to take it into our own hands, not tail behind reactionary movements of the ruling class.