Notes on Endnotes’ “We Unhappy Few”

The first essay in Endnotes 5, “We Unhappy Few“, is an interesting look at various psychological and psychiatric concepts, and how they can be applied to the dynamics of small groups of radicals and revolutionaries. The first half looks at some ideas that were born out of the struggles in Europe in the 1968 period around the proper orientation between “willed” groups of radicals and the larger, “spontaneous” movements around them, through writings like Roger Gregoire and Fredy Perlman’s Worker- student action committees: France May ’68, Gilles’ Duave’s arguments about a “historical party” vs. a “formal party”, and Jacques Camatte’s criticism of organizations as always tending toward becoming “gangs” and “rackets”. The second half gets much more abstract, centering on concepts advanced by the psychiatrist Wilfred Bion, such as “basic assumption groups”, “paranoid-schizoid states”, and “mystics”. Strange stuff, but actually simpler and more relevant than they initially seem.

Bion’s work fundamentally revolves around unpacking how people think, how thought is dependent on and shaped by other people and their thoughts, and how this can impact the behavior and evolution of groups. One key dynamic is how open somebody is to new knowledge, which is dependent on whether somebody is actually relating to and engaging with the object of potential knowledge. Resisting knowledge because of “assumed knowledge” is common, especially in dogmatic communist sects, who tend to never truly participate in or relate to the real world, whether that is via conversation with other groups or people in the streets during moments of struggle, since they believe that they already have the necessary knowledge. Another common cause of refusing knowledge is because it has been replaced with moralism, in the sense that groups or movements are declared as “good” or “bad” based on pre-conceptions, without any serious investigation or inquiry. Consider how some segments of the left rejected the Yellow Vest movement out of hand, as an inescapably fascist mobilization, without truly grasping the movement’s internal dynamics and contradictions, or engaging with first-hand accounts.

Another insight is the relational and collective nature of thought. All thinking is in relation with other people’s thinking, which we absorb via conversations, writing, etc. When we think, it is always mediated in some way by a larger array of other people’s thoughts, whether we are reflecting on them, responding to them, processing and understanding them, etc. A group, therefore, acts as a sort of container to hold and assimilate thinking, and to an extent can even do some thinking for us, which at its best leads to spreading knowledge faster, and at its worse enforces dogma.

Individual and group ability to think and develop knowledge is a constantly-evolving process, building on itself in some moments and regressing in others. Central to this process is how the realization or non-realization of a certain preconception is dealt with. When something happens that does not fit our pre-conceptions, how we respond influences whether we end up changing and developing our knowledge, or whether we resist this information and cling to the old pre-conception. Dealing with the falsification of our pre-conceptions can be challenging, and requires patience and discipline to deal with the accompanying feelings of confusion, doubt, and uncertainty, but it is a crucial part of developing our capacity to absorb and process knowledge and build our understanding of the world.

Bion identifies two general states that define a back-and-forth process of dealing with new information and consolidating it into knowledge: a paranoid-schizoid state (Ps), where thoughts are uncertain and confusing and chaotic, and a depressive state (D), where thoughts are structured and integrated (presumably these names have some actual meaning drawn from Bion’s work in psychiatry, even if their connection to how they are defined here is very unclear). Learning and growth requires continual movement between progressively developed states of Ps and D, where a new Ps state is triggered by new information (perhaps, a certain pre-conception being proven wrong by experience or argument), which in turn eventually settles into a new D state, where the new information is processed and synthesized into a new set of concepts. Of course, this progressive development requires the ability to actually carry out the productive absorption and integration of new knowledge; without this, a new Ps state triggered by new information could easily just decay back into the old D state, with its old pre-conceptions still intact.

For radical groups, this framework can be applied to understand how they interact with new information, such as the sort that emerges from moments in struggle, based on their participation or observation of “spontaneous” uprisings, or their own attempts to instigate a struggle, or perhaps some new unorthodox idea that a member brings up based on some text, or their own personal experiences. A group that is too dogmatic will mechanically brush aside any new information and experience, clinging to its existing ideas, and remain stagnant in a D state. A more open and healthy group that is interested in learning and growth, on the other hand, will open up to new information, triggering a Ps state where assumptions and ideas are up in the air and there is much uncertainty about the future, but then steadily consolidates into a new, more developed D state, with new and robust frameworks, synthesized from the old frameworks and the new ideas, that guide the groups activities. The splitting or dissolution of groups can also be analyzed through this perspective, as being moments where the group cannot bear the tension and strain of the Ps state.

All in all, some fairly useful concepts here. Unfortunately, there isn’t much offered beyond the basic idea that individuals and groups should be open to new information and experiences, and accept the kind of periodic disarray and doubt that may come with such openness. Specifically, the question of how to maintain such openness is not answered. This is hardly a trivial matter, especially insofar as larger radical organizations are concerned. How to build and maintain a radical organization or group that can keep itself open to new experiences and ideas, while also maintaining a certain level of discipline and cohesion to effectively wage class struggle, is a complex question that touches on all aspects of how such groups are structured, governed, and networked.

Based on my experiences in organizing (i.e. in tech worker organizing), my focus when thinking about organizational health and dynamism tends to be on how an organization interacts with new and prospective members and sympathizers. Are newcomers seen as containers of new ideas and experiences who can contribute to the intellectual and practical fabric of the group; or are they seen as abstractions which can be uncritically and mechanically plugged in to pre-existing committees and campaigns? Is there an organic process by which newcomers can learn about organizational history, structure, and norms, or are they left alone to waffle about and scratch their head about who they should talk to and what they could be doing?

If we understand new members as a type of new information, then whether they are properly assimilated into an organization is a measure of how open that organization is to building new knowledge, and how willing it is to go through the progressive back-and-forth Ps-D oscillation. New members of radical and revolutionary groups, if they are actually allowed to be full individuals with their own ideas, experiences, struggles, will lead to a progressive transformation of the group, and a reforging and reconstitution of the relationships and strategies that underpinned the group prior to their joining. This requires the organization to have the collective capacity and will to weather the period of uncertainty and awkwardness that is inherent to taking up new members, as well as some idea as to how to eventually stabilize and synthesize the new with the old.

This dynamic is most pronounced in moments of intense popular struggle or upheaval, when large numbers of people who are swept up in the moment start to look for organizations to join and continue the fight. Organizations that have the capacity and will to absorb this new energy will grow and evolve; those that don’t will stagnate and split. And of course, just because an organization is able to absorb new energy, ideas, and members in one moment does not mean it will always be able to do so; for example, the DSA grew tremendously in a certain direction in the context of the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign, but there are signs that it is unable to really relate to or connect with the current wave of uprisings and rebellions against the police state.

There is a lot more that can be said about how to understand and apply Endnotes’ analysis of Bion’s psychological frameworks, especially in how they are parallel with other frameworks the Maoist concept of the mass line, but for now this is hopefully a good sketch of the basic concepts and some rudimentary ways to apply them to radical organizing.

Tagged: anarchism, communism, marxism, organizing, philosophy, psychology, socialism, strategy