Ernst Bloch

Ernst Bloch on exposing the failure of the Democratic process in the face of recent Republican strategies, updated from 1932, to relate better to the eternal political use of the “Joe the Plumber”, aka “Joe Six-Pack”, syndrome:

“First, one must distinguish the falsely from the genuinely nonsynchronous contradiction, the latter from the synchronous contradiction, and then, in both of them, the objective and the subjective factors of the contradiction. The subjectively nonsynchronous contradiction is pent up anger, the objectively nonsynchronous one is unsettled past; the subjectively synchronous one is Joe the Plumber’s free revolutionary act, the objectively synchronous contradiction is the impeded future contained in the Now, the impeded technological benefaction, the impeded new society, with which the old one is pregnant in its productive forces. The basic factor in the objectively synchronous contradiction is the conflict between the collective character of the productive society contained within capitalism and the free market, and the private character of of their antipathy…”1

A little heady, but overall, prescient analysis in the context of the recent worldwide financial stock market panic, wherein Republicans, voted into government, call for nothing but destroying government in the name of efficiency. But people, unlike ideal worlds or soundbite attacks, are not composed entirely of efficiency. Efficiency occurs in a moment of change in a system, whereas a system itself is always composed of a range of efficiencies. This more complex definition of a system is itself dependent on the education of the perceiver of the system. Thus, at the root of the Republican campaign logic, lies the primary role of controlling education. An uneducated people are full of the subjectively nonsynchronous contradiction, and thus, an objectively nonsynchronous contradiction is easy to invoke to gain the traction the subjects dreams yearn for.  Either way, its a moot point: they dont teach analysis in bible school or at the Creation museum. Except where tactics on how to enforce a point of view lie. And thus, analysis will lose in the face of the ability to manipulate the subjectively nonsynchronous contradiction into a future history of the objectively nonsynchronous contradiction.

1 Ernst Bloch: Erbschaft dieser Zeit, 1935 [wiki]