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| The Zeitgeist Movement symbol |
For those of you that don't already know, The Zeitgeist Movement (ZM) is a grassroots movement and at the time of writing is a 500,000 strong online community. It describes itself as a sustainability advocacy organization, and is the official activist arm of The Venus Project founded by industrial designer and social engineer Jacque Fresco. The ZM was inspired by the social response from Peter Joseph's film Zeitgeist: Addendum, sequel to Zeitgeist: The Movie. It was Zeitgeist: Addendum which first introduced the Venus Project. A third film was released globally on January 15, 2011 called Zeitgeist: Moving Forward, which focuses on human behavior, technology, and rationality, which has been viewed online by upwards of 2 million people.
Zeitgeist: Moving Forward is lucid in exposition and at times deeply insightful. The first 1-1/2 hours acutely (although it would subsequently appear unknowingly) expresses the complex dialectical relationship between our genes and the environment, and how the interaction shapes both our human nature and behaviour. It also clearly highlights many of the key motivators for replacing the capitalist mode of production with a system that puts people and the environment before profit, and the film offers a tangible and inspiring view of what a post capitalist world could be like in what the ZM define as a resource based economy. I was also glad to see Professor Richard Wilkinson from The Equality Trusts contribution on inequality and the statistics taken from his co-authored book The Spirit Level. The Equality Trusts findings really do deserve the largest possible audience and this film will undoubtedly help achieve this.
Some familiar mistakes
The above aspects aside, I largely found the film to show the ZM to be limited in analytical, theoretical and tactical foundations and orientation. The analysis and criticisms of Karl Marx and Marxism, were grossly misplaced and showed the organizations, as represented by this film own reactionary position. The criticisms are not of genuine Marx/ism, but instead of the Stalinist bureaucratic caricature of communism that spread across the world for most of the 20th century. It is clearly evident that the filmmakers and contributors had either never seriously read Marx's works, or if they have, demonstrate a severe misunderstanding of his philosophy on Marx's own terms, whilst paradoxically spouting a quasi-Marxist analysis themselves. The evaluation of the socio-psycho-economic factors behind humanities slavish adherence to consumerism is a plagiaristic 21st century version of Marx's dialectical base/superstructure relation, albeit without any reference to the class dynamic.
It is Marx himself that explains the relation best in The German Ideology
"The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it..."
Dr John Molyneux elaborates
“The means of mental production – the schools, universities, publishers, press and media generally – are today enormously expanded (mass education, TV, radio, film etc) compared to Marx’s day, but they remain almost entirely in the hands of the capitalist class and its state. This means that for the large majority of people almost every item of news, almost all their knowledge of history, of economics, of science, and most of the teaching they receive on morality and religion is brought to them within the framework of capitalist ideology. This cannot fail to have a massive effect on their thinking.”
Whilst the ZM are aware of and criticise this relation, they fail to realise they remain subject to it.
The limitations inherent in the ZMs adherence to a mechanical reductionist theory of knowledge soon becomes apparent when the film states that science and technological development will replace politics as the determinants of change. The ZM conceptualize science and technology as atomised determinations that can exist outside of political influence, but this is a fundamentally incorrect proposition. Most scientists sincerely, but mistakenly believe that they are entirely open-minded. They say, that they have "no philosophy" but merely dedicate themselves to the objective consideration of "the facts". Unfortunately though, the facts do not select themselves, do they?
Political theorist and author Alan Woods states
"...scientists are ordinary mortals who live in the same world as the rest of us. As such, they can be influenced by prevailing ideas, philosophies, politics and prejudices..."
The ZM fail to see that because they will be conducting their experiments and projects within the confines of the monetary system they will in one degree or another also be subject to its restrictions on their mental conceptions.
The American geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky says that scientists often have a naïve faith that if only they could discover enough facts about a problem
"...these facts would somehow arrange themselves in a compelling and true solution. The relation between scientific discovery and popular belief is not, however, a one-way street. Marxists are more right than wrong when they argue that the problems scientists take up, the way they go about solving them, and even the solutions they are inclined to accept, are conditioned by the intellectual, social, and economic environments in which they live and work."
They are rightly critical of institutional politics as the main driver for fundamental societal change, but to dismiss 'politics' per se from the equation as they do towards the end of the film is naive utopianism. They fail to understand that the worldwide implementation of a resource based economy will not only require the expropriation of the ruling classes, but also the contending classes appropriation of the state and the management and reorientation of its institutions. This conquest of power, in its very essence, is a political act; a revolutionary one maybe, but a political act nonetheless.
For those that care to learn, history teaches us that the ruling class will never concede their power without a fight. They will never willingly surrender control, it needs to be taken from them via revolutionary struggle. By ignoring Marx's scientific socialist method the ZM fall into the trap of believing that governmental institutions (the ruling classes political representation) will eventually "come on board" with their resource based economy project. This is the same trap that the early utopian socialists fell into when stating that the ruling class would, with time, voluntarily adopt their egalitarian plans as they presented a more "rational" society and economic system.
We can add to this that the ZM is also subject to the ruling classes judicial system, and therefore its laws and regulations. If they genuinely believe that the ruling class will allow them to continue this project forever without either implicit regulation and/or explicit clampdowns in the form of state interventions, well, once again perhaps they should actually read or reread Marx's works themselves and not simply parrot the philosophical and ideological prejudices inherent in the system they are critical of, and trying to replace.
An appropriate theory of social change
The ZM are perhaps trying to distance themselves from Marx as an attempt not to alienate the populace of the United States as his name undoubtedly comes with a lot of baggage. However, due to their cynicism they run the risk of alienating a massive group with the type of knowledge and experience that would be useful assets to the future development of their project. The ZM has the potential to serve as a popular front for a new democratic co-revolutionary movement built up of progressive organisations and should allow Marxism to help guide its orientation and to avoid the pitfalls of bourgeois methodology. By going it alone and rejecting the traditions and works of genuine Marxists and anti-capitalist groups, they are ignoring important lessons learned by organisations that have done a lot of positive work in attempting to bring about a better world and in developing a revolutionary methodology. Nevertheless, by the same token Marxists should remember that the science of Marxism is by its very nature fluid and dynamic and needs to constantly be enriched and developed if it's to avoid the dangers of static dogmatism. Perhaps the ZM has a role to play in deepening this process and helping to shake off any outdated orthodoxy.
If the ZM were willing to accommodate Marxist analysis and tactics into their theoretical framework, perhaps a good place to start would be to recognize in accordance with Professor David Harvey's suggestions in his article The Enigma of Capital and the Crisis this Time the necessity of the continual dialectical unfolding of the "7 moments" of social change within the social body politic as a whole.
These 7 moments of social change consist of
a) technological and organizational forms of production, exchange and consumption
b) relations to nature
c) social relations between people
d) mental conceptions of the world, embracing knowledge's and cultural understandings and beliefs
e) labour processes and production of specific goods, geographies, services or affects
f) institutional, legal and governmental arrangements
g) the conduct of daily life that underpins social reproduction.
Harvey's explanation is rather long, but deserves quoting in full
"Each one of these moments is internally dynamic, marked by tensions and contradictions (just think of our diverse and contested mental conceptions of the world) but all of them are co-dependent and co-evolve in relation to each other within a totality, understood as a Gramscian or Lefebvrian “ensemble” or Deleuzian “assemblage” of moments. The transition to capitalism entailed a mutually supporting movement across all seven moments within the totality. New technologies could not be identified and applied without new mental conceptions of the world (including that of the relation to nature and of new labor processes and social relations).
Social theorists often take just one of these moments and view it as the “silver bullet” that causes all change. We have technological determinists (Tom Friedman), environmental determinists (Jared Diamond), daily life determinists (Paul Hawken), labor process determinists (the autonomistas), class struggle determinists (most Marxist political parties), institutionalists, and so on and so forth. From Marx’s perspective they are all wrong. It is the dialectical motion across the moments that really counts, even as there is uneven development in that motion.
When capitalism itself undergoes one of its phases of renewal, it does so precisely by co-evolving all moments, obviously not without tensions, struggles, fights and contradictions. Consider how these seven moments were configured around 1970 before the neoliberal surge and consider how they look now; all have changed in relation to each other and thereby changed the workings of capitalism as a whole.
This theory tells us that an anti-capitalist political movement can start anywhere (in labor processes, around mental conceptions, in the relation to nature, in class or other social relations, in the design of revolutionary technologies and organizational forms, out of daily life or through attempts to reform institutional and administrative structures including the reconfiguration of state powers). The trick is to keep the political movement moving from one moment to another in mutually reinforcing ways. This was how capitalism arose out of feudalism and this is how a radically different alternative can arise out of capitalism. Previous attempts to create a communist or socialist alternative fatally failed to keep the dialectic between the different moments in motion and failed to embrace the unpredictable and uncertain paths in the dialectical movement between them.
The problem for the anti-capitalist left is to build organizational forms and to unleash a co-revolutionary dynamic that can replace the present system of compounding accumulation of capital with some other forms of social coordination, exchange and control that can deliver an adequate style and standard of living for the 6.8 billion people living on planet earth. This is no easy task and I do not pretend to have any immediate answers (though I do have some ideas) as to how this might be done. But I do think it imperative that the organizational forms and political strategies match the diagnoses and descriptions of how contemporary capitalism is actually working. Unfortunately, the fierce attachment of many movements to what can best be termed a “fetishism of organizational form” gets in the way of any broad revolutionary movement that can address this problem. Anarchists, autonomists, environmentalists, solidarity economy groups, traditional left revolutionary parties, reformist NGO’s and social democrats, trade unions, institutionalists, social movements of many different stripes, all have their favored and exclusionary rules of organization often derived from abstract principles and sometime exclusionary views as to who might be the principle agent sparking social revolution. There is some serious barrier to the creation of some overarching umbrella organization on the left that can internalize difference but take on the global problems that confront use. Some groups, for example, abjure any form of organization that smacks of hierarchy. But Elinor Ostrom’s study of common property practices shows that the only form of democratic management that works when populations of more than a few hundred people are involved, is a nested hierarchy of decision making. Groups that rule out all forms of hierarchy thereby give up on any prospect whatsoever for democratic response not only to the problem of the global commons but also to the problem of continous capital accumulation. The strong connection between diagnosis and political action cannot be ignored. This is a good moment, therefore, for all movements to take a step back and examine how their preferred methods and organizational forms relate to the revolutionary tasks posed in the present conjuncture of capitalist development."
Conclusion
At 2-1/2 hours long you would imagine that a documentary like this would be a hard slog, but this is not the case withZeitgeist: Moving Forward, in fact for most of the duration it's hard to take your eyes off it. The film is a great introduction to a lot of issues that are overdue the widest possible audience and recognition. Hopefully the early part of the film that focusses on human behaviour will drive the final nails into coffin of biological determinism, and the idea that human nature is a fundamental barrier to a fairer world will be banished to the dustbin of history forever.
It is apparent from their website that the ZM are aware and considering most of the"7 moments of social change" unfortunately though, due to their current“fetishism of organizational form” they offer only a partial solution for the transition to a resource based economy. To offer a real alternative, they need to move beyond the limitations of their reductionist theoretical framework and tactics and towards a dialectical approach, be aware of, and understand the partial role they play within the social body politic as a whole, and not alienate other progressive organisations with the same goals to help create the aforementioned new democratic "co-revolutionary movement".
Some important notes about the Zeitgeist Movements theoretical and tactical orientation.
The ZMs relationship to the films - The movement's website states that officially a distinction is made between the work of the movement and the issues raised in Peter Joseph's films in that the movement is not necessarily in advocacy of any issues raised in the films and exists on its own. (www.thezeitgeistmovement.com)
Anti-semitism - The ZM has on more than one occasion been accused of anti-semitism and of analytic parallels with the book 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.' This is a book that was first published around the turn of the last century in Russia. It is a fraudulent and fictional document made to read as if written by Jews intent on ruling the world. It suggests that the Jewish people plan on world domination through a process of controlling governments, controlling the media, controlling banks, and swindling the populace at large. The claim is that Jews wish to enslave the world by creating a “one world government.” The text is deeply anti-Semitic, and has been shown numerous times to be a forgery, but has been used consistently throughout the 20th and 21st centuries to justify atrocities committed against Jews. Furthermore it remains popular in parts of the world, and amongst certain right-wing and fascist organisations. (www.thethirdestate.net)
Written by Marked Red
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