The first issue of Geese Magazine was released one year ago today, and in that time we have made much more of a splash than many of us on the editorial team expected. However, in that year, there has arisen a bit of confusion as to what kind of publication Geese is. This is unsurprising considering the milieu we find ourselves in, who are seemingly incapable of adjusting the content of their speech in accordance to the room they are in—we have “organizers” yelling about the legacy of Joseph Stalin at eviction defenses, leaders telling rooms full of socialists why they should be socialists, and insular ‘educationals’ about this-or-that historical event that happened 100 years ago and 5000 miles away. More comical than this, we have entire organizations putting their time and effort into printing newspapers (yes, physical newspapers), producing stale, rote denunciations of “imperialism” and “capitalism” ad infinitum. I once commented how these organizations seem to be stuck perpetually 100 years in the past printing physical newspapers. A member replied, essentially calling me a hypocrite for running a publication myself, never stepping back and thinking for a moment that there may be such things as different types of publications, geared toward different audiences, with different goals, etc. Nobody would suggest that Vogue has the same social function as the New York Times, nor the New York Times as Monthly Review; so how does one, without a hint of irony, flatten these distinctions of social function into the common characteristic of “they both consist of text?” We may never know. Regardless, this interaction brought to my attention that a short article discussing Geese Magazine’s raison d'être would be fruitful.
First of all, Geese is not a newspaper, it is not for ‘mass’ consumption, nor is it somewhere one goes to ‘stay informed.’ In short, Geese is a magazine for socialist and communist intellectuals—it is not a ‘popular’ publication. We don’t really expect everyone to understand what we are saying, but this is only because we have chosen a particular audience—Geese is talking specifically to the communist subculture. But why do we choose to only speak to this strata, especially considering that a large component of our politics is precisely to break from this subculture and speak to ‘the people’ at large? It is because it will be in reaction to this subculture—out of this subculture—that the public intellectuals of the American communist movement will emerge; that is, the people who will make communism a concrete political movement (as opposed to a doctrine to be applied), who will concretize it. This is the point of the magazine: to produce an intellectual culture that sees its task not as rote and uncreative ‘application,’ but as the much more daunting task of concretization,1 and that will hopefully produce intellectuals up to the task.
The problem of concretization leads directly to the problem of intellectuals—the problem of concretization necessitates the creation of an intellectual grouping able to undertake the task. Concretization cannot be carried out on a ‘spontaneous’ basis, especially for subaltern classes and strata (whose intellectuals are immediately absorbed, in the United States, by the petty-bourgeois), it can only be done by intellectuals conscious of their role, and who are immersed in the life of the people their politics seek to ‘capture’ (“the educator must, too, be educated”). This is what Geese sets out to be: not a subcultural echo chamber like Cosmonaut or similar publications, in which the highest virtue is showing off one’s subcultural historical knowledge and calling (once again!) for the “organization of the working class,” but a forum in which intellectuals, conscious of their fundamental political task, work to concretize communism into a living extension of American history.
Most socialist and communist publications seem to be unsure about what they really are, what their ‘purpose’ is. They vacillate between being a journal for communists—discussing matters of political strategy and theory—and acting almost like a newspaper or propaganda outlet for the yet-to-be-informed ‘masses.’ If these publications were a bit more conscious of their task and purpose, I believe they, and we, would be a lot more successful in creating this intellectual culture we all wish to see emerge. The undecidedness of these publications indicates a general neglect of the problem of intellectuals among socialists and communists. The function of intellectuals is to articulate the worldviews of social groups on ethico-political grounds, to concretize principles into definite political forces. The general neglect of this fact reflects the American tendency to see politics as a set of techniques, when, if applied correctly, can be utilized by anyone in need of them; in no need of ethico-political content (that is, something existentially worthwhile to a definite historical group). This is activism. It rejects the need for intellectuals and their fundamental task, concretization. Activists apply Marxism without even the inkling that it must first become concrete. Marxist theory must become the organic answer to American political questions, since, for activists, communist politics is simply a set of techniques and generic denunciations of all capitalist evils that need no adjustment to national conditions.2
Activism sees its task as intensifying its technique and multiplying it—it structurally ‘rejects’ concretization because non-economistic3 modes of thought undermine the prerogatives of activist organizations and their members, hence why any critique of economism is met with such violence by the ‘organized left.’ Concretization undermines the empty unity that undergirds the activity of activist organizations (there is a reason that DSA has Maoists and Social-Democrats canvassing side-by-side for anyone who considers themselves vaguely socialist)4 and exposes the organization to the possibility of making mistakes—the basic risk involved with taking a concrete position. It is almost dangerous to the activist organization for its members to ask, “Are we doing the right thing?” But they never do that anyway, their incessant winning keeps them from doing so!
When the problem of concretization (and consequently, the problem of intellectuals) is grasped and taken up by American socialism, it will be the signal that the reign of economism is coming to an end, that the era of activism as the guidepost of left-wing political activity is coming to a close. But this can only occur when the problem of intellectuals is grasped in all its gravity. In our view, Geese Magazine is simply an objectified form of this recognition—the entire project is dedicated to tackling this problem; that is, clearing a road through the jungle of incessant leftist nonsense.
If we juxtapose the logic of economism-activism, on the one hand, with Geese’s recognition of the problem of intellectuals on the other, we will find some striking differences, despite the cries of the activists who “have read Gramsci.” The logic of economism-activism sees politics as reducible to technique and method, to statistics and interests, to rationality. Going down the other path will lead one to quickly realize that there is nothing really rational at all about politics. Homogeneous ideals do not enter diverse consciousnesses by homogeneous means—the process of disseminating new ideas is necessarily a variable one in which the ideas must be repeated in a myriad of ways and starting from different angles. It is a liberal-enlightenment error to assume that rational clarity wins the day. Any effort to create a new strata of intellectuals must understand this. As Gramsci writes:
The ability of the professional intellectual skillfully to combine induction and deduction, to generalize, to infer, to transport from one sphere to another a criterion of discrimination, adapting it to new conditions, etc. is a “specialty,” it is not endowed by “common sense.” Therefore, the premise of an “organic diffusion from a homogeneous center of a homogeneous way of thinking and acting” is not sufficient. The same ray of light passes through different prisms and yields different refractions of light: in order to have the same refraction, one must make a whole series of adjustments to the individual prisms. Patient and systematic “repetition” is the fundamental methodological principle.5
We all know this variable repetition well: the dominant parties have us surrounded by their talking heads, their intellectuals. The Republicans had Rush Limbaugh—now they have Alex Jones, the Paul brothers, Andrew Tate, and a myriad of other influencers all talking from different angles, in conscious service of a particular concrete political movement. There may be contradictions between these intellectuals, but they are secondary—those influenced by these intellectuals, just by holding a certain opinion, are interpellated into the arms of a political party, regardless of whether the listener “is political” or not. Constructing worldview that produces these ‘autonomous militants’ must to be the aim of our intellectuals: a concretized politics does not rely on everyone having the same understanding or ‘purity of ideology’ (just think of the sheer diversity of opinion and character that falls into the Democratic Party’s orbit!), what it needs is a central expression that can account for varying levels of political understanding and engagement. Frank Luntz, a consultant for the GOP known for his ability to develop talking points for the party, put the challenge of the politician as such:
The challenge in working in politics, particularly if you're working for a political party, is that everyone's a messenger.
Not recognizing this leads to sectarian irrelevance—politics is not about learning doctrines, it is about putting into motion particular passions in the service of ‘doctrines.’ People do not become Democrats because they were sat down and taught what Rousseau and Voltaire wrote, nor are people Republicans because they are familiar with the work of Frank Meyer. Their elementary passions are put into motion and mobilized because the parties that represent them actively articulate their constituents' activity in the ‘realm’ of politics—their visions are concrete. On the other hand, the present activity of America’s communists betrays an entirely different relation to the people we seek to lead: communists, without even the need to step outside, pretend to know already what the passions of the people are, and hence take up a paternalistic relation of ‘educator.’ They teach the single mom raising three kids by herself that her life is hard, they teach their jaded 50-year-old co-worker that they're exploited, they teach their friends about some irrelevant CIA intervention 60 years ago.6 This relation to mass activity is symptomatic of abstract ideology, which only exists outside the particular historical situation we are in. Because real life won't teach people these things, it takes an off-putting subcultural activist to teach them, and for the same reason, it asks potential adherents to ‘convert’ and become one of those activists themselves. It leads to a voluntaristic conception of politics in which the activists ‘make’ the movement, rather than ‘material history,’ i.e., real class struggles.
You have experienced the effects of abstract, yet-to-be-concretized, politics. Take the last time you spoke to someone (who is not a ‘Marxist,’ or necessarily ‘political’) about the problems of capitalist society, all you can really muster as a response as to what to do is to tell them to read something—“read Marx” or something of the like. You basically are 1) asking them to ‘convert,’ and 2) asking them to change their basic activities, to change what they do on a day-to-day basis—most people don’t read! Why should people not feel hopeless about the prospects of social change if what is required of everyone is to change their day-to-day activities?
Far from asking everyone to “read Marx,” Geese Magazine seeks to make communism something that anyone can immediately identify with (more precisely: be identified as) simply by taking a position seemingly unrelated to any ‘self-conscious’ talk of ideology. When someone declares that they support universal healthcare or trans rights, they are immediately classed—interpellated—as a Democrat, simply because the Democrats are the concrete vessel through which these desires are expressed in human political practice; regardless of how ineffective and/or unwilling the actual party organization is in attaining these goals. As of now, communism is incapable of interpellating anything—it does not give identity to any political yearning. Unless communism in America develops the ability to interpellate spontaneous, eclectic, and unfocused political demands of millions of people, communism will remain a subculture staffed exclusively by people who are “into politics,” never venturing beyond its ‘scene’ and into the realm of mass activity.
Out of the 77 million people who voted for Trump in 2024, how many do you think are “into politics” the way the average communist is? Obviously, not all that many—and this is the point, that political blocs, mass politics, are not made up only of people who are “into politics.” They are made of up of an inconceivable number of eclectic perspectives and wills, each at varying levels of political understanding and engagement, that are interpellated into a political camp by there existing a political movement able to interpellate them—a concrete political movement; one that does not demand ‘membership’ or ideological ‘adherence’ of its ‘members’ (like the communist subculture), but only requires its ‘members’ to ‘be themselves.’
This is where the intellectuals of the nascent communist movement come in—our task is to be the interpellating force that brings these people-as-they-are into the fold of revolutionary politics. The intellectuals of the right have been immensely successful in this in recent years, they take the spontaneous sentiments of a group of people and make them conscious and systematic. Andrew Tate does not demand that his viewers vote for the Republican Party, but nonetheless they vote for the Republican Party. He interpellates otherwise generally apolitical young men into the orbit of a political camp—we must do the same for opposite ends. Here is the purpose of Geese: to develop intellectuals who are 1) conscious of the task and 2) up to the task—to cure the American communist movement of its fixation with activism and its conception of politics as simple technique, to elevate American communism from a subculture of activist sects to an ethico-political center that gives conscious political expression to the spontaneous sentiments of hundreds of millions of people. This transformation from subculture to culture has a name: concretization.
See further ‘Good for the Gander’ by P.K. Gandakin and my recent article ‘The Marginality of American Communism’ for a more fleshed out discussion of what “concretization” means.
Marxists will, a lot of the time, acknowledge this, but take American capitalism as the generic rational model of capitalist development and revert to abstract Marxism thinking it is attuned to national realities.
‘Economism’ is much broader than the narrow definition given to it by most Marxists, it denotes the parts of “Marxism” that are actually just inherited from liberalism. It is ubiquitous in American thought. Watch any group of pundits talk on MSNBC or listen to any New York Times podcast and you will see what I am talking about. See further my recent “Trump and the Media: A Review” for a deeper exploration of economism in liberal journalism. One could also read the first chapter of Robert Taber’s War of the Flea in which he criticizes American counter-insurgency specialists for reducing guerrilla warfare to a set of techniques and believing that insurgencies are the products of “outsiders” and “conspirators” who are “alien” to the communities they operate in. Taber is, in fact, criticizing an economistic tendency.
This is fine, it just never seeks to go beyond that, the whole point should be to rupture with this arrangement eventually!
Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, p.128 Volume I
The CIA has already admitted to most of these! Not to mention that the revelations of CIA misadventures are already ‘cashed in’ in American politics. They contributed to the general mistrust of ‘big government’ that got Ronald Reagan elected.
Enjoy the article? Support us on Patreon!