I’ve been reading Neoreaction a Basilisk and, through the books criticisms, getting more acquainted with the current theories right wing “intellectuals” are propagating. That’s led me to consider reading through at least some of Nick Land’s work, maybe to better grasp what theory Silicon Valley elites are huffing at the moment.
I’ve done this once; before I ever became more ideologically aware, I read through Atlas Shrugged not knowing what it was and after finishing, even then, walked away pissed off I spent any time on it. However, it was useful for catching right wing references and understanding the basis for libertarianism later. It’s also been interesting, though not quite useful, to trace how right wing thought has evolved and what the resulting “praxis” has looked like; the Koch brothers using the tea party as an entryist/infiltration strategy for promoting libertarianism in government, the resulting frustration of those efforts leading to Steve Banon and the promotion of Trump and the beginnings of more “authoritarian” or dictatorial strategies, and now to Moldbug and Land promoting straight up accelerationism and fascism amongst the ascendant tech CEOs after they all abandoned their former siding with liberals.
But is it useful to know any of that? I feel like all that’s happening as I come to understand how they think and how they implement their vision for the world, the more I understand how fucked we are (let’s assume we’re fucked, right?).
If we follow Marx’s example, then there are two kinds of right-wing theory. First is vulgar theory, then there is scientific theory. He didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about the vulgarians except to make fun of them.
On the other hand, Marx understood the material advantage held by bourgeois intellectuals over proletarians, namely that proletarians don’t get paid to produce theory. Therefore not only was it necessary to generate theory from below, from the proletarian standpoint; it was also necessary to critically examine the most advanced bourgeois theory, to dust off the class bias, and then to hand it to the working class for their revolutionary purposes. That is essentially what Marx dedicated his life to, as himself an intellectual of bourgeois background and education. He took bourgeois political economy and created a revolutionary theory out of it, a practical theory that could be used to change things for the working class.
Lenin makes this point in What Is To Be Done, stating: ” We have said that there could not have been Social-Democratic consciousness among the workers. It would have to be brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness …” Gramsci also wrote about the need for the working class to have its own intellectuals and the nature of these different intellectual strata.
In brief: if you are going to read theory, left or right wing, clarify your own purpose before wading in. If your purpose is entertainment, go ahead and read whatever drivel is written by The Economist or Tucker Carlson. If your purpose is to advance your ability to help the working class, then at most I would read relevant academics pursuing science honestly, even if those academics adopt imperial or class-biased attitudes.