Theory in Action: Reclaiming the Political Thought of Christopher Caudwell

Abstract

Much of Marxism's power comes the dialectical search for the aspects of the present that point towards the possibilities of the future: this mode of inquiry (and the forms of praxis it produces), despite its revolutionary aims, requires ongoing attention to the past. Marx's scientific socialism, in other words, is a project made possible and meaningful by the unfolding of history. Given Marxism's dialectical grounding in history, however, I find the tendency of some Marxists to omit many of their radical forebears their political genealogy striking. In the ranks of these forgotten radicals are numerous figures that continue to offer important insights and challenges up to the present, and it is to my mind authentically Marxist work to recover the critical content of these past struggles. The subject of this particular effort is Christopher St. John Sprigg (who went by the pseudonym Christopher Caudwell), a Marxist particularly notable for both his fruitful understanding of praxis and his near invisibility in contemporary Marxist discourse. Reclaiming Caudwell not only does justice to an extraordinary comrade, but also reanimates valuable currents in contemporary Marxism.Caudwell, a self-taught thinker and poet who dropped out of school in his early teens, became active in the Poplar branch of the Communist Party in 1935. During the subsequent two years, he composed all of his major theoretical works - Illusion and Reality, Studies in a Dying Culture, Further Studies, The Crisis of Physics and Romance and Realism. As E.P. Thompson noted, the great haste in which this onslaught was produced deleteriously impacted the quality and depth of Caudwell's written works. Although Caudwell can be faulted for his scholarly methods, however, the passionate commitment to Marxist praxis that motivated this flurry of theorizing shines through in flashes of brilliance that still bear fruit. Caudwell's range - spanning cultural studies to the natural sciences - further indicates that he understood the need to apply what Marx famously termed the ruthless criticism of all that exists to expose and contest the full logic of domination operative in modernity.1 Caudwell's lived commitment to the radical contestation of systematic oppression, indeed, is beyond question. Caudwell joined the British battalion of the International Brigade and died near the Jarama River, courageously covering his unit's retreat his machine gun nest, at the age of twenty-nine.2The tandem of Caudwell's drive to theorize and live effective resistance, even where the consequences of principled action were potentially fatal, speaks to the best and most heroic aspects of Marxist praxis. Caudwell's and works example the refusal to be subsumed by an unjust world and the resulting commitment to living the ideals of an emancipated future disruptively in the present. Like Adorno, indeed, Caudwell fully rejected the wrong life which cannot be lived rightly, as he understood that, There is nothing innocuous left...The only responsible course is to deny oneself the ideological misuse of one's existence.3 Caudwell, therefore, is a corrective to the reified cynicism and cultivated apathy that infects many contemporary attitudes about politics, particularly radical politics, because he creates a consistent sense of nonidentity - a discord with the system that allows him to break it constructively.4 In this paper, I argue that Caudwell's theory - particularly his vivid conception of freedom - retains a critical edge that recommends it to Marxists today and demands further study. I also contest that Caudwell's example is valuable as a model of uncompromising lived praxis, which considers all things as Adorno insisted we must: from the standpoint of redemption.51 conclude with a reflection on what conditions the invisibility of certain Marxists within the radical imaginary, and a plea for a fuller investigation of our radical lineages. …