Everything which touches on politics may be fatal to philosophy. Louis Althusser At or rather near its heart, my essay is concerned with the question "what is to be done?" I pursue it because, as Nancy says, it is "on everyone's lips (including the philosopher):' This is not to say professional publications of ten take up the question, but at conferences and talks, in legislatures, in discussions with students and their parents, the question arises, repeatedly. What good is a philosophy major? Why fund the humanities? Does deconstruction have a politics? One can also witness the question's centrality from another direction. Given what someone has done, what are we to say about what was thought, as if in the doing, some truth arises, a position evident in many responses to Heidegger's Nazism. In my experience, both within and outside the confines of academia, the question "what is to be done?" is either an explicit concern or right around the corner. As it surrounds us, it seems crucial that we explore this question (a "we" convened and addressed-but neither constituted nor rigorously delimited by this essay), for in many cases, whatever is said will be considered in its light. But then the question also seems inescapable. Aren't we always doing? Aren't we riding planes, driving cars, buying produce, funding conferences, publishing papers, teaching? And might we not be doing otherwise, that is, aren't there choices to be made? If so, I don't see how one could avoid asking "what is to be done?" A question on everyone's lips, perhaps even an inevitable question, still merits caution. I want to consider, therefore, what is at question when we ask "what is to be done?" I find various determinations at play in this interrogation. First, a goal or end is required. One raises such a question with an end in mind or in an effort to clarify what ends might be sought. Second, one must have some sense for one's arena of agencies, that is, one must know what forces flesh out the site wherein one's end will be realized or frustrated.1 One might seek human freedom in an arena of class warfare, for example, and struggle with the emergence of state capitalism. Or, one might seek the flourishing of all species, and thus contend with the environmental impact of human "development" as well as threats posed by natural disasters. Note that ends must reflect the kind of creatures able and supposed to realize them. If such were not the case, "realization" would not even be an issue. Moreover, but without necessity, ends often influence the ways in which arenas of agencies are construed. For example, Charles Taylor, in his "The Politics of Recognition," rejects what he term "subjectivist, half baked neo-Nietzschean theories" which lead to the claim that "all judgments of worth are based on standards that are ultimately imposed by and further entrench structures of power."2 Why? Not because they fail to demonstrate that subjectivity is such that' no other kinds of judgments are possible (in fact, Taylor refers to no "theory" in particular), but because "this is hardly a satisfactory solution" for a politics predicated upon "recognition" and "respect" (PR, 70). In other words, Taylor is unwilling to countenance accounts ofthe arena of agencies which might impede the pursuit of the ends he deems worthwhile. Its facile conviction aside, Taylor's insistence supports the notion that a sense for one's ends and for the arena of agencies wherein such ends are sought are, in varying ways, interdependent within the context of the question "what is to be done?" Alongside ends sought within an arena of agencies, a concrete sense for what forces populate that arena is required. In the years leading up to the Russian Revolution, for example, Lenin constantly worried about opportunism, the splintering of the proletariat into antagonistic sub-classes, a result of the tendency of relatively affluent workers to forgo revolutionary struggle in exchange for piecemeal reforms favorable to their own niche of proletarian life. …