This theorization seeks a move from an obsession with transition in much of Marxism and progressivism and developmental thinking to transformation. Would that mean a conceptual transition from what is to what it is to be? In other words, would it be a conceptual transition from mere description to the ought,to the ethic of transition? Marxism is not mere description of the delusional veil called transition of surfaces; Marxism is also transformative praxis in just and desirable directions.Hence one needs to engage with what is discursively buried, hidden, in the transparent script of transition. The loss of the elements of the crypt in the language of transition and the non-mourning for such loss—as if the elements are stashed away in a secret vault, only to be forgotten—is a political condition that needs to be undone.What is at stake (in politics) is what takes place secretly (i.e., that which deludes) or takes a secret place (i.e., that which is foreclosed), in order to keep the crypt safe (Derrida 1986, xv).
The imagination of the political has hitherto been colonized by the concept of “transition.” In classical Marxism, it is not called transition, however. It is called “historical materialism.” Much of the Marxian imagination has been unnecessarily colonized by the concept, language and framework of transition qua historical materialism. Historical materialism is a sophisticated theory of transition, but it is a ridiculously naive and banal theory of transformation.
For example, Soviet society did transit from private capitalism to state capitalism (Resnick and Wolff 2002), but it hardly underwent Marxian transformation; in terms of transformation in the logic-language-ethos of surplus exploitation as also new subject-formation. In other words, there were changes in foregrounded signifiers, but there was no fundamental change in the crypted signifiers. The question of transition hence must turn into a movement where the crypt itself becomes the object of political inquiry, and not where political change is circumscribed, wittingly or unwittingly, by the preservation of the crypt. This is a subtle but profound difference that this theorization of transition unpacks.
Thus, even “radical” politics—Marxian and non-Marxian—may ultimately never get to the point of reorienting themselves to the objective of transformation, notwithstanding previous and ongoing attempts to the contrary. In other words, while the crypt even if secret is very much alive/real, politics addressing it is absent or muted. On the other hand, Marx’s idea of political is envisioned in terms of transformation of the crypt. Transformation could then perhaps be the logic-language-ethos of a post-transition imagination of transition; a transition imagination not reduced to historical materialism or liberal gradualism.
The conjecture is the following: let us not be slaves of transition.
Let us be sculptors of transformation.
Let us not just look for alternative transitions.
Let us look for alternatives to transition.