Comradely Critique

Abstract

What does it mean to disagree with people with whom you usually agree? How should political actors concerned with emancipation approach internal disagreement? In short, how should we go about critiquing not our enemies or adversaries but those with whom we share emancipatory visions? I outline the notion of comradely critique as a solution to these questions. I go through a series of examples of how and when critique should differ depending on its addressee, drawing on Jodi Dean’s figure of the comrade. I develop a contrast with its neighbours the ally and the partisan, thus identifying key elements of comradely critique: good faith, equal humanity, equal standing, solidarity, collaboration, common purpose and dispelling fatalism. I then analyse Theodor W. Adorno and Herbert Marcuse’s private correspondence on the 1960s German student movement as an illustration of (imperfect) comradely critique. I conclude by identifying a crucial tension about publicness and privateness.

Eugene Rivers and the responsibility of intellectuals

“…Macdonald's position implies that intellectuals like Lerner fail to understand the structural and systematic characteristics of domination that prevent the formation of radical social alternatives (cited in Chomsky, 2017). What intellectuals ought to be doing is challenging power through a class‐based comradely critique, not abetting it (Slothuus, 2021a). However, this is difficult if dominant intellectuals are traditional, rather than organic, intellectuals, since they might know the subordinate position but neither feel nor understand it.…”