180

The situation alters, and this is where so many pro-
revolutionaries fail to apply their critiques when caught up in social
eruptions, when an ideology sets itself up as an opposition to
existing conditions and thereby attracts the investment of
individuals' disaffection to itself. All the time this radical ideology is
negating details, corruption, American, corporations, patriarchy,
racism, it has no critique of the conditions of society and thus,
through this mistake, ends affirming by omission what is really
wrong with the world. What is forgotten by the groups of partial
causes is that the world is prepared to negotiate on partial terms.
In this way, pro-democracy movements, trade unions, educational
and health initiatives, which at first take a critical perspective on
the organization of society end in becoming functions of it. And
this is where Marxists terms such as containment and recuperation
come in. When circumstances insists that they must contemplate
the collapse of apparently revolutionary social movements Marxists
come up with a variation on the theoretical model of corruption:
they say, the movements in question were once revolutionary but
certain factors became dominant over their initial determinant and
altered their original nature - this is how the real (movement)
recognized and affirmed by theory becomes decayed, ideological
and thus not real.

Radicalism fails where it becomes a function of a force bigger than
it can conceive and it becomes a function of a larger force because
of its theoretical limitation, radicalism rails because it narrows the
margins of the issues it wants to address, it wants to talk about
health, or war, or equal pay, but these issues do not stand
independently of each other or of the world that contains them. As
activists seek to promote the interest of their cause they are at the
same time participating in and, by implication, validating processes
and forces that they have not consciously addressed; they become
part of the great debate, or one interest that must be balanced with
the interests of all others: part of the democratic process that must
be set before the attention of the electorate. The Marxist concepts
of incorporation and recuperation mean very simply that the
significance of the values you espouse are outweighed by the
values contained, unconsciously but structurally, in you limited
objectives. You say, 'defend the health service' but as health
service is a function of the state and was produced by a number of
conditioning historical forces and events, you are by implication
arguing for the continued existence of the state arrested at a