For the most part, elections are won by those who are willing to govern. This is not to say that all election losers are unwilling to govern. After all, the leading contenders in most elections yearn to govern, but since only one contender can win, there are always losers who want to govern.

Since activists work toward changing “what is the case”—what philosophers like to call reality—from an activist perspective one might say that everyone who wants to govern is a loser. Governing has to do with maintaining what is the case, with the goal of making it better, but only on its own terms and in the near future. Thus, almost by definition, those who aim to change what is the case are unwilling to govern.

Those who are unwilling to govern in this sense cannot win elections. This is not only because the losers alone are supported by elites—that is, by those who benefit most from the structures of what is the case. It is also because although a significant proportion of the population may desire better lives, in general they do so in terms of what is the case.

In the seventeenth century, at the outset of his great epistemological auto-critique, Descartes wrote: “Several years have now passed since I first realized how numerous were the false opinions that in my youth I had taken to be true, and thus how doubtful were all those that I had subsequently built upon them.” Think for a moment about the uncountable number of beliefs, let alone attitudes, habits, and customs, each of us must acquire before we become subjects sufficiently able to inquire about the appropriateness of any belief at all. Before becoming such a subject a human being must learn to see, learn to hear, learn to move, learn to understand, learn to speak, learn what is acceptable and unacceptable behaviour in various contexts, and many other things through many successive stages. Certainly early learning involves pre-programmed developmental transformations, but such transformations must occur both within and through a specific cultural milieu. For example, we do not learn to speak; we learn to speak early 21st century north Toronto English. Since we cannot learn to speak without learning to speak a particular language, since we cannot choose the particular language by means of which we learn to speak, and since we must learn to speak before we become subjects capable of informed criticism, rather than say we acquire a language we should say a language acquires us. Furthermore, this generalizes with respect to virtually all the basic beliefs, attitudes, and customs that we learn—for example, civil manners, basic attitudes of legitimacy, and things about which to feel embarrassment or pride. If we remained un-acquired by such “habits for action,” to borrow a term from the philosophical tradition of American pragmatism, we would not become subjects able to act well in our world.

Because subjects have always already been subjected to what is the case—a subjection that necessarily occurs before the development of the capacity for criticism—although majorities of subjects may yearn for better lives, in general they do so in terms of what is the case. Instead of turning to activism, they elect one loser or another.

Both processes of subjection and processes of propaganda produce aspects of subjectivity that express themselves in particular, largely predictable habits for action. However, subjection is a condition of subjectivity as such, whereas propaganda is not. The important difference is that subjection acquires individuals in order to produce subjects, whereas propaganda acquires subjects in order to produce specific aspects of subjectivity.

In order to be effective, propaganda must be both well produced and properly disseminated, which requires resources. Thus effective propaganda arises from those who have sufficient access to resources, from those who are most intimate with what is the case, from elites. Additionally, because effective propaganda must target a specific demographic, it requires messaging sufficiently in harmony with the relevant subjection of subjects, the relevant aspects of what is the case. So in the end, effective propaganda does not stray from what is the case, and its critique is always on the way to the critique of subjection itself.

In what is the case “we live and move and have our being,” to borrow and perhaps turn on its head one of G.W.F. Hegel’s favourite passages from the Acts of the Apostles. It would seem to be very difficult indeed to radicalize what Louis Althusser called “good subjects,” or what Michel Foucault called “docile and useful” subjects—subjects whose subjection by and to what is the case has been virtually total—but since activists are not interested in becoming losers, that is what is to be done. Activism must pit subjects against their subjection, against their very being and milieu.

There is enough Marxism in Althusser and even enough Marxism and Althusser in Foucault for those no longer interested in the internecine battles of the left and post-left to draw from all three at once. First from Marxism. During the 2008-09 global economic crisis our anxieties have made us more and more conscious of what we have always known on both the left and the right. Much of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations reads like a long and detailed preface to Marx and Engels’ Manifesto of the Communist Party, but we frequently forget the deep agreement between these two texts, that production is fundamental and capitalism has a history. Despite disagreement amongst pundits and critics on how to proceed out of and beyond economic crises, crises often force commentators on all sides to refocus on the economic base of society. Of course, not quite furtively, most pundits relish the opportunity to politely and knowingly dismiss ambitious explanations that ground themselves explicitly in the economic base. We watch our house prices and mortgage rates, monitor the pension investments of our professional associations, and remain reticent about voting for social democratic parties because they cannot be trusted with the economy, and even as we pay attention to the forecasts about oil reserves, manufacturing losses, housing starts, and credit default swaps, we steadfastly refuse to explain major issues in terms of the economic base. Many years ago Paul Nizan was perhaps correct to call pundits—at least the academic variety—“watchdogs,” intellectual apologists for what is the case. But as wonderful as it is, Nizan’s economic and class analysis collapses in on itself because in its reception it becomes nothing but polemic, a virtual violence that loses sight of practice. The Watchdogs is a book that itself seems to bark and condemn threateningly. At best, its audience—academic or otherwise—is momentarily disorientated, but in no time at all the condemnation is returned with effect from the evident security of what is the case, and the polemicist is incited to escalation on the distant horizon of which is the disaster that is violence.

It will often be the case that the tools of Marxism will help us to understand and explain, but anyone who offers to teach Marxism knows that ideology, power, and violence—the apparatuses of subjection—have made Marxism a least elected elective. In general, students are subjects and subjects would rather govern than change what is the case, which is rational. If it remains difficult to pit subjects against their subjection by means of analyses beginning from the economic base even though the economic base is so often relevant, we must nevertheless avoid the dead-end of polemic and escalation.

Structuralism and post-structuralism in general, and Foucault and Althusser in particular, help us understand that subjection is not merely a limitation that negatively conditions a pre-existing subject. Rather it positively produces subjects as such. Thus the subjection that makes subjects dismiss the tools of Marxism is itself not a limitation, but rather the very source of their identity. To hold subjects accountable for the fundamental ignorance that comes with subjection would be both to miss the mark and to alienate subjects. Generally decent people who have been subjected to structurally limited habits for action are neither deeply accountable for those habits, nor likely to respond well to polemic. Although ideology, power, and violence lie at the heart of subjection, the very fact of subjection obligates the activist to refrain from aggressive polemics, and for both of the standard reasons: it is ineffective, and it fails to respect the dignity of the individual.

The most interesting critical innovation in recent years has been the explosion of the realm of activist propaganda critique, inspired in many ways by figures like Noam Chomsky. Critical alternative news and information providers—the leading example of which is perhaps Democracy Now!—have emerged and flourished. A significant and growing assemblage of activists and activist sympathisers produces and consumes this alternative press—an incredible dimension of articulate analysis that both critically rejects the mainstream media and stands on its own. The fact that this sophisticated dimension continues to expand is an indication that propaganda critique does not miss the mark. Unlike electoral politics, it engages growing and significant portions of the population hungry for analysis that exceeds the aestheticization of politics in the mainstream, which after all barely exceeds largely friendly colour commentary on what the losers are doing. And unlike polemics, it does not bark, but rather bites with engaged critical analysis. Propaganda critique, the alternative press it has generated, and the politicisation of the aesthetization of the mainstream are significant sites of real struggle. Indeed, since propaganda must proceed from and to what is the case, activities that perform its critique only complete themselves by the pitting of subjects against subjection, the activist’s primary project. Thus the critical alternative press currently leads the struggle for what ought to be the case.

John Duncan is director of the Ethics, Society and Law program at Trinity College, University of Toronto, and co-founder of their "Humanities for Humanity" course.