4) The insurrectionary position has a social problem. It cannot work towards truly revolutionary theory or practice because it takes as its nourishment the entirely ungrounded hope that an analysis of hopelessness will be recognized as valid and adopted by all. This can only be accomplished, per impossible, if all witness to insurrectionary negations recognize the revelatory force of their practical activity. The deed’s propaganda must be clear, the message must reach all, and they must be persuaded by it. They are thus:
5) Vanguardists without organizational strategy or social following. Since there is nothing worldly to preserve or develop, responses to total alienation take metaphorical, symbolic, and spectacular form. Its practitioners operate in the precise position of a symbolic vanguard in that “examples” stem from a privileged position of consciousness removed from the thoughts and struggles of those lacking such advanced understanding. This is not a criticism of all possible vanguardism, although more refined versions are subject to other critiques. It is a criticism of those who are exclusively concerned with acting as if they were something that social conditions are far from fostering.