I think it is useful to set up as a framework for discussion four somewhat idealized positions with regard to the role of the state in an advanced industrial society. I want to call these positions: (1) classical liberal, (2) libertarian socialist, (3) state socialist, (4) state capitalist, and I want to consider each in turn. Also, I’d like to make clear my own point of view in advance, so that you can evaluate and judge what I am saying. I think that the libertarian socialist concepts, and by that I mean a range of thinking that extends from left-wing Marxism through to anarchism, I think that these are fundamentally correct and that they are the proper and natural extension of classical liberalism into the era of advanced industrial society.

In contrast, it seems to me that the ideology of state socialism, i.e. what has become of Bolshevism, and that of state capitalism, the modern welfare state, these of course are dominant in the industrial societies, but I believe that they are regressive and highly inadequate social theories, and a large number of our really fundamental problems stem from a kind of incompatibility and inappropriateness of these social forms to a modern industrial society.

Let me consider these four points of reference in sequence, beginning with the classical liberal point of view.

Classical Liberalism

Classical liberalism asserts as its major idea an opposition to all but the most restricted and minimal forms of state intervention in personal and social life. Well, this conclusion is quite familiar, however the reasoning that leads to it is less familiar and, I think, a good deal more important than the conclusion itself.

One of the earliest and most brilliant expositions of this position is in Wilhelm von Humboldt’s “Limits of State Action” which was written in 1792, though not published for 60 or 70 years after that. In his view the state tends to, I quote, “make man an instrument to serve its arbitrary ends, overlooking his individual purposes, and since man is in his essence a free, searching, self-perfecting being, it follows that the state is a profoundly anti-human institution.” I.e. its actions, its existence are ultimately incompatible with the full harmonious development of human potential in its richest diversity and, hence, incompatible with what Humboldt and in the following century Marx, Bakunin, Mill, and many others, what they see as the true end of man.

And, for the record, I think that this is an accurate description. The modern conservative tends to regard himself as the lineal descendant of the classical liberal in this sense, but I think that can be maintained only from an extremely superficial point of view, as one can see by studying more carefully the fundamental ideas of classical libertarian thought as expressed, in my opinion, in its most profound form by Humboldt.

I think the issues are of really quite considerable contemporary significance, and if you don’t mind what may appear to be a somewhat antiquarian excursion, I’d like to expand on them.

For Humboldt as for Rousseau, and before him the Cartesians, man’s central attribute is his freedom. Quote: “To inquire and to create, these are the centers around which all human pursuits more or less directly revolve.” “But,” he goes on to say, “all moral cultures spring solely and immediately from the inner life of the soul and can never be produced by external and artificial contrivances. The cultivation of the understanding, as of any of man’s other faculties, is generally achieved by his own activity, his own ingenuity, or his own methods of using the discoveries of others.”

From these assumptions quite obviously an educational theory follows, and he develops it but I won’t pursue it. But also far more follows. Humboldt goes on to develop at least the rudiments of a theory of exploitation and of alienated labor that suggests in significant ways, I think, the early Marx. Humboldt in fact continues these comments that I quoted about the cultivation of the understanding through spontaneous action in the following way.

He says, “Man never regards what he possesses as so much his own, as what he does, and the laborer who tends the garden is perhaps in a truer sense its owner than the listless voluptuary who enjoys its fruits. And since truly human action is that which flows from inner impulse, it seems as if all peasants and craftsmen might be elevated into artists, that is men who love their labor for its own sake, improve it by their own plastic genius and invented skill, and thereby cultivate their intellect, ennoble their character and exult and refine their pleasures, and so humanity would be ennobled by the very things which now, though beautiful in themselves, so often tend to be degraded. Freedom is undoubtedly the indispensable condition without which even the pursuits most congenial to individual human nature can never succeed in producing such salutary influences. Whatever does not spring from a man’s free choice, or is only the result of instruction and guidance, does not enter into his very being but remains alien to his true nature. He does not perform it with truly human energies, but merely with mechanical exactness. And if a man acts in a mechanical way, reacting to external demands or instruction, rather than in ways determined by his own interests and energies and power, we may admire what he does, but we despise what he is.”

For Humboldt then man “is born to inquire and create, and when a man or a child chooses to inquire or create out of his own free choice then he becomes in his own terms an artist rather than a tool of production or a well trained parrot.” This is the essence of his concept of human nature. And I think that it is very revealing and interesting to compare it with Marx, with the early Marx manuscripts, and in particular his account of, quote “the alienation of labor when work is external to the worker, not part of his nature, so that he does not fulfill himself in his work but denies himself and is physically exhausted and mentally debased. This alienated labor that casts some of the workers back into a barbarous kind of work and turns others into machines, thus depriving man of his species character, of free conscious activity and productive life.”

Recall also Marx’s well known and often quoted reference to a higher form of society in which labor has become not only a means of life but also the highest want in life. And recall also his repeated criticism of the specialized labor which, I quote again, “mutilates the worker into a fragment of a human being, degrades him to become a mere appurtenance of the machine, makes his work such a torment that its essential meaning is destroyed, estranges him from the intellectual potentialities of the labor process in very proportion to the extent to which science is incorporated into it as an independent power.”

Robert Tucker, for one, has rightly emphasized that Marx sees the revolutionary more as a frustrated producer than as a dissatisfied consumer. And this far more radical critique of capitalist relations of production flows directly, often in the same words, from the libertarian thought of the enlightenment. For this reason, I think, one must say that classical liberal ideas in their essence, though not in the way they developed, are profoundly anti-capitalist. The essence of these ideas must be destroyed for them to serve as an ideology of modern industrial capitalism.

Writing in the 1780’s and early 1790’s, Humboldt had no conception of the forms that industrial capitalism would take. Consequently, in this classic of classical liberalism he stresses the problem of limiting state power, and he is not overly concerned with the dangers of private power. The reason is that he believes in and speaks of the essential equality of condition of private citizens. Of course, he has no idea, writing in 1790, of the ways in which the notion of a private person would come to be reinterpreted in the era of corporate capitalism.

He did not foresee, I now quote the anarchist historian Rudolf Rocker, “that democracy with its model of equality of all citizens before the law and liberalism with its right of man over his own person both would be wrecked on the realities of capitalist economy. Humboldt did not foresee that in a predatory capitalist economy state intervention would be an absolute necessity to preserve human existence, to prevent the destruction of the physical environment. I speak optimistically of course.”

As Karl Polanyi, for one, has pointed out: “The self-adjusting market could not exist for any length of time without annihilating the human and natural substance of society. It would have physically destroyed man and transformed his surroundings into a wilderness.” I think that is correct. Humboldt also did not foresee the consequences of the commodity character of labor. The doctrine is, again in Polanyi’s words, “that it is not for the commodity to decide where it should be offered for sale, to what purpose it should be used, at what price it should be allowed to change hands, in what manner it should be consumed or destroyed.” But the commodity in this case is of course human life. And social protection was therefore a minimal necessity to constrain the irrational and destructive workings of the classical free market.
Nor did Humboldt understand in 1790 that capitalist economic relations perpetuated a form of bondage which long before that, in fact as early as 1767, Simon Linguet had declared to be even worse than slavery, writing “it is the impossibility of earning a living by any other means that compels our farm laborers to till the soil whose fruits they will not eat and our masons to construct buildings in which they will not live. It is want that drags them to those markets where they await masters who will do them the kindness of buying them. It is want that compels them to go down on their knees to the rich man in order to get from him permission to enrich him. What effective gain has the suppression of slavery brought him? He is free, you say, that is his misfortune. These men, it is said, have no master. They have one, and the most terrible, the most imperious of masters: that is need. It is this that reduces them to the most cruel dependence.”

And if there is something degrading to human nature in the idea of bondage – as every spokesman for the enlightenment would insist -, then it would follow that a new emancipation must be awaited, what Fourier referred to as the third and last emancipatory phase of history, the first having made serfs out of slaves, the second wage earners out of serfs, and the third, which will transform the proletariats to free men, by eliminating the commodity character of labor, ending wage slavery and bringing the commercial, industrial and financial institutions under democratic control.

These are all things that Humboldt in his classical liberal doctrine did not express and didn’t see, but I think that he might have accepted these conclusions. He does, for example, agree that state intervention in social life is legitimate “if freedom would destroy the very conditions without which not only freedom but even existence itself would be inconceivable”, which are precisely the circumstances that arise in an unconstrained capitalist economy. And he does, as in the remarks that I quoted, vigorously condemn the alienation of labor.

In any event, his criticism of bureaucracy and the autocratic state stands as a very eloquent forewarning of some of the most dismal aspects of modern history, and the important point is that the basis of his critique is applicable to a far broader range of coercive institutions than he imagined, in particular to the institutions of industrial capitalism.

Though he expresses a classical liberal doctrine, Humboldt is no primitive individualist, in the style of for example Rousseau. Rousseau extols the savage who lives within himself but Humboldt’s vision is entirely different. He sums up his remarks as follows: “The whole tenor of the ideas and arguments unfolded in this essay might fairly be reduced to this ‘that while they would break all fetters in human society, they would attempt to find as many new social bonds as possible, the isolated man is no more able to develop than the one who is fettered.’” And he, in fact, looks forward to a community of free association, without coercion by the state or other authoritarian institutions, in which free men can create and inquire and achieve the highest development of their powers.

In fact, far ahead of his time, he presents an anarchist vision that is appropriate perhaps to the next stage of industrial society. We can perhaps look forward to a day when these various strands will be brought together within the framework of libertarian socialism, a social form that barely exists today, though its elements can perhaps be perceived. For example, in the guarantee of individual rights that has achieved so far its fullest realization, though still tragically flawed, in the western democracies or in the Israeli kibbutzim or in the experiments of workers’ councils in Yugoslavia or in the effort to awaken popular consciousness and to create a new involvement in the social process which is a fundamental element in the third world revolutions coexisting uneasily with indefensible authoritarian practice.

Let me summarize the first point. The first concept of the state that I want to set up as a reference is classical liberal. Its doctrine is that the state functions should be drastically limited. But this familiar characterization is a very superficial one. More deeply, the classical liberal view develops from a certain concept of human nature, one that stresses the importance of diversity and free creation. Therefore, this view is in fundamental opposition to industrial capitalism with its wage slavery, its alienated labor and its hierarchic and authoritarian principles of social and economic organization.
At least in its ideal form, classical liberal thought is opposed as well to the concepts of possessive individualism that are intrinsic to capitalist ideology. It seeks to eliminate social fetters and to replace them by social bonds, not by competitive greed, not by predatory individualism, not of course by corporate empires, state or private. Classical libertarian thought seems to me, therefore, to lead directly to libertarian socialism or anarchism, if you like, when combined with an understanding of industrial capitalism.

Libertarian Socialism and Anarchism

The second point of reference that I want to discuss is the libertarian socialist vision of the state. A French writer, rather sympathetic to anarchism, once wrote that “anarchism has a broad back – like paper it endures anything.” And there are many shades of anarchism. I am concerned here only with one, namely the anarchism of Bakunin who wrote in his anarchist manifesto of 1865 that to be an anarchist one must first be a socialist. I am concerned with the anarchism of Adolf Fisher, one of the martyrs of the Hay Market affair in 1886, who said that every anarchist is a socialist but not every socialist is necessarily an anarchist. A consistent anarchist must oppose private ownership of the means of production. Such property is indeed, as Proudhon in his famous remark asserted, a form of theft. But a consistent anarchist will also oppose the organization of production by government.

Quoting “it means state socialism, the command of the state officials over production and the command of managers, scientists, shop officials in the shop. The goal of the working class is liberation from exploitation, and this goal is not reached and cannot be reached by a new directing and governing class substituting itself for the bourgeoisie. It is only realized by the workers themselves, being master over production, by some form of workers’ councils.” These remarks, it happens, are quoted from the left wing Marxist Anton Pannekoek, and in fact radical Marxism – what Lenin once called infantile ultra-leftism – merges with anarchist currents. This is an important point, I think, and let me give one further illustration of this convergence between left wing Marxism and socialist anarchism.

Consider the following characterization of revolutionary socialism: “The revolutionary socialist denies that state ownership can end in anything other than a bureaucratic despotism. We have seen why the state cannot democratically control industry. Industry can only be democratically owned and controlled by the workers electing directly from their own ranks industrial administrative committees. Socialism will fundamentally be an industrial system; its constituencies will be of an industrial character. Thus those carrying on the social activity and industries of society will be directly represented in the local and central councils of social administration. In this way the powers of such delegates will flow upwards from those carrying on the work and conversant with the needs of the community. When the central industrial administrative committee meets it will represent every phase of social activity. Hence the capitalist political or geographical state will be replaced by the industrial administrative committee of socialism. The transition from one social system to the other will be the social revolution. The political state throughout history has meant the government of men by ruling classes; the republic of socialism will be the government of industry administered on behalf of the whole community. The former meant the economic and political subjection of the many, the latter will mean the economic freedom of all. It will be, therefore, a true democracy.”

These remarks are taken from a book called “The State: Its Origins and Function”, written by William Paul in early 1917, just prior to Lenin’s “State and Revolution”, which is his most libertarian work.

William Paul was one of the founders of the British Communist Party, later the editor of the British Communist Party Journal. And it is interesting that his critique of state socialism resembles very closely, I think, the libertarian doctrine of the anarchists, in particular, in its principle that the state must disappear, to be replaced by the industrial organization of society in the course of the social revolution itself. Proudhon in 1851 wrote that what we put in place of the government is industrial organization, and many similar comments can be cited. That, in essence, is the fundamental idea of anarchist revolutionaries. What’s more important than the fact that many such statements can be cited is that these ideas have been realized in spontaneous revolutionary action several times. For example, in Germany and Italy after the first World War, in Catalonia in 1936.

One might argue, or at least I would argue, that council communism in this sense, in the sense of the long quotation that I read is the natural form of revolutionary socialism in an industrial society. It reflects the intuitive understanding that democracy is largely a sham when the industrial system is controlled by any form of autocratic elite, whether of owners, managers, technocrats, a vanguard party, a state bureaucracy, or whatever. Under these conditions of authoritarian domination, the classical liberal ideals which are expressed also by Marx and Bakunin and all true revolutionaries cannot be realized.

Man will, in other words, not be free to inquire and create, to develop his own potentialities to their fullest. The worker will remain a fragment of a human being, degraded, a tool in the productive process directed from above. And the ideas of revolutionary libertarian socialism, in this sense, have been submerged in the industrial societies of the past half century. The dominant ideologies have been those of state socialism and state capitalism.

But there has been an interesting resurgence in the last couple of years. In fact, the theses that I quoted from Anton Pannekoek were taken from a recent pamphlet of a radical French workers group, and the quotation that I read from William Paul on revolutionary socialism was taken from a paper by Walter Kendall at the National Conference on Workers Control in Sheffield, England, last March.

Both of these groups represent something significant. The Workers Control Movement in England, in particular, has developed into, I think, a remarkably significant force in the last few years. It includes some of the largest trade unions, for example the Amalgamated Engineering Federation which, I think, is the second largest trade union in England and which has taken these principles as its fundamental ideas. It’s had a series of successful conferences, putting out an interesting pamphlet literature, and on the continent there are parallel developments. May 1968 in France of course accelerated the growing interest in council communism and similar ideas and other forms of libertarian socialism in France and Germany, as it did in England.

Given the general conservative cast of our highly ideological society, it’s not too surprising that the United States is relatively untouched by these currents. But that too may change. The erosion of the Cold War mythology at least makes it possible to discuss some of these questions, and if the present wave of repression can be beaten back, if the left can overcome its more suicidal tendencies and build on the achievements of the past decade, the problem of how to organize industrial society on truly democratic lines, with democratic control in the workplace as well as in the community, this should become the dominant intellectual issue for those who are alive to the problems of contemporary society. And as a mass movement for revolutionary libertarian socialism develops, as I hope it will, speculation should proceed to action.

It may seem quixotic to group left Marxism and anarchism under the same rubric, as I have done, given the antagonism throughout the past century between the Marxists and the anarchists, beginning with the antagonism between Marx and Engels on the one hand and, for example, Proudhon and Bakunin on the other. In the nineteenth century at least, their differences with regard to the question of the state was significant, but in a sense it was tactical. The anarchists were convinced that capitalism and the state must be destroyed together. But Engels, in a letter of 1883, expressed his opposition to this idea as follows: “The anarchists put the thing upside down. They declare that the proletarian revolution must begin by doing away with the political organization of the state. But to destroy it at such a moment would be to destroy the only organism by means of which the victorious proletariat can assert its newly conquered power, hold down its adversaries and carry out that economic revolution of society without which the whole victory must end in a new defeat and in a mass slaughter of the workers, similar to those after the Paris commune.”

Now, the Paris Commune, I think it is fair to say, did represent the ideas of libertarian socialism, of anarchism if you like, and Marx wrote about it with great enthusiasm. In fact, the experience of the commune led him to modify his concept of the role of the state and to take on something more of an anarchist perspective of the nature of social revolution, as you can see, for example, by looking at the introduction to the Communist Manifesto, the edition that was published in 1872. The commune was of course drowned in blood, as the anarchist communes of Spain were destroyed by Fascist and Communist armies. And it might be argued that more dictatorial structures would have defended the revolution against such forces. But I doubt this very much, at least in the case of Spain, it seems to me that a more consistent libertarian policy might have provided the only possible defense of the revolution.

Of course this can be contested and this is a long story that I don’t want to go into here, but at the very least it is clear that one would have to be rather naive, after the events of the past half century, to fail to see the truth in Bakunin’s repeated warnings that the red bureaucracy would prove to be the most violent and terrible lie of the century. “Take the most radical revolutionary and place him on the throne of all Russia”, he said in 1870, “or give him dictatorial power, and before a year has passed he will become worse than the Czar himself.”

I’m afraid, in this respect Bakunin was all too perceptive, and this kind of warning was repeatedly voiced from the left. For example, in the 1890’s the anarchosyndicalist Fernand Pelloutier asked, “Must the transitional state to be endured necessarily or inevitably be the collectivist jail? Might it not consist of a free organization limited exclusively by the needs of production and consumption, all political institutions having disappeared?”

I don’t pretend to know the answer to that question, but I think that it is tolerably clear that unless the answer is positive, the chances for a truly democratic revolution that will achieve the humanistic ideals of the left are perhaps rather slight. I think Martin Buber put the problem quite succinctly when he said: “One cannot in the nature of things expect a little tree that has been turned into a club to put forth leaves.” For just this reason, it is essential that a powerful revolutionary movement exist in the United States, if there are to be any reasonable possibilities for democratic social change of a radical sort anywhere in the capitalist world. And comparable remarks, I think, undoubtedly hold for the Russian empire.

Lenin until the end of his life stressed the idea that “it is an elementary truth of Marxism that the victory of socialism requires the joint effort of workers in a number of advanced countries. At the very least it requires that the great centers of world imperialism be impeded by domestic pressures from counter revolutionary intervention. Only such possibilities will permit any revolution to overthrow its own coercive state institutions as it tries to bring the economy under direct democratic control.

Let me summarize briefly again. I have mentioned so far two reference points for discussion of the state, classical liberalism and libertarian socialism. They are in agreement that the functions of the state are repressive and that state action must be limited. The libertarian socialist goes on to insist that the state power must be eliminated in favor of the democratic organization of the industrial society with direct popular control over all institutions by those who participate in as well as those who are directly affected by the workings of these institutions. So one might imagine a system of workers’ councils, consumer councils, commune assemblies, regional federations, and so on, with the kind of representation that is direct and revocable, in the sense that representatives are directly answerable to and return directly to the well defined and integrated social group for which they speak in some higher order organization, something obviously very different than our system of representation.

Now it might very well be asked whether such a social structure is feasible in a complex, highly technological society. There are counter arguments, and I think they fall into two main categories. The first category is that such an organization is contrary to human nature, and the second category says roughly that it is incompatible with the demands of efficiency. I’d like to briefly consider each of these.

Consider the first, that a free society is contrary to human nature. It is often asked, do men really want freedom, do they want the responsibility that goes with it. Or would they prefer to be ruled by a benevolent master. Consistently, apologists for the existing distribution of power have held to one or another version of the idea of the happy slave. Two hundred years ago Rousseau denounced the sophistic politicians and intellectuals “who search for ways to obscure the fact,” so he maintained, “that the essential and the defining property of man is his freedom. They attribute to man a natural inclination to servitude, without thinking that it is the same for freedom as for innocence and virtue. Their value is felt only as long as one enjoys them oneself, and the taste for them is lost as soon as one has lost them.” As proof of this doctrine he refers to the marvels done by all free peoples to guard themselves from oppression. “True” he says “those who have abandoned the life of a free man do nothing but boast incessantly of the peace, the repose they enjoy in their chains. But when I see the others sacrifice pleasures, repose, wealth, power and life itself for the preservation of this sole good which is so disdained by those who have lost it, when I see multitudes of entirely naked savages scorn European voluptuousness and endure hunger, fire, the sword and death to preserve only their independence, I feel it does not behoove slaves to reason about freedom.” A comment to which we can perhaps give a contemporary interpretation.

Rather similar thoughts were expressed by Kant 40 years later. He cannot, he says, “accept the proposition that certain people are not right for freedom, for example, the serfs of some landlord. If one accepts this assumption, freedom will never be achieved. For one cannot arrive at the maturity for freedom without having already acquired it. One must be free to learn how to make use of ones powers freely and usefully. The first attempts will surely be brutal and will lead to a state of affairs more painful and dangerous than the former condition, under the dominance but also the protection of an external authority. However, one can achieve reason only through ones own experiences, and one must be free to be able to undertake them. To accept the principle that freedom is worthless for those under ones control and that one has the right to refuse it to them forever is an infringement on the right of God himself, who has created man to be free.”

This particular remark is interesting because of its context as well. Kant on this occasion was defending the French revolution during the terror against those who claimed that it showed the masses to be unready for the privilege of freedom. And his remarks, too, I think, have obvious contemporary relevance. No rational person will approve of violence and terror, and in particular the terror of the post-revolutionary state that has fallen into the hands of a grim autocracy has more than once reached indescribable levels of savagery. At the same time, no person of understanding or humanity will too quickly condemn the violence that often occurs, when long subdued masses rise against their oppressors or take their first steps toward liberty and social reconstruction.

Humboldt, just a few years before Kant, had expressed a view that was very similar to that. He also said that freedom and variety are the preconditions for human self-realization. “Nothing promotes this rightness for freedom so much as freedom itself. This truth perhaps may not be acknowledged by those who have so often used this unrightness as an excuse for continuing repression, but it seems to me to follow unquestionably from the very nature of man. The incapacity for freedom can only arise from a want of moral and intellectual power. To heighten this power is the only way to supply the want, but to do so presupposes the freedom which awakens spontaneous activity. Those who do not comprehend this may justly be suspected of misunderstanding human nature, and wishing to make men into machines.”

Rosa Luxemburg’s fraternal sympathetic critique of Bolshevik ideology and practice was given in very similar terms. “Only the active participation of the masses in self-government and social reconstruction could bring about the complete spiritual transformation in the masses degraded by centuries of bourgeois class rule, just as only their creative experience and spontaneous action can solve the myriad problems of creating a libertarian socialist society.”

She went on to say that historically the errors committed by a truly revolutionary movement are infinitely more fruitful than the infallibility of the cleverest central committee, and I think that these remarks can be translated immediately for the somewhat parallel ideology of the soulful corporation which is now fairly popular among American academics. For example, Carl Kaysen writes: “No longer the agent of proprietorships seeking to maximize return on investment, management sees itself as responsible to stock holders, employees, customers, general public and perhaps most important the firm itself as an institution. There is no display of greed or graspingness, there is no attempt to push off on the workers and the community at least part of the social costs of the enterprise. The modern corporation is a soulful corporation.”

Similarly, the vanguard party is a soulful party. In both cases those who urge that men submit to the rule of these benevolent autocracies may, I think, justly be accused of wishing to make men into machines. Now, the correctness of the view that is expressed by Rousseau and Kant and Humboldt and Luxemburg and innumerable others, I don’t think that the correctness of this is for the moment susceptible to scientific proof. One can only evaluate it in terms of experience and intuition. But one can also point out the social consequences of adopting the view that men are born to be free, or that they are born to be ruled by benevolent autocrats.

What of the second question, the question of efficiency? Is democratic control of the industrial system, down to its smallest functional units, incompatible with efficiency? This is very frequently argued on several grounds. For example, some say that centralized management is a technological imperative, but I think the argument is exceedingly weak when one looks into it. The very same technology that brings relevant information to the board of managers can bring it at the time that it is needed to everyone in the work force. The technology that is now capable of eliminating the stupefying labor that turns men into specialized tools of production permits in principle the leisure and the educational opportunities that make them able to use this information in a rational way. Furthermore, even an economic elite which is dripping with soulfulness, to use Ralph Miliband’s phrase, is constrained by the system in which it functions to organize production for certain ends: power, growth, profit, but not in the nature of the case human needs, needs that to an ever more critical degree can be expressed only in collective terms. It is surely conceivable and is perhaps even likely that decisions made by the collective itself, will reflect these needs and interests as well as those made by various soulful elites.

In any event, it is a bit difficult to take seriously arguments about efficiency in a society that devotes such enormous resources to waste and destruction. As everyone knows, the very concept of efficiency is dripping with ideology. Maximization of commodities is hardly the only measure of a decent existence. The point is familiar, and no elaboration is necessary.

State Socialism and State Capitalism

Let me turn to the two final points of reference: the Bolshevik or state socialist and the state capitalist. As I have tried to suggest, they have points in common, and in interesting respects they diverge from the classical liberal ideal or its later elaboration in libertarian socialism. Since I am concerned with our society, let me make a few rather elementary observations about the role of the state, its likely evolution and the ideological assumptions that accompany and sometimes disguise these phenomena.

To begin with, it is obvious that we can distinguish two systems of power, the political system and the economic system. The former consists in principle of elected representatives of the people who set public policy. The latter in principle is a system of private power, a system of private empires, that are free from public control, except in the remote and indirect ways in which even a feudal nobility or a totalitarian dictatorship must be responsive to the public will. There are several immediate consequences of this organization of society.

The first is that in a subtle way an authoritarian cast of mind is induced in a very large mass of the population which is subject to arbitrary decree from above. I think that this has a great effect on the general character of the culture. The effect is the belief that one must obey arbitrary dictates and accede to authority. And I think that in fact a remarkable and exciting fact about the youth movement in recent years is that it is challenging and beginning to break down some of these authoritarian patterns.

The second fact that is important is that the range of decisions that are in principle subject to public democratic control is quite narrow. For example, it excludes in law in principle the central institutions in any advanced industrial society, i.e. the entire commercial, industrial and financial system. And a third fact is that even within the narrow range of issues that are submitted in principle to democratic decision making, the centers of private power of course exert an inordinately heavy influence in perfectly obvious ways, through control of the media, through control of political organizations or in fact by the simple and direct means of supplying the top personnel for the parliamentary system itself, as they obviously do. Richard Barnet in his recent study of the top 400 decision makers in the postwar national security system reports that most have, I quote now, “come from executive suites and law offices within shouting distance of each other, in 15 city blocks in 5 major cities.” And every other study shows the same thing.

In short, the democratic system at best functions within a narrow range in a capitalist democracy, and even within this narrow range its functioning is enormously biased by the concentrations of private power and by the authoritarian and passive modes of thinking that are induced by autocratic institutions such as industries, for example. It is a truism but one that must be constantly stressed that capitalism and democracy are ultimately quite incompatible. And a careful look at the matter merely strengthens this conclusion. There are perfectly obvious processes of centralization of control taking place in both the political and the industrial system. As far as the political system is concerned, in every parliamentary democracy, not only ours, the role of parliament in policy formation has been declining in the years since WWII, as everyone knows and political commentators repeatedly point out.

In other words, the executive becomes increasingly powerful as the planning functions of the state become more significant. The House Armed Services Committee a couple of years ago described the role of Congress as that of a sometimes querulous but essentially kindly uncle who complains while furiously puffing on his pipe but who finally, as everyone expects, gives in and hands over the allowance. And careful studies of civil military decisions since WWII show that this is quite an accurate perception.

Senator Vandenberg 20 years ago expressed his fear that the American chief executive would become the number one warlord of the earth, his phrase. That has since occurred. The clearest decision is the decision to escalate in Vietnam in February 1965, in cynical disregard of the expressed will of the electorate. This incident reveals, I think, with perfect clarity the role of the public in decisions about peace and war, the role of the public in decisions about the main lines about public policy in general. And it also suggests the irrelevance of electoral politics to major decisions of national policy.

Unfortunately, you can’t vote the rascals out, because you never voted them in, in the first place. The corporate executives and the corporation lawyers and so on who overwhelmingly staff the executive, assisted increasingly by a university based mandarin class, remain in power no matter whom you elect.

Furthermore, it is interesting to note that this ruling elite is pretty clear about its social role. As an example take Robert McNamara, who is the person widely praised in liberal circles for his humanity, his technical brilliance and his campaign to control the military. His views of social organization, I think, are quite illuminating. He says that vital decision making in policy matters as well as in business must remain at the top. That is partly, though not completely, what the top is for. And he goes on to suggest that this is apparently a divine imperative. I quote: “God is clearly democratic, he distributes brain power universally, but he quite justifiably expects us to do something efficient and constructive with that priceless gift. That’s what management is all about. Management in the end is the most creative of all the arts, for its medium is human talent itself. The real threat to democracy comes from under-management. The under-management of society is not the respect of liberty, it is simply to let some force other than reason shape reality. If it is not reason that rules man then man falls short of his potential.”

So reason then is to be identified as the centralization of decision making at the top in the hands of management. Popular involvement in decision making is a threat to liberty, a violation of reason. Reason is embodied in autocratic, tightly managed institutions. Strengthening these institutions within which man can function most efficiently is, in his words, “the great human adventure of our times.” All this has a faintly familiar ring to it. It is the authentic voice of the technical intelligentsia, the liberal intelligentsia of the technocratic corporate elite in a modern society.

There is a parallel process of centralization in economic life. A recent FTC report notes that the 200 largest manufacturing corporations now control about two thirds of all manufacturing assets. At the beginning of WWII the same amount of power was spread over a thousand corporations. The report says: “A small industrial elite of huge conglomerate companies is gobbling up American business and largely destroying competitive free enterprise.” Furthermore it says: “These two hundred corporations are partially linked with each other and with other corporations in ways that may prevent or discourage independent behavior in market decisions.” What is novel about such observations is only their source, the FTC. They are familiar, to the point of cliche, among left-liberal commentators on American society.

The centralization of power also has an international dimension. Quoting from Foreign Affairs, it has been pointed that “on the basis of the gross value of their output, US enterprises abroad in the aggregate comprise the third largest country in the world, with a gross product greater than that of any country except the United States and the Soviet Union. American firms control over half the automobile industry in England, almost 40% of petroleum in Germany, over 40% of the telegraphic, telephone and electronic and business equipment in France, 75% of the computers. Within a decade, given present trends, more than half of the British exports will be from American owned companies.” Furthermore, these are highly-concentrated investments: 40% of direct investment in Germany, France and Britain is by three firms, American firms.

George Ball has explained that the project of constructing an integrated world economy, dominated by American capital, an empire in other words, is no idealistic pipe dream, but a hard headed prediction. It is a role, he says, into which we are being pushed by the imperatives of our own economy, the major instrument being the multinational corporation which George Ball describes as follows: “In its modern form, the multinational corporation, or one with worldwide operations and markets, is a distinctly American development. Through such corporations it has become possible for the first time to use the world’s resources with maximum efficiency. But there must be greater unification of the world economy to give full play to the benefits of multinational corporations.”

These multinational corporations are the beneficiary of the mobilization of resources by the federal government, and its world wide operations and markets are backed ultimately by American military force, now based in dozens of countries. It is not difficult to guess who will reap the benefits from the integrated world economy, which is the domain of operation of these American based international economic institutions.

At this stage in the discussion one has to mention the specter of communism. What is the threat of communism to this system? For a clear and cogent answer, one can turn to an extensive study of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation and National Planning Association called the Political Economy of American Foreign Policy, a very important book. It was compiled by a representative segment of the tiny elite that largely sets public policy for whoever is technically in office. In effect, it’s as close as you can come to a manifesto of the American ruling class.

Here they define the primary threat of communism as “the economic transformation of the communist powers in ways which reduce their willingness or ability to complement the industrial economies of the West.” That is the primary threat of communism. Communism, in short, reduces the willingness and ability of underdeveloped countries to function in the world capitalist economy in the manner of, for example, the Philippines which has developed a colonial economy of a classic type, after 75 years of American tutelage and domination. It is this doctrine which explains why British economist Joan Robinson describes the American crusade against communism as a crusade against development.

The cold war ideology and the international communist conspiracy function in an important way as essentially a propaganda device to mobilize support at a particular historical moment for this long time imperial enterprise. In fact, I believe that this is probably the main function of the cold war. It serves as a useful device for the managers of American society and their counterparts in the Soviet Union to control their own populations and their own respective imperial systems. I think that the persistence of the cold war can be in part explained by its utility for the managers of the two great world systems.

There is one final element that has to be added to this picture, namely the ongoing militarization of American society. How does this enter in? To see, one has to look back at WWII and to recall that prior to WWII, of course, we were deep in the depression. WWII taught an important economic lesson, it taught the lesson that government induced production in a carefully controlled economy – centrally controlled – could overcome the effects of a depression.

I think this is what Charles E. Wilson had in mind at the end of 1944 when he proposed that we have a permanent war economy in the postwar world. Of course, the trouble is that in a capitalist economy there are only a number of ways in which government intervention can take place. It can’t be competitive with the private empires for example, which is to say that it can’t be any useful production. In fact, it has to be the production of luxury goods, goods not capital, not useful commodities, which would be competitive. And unfortunately there is only one category of luxury goods that can be produced endlessly with rapid obsolescence, quickly wasting, and no limit on how many of them you can use. We all know what that is.

This whole matter is described pretty well by the business historian Alfred Chandler. He describes the economic lessons of WWII as follows: “The government spent far more than the most enthusiastic New Dealer had ever proposed. Most of the output of the expenditures was destroyed or left on the battlefields of Europe or Asia but the resulting increased demand sent the nation into a period of prosperity, the likes of which had never before been seen. Moreover, the supplying of huge armies and navies fighting the most massive war of all time required a tight centralized control of the national economy. This effort brought corporate managers to Washington to carry out one of the most complex pieces of economic planning in history. That experience lessened the ideological fears over the government’s role in stabilizing the economy.”

This is a conservative commentator, I might point out. It may be added that the ensuing cold war carried further the depoliticization of the American society and created the kind of psychological environment in which the government is able to intervene in part through fiscal policies, in part through public work and public services, but very largely, of course, through defense spending.

In this way, to use Alfred Chandler’s words, “the government acts as a coordinator of last resort when managers are unable to maintain a high level of aggregate demand.” As another conservative business historian, Joseph Monsen, writes, “enlightened corporate managers, far from fearing government intervention in the economy, view the new economics as a technique for increasing corporate viability.”

Of course, the most cynical use of these ideas is by the managers of the publicly subsidized war industries. There was a remarkable series in the Washington Post about a year ago, by Bernard Nossiter. For example, he quoted Samuel Downer, financial vice president of LTV Aerospace, one of the big new conglomerates, who explained why the postwar world must be bolstered by military orders. He said: “Its selling appeal is the defense of the home. This is one of the greatest appeals the politicians have to adjusting the system. If you’re the president and you need a control factor in the economy, and you need to sell this factor, you can’t sell Harlem and Watts but you can sell self-preservation, a new environment. We are going to increase defense budgets as long as those bastards in Russia are ahead of us. The American people understand this.”

Of course, those bastards aren’t exactly ahead of us in this deadly and cynical game, but that is only a minor embarrassment to the thesis. In times of need, we can always follow Dean Rusk, Hubert Humphrey and other luminaries and appeal to the billion Chinese armed to the teeth and setting out on world conquest.

Again, I want to emphasize the role in this system of the cold war as a technique of domestic control, a technique for developing the climate of paranoia and psychosis in which the tax payer will be willing to provide an enormous endless subsidy to the technologically advanced sectors of American industry and the corporations that dominate this increasingly centralized system.

Of course, it is perfectly obvious that Russian imperialism is not an invention of American ideologists. It is real enough for the Hungarians and the Czechs, for example. What is an invention is the uses to which it is put, for example by Dean Acheson in 1950 or Walt Rostow a decade later, when they pretend that the Vietnam war is an example of Russian imperialism. Or by the Johnson administration in 1965 when it justifies the Dominican intervention with reference to the Sino-Soviet military bloc. Or by the Kennedy intellectuals, who as Townsend Hoopes put it in an article in the Washington Monthly in the last month, were deluded by the tensions of the cold war years, and could not perceive that the triumph of the national revolution in Vietnam would not be a triumph for Moscow and Peking. It was the most remarkable degree of delusion on the part of presumably literate men.

Or, for example, by Eugene Rostow who in a recent book that was very widely praised by liberal senators and academic intellectuals, outlined the series of challenges to world order in the modern era as follows: “Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm, Hitler,” and continuing in the postwar world, “general strikes in France and Italy, the civil war in Greece, and the attack on South Vietnam where Russia has put us to severe tests in its efforts to spread communism by the sword.”

This is a very interesting series of challenges to world order: Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm, Hitler, general strikes in France and Italy, the civil war in Greece and the Russian attack on South Vietnam. If one thinks it through, he can reach some pretty interesting conclusions about modern history.

One can continue with this indefinitely. I mean to suggest that the cold war is highly functional both to the American elite and its Soviet counterpart who in a perfectly similar way exploit Western imperialism, which they did not invent, as they send their armies into Czechoslovakia.

It is important in both cases in providing an ideology for empire and for the government subsidized system here of military capitalism. It is predictable then that the challenges to this ideology will be bitterly resisted, by force if necessary. In many ways, American society is indeed open and liberal values are preserved. However, as poor people and black people and other ethnic minorities know very well, the liberal veneer is pretty thin. Mark Twain once wrote that “it is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.” Those who lack the prudence may well pay the cost.

Roughly speaking, I think it is accurate to say that a corporate elite of managers and owners governs the economy and the political system as well, at least in very large measure. The people, so-called, do exercise an occasional choice among those who Marx once called the rival factions and adventurers of the ruling classes. Those who find this characterization too harsh may prefer the formulations of a modern democratic theorist like Joseph Schumpeter who describes modern political democracy, favorably, “as a system in which the deciding of issues by the electorate is secondary to the election of the men who are to do the deciding. The political party”, he says accurately, “is a group whose members propose to act in concert in the competitive struggle for political power. If that were not so, it would be impossible for different parties to adopt exactly or almost exactly the same program.” That’s all the advantages of political democracy, as he sees it.

This program that both parties adopt more or less exactly and the individuals who compete for power express a narrow conservative ideology, basically the interests of one or another element in the corporate elite, with some modifications. This is obviously no conspiracy. I think it is simply implicit in the system of corporate capitalism. These people and the institutions they represent are in effect in power, and their interests are the national interest. It is this interest that is served primarily and overwhelmingly by the overseas empire and the growing system of military state capitalism at home.

If we were to withdraw the consent of the governed, as I think we should, we are withdrawing our consent to have these men and the interests they represent, govern and manage American society and impose their concept of world order and their criteria for legitimate political and economic development in much of the world. Although an immense effort of propaganda and mystification is carried on to conceal these facts, nonetheless facts they remain.

We have today the technical and material resources to meet man’s animal needs. We have not developed the cultural and moral resources or the democratic forms of social organization that make possible the humane and rational use of our material wealth and power. Conceivably, the classical liberal ideals, as expressed and developed in their libertarian socialist form, are achievable. But if so, only by a popular revolutionary movement, rooted in wide strata of the population, and committed to the elimination of repressive and authoritarian institutions, state and private. To create such a movement is the challenge we face and must meet if there is to be an escape from contemporary barbarism.

________

Text source here.

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When I was writing my review of Vincent Bevins’s If We Burn, I thought that I would end by comparing the Bevins and Nunes. Like Bevins, Nunes’s theoretical tract is a “response to the cycle of struggles that began in 2011” but unlike Bevins, Nunes does not think that the failures of this cycle of struggles can be attributed to ideology alone. While he does offer a critique of “horizontalism,” like Bevins, he recognizes that this ideology is, in part, a response to certain underlying material conditions that remain, for better or worse, unavoidable. The nature of capitalist society has changed and so, therefore, has the nature of class struggle. Leaving aside whether this would be desirable or not, attempting to turn back the clock to an era in which unions and parties and other formal organizations mediated class struggle is itself ideological, an expression of left melancholy that needs to be overcome.

So what is it that has changed? The place to look for answers is in the heart of the book, “Elements for a Theory of Organisation 1.” As Nunes writes, “the idea of horizontality” emerges for three reasons: “an increased awareness of the interconnectedness brought about by capitalist globalization; the discovery of the organizing and mobilizing affordance provided by the internet; and the inspiration coming from autonomous movements in the Global South, especially the Zapatistas in Mexico and those that emerged in Argentina in the wake of the 2001 crisis.” In other words, while the “idea of horizontality” may be ideology, what it responds to are very real changes in the nature of society: globalization, information technology, and new form of class struggle emerging in response to these. Note how different this account is from Bevins, who attributes horizontalism—or the idea of horizontality—to ideology alone. As he writes later in the chapter:

Today’s revolts emerge from a conjuncture marked by the convergence of four historical trends that, at least for now, appear irreversible. The first is the increasing mediatisation of everyday life, and specifically the use of digital platforms that generate an enormous potential for what Manuel Castells dubbed “mass self-communication.” The second is the vertiginous drop in organising costs resulting from that, which enables complex collective coordination on a scale that in the past could only have been achieved through mass organisations. The third is the crisis of the “post-political” centrist consensus dominant in most countries since the end of the Cold War, which has intensified a long-running loss of confidence in liberal democratic institutions across the world. The fourth is the decline, in membership as well as political relevance, of most mass organisations that played a central role in convoking and organising popular struggles in the twentieth century.

Only reason 3 is a matter of ideology—the others are material changes in the nature of contemporary life that are irreversible except through other material changes. Fighting against the ideology of horizontalism without addressing these underlying material conditions is quixotic because these new forms offer both potentials and drawbacks. The easiness of networked organizing outcompetes formal organizations time and again, and therefore one must accept that, for the time being, this will be a big part of the mix, even if one imagines, as Nunes does, an important role for formal organizations. The result of this recognition is that Nunes suggests we stop thinking about organization as formal organization alone but look at “organisational ecology” which includes both formal and informal organization. In fact, Nunes argues that since the 1960s and 1970s this ecological perspective has been implicitly adopted by movements where a leading formal organization was lacking, such as “Autonomia” or “the movement of ‘77” in Italy and the Gay and Women’s Liberation Movements.

This brings us to some of the most important points of the book, with regard to contemporary debates about organization. Today there is a tendency to treat organization as a quantity which can be measured—organization is something which class struggle today lacks, either in whole or in part, and therefore the problems confronting us are problems of “disorganization.” But for Nunes organization is just what there is, and what some people describe as disorganization is simply a different form of organization. This is a point that has been made many times before, including by me. What people describe as spontaneous, reflexive, and disorganized is often, in fact, quite organized. Riots don’t lack organization, though they do typically lack formal organization. Contemporary movements are, in fact, a kind of fractal—when you zoom in on the disorganization of the riot what you find are, in fact, planned, conscious actions that merely appear disorganized in aggregate. This insight applies the other way, too. When one examines the behavior of a formal organization, what often appears highly organized in aggregate is often quite spontaneous, unplanned, or chaotic when one zooms in, since all kinds of decisions taken within organizations are done so informally. “Spontaneity” is therefore a particularly problematic concept.

Nunes also offers a criticism of another concept, “self-organization,” that is often used by the ultraleft to describe the power of informal organization. But what is the self of self-organization? What we call self-organization is often not really very self-organized but rather in response to some kind of other-organization. In class society, and in struggles against it, there is no real self-organization, since that would imply full autonomy for the self-organized group when, in fact, what we describe as self-organization is a reaction to heteronomy—to the fact of being organized by bosses, cops, unions, and parties.

The critique of self-organization that Nunes offers is gotten at by way of the discourse of cybernetics, and particularly second-order cybernetics. Cybernetics is, in some senses, a study of self-organization. It defines animals, people, machines, and even organizations by their capacity to act on and regulate themselves through circular causality. But any organism deemed self-organizing is always in relation to whatever is outside the self, from which it derives energy, resources, etc. Even though the human body self-regulates it isn’t really self-organized since it is partly produced by forces outside itself, hence second-order cybernetics. This is a useful framework and one of the best aspects of the book is the way it takes ideas from cybernetics and shows their utility. As much as this discourse has been used by capitalism to naturalize economy and society, there are some important truths contained within it, and for better or worse, we can’t get away from the language of “emergence” when it comes to describing society and its class struggle. Without the notion of emergence, it becomes hard to understand how things happen without anyone intending them. Though the Hegelian dialectic is another way to get at this, “emergence” is here to stay and helps explain how movements always surprise us and how they unfold in ways that are beyond the control of individuals

In a subsequent chapter, I will offer some criticisms of Nunes, and indicate some of the problems with his approach.

I wanted to indicate why I think the Nunes book is important, useful, and underrated. Now I want to spell out some of my criticisms of the book.

My first criticism is that I think the account which we get in the book of the emergence of the “network paradigm” lays the emphasis too much on technological change, and the internet in particular. Of the four causes that Nunes gives for this emergence—information technology; cheaper organizing via information technology, the crisis of centrism, and the waning of workers’ parties and unions—the fourth is, in my view, the most important, whereas Nunes’s book lays emphasis on the first two. (I should add that I think 1 and 2 are the same, and 3 not a real thing). But we can easily deduce that the fourth is the determinative cause since the examples he gives of “organizational ecology” date from the 1970s and not the 1990s. If the ecological view emerges with the Women’s and Gay Liberation Movements or the “area of Autonomy” in Italy in 1977 and not the networked, alter-globalizing Zapatista Liberation Army, then we cannot attribute it to digital technology primarily. The crisis of the parties and unions—or what Endnotes and others have described as “end of workers’ identity” of the “end of the workers’ movement” or “programmatism”—emerges much earlier than digital technology, and is therefore determinative.

Furthermore, some of what Nunes attributes to the network paradigm has been a consistent feature of class struggle for as long as we have examples. Informal organization—aggregate action—has always been part of the mix, and we can find recognition of this “self-activity” in Marx, Luxemburg, and others. Nearly every revolution has begun as a consequence of informal organization with formal organizations playing catch up. Since the 1990s, digital technology has acted as a multiplier for this kind of informal organization, but the decline of formal working-class organization is, in my view, far more consequential. Adopting an evolutionary framework, Nunes argues that informal organizing now out-competes formal organization as a result of the low levels of initial investment digital technology affords—anybody can, potentially, reach millions with a single tweet or TikTok. In a fascinating moment in the text, Nunes suggest that, rather than an era without vanguards, digital technology has allowed nearly anyone to become a vanguard, such that the leadership function, rather than having disappeared, has been distributed more widely. Anyone who has participated in contemporary social movements will recognize the truth of this assertion, even if when, we trace things back to their origins, we often find the actions of vouched groups rather than scattered individuals. Aggregate action (informal organization) and collective action (formal organization) are always co-present. It’s not that intentional, deliberate action has disappeared—in fact there is more of it than ever, it’s just that now it’s in the hands of more people.

In assigning relative weight to these various causes, we should place emphasis, however, on the inability of formal organizations to “get the goods” and downgrade the lower investment allowed by digital technology. The affordances of the digital are not, in this regard, all that different than print—or graffiti, for that matter—which is why we see the “ecological” paradigm emerging in the 1960s and 1970s and not the 1990s. In the era of the classical workers’ movement—let’s date it from 1871-1968, for convenience—the unions and parties which were able to assert partial leadership over social movements did so because they were able to deliver tangible benefits to participants through bilateral negotiations with the state and capitalists. But today we live in an era in which, to put it bluntly, due to weakening growth, elites are much less willing to negotiate. There is no longer a compromise position and class struggle has become much more zero-sum. As such, the fruits of formal organization are diminished as a function of investment in such organization, and it is this which explains their decline, and the preference for informal organization, not some deleterious ideology emerging from the Port Huron Statement and sent around the world. It’s not so much that informal organization has become cheaper but that everything else has become more expensive.

The other problems with Nunes’s approach might be described as formalism and monism. Nunes offers us a theory of “political organisation” and not a theory of revolution or communism. As such, its strengths (its lucidity about organisation) rest on weaknesses. In its Spinozism, it defines organization as the “capacity to act” and “produce political effects” but are all capacities and effects equal? While Nunes states that his aim is a theory of political organization rather than organization as such, it’s hard to see how his definition is specific enough to emancipatory, revolutionary, or communist organization—ie, the forms of organization we care about. Doesn’t this definition work for fascist organization as well? Doesn’t it describe the organizing forms of the state and capital? Are those not “political”? A related problem is that (revolutionary, emancipatory) political organizations are usually described and analyzed in the book without any reference to antagonist organizations. But the goal of communist organization is not just to multiply the power of such organizations but to negate the already-existing organizations by which proletarians are always already organized: the organizations of capitalism and the state. In other words, the theory of political organization we get in Nunes’s book lacks negativity and does not sufficiently distinguish emancipatory from counter-emancipatory organizations. This is because its definition of organization is formalist or perhaps functionalist but is missing “content,” missing a sense of what such organization is for, ultimately—ie, the production of classless, moneyless, stateless society. It is possible that such a society can be defined as a kind of organization but the book does not do so.

Marx’s definition of communism as a state of affairs in which “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all” shares something with Nunes’s definition of organization as “capacity to act” but contains some additional predicates. Development is not only capacity to act but capacity to cultivate new capacities and experiences. In other words, we can’t define organization formally but must think about content, about what people want and what people are. This is something which Nunes resists, given the post-Althusserian and antihumanist theory he relies on, but I don’t think it can be avoided if we want to develop a theory of emancipatory organization.

____

SOURCE: https://jasperbernes.substack.com/p/organization-and-its-theories

The post Organization and Its Theories- by Jasper Bernes appeared first on Void Network.

Κείμενο: Peter Gelderloos

https://petergelderloos.substack.com/p/geopolitics-for-2024

Μετάφραση: Νίκος Γκατζίκης / Επιμέλεια: Τάσος Σαγρής (Κενό Δίκτυο)

Γεωπολιτική για αναρχικούς;

Η γεωπολιτική τείνει να είναι ένα πεδίο ανάλυσης για ειδικούς και δημοσιογράφους που ενδιαφέρονται για τoυς ανταγωνισμούς και τις τύχες των εθνών-κρατών, τις συμμαχίες τους και τους θεσμούς τους. Προσεγγίζουν το θέμα με ένα επίπεδο στρατηγικής παρόμοιο με αυτό των αθλητικών σχολιαστών στο κυριακάτικο ποδόσφαιρο: κατανοούν το ρεπερτόριο των παιγνιδιών, τα δυνατά και αδύνατα σημεία, αλλά ποτέ δεν θα αποδομήσουν την ιστορία του παιχνιδιού, ποτέ δεν θα αναρωτηθούν για τη σχέση μεταξύ του πάγκου και του γηπέδου, του προπονητή και του ιδιοκτήτη, των θεατών και των παικτών (δηλαδή, πέρα από ένα δημοκρατικό θέαμα: τα πάνε καλά μεταξύ τους; είναι οι οπαδοί ευχαριστημένοι με την ομάδα τους;) Δεν θα αναλύσουν την αρχιτεκτονική του σταδίου ή το διαφημιστικό διάλειμμα και σίγουρα δεν θα αναρωτηθούν αν υπάρχει κάποιο άλλο είδος παιχνιδιού που θα μπορούσαμε να παίζουμε. Χρειάζονται το παιχνίδι να συνεχίζεται για πάντα. Αν το παιχνίδι σταματήσει, θα εξαφανιστούν.

Μερικοί αναρχικοί μπορεί να σκεφτούν, ότι αφού θέλουμε να καταργήσουμε τα έθνη-κράτη, γιατί να ασχολούμαστε με τα ασήμαντα στρατηγικά τους παιχνίδια; Γιατί να θέλουμε να τα κατανοήσουμε με τους δικούς τους όρους;

Είναι απολύτως αληθές ότι οι αναρχικοί δεν θα εμφανιστούν ποτέ ως παίκτες στο ταμπλό του γεωπολιτικού Μεγάλου Ρίσκου. Έχουμε βγει εντελώς από αυτόν τον χάρτη. Και έτσι πρέπει να είναι. Αν είμαστε αναρχικοί, είναι γιατί προσεγγίζουμε τη στρατηγική και την εξουσία από μια εντελώς διαφορετική σκοπιά, και με εντελώς διαφορετικές επιθυμίες και μεθόδους.

Αλλά προς το παρόν, είναι το γεωπολιτικό σύστημα των κρατών και του καπιταλισμού που είναι το πιο ενεργό στην παραγωγή του μέλλοντος μέσα στο οποίο θα αναγκαστούμε να κατοικήσουμε. Η γνώση του εύρους των πιθανών μελλοντικών εξελίξεων μας βοηθά να κατανοήσουμε το σύστημα με το οποίο βρισκόμαστε αντιμέτωποι και να προετοιμαστούμε για όσα πρόκειται να αντιμετωπίσουμε.

Αν νομίζεις ότι μια ταινία αποκαλυπτικής καταστροφής με ζόμπι —ή πραγματικά οποιαδήποτε άλλη ταινία “αποκάλυψης”— παρουσιάζει ένα ρεαλιστικό σενάριο για το πώς μοιάζει η συστημική κατάρρευση, τότε θα χαραμίσεις τον χρόνο σου άδικα σε λάθος τρόπους προετοιμασίας για τις επερχόμενες καταστροφές.

Τα τελευταία είκοσι χρόνια, έχω ακούσει πολλούς αναρχικούς να κάνουν σοβαρές προβλέψεις για το πού κατευθυνόμασταν και ποιους κινδύνους αντιμετωπίζαμε. Αυτές οι προβλέψεις είναι τολμηρά εγχειρήματα και χρήσιμα, γιατί μας επιτρέπουν να δοκιμάζουμε τις θεωρίες μας.

Πολλές προβλέψεις που θυμάμαι έχουν αποδειχθεί λανθασμένες.

• Ο Τραμπ δεν έκανε πραξικόπημα: στην πραγματικότητα, ο Τζον Μπόλτον μιλούσε από εμπειρία όταν έλεγε ότι ένα πραξικόπημα απαιτεί πολύ περισσότερη οργάνωση.
• Οι φασίστες δεν κατέκτησαν την εξουσία- αποτελούν όμως κίνδυνο κυρίως για τους ανθρώπους σε επίπεδο δρόμου και στον τρόπο με τον οποίο ωθούν την κεντροδεξιά προς τα δεξιά όσον αφορά την αποδεκτή πολιτική που μπορεί να εφαρμόσει μια δημοκρατική κυβέρνηση. (ΣτΜ: από τότε που γράφτηκε το άρθρο υπήρξαν εξελίξεις στην Ιταλία που είτε περιπλέκουν τα πράγματα, είτε ενισχύουν αυτό το σημείο σαν μια εξαίρεση που επιβεβαιώνει τον κανόνα…)
• Η προώθηση του αντιφασισμού εν μέσω ενός αναπτυσσόμενου αντιρατσιστικού κινήματος ήταν σφάλμα, ένα βήμα προς τα πίσω. Όπως έκανε και στις προηγούμενες εκδοχές του, ο αντιφασισμός έβγαλε από το επίκεντρο της συζήτησης τα ζητήματα της λευκής υπεροχής και της αποικιοκρατίας και επέτρεψε στην Αριστερά να κερδίσει έδαφος σε κινήματα που προηγουμένως ήταν αντι-κρατικά: μας άφησε απροετοίμαστους τη στιγμή που ο πραγματικός φασισμός υποχωρούσε ενώ το δημοκρατικό Κράτος έκανε βήματα εμπρός και εναντίον μας.
• Η Δημοκρατία αντιμετωπίζει κρίση, αλλά εξακολουθεί να αποτελεί τον μεγαλύτερο κίνδυνο για εμάς: η ευρύτερη διάδοση αυτής της επίγνωσης θα μπορούσε να είχε σώσει μερικά από τα πιο ισχυρά μας κινήματα — στη Χιλή και στην Ελλάδα — από το να πέσουν σε θανατηφόρα στρατηγικά αδιέξοδα. Θα είχε επίσης βελτιώσει την αρχική διατύπωση των κινημάτων Occupy και 15M (ΣτΜ: το “Κίνημα των Αγανακτισμένων” της Ισπανίας), επιτρέποντάς τα να αναπτυχθούν σε πολύ πιο ριζοσπαστικές κατευθύνσεις.
• Ο “ύστερος καπιταλισμός” ή το “τελικό στάδιο του καπιταλισμού” που διακηρύχθηκε μετά τον Α’ Παγκόσμιο Πόλεμο εξακολουθεί να αργοσέρνεται. Η απόρριψη του Μαρξισμού θα μας επέτρεπε να δούμε πιο καθαρά το ζωτικό στρατηγικό, κρατικοκίνητο στοιχείο του καπιταλισμού: τα κράτη και οι θεσμοί τους κατακτούν νέες περιοχές προληπτικά, για να εξασφαλίσουν την καπιταλιστική επέκταση.
• Αν ήμασταν σε επιφυλακή για αυτά τα νέα μέτωπα θα είχαμε κερδίσει ένα προβάδισμα και θα είχαμε εντοπίσει έγκαιρα το κυρίαρχο ρεύμα του κλιματικού κινήματος και της πράσινης ενέργειας ως τις μεγαλύτερες απειλές για τη ζωή σε αυτόν τον πλανήτη. Τώρα, πρέπει να προσπαθήσουμε να καλύψουμε το χαμένο έδαφος.

Με ανησυχεί πάρα πολύ ότι, απ’ όσο έχω δει, οι άνθρωποι που έκαναν λανθασμένες προβλέψεις δεν παραδέχτηκαν τα λάθη τους. Θα ήταν θαρραλέο, ειλικρινές, και θα μας είχε ενισχύσει πάρα πολύ, δίνοντάς μας περισσότερες ευκαιρίες να ακονίσουμε τα θεωρητικά μας εργαλεία, να καλλιεργήσουμε την στρατηγική μας διαίσθηση.

Και νομίζω ότι το Εγώ, αυτή η τυφλή αποφυγή των λαθών μας, ήταν ένας σημαντικός παράγοντας που οδήγησε τους ριζοσπαστικούς ανθρώπους σε όλο τον κόσμο σε ακόμη μεγαλύτερα, προφανή λάθη. Οι απογοητευμένοι υποψήφιοι επαναστάτες, στρέφονται σε μονοθεματικούς ακτιβισμούς, αμεσοδημοκρατικές κοινότητες, ή στις τελευταίου τύπου σταλινικές σέχτες με αυστηρά καθορισμένες οργανώσεις, προσεκτικά επιλεγμένο προλεταριακό μάτσο ανδρισμό και χωρίς πραγματική εμπλοκή ή σχέση με την ίδια την κοινωνική σύγκρουση.

Προς ποια κατεύθυνση κινείται το παγκόσμιο σύστημα;

Συνοψίζοντας, το παγκόσμιο σύστημα κατανοεί τον εαυτό του ως παγκόσμιο και διαμεσολαβεί σε πολιτικές συγκρούσεις και στη ροή πόρων και πληροφοριών σύμφωνα με μια ορισμένη λογική. Κάθε διαδοχικό παγκόσμιο σύστημα έχει ένα ηγετικό κράτος, αλλά αυτός ο ηγέτης δεν έχει τη δύναμη να ελέγχει τα πάντα που συμβαίνουν στο παγκόσμιο σύστημα: αντίθετα, είναι ο αρχιτέκτονας που σε μια κρίσιμη στιγμή αποκτά τη δύναμη και τη νομιμοποίηση, την ηγεμονία, να σχεδιάσει ένα νέο παγκόσμιο σύστημα στο οποίο όλοι οι άλλοι κυρίαρχοι παίκτες συμφωνούν να συμμετάσχουν.

Μετά τον Δεύτερο Παγκόσμιο Πόλεμο, οι ΗΠΑ ανέλαβαν από το Ηνωμένο Βασίλειο και έγιναν οι αρχιτέκτονες του επόμενου παγκόσμιου συστήματος, επικεντρωμένο σε μια υποτιθέμενη παγκόσμια τάξη κρατών που κυβερνάται από τον ΟΗΕ, με έδρα στη Νέα Υόρκη, και ένα καπιταλιστικό καθεστώς ελεύθερου εμπορίου και επενδύσεων που εποπτεύεται από τα ιδρύματα του Μπρέτον Γουντς όπως το Διεθνές Νομισματικό Ταμείο.

Οι ΗΠΑ και οι πιο στενοί τους σύμμαχοι δεν είναι πλέον οι κύριες κινητήριες δυνάμεις της οικονομικής ανάπτυξης και το μερίδιο των νέων επενδύσεων που καταλαμβάνουν μειώνεται. Πολιτικά, το μπλοκ του ΝΑΤΟ είχε επεκτείνει τον ιστό των συμμαχιών του σε περιοχές που ανήκαν εδώ και καιρό στη ρωσική σφαίρα επιρροής. Η Ρωσία αντεπιτίθεται στην Ουκρανία, αλλά οι διαιρέσεις εντός του ΝΑΤΟ και της ΕΕ έχουν πρόσφατα ακινητοποιήσει αυτές τις συμμαχίες, έτσι ενώ η Ρωσία συνεχίζει να λαμβάνει οπλισμό και οικονομική υποστήριξη από τους συμμάχους της, η δυτική χρηματοδότηση για την Ουκρανία έχει σταματήσει να παίζει τον κρίσιμο ρόλο.

Αλλού, η Ρωσία έχει υποστεί ταπεινωτικές ήττες, όπως με την αδυναμία της να υποστηρίξει την Αρμενία ενάντια στον επεκτατισμό του Αζερμπαϊτζάν, το οποίο υποστηρίζεται από την Τουρκία. Όταν η Τουρκία προσχώρησε στο ΝΑΤΟ κατά τη διάρκεια του Ψυχρού Πολέμου, αυτό ήταν μια μεγάλη νίκη για τη στρατιωτική συμμαχία καθώς επέφερε μερική περικύκλωση της Ρωσίας. Αλλά τώρα, η Τουρκία ενεργεί σε στρατηγικό επίπεδο σαν μια αδέσμευτη χώρα, ακόμη και αν συνεχίζει να διατηρεί το δικαίωμα του βέτο εντός του ΝΑΤΟ.

Κατά τη διάρκεια του Ψυχρού Πολέμου, οι αδέσμευτες χώρες αποτελούνταν από κράτη που ήταν πολύ πιο αδύναμα οικονομικά και στρατιωτικά από τις ΗΠΑ και τη Ρωσία, αλλά που μπορούσαν σταδιακά να βελτιώσουν τη θέση τους κρατώντας ανοιχτές τις πόρτες τους και στα δύο μπλοκ, ουσιαστικά πηγαίνοντας με όποιον θα τους έδινε την καλύτερη συμφωνία.

Έτσι, η Τουρκία εξυπηρετεί ουσιαστικά τα δικά της συμφέροντα, ενάντια τόσο στις ΗΠΑ/ΕΕ όσο και στη Ρωσία, καθώς και σε άλλους μεσαίους αντιπάλους προς τα νότια και ανατολικά της, για παράδειγμα με τον τρόπο που έχει χρησιμοποιήσει σουνιτικές φονταμενταλιστικές ομάδες σχετιζόμενες με το Ισλαμικό Κράτος ενάντια τόσο στο Ιράν όσο και στους Κούρδους.

Τα μέλλοντα

Όταν ένα παγκόσμιο σύστημα παραπαίει, οι γενικές επιλογές είναι:

α) το σύστημα ανανεώνεται και επανεφευρίσκεται με επιτυχία, με τον παλιό ηγέτη να λανσάρει μια αναμορφωμένη αρχιτεκτονική

β) ένας νέος ηγέτης εξασφαλίζει την εξουσία και τη νομιμοποίηση να κερδίσει την υποστήριξη μιας νέας αρχιτεκτονικής, αρχίζοντας ένα νέο παγκόσμιο σύστημα

γ) οι άνθρωποι αυξάνουν τις ικανότητες τους για αντίσταση στο Κράτος και κερδίζουμε μια παγκόσμια επανάσταση, καταστρέφοντας το παγκόσμιο σύστημα και αποτρέποντας τη δημιουργία ενός νέου

δ) το τρέχον παγκόσμιο σύστημα παραμένει στη θέση του, διαβρώνεται και διολισθαίνει όλο και περισσότερο σε παγκόσμιο πόλεμο μέχρι τελικά να συμβεί η επιλογή α, β ή γ.

Ένας Νέος Αμερικανικός Αιώνας

Αναφέρομαι στο Σχέδιο για Έναν Νέο Αμερικανικό Αιώνα (Project for a New American Century- PNAC), την ομάδα νεοσυντηρητικών διανοούμενων που υποστήριξαν τον Μπους ΙΙ και πίστευαν ότι είχαν το στρατηγικό σχέδιο για την αναζωογόνηση των ΗΠΑ ως αδιαμφισβήτητο ηγέτη του κόσμου. Η ειρωνεία είναι ότι κανένας άλλος παίκτης δεν έχει κάνει περισσότερα από τις ΗΠΑ για να υπονομεύσει την ηγεμονία των ΗΠΑ.

Η εξωτερική και οικονομική πολιτική που υποστηρίχθηκε από τον Μπους ΙΙ και συνεχίστηκε με κάποιους τρόπους από τον Τραμπ και άλλους τρόπους από τον Μπάιντεν, πιθανόν έχει καταστρέψει οποιαδήποτε πιθανότητα έχουν οι ΗΠΑ να αποκαταστήσουν την παγκόσμια αρχιτεκτονική που καθιέρωσαν μετά την νίκη τους επί των Ναζί.

Το γεγονός ότι κανένας στην αμερικανική ή βρετανική πολιτική ελίτ δεν φαίνεται να κατανοεί αυτό το γεγονός, απλά το επιβεβαιώνει. Και παρόλο που το επίπεδο της αυτοκαταστροφικής άγνοιας είναι εκπληκτικό, δεν πρέπει να προκαλεί έκπληξη, καθώς οι καπιταλιστές συνήθως κατανοούν τον καπιταλισμό σε επιφανειακό επίπεδο, όπως και οι κρατιστές κατανοούν το Κράτος σε επιφανειακό επίπεδο, παρόμοια με τους σχολιαστές αθλητικών που αναλύουν κυρίως τις φάσεις των πιο πρόσφατων αγώνων.

Όταν οι ΗΠΑ ήταν στην στιγμή της μεγαλύτερης ισχύος τους, στα τέλη της δεκαετίας του ’80 και στη δεκαετία του ’90, αμέσως μετά τη νίκη τους στον Ψυχρό Πόλεμο, η υπεροψία του νεοσυντηρητικού κινήματος στην πολιτική τάξη και η ανεξέλεγκτη απληστία της νεοφιλελεύθερης τεχνοκρατίας μεταξύ των χρηματοπιστωτικών ιδρυμάτων, κατέστρεψαν άμεσα τη βάση της ηγεμονίας των ΗΠΑ.

Το ΔΝΤ, οι G7, και όλο το τσίρκο των ανθρωπιστικών ΜΚΟ και διεθνών επενδυτών επωφελήθηκαν κατάφωρα από τη διαφθορά, τα αυταρχικά καθεστώτα και τους εμφύλιους πολέμους σε πρόσφατα αποαποικιοποιημένες χώρες. Αυτό που εννοούσαν όταν μίλαγαν για “ανάπτυξη” ήταν η απόλυτη εξάρτηση από ένα μόνο εξαγώγιμο προϊόν, έτσι ώστε κάθε φτωχή χώρα να μην είναι μόνο εντελώς ευάλωτη στην πολιτική πίεση από τις ΗΠΑ και την Ευρώπη, αλλά και να βυθίζεται στην πείνα ανάλογα με τις διακυμάνσεις της αγοράς συναλλάγματος. Μετά τη δεκαετία του ’70, αυτό που τους ενδιέφερε περισσότερο ήταν να βγάζουν κέρδη με κάθε τρόπο βασιζόμενοι σε καθαρή χρηματοοικονομική κερδοσκοπία παρά σε οποιαδήποτε παραγωγική ανάπτυξη που, από καπιταλιστική άποψη, θα μπορούσε να θεωρηθεί βιώσιμη. Με άλλα λόγια, όλη η πτέρυγα οπαδών του Λόρενς Σάμερς δεν έκρυβε το γεγονός ότι ήταν βρικόλακες που δεν πίστευαν καν το δικό τους δόγμα, ενώ η πλευρά των Ράμσφελντ και Μπόλτον αδυνατούσε να κρύψει την άγνοιά της για τον κόσμο, για την πολιτική και για τις χώρες στις οποίες πίστευαν ότι μπορούσαν να κυριαρχήσουν.

Η όλη ηγεμονία των ΗΠΑ στη παγκόσμια πολιτική σκηνή ήταν γενικότερα κατάφωρη.

Οι ΗΠΑ και το Ηνωμένο Βασίλειο θα μπορούσαν να είχαν αποδεχτεί περιστασιακές παραχωρήσεις, μη επιτυγχάνοντας πάντα τα επιθυμητά αποτελέσματα στις διεθνείς συγκρούσεις. Αυτό το θέατρο του «παίζοντας δίκαια» θα μπορούσε να είχε δημιουργήσει ευρεία πίστη και εξάρτηση από το πλαίσιο των Ηνωμένων Εθνών. Και αυτό θα είχε ενισχύσει τη δύναμη των ΗΠΑ μακροπρόθεσμα, αφού ο ΟΗΕ δημιουργήθηκε από τις ΗΠΑ και έχει την έδρα της παγκόσμιας πολιτικής στη Νέα Υόρκη. Αλλά αντίθετα, δεν κατανόησαν τη ηγεμονική και σχεσιακή φύση της εξουσίας και πίστευαν ότι η κατοχή μιας άνευ προηγουμένου ποσότητας ισχύος σήμαινε ότι μπορούσαν να δρουν μονομερώς χωρίς να υπονομεύσουν την ίδια τη βάση αυτής της ισχύος.

Αυτό θα ήταν σαν η Apple να είχε καταφέρει να χρησιμοποιούν όλοι στον κόσμο υπολογιστές Apple, αλλά να μην επέτρεπε στους ανθρώπους να παράγουν οτιδήποτε μέσα σε έναν υπολογιστή Apple που να κριτικάρει την Apple. Τι σημασία έχει αν μιλάς άσχημα για το Twitter X, αν το μόνο φόρουμ για να το κάνεις είναι το Twitter X;

Εισβάλλοντας αυθαίρετα στο Ιράκ δύο φορές και δολοφονώντας εκατομμύρια ανθρώπους, ανατρέποντας σοσιαλδημοκρατικά (αλλά καπιταλιστικά!) καθεστώτα επειδή αυτά δεν ευνοούσαν μια λίστα Δυτικών επενδυτών, προστατεύοντας το Ισραήλ από την οποιαδήποτε ελάχιστη επίπληξη μέχρι το σημείο όπου σχεδόν το σύνολο της ισραηλινής κοινωνίας να αισθάνεται πως έχει το δικαίωμα να διαπράττει γενοκτονία — όχι στα κρυφά, όπως μερικές φορές κάνουν οι ΗΠΑ, αλλά φανερά μπροστά στις κάμερες τηλεοπτικών καναλιών, χαμογελώντας και κάνοντας αστεία, με τις ίδιες τις ΗΠΑ να κρατούν τις κάμερες — οι ΗΠΑ και το Ηνωμένο Βασίλειο έχουν καταστρέψει την νομιμοποίηση και την λειτουργικότητα του ίδιου τους του πολιτικού εργαλείου. Οι ΗΠΑ (και υπό την προστασία τους, το Ισραήλ) αγνοούν κατάφωρα και αυθαίρετα τις αποφάσεις του ΟΗΕ. Δρουν σαν “κράτος-παρίας” μέσα στο διακρατικό σύστημα που οι ίδιες σχεδίασαν, αν και το σχεδίασαν προς όφελός τους. Και αυτή η καουμπόικη στάση πάντα χαρακτήριζε την εξωτερική πολιτική των ΗΠΑ (εκτός, ίσως, υπό τον Ρούζβελτ), αλλά επιταχύνθηκε υπό τον Ρέιγκαν και ειδικά τον Μπους ΙΙ.

Ο Τραμπ μιμήθηκε αυτή την αλαζονεία με αρκετές μονομερείς κινήσεις, ενισχύοντας για παράδειγμα την εν λευκώ υποστήριξη προς το Ισραήλ, και αποσυρόμενος από το ίδιο το ζήτημα της στρατηγικής με μια τάση μη-επέμβασης που άφησε τους κύριους συμμάχους των ΗΠΑ ξεκρέμαστους. Η διοίκηση του Μπάιντεν εντωμεταξύ, προσπαθεί να κάνει επανεκκίνηση της στρατηγικής σκέψης, αλλά ενεργεί σαν να βρισκόμαστε στο 1996.

Το Ισραήλ ήταν κάποτε ένα σημαντικό στρατιωτικό εργαστήριο για τις ΗΠΑ και μια πυρηνική επιλογή στην κύρια περιοχή πετρελαϊκής παραγωγής του κόσμου, σε μια εποχή που μια παναραβική συμμαχία απειλούσε με τον έλεγχο τόσο του πετρελαίου όσο και της διώρυγας του Σουέζ. Τώρα, το Ισραήλ είναι σε μεγάλο βαθμό ένα βαρίδιο. Η Σαουδική Αραβία, η Τουρκία και το Ιράν προσπαθούν να ξανασχεδιάσουν τις γραμμές εξουσίας στη Δυτική Ασία με επιθετικό τρόπο και κανένας από αυτούς δεν βασίζεται αποκλειστικά στις ΗΠΑ για την προστασία τους. Η Υεμένη απειλεί ουσιαστικά τη ναυσιπλοΐα μέσω της διώρυγας του Σουέζ και το μεγαλύτερο μέρος του πετρελαίου της Δυτικής Ασίας εξάγεται προς την Ινδία και τις οικονομίες της Ανατολικής Ασίας, κυρίως την Κίνα.

Καθώς το Ισραήλ συνεχίζει την κατάφωρη γενοκτονία των Παλαιστινίων, ο ΟΗΕ αποδεικνύεται ανίκανος να παρέχει ακόμη και ανθρωπιστική βοήθεια και σχεδόν αγνοείται ως δυνητικός διαμεσολαβητής. Οι μόνοι παίκτες που μπορούν να απειλήσουν πραγματικά το Ισραήλ είναι η Χεζμπολάχ, οι Χούθι και οι ένοπλες πολιτοφυλακές που συνδέονται με τους Φρουρούς της Επανάστασης. Ο κύριος παίκτης στη διαδικασία διαμεσολάβησης είναι το Κατάρ. Με άλλα λόγια, οι μόνοι παίκτες που κερδίζουν σε νομιμοποίηση και ισχύ είναι σύμμαχοι του Ιράν, το οποίο είναι η μόνη από τις τρεις περιφερειακές δυνάμεις με την οποία οι ΗΠΑ δεν έχουν καμία σχέση επιρροής ή συμμαχίας.

Εντωμεταξύ, οι ΗΠΑ υποσκάπτουν τη σχέση τους με τις ευρωπαϊκές κυβερνήσεις. Ο Τραμπ συγκεκριμένα έδειξε στην ΕΕ και στο ΝΑΤΟ ότι δεν μπορούν πλέον να θεωρούν τις ΗΠΑ αξιόπιστο εταίρο τους, και αυτό είναι ένα άμεσο αποτέλεσμα της δυσλειτουργίας της δημοκρατίας καθώς το παγκόσμιο σύστημα καταρρέει. Οι δημοκρατικοί μηχανισμοί εξακολουθούν να παρέχουν έναν σημαντικό μηχανισμό αποσυμπίεσης που μπορεί να καθησυχάζει και να ενσωματώνει τα κινήματα αντίστασης πριν αυτά γίνουν επαναστατικά. Αλλά στις ΗΠΑ, τη Βραζιλία, την Ουγγαρία, την Πολωνία και το Ηνωμένο Βασίλειο, οι εκλογικές νίκες των δεξιών λαϊκιστών έδειξαν ότι στην πραγματικότητα η δημοκρατία είναι επικίνδυνη για την εξουσία επειδή δεν είναι εντελώς προσχηματική. Μέχρι τώρα, οι εκλογικές υποσχέσεις ήταν όλες για τα σκουπίδια γιατί καμία νέα πολιτική διοίκηση δεν έθετε σε κίνδυνο τις υποκείμενες οικονομικές πολιτικές του νεοφιλελευθερισμού. Οι τεχνοκράτες δεν έπρεπε να ανησυχούν: η μηχανή τους θα συνέχιζε να λειτουργεί αδιάλειπτα.

Ακόμη και οι εκλογικές νίκες προοδευτικών κομμάτων στην Ελλάδα, τη Βραζιλία, την Αργεντινή και αλλού έδιναν στους καπιταλιστές να καταλάβουν ότι δεν έχουν κανένα λόγο να ανησυχούν. Και τα δημοκρατικά κράτη αποδείχθηκαν ικανά να διαλύσουν πραγματικά φασιστικά κινήματα όπως η Χρυσή Αυγή στην Ελλάδα, πριν αυτά αποδειχθούν πραγματική απειλή. Αλλά οι δεξιοί λευκοί λαϊκιστές όπως ο Τραμπ, ο Μπολσονάρο, ο Όρμπαν και ο Τζόνσον, όχι μόνο διέβρωσαν τη λειτουργικότητα της δημοκρατικής διακυβέρνησης, αλλά απείλησαν και τη σταθερότητα του τεχνοκρατικού status quo, τρομάζοντας τους επενδυτές που ζούσαν μέχρι τότε σε έναν παράδεισο φτιαγμένο μόνο για αυτούς, και έκαναν κομμάτια την υποτιθέμενη ανθεκτικότητα βασικών πολιτικών σχηματισμών όπως η Ευρωπαϊκή Ένωση ή η συμμαχία ΗΠΑ-Ευρώπης.

Η Ευρώπη— έχοντας αποτελέσει για καιρό τον πολύτιμο φορέα πολιτιστικής και πολιτικής νομιμοποίησης, δεδομένης της λευκής υπεροχής στην καρδιά του παγκόσμιου συστήματος— έχει για πρώτη φορά εδώ και σχεδόν έναν αιώνα αναγκαστεί να διαχωρίσει τα συμφέροντά της, και αυτό φαίνεται ήδη σε μια εμφανώς διαφορετική προσέγγιση προς την Κίνα. Στις ΗΠΑ, η πολιτική ελίτ ήδη θεωρεί την Κίνα ισότιμο αντίπαλο για ένα νέο Ψυχρό Πόλεμο, ενώ στην Ευρώπη η Κίνα θεωρείται ως ένας εν μέρη αξιόπιστος στρατηγικός εταίρος. Αν δεν αλλάξει κάτι γρήγορα, οι ΗΠΑ θα υποβαθμιστούν στην ίδια κατάσταση.

Και χωρίς αξιόπιστη υποστήριξη από τις ΗΠΑ, η ΕΕ θα πρέπει να ετοιμαστεί για πόλεμο, για να μπορέσει να αποτρέψει τη Ρωσία από περαιτέρω εισβολές. Για να βρεθεί μια ισορροπία που η Ρωσία δεν θα ρισκάρει να διαταράξει, αυτό μπορεί να σημαίνει να εγκαταληφθεί η Ουκρανία σε έναν μόνιμο διαμελισμό.

Από την προοπτική της αμερικανικής ισχύος, τίποτα από αυτά δεν φαίνεται να είναι για καλό. Για να έχουν την οποιαδήποτε πιθανότητα να ανανεώσουν το παγκόσμιο σύστημα που δημιούργησαν, οι ΗΠΑ θα πρέπει να κάνουν φιλόδοξες κινήσεις για να εξιλεώσουν την κακή τους φήμη:

• να υποστηρίξουν την δημιουργία Παλαιστινιακού Κράτους και να διακόψουν επίσημα την υποστήριξη της τρέχουσας κυρίαρχης τάξης του Ισραήλ καταστρέφοντας με αυτόν τον τρόπο την ισραηλινή οικονομία
• να εξομαλύνουν τις σχέσεις με την Κίνα και το Ιράν, εξασφαλίζοντας όμως ευνοϊκές επενδυτικές και εμπορικές συμφωνίες με τα κατ’όνομα δημοκρατικά καθεστώτα όπως της Ινδίας, της Ταϊβάν και της Νότιας Κορέας
• να κάνουν μια πειστική, ουσιαστική πρόταση για αναδιάταξη των διεθνών επενδύσεων που να διαφέρει από τη μισθοφορική νομισματική πολιτική του ΔΝΤ, διασφαλίζοντας περισσότερη αυτονομία για τη “βιώσιμη ανάπτυξη”, που θα καθοδηγείται από τις τοπικές κυρίαρχες τάξεις των πρώην αποικιοκρατούμενων χωρών, κλπ.
• να παρουσιάσουν ένα πειστικό σχέδιο για μια παγκόσμια μετάβαση στη πράσινη ενέργεια που θα επιταχύνει το τρέχον κύμα κερδοφόρων επενδύσεων, εξόρυξης και παραγωγής, ενώ επίσης θα περιλαμβάνει ένα στοιχείο “παγκόσμιας δικαιοσύνης”που θα παρέχει ουσιαστικούς πόρους σε φτωχές χώρες για να συμμετάσχουν στη μετάβαση και να βελτιώσουν την οικονομική τους θέση

Και εσωτερικά:

• να υιοθετήσουν την κατάργηση των φυλακών για δεύτερη φορά (η πρώτη φορά ήταν το 1865^[1]) με την αποποινικοποίηση των ναρκωτικών, την κατάργηση της ποινής της κάθειρξης για όλους τους μη βίαιους παραβάτες και την επέκταση της χρήσης άοπλων περιπολικών γειτονιάς
• να θεσπίσει υγειονομική περίθαλψη για όλους

Η πιθανότητα να συμβούν αυτά φαίνεται ωστόσο ελάχιστη, δεδομένου του πόσο μικρή είναι η επίγνωση που έχει η σημερινή άρχουσα τάξη για όλους τους τρόπους με τους οποίους υπονομεύει η ίδια την εξουσία της.

Μοιάζουν να πιστεύουν ακόμα ότι η προβολή δύναμης είναι ο τρόπος για να παραμείνουν στην εξουσία. Αλλά κανείς δεν αμφισβητεί ότι οι ΗΠΑ έχουν τον ισχυρότερο στρατό στον κόσμο. Δεν χρειάζεται. Το μόνο που χρειάζεται να δείξουν οι αντίπαλοι είναι ότι ο στρατός των ΗΠΑ αδυνατεί να φέρει εις πέρας αυτά που επιθυμεί η άρχουσα τάξη. Αυτό αποδείχθηκε τόσο στο Αφγανιστάν όσο και στο αδιέξοδο του Ιράκ. Και τώρα οι ΗΠΑ κόβουν βόλτες πάνω κάτω στην Ερυθρά Θάλασσα και τη Μεσόγειο εκτοξεύοντας πυραύλους στην Υεμένη, τη Συρία και το Ιράκ, φουσκώνοντας το στήθος τους και δείχνοντας ότι αν με χτυπήσεις με ένα άχυρο θα σε χτυπήσω με ένα σφυρί, αλλά αυτό που πραγματικά δείχνουν είναι η αναποτελεσματικότητά τους, η προθυμία τους να προκαλέσουν αποσταθεροποίηση της περιοχής από καθαρή αλαζονεία, και η μόνιμη περιφρόνησή τους για τα κυριαρχικά δικαιώματα οποιασδήποτε άλλης χώρας, ακόμα και των συμμάχων τους.

Αυτό βλάπτει σοβαρά την πίστη στις ΗΠΑ ως τον εν δυνάμει παγκόσμιο ηγέτη, γιατί μία από τις βασικές αλλαγές από το βρετανικό παγκόσμιο σύστημα στο αμερικανικό ήταν η αποαποικιοποίηση, καθώς μετά τον Β’ Παγκόσμιο Πόλεμο οι ΗΠΑ προβλήθηκαν ως εγγυητές της ελευθερίας απέναντι τόσο σε δικτατορίες όσο και σε επιθετικά κράτη.

Η αμερικανική ισχύς ακυρώνεται από την πραγματικότητα. Για δύο χρόνια, η Ουκρανία πολεμά επί ίσοις όροις τη Ρωσία, τη δεύτερη ισχυρότερη στρατιωτική δύναμη στον κόσμο, καταστρέφοντας ρωσικά τανκς εκατομμυρίων δολαρίων με drones αξίας μερικών χιλιάδων δολαρίων. Οι Χούθι τώρα χρησιμοποιούν drones απειλώντας τη ναυσιπλοΐα σε μία από τις πιο σημαντικές εμπορικές υδάτινες οδούς της παγκόσμιας οικονομίας. Η αποτελεσματικότητα των αμερικανικών συστημάτων αντιπυραυλικής άμυνας αξίας δισεκατομμυρίων δολαρίων είναι απλώς μέτρια. Εν τω μεταξύ, οι αμερικανικές πυραυλικές επιθέσεις από βάσεις, πλοία και αεροπλάνα σε όλη την περιοχή είναι κάτι παρά πάνω από αναποτελεσματικές, επειδή ενισχύουν τους αντιπάλους και αναγκάζουν τις μη συμμαχικές χώρες να επανατοποθετήσουν τους εαυτούς τους σε απόσταση ασφαλείας από τις ΗΠΑ και το Ισραήλ.

Αντί να προβάλλουν ισχύ, οι ΗΠΑ χρειάζονται να προβάλλουν νοημοσύνη, δημιουργώντας λύσεις για τις πολλές κρίσεις που πλήττουν το παγκόσμιο σύστημα. Η σημερινή αμερικανική κυρίαρχη τάξη δεν βλέπει τα πραγματικά προβλήματα και δεν προτείνει καμία πραγματική λύση. Η πιθανότητα αλλαγής φρουράς που θα ωθήσει τις αμερικανικές και ευρωπαϊκές ελίτ σε μια πιο έξυπνη στάση είναι εξαιρετικά χαμηλή, κοιτώντας τον εκλογικό χάρτη.

Από τους Τραμπικούς, που ρίχνουν λάδι στη φωτιά στο εσωτερικό και στο εξωτερικό, μέχρι τους Μπάιντεν, που δοκιμάζουν τις ίδιες παλιές τεχνικές ελπίζοντας σε διαφορετικά αποτελέσματα, το πολιτικό κατεστημένο βρίσκεται σε πόλεμο με τον εαυτό του. Πολιτικοί, τεχνοκράτες και επενδυτές εκλαμβάνουν προτάσεις που είναι πραγματικά αναγκαίες για να σωθεί το τρέχον παγκόσμιο σύστημα σαν ένα παράξενο μείγμα προδοσίας, προοδευτικών ανοησιών και σοσιαλιστικής επανάστασης.

Ο δρόμος των BRICS

Σε αυτό το σημείο φαίνεται απίθανο ότι οι ΗΠΑ θα μπορούσαν να διασώσουν το σχέδιό τους για παγκόσμια κυριαρχία, αλλά μέχρι να εμφανιστεί ένας αποτελεσματικός νέος ηγέτης με μια πειστική νέα αρχιτεκτονική, αυτό σημαίνει ότι το τρέχον σύστημα θα συνεχίσει να υφίσταται, παρακμάζοντας όλο και περισσότερο με συγκρούσεις, πολέμους και ακόμη και νεοφασιστικά καθεστώτα σε ορισμένες περιοχές, μέχρι να συμβεί μια αποφασιστική αλλαγή προς τη μία ή την άλλη κατεύθυνση.

Στο δοκίμιο «Αναρχία στα Παγκόσμια Συστήματα», ο Alex Gorrion υποστηρίζει ότι ο επόμενος παγκόσμιος αρχιτέκτονας θα είναι πιθανώς η Κίνα ή ενδεχομένως η Ινδία.

Πριν εξετάσουμε αυτές τις πιθανότητες, ας ρίξουμε μια ματιά σε ένα χαρακτηριστικό του θεωρητικού πλαισίου που χρησιμοποιούμε, το παγκόσμιο σύστημα. Ο πιο σχετικός θεωρητικός είναι ο Τζιοβάνι Αρίγκι, ο οποίος συνδύαζε μια κατά κύριο λόγο υλιστική ανάλυση των παγκόσμιων οικονομικών ροών με μια κατά κύριο λόγο αναρχική ανάλυση της εξουσίας και του κοινωνικού σχεδιασμού υπό το σύγχρονο κράτος. Φυσικά δεν αποδίδει τα εύσημα στους αναρχικούς, αλλά είναι ακαδημαϊκός, οπότε αυτό είναι αναμενόμενο.

Στην πρώτη έκδοση του βιβλίου του ” Τα μονοπάτια του Κεφαλαίου”, που δημοσιεύθηκε το 1994, ο Αρίγκι κάνει αυτό το τολμηρό βήμα: μια πρόβλεψη. Και το παίρνει εντελώς λάθος, λέγοντας ότι η Ιαπωνία θα είναι ο αρχιτέκτονας και ηγέτης του επόμενου παγκόσμιου συστήματος. Σε μια μεταγενέστερη έκδοση του βιβλίου ωστόσο, κάνει το σωστό και αναγνωρίζει ότι έκανε λάθος και ότι πιθανότατα η ηγέτιδα δύναμη του μέλλοντος θα είναι η Κίνα. Ωστόσο, δεν προσφέρει μια πειστική ανάλυση για το ποιο ελάττωμα της θεωρίας τον οδήγησε να κάνει αρχικά αυτό το λάθος.

Στο κείμενο «Αναρχία στα Παγκόσμια Συστήματα» υποστηρίζεται ότι το λάθος του Αρίγκι προκύπτει από την προτίμηση του προς την υλιστική πλευρά του δικού του θεωρητικού εργαλείου, έναντι της αναρχικής οπτικής. Η συσσώρευση κεφαλαίου δεν είναι η κινητήρια δύναμη του παγκόσμιου συστήματος. Είναι ένα αναγκαίο καύσιμο, αλλά η συσσώρευση κεφαλαίου δεν συμβαίνει χωρίς την αρχιτεκτονική και τον στρατηγικό σχεδιασμό των κρατών. Μπορούμε να συνειδητοποιήσουμε πόσο προφανές θα έπρεπε να είναι αυτό, αν αφήσουμε τους εαυτούς μας να δουν εκ των υστέρων το πόσο γελοία ήταν η πρόβλεψη ότι η Ιαπωνία θα ήταν η νούμερο ένα παγκόσμια δύναμη. Αυτή η πρόβλεψη βασιζόταν σε στατιστικά στοιχεία για την οικονομική ανάπτυξη της Ιαπωνίας, αφήνοντας έξω τον μη ποσοτικοποιήσιμο παράγοντα: τον στρατηγικό σχεδιασμό και τις διαμάχες εξουσίας των κρατών.

Η Ιαπωνία δεν θα μπορούσε να είναι ο επόμενος παγκόσμιος αρχιτέκτονας, διότι δεν είχε κερδίσει ποτέ έναν πόλεμο ενάντια στον παλιό ηγέτη, τις ΗΠΑ, και έτσι δεν είχε αποκτήσει κάποιο χώρο αυτονομίας μέσα στον οποίο θα μπορούσε να αρχίσει να κατασκευάζει έναν νέο σχεδιασμό. Μόλις η Ιαπωνία αμφισβήτησε τις ΗΠΑ— σε καθαρά οικονομικό επίπεδο— στη δεκαετία του ’80, οι Αμερικανοί σχεδιαστές απλώς έκοψαν την παροχή χρήματος. Μετά τον Πόλεμο της Κορέας όμως, η Κίνα είχε αυτή τη στρατιωτική νίκη έναντι των ΗΠΑ, και άρα έναν χώρο περιφερειακής αυτονομίας.

Θα μπορούσε λοιπόν η Κίνα να είναι ο αρχιτέκτονας του επόμενου παγκόσμιου συστήματος, και πώς θα μπορούσε αυτό να μοιάζει;

Για αρχή, η Κίνα δεν φαίνεται να έχει τη στρατιωτική δύναμη που απολάμβαναν οι προηγούμενοι αρχιτέκτονες του παγκόσμιου συστήματος. Τον 18ο και 19ο αιώνα, οι Βρετανοί είχαν τον πιο ισχυρό στόλο του κόσμου, πράγμα που τους έδινε παγκόσμια στρατιωτική εμβέλεια. Στο τέλος του Β’ Παγκοσμίου Πολέμου οι ΗΠΑ είχαν τον πιο αποτελεσματικό στρατό, τον μεγαλύτερο στόλο αεροπλανοφόρων, πυρηνικές βόμβες, βομβαρδιστικά μεγάλων αποστάσεων, και στρατιωτικές βάσεις με διαδρόμους προσγείωσης αρκετά μεγάλους για αυτά τα βομβαρδιστικά, σε όλο τον κόσμο.

Σήμερα, η Κίνα κατέχει προηγμένη τεχνολογία, αλλά μόλις πρόσφατα απέκτησε έναν στόλο ανοιχτής θάλασσας και πολύ πιο πρόσφατα επεκτάθηκε σε διαπλανητικό επίπεδο, στήνοντας τις πρώτες στρατιωτικές βάσεις στην ανατολική Αφρική. Ωστόσο, αυτή η διάκριση μπορεί να μην είναι τόσο σημαντική όσο ήταν στο παρελθόν.

Δεν υπάρχει κράτος που η κινεζική κυβέρνηση θα πρέπει να ανατρέψει ή να κατακτήσει για να πάρει τη θέση του ως παγκόσμιος αρχιτέκτονας (η Ταϊβάν μοιάζει να είναι αυτό το κράτος, αν και για λόγους πολύ πιο σχετικούς με την ιδεολογία της Κινεζικής άρχουσας τάξης παρά με την θέση της Κίνας στην παγκόσμια σκηνή· η Ταϊβάν, στην πραγματικότητα, θα μπορούσε να γίνει το Ισραήλ της Κίνας). Στο τρέχον σύστημα, ο ανοιχτός πόλεμος έχει δείξει φθίνουσες αποδόσεις. Καμία μεγάλη δύναμη δεν έχει συγκρουστεί ανοιχτά από το 1945 και όλες οι μεγάλες επεμβάσεις των δύο παγκόσμιων δυνάμεων (Βιετνάμ για τις ΗΠΑ και τους Σοβιετικούς, Αφγανιστάν για τους Σοβιετικούς, Αφγανιστάν και Ιράκ για τις ΗΠΑ) τους κόστισαν τελικά περισσότερα από όσα κέρδισαν.

Η μόνη στρατιωτική ικανότητα που πιθανώς θα χρειαζόταν η Κίνα για να αναλάβει τον ρόλο του παγκόσμιου ηγέτη είναι η επιχειρησιακή ικανότητα για αποτροπή και σταθεροποίηση. Αποτροπή σημαίνει απλώς ότι η Κίνα θα αποτελεί στρατιωτική απειλή αρκετά ισχυρή ώστε κανένα άλλο κράτος να μην τολμά να της επιτεθεί ανοιχτά σε αυτήν ή στα μικρότερα κράτη που η ίδια θεωρεί ως την κύρια ζώνη επιρροής της. Οι επιχειρήσεις σταθεροποίησης θα απαιτούσαν από την Κίνα να προβάλει τη δύναμη της διεθνώς για να προστατεύσει τη ροή του εμπορίου και τις μεγάλες επενδύσεις. Οι βάσεις της στην Ανατολική Αφρική είναι καλά τοποθετημένες για να βοηθήσουν στην αστυνόμευση των διαδρομών προς την Ερυθρά Θάλασσα και τη Διώρυγα του Σουέζ μέσω των οποίων ρέει μεγάλο μέρος του εμπορίου μεταξύ Ευρώπης και Ασίας.

Ωστόσο, αν προχωρήσουμε αυτή την ανάλυση περαιτέρω, θα ήταν λάθος να υποθέσουμε ότι απαιτείται ένα μόνο κράτος να είναι η μοναδική στρατιωτική και οικονομική υπερδύναμη για να ξεκινήσει ένα νέο παγκόσμιο σύστημα. Από τη Βεστφαλιανή κυριαρχία^[2] μέχρι τα Ηνωμένα Έθνη, όλα τα προηγούμενα παγκόσμια συστήματα βασίζονταν σε μεγάλο βαθμό στη συνεργασία (μεταξύ των εθνών-κρατών) και αν όχι στη συναίνεση, τότε τουλάχιστον στη συγκατάθεση.

Αυτό μπορούμε να το δούμε πιο καθαρά με τις χώρες του συνασπισμού BRICS, ένα σχήμα που προδιαγράφει καλύτερα ένα πιθανό νέο παγκόσμιο σύστημα. Οι BRICS, μαζί με την Νέα Αναπτυξιακή Τράπεζα και άλλους συνδεδεμένους θεσμούς, αποτελούν έναν αντίβαρο στο G7 και το ΔΝΤ. Πρόκειται για τις υπερδυνάμεις του λεγόμενου αναπτυσσόμενου κόσμου: Βραζιλία, Ρωσία, Ινδία και Κίνα όταν ξεκίνησε το 2009, με τη Νότια Αφρική να προστίθεται έναν χρόνο αργότερα. Στην αρχή αυτού του έτους εντάχθηκαν η Αίγυπτος, η Αιθιοπία, το Ιράν και τα Ηνωμένα Αραβικά Εμιράτα.

Σαφώς, οι BRICS επιτυγχάνουν σημαντική ανάπτυξη με τις αρχικές πέντε χώρες να αποτελούν το 45% του παγκόσμιου πληθυσμού και το 33% του παγκόσμιου ΑΕΠ (ή 27% αν δεν προσαρμοστεί σύμφωνα με την αγοραστική δύναμη). Αυτά σε σύγκριση με το ΝΑΤΟ (το οποίο είναι στρατιωτική συμμαχία και όχι οικονομική όπως οι BRICS), με 31 μέλη που αντιπροσωπεύουν το 55% των παγκόσμιων στρατιωτικών δαπανών, το 12% του παγκόσμιου πληθυσμού και πάνω από το ένα τρίτο του παγκόσμιου ΑΕΠ.

Εντωμεταξύ, η Νέα Αναπτυξιακή Τράπεζα με έδρα τη Σαγκάη, έχει συνολικά κεφάλαια 100 δισεκατομμυρίων δολαρίων, με 34 δισεκατομμύρια δολάρια σε εγκεκριμένα δάνεια ετησίως. Αυτό είναι πολύ λιγότερο από τα 932 δισεκατομμύρια δολάρια που αποτελούν τους συνολικούς πόρους του ΔΝΤ, αλλά δεν είναι και αμελητέο ποσό.

Τόσο ο ΟΗΕ όσο και το ΔΝΤ ιδρύθηκαν στις ΗΠΑ (με την πρώτη Γενική Συνέλευση του ΟΗΕ να συγκαλείται στο Ηνωμένο Βασίλειο, τον στενότερο σύμμαχο των ΗΠΑ). Ο κύριος αντίπαλος των ΗΠΑ, η ΕΣΣΔ, συμπεριλήφθηκε στον ΟΗΕ μιας και ο σκοπός του ήταν να αποτελεί ένα παγκόσμιο οργανισμό που να περιλαμβάνει όλα τα σύγχρονα κράτη, αλλά οι ΗΠΑ χρησιμοποίησαν τον ΟΗΕ συστηματικά για να περιορίσουν τους αντιπάλους τους, ή τον αποδυνάμωσαν όταν δεν μπορούσαν να επιβληθούν. Και αρχικά η ΕΣΣΔ δεν συμπεριλήφθηκε στο ΔΝΤ και σε παρόμοιους χρηματοπιστωτικούς θεσμούς, αν και με την πάροδο του χρόνου προσκλήθηκε και ενσωματώθηκε. Με άλλα λόγια, το σύστημα των ΗΠΑ υποστήριζε ότι είναι παγκόσμιο αλλά το έκανε με τρόπους που ωφελούσαν διακριτικά τις ΗΠΑ και τους συμμάχους τους.

Οι BRICS, από την άλλη πλευρά, ακολουθούν μια διαφορετική στρατηγική. Η συμμαχία δίνει στον εαυτό της τη δυνατότητα να είναι αντιηγεμονική, χωρίς να προσποιείται ότι είναι παγκόσμια. Είναι πολύ ξεκάθαρα ένα αντίβαρο στους κυρίαρχους οικονομικούς θεσμούς και συμμαχίες (το G7 και το ΔΝΤ). Και όμως, προσφέρεται για πιο ουσιαστική συνεργασία. Ειδικά κατά την ίδρυσή της το 2009, η Κίνα αποτελούσε την οικονομική δύναμη της συμμαχίας. Η Κίνα έχει συνεχιζόμενες πολιτικές και οικονομικές αντιπαλότητες καθώς και συνοριακές διαφορές, τόσο με τη Ρωσία όσο και με την Ινδία. Και όμως, και οι δύο αυτές χώρες προσκλήθηκαν να αποτελέσουν την αρχική βάση και η ιδρυτική σύνοδος κορυφής πραγματοποιήθηκε όχι στην Κίνα αλλά στη Ρωσία (αν και όχι χωρίς σημασία, στο Γεκατερίνμπουργκ, που βρίσκεται στην Ασία).

Δεν υπάρχει τίποτα επαναστατικό στο σύστημα που σχεδιάζει η Κίνα. Είναι απολύτως μια συνέχεια του παγκόσμιου συστήματος του καπιταλισμού, που κυβερνά τον κόσμο με όλο και πιο σφιχτό έλεγχο από τον 16ο αιώνα. Ωστόσο, επιδεικνύει ορισμένες διαφορετικές οργανωτικές αρχές.

Στο σύστημα υπό την ηγεσία των ΗΠΑ, μπορούμε να εντοπίσουμε τις εξής αρχές.

Αποαποικιοποίηση των Εθνών: οι ΗΠΑ διαφοροποιήθηκαν από τη Μεγάλη Βρετανία, την μεγαλύτερη αποικιοκράτική δύναμη στην παγκόσμια ιστορία, υποστηρίζοντας την “αποαποικιοποίηση”… μέσα σε ένα συγκεκριμένο πλαίσιο. Κάθε έθνος-κράτος θα πρέπει να έχει μια κυβέρνηση κατά τα δυτικά πρότυπα, αλλά οι αποικισμένοι πληθυσμοί δεν επιτρέπεται να αυτοκαθοριστούν. Τα σύνορα συνήθως σχεδιάστηκαν από τους πρώην αποικιοκράτες και η ανεξαρτησία θα δινόταν μόνο όταν οι πρώην αποικιοκράτες και οι ΗΠΑ αποφάσιζαν ότι μια νέα (τοπική) άρχουσα τάξη ήταν έτοιμη να αναλάβει την εξουσία. Έτσι, οι περισσότερες καταπιεστικές δυναμικές εξουσίας της αποικιακής εποχής επιβίωσαν μετέπειτα στην εποχή της αποαποικιοποίησης.

Νεοφιλελευθερισμός: η Διεθνής Νομισματική Τράπεζα και ο Παγκόσμιος Οργανισμός Εμπορίου ώθησαν τις παγκόσμιες οικονομίες μακριά από τον προστατευτισμό και προς την απελευθέρωση της νομισματικής πολιτικής έτσι ώστε, θεωρητικά, οι καπιταλιστές οπουδήποτε στον κόσμο να μπορούν να επενδύσουν οπουδήποτε το επιθυμούν. Η έννοια της «ελεύθερης αγοράς» ήταν καθαρή μυθολογία, καθώς οι μεγάλες επενδύσεις σε φτωχότερες χώρες τείνουν να έχουν μονοπωλιακά χαρακτηριστικά και οι ισχυρές χώρες μπορούσαν να καταστρέψουν τα νομίσματα των λιγότερο ισχυρών χωρών. Επιπλέον, οι επενδύσεις σε πρώην αποικισμένες χώρες τείνουν να επιτυγχάνουν κέρδη με καθαρά κερδοσκοπικό, χρηματοοικονομικό τρόπο ή/και ενισχύοντας οικονομίες εξαγωγών/εξορύξεων/φυτειών.

Δημοκρατία και Ανθρώπινα Δικαιώματα: οι ΗΠΑ προώθησαν την καθολική δημοκρατία με εγγυήσεις για τα ανθρώπινα δικαιώματα. Ωστόσο, από όλες τις οργανωτικές αρχές αυτές αποδείχθηκαν οι πιο ατελείς. Οι επενδυτές συχνά διαπίστωναν ότι ήταν πιο βολικό να συνεργάζονται με δικτατορίες, ειδικά όταν ο στόχος τους ήταν το γρήγορο κέρδος ή η κατασκευή εξαιρετικά καταστροφικών μεγάλων έργων. Και οι ΗΠΑ, η Βρετανία, η Γαλλία, η Ολλανδία και η Βελγική πολιτική ελίτ ήταν πολύ ζηλότυπες με την εξουσία τους για να επιτρέψουν ελεύθερες εκλογές, όταν αυτό σήμαινε ότι μια τοπική κυβέρνηση θα κέρδιζε σε δύναμη και θα την έκανε την χώρα λιγότερο υπάκουη, ή όταν η νέα κυβέρνηση δεν ευνοούσε τους ενδεδειγμένους επενδυτές. Ως εκ τούτου, αυτά τα κράτη του ΝΑΤΟ ιδίως, εμπλέκονταν σε πραξικοπήματα και υποστήριζαν δικτατορίες σε όλο τον κόσμο, στην «πίσω αυλή της Αμερικής» ή στις πρώην αποικίες σε όλη την Αφρική και την Ασία, αντίστοιχα. Όσο για τα ανθρώπινα δικαιώματα, αποδείχθηκε ότι ήταν μια έννοια σε μεγάλο βαθμό χωρίς περιεχόμενο στις ιεραρχικές κοινωνίες που παράγουν τεράστιες ανισότητες.

Θα χρειαζόμασταν εδώ μια καλύτερη ανάλυση, αλλά πιστεύω ότι οι οργανωτικές αρχές που προωθεί η Κίνα μπορούν να συνοψιστούν ως εξής:

Κρατική Κυριαρχία: αν και η Κίνα ασκεί σε μεγάλο βαθμό πολιτικές εθνοκάθαρσης και θα πρέπει να χαρακτηριστεί ως κράτος εποικισμού σε τουλάχιστον τα μισά από τα εδάφη που την απαρτίζουν, και ο ίδιος ο Σι θα μπορούσε να περιγραφεί ακριβέστερα ως ένας βαθιά εθνικιστής σοσιαλιστής, η Κίνα δεν δίνει έμφαση στο έθνος-κράτος ως οργανωτική αρχή σε παγκόσμιο επίπεδο. Πολύ πιο σημαντική αρχή αποτελεί η κρατική κυριαρχία: εντός των συνόρων του, το κάθε κράτος έχει τη νομιμοποίηση να κάνει ό,τι θέλει. Μπορεί να επιβάλει εθνική ομοιογένεια, μπορεί να καταργήσει τις ιδέες περί έθνους εντελώς. Το τι κάνει είναι δική του δουλειά και κανενός άλλου. Υποθετικά, διαφωνίες γύρω από τα υπάρχοντα σύνορα μεταξύ κυρίαρχων κρατών θα πρέπει να επιλύονται μέσω διμερούς διπλωματίας. Επίσης υποθετικά, καθώς θα αυξάνεται η στρατιωτική ισχύς, η Κινεζική άρχουσα τάξη θα υποστηρίζει πραξικοπήματα και αλλαγές καθεστώτος σε ασθενέστερες χώρες σε όλη την Ασία, την Ωκεανία, τη Λατινική Αμερική και την Αφρική, αλλά θα χρειάζεται να βρίσκει έναν αποτελεσματικό τρόπο διακυβέρνησης ή δικαιολόγησης αυτών των έκτακτων ενεργειών.

Επενδύσεις σε υποδομές: η Κίνα θα συνεχίσει να υποστηρίζει το παγκόσμιο ελεύθερο εμπόριο, ισορροπώντας ως συνήθως μεταξύ της παροχής στρατηγικής υποστήριξης σε σημαντικές εγχώριες εταιρείες και της διασφάλισης της δυνατότητας για τις κυβερνήσεις να προσελκύουν επενδύσεις από οπουδήποτε στον κόσμο, το δικαίωμα των επενδυτών να επενδύουν οπουδήποτε στον κόσμο. Αλλά σε αντίθεση με την έμφαση στο καθαρό κέρδος, όπως στο αμερικανικό σύστημα, μπορεί να υπάρξει μια πραγματική στροφή προς την προώθηση της βιώσιμης οικονομικής ανάπτυξης, που επιτυγχάνεται αρχικά μέσω μεγάλων έργων «βελτίωσης» των υποδομών στις μετα-αποικιακές χώρες. Με άλλα λόγια, η Κίνα -και η Ινδία και η Βραζιλία- πιθανότατα θα επιδιώξουν να επιτύχουν μια επέκταση της πραγματικής παραγωγής, όχι μόνο της εγχώριας αλλά σε όλο τον κόσμο.

Ποιότητα ζωής: Δεδομένου του τεχνοκρατικού υποβάθρου της, η Κινεζική άρχουσα τάξη είναι πιθανό να προκρίνει την έμφαση στην ποιότητα ζωής έναντι των ανθρωπίνων δικαιωμάτων. Η ποιότητα ζωής, σύμφωνα με τη θρησκεία του καπιταλισμού, είναι κάτι που μπορεί να μετρηθεί ποσοτικά, σε αντίθεση με τα ανθρώπινα δικαιώματα. Και η προώθηση αυτής της αντίληψης της ποιότητας ζωής συνάδει με την αυξημένη επένδυση στην ανάπτυξη των υποδομών, ενώ η έννοια των ανθρωπίνων δικαιωμάτων ενθαρρύνει παραβιάσεις της κυριαρχίας άλλων κρατών. Τα ανθρώπινα δικαιώματα είναι ένα υπόλειμμα του πατερναλισμού των αποικιοκρατικών, χριστιανικών χωρών που χρειάζονται να βεβαιωθούν ότι οι αποικιοκρατούμενοι λαοί έχουν μάθει να απαγγέλουν τα κατάλληλα δόγματα πριν μπορέσουν να τους εμπιστευθούν την ανεξαρτησία τους. Η ποιότητα ζωής, ωστόσο, μπορεί να αποτελέσει ένα κοινό σημείο μεταξύ διπλωματών που εργάζονται για μια πολιτική τάξη η οποία βασίζεται στην απόλυτη κρατική κυριαρχία και τεχνοκρατών- επενδυτών που επιδιώκουν την οικονομική ανάπτυξη μέσω επενδύσεων σε υποδομές. Η υπόσχεση για υψηλότερη ποιότητα ζωής μπορεί επίσης να αποτελέσει μια αποτελεσματική στρατηγική για τον κατευνασμό πιθανών απειλητικών λαϊκών κινημάτων.

Τόσο το παράδειγμα όσο και οι πόροι που προσφέρουν οι BRICS αποδεικνύονται ελκυστικά. Μόνο φέτος, το Ιράν ήταν μία από τις πολλές νέες χώρες που εντάχθηκαν στις BRICS, παρά τις προσπάθειες των ΗΠΑ να απομονώσουν την Τεχεράνη.

Πώς θα έμοιαζε το σημείο καμπής, που θα προαναγγέλλει την αρχή ενός νέου παγκόσμιου συστήματος;

Οι BRICS δεν θα ήταν απαραίτητα το όχημα για το νέο παγκόσμιο σύστημα, ειδικά επειδή η συμμαχία σχεδιάστηκε ως ένα οικονομικό και πολιτικό αντίβαρο μέσα στο τρέχον παγκόσμιο σύστημα. Αλλά, παρόμοια με τη σχέση μεταξύ της Κοινωνίας των Εθνών και των Ηνωμένων Εθνών, δίνει μια καλή ένδειξη για το πώς θα έμοιαζε το νέο σύστημα.

Θα μπορούσε εύκολα να ξεκινήσει ως συμμαχία ή κάποιου είδους συνθήκη, μετά από μια παγκόσμια ύφεση και την εξάπλωση ενός ή δύο περιφερειακών πολέμων. Η συνθήκη ή η συμμαχία θα μπορούσε να μίλαγε μια γλώσσα που να αναφέρεται στον σεβασμό των συνόρων και της εσωτερικής κυριαρχίας των κρατών και στη δέσμευση για διαμεσολάβηση αντί του πολέμου. Θα μπορούσε να παρουσιαστεί ως ένα win-win (αντί για το αρνητικό άθροισμα του ανοιχτού πολέμου) εάν ήταν η επέκταση μιας ήδη υπάρχουσας, επιτυχημένης συμμαχίας μεταξύ οικονομικών μεγάλων δυνάμεων. Αυτή η συμμαχία θα έστελνε ανοιχτή πρόσκληση σε όλες τις άλλες χώρες, απαιτώντας μια ανανέωση της δέσμευσης για ελεύθερο εμπόριο, ενώ θα ανακοίνωνε μεγάλες επενδύσεις ως κίνητρο. Αντί για τον επιθετικό δανεισμό του ΔΝΤ, αυτές οι επενδύσεις θα σχεδιάζονταν φαινομενικά για τον εκσυγχρονισμό των υποδομών σε όλο τον κόσμο και την αύξηση της ποιότητας ζωής.

Οι αρχικοί υπογράφοντες αυτής της συμμαχίας θα πρέπει πιθανώς να περιλαμβάνουν την Κίνα, την Ινδία, τη Βραζιλία, τη Νότια Αφρική, την Ινδονησία, την Αίγυπτο, ίσως την Αργεντινή και τη Σαουδική Αραβία, και— κρίσιμα— την Ευρωπαϊκή Ένωση, ή τουλάχιστον τη Γερμανία και τη Γαλλία. Όπως σημειώθηκε, η ΕΕ έχει ήδη αρχίσει να απομακρύνεται από τις ΗΠΑ και να διατηρεί ανοιχτές προοπτικές για χτίσιμο καλών σχέσεων με την Κίνα.

Μια σημαντική αλλαγή που θα μπορούσε να γείρει την πλάστιγγα, θα ήταν μια πιθανή χρεωκοπία των ΗΠΑ σε μια μελλοντική ύφεση, ή το να εξακολουθήσουν οι ΗΠΑ τη αχαλίνωτη στρατιωτική επιθετικότητα σε όλο τον κόσμο, χωρίς μια αντίστοιχη δέσμευση προς τους ιστορικούς συμμάχους τους.

Η νέα συμμαχία θα ξεκινούσε αυτοβούλως μεταξύ μιας ομάδας χωρών, αλλά θα επεκτεινόταν παγκοσμίως και θα ξεπερνούσε γρήγορα τον ΟΗΕ και το ΔΝΤ σε νομιμοποίηση, λειτουργικότητα και πόρους.

Ποιες θα ήταν οι πρώτες εντάσεις που θα αντιμετώπιζε ένα τέτοιο παγκόσμιο σύστημα; Δεν τίθεται θέμα πως η Συμφωνία του Παρισιού ή ο ΟΗΕ έχουν οποιαδήποτε πραγματικά θετική επίδραση στην αντιμετώπιση της πλανητικής καταστροφής, αλλά η έμφαση των BRICS στη χρήση «κυρίαρχων πόρων» (ορυκτών καυσίμων) για τη χρηματοδότηση της ανάπτυξης και την πληρωμή μιας ενεργειακής μετάβασης αποκλείει άμεσα οποιεσδήποτε πραγματικές εναλλακτικές για τον πλανήτη. Αυτό σημαίνει ότι η επιταχυνόμενη και καταστροφική κλιματική αλλαγή θα είναι το σκηνικό του νέου παγκόσμιου συστήματος. Οι αλλαγές καιρού αποδεικνύονται πιο καταστροφικές για τις χώρες της εύκρατης ζώνης, αλλά αυτές είναι οι ίδιες χώρες που πρέπει να αναλάβουν το βάρος της εγκαινίασης ενός νέου παγκόσμιου συστήματος.

Οι Κινεζικές και Ινδικές επενδύσεις στην Αφρική πιθανότατα θα διατηρήσουν έναν απροκάλυπτα αποικιακό χαρακτήρα (περισσότερο, για παράδειγμα, από τις Βραζιλιάνικες επενδύσεις στη Λατινική Αμερική), εμποδίζοντας το νέο σύστημα να επωφεληθεί από τις αλλαγές βιτρίνας (ΣτΜ: change in branding στο πρωτότυπο) ή να αυξήσει την νομιμοποίηση του.

Οι αγώνες εξουσίας μεταξύ των πιο ισχυρών μελών της συμμαχίας θα μπορούσαν να αποδειχθούν αποσταθεροποιητικοί, ειδικά καθώς η Ινδία (μια δεξιά δημοκρατία) ξεπερνά την Κίνα σε οικονομική ανάπτυξη. Όπως έδειξε το κίνημα αντίστασης στο Χονγκ Κονγκ, η Κίνα, ως απολυταρχία, έχει λιγότερες επιλογές για την ενσωμάτωση της εξέγερσης. Στην ενδεχόμενη αδυναμία να καταστείλει ένα υπονομευτικό κίνημα με χρήση αστυνομικής βίας, η ηγεσία του ΚΚΚ θα μπορούσε να διασπαστεί και το σύστημα θα διαλυόταν.

Επίσης, οι δικτατορικές μορφές διακυβέρνησης σπάνια επιβιώνουν από ισχυρούς ηγέτες. Βέβαια, ο Σι δεν είναι δικτάτορας με τον τρόπο που ήταν ο Χίτλερ και ο Φράνκο. Υπάρχει ένας πολύ ισχυρός κομματικός μηχανισμός πίσω του και έχει εδραιώσει την εξουσία του στο Κόμμα την τελευταία δεκαετία.

Η Ινδία δεν θα διαλυθεί μετά τον Μόντι, αλλά η Ρωσία θα μπορούσε εύκολα να διαλυθεί μετά τον Πούτιν. Με την Κίνα, είναι δύσκολο να πει κανείς, επειδή οι προηγούμενες διοικήσεις του ΚΚΚ δεν είχαν την πολιτική ευστροφία του Σι, την ικανότητά του να κάνει επιθετικούς υπολογισμούς που να επικεντρώνονται στο πώς το κινεζικό κράτος θα μπορούσε να αυξήσει την ισχύ του χωρίς να αποδεχθεί καμία από τις διαθέσιμες επιλογές (π.χ. ούτε Μαοϊσμός, ούτε νέα Πολιτική Ανοικτών Θυρών).

Με άλλα λόγια, ο Σι και οι σύμβουλοί του έχουν τη δυνατότητα να λειτουργούν επινοητικά, ένα χαρακτηριστικό απαραίτητο για το σχεδιασμό ενός νέου παγκόσμιου συστήματος. Αλλά μέρος του συστήματος διακυβέρνησης του Σι έχει απαιτήσει μηδενική ανοχή σε οποιαδήποτε ανυπακοή ή διαφωνία, κάτι που θα δυσκολέψει σημαντικά μια αποτελεσματική διαδοχή όταν ο Σι δεν θα είναι πια παρών. Το κρίσιμο ερώτημα είναι, αν υπάρχει ο χώρος για διάλογο μακριά από τη δημοσιότητα στα ανώτερα και μεσαία επίπεδα του ΚΚΚ, προβάλλοντας δημοσίως συναίνεση και ενότητα; Ή η μέθοδος διακυβέρνησης του Σι δημιουργεί μια κουλτούρα υποτακτικών γραφειοκρατών που δεν μπορούν να αμφισβητήσουν μια κακή ιδέα; Αν ισχύει το δεύτερο, η Κίνα ίσως μπορέσει να βοηθήσει στην εκκίνηση ενός νέου παγκόσμιου συστήματος όσο ο Σι είναι επικεφαλής, αλλά μπορεί να μην παραμείνει το κυρίαρχο μέλος της κεντρικής συμμαχίας του συστήματος.

Μιλώντας για επανάσταση

Ειλικρινά, ο μόνος λόγος που αύξησα την πιθανότητα μιας επιτυχούς παγκόσμιας επανάστασης είναι επειδή τα παγκόσμια συστήματα εξουσίας αντιμετωπίζουν περισσότερες τριβές και γίνονται ανίκανα να προβάλουν τη σταθερότητα. Όχι επειδή γινόμαστε πιο δυνατοί.

Και ο κύριος λόγος που δεν γινόμαστε πιο δυνατοί από μόνοι μας, είναι επειδή έχουμε χάσει τη μνήμη και τη φαντασία μας.

Μέσα στην ένδεια βιωμάτων και την αλλοτρίωση που επιβάλλει ο καπιταλισμός, σπάνια γνωρίζουμε πώς να επιτύχουμε την οποιαδήποτε συνέχεια από τη μια γενιά στην άλλη, οπότε επαναλαμβάνουμε τα ίδια λάθη ξανά και ξανά. Και λειτουργώντας υπό την αποικιακή νοοτροπία του ορθολογισμού έχουμε ξεχάσει ότι ο πραγματικός κόσμος δεν μπορεί να υπάρξει χωρίς τους κόσμους της φαντασίας. Αφήνουμε τον καπιταλισμό να τα φαντάζεται όλα για εμάς κι έχει ατροφήσει η δική μας φαντασία, έτσι ώστε να μην μπορούμε πλέον να στραφούμε στην επανάσταση ως μια σημαντική, ουσιαστική έννοια- επειδή ελάχιστοι γνωρίζουν πλέον πώς να φανταστούν μια επανάσταση.

Μόλις ξεπεράσουμε τις πρώτες στιγμές της επανάστασης- όπου μπορούμε να στηριχτούμε αποκλειστικά στο πάθος, την αυθόρμητη νοημοσύνη και τις καινοτόμες τακτικές μας-, από εκεί και πέρα, δεν έχουμε φανταστεί ποια βήματα θα κάνουμε στη συνέχεια. Έτσι, δεν κάνουμε καθόλου βήματα. Είτε γινόμαστε παθητικοί, είτε εξαντλούμαστε, είτε προσπαθούμε να επαναλάβουμε τις ίδιες χορευτικές κινήσεις που μας έφεραν σε εκείνο το σημείο. Ή δοκιμάζουμε ένα αντίθετο σύνολο χορευτικών κινήσεων (που συνήθως μας οδηγεί σε πολύ χειρότερο σημείο).

Αυτό είναι κρίμα γιατί έχουμε τη μεγαλύτερη ευχέρεια να χτίσουμε μια επανάσταση σε μια στιγμή όπως αυτή, όταν ένα παγκόσμιο σύστημα καταρρέει, και πριν αναζωογονηθεί ή πριν το επόμενο σύστημα έχει την ευκαιρία να εκκινήσει πλήρως την αντικατάστασή του.

Για να μην σπαταλήσουμε τις ευκαιρίες μας, όμως, πρέπει να θυμηθούμε πολλά πράγματα:

• Η Δημοκρατία είναι ο εχθρός μας. Η υποστήριξη της Δημοκρατίας, μας μετατρέπει μόνο σε καινοτόμους σχεδιαστές για την αναζωογόνηση του αμερικανικού σχεδίου.
• Η Δεξιά και η Αριστερά είναι τα δύο χέρια του Κράτους, εξίσου επικίνδυνα. Η πραγματική γραμμή σύγκρουσης βρίσκεται ανάμεσα στους πάνω και στους κάτω. Ωστόσο, η Δεξιά και η Αριστερά δεν είναι το ίδιο. Οι ακόλουθοι της Αριστεράς είναι κυρίως ειλικρινείς. Πρέπει να είμαστε παρόντες για να βοηθούμε με την συμμετοχή μας να διαδοθούν ουσιαστικές μορφές εξέγερσης, και πρέπει να μπορούμε κάθε φορά να καταδείξουμε στους Αριστερούς ψηφοφόρους την αληθινή φύση των ηγετών τους. Όσον αφορά τη Δεξιά, πρέπει πάντα να επιτιθέμεθα στα ψέματα και τις παρανοϊκές ιδέες της. Το κλειδί είναι να αφήνουμε την πόρτα ανοιχτή για τους ακόλουθους της Δεξιάς ώστε αυτοί να έχουν την ευκαιρία να προδώσουν την εξουσία, αλλά ποτέ να μην ενστερνιζόμαστε τις ανησυχίες τους. Πρέπει να χτίζουμε δύναμη βασισμένη στην εκτεταμένη αλληλεγγύη για να τους δείχνουμε τον δικό μας τρόπο, αλλά θα πρέπει και οι ίδιοι να μπορούν να κάνουν το κατάλληλο βήμα και να εγκαταλείψουν τις κοινωνικές ταυτότητες που βασίζονται στην καταπίεση.
• Ο μαρξισμός πρόδωσε τα ισχυρότερα επαναστατικά κινήματα του 19ου και 20ού αιώνα. Δεν αξίζει άλλες ευκαιρίες. Οι πρωτοπορίες, τα εξουσιαστικά κόμματα και οι ρεφορμισμοί πρόδωσαν τα ισχυρότερα κοινωνικά κινήματα των τελευταίων 100 ετών. Δεν αξίζουν άλλες ευκαιρίες.
• Η κατάργηση των φυλακών συνέβη ήδη στο παρελθόν, αλλά επειδή έμεινε ανολοκλήρωτη, άλλαξε μόνο τον τρόπο λειτουργίας των ιδρυμάτων της καταπίεσης χωρίς να τερματίσει την ίδια την καταπίεση. Η ουσιαστική κατάργηση πρέπει να εντοπίσει τη κοινή ρίζα της εκμετάλλευσης και της λευκής υπεροχής (πολλοί από τους σημερινούς υποστηρικτές της κατάργησης των σχέσεων σύγχρονης δουλείας και εκμετάλλευσης (abolitionists) προετοιμάζουν ήδη το έδαφος για μια δεύτερη μεγάλη ήττα μας- μέσα στη δική τους “νίκη”).
• Η αποαποικιοποίηση συνέβη ήδη. Αλλά επειδή ήταν πολιτική και όχι κοινωνική, η αποικία ουσιαστικά εξαπλώθηκε, εκπαιδεύοντας τους αποικιοποιημένους να ενεργούν όπως οι αποικιοκράτες τους. Για να καταστρέψουμε την αποικιοκρατία, πρέπει να καταστρέψουμε τις ρίζες, τις αρχές και τις μεθόδους της- την προσαρμογή, την υποταγή και την αφομοίωση.
• Μια επανάσταση πρέπει να θεσμίσει την αλληλεγγύη μεταξύ όλων των ανθρώπων, αλλά οι άνθρωποι πρέπει να είναι ειλικρινείς για τις καταβολές και την καταγωγή τους. Οι άνθρωποι που φέρουν μέσα τους μια κουλτούρα μεσαίας τάξης πρέπει να την ξεμάθουν, να την αποκηρύξουν, καθώς αυτή εκδηλώνεται μέσω μιας πολιτικής μορφής προνομίων και ανέσεων: χτίζοντας άτυπη κοινωνική εξουσία, εξομαλύνοντας αντιθέσεις και αποφεύγοντας τη σύγκρουση. Αυτή τη στιγμή, υπάρχει μια σταυροφορία για να καταστραφούν οι πρακτικές της μετασχηματιστικής δικαιοσύνης – και οι δύσκολες εμπειρίες από τις οποίες προέρχονται αυτές οι πρακτικές – υπέρ εκείνων των ειδικών συμπεριφορών (ταυτόχρονα εύθραυστες και κακόβουλες) που ευδοκιμούν στα μέσα κοινωνικής δικτύωσης.
• Η επανάσταση είναι ζήτημα οργάνωσης, αλλά σχεδόν όλοι όσοι το θέτουν με αυτόν τον τρόπο περιορίζονται ήδη σε μια αντεπαναστατική ιδέα της οργάνωσης.
• Υπάρχει ένας άλλος τρόπος οργάνωσης του εαυτού μας, σχεδιασμού της δράσης και στρατηγικών βημάτων. Και υπήρχε από πάντα.

Προσπαθώ να αναπτύξω αυτά τα επιχειρήματα στα γραπτά μου και θα εστιάσω εκεί στα μελλοντικά μου έργα.

https://petergelderloos.substack.com

Επίλογος

Επιπλέον, κάτι στο οποίο δεν μπορώ να συνεισφέρω και πολύ: οι Μαύροι και οι Ιθαγενείς αναρχικοί χρειάζονται περισσότερο χώρο και υποστήριξη. Για να είναι πραγματικά επιτυχημένη, οποιαδήποτε επαναστατική προσέγγιση πρέπει να είναι πλουραλιστική, να είναι αντι-αποικιακή και να κατανοεί τις ρίζες της καταπίεσης. Η συγκεκριμένη ιστορική γενεαλογία του αναρχισμού που κατάγεται από την Ευρώπη δεν είναι επαρκής, ούτε για εμάς που είμαστε παγιδευμένοι μέσα στη λευκή υπεροχή και σίγουρα ούτε για όλους τους υπόλοιπους.

Για περισσότερα σχετικά με αυτές τις κατευθύνσεις, δείτε:

Klee Benally, “No Spiritual Surrender: Indigenous Anarchy in Defense of the Sacred”

Modibo Kadalie, “Intimate Direct Democracy”

Zoe Samudzi και William C. Anderson, “As Black As Resistance”

William C. Anderson, “The Nation on No Map”

Τέλος, ένα άρθρο που δίνει τροφή για σκέψη και αλληλεγγύη τόσο προς τους Κούρδους όσο και προς τους Παλαιστινίους – δύο λαούς που αντιμετωπίζουν γενοκτονία – και μία πρόσκληση για διεθνισμό από τα κάτω και όχι για διεθνισμό που ευνοεί τον κρατικό παράγοντα:

Ozlem Goner, “Internationalism beyond the Geopolitics of States and Solidarity in ‘Complex’ Situations“

^[1] ΣτΜ: με την κατάργηση της δουλείας στις ΗΠΑ

^[2] ΣτΜ: Σε διπλωματικό επίπεδο, η Συνθήκη της Βεστφαλίας λειτούργησε ως εφαλτήριο μιας νέας δυναμικής στην πολιτική σκηνή της κεντρικής Ευρώπης, η μετέπειτα λεγόμενη Βεστφαλιανή κυριαρχία, δυναμική η οποία εστιάζει στη συνύπαρξη κυρίαρχων κρατών. Βάσει αυτού, οι όποιες εσωτερικές υποθέσεις ενός κράτους αφορούν το ίδιο το κράτος και συνεπώς οι παρεμβάσεις από τρίτους αποτελούν σφάλμα. Καθώς η ευρωπαϊκή πολιτική λογική εδραιώθηκε σε όλο τον κόσμο, τα Βεσταφαλιανά αυτά ιδεώδη, ειδικότερα δε η ιδέα του κυρίαρχου κράτους, αποτέλεσαν κεντρικό πυλώνα του διεθνούς δικαίου και της ανερχόμενης τάξης πραγμάτων. Πηγή: Wikipedia

ΔΙΑΒΑΣΤΕ ΕΠΙΣΗΣ:

The post Αναρχική Επαναστατική Γεωπολιτική 2024- Peter Gelderloos appeared first on Void Network.

Interview for New York Times by Jessica Bennett, contributing editor in Opinion, where she writes about gender, politics and personalities.

_______

The first thing I did when reading Judith Butler’s new book, “Who’s Afraid of Gender?”, was to look up the word “phantasm,” which appears 41 times in the introduction alone. (It means illusion; the “phantasm of gender,” a threat rooted in fear and fantasy.)

The second thing I did was have a good chuckle about the title, because the answer to the question of who is afraid of gender was … well, I am? Even for someone who’s written on gender and feminism for more than a decade and who once carried the title of this newspaper’s “gender editor,” to talk about gender today can feel so fraught, so politicized, so caught in a war of words that debate, or even conversation, seems impossible.

I am perhaps the intended reader of Butler’s book, in which the notoriously esoteric philosopher turned pop celebrity dismantles how gender has been constructed as a threat throughout the modern world — to national security in Russia; to civilization, according to the Vatican; to the American traditional family; to protecting children from pedophilia and grooming, according to some conservatives. In a single word, “gender” holds the power to seemingly drive people mad with fear.

Butler’s latest comes more than three decades after their first and most famous book, “Gender Trouble,” brought the idea of “gender as performance” into the mainstream. As it turns out, Butler — who has written 15 books since — never intended to return to the subject, even as a culture war raged. But then the political became personal: Butler was physically attacked in 2017 while speaking in Brazil, and burned in effigy by protesters who shouted, “Take your ideology to hell.”

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity

Did you ever think you’d see a world in which your ideas would be so widespread — and so fraught?

When I wrote “Gender Trouble,” I was a lecturer. I was teaching five classes, trying to work on this book I thought no one would read. Still, I knew I wasn’t just speaking for myself; there were other people who were strong feminists but also lesbian or gay or trying to figure out gender in ways that weren’t always welcome. But today, the people who are afraid of my ideas are the people who don’t read me. In other words, I don’t think it’s my ideas that they’re afraid of. They’ve come up with something else — a kind of fantasy of what I believe or who I am.

And of course it’s not just my views that are being caricatured, but gender more broadly — gender studies, policies that focus on gender, gender discrimination, gender and health care, anything with “gender” in it is a kind of terrifying prospect, at least for some.

So … who is afraid of gender?

It’s funny, I have a friend, a queer theorist. I told him the book’s name and he said, “Everyone! Everyone’s afraid of gender!”

What’s clear to me is that there is a set of strange fantasies about what gender is — how destructive it is, and how frightening it is — that a number of forces have been circulating: Viktor Orban, Vladimir Putin, Giorgia Meloni, Rishi Sunak, Jair Bolsonaro, Javier Milei, and of course Ron DeSantis, Donald Trump and lots of parents and communities in states like Oklahoma and Texas and Wyoming, who are seeking to pass legislation that bans the teaching of gender or reference to gender in books.

Obviously, those folks are very frightened of gender. They imbue it with power that I actually don’t think it has. But so are feminists who call themselves “gender critical,” or who are trans-exclusionary, or who have taken explicit positions against trans politics.

Can you describe what prompted you to return to this subject?

I was going to Brazil for a conference on the future of democracy. And I was told in advance that there were petitions against me speaking, and that they decided to focus on me because I’m the “papisa,” the female pope, of gender. I’m not quite sure how I got to have that distinction, but apparently I did. I got to the venue early, and I could hear the crowds outside. They’d built a kind of monstrous picture of me with horns, which I took to be overtly antisemitic — with red eyes and kind of a demonic look — with a bikini on. Like, why the bikini?

But in any case, I was burned in effigy. And that freaked me out. And then, when my partner and I were leaving, at the airport, we were attacked: Some woman came at me with a big trolley and she was screaming about pedophilia. I could not understand why.

You thank the young man who threw his body between you and the attacker, taking blows. Was this the first time you’d heard that “pedophilia” association?

I had given a talk on Jewish philosophy, and somebody in the back said, “Hands off our children!” I thought, What? I figured out later that the way that the anti-gender ideology movement works is to say: If you break down the taboo against homosexuality, if you allow gay and lesbian marriage, if you allow sex reassignment, then you’ve departed from all the laws of nature that keep the laws of morality in tact — which means it’s a Pandora’s box; the whole panoply of perversions will emerge.

As I was preparing to interview you, I received a news alert about the “Don’t Say Gay” settlement in Florida, which says that schools cannot teach about L.G.B.T.Q. topics from kindergarten through the 8th grade, but clarifies that discussing them is allowed. You write that words have become “tacitly figured as recruiters and molesters,” which is behind the effort to remove this type of language from the classroom.

Teaching gender, or critical race theory, or even ethnic studies, is regularly characterized as forms of “indoctrination.” So for instance, that woman who was accusing me of supporting pedophilia, suggests that my work or my teaching would be an effort at “seduction” or “grooming.”

In my experience of teaching, people are arguing with each other all the time. There’s so much conflict. It’s chaotic. There are many things going on — but indoctrination is not one of them.

What about the warping of language on the left?

My version of feminist, queer, trans-affirmative politics is not about policing. I don’t think we should become the police. I’m afraid of the police. But I think a lot of people feel that the world is out of control, and one place where they can exercise some control is language. And it seems like moral discourse comes in then: Call me this. Use this term. We agree to use this language. What I like most about what young people are doing — and it’s not just the young, but everybody’s young now, according to me — is the experimentation. I love the experimentation. Like, let’s come up with new language. Let’s play. Let’s see what language makes us feel better about our lives. But I think we need to have a little more compassion for the adjustment process.

I want to talk for a moment about categories. You have occupied many — butch, queer, woman, nonbinary — yet you’ve also said you’re suspicious of them.

At the time that I wrote “Gender Trouble,” I called for a world in which we might think about genders being proliferated beyond the usual binary of man and woman. What would that look like? What would it be? So when people started talking about being “nonbinary,” I thought, well, I am that. I was trying to occupy that space of being between existing categories.

Do you still believe that gender is “performance?”

After “Gender Trouble” was published, there were some from the trans community who had problems with it. And I saw that my approach, what came to be called a “queer approach”— which was somewhat ironic toward categories — for some people, that’s not OK. They need their categories, they need them to be right, and for them gender is not constructed or performed.

Not everybody wants mobility. And I think I’ve taken that into account now.

But at the same time, for me, performativity is enacting who we are, both our social formation and what we’ve done with that social formation. I mean, my gestures: I didn’t make them up out of thin air — there’s a history of Jewish people who do this. I am inside of something, socially, culturally constructed. At the same time, I find my own way in it. And it’s always been my contention that we’re both formed and we form ourselves, and that’s a living paradox.

How do you define gender today?

Oh, goodness. I have, I suppose, revised my theory of gender — but that’s not the point of this book. I do make the point that “gender identity” is not all of what we mean by gender: It’s one thing that belongs to a cluster of things. Gender is also a framework — a very important framework — in law, in politics, for thinking about how inequality gets instituted in the world.

This is your first book with a nonacademic press. Was that a conscious decision?

Oh, yeah. I wanted to reach people.

It’s funny because many of your ideas do reach people, albeit in internet-era sound bites. I’m thinking about, for instance, of “gender is a drag” T-shirts or “Judith Butler explained with cats.” It strikes me that a lot of people who claim to have read you have actually just read the Instagram caption of you.

Well, I don’t blame them for not reading that book. It was tough. And some of those sentences are truly unforgivable. Hopefully I didn’t do that in “Who’s Afraid of Gender?”

I feel like I’m more in touch with people who are mobilizing on the ground at the global level than I have been before. And that pleases me.

______

Jessica Bennett is a contributing editor in the Opinion section of The Times. She teaches journalism at New York University and is the author of “Feminist Fight Club” and “This Is 18.” More about Jessica Bennett

The post Judith Butler Thinks You’re Overreacting – Interview appeared first on Void Network.

A call for the global creation of collectivities that struggle for a free and authentic human life

Raoul Vaneigem[1]

We have made Mankind the shame of humanity.

From the most ancient times to the present day, no society has attained the degree of ignominy and abjection reached by an agro-mercantile civilization that, for two thousand years, has passed for Civilization par excellence.

It is undeniable that, as trans-hominids, we have inherited an instinct for predation and an instinct for mutual assistance. They constitute our share of residual animalism. But while the awareness of an interweaved solidarity has favored our progressive humanization, predatory aggressiveness has developed in us a tendency for self-destruction. Is this so difficult to understand?

The appearance of an economy that sacrifices life for work, for Power, for Profit, has marked a break with the egalitarianism and the symbiotic evolution of pre-agrarian civilizations. Agriculture and livestock breeding have privileged the predatory instinct, at the expense of a life drive that has never renounced the reestablishment of its usurped sovereignty.

Appropriation, competition and rivalry have pleased themselves by exalting the “civilized wild animal,” whose spiritual sublimation serves to legitimatize their enterprises. In its emblematic form, the lion thus lets one believe that it is natural to hunt and oppress the beasts. What is in fact required is the denaturation of the human being. In vain does one seek among the most pitiless carnivores the cruelty that is as deliberate or the ferociousness that is as inventive, as those demonstrated by Justice, Religion, Ideology, Empire, State and Bureaucracy.

We must see the fixed grin of the arms dealers at the moment when their billable products are tearing apart women, children, men, animals, forests and [whole] landscapes. “Make do with what you have,”[2] right?

Profit has the cynicism of a done deal [fait accompli]. It hides nothing from us about those heartless restaurants in which the fashionable ladies and gentlemen stuff themselves while their luxury shoes drip blood and excrement.

Why get involved when pre-formatted public opinion takes the side of one or another belligerent, as if it were a soccer match between Russia and Ukraine, Israel and Palestine? The bets are on and the cheers of the spectators cover the screams of the massacred crowds.

Simply cursing a foul civilization does not prevent it from perpetuating itself when we let the laws of financial rapacity orchestrate our denaturation, form the patterns of our apathy, and punctuate our frustrations by triggering explosions of a blind and murderous hatred. Add insult to injury? What would be the point? Doing so would only reinforce a personal sense of guilt that is relieved by making the others feel guilty. The predatory reflex would once again find its niche there.

The exhortations addressed to the greatest number of people are subject to a double discredit: on the one hand, the slogans and militant incitements restart the old motor of Power in which radicalism quickly hinders the radicalism of lived experience; on the other hand, what chooses to be announced from the podium of generalities is easily diluted in the hodge-podge of ideas cut off from life.

Except, that is, if the reader discovers [in that radicalism] the occasion for an intimate dialogue with herself. In other words, if she drinks from the source of the human consciousness that is in her.

Rather than address myself to the greatest number of people, I prefer to speak directly to the autonomous individual. Because she is not ignorant of the fact that my sole intention is to confide my way of seeing things to her, in a fraternal debate in which there is no need to know each other in order to recognize each other.

What better guarantee for the awakening of consciousness is there than mutual aid? It is not by chance that it is reborn spontaneously to the extent that predation ceases to hide the facts that it devours itself and makes its own self-destruction profitable.

The bankruptcy of having propagates an ennui that is worse than death, the specter of which it ceaselessly raises. And the breath of life rehabilitates being. The subject frees itself from the object, it frees itself from the thing to which reification had reduced it. Isn’t this what is implied by the adage “men and women are not commodities”? The simple changing of roles – men taking on femininity and women taking on masculinity – doesn’t change anything. From the moment that we spare children from the ravages of predatory education, we have only to leave to their spontaneous radicalism the care of awakening them to their destinies as human beings.

There is no need for prophets to foresee what is going to happen: either the triumph of the idiot who thinks with a bludgeon or the surging of a life that has regained awareness of the sovereignty that can be exerted by its humanity.

The usefulness of fascism and anti-fascism is that they hide the true final struggle, the one that – inseparably both existential and social – implies the eradication of predation, the disappearance of hierarchical Power, and the end of the barking out of orders.

The lucrative cynicism and absurdity of war, fomented by governmental and global mafias, has ended up tiring even the most obtuse of its pimps. The succession of virtually interchangeable conflicts incites “public” opinion to gradually exit from the chessboard of geopolitical schemes.

It is here and now that the appearance of May 1968,[3] the Zapatistas,[4] the Yellow Vests[5] and the combatants of Rojava[6] opens up to life and its awareness a path that the historical derailment of the agro-market Civilization has obstructed and led towards death.

Hoping for nothing does not mean despairing of everything. The return to life is a violent, natural and spontaneous reaction. It holds the power to ruin the desertification of the earth, from which profit-making is drawing the last resources. The return to life, to its authenticity, to its awareness, is our real immunological self-defense. Since denaturation hinders the nature present in and around us in the name of Profit, why not bet on it to have done with a hateful civilization? How? Don’t ask me, ask yourself, you who at every instant navigates between lethargy and revolt.

Everywhere signs of distress and jubilation mix together and multiply. Don’t be mistaken! The angry refusal of a war waged against a specifically targeted region – Palestine, in this case – goes much further than a singular disavowal. It more and more clearly expresses the execration of a war conducted, not only against the population of a particular area, but also against the people of all the countries on Planet Earth. This rejection of war has understood that, for totalitarian greed, living is a crime. This is why the new global insurrections are part of the self-defense of the living. In them are embodied both the will to abrogate a universe of psychopaths who make death profitable and the implementation of a new alliance with nurturing nature.

This is one war too many. Not for the governmental and supra-governmental weapons lobbies, not for the producers of narco-neuroleptics, but for whomever isn’t disposed to dying early by joining the party of voluntary servitude and “viva la muerte!”[7]

The problem is principally due to the doubts, to the despair, to the disappointments against which life’s firm stance collides generation after generation.

Isn’t it absurd to expect anything at all from the governmental authorities that make decisions for us and that harass us with their degrees, each one more ridiculously dishonest than its predecessor?

Despite the gloominess of the era, don’t we at least have the pleasure of seeing, right before our very eyes, the shriveling up of the Gods – those impostors who for ten thousand years have usurped the faculty of creating and creating oneself, while life, in its crazy fecundity, has in fact granted it to the human species?

The time has come to resume the course of our real destiny. The time has come to change the world and become what we want to be: not the owners of a sterile universe, but the inhabitants of a world whose abundance is such that we can enjoy it freely. Enough of this upside-down world in which profit-making becomes impoverished by impoverishing its resources! May the disappearance of harmful [sources of] energy de-pollute the water, the air, the soil, and the land so that our creative ingenuity effaces even the memory of a regrettable diversion of our evolution!

In the intensity of a desire, the present awakens to the presence of a life that doesn’t care about being measured or programmed. The joy of living initiates the art of harmonization, because it carries within itself the specifically human faculty of creating and creating oneself.

The appropriation of the soil and animal husbandry have implanted in our morals a herd instinct in which the individual sees her intelligence lowered to the level of the flocks that she feeds. What is being sketched out today is the resurgence of the autonomous individual who liberates herself from individualism and its alienated consciousness.

We are at a turning point in history, in which the elaboration of a style of life is supplanting a survival that is condemned to work and opening up an existence devoted to the comfort of palliative care.

The understanding that emanates from our vital drives highlights an incessant conflict between a perspective of life and a perspective of death, between the attraction of our desires, illuminated by our sensitive intelligence, and the hold that intellectual intelligence has over them. Because the blockage of our emotions that Wilhelm Reich called character armoring obeys the imperatives of a mechanical efficiency to which the body at work is held. And so, quite obviously, if the pleasure that comes from the cost-free nature of life [la gratuité du vivant] has no place in totalitarian greed, this means that restoring the joy of living, developing festive combativeness, and reaffirming the innocence of the living, which knows nothing of both masters and slaves, are the weapons that are of a nature to bring about the ruin of Profit.

We are in the midst of the turmoil of an enthralling combat. It marks the rebirth of our human consciousness. In it is expressed the resurgence of a dignity that has always been at the heart of our attempts at emancipation, notably in the proletarian project of a classless society. We have seen how the proletariat was dispossessed of its project by the very people who became its [alleged] defenders. It would be better to consider eradicating from the outset all forms of power – whether it is that of the mayor, a governmental official, or that of the political militant, an officer of ideology and the contestatory bureaucracy.

Among the self-proclaimed spokespeople for the people, how many are not ready to replace the State’s authority with their own?

Isn’t it a salutary resolution to desire everything, but to expect nothing? By this I mean relying on our life drives, not as an inevitable destiny, but as a creative presence that we have the freedom to experience by preventing its obstruction, by avoiding a deadly inversion, which generates emotional plagues. We have underestimated the importance of refining anger in a way that avoids the traps of urgency, of being drawn onto the terrain of the enemy, of succumbing to the militarization of political militancy. But, principally, the distance that the refinement of the emotions implies is a propitious place for the ripening of creativity. It favors the implementation of a form of guerrilla warfare that only has recourse to weapons that do not kill and are inexhaustible.

Looking back over the centuries, we can see that an awakening of consciousness has rekindled a struggle and that the renewal of mutual aid is gradually clearing away the mists of confusion.

It will be inconceivable to future generations that it took so long for us to realize that life has provided men and women with an exceptional faculty, without which they would not have gone beyond the stage of animalism. In its experimental blindness, this faculty has given us the privilege of creating and recreating the world around us.

Pre-agrarian collectivities evolved in a symbiosis with an environment from which they drew their subsistence. The emergence of the market civilization and its City-States caused a break with nature, which, once a living subject, became an object of exploitation. A system of authoritarian government endeavored to cover up the creativity of mutual aid that, “from Lucy to Lascaux,”[8] had guided an evolution that, even today, the sycophants of market civilization still have a great reluctance to uncover.

The notion of Fate prevails. It propagates a spirit of submission; it instills an ontology of accursedness; it spreads the myth of an irremediable Fall, to which we must resign ourselves, just as we must obey the arbitrary requirements of a deified master.

What is now being reborn among those who still aspire to live is the feeling of having been swindled. To the extent that the collapse of patriarchy has completed the burial of the Gods in the latrines of the past, it has also taught us to discover a fundamental difference between Fate and destiny. The scorn for life, programmed by the market civilization, has hidden under the name of Fate the active principle that I call destiny and that is nothing other than the faculty of creating ourselves by recreating the world.

Fate is a matter of Providence; it cannot be discussed; it pleads the Inevitability [Fatalité] that brings an appreciable comfort to servility.

Fate is endured; destiny is constructed. There’s nothing metaphysical about this. The atrocious barbarism of our history has never succeeded in stifling the visceral struggle that, from generation to generation, has demonstrated a will to emancipation, which is both timeless and modulated by economic, political, psychological and social fluctuations.

“Fate” and “destiny” are problematic because they have been made to be synonymous. This is why I suggest that, for greater clarity, we retain their French origins.[9]

The radicalism of the struggles for life call for human destiny to supplant Fate, Chance and Providence. It flourishes in the midst of a no man’s land[10] where an incontinent civilization empties itself of its existential substance, while a new civilization is struggling in the throes of childbirth.

During the first faltering steps of autonomy, the creative powers of men and women – though they fumble around – suddenly reveal that we are capable of developing ourselves without masters, without gurus, without tutelage. If we have had the opportunity to understand that nothing more surely attracts misfortune than the custom of wallowing in it, we must agree that, on the other hand, the enjoyment of the happiness of life is equally contagious, but in a more amiable fashion.

The unshakeable determination to cultivate our lives and the garden that is our nourishing earth simultaneously offers unstoppable assistance in the struggle against fear, guilt, self-sacrifice, Puritanism, work, power, and money. This determination nourishes the struggle against the mercantile spirit that universally ensures the promotion of anti-physical values,[11] values that are hostile to nature.

The will to individual autonomy is both alone and accompanied in its fight for the emancipation of the self. Questions of health, stability, immunity, friendship, love, pleasure, and creativity are at the heart of the emancipation of the earth illuminated by the new global insurrections. The stakes are the same: attaining freedom for the various human desires by creating a society that ensures their harmonization with each other.

In my daily life, the authenticity of lived experience is the natural guarantee of my desires. Their freedom excludes market freedoms – the freedoms to exploit, to oppress, to kill.

For the individual who seeks autonomy, freedom and authenticity constitute the paradox of an openly declared clandestinity.

The sermon of good intentions has never been as insufferable as it is in the 21st century, when alienated consciousness no longer uses kid gloves to put words to work. Under the names of terrorist, assassin, psychopath and outlaw, it designates those who, alas, are in a state of inhumanity that the frenzy of short-term profit aggravates and accelerates to match the pace of its profitable and useless great works.

I have always defended this principle: absolute freedom for all opinions, absolute proscription of all instances of inhumanity. To my mind, this is the only way to broach the questions of religion and ideology. Such a choice frees us from the humanitarian hypocrisy that affects so many ideas and beliefs. It no longer even needs to dwell on the fact that, to this point, freedom of thought has never been anything other than a market freedom.

We do not want to judge inhumanity: we want to condemn and banish it. We have no need of explanations, justifications or extenuating circumstances. It doesn’t matter if it comes from rich neighborhoods or slums, from conservatives or progressives: NO INHUMANITY IS TOLERABLE. Let this be clear and unambiguous!

We will do everything possible to eradicate from our morals the propensities to kill, injure, rape, or mistreat others, whatever the reasons that are given to explain their emergence or resurgence. We’ve had enough of the universal tribunal in which weighing, excusing, condemning, punishing, and granting amnesty perpetuate the jumping up and down of impotent indignation. Righteous anger will remain impotent as long as the “Get out of my way”[12] that condemns us to the social jungle and the predatory reflex remains embedded in each one of us.

We have had enough of the caricature of existence that has been globally popularized by narco-American evangelism! The self-made man[13] only builds and propagates his own death. That is his opening bid, gloriously displayed!

Isn’t it in the autonomous individual that we see the intensification of the pleasures of not having to answer to anyone, of being alone in the untangling, the debating and, sooner or later, the carrying out, in an alchemical mode, of a transformation of the gloomy survival that stagnates in each of us? To bring about the transmutation of a raw material – condemned to rot – into the full and complete life to which we have always aspired as human beings. The art of living replaces all that we’ve learned about dying. Such is the only form of teaching to which I want to adhere.

Enjoying my lived authenticity, as disordered as it might be, frees me from the obligation to play a role, to which individualism and the herd that guides it are constrained. It raises my awareness of the derisory and pathetic duty to appear; it frees me from the dictatorship of appearances, of the spectacle and of the fear of being weighed and judged that it constantly conveys. Isn’t true happiness the rediscovery of the innocence of being oneself, of not having to justify oneself, of desiring according to the heart without expecting or hoping for anything from the mind?

We are headed towards a new Renaissance, towards a resurgence of the Enlightenment. Our transversal path will be that of an openly declared clandestinity. The fist of profit strikes us everywhere: let’s strike back everywhere and dismember it!

Clandestinity begins within us in the “dark room” where we are alone, debating what we do not want and what we endlessly desire. It awakens us to the awareness of our life drives, the pleasures that stimulate it, and the vexations that invert and turn them into death drives.

The paradox of an openly declared clandestinity is also attested to by the anonymity of the Yellow Vests, as by the anonymity that each individual claims when she takes refuge in the dark room of her secret desires – where she alone is able to decide if she will join the system of predation and the egotistical calculus of individualism or if she will instead devote herself to the transmutation of survival into a full and complete life.

In “Fuenteovejuna,” the dramatist Lopes de Vega[14] depicts the inhabitants of a village who, tired by the cruelty of an iniquitous governor, assassinate him. Tasked with finding the culprit, judges and executioners put questions to the villagers, but they receive no other response but the name of the village, which is Fuente Ovejuna. Wearied by war, the interrogators order a general amnesty.

The anonymity demanded by individuals who struggle for their autonomous solidarity offers an example of a weapon of life. It unites the resistance to oppression. In the same way that the obstinacy of the Yellow Vests no longer needs yellow vests to be propagated, we witness the increasing presence of a life that wants to be free and unencumbered by religions, ideologies, politics, or hierarchical, governmental and globalist structures. Life above all else is the broken gun that breaks reification and teaches us how to sabotage the transformation of being into having. It radicalizes the reformist militant by dissuading him from letting the Power that he claims to combat become embedded in him.

The living carries within itself the fertility of desire. No desert can resist its fecundity. In our intimacy, the decision is taken to put an end to the moment that belongs to the time of wear and tear, work, and death and to privilege the moment and the desire for life that manifests itself in the pleasures of lived authenticity. Do you want the proof a contrario?[15] At the moment that I write this, we may observe the formidable wave of self-destructive nihilism that is overwhelming the societies eaten away by the cancer of profitability.

I give less importance to the support of a great number of people than to the intelligence of autonomous individuals, which is, due to its will to authenticity, the antidote to intellectual elitism.

Slow but inevitable, the reversal of perspective illuminates the renewal; it is the place where the reunification of the existential and the social takes place. Individual combat and the combat for a uniquely human society is one and the same thing.

Life has no need of masters, religious cults or parties.

Pleasure is the peaceful violence of the living that proliferates in and around us. It is the cost-free arrangement that confers upon us an awareness that is capable of humanizing it. This is what we are resolved to attempt to bring about.

Let’s rebuild the earth and make our communities, our neighborhoods and our regions oases that the living renders invulnerable!

_____

NOTES

[1] Raoul Vaneigem, «ABOLIR LA PRÉDATION, REDEVENIR HUMAIN: Appel à la création mondiale de collectivités en lutte pour une vie humaine libre et authentique». Dated January 2024. Publication by Fayard as a multi-language pamphlet (French, Italian, German and English) forthcoming. Translated by NOT BORED! 28 January 2024. All footnotes by the translator.

[2] «A la guerre comme à la guerre»: literally “in war as in war.”

[3] In France in May-June 1968, a generalized wildcat strike and an widespread occupations movement almost toppled the French government. Vaneigem himself was a participant in this movement.

[4] See “The Zapatistas’ Fight is the Universal Fight of Life Against the Desertification of the Earth,” 2019: https://notbored.org/zapatistas.pdf.

[5] See “Concerning the ‘Yellow Vests’: Everything is possible, even self-managing assemblies in the middle of street intersections, villages and neighborhoods,” 2018: https://notbored.org/yellow-vests.pdf.

[6] Rojava is a region in Northern Syria that has been autonomous since 2012.

[7] “Long Live Death!” was a fascist slogan during the Spanish Civil War.

[8] Lucy is the name given to the relatively complete fossil of the prehistoric hominid Australopithecus afarensis, which was discovered in Ethiopia in 1974. Lascaux is the name of an intermediate warming period during the Würm, which was the last glacial period in the Alpine region of Europe, and the location of famous cave drawings discovered in 1940.

[9] That is to say, Destin and destinée.

[10] English in original.

[11] In the works of François Rabelais (1483-1553) Physis is joyful and unashamed and Antiphysis is hateful and destructive.

[12] The French here is ôte-toi de là que je m’y mette: literally “get out of there so I can put myself there.”

[13] English in original.

[14] Félix Lope de Vega y Carpio (1562-1635) was Spanish playwright, poet and novelist.

[15] Latin in original: argument from the contrary.

____

SOURCE: https://autonomies.org/2024/02/raoul-vaneigem-abolish-predation-become-human-again/

The post Raoul Vaneigem: Abolish Predation – Become Human Again appeared first on Void Network.

Essay By Hermann Duncker

Translation by Jacob Blumenfeld

Translator’s Introduction

Does the working class need a philosophy — and if so, which one? There is perhaps no answer more shocking than that given by the socialist politician and historian Hermann Duncker in 1897. He answered that yes, it does need one — and it should be the philosophy of Max Stirner.

Proletarian philosophy as the philosophy of the famous anarchist nihilist Max Stirner? This makes no sense at all — if we assume that Stirner’s philosophy is simply anarchist and nihilist. Such a ridiculous description of Stirner’s thought has been bandied around since the publication of his book Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (The Unique and its Property, often mistranslated as The Ego and its Own) in 1844. And yet such a description contains nary a shred of truth.

We tend to think of Stirner as either a negative foil to Karl Marx or a positive analogy to Friedrich Nietzsche. Rarely is he read on his own terms. Squeezed between anarchists appropriating him and Marxists denouncing him, Stirner has had almost no room to breathe. And yet it was not always like this. Rather than reading him as a bad Hegelian or a good Nietzschean, we should take him at his own word, as a grand critic of modern society, a ruthless destroyer of idols and identities, a thinker who despised the platitudes of patriotism, the essence of ethics, rituals of religion, the gods of gender, and the norms of nationality.

Stirner advocated the self-liberation of the individual from fixed dogmas and sacred conventions through combining with others in voluntary associations to accomplish what no one could do on their own: be free. For Stirner, the struggle to live one’s own life free from the domination of others requires starting from oneself, from one’s own needs and desires, and building from there. No more fighting for God’s cause, the nation’s cause, the people’s cause — but for oneself, one’s own cause. This cause is not reducible to maximizing utility, acquiring wealth, or seeking pleasure — rather, it names a multiplicity of incommensurable ends that each individual pursues throughout their changing life, sometimes failing, sometimes reaching, always striving anew. To fulfil such ends is impossible on one’s own, thus egoism, as Engels once noted, immediately turns into communism, for one cannot appropriate one’s own life without the power that comes from fighting with others in common, for ourselves, joyfully and in solidarity. This insight, lost and found throughout the ages, finds apt expression in this short, optimistic piece by Hermann Duncker, originally published in Sozialistische Monatshefte in July 1897 and here translated into English for the first time.

Duncker is quite an impressive figure in German socialist history. Born in 1874 as the son of a bankrupted Hamburg merchant, the Duncker family moved to Göttingen where Hermann attended high school, raised by his mother. In 1897, when he wrote this article, he was a twenty-three-year-old member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), studying political economy and philosophy in Leipzig under Wilhelm Wundt, Karl Bücher, and Karl Lamprecht, having just finished a degree in music. Shortly thereafter, he married Käte Duncker (née Döll), a remarkable socialist in her own right. Together, they traveled around giving lectures on socialist themes, and during World War I, they split from the SPD to help found the Spartacist League with Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, and Clara Zetkin, and eventually helped found the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Both were on the KPD’s first central committee. Hermann founded the Marxist Workers’ School in 1925 and remained committed to a united front with the Social Democrats. During Nazi rule, Käte escaped to the United States, while Hermann made his way through Denmark, Britain, France, Morocco, and eventually the United States. After the war, they returned to eastern Germany and joined the Socialist Unity Party (SED), while Hermann taught at Rostock, eventually becoming head of the German Trade Federation (FDGB). He died in 1960, and was buried in Berlin’s Friedrichsfelde Cemetery next to the Memorial for the Socialists, commemorating Luxemburg and Liebknecht.

This article below may seem out of place today, as words like “justice” and “rights” dominate the discourse of the Left. But the idea that Stirner can be read positively by workers, the fact that his thought can be seen as an inspiration to the working class, should finally awaken socialists from the dogma that we must fight for a higher cause than our own. For Duncker, following Stirner, proletarians need not look outside themselves and their own needs. Trusting that workers can think and decide for themselves is a basic prerequisite for social emancipation. As Duncker pointed out in a note to this text, Stirner’s “main philosophical work can be bought in the Reklam edition for 80 pfennig, and thus everyone can form his or her own judgment on the basis of the work itself.” For who knows more than the worker how much their work degrades them? What a “philosophy of the proletariat” can do is remove some of the ideological barriers to self-emancipation, but it can never achieve that itself. That is the burden of those who want such emancipation, and fight for it.

A Philosophy for the Proletariat by Hermann Duncker

One speaks of a science for the people, of an art for the proletariat — and not only in theory; practice has also provided the people with works that seek to meet their needs, to expand their education and knowledge. The various histories from the Dietz publishing house, the scientific and economic books of the Workers’ Library give the proletarian — as long as they find their way into his hands — a treasure trove of knowledge that can already make him intellectually superior to the bourgeoisie, baptized with so-called “higher education.” Given the diversity of these intellectual products, it is surprising that one area seems to be almost completely passed over: philosophy!

Does not the socialist worldview demand its anchoring in philosophy? The feeling of this necessity probably led [Friedrich] Engels in his time to conduct the polemic against [Eugen] Dühring in a broader, popular style, but his revolution of science offers only a stringing together of philosophical fragments, as the critical nature of his task entailed. It is difficult to extract a system from it. The attempt to create such a system was undertaken by Leopold Jacoby in his Idea of Development, of which the first two parts have been published; the death of the author has made it impossible to expand and complete the work into a whole. But what Jacoby develops is more or less a philosophy of nature — he himself was a natural scientist by profession. Philosophy as a by-product of natural science has given rise to a number of popular philosophical treatises. But the more or less serious dubiousness of its hypotheses condemns it. We cannot be content with the fact that their theories, which have long since been since obsolete and disproven, seep through the channels of cheap popular editions into the working masses, as happened with [Ludwig] Büchner’s Force and Matter. And why should the modern view of life be developed and promoted only by the long detour via natural science?

The epistemological philosophy of the Kantian school (to which [Joseph] Dietzgen, the worker-philosopher, still adheres in his Positive Outcome of Philosophy), has been replaced by the philosophy of nature; but this, too, had to make way for a new philosophical approach that sought a psychological foundation. With this change in scientific horizon, the philosopher’s object also changed; if earlier one passed from the idealistic soul to the materialistic body, now, as it were, both objects are combined into one. And since one was aware of this connection in oneself, the “realistic I” became the starting point and object of philosophical reflection.

The “I-philosophy,” as it sounds aphoristically from the modern artistic creations of [Henrik] Ibsen, [Fyodor] Dostoyevsky, [Richard] Dehmel and others, and as it has found its youngest and most dazzling representative in Friedrich Nietzsche, starts from the individual alone. This lack of presuppositions, the restriction to one’s own self-knowledge, makes this philosophy particularly suitable for the worker. The capitalist system, which made him take his hide to the market at an early age, thus awakens the feeling of personality in him far more readily than in a bourgeois boy who only puts a colorful cap on his ego at university. The life experiences that the worker gathers in abundance in the struggle for existence soon prompt him to think about the value or worth of his labor power, and since this cannot be separated from himself, he easily comes to reflections about the value of his personality or about its lack of worth in relation to the world of the propertied classes.

What sustains the socialist movement, if not the awakened self-awareness of the masses! Self-consciousness and self-confidence are correlative terms, here; the one is not conceivable without the other. It is a well-known fact that one thinks more about what one does not have than about what one does have; thus thoughts about justice and violence, state and law, property and family easily nestle in the head of the disinherited and dispossessed proletarian. His thoughts are not bound to the status quo, he need not stop at the hallowed institutions of the state, for he has nothing to lose, but a world to win!

Doesn’t this whole line of thought run parallel with the “philosophy of the individual?” Only that the latter tried much more laboriously and incompletely to conceptually get rid of the phenomena that already ceased to exist objectively for the proletariat. However, this philosophical treatment has the great advantage that it awakens and supports individual observation through the entire structure of its system, and makes it easier for the philosophizing individual to gain insight and overview of the world circling around him.

The clearest and deepest builder of this I-philosophy is Max Stirner, and his philosophy of The Unique and its Property is a book that should be in the hand of every thinking worker.

Nietzsche has often been called Stirner’s successor, and judging by the chronology, nothing could be said against it. Stirner wrote about forty years before Nietzsche. But according to the content, one would like to reverse the relationship, since Stirner completes and synthesizes Nietzsche’s fragments. However, a great contrast between the two must be mentioned, since this is what most recommends Stirner to us as a philosophical teacher of the proletariat.

Nietzsche is an aristocrat, Stirner a plebeian (meant in its proper sense). Nietzsche writes for the cultured, weary of culture, in a refined, artistic style, which presupposes an infinite amount of leisure time and positive knowledge for understanding — and the worker can acquire both only with difficulty. Stirner addresses the egoist, who is to shake off the yoke of centuries of servitude to prejudices and illusions, but also to state power and exploitation. His language is unvarnished and coarse; he presupposes nothing but a free gaze and a free heart. In various places he appeals to proletarian feeling and proletarian power.

There is no question that one must first read into Stirner; one must skip over some parts of his long polemic against Christianity and the liberalism of the forties. Above all, terms like “people,” “liberalism,” and “communism” have to be explained in their historical context. Nevertheless, one will soon forget that the book is already more than fifty years old.

His remarks on the history of the development of the bourgeoisie, on church and state, his theory of law, and more, contain a wealth of far-reaching insights. What he says about the question of pauperism, i.e. the “social question” of his time, is right on p. 294 (but perhaps a few examples give the best insight):

States are being asked to eliminate pauperism. This is like asking the state to cut off its own head and lay it at its feet.

And further, on p. 296:

Pauperism is my worthlessness, the fact that I cannot make use of myself. Thus, the state and pauperism are one and the same. The state does not let me achieve my worth and only exists through my worthlessness: it always seeks to draw benefit from me, i.e., to exploit, to deplete, to consume me, even if this consumption only consists in my supplying proles (proletariat); it wants me to be ‘its creature.’ Pauperism can only then be removed when I make use of myself as myself, when I give myself value, and make my own price myself. I must revolt in order to rise.

At this point, another point may be touched upon, which unfortunately is often decisive today. It is the fact that Stirner is discredited — as a “philosopher of anarchism.” One cannot oppose this discrediting of his philosophy sharply enough: anyone can be exploited by anyone! And it is true that Stirner knows nothing of modern socialism, he even fights the utopian communism of [Wilhelm] Weitling and [Pierre-Joseph] Proudhon. But he doesn’t put his philosophy at all into the narrow frame of a sociopolitical system, for him what matters is the I — and the union! The union is nothing other than a type of modern fighting organization, the trade union, as Stirner himself (pp. 315–318) describes a strike by such a union in the most vivid colors!

A French critic calls Der Einzige (The Unique) a book that one leaves as a monarch — un livre qu’on quitte monarque. Well, the proletariat has been a slave long enough to be allowed to play the master for once. But for the role of master it must also possess the master’s consciousness, and this is the great lesson and fruit of reading Stirner.

It is not recognized in the whole fullness of the word that all freedom is essentially — self-emancipation, i.e., that I can only have as much freedom as I get through my ownness. Of what use is it to sheep that no one curtails their freedom of speech? They stick to bleating!

________

Hermann Duncker was a Marxist historian and leading figure in the German workers’ education movement. He was a member of the Social Democratic Party and later the German Communists.

Jacob Blumenfeld is author of All Things Are Nothing to Me: The Unique Philosophy of Max Stirner.

SOURCE https://jacobin.com/2024/02/max-stirner-proletariat-philosophy-duncker/

The post Max Stirner’s Philosophy Is Actually Worth Reading appeared first on Void Network.

Individual freedom requires social support. To say NO, you need others to respect your choice and not force you to obey. To move freely, you need others to support your movement and not erect walls and roadblocks. To change what does not work, you need others who are affected to accept the change.

Basically, freedom is a social relationship, where me having my freedom depends on you having yours. A system is required to secure this social arrangement.

Systems shape us

We create systems in order to make things happen. A system has three elements: a purpose or goal; a set of rules, policies, and procedures designed to achieve the goal; and relationships that are shaped by applying the rules, policies, and procedures.

The systems we create are not separate from us; they organize us. Consider competitive sports. There is a goal (to win). There are rules of the game and penalties for violating them. And there are participants, whose behavior and relationships are shaped by the game.

The goal of the capitalist system is to extract capital from human labor. Achieving that goal requires a system with rules, penalties, and social relationships that all support the goal.

This three-part essay examines how the capitalist system robs us of all three basic freedoms; what blocks us from claiming our freedom; and how we can create a social system that supports freedom for all.

Part 1. My Body Is Not Your Capital-Producing Machine – Or Is It?

It is commonly believed that we have little control over our work lives, but that life outside of work – family and social relationships – is ours to shape.

In reality, time outside of work is largely consumed with two things: replacing the energy we put out on the job so we can work again the next day, and raising the next generation of workers to replace the current one. Production depends on this reproduction of the worker.

The tight connection between production and reproduction is difficult to see because they are organized differently. Production is organized socially, with billions of workers linked in global chains of manufacture and distribution. Reproduction is organized privately, with individuals and families expected to replenish and reproduce themselves with no outside support.

Employers benefit from privatized reproduction. They can hire workers to produce while avoiding the cost of replacing them, even though their business depends on it. According to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business,

Paid maternity leave is a totally ridiculous kind of demand to expect employers to pay. Those who want to have babies should pay for them.

Because production and reproduction are differently organized, it seems they exist in two different spheres: an economic sphere of work shaped by capitalism, where one has little control; and a personal sphere of friendship and family, not shaped by capitalism, where one is presumed to have total control.

In reality, work and life-outside-of-work are parts of a single capitalist system. Despite the relentless message that we make our own lives and ‘there is always a choice,’ it is impossible to have a personal life that is separate from, or exists outside of, the capitalist system. Lack of freedom on the job requires a lack of freedom outside it.

The more authorities restrict reproduction and individual behavior, the more the myth of two spheres breaks down to reveal only one sphere, capitalism, that dominates every aspect of life.

You cannot refuse, and you cannot leave

The goal of capitalist production is to produce capital. Capital is profit that is invested to extract more profit. Profit comes from paying workers less than the value of what they produce. The lower the wages, the higher the profit.

Jeff Bezos rakes in billions of dollars in profit by paying workers far less than the value of their work. He then uses this profit to purchase other businesses that enable him to exploit even more workers and make even more profit. Bezos is accumulating capital. The more capital he accumulates, the greater his power over society.

No one freely chooses to work all their life to produce capital to make others rich. The worker must be robbed of the freedom to say no, to leave, or to change the system. To maintain this social arrangement everyone, including the worker, must do their part.

Employers rely on the State to ensure the conditions for capital accumulation. As Braverman explained in Labor and Monopoly Capital,

In the most elementary sense, the State is guarantor of the conditions, the social relations, of capitalism, and the protector of the ever-more unequal distribution of property which this system brings about.

The State gives employers the legal authority to dictate the conditions of employment. Unionized workers can modify some of these conditions, but they have no legal right to challenge the nature of the work or how it is organized, to determine staffing levels, or to curb executive pay. All major work-related decisions fall under management rights. The State uses the legal system, the police, and the military to enforce those rights.

States allow employers to use, abuse, and discard workers as the cost of doing business. When hazardous working conditions cause sickness, injury, and death, the State sides with the employer. Workers’ claims for compensation are minimized or denied, fines levied against companies are too small to change anything, and no employer ever goes to jail for killing a worker.

States use legislation and monetary policy to prevent workers’ demands from cutting into profits. The legal minimum wage sets the bar so low that the average worker must go into debt to pay for basic essentials.

The only option for those who cannot work or refuse to do so is appeal to the State for support. Such support is notoriously difficult to get and kept miserably low to deter all but the most desperate. Ontario makes it easier to access euthanasia than to access social support.

States restrict travel in order to block workers from escaping to a better situation. Around the world, millions of people are incarcerated for the ‘crime’ of crossing a border in search of a better life.

Border restrictions trap workers in low-waged areas. Employers are free to move production in and out of these low-waged areas, giving them leverage to lower the pay of workers in higher-waged areas.

States use immigration controls to manage the size and composition of the workforce to benefit employers. Lower unemployment increases the pressure to raise wages, and importing more workers lowers that pressure. Denying equal rights to newcomers enables employers to underpay and overwork them, exerting a downward pressure on the pay and conditions of all workers.

All these measures ensure that, no matter how hard they labor or how much they protest, the worker is blocked from escaping their assigned role as a capital-producing machine.

What personal life?

The concept of ‘personal life’ ignores how much our lives are restricted outside work.

The modern family is a State-regulated institution. Laws dictate who can marry and who cannot, who is a family member and who is not, and how many unrelated people may live in a dwelling. Laws enforce gender norms, restrict access to contraception and abortion, and determine at what age a person may engage in adult activities.

One cannot leave a family at will. The State can forcibly return runaway youngsters to their families, place them in alternate families, or confine them in detention centers. Spouses who want to leave their marriages and parents seeking relief from childcare duties can be held financially responsible for ‘dependents.’

The State defines what it means to be a fit parent and can remove children from those it declares unfit. The State decides if families separated by national borders will be reunited or remain apart, and whether family members will be deported.

State laws compel young people to attend school, whether they want to or not, and parents are expected to enforce this law. In Jacksonville, Florida,

if a child has more than five unexcused absences [from school] in a calendar month or 15 unexcused absences in a 90-day period, parents can be arrested, charged with a misdemeanor, and face up to 60 days in jail.

Not free to be me

Organizing reproduction in family units demands distinct gender roles; men are cast as the primary producers, and women as the primary care-givers. Someone has to care for the young, sick, and infirm, and it’s typically the lower-paid woman who is paid less precisely because of her care-taking duties.

A family system based on reproducing couples allows no room for gender fluidity or for being intersex or trans. Those who do not conform to their socially assigned gender role risk punishment in the legal system or treatment in the medical system. As long as reproduction is rooted in the family, we cannot escape the pressure of binary gender roles and all the oppression they generate.

Capitalism favors standardized production, where large numbers of identical objects can be quickly produced with less labor and more profit. To produce uniform outcomes, the worker must make the same moves over and over again. This assembly-line model has been adopted in every industry, including hospitals and schools. As one principal instructed his teachers,

When I stand in the hallway, I should be able to hear all fourth grades saying the same thing. Do not deviate from the scripted program and do not fall behind in the pacing plan.

The demand for uniformity dominates every area of life. To maximize profit, the capitalist class engineer plants and animals to eliminate variation, reduce workers to the status of interchangeable cogs in a machine, and convince people of all nations to desire the same things and behave in the same ways.

Shut up and conform

Questioning makes progress possible; it invites us to examine what we are doing and why, and to consider different options. Capitalism makes questioning policies or those who make them a serious offense, even treasonous. We cannot speak freely or share vital information. The relentless persecution of whistle-blowers Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, and Steven Donziger serves as a general warning not to question authority or hold it accountable.

A system that demands conformity cannot tolerate dissent or diversity. In the past, people who thought, felt, or behaved differently were considered interesting, odd, eccentric, colorful, or characters. Today, such people risk being labeled ‘mentally ill,’ forcibly drugged, and confined to a psychiatric institution, possibly indefinitely.

The social power of modern psychiatry cannot be explained on the basis of its scientific validity or clinical effectiveness, both of which are highly contested. Its influence comes from its usefulness to the capitalist system.

Since slavery days, the State has partnered with medicine and psychiatry to enforce conformity and obedience. Today, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) catalogs unacceptable behavior in every area of life, with unacceptable behavior meaning protesting how things are, or disturbing others with your protest.

Being trapped in an oppressive social system is so painful that many people break down, lash out, use drugs, escape into fantasy, and so on. Mass misery cannot be acknowledged without bringing the entire capitalist system into question. Instead, modern medical systems practice damage control, where the sick and injured are patched up and returned to the same situations that harmed them.

Controlling fertility

States control reproduction to manage the size and composition of the workforce; minimize the cost of social support; and enforce social control. What the pregnant person wants or does not want is not considered.

To lower the birth rate, China imposed a limit of one child per family in 1980. Violators could be punished with fines, job loss, forced abortions, and loss of access to social services. As the birth rate fell, the one-child policy was replaced with a two-child policy in 2016, followed by a three-child policy in 2021.

To raise the birth rate, Nazi Germany outlawed all forms of birth control, including abortion, with stiff penalties for violators. ‘German-blooded’ women with large families were awarded the Mother’s Cross: bronze for up to five children; silver for six or seven; and gold for eight or more.

To increase the enslaved labor force in the US, Black women and girls were forcibly impregnated and compelled to bear their rapists’ children. When importing enslaved people was outlawed in 1808, forced reproduction became even more important to the slave economy.

Planters advertised for [Black women] as they did for breeding cows or mares, in farm magazines and catalogues. They shared tips with one another on how to get maximum value out of their breeders. They sold or lent enslaved men as studs and were known to lock teenage boys and girls together to mate in a kind of bullpen. They propagated new slaves themselves, and allowed their sons to [do so].

To minimize the cost of social support and reduce the risk of rebellion, States sterilize those they consider ‘surplus’ or socially unfit, including Black, Indigenous, imprisoned, addicted, disabled, and poor people.

During the Great Depression, the International Congress of Eugenics met in New York City to discuss the mass sterilization of unemployed workers. One speaker declared,

A major portion of this vast army of unemployed are social inadequates, and in many cases mental defectives, who might have been spared the misery they are now facing if they had never been born.

The US-funded program to sterilize Puerto Rican women had two goals: to reduce the number of poor people on the island; and to promote the migration of women workers to New York, which would be easier if they had no children.

Between the 1930s and the 1970s, approximately one-third of the female population of Puerto Rico was sterilized, making it highest rate of sterilization in the world.

In the US today, 31 states plus Washington, DC, legally allow the forced sterilization of people with disabilities

Forced birth

When the US Supreme Court abolished the legal right to abortion, it shattered the belief that our bodies belong to us, and that life-outside-of-work is ours to shape.

When states coerce and force women, girls and people with the capacity for pregnancy to remain pregnant against their will, they create human chattel and incubators of them. By doing so, state lawmakers force their bodies into the service of state interests.

States typically prioritize the welfare of the fetus over that of the parent. Prospective parents are bombarded with advice on how to produce a healthy child and can be penalized for behaviors that risk fetal health. In the US today, a miscarriage can get you charged with manslaughter or murder. In El Salvador, a women was sentenced to 50 years in prison after a stillbirth.

Protecting the pregnant person is not a priority. There are no public warnings that pregnancy can cause severe pain, traumatic injury, hemorrhage, sepsis, sterility, disability, and death.

Women in the US are 14 times more likely to die by carrying a pregnancy to term than by having an abortion. In Mississippi, a Black woman is 118 times as likely to die from carrying a pregnancy to term than from an abortion. The United States is the most dangerous place in the industrialized world to give birth, ranking 55th overall in the world.

Because staying pregnant is more dangerous than having an abortion, a complete abortion ban in the US would increase the number of pregnancy-related deaths by an estimated 21 percent overall, and 33 percent for Black women. These figures do not include the rise in deaths from unsafe abortions.

The Supreme Court refused to consider these matters. Justice Alito wrote,

We do not pretend to know how our political system or society will respond to today’s decision overruling Roe and Casey. And even if we could foresee what will happen, we would have no authority to let that knowledge influence our decision.

It seems counter-productive for capitalism to restrict abortion. Women need to control their fertility so they can work outside the home. Denying this control has a devastating impact on their earning potential, as well as disrupting industries that depend on female labor.

The capitalist class are not united on all things. For some sections, social control is the highest priority. They rightly fear that people who are free to choose in any area of life will push for freedom on the job. To prevent that, they claim the right to dictate what people can and cannot do, and use the State to impose their beliefs on society.

Authoritarian

A tiny elite can only rule a large majority by robbing them of the choice to live any other way. By definition, such rule is authoritarian.

As the gap grows between the wealthy capitalist class and the impoverished working class, the risk of rebellion rises. To maintain social control, governments all over the world are becoming more authoritarian. Two recent US examples include the Trump insurrection and the proliferation of forced-birth laws.

In Canada, a seemingly liberal government has adopted an unprecedented number of Secret Orders-in-Council that are never published and cannot be accessed by Parliament or the public. Secret decision-making enables elites to enact policies that ordinary people would reject, such as exporting billions of dollars in weaponry to the US and Saudi Arabia. A genuine democracy has no need for secret policies.

Technological advances make it easier to enforce authoritarian control. A 2011 report warned,

Within the next few years, it will be technically possible and financially feasible for authoritarian governments to record nearly everything that is said or done within their borders – every phone conversation, electronic message, social media interaction, the movements of nearly every person and vehicle, and video from every street corner.

Fear of majority rebellion has spurred increased funding for police and expanded police powers.

The budgets of modern police departments are staggeringly high and ever increasing, with no parallel in history, producing incarceration rates unseen around the world. If police and prisons made us safe, we would have the safest society in world history — but the opposite is true.

That is how afraid of us they are.

Fed Up

Having suffered through a lethal pandemic, most people are working harder and longer for less, while profits and executive pay soar. Inflation is rapidly rising, yet the modest demand that wages at least match inflation is rejected as excessive and inflationary. Corporate profiteers get no such criticism, even though fatter profits account for more than 50 percent of increased prices.

A US report found, “markups and profits skyrocketed in 2021 to their highest recorded level since the 1950s.” The average price markup was 72 percent higher than a company’s costs, pushing net profits to the highest value on record. The authors conclude,

Since markups are unusually and suddenly so high, there is room for reversing them with little economic harm and likely societal benefit, including lower prices and less inequality.

They must have missed the capitalist memo that profits are sacred and workers are expendable.

Instead of forcing corporations to lower prices or raise wages, officials are jacking up interest rates on loans and mortgages. This has the effect of undercutting wages, driving workers deeper into debt, and making it more difficult to pay for essentials, such as food, housing, and medical care.

Understandably, confidence in capitalist institutions is falling. Only 36 percent of Americans think the US system of government is sound, and only 13 percent of Americans are satisfied with how things are going in the US.

When the majority lose faith that the existing system can solve their problems, they look for alternatives. One result is a global resurgence of working-class rebellion with millions of people protesting their suffering and demanding fundamental social change.

________

Source: https://susanrosenthal.com/capitalism/my-body-is-not-your-capital-producing-machine-or-is-it/

Coming soon: Part 2. Why Freedom Cannot be Won Within the System that Takes it Away.

The post My Body Is Not Your Capital-Producing Machine – Or Is It?- – Susan Rosenthal MD appeared first on Void Network.

____

There are three basic freedoms: freedom to say NO; freedom to move away; and freedom to change what does not work.

Individual freedom requires social support. To say NO, you need others to respect your choice and not force you to obey. To move freely, you need others to support your movement and not erect walls and roadblocks. To change what does not work, you need others who are affected to accept the change.

Basically, freedom is a social relationship, where me having my freedom depends on you having yours. A system is required to secure this social arrangement.

Systems shape us

We create systems in order to make things happen. A system has three elements: a purpose or goal; a set of rules, policies, and procedures designed to achieve the goal; and relationships that are shaped by applying the rules, policies, and procedures.

The systems we create are not separate from us; they organize us. Consider competitive sports. There is a goal (to win). There are rules of the game and penalties for violating them. And there are participants, whose behavior and relationships are shaped by the game.

The goal of the capitalist system is to extract capital from human labor. Achieving that goal requires a system with rules, penalties, and social relationships that all support the goal.

This three-part essay examines how the capitalist system robs us of all three basic freedoms; what blocks us from claiming our freedom; and how we can create a social system that supports freedom for all.

Part 1. My Body Is Not Your Capital-Producing Machine – Or Is It?

It is commonly believed that we have little control over our work lives, but that life outside of work – family and social relationships – is ours to shape.

In reality, time outside of work is largely consumed with two things: replacing the energy we put out on the job so we can work again the next day, and raising the next generation of workers to replace the current one. Production depends on this reproduction of the worker.

The tight connection between production and reproduction is difficult to see because they are organized differently. Production is organized socially, with billions of workers linked in global chains of manufacture and distribution. Reproduction is organized privately, with individuals and families expected to replenish and reproduce themselves with no outside support.

Employers benefit from privatized reproduction. They can hire workers to produce while avoiding the cost of replacing them, even though their business depends on it. According to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business,

Paid maternity leave is a totally ridiculous kind of demand to expect employers to pay. Those who want to have babies should pay for them.

Because production and reproduction are differently organized, it seems they exist in two different spheres: an economic sphere of work shaped by capitalism, where one has little control; and a personal sphere of friendship and family, not shaped by capitalism, where one is presumed to have total control.

In reality, work and life-outside-of-work are parts of a single capitalist system. Despite the relentless message that we make our own lives and ‘there is always a choice,’ it is impossible to have a personal life that is separate from, or exists outside of, the capitalist system. Lack of freedom on the job requires a lack of freedom outside it.

The more authorities restrict reproduction and individual behavior, the more the myth of two spheres breaks down to reveal only one sphere, capitalism, that dominates every aspect of life.

You cannot refuse, and you cannot leave

The goal of capitalist production is to produce capital. Capital is profit that is invested to extract more profit. Profit comes from paying workers less than the value of what they produce. The lower the wages, the higher the profit.

Jeff Bezos rakes in billions of dollars in profit by paying workers far less than the value of their work. He then uses this profit to purchase other businesses that enable him to exploit even more workers and make even more profit. Bezos is accumulating capital. The more capital he accumulates, the greater his power over society.

No one freely chooses to work all their life to produce capital to make others rich. The worker must be robbed of the freedom to say no, to leave, or to change the system. To maintain this social arrangement everyone, including the worker, must do their part.

Employers rely on the State to ensure the conditions for capital accumulation. As Braverman explained in Labor and Monopoly Capital,

In the most elementary sense, the State is guarantor of the conditions, the social relations, of capitalism, and the protector of the ever-more unequal distribution of property which this system brings about.

The State gives employers the legal authority to dictate the conditions of employment. Unionized workers can modify some of these conditions, but they have no legal right to challenge the nature of the work or how it is organized, to determine staffing levels, or to curb executive pay. All major work-related decisions fall under management rights. The State uses the legal system, the police, and the military to enforce those rights.

States allow employers to use, abuse, and discard workers as the cost of doing business. When hazardous working conditions cause sickness, injury, and death, the State sides with the employer. Workers’ claims for compensation are minimized or denied, fines levied against companies are too small to change anything, and no employer ever goes to jail for killing a worker.

States use legislation and monetary policy to prevent workers’ demands from cutting into profits. The legal minimum wage sets the bar so low that the average worker must go into debt to pay for basic essentials.

The only option for those who cannot work or refuse to do so is appeal to the State for support. Such support is notoriously difficult to get and kept miserably low to deter all but the most desperate. Ontario makes it easier to access euthanasia than to access social support.

States restrict travel in order to block workers from escaping to a better situation. Around the world, millions of people are incarcerated for the ‘crime’ of crossing a border in search of a better life.

Border restrictions trap workers in low-waged areas. Employers are free to move production in and out of these low-waged areas, giving them leverage to lower the pay of workers in higher-waged areas.

States use immigration controls to manage the size and composition of the workforce to benefit employers. Lower unemployment increases the pressure to raise wages, and importing more workers lowers that pressure. Denying equal rights to newcomers enables employers to underpay and overwork them, exerting a downward pressure on the pay and conditions of all workers.

All these measures ensure that, no matter how hard they labor or how much they protest, the worker is blocked from escaping their assigned role as a capital-producing machine.

What personal life?

The concept of ‘personal life’ ignores how much our lives are restricted outside work.

The modern family is a State-regulated institution. Laws dictate who can marry and who cannot, who is a family member and who is not, and how many unrelated people may live in a dwelling. Laws enforce gender norms, restrict access to contraception and abortion, and determine at what age a person may engage in adult activities.

One cannot leave a family at will. The State can forcibly return runaway youngsters to their families, place them in alternate families, or confine them in detention centers. Spouses who want to leave their marriages and parents seeking relief from childcare duties can be held financially responsible for ‘dependents.’

The State defines what it means to be a fit parent and can remove children from those it declares unfit. The State decides if families separated by national borders will be reunited or remain apart, and whether family members will be deported.

State laws compel young people to attend school, whether they want to or not, and parents are expected to enforce this law. In Jacksonville, Florida,

if a child has more than five unexcused absences [from school] in a calendar month or 15 unexcused absences in a 90-day period, parents can be arrested, charged with a misdemeanor, and face up to 60 days in jail.

Not free to be me

Organizing reproduction in family units demands distinct gender roles; men are cast as the primary producers, and women as the primary care-givers. Someone has to care for the young, sick, and infirm, and it’s typically the lower-paid woman who is paid less precisely because of her care-taking duties.

A family system based on reproducing couples allows no room for gender fluidity or for being intersex or trans. Those who do not conform to their socially assigned gender role risk punishment in the legal system or treatment in the medical system. As long as reproduction is rooted in the family, we cannot escape the pressure of binary gender roles and all the oppression they generate.

Capitalism favors standardized production, where large numbers of identical objects can be quickly produced with less labor and more profit. To produce uniform outcomes, the worker must make the same moves over and over again. This assembly-line model has been adopted in every industry, including hospitals and schools. As one principal instructed his teachers,

When I stand in the hallway, I should be able to hear all fourth grades saying the same thing. Do not deviate from the scripted program and do not fall behind in the pacing plan.

The demand for uniformity dominates every area of life. To maximize profit, the capitalist class engineer plants and animals to eliminate variation, reduce workers to the status of interchangeable cogs in a machine, and convince people of all nations to desire the same things and behave in the same ways.

Shut up and conform

Questioning makes progress possible; it invites us to examine what we are doing and why, and to consider different options. Capitalism makes questioning policies or those who make them a serious offense, even treasonous. We cannot speak freely or share vital information. The relentless persecution of whistle-blowers Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, and Steven Donziger serves as a general warning not to question authority or hold it accountable.

A system that demands conformity cannot tolerate dissent or diversity. In the past, people who thought, felt, or behaved differently were considered interesting, odd, eccentric, colorful, or characters. Today, such people risk being labeled ‘mentally ill,’ forcibly drugged, and confined to a psychiatric institution, possibly indefinitely.

The social power of modern psychiatry cannot be explained on the basis of its scientific validity or clinical effectiveness, both of which are highly contested. Its influence comes from its usefulness to the capitalist system.

Since slavery days, the State has partnered with medicine and psychiatry to enforce conformity and obedience. Today, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) catalogs unacceptable behavior in every area of life, with unacceptable behavior meaning protesting how things are, or disturbing others with your protest.

Being trapped in an oppressive social system is so painful that many people break down, lash out, use drugs, escape into fantasy, and so on. Mass misery cannot be acknowledged without bringing the entire capitalist system into question. Instead, modern medical systems practice damage control, where the sick and injured are patched up and returned to the same situations that harmed them.

Controlling fertility

States control reproduction to manage the size and composition of the workforce; minimize the cost of social support; and enforce social control. What the pregnant person wants or does not want is not considered.

To lower the birth rate, China imposed a limit of one child per family in 1980. Violators could be punished with fines, job loss, forced abortions, and loss of access to social services. As the birth rate fell, the one-child policy was replaced with a two-child policy in 2016, followed by a three-child policy in 2021.

To raise the birth rate, Nazi Germany outlawed all forms of birth control, including abortion, with stiff penalties for violators. ‘German-blooded’ women with large families were awarded the Mother’s Cross: bronze for up to five children; silver for six or seven; and gold for eight or more.

To increase the enslaved labor force in the US, Black women and girls were forcibly impregnated and compelled to bear their rapists’ children. When importing enslaved people was outlawed in 1808, forced reproduction became even more important to the slave economy.

Planters advertised for [Black women] as they did for breeding cows or mares, in farm magazines and catalogues. They shared tips with one another on how to get maximum value out of their breeders. They sold or lent enslaved men as studs and were known to lock teenage boys and girls together to mate in a kind of bullpen. They propagated new slaves themselves, and allowed their sons to [do so].

To minimize the cost of social support and reduce the risk of rebellion, States sterilize those they consider ‘surplus’ or socially unfit, including Black, Indigenous, imprisoned, addicted, disabled, and poor people.

During the Great Depression, the International Congress of Eugenics met in New York City to discuss the mass sterilization of unemployed workers. One speaker declared,

A major portion of this vast army of unemployed are social inadequates, and in many cases mental defectives, who might have been spared the misery they are now facing if they had never been born.

The US-funded program to sterilize Puerto Rican women had two goals: to reduce the number of poor people on the island; and to promote the migration of women workers to New York, which would be easier if they had no children.

Between the 1930s and the 1970s, approximately one-third of the female population of Puerto Rico was sterilized, making it highest rate of sterilization in the world.

In the US today, 31 states plus Washington, DC, legally allow the forced sterilization of people with disabilities

Forced birth

When the US Supreme Court abolished the legal right to abortion, it shattered the belief that our bodies belong to us, and that life-outside-of-work is ours to shape.

When states coerce and force women, girls and people with the capacity for pregnancy to remain pregnant against their will, they create human chattel and incubators of them. By doing so, state lawmakers force their bodies into the service of state interests.

States typically prioritize the welfare of the fetus over that of the parent. Prospective parents are bombarded with advice on how to produce a healthy child and can be penalized for behaviors that risk fetal health. In the US today, a miscarriage can get you charged with manslaughter or murder. In El Salvador, a women was sentenced to 50 years in prison after a stillbirth.

Protecting the pregnant person is not a priority. There are no public warnings that pregnancy can cause severe pain, traumatic injury, hemorrhage, sepsis, sterility, disability, and death.

Women in the US are 14 times more likely to die by carrying a pregnancy to term than by having an abortion. In Mississippi, a Black woman is 118 times as likely to die from carrying a pregnancy to term than from an abortion. The United States is the most dangerous place in the industrialized world to give birth, ranking 55th overall in the world.

Because staying pregnant is more dangerous than having an abortion, a complete abortion ban in the US would increase the number of pregnancy-related deaths by an estimated 21 percent overall, and 33 percent for Black women. These figures do not include the rise in deaths from unsafe abortions.

The Supreme Court refused to consider these matters. Justice Alito wrote,

We do not pretend to know how our political system or society will respond to today’s decision overruling Roe and Casey. And even if we could foresee what will happen, we would have no authority to let that knowledge influence our decision.

It seems counter-productive for capitalism to restrict abortion. Women need to control their fertility so they can work outside the home. Denying this control has a devastating impact on their earning potential, as well as disrupting industries that depend on female labor.

The capitalist class are not united on all things. For some sections, social control is the highest priority. They rightly fear that people who are free to choose in any area of life will push for freedom on the job. To prevent that, they claim the right to dictate what people can and cannot do, and use the State to impose their beliefs on society.

Authoritarian

A tiny elite can only rule a large majority by robbing them of the choice to live any other way. By definition, such rule is authoritarian.

As the gap grows between the wealthy capitalist class and the impoverished working class, the risk of rebellion rises. To maintain social control, governments all over the world are becoming more authoritarian. Two recent US examples include the Trump insurrection and the proliferation of forced-birth laws.

In Canada, a seemingly liberal government has adopted an unprecedented number of Secret Orders-in-Council that are never published and cannot be accessed by Parliament or the public. Secret decision-making enables elites to enact policies that ordinary people would reject, such as exporting billions of dollars in weaponry to the US and Saudi Arabia. A genuine democracy has no need for secret policies.

Technological advances make it easier to enforce authoritarian control. A 2011 report warned,

Within the next few years, it will be technically possible and financially feasible for authoritarian governments to record nearly everything that is said or done within their borders – every phone conversation, electronic message, social media interaction, the movements of nearly every person and vehicle, and video from every street corner.

Fear of majority rebellion has spurred increased funding for police and expanded police powers.

The budgets of modern police departments are staggeringly high and ever increasing, with no parallel in history, producing incarceration rates unseen around the world. If police and prisons made us safe, we would have the safest society in world history — but the opposite is true.

That is how afraid of us they are.

Fed Up

Having suffered through a lethal pandemic, most people are working harder and longer for less, while profits and executive pay soar. Inflation is rapidly rising, yet the modest demand that wages at least match inflation is rejected as excessive and inflationary. Corporate profiteers get no such criticism, even though fatter profits account for more than 50 percent of increased prices.

A US report found, “markups and profits skyrocketed in 2021 to their highest recorded level since the 1950s.” The average price markup was 72 percent higher than a company’s costs, pushing net profits to the highest value on record. The authors conclude,

Since markups are unusually and suddenly so high, there is room for reversing them with little economic harm and likely societal benefit, including lower prices and less inequality.

They must have missed the capitalist memo that profits are sacred and workers are expendable.

Instead of forcing corporations to lower prices or raise wages, officials are jacking up interest rates on loans and mortgages. This has the effect of undercutting wages, driving workers deeper into debt, and making it more difficult to pay for essentials, such as food, housing, and medical care.

Understandably, confidence in capitalist institutions is falling. Only 36 percent of Americans think the US system of government is sound, and only 13 percent of Americans are satisfied with how things are going in the US.

When the majority lose faith that the existing system can solve their problems, they look for alternatives. One result is a global resurgence of working-class rebellion with millions of people protesting their suffering and demanding fundamental social change.

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Written by Susan Rosenthal

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Source: https://susanrosenthal.com/capitalism/my-body-is-not-your-capital-producing-machine-or-is-it/

The post My Body Is Not Your Capital-Producing Machine – Or Is It? appeared first on Void Network.

Preface 

Below are two excerpts from Rodrigo Karmy Bolton’s The Future is Inherited, a compilation of essays and reflections composed during the initial months of the 2019 Chilean uprising, which recently appeared in English. 

In October 2019, Transantiago, the Metropolitan Transit system in Chile’s capital, raised the train fare by thirty pesos. In response, high school students planned what they called a Evasión Masiva, a week of coordinated protests across the city where participants and commuters alike jumped metro turnstiles and refused to pay the fare. On Friday, October 18, a “mass evasion”  shut down Santiago’s metropolitan transit system during rush hour. Crowds began gathering across the city, and by nightfall, barricades guarded by singing revelers burned at every major intersection. Banks and government buildings were set ablaze, while supermarkets, WalMarts, and one sixth of all corporate owned pharmacies were looted. The country’s President at the time, Sebastián Piñera, held a press conference in which he declared a “state of emergency” in the city. Twenty-four hours later, tanks and Humvees patrolled Santiago, military curfews were enforced, and civil liberties were suspended for the first time since the Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990).

This inaugural wave of unrest was quickly countered by a series of political maneuvers that sought to channel the energy in the streets into institutional changes. By November 2019, the ruling conservative party and its opposition agreed to initiating a process that would lead to the drafting of a new constitution. 

Two years have since passed. The constitutional convention has begun to draft a new constitution, and Gabriel Boric, a leader from the 2011 university student movement turned congressional representative, now serves as Chile’s president. In the eyes of many who cleave to the normative framework of political conflict, this trajectory appears as a sorely needed process of social change. However, as Karmy’s meditations on the experiences and rhythms of October 2019 reveal, the most powerful elements of the revolt are often those least capable of being translated into institutional transformations.  

For Karmy, the date “October 18th” marks not simply a night of insurrection, but a fissure that split Chilean history open, like a short circuit that bridged the anger against the Pinochet Dictatorship, the 1990’s transition to democracy, and the present forms of technocratic governance. After decades of violent social control, forced disappearances, torture, and extrajudicial murder, the political reconciliation that announced the shift from dictatorship to parliamentary democracy was made possible by a series of agreements and accords between Pinochet’s administration, its political supporters, and its centrist and leftist opponents. This meant that throughout the 1990s, Pinochet remained a “senator for life” and the head of the Chilean military, while his 1981 constitution enshrining the Chicago boy’s neoliberal principles remained in place.

Although social democrats and progressives like to present the rampant inequalities and political restrictions that plague contemporary Chile as institutional hangovers from the dictatorship, the Chilean left has its own part to play in this history. As Karmy shows, their inability to break away from “the transitional episteme” has committed them to a pragmatic framework of political conflict, which prioritizes the restoration of a shared legitimacy and the practical matter of governability over all expressions of “popular,” i.e., everyday people’s concern for justice, dignity, and self-respect. If the revolt taught us anything, it’s that the real conflict is not between the camps of left and the right, but between an elitist framework for resolving questions of governance, and a Chilean people who no longer wish to be governed as a population whatsoever.

Whether or not the energy from October 2019 will succeed in breaking out of this transitional episteme remains to be seen. What limitations would need to be overcome, in order for this to happen? In Chile’s capital, it was the state of exception and the military in the streets that allowed the game of mass evasion to be transformed into a general revolt. Yet constitutional states of exception have been declared many times in Chile’s periphery in recent years, without the corresponding eruption of mass revolt. Mapuche communities in Southern Chile have been occupied by the Chilean military since September 2021, in response to an escalation in direct actions against the local elite complicit with extractive industries and ecological destruction earlier that year. In the desert regions along Chile’s northern border, the military has also been called on to police the crisis of mass undocumented immigration spurred by Venezuelans fleeing the economic crisis. This suggests, first, that our understanding of popular revolt must expand beyond the spectacle of urban riots and street demonstrations, to consider what revolt looks like in other territories. At the same time, the concept of “popular” revolt has often been hamstrung by its association with an idea of “the people” as the agent and actor of struggle, whether this be the Nation or various abstract “communities.” As Karmy shows, the protagonists of the Chilean revolt, at the moment they take to the streets, cannot be neatly subsumed under any such categories. In this way, his work not only allows us to see the limitations of the 2019-2021 wave of global uprisings, but also helps us identify potential connections with others struggles internationally that continue to confront similar obstacles. 

—Emilio Janequeo, Santiago de Chile, April 2022

October 18 [1]

Whatever happened to this date? Is it just a chronological date? Perhaps, a dislocated number that, while locating itself on a calendar, desperately flees from it. Its potency does not match its figure, its life with its letter. It explodes without referring to any leader, nor to any political party or partisan vanguard. Everything is much more precarious, but at the same time, more resistant, it can flee between the interstices of the city and permanently “evade” the “who” created by police dynamics. “Evade” designated the subtraction of the sensible life of bodies — what we will call “surface” — with respect to the governmental machinery of neoliberal reason.

As if a crack opened in the middle of the road, as if a historical continuum had stopped. The atmosphere normalized the presence of multiple sounds: sirens breaking the city buzz, helicopters machine-gunning the airspace, shots from various weapons filtering through diverse populations, never before images being monitored by images already frozen, songs — Víctor Jara ^[2] or Jorge González ^[3] — penetrating from other times to face a voracious repression; pots and pans biting into the night coming from dark windows and protesters defying the curfew with shouts and hand-to-hand combat against police or military uniforms.

Nights and days were not the same, but they were the same. A single day, hour or minute that condensed days and nights, days and nights as if there was no more difference between them. Other faces ravaged the mornings, other voices dictated the rhythm; the poor, the blind, those who had said “enough” to a life that promised nothing but debts, to an existence that had renounced all historicity, to an agony whose grief paralyzed bodies. The streets were invested with graffiti with which the crowd embraced the moment of their celebration. It all meant that the downward gaze in front of the boss could not carry on. The randomness of the clash was violent: the boss found the servant in the ferocity of a revolt, without the domestication he presupposed, without the ignorance he attributed to him, without the fear that he had instilled in him.

“No fear” is infinitely replicated on the walls of Chile. With no fear, but with rage: a whole generation that had been hardened by the silence of dictatorship imploded in the emergence of rage brought by their children. But anger not as a psychologically manageable emotion, but as a politically ungovernable affect. The entire transitional episteme was made for docile bodies. It was always a matter of modesty, of control, of learning not to demand beyond “what is possible” within a historical and political limit that became ontological. If not, the military could return or the businessmen could flee: fear provided the affective tonality to the transitional episteme. Sociologists, economists and politicians consolidated an upper echelons’ agreement around the prevalence of neoliberal reason. Everyone had to give in because everyone had to accept the established limit that was forged in the formula “as far as possible”. 

Those who raged during the dictatorship could faint in the desolation of democracy, those who fought during the dictatorship had to tame their spirits in the new transitional machinery. But injustice remained unredeemed. And it is that fissure that always challenged the transitional episteme that is actualized in the politicization of anger that ends up leading the Chilean government machine to bankruptcy.

Rage has been the ardor of an injustice that went beyond the psychological sphere captured by neoliberal confiscation and, like a blast crossing two eras at once, it left historicity in the hands of children: “He who doesn’t know about children, knows nothing of riots.” A revolt leads a people to experience its in-fancy, precisely, the inactuality with oneself, the strange thunder of its untimeliness. Usual spaces and times are shattered into a thousand pieces. And the revolt reminded us that the most decisive tremor, the adjustment with our historicity, is nothing more than a future that is inherited.

It is not a question of “future” as a horizon that owns a precise direction, but of a future in the sense of a disposition to the possibility of becoming others, in which a potency never rested on some trauma that could foreshadow it in some way, but always remained irreducible to the tricks of the law. It is a power that is nothing more than future and that only its clandestine transfer of the impersonality of a common can make it possible for bodies to know what it is that they are actually capable of. Because this potency is defined by its transmissibility and it becomes nothing more than an affirmation of life that escapes any suture provided by power. The future is inherited precisely because the bodies were able to “evade” the fear inoculated by the oligarchy during their years of dictatorship and in the convoluted transition.

The gaze of the former servant — like that passive “Indian” before the colonist — does not bow his head in front of power, but rather defies it and suffers the direct destruction of its eyes. The servant burns everything, launching himself in his martyrological potency for yesterday’s dead, for those who were defeated in the past. Rage burns everything on history’s pyre, without the authorization by the masters who once crushed the native, the worker, the student. In-fancy dislocating the civilized continuity between life and language to lead us to the cleft of popular imagination: the only barricade that connects bodies with surfaces, the new with the old, life with its forms.

The entire university apparatus, with its knowledge of order, believes that the revolt is a “social phenomenon.” A reduction to causalism by current sociology, when truly the revolt is a medium of common sensibility in which the spirits of the past embrace the incandescence of our present. Thousands of Chileans knew this when they sang “The right to live in peace” (El derecho de vivir en paz) by Victor Jara or “The dance of those left behind” (El baile de los que sobran). Uncle Ho, who fought against North American imperialism, became a surplus, a remnant, much like the municipalized students of the 1980s, ungovernable who transmitted potency from one moment to another, who inherited the future to those who could hear the intensity of their voice. That is why October 18 is not a date, but rather an artifact of spiritualism by which the defeated were able to “evade” the historical cruelty of the victors.

Revolt^[4]

One of the first days of protests I found myself at 11am in Plaza Italia. I was going to the demonstration called for 2pm, but decided to arrive earlier to get a feel for the atmosphere. After all, politics is always an atmospheric affair. I began walking from Plaza Italia towards the Andes, that is, towards the Salvador Metro station and the landscape was made up of the rubble after the battle. On Sunday, there was a large demonstration, and protests continued during the night, in the midst of the declaration of a curfew. There was the sour smell of tear gas along the road, burning the skin; burned plastic occasionally penetrated the urban ruin. Some shops were burnt, others were intact: The Gabriela Mistral Cultural Center (GAM) was intact, the Kentucky Fried Chicken branch was burnt; the theater of the University of Chile was intact, the branch of the Bank of Chile was completely burnt.

Popular violence is not a “Hobbesian violence”[5] but a violence interrupting capitalist symbolism. These are not vandals who simply destroy everything they touch, but molecular movements that, most of the time, direct their fury against the signs of power. But this does not mean, that once the revolt is in full swing, several criminal gangs will not penetrate the popular din to progressively restore exchange value from within, inoculating economy into what the revolt had made aneconomical. Precisely: every revolt runs at a loss. The aneconomy of the revolt interrupts “the normal flow” of the country’s capital, the institutions stop working, temporality is strongly suspended. The upsetting of reality, a necessary elixir of revolt, is a sign that a people has broken out as a revolt. 

Because no revolt carries with it the sign of purity. It is dirty, full of mixtures that flourish in the suspension of historical time it has opened. Every revolt fights against its own centrifugal forces, because its power is measured in the ability to remove sovereign violence that, however, tries to capture it permanently. For this reason, a revolt must bring into play an untimely relationship with the present. It never fits with itself because it wildly differs from itself. We cannot demand purity and hygiene from a revolt, because all dynamics oriented towards cleansing or purification symbolize the triumph of sacrificial or sovereign violence that the revolt is destituting. It is sacrifice that purifies, sacrifice that cleanses the world to slaughter the goats that crystallize the new evil on earth.

Sacrifice is precisely the weapon of all reactionary politics, waiting like a shadow within the state formula: “no people has ever doubted that there was an expiatory virtue in the effusion of blood,” wrote Joseph De Maistre in his Treatise on sacrifices.[6] Precisely because the violence of the revolt deposes the sacrificial dynamic, because in it the martyrological power is at stake, that is, the one that seals without blood the revocation of all sovereignty: “A political execution”, asserts Paul W. Kahn, “read as an act of martyrdom, proclaims the weakness, not the strength of the state.”[7] This is because martyrdom threatens to “expose the state and its claim to authority as nothing.” [8] Popular violence is martyrological in this sense: its potency destitutes [9] sovereign violence, exposing its weakness and dissolving its claim to authority as nothingness.

It does not destroy, but destitutes; it does not establish, but revokes. It breaks the subject supposed to know that has erected the discourse, making it fall like a mask, and it can do nothing but exercise sacrificial violence so as to restore order. All calls from the government and the occasional political actor to dialogue are based on the sacrificial fiction, in which all the agents in conflict get solved in the same general equivalent: police lives are as much of a victim of violence as those of citizens who have fallen under the military bullet or police hunt. The government’s discourse is sacrificial precisely when it condemns violence “wherever it comes from.” This sets it up to exercise the greatest violence of all — sovereign violence precisely — which is such because it can crush all the other types of violence that it considers simply sectorial.

But in addition, the sacrificial paradigm raised by the state discourse restores, in turn, capital, to the extent that it restores the equivalent codification that enables state violence to be reconciled in the same unit with the torn revolt of a citizenry out in the open. The martyr breaks sacrifice to the same extent that it exposes its nothingness. Could we say that the notion of sovereignty once proposed by philosopher Georges Bataille is that of a true and properly martyrological sovereignty inasmuch as it implodes the moment it is exercised? [10] And if this is so, would not the Schmittian conception of sovereignty be one that has not assumed the radical nature of its concept, that has never lived up to what it proclaims? [11]

In any case, the term “martyrdom” has had a bad name because, from my point of view, it has always been conceived under the sacrificial aura or, what is the same, it has always been represented from the point of view of the victors who appropriated its concept to capitalize on it in terms of the restitution of order. Using the well-known Benjaminian distinction between pure and mythical violence, I would like to differentiate martyrdom from sacrifice and maintain that the first refers to a popular violence of a redemptive and destituent nature that establishes or preserves nothing and, the latter is oligarchic violence oriented towards the establishment and preservation of order.

In this light, a revolt is martyrological and not sacrificial, and brings with it the courage of living labor in which the affirmation of a potency is played out, rather than the consolidation of power. Beyond the purification of liberal discourse that condemns all violence, wherever it comes from, thereby trying to exempt itself from sacrificial dynamics while reproducing them, it is necessary to vindicate the violence opened up by the revolt that, however, suspends the sacrificial violence that, time and again, does nothing more than exert its mythical death power. It is not a matter of aestheticizing it, but to assume the materiality with which it denounces the injustice of the current state of affairs, exposing sovereign power to the nakedness of its nothingness.

A revolt is never welcome. Crowds don’t know whether to laugh or cry in front of it. They don’t know if it happens for better or worse, precisely because it does not obey any telos or any guarantee to the extent that it exposes the fragility of our bodies before history’s elements. But a revolt never comes in a uniform shape or mode, but is always different, multiple and intense. It is also unpredictable. All efforts to identify its causes always come to a limit. Knowledge goes bankrupt. And suddenly, everyone remembers the thousand reports that kept on showing the misery of our conditions. But at such a moment, we wonder: if the conditions were already there, why did the fuse light at this moment? Why not before or after? Between the conditions and their outbreak, something key always takes place: a murder, an act of radical injustice against certain bodies, committed by the exercise of State violence.

In the Arab Spring, the immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in front of the police station was the imaginal operator that triggered the revolt. In Chile on October 18, thousands of high school students who had evaded the Metro turnstiles were brutally repressed by the police force. Five days after the proclamation of the State of Constitutional Exception, accompanied a nightly curfew apparatus, national and international Human Rights organizations were counting the death toll by State agents as the fierce way in which sacrificial violence was being deployed in the streets of a flooded city.

The revolt breaks out in various ways, an organization can take over — such as the one articulated today by Unidad Social. Like the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising, which articulated a minimum organization during the 1987 Palestinian intifada, Unidad Social could also become an “agency” (a “support” according to Judith Butler) [12] born out of the revolt itself to keep its work alive and not to confiscate it in a dead and completely bankrupt representational apparatus. Because, in the midst of the bankruptcy of a state model violently implemented in 1973, we are witnessing a beginning. 

We do not know what will happen or how events will unfold. But in the face of the devastation wrought by the dictatorship and later by the transition, directing its efforts to separate bodies from their potency, lives from their images, in a neutralization process, the revolt restored their intensity. Faced with the neoliberal body confiscated by the company form — turned “to prey”, said Guadalupe Santa Cruz — the revolt restored a body potency. The fascination experienced by the participants in a political process such as this is entirely linked to the surprise that awaits the conscience — that poor counselor — of what a body can do, what bodies can do. Because the revolt throws us into this: a hand-to-hand combat.

We never imagined what our bodies could do, we were never aware of it. How could we be, if consciousness — that representational apparatus — does nothing more than instill fear in us and push us to calculate our every movement? The revolt is aneconomic precisely because it does not calculate and always runs at a loss. We have already lost comrades in struggle, eyes, academic calendars, international events (APEC-COP 25) and we will continue to lose. Everything has been suspended, then, as Furio Jesi saw: unlike a revolution, a revolt implies the “suspension of historical time.” [13] A suspension that brings with it a radical loss, an unconditional expenditure that is impossible to foresee, but also the opening of a beginning in which we can re-imagine another historical era. It is precisely that beginning that we must embrace today with all the forces of history. Without it, we will not only be left without a future or a past, but above all we will be stripped of the heat of a present.

Rodrigo Karmy Bolton’s The Future is Inherited is now available in English from les presses du réel

Images: Tomas Munita

Notes

1. First published in El Desconcierto on November 27, 2019. 

2. Victor Jara (1932-1973) was a Chilean theater director, actor, playwright and folklore researcher, but generally known as a singer-songwriter, who actively participated in the Popular Unity’s presidential campaign. He was arrested after the coup in 1973 and was sent to the “Estadio Chile” (currently called “Víctor Jara Stadium”) where he was tortured and killed by the military. One of his most relevant songs was “The right to live in peace”, which Jara wrote inspired by Ho Chi Min and the Vietnam War. This song was massively sung during the recent protests along the country. —Editorial note.

3. Jorge González was the leader of Los Prisioneros, one of the main musical bands in recent Chilean history. Formed during the 1980s, they became a critical voice to the political and social order established by the dictatorship. One of their key songs was “The dance of those left behind”, which was massively sung during the protests in Plaza Dignidad. —Editorial note.

4. Originally published in Ficción de la Razón on October 29, 2019, as part of the special dossier “Estado generales de emergencia” coordinated by Sergio Villalobos-Ruminott and Mauricio Amar.

5. José Joaquín Brunner. Democracia, violencia y perspectivas futuras. Online here.

6. Joseph De Maistre. Tratado sobre los sacrificios. México, Sexto Piso, 2009, 24-25.     

7. Walter Benjamin, “On the Critique of Violence.”  

8. Paul W. Kahn. El liberalismo en su lugar. Santiago, Universidad Diego Portales, 2018, 112. 

9. The English edition incorrectly renders “destitutes/destituent” throughout as “dismisses.” —Note added by Ill Will.↰

10. Georges Bataille. Lo que entiendo por soberanía. Buenos Aires, Paidós, 1996. 

11. Carl Schmitt. Teología política. Cuatro ensayos sobre el concepto de soberanía. Buenos Aires, Struhart y Cia., 2005. 

12. Judith Butler. Cuerpos aliados y lucha política. Hacia una teoría performativa de la asamblea. Buenos Aires, Paidós, 2017.

13. Furio Jesi. Spartakus. The Symbology of Revolt, Translated by Alberto Toscano, Seagull Books, Ch. 2. Online here. 

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SOURCE: IllWill

The post Fragments of a Chile in Revolt- Rodrigo Karmy Bolton appeared first on Void Network.

— Anne Boyer, A Handbook of Disappointed Fate

¤
“HOW DO YOU throw a brick through the window of a bank if you can’t get out of bed?” This question, formulated by Johanna Hedva in “Sick Woman Theory,” has been with me for quite some time now. I haven’t been able to get it out of my head. Why? Because it points to a situation familiar to too many of us (but who is that “us”?): a situation characterized by despair and depression. A situation in which you really can’t get out of bed. This situation is also, in most cases, saturated by politics and by the economy. Contrary to mainstream psychological and psychiatric discourse the reason why you can’t get out of bed is not because you have a bad attitude, a negative mindset, or because you have somehow chosen your own unhappiness. Nor is it merely a matter of chemistry and biology, an imbalance in the brain, an unlucky genetic disposition, or low levels of serotonin. More often than not it is a matter of the world you live in, the work that you hate, or the job that you just lost, the debt that haunts your present from the future, or the fact that the planet’s future is going still faster and further down the drain.

This essay, then, is an attempt, based on a dissertation and some personal experience — I had a postpartum depression in 2013/2014 — to think about depression and politics; to think about the political economy and the psychopathologies of the present. It is animated by a fact, a claim, and a call. The fact first: as the Danish Mental Health Foundation makes clear, more and more people in Denmark are diagnosed with depression. At any given time, four to five percent of the population is depressed, or, more accurately, diagnosed as such. Indeed, according to the Danish Health Authority more than 450,000 Danes bought antidepressants in 2011, a figure which has almost doubled over the past decade. This tendency can be observed all over the Western world. The US National Institute of Mental Health estimates that 7.1 percent of the adult American population — 17.3 million people — suffers from depression. Other data suggest that depression affects one in every five Americans. These numbers have led the World Health Organization to conclude that depression is the most common mental disorder and the prime cause of disability and suicide, affecting around 350 million people worldwide. No wonder, then, that the global consumption of SSRI antidepressants has gone through the roof with sales now approaching $14 billion annually, according to the market research firm alliedmarketresearch.com, which also, in some very clumsy prose indeed, points out that “[t]here are many factors including genes, factors such as stress and brain chemistry that could lead to depression.”

The claim: Depression makes manifest the contemporary subject’s alienation, in its most extreme and pathological form. As such, the psychopathology needs to be related to a world of capitalist realism, where there really is no alternative, as Thatcher triumphantly declared, and the future seems frozen once and for all. The crisis embodied by depression thus becomes a symptom of a historical and capitalist crisis of futurity. It is a kind of structure of feeling, as Raymond Williams would say. Consequently, any cure to the problem of depression must take a collective, political form; instead of individualizing the problem of mental illness, it is imperative to start problematizing the individualization of mental illness. The call is for the left, for these specific reasons, to take seriously the question of illness and mental disorders. Dealing with depression — and other forms of psychopathology — is not only part of, but a condition of possibility for an emancipatory project today. Before we can throw bricks through windows, we need to be able to get out of bed.

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The best political thinker of depression remains the late Mark Fisher, who suffered from and in the end took his own life because of depression. His whole oeuvre is an ongoing meditation on depression as a personal experience and a social and political experience. In the book Capitalist Realism from 2009, he connected depression to what I have already referred to as capitalist realism, “the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it.” In this book, depression becomes a paradigm case of how capitalist realism operates, a symptom of our blocked and bleak historical situation. In the essay “The Privatisation of Stress” from 2011, later reprinted in K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher (2004–2016) from 2018, Fisher wrote that one difference between sadness and depression is that “while sadness apprehends itself as a contingent and temporary state of affairs, depression presents itself as necessary and interminable: the glacial surfaces of the depressive’s world extend to every conceivable horizon,” and because of that, because of that specific characteristic of depression, a strange resonance exists between “the seeming ‘realism’ of the depressive, with its radically lowered expectations, and capitalist realism.” And in the text Good for Nothing from 2014, Fisher stated that his depression always involved a deep and ineradicable conviction that he was literally good for nothing. He wrote that he offered up his own experiences of mental distress not because he thought there was anything special or unique about them, but “in support of the claim that many forms of depression are best understood — and best combatted — through frames that are impersonal and political rather than individual and ‘psychological.’” The importance of arriving at a political understanding of depression cannot be overstated. If the reader only takes one thing away from my text let it be this: depression has a set of causes and a concrete context that transcend any diagnostic manual, as well as the neoliberal ideology of focusing on subjects, not structures; personal responsibilities, not collective ones; chemistry, not capital.

However, to understand depression through political frames does not mean that the problem of depression can be immediately solved by political means. There is a horror to depression that cannot and must not be translated too quickly into the sphere of politics, regardless of our critical and revolutionary aspirations. As anyone who has been depressed — or been around someone who has — knows, it is literally hell on earth. The physical pain is unbearable, your body is inert and feels too heavy, your mind is not functioning, and you cannot escape the feeling of being stuck, stagnated, that the race is run and that the present — which is hell — is all there is and all that can ever be imagined to be. It would be an offense to say, well, it’s just politics. By the same token there is absolutely no need to romanticize what has become known as depressive realism, since that “realism” only runs in tandem with and supports the realism of capitalism: that there are no alternatives, that there really is nothing to be done about the current state of affairs. This is another thing to take away from this. Let’s also not forget that depression is the major contributor to suicide deaths, which number close to 800,000 per year according to a recent report from WHO.

A third and final thing to be considered here is that it is indeed difficult to write about depression. By this I do not only mean that it is difficult to write about your own depression; it is also just difficult to write about the immense suffering while at the same time finding a position in relation to depression or developing a discourse on depression that is not in itself utterly depressing. Not less so after Mark Fisher’s tragic death.

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We have a lot of facts about depression, but the facts do not speak for themselves. The sale of antidepressants does not correspond exactly to occurrences of depression, as SSRIs are not exclusively used for treating depression, but used to treat a range of other mental illnesses as well. The frequency of diagnoses does not necessarily mirror the frequency of depressions, and thus the increase in diagnoses could testify to a growing number of depressed people or to an escalating tendency to pathologize common, “normal” affects such as sadness, translating them into the diagnostic category of depression (the latest example of this tendency is the inclusion of grief in the new editions of diagnostic manuals such as the DSM and ICD). We also have to wonder, why does there seem to be so much comfort in psychiatric diagnoses? Because there is comfort in the diagnosis of depression. So that’s why I feel so bad! Depression! A chemical imbalance in the brain! In this way, the diagnosis provides momentary meaning to meaningless misery. The suffering gets a name and a cause: a lack of serotonin. But this cause has causes which in the diagnostic system — and in the capitalist world as a whole — remain undiagnosed and untold.

As Mark Fisher writes in Capitalist Realism:

It goes without saying that all mental illnesses are neurologically instantiated, but this says nothing about their causation. If it is true, for instance, that depression is constituted by low serotonin levels, what still needs to be explained is why particular individuals have low levels of serotonin. This requires a social and political explanation; and the task of repoliticizing mental illness is an urgent one if the left wants to challenge capitalist realism.
Before going into the causality of depression, however, let me first describe the morality that surrounds depression. Take, as an example, a self-help video, “Why am I depressed?,” by a man called Leo Gura. He is, according to his Twitter profile, “a professional self-development junkie, life coach, video blogger, entrepreneur, and speaker,” who helps “people design awesome lives.”

Gura, a bald man with a goatee and the founder of actualized.org, starts the video by saying that he wants to answer the question of the title, “Why am I — you [raising eyebrows, while forming with his hands a parenthesis in the air as if around the word] — depressed?” And the answer is simple: you are depressed because your psychology sucks. It should be noted that this is also the title of a video work by the artist duo Claire Fontaine, who in their ready-made video Untitled (Why Your Psychology Sucks) from 2015 has an African-American actress perform an almost exact verbatim copy of Gura’s talk, unfolding a pungent and quite comical criticism of the neoliberal self-help industry’s ideological personalization of depression and generalized responsibilization of the subject as such. Claire Fontaine is one of the artists who have worked in the most concentrated and consistent way with the problem of depression. In their work, depression is always already political and must be understood in relation to its real basis in social conflicts within a capitalist economy of debt and financial speculation.

Back to the original video, where a flashing sequence of catchphrases or keywords succeeds Gura’s introductory remarks. In the order given, the words read: “Success, happiness, self-actualization, life purpose, motivation, productivity, peak performance, creative expression, financial independence, emotional intelligence, positive psychology, consciousness, peak performance, personal power, wisdom.” (Apparently, the concept of “peak performance” is so important that it must be repeated.) Then, Gura delivers his message, his shocking truth: “Here is the deal. I’m going to blunt with you here, because the bottom line is that the reason you’re depressed is because your psychology sucks. Alright, you’ve got shit psychology. I’m not blaming you, I’m telling you a fact.” He goes on to clarify that he is not talking about people who are “clinically depressed,” and who thus have “legitimate” depression. He is talking about the rest of us, the majority who get a diagnosis of depression and whom he is not blaming, except that he is. The video lasts a little more than 20 minutes, and at one point Leo Gura boldly and bluntly declares: “You are causing your depression.” There is something wrong with your mental and cognitive apparatus, your psychology is “shit.” Stop being a victim and take ownership of your psychology! Peak performance!

It is easy enough to laugh at the video and make fun of its logic, but the logic is the dominant one in the world of today — even if it is sometimes articulated in more moderate ways — and it has real effects. The logic is this: people create their own reality. Thoughts alone can change things. This means that you weave the thread of your own fate, there are no external circumstances and no excuses either.

A Danish sociologist with a quasi-royal name, Emilia van Hauen, expresses the same logic when writing on her homepage that “happiness is a choice — your choice,” and fellow Danish therapist, Eva Christensen, sings along (again in my own translation):

Happiness is a personal responsibility. Happiness is not something you can expect to get from others. Everybody has the key to their own happiness. And hence also the responsibility to put the key in the right lock. Happiness is created from the inside, it is not other people’s responsibility to make us happy, it is our own responsibility. Just as we cannot change other people, only ourselves.
If the individual is responsible for her own happiness, then she is also responsible for her own unhappiness. If the keys are in our own hands, each of us is personally responsible for almost everything. Success or failure, and health or illness are a matter of subjective willpower, lifestyle, and choice alone. While we may not be able to change other people, or the world for that matter, we certainly can work on changing ourselves and our selves. Structural change, a change of the system, is abandoned in favor of subjective change, a change of the self. Every problem, however social, political, or economic in nature, is personalized and even criminalized, the subject is made responsible for its own unhappiness, and made to suffer alone and to feel guilty, at the same time, for feeling unhappy, for not being a good and productive citizen, for not coming to work, for not getting out of bed.

These processes of personalization and responsibilization that positive psychology and the imperative of happiness entail, these processes go hand in hand. Mark Fisher was attuned to this logic, or should we say ideology. Depressed people are encouraged to feel and believe that their depression is their fault and their fault only. “Individuals will blame themselves rather than social structures, which in any case they have been induced into believing do not really exist,” as he wrote in “Good for Nothing” — implicitly referencing another of Thatcher’s claims, that society does not exist. This is where the problem of depression feeds into a more general problem: the model of subjectivity advocated in the original self-help video by Leo Gura is identical to the model of the autonomous, self-determining, competitive individual, the fiction of capitalist subjectivity. In the video “the viewer,” the “you,” is the cause of his or her own depression, but consequently also the only cure. What the video wants to do is to teach you how to “master your psychology” and eventually put you in a state of “total bliss and happiness.” It is a deeply moral message. Failing to be happy is simply immoral. If you are such an immoral and bad person that you have become unhappy — or depressed — it is you, and you alone that is to blame. This is the blaming cult of contemporary capitalism: you are causing your own depression — even when evidently you are not.

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Capitalism, in other words, inflicts a double injury on depressed people. First, it causes, or contributes to, the state of depression. Second, it erases any form of causality and individualizes the illness, so that it appears as if the depression in question is a personal problem (or property). In some cases, it appears to be your own fault. If you had just lived a better and more active life, made other choices, had a more positive mindset, et cetera, then you would not be depressed. This is the song sung by psychologists, coaches, and therapists around the world: happiness is your choice, your responsibility. The same goes for unhappiness and depression. Capitalism makes us feel bad and then, to add insult to injury, makes us feel bad about feeling bad.

From my own experience of depression — except that it is not really “my own” experience — and from having written a dissertation on the topic, I think it is beyond doubt that we need another analysis of depression, and, also, another kind of cure. The personalization of depression must be answered by a politicization of depression. At the level of analysis and social causation, the phenomenon of depression should be connected to issues of labor and work — and unemployment, since stats show that unemployed people are more susceptible to get depressed than people in jobs, regardless of how much these people hate their job. It should be connected to our brutal, neoliberal culture of competition (Happy Hunger Games and may be odd be ever in your favor!) and to the concomitant ideology of happiness, which forces all of us to smile and be happy nonstop, even or especially when we are fighting among each other, fighting to make ends meet and just get by another day. Depression should, moreover, be connected to the realm of education: it is obvious to me that so many of the students at the University of Copenhagen, where I work and teach, are struggling with countless mental illnesses. I cannot even begin to imagine how it must be in the United Kingdom or United States, where students don’t have the benefit of free education as is the case Denmark but are driven ever deeper into a spiral of debt. No matter where we look, students are depressed, anxious, stressed out, burned out.

In the wake of the economic crisis, a plethora of studies have looked into the psychopathological consequences of debt. In 2012, economist John Gathergood published a study showing that people awash in a sea of debt experience and exhibit a variety of mental problems, including depression. By all accounts, it seems that being indebted can, and indeed does, lead to an increased risk not only of depression but also suicide. Another study found that “[t]hose in debt were twice as likely to think about suicide after controlling for sociodemographic, economic, social and lifestyle factors.” And in The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills, David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu have conducted an epidemiological research project which demonstrates that austerity policies — rather than recession as such — have disastrous consequences for the state of public and private health. At one point in their book, Stuckler and Basu refer to a particular study of Americans over the age of 50 which found “that between 2006 and 2008, people who fell behind on their mortgage payments were about nine times more likely to develop depressive symptoms.” Their bleak conclusion is that austerity not only hurts, but kills, exemplified by the tragic case of the Greek Dimitris Christoulas, who on April 4, 2012, “put a gun to his head in front of the Greek parliament and declared: ‘I am not committing suicide. They are killing me.’ Then he pulled the trigger.”

These conditions are real, and so are the causal connections. Obviously, the causes are many, and complex. But the symptoms of depression are also symptoms of something else. And the fact is that the economy of debt causes deep distress as indebted people, students and otherwise, are forced to pawn their own future. Yet the psychiatric and public discourse remain bent on treating depression as a personal problem devoid of context. Nowhere is this clearer than in the discourse of the diagnostic manuals — a discourse that increasingly dominates public opinion — where mental illnesses are addressed solely in terms of symptoms, without any regard for the historical, social, and economic context of the person suffering. An important task, then, for a leftist analysis of the present is not only to insist on the context but also and perhaps above all to insist, with Hedva, that “it is the world itself that is making and keeping us sick.” Not the world in any abstract sense, but the concrete, capitalist world in which we live, or plod our way through. This is the reason why so many of us lie in bed, and can’t get out of it. Or as queer theorist Ann Cvetkovich argues in her book Depression: A Public Feeling:

Epidemics of depression can be related (both as symptom and as obfuscation) to long-term histories of violence that have ongoing impacts at the level of everyday emotional experience. […] What gets called depression in the domestic sphere is one affective register of these social problems and one that often keeps people silent, weary, and too numb to really notice the sources of their unhappiness (or in a state of low-level chronic grief — or depression of another kind — if they do).
The history of depression is a history of our contemporary capitalist world — and also, in the words of Cvetkovich, a history of violence: the violence that people of color, or LGBT people, or asylum seekers, experience on a daily basis, a violence both physical and psychic. Data are, again, overwhelming on this point, but suffice it to mention the “38 percent of low-income mothers and mothers of color who develop postpartum depression,” to quote from Sophie Lewis’s Full Surrogacy Now; the half of LGBT people who have experienced depression in the past year; and the 61 percent of all the kids in Sjælsmark Udrejsecenter, a prison-like camp for rejected asylum seekers in Denmark, who would meet the criteria for a psychiatric diagnosis. In many instances, depression bears the mark of such violence and vulnerability, though it is not, sadly, the only mental health issue at stake.

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Up until this point I have not mentioned the climate crisis, but on the evidence of what has been said so far, it doesn’t risk exaggeration to say that ecology and mental health stands in an intimate relation. This is not to neglect the material reality, only to hint at the profound psychic effects of ecological losses and a warming globe. Again, the young generation of today, sometimes called the fucked-up generation, is worth mentioning (Phil Neel writes about this generation, “the first in a grand parade of the futureless,” in his brilliant book Hinterland). They are living in a world where tomorrow will most likely be worse than today, where there really are no alternatives and no future, not least because of how the climate crisis quite literally annihilates the future as such. Who can blame them for being depressed?

All of this to say that the current — social, political, economic, ecological — crisis is thus a mental health crisis as well. The perpetuum mobile of capitalism and its exhaustion of resources also pertains to mental resources. The economic and the psychological seem to have become indistinguishable from each other, as the double meaning of depression would also suggest. Naturally, we are not all in the same boat, or in the same bed. We are not all depressed (and those of us who are are experiencing it in the same way, or for the same reasons). We are not equally fucked (up). Some strata of society have access to futurity in ways that others do not, some bear the burden more than others, and some simply die sooner than others. People in Greece during the Euro Crisis, or people in the US higher educational system, are not indebted or depressed in the same way. As shown above, the violence and social suffering are differentially distributed along axis of class, gender, and race; so is the climate crisis insofar as citizens of Copenhagen are not feeling the devastating weight of it as those in Chittagong.

Insisting on the politics of illness, mental health, and depression, it is crucial to keep such local and global differences in mind. This should not, however, lead to a competition of social suffering. Competition is precisely what capitalism is all about, and seeks to intensify, so that we are, simultaneously, alone in our suffering and fighting among each other’s suffering selves. But it should lead to a recognition that a critique of capitalism will need to take into account the contextualized psychopathology of depression as well as other mental illnesses. Furthermore, it gives us an idea of a possible “cure,” of what needs to be done, of how we get out of bed (or maybe, why we even want to get out of bed).

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The first thing to note is that an adequate diagnosis of depression — and its context — is not enough in itself. It is common wisdom, however, that the diagnosis does not necessarily entail the cure. Just because we know what’s wrong does not mean that we will be able to deal with it. On the contrary, one of the primary symptoms of depression is that what you need to do is precisely what you cannot do, at least not alone and on your own. Or in the plain words of Ann Cvetkovich: “Saying that capitalism (or colonialism or racism) is the problem does not help me get up in the morning.” Also, there is no reason to believe that abolishing private property ownership, or realizing a global and absolute cancellation of private debt, will relieve the suffering of depressed people with a single stroke, as if by magic. But, in an act of speculation, I am tempted to say that revolution is the best antidepressant there is, it makes for a better world, true happiness. But, alas!, in order to do revolution, we need to get out of bed. A real dialectical catch-22 of depression.

Maybe a good place to start, then, with regards to the politics of depression, is to collectivize suffering, externalize blame, communize care. At this point, the question of responsibility returns in all its force. The neoliberal responsibilization of the depressed subject must be rejected, and, also, replaced by an idea of collective responsibility. The same goes for any kind of therapeutic project, and Italian thinker Franco “Bifo” Berardi — who is, admittedly, a bit loose and careless when it comes to precision in the clinical vocabulary — may be right when he asserts that “in the days to come, politics and therapy will be one and the same.” Therapy as resistance, not as reactionary obedience to the given order. Therapy as a collective project, not an individual one. Therapy as the overcoming of alienation.

What might such collective and emancipatory “therapy” look like? We have an archive of feminist and artistic projects of care, self-care, and collective care from Audre Lorde to Claire Fontaine to, rather recently, Danish artist and activist Jakob Jakobsen and the Hospital for Self Medication that he initiated after a severe depression and several months of hospitalization. We need a language that joins this archive to a movement and separates it from institutional psychiatry, neoliberal therapies, and the capitalist pursuit of profit. This is care that transcends the hospital, the clinic, the family, the state, the insurance company, Capital as such (even if one does not have access to those institutions in the first place). This is care which, based on a politicized understanding of mental illness, moves beyond care in its commodified and capitalist form. When bodies take care of each other, when responsibility is redistributed, and individual collapses are transformed into collective intimacies, the future can be (re)built in the name of a communist, shared, and sustainable one.

As poet Wendy Trevino writes:

We can’t individually “win” in this world
& simultaneously create another
Together.

This would be one way of imagining a “cure” for depression without reinforcing conformity and the status quo. What is certain is that any left politics worthy of its name must go beyond saying capitalism is the problem (even if it surely is) and confront the question of how to get up in the morning. This problem is as practical as it is revolutionary. Of course, sometimes staying in bed can be a revolutionary act in itself, a kind of strike, the epitomization of an exhausted and negative No, I can’t in a world that revolves increasingly around an emphatic and positive Yes, I can. But there are also people finding new ways to get out of bed: I’ll just mention in passing, as an encouraging sign, that there are cracks in the edifice of capitalist realism that Mark Fisher didn’t live to see.

Regardless, the point is obviously not to get out of depression so that we can get back to the work that caused the depression to begin with. The point must be, rather, to destroy the material conditions that make us sick, the capitalist system that destroys people’s lives, the inequalities that kill. Thus, creating another world together. But to do that, to get to where that becomes possible, what is called for is not competition among the sick, but alliances of care that will make people feel less alone and less morally responsible for their illness. In alliance with each other, people might eventually be able to get up and throw some bricks.

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Adapted from the book Going Nowhere, Slow, out on Zero Books November 29, 2019.

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Mikkel Krause Frantzen holds a PhD from the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen, and is currently postdoctoral fellow at University of Aalborg, Denmark. He is the author of Going Nowhere, Slow — The Aesthetics and Politics of Depression (Zero Books, 2019).

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source: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/future-no-future-depression-left-politics-mental-health

The post A Future with No Future: Depression, the Left, and the Politics of Mental Health appeared first on Void Network.