Date: Tue, 9 Apr 1996 01:24:21 +0200
From: Harald Beyer-Arnesen <haraldba-AT-sn.no>
Subject: Re: discussing neo-liberalism & utopia


On the links connecting the question of utopia with neo-liberalism and
globalization... raised by Stewe Wright on the background of an article by
Massimo De Angelis.
(I am only able to read the part translated into English by Steve.)

In his reply to Steve, Massimo refers to Marx 1844 manuscript:
  
  "the communal beings are the ones for whom "the other" becomes
  a need for them". (Please note, this means something different
  than say that we need the "other"). I think this sentence captures
  the entire problematic of a new society. The question that Marx
  does not ask is of course HOW does this "communal subject" come
  about, how do we recognize the "others" from whom we have been
  divided by capitals strategies, as a need for us. I think the way
  this occures is the process struggles of different sections of the
  working class. So the process of circulation of struggles among
  different sections not only disrupts capital, but also at the
  same time, creates the "communal being" as defined above."

It could also be said that within the present global organization of the
economy the absolute need of "the other" confront us as a faceless multitude
which entraps and disconnects us. What is non-exsistent today is the
self-evident correlation of early industrial capitalism between work inside
the factory gates with life outside. Through their shared knowledge people
in this working-class communities knew the history of their products that
made up their material existence ... and recognized that even if others
ruled over it, they themselves where the makers of everyday life. Today the
endless threads that bind are lives as wage-slaves together are almost
hopeless to follow.

Franco Barchiesi's uses a strike that hit General Motors to exemplify that
the just-in-time strategy of capital has rendered it very vulnerable. The
strike at General Motors: "emphasized the impressive potential to cripple
the whole process contained in the strategic location of small groups of
workers in particular phases." What he fails to mention is that this very
vulnerability could become ours if we succeed. However much Negri talks of a
"mass intellectuality" and in reference to computers that "in communication
the immateriality is total" - which is very hard to believe - we are living
in a material world, and are likely to do so also in the future.

The globalization of the economy opens up to enormous opportunities. But at
the same moment it presents us with obstacles that makes it more difficult
both to imagine communism as a real opportunity, and to realize it. This
difficulty of imagining communism in other than in an abstract form, makes
it less of an possibilty. Most workers are practical people in search of
practical ways to actualize their dreams. Thus, in these and many other ways
the present organization of the world economy is interlinked with the
question of utopia. 

I find Massimos definition of an utopian strategy inadequate, even if
inspiring (here as elsewhere, the reservation that I have not been able to
read the the whole thing applies). I believe that that our possible
disagreement here is connected with what I find missing - or maybe just
unexplored - in the different shades of autonomist marxism in general.

 Massimo writes: 
 
   "Furthermore,it seems to be that we need to respond in two ways to
   the passive acceptance of the economy's autonomy. Firstly, with
   autonomy *from* the economy, with a critical and radical thought
   that simply does not accept the basic assumptions imposed by a
   representation of the world finalised in the elaboration of
   strategies for the maintenance of the current system of affairs.
   Secondly, with the *economy of autonomy*, economy understood here
   not as a system of capitalist relations, but as an alternative
   system of social relations, definition of needs and of human mores
   [modi] for their satisfaction, given the current material    and
subjective bases. In short, against the false realism of economic
   realism we have to recover a utopian discourse, in thought as well
   as in antagonistic and constitutive practice. Through an
   interesting play on words, the word utopia is defined in English as
   *no*where - no place. But this could also be read as *now*here -
   here and now. Utopia therefore not as *the* alternative model, not
   as a party program or a plan in search of subjects to subordinate.
   Utopia instead as an open and inclusive horizon of thought,
   antagonistic practice and communication."

I could agree with almost every single word, as an abstraction. What
bewilders me, Massimo, is how you imagine the autonomy *from* the economy
and an *economy of autonomy* could be actualized here and now. I guess the
circulation of struggles plays a role here. But this autonomy could also
easily be read as an recipe for an integration in the capitalist economy
through some kind of workers co-ops, or as an isolation from the circulation
of struggles through marginalization. Where is the link to the expropriation
of the means to our material existence? And from there to making communism a
generalized living reality. The challenge of transition does not just
disappear because of the bankruptcy of state socialism.

Another thing that troubles me with the autonomist language related to this
subject, is that the "circulation of struggles" seem to take the shape of an
objective quality out of which "communal subject" just occurs. To make my
point clearer, I will draw on a paper Harry Cleaver wrote on the occasion of
the 150th anniversary of the birth of Peter Kropotkin (to be found on his
home page). Cleaver there presents what he sees as the similarities between
Kropotkin's method and that of autonomist marxism. In this connection he he
quotes the following passage from Kropotkin's "Anarchist communism: its
basis and principles":

   "As to the method followed by the anarchist thinker it is
   entirely different from that followed by the utopist... He
   studies human society as it is now and was in the past ...
   tries to discover its tendencies, past and present, its growing
   needs, intellectual and economic, and in his ideal he merely
   points of in which direction evolution goes."

The whole life of Kropotkin contradicts his own words in the last sentence.
Kropotkin did as Cleaver points out, try to: "discover tendencies in the
present which provide alternative paths out of the current crisis and out of
the capitalism system". Kropotkin even declared that "without a certain
leaven of Communism the present societies could not excist" But he also
tried to lay out the principles on which a new society had to be founded if
it were to succeed, and described in very practical terms how the
organization of the economy in a communist society could be made to
function. He tried to document how a organizations of the society on
communist principles could free people from dreary work - "creating the
greatest amount of goods necessary to the well-being of all, with the least
possible waste of human energy" - adding that the combined effect of letting
peoples creativity loose, would make this gain even greater. He argued
against the collectivist (what you would call socialist) principle of "To
each according to his deeds" and wrote, that "if the Social Revolution had
the misfortune of proclaiming such a principle, it would mean its necessary
failure." To those who warned:"take care you do not go to far! Humanity
cannot be changed in day, so do not be in to great hurry with your schemes
of Expropriation and Anarchy, or you will be in danger of achieving no
permanent results," he answered:

   "Now what we fear with regard to Expropriation is exactly the
   contrary. We are afraid of not going far enough, of carrying out
   Expropriation on too small scale to be lasting. We could not
   have revolutionary impulse arrested in mid career, to exhaust
   itself in half measures, which would content no one, and while
   producing a tremendous confusion in society, and stopping its
   customary activities, would have no vital power - would merely
   spread general discontent and inevitably prepare the way for the
   triumph of reaction."

Contrary to the predominant opinion then and now, he thought such
half-measures would lead to: "a terrible shattering of the industrial
system, without the means of reorganizing it on new lines."

The reason for this is today is much more pronounced on a global scale:

   "There are in fact, in a modern State established relations which
   is practically impossible to modify if one attacks them only in
   detail. There are wheels within wheels in our economic organization
   - the machinery is so complex and interdependent that no one part
   can be modified without disturbing the whole. This becomes clear as
   soon as an attempt is made to expropriate anything."

His study of past revolutions had convinced him that a revolution unable to
feed the cities was doomed to failure, so he tried to give practical answers
on how this could be organized; a challenge that can be compared to that the
global economy poses today. At the same time Kropotkin warned against the
method of what he called Jacobin Utopias (the centralized and armed plan),
which failure he said was proved already in 1793, and would "lead to an
universal uprising, to three or four Vendees, to the villages rising against
the towns..." (which reads like a prophecy of the war on the villages which
started in Russia in 1918).
    
But back to Cleaver. He writes that autonomist marxism has reconceptulized
communism "in a manner very much in harmony with Kropotkin's own views, not
as some-day-to-be-achieved utopia but as a living reality whose growth only
need to be freed of constraint." In a footnote to this passage he adds:

   This reconceptualization is in keeping with Marx's concept,
   long abandoned by most orthodox Marxists, that "Communism is
   for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an
   ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call
   communism the real movement which abolishes the present state
   of things."

Despite autonomist marxisms very interesting reading of Marx, trying to
restitute the place of the working class as a real and diverse living force,
here subjectivity again reappears objectified in the form of an abstract
"real movement" ushering in communism. To use the writings of Cleaver -
which I find a pleasure reading - seems unfair, and this tendency is much
more pronounced in Negri's texts, but I am sure Cleaver can answer for
himself. Of course, this "real movement" could also be read as the living
reality of the labor movement at the time of Marx. But if that is the case,
it certainly was a movement that did try to adjust reality to its ideals
(and the life of Marx himself would have taken a whole other turn, had he
not tried to do the same) . The problem with this "real movement" - which in
1917 abolished the present state of things in Russia, and more recently
abolished Yugoslavia from the map - without any generalized knowledge of
where it's heading, and which roads that are likely to lead where, this
movement could end up anywhere, most likely somewhere resembling the place
it started out from. For as the Italian anarchist Malatesta pointed out:
"Whoever sets out on the highroad and takes a wrong turning does not go
where he intends to go but where the roads leads him."

A certainly agree with Cleaver - and here we are back to the question of the
so-called "creation" of the "communal subject" - that we should try to point
to experiences in peoples lives where they live out communist principles.
Most people would consider a person or family that in their home charged
their guests for services rendered as coming from another planet. Most
workers find it self-evident when out drinking beer, that they pay for the
one that at the present moment is out of cash. And they don't write it up in
a book. Even workers prejudiced to people of colour, would most times gladly
spend two or three beers on the guy from the job from Morocco, and even hug
him. Communism is possible because most people have always praticed
communist customs within certain permitted confines. Because the "communal
subject" is always a potentiality, already there, within each and one of us.
Most workers (even bosses) find a communist society a good idea, they just
don't think it possible. This is not only related to what happened in Russia
and other places, but with the problem of imagining a world economy
organized on communist principles that does not give birth to an new
bureaucratic class. As so often happens, when people who honestly consider
themselves socialist or communist, try to explain to others the substance of
this new society they are struggling for - and not just the one they are
struggling against - it rings in most peoples ears as just more of what they
already have. And in fact, it is no easy task explaining how bringing about
- starting from the present organization of the economy - the co-existence
of a real, and not just a formal, control of the means of existence, with
the freedom to be obtained from the mulitude of possibilities opened up by
the creativity of human beings around the world.

A challenge anyone on this list!

        (One thing I am sure of, it is only possible without the
mediation of money.)
-- 
– in solidarity,
- Harald Beyer-Arnesen
– haraldba-AT-sn.no



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