Date: Mon, 15 Apr 1996 01:58:18 +0200
From: Harald Beyer-Arnesen <haraldba-AT-sn.no>
Subject: Re: discussing neo-liberalism & utopia


Massimos reply to my contribution to the discussion on neo-liberalism and
utopia gives me an opportunity to clearify my view. To avoid any
misunderstanding, I definitely don't consider the question of utopia as
divorced from our struggles, which would reduce it to an academic exercise.
On the contrary I want to see the question of an qualitatively different
future to once more become an self-evident part of our struggles to be
collectively dicussed and as far as possible tried out. I want to see these
discussions circulate through the interlinking of our struggles.
   And Yes, Massimo, I would like to learn from your "notes" on the relation
between circulation of struggles and the new society (and anybody elses
"notes").

First a question to you, Massimo. In your reply you wrote:

   "To me, the "link with the expropriation of the means to our
   material existence" is right there, in the very moment one starts
   to even mention something like "the economy of autonomy". You can
   produce as a communal subject only if you have direct access to
   material wealth (that is, if you "reverse" the process of separation
   of enclosures). And direct access to material wealth can on put under
   question private property (including the state form of private
   property)."

Can you try to explain what this means in practice here and now?

In your reply to me you also said:

   "You seem to want concrete examples of how to organize a new society,
   so we tell people. It is a wonderful exercise, very exciting and
   intriguing. It is more than a year I am trying to think about it, so
   as I can write a Sci-fi novel I have in mind. It's hard work and
   frustrating too,  because it entirelly goes through the brain. The
   most scary bit though is that when you come out with a picture that
   seems to satisfy the politically correct requirements you have posed
   yourself,  it risks to become A PLAN, that is a pre-conceived set of
   relations which existence is defined BEFORE AND OUTSIDE real people in
   real life. It is nice and helpful to think to alternative arrangementS,
   but we must NEVER confuse them with the actual fact that the only
   possible plan of action from our point of view can be the OPEN PROCESS
   of constitution of new social relations.   In other words, UTOPIAN
   THOUGHT TO ME ACQUIRES THE VALUE OF A STRATEGIC WEAPON IN TODAY'S
   STRUGGLES, rather than representing  THE PICTURE  of a future society
   to which I can convert people to. As a strategic weapon for example to
   show DIFFERENT  possible horizons and contrasting them to the poverty
   of the mainstream one, etc. etc. I got to go."
 
Any thoughts of the future, even of tomorrow, are thoughts of something that
is NOT - or rather exists just as an preconceived idea. This prefiguration
will never be actualised exactly as thought, but never the less will have
bearing on our future through the actions it leads us to take. So by
thinking ahead and considering which possible paths to follow to get there,
we modify our pratice here and now. It's not just that the means effects the
ends, but our picture of the future effects our choices here and now. In our
daily lives any thought of the future is constantly modified in the process
of arrival. Essentially the question of Utopia is no different. In saying
that "UTOPIAN THOUGHT ACQUIRES THE VALUE OF A STRATEGIC WEAPON," I cannot
see it otherwise than that you agree with me that: Our pre-conceived
thoughts of the future we cannot have lived, has consequences for our living
reality here and now and for the future we will have to live.

To the question of the plan. It is possible to present a picture of a
classless society designed by the-would-be-clearest-minds into a codified
not to be changed plan, as a program to which others have to bend.
Translated into real life such a plan would give birth to anything but a
classless society. Rather it would result in a condition not much different
the one we already know where our lives are bent and made flexible to the
plans made by the owners of this world - to their utopias. And I think we
will find the day capitalism as we know it crumbles, if we have not
democratically integrated thoughts of how to build a new society into our
struggles, there will be others there who have made plans for us.
   Thoughts of utopia does not have to be presented as holy scripture in
search of diciples. Me presenting my necessary fragmentary views of how the
future could be lived to people I meet, work with and struggle amongst,
could give them tools and ideas that make them more able to formulate their
own views, paint their own pictures, clearify their own ideas of the future
they want to live and the possible means to get there. The reverse is just
as true, without such a dialogue my owns ideas will remain poor, grey
obscure pictures.

   To tools to the understanding of the future society can be used in our
struggles here and now. Take the question of logistics - the travels of the
bits and parts that are joined together as products somewhere before
continuing their journey. These are the very products that make up our
material existence and we tend to take as granted, in our false belief that
their presence is only limited by our bank accounts. The knowledge of these
travels will be vital in the period following the expropriation of the means
of production, but would also increase our ability to hurt capital today.
The needs of the present could also meet the needs of the future by
establishing personal links between workers along the lines that things
travel, duplicating (and in the future replacing) those between bosses.
Thereby increasing our understanding of how our needs and possibilities are
interconnected and simultaneously undermining the position of the
bureaucracy of money. The connections drawn in the last yeats between
workers of US and Canada and Mexico around the issues of the Maquiladoras,
NAFTA and Chiapas, surely also open up possibilties for utopian thought.
   In my years in the chocolate industry I came over a pamphlet called the
"Global Chocolate Factory" published by Transnationals Information Exchange
(TIE), the Dutch Food Workes Union (Voedingsbond/FNV); The International
Union of Food Workers, the International Federation of Plantation,
Acricultural and Allied Workes (IFPAAW) and the Centre for Research on
Transnational Companies (SOMO). It told of a programme that brought workers
of this global factory together in face to face meetings and through slides
documenting the life in the cocoa growing sector in Brazil and Ghana, the
processing industry in Netherlands, and at a British chocolate factory. The
branch of General Workes Union at Cadbury's Bournville, Birmingham twinned
itself with a Brazilian trade union branch. Into this net was integrated
toxicologists. doctors, environmentalists and consumer groups. Now the
programme did not include the workers producing all the other ingredients
directly used in the production of chocolate, which in the factory where I
worked would have united workers from several different countries in each of
the continents, nor did include the workers producing the machinery in use,
the light bulbs, the paper, pencils, chairs and tables and computers in the
offices, the chemicals used to clean the floors, the workers in the service
and transport industries... (When the copmputer-system connected to the
conveyor-belts sorting out the articles to the customers broke down, which
happened quite often, the company had to fly in an expert from the
Netherlands. Once there was a crisis caused by the expert having been
hospitalised after a heart attack.)

These logistics has immediately significance for how we organize both the
future society and our struggles here and now. The same holds true for any
other subject I can think of. A better understanding of what we are
struggling for would radically change the way we struggle, just as how we
carry out our struggles will decide if we will succeed in building a world
on communist principles. In almost every revolution in the past the working
population as a whole has not known what to do with the the freedom obtained
through the power of their own struggles. This was often more crucial than
the violence organized by the old and coming ruling classes, for their
ultimate failure. If we are to become masters of our lives we must know our
world and what we want from life. If not there is always somebody out there
who knows what is best for us and who have made plans for our lives.



   
 
-- 
– in solidarity,
- Harald Beyer-Arnesen
– haraldba-AT-sn.no



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