File spoon-archives/aut-op-sy.archive/aut-op-sy_1997/97-04-23.075, message 43


From: Mneillft-AT-aol.com
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 11:19:01 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: economics of communist societies/bolos/GIK


In a message dated 97-04-10 20:06:29 EDT, you write:
Steve wrote:
> Perhaps the most controversial aspect
>  for me is the advocacy as Bryan says of an *exodus* from capital and the
>  state: much as it appeals to me at times, I just don't think it's possible
>  to get away with covertly constructing new social relations without
capital
>  and the state noticing. To be fair, pm does talk of 'substruction' ie
>  finding ways to combine subversion of the old and construction  of the new
>  - so maybe I'm being unfair reducing his/her argument to the notions of
>  exodus that I criticised in my piece on debates within the Italian
>  movement. Can anybody else comment on this aspect of the book?

Whether "exodus" is the most controversial part of the book, I don't know,
but it certainly is problematic.  I think substruction is a critical concept,
encouraging us to think about the relationship between subverting the
capitalist and constructing the 'communist' -  the 'bolo'.  I'm always
reminded of Marx' remark that the new society emerges from the womb of the
old, inferring the new partially develops within the old. PM suggests, in
effect, deliberately beginning to create the new as we struggle against the
old.  The focus of the book is on possible arrangements of the new -- where
economics (esp. work) no longer dominates society, creating time and space to
be human, which is to create culture.  

As I said in my last post, however, I have not figured out how to use it
beyond what Chris suggested, as a way of helping folks see that capitalism is
not necessary, something else is materially and socially possible and
preferable. (and as a reminder not to forget the necessity of thinking of
present and future both).  But PM opens the main text (the text has 3 parts)
by a sort of resort to quantum mechanics: humans have chosen to immerse
themselves in misery, we just need to decide we are tired of that game and
want to play a new one, the bolo game.  Having decided that, and just
shifting how we live, capital collapses in five years. (In the intro to the
new edition, more than 5 years after the first, he addresses "what
happened.")  I suppose we could just say he dodged the issue of how to build
the new and attack the old in order to address a different question, which I
tie to the issue of "communist economics" (and I have read none of the
various pamphlets and papers and books folks have been recommending, so
cannot compare PM's approach to that issue with the German's etc.).  

PM has himself been involved in various efforts to construct modified
attempts at a bolo. He is well aware of the issues of merely creating a
semi-detached (but not really detached) space within capital, and he thinks a
lot about things like money ; ast I talked with him in person, some time ago,
he was thinking, for example, that attacking money first -- i.e.,
priviledging barter and trying to escape money relations -- was a mistake,
that creating social and productive (as Steve noted, food production is
essential to PM, and I think he is correct) spaces enables the attack on
money. 

Given the interest in the Encuentro in questions of what alternatives to
capitalism (neoliberalism) can look like, the issues and possibilities
suggested by PM are worthy of consideration. But we need to be thinking (as
PM also does) about how to get there.  Still,  IMHO, an attraction of the
ideas of networking, decentralized as much as possible, non-hierarchical,
etc., resonate with so many of us in part because they appear close to forms
we would like to be living - and if that is not the exact model of bolo'bolo,
at least bolo is an illustration of the model.  It ties too with the
Zapatista notion of living power not seizing power.  All in all, this seems a
far more promising approach than beginning with the state and how to run the
factories, etc., without questioning whether they should be run at all, which
I think are the starting points for at least some 'socialist' economics. 

Bryan A. writes: 

PM writes of substruction as a negation, inherently distructive of the
Planetary Work Machine (an amazing term) - from messing with information
flows to guerrilla warfare.  This negation must be simultaneous with the
positive and practical assertion of bolos in life: building such
communitites and their networks of support and exchange.  
	There's a massive element to this, which we don't realy find in,
say, Bey, but is more Autonomist: "Disinformation, dysproduction, and
dysruption would have to be joined on a mass level in order to produce a
critical situation for the Machine."  And it's global, across the First
through Third worlds (62).  

Thanks, Bryan, for reminding me of this -- we in Midnight Notes published
that (first) part of bolo'bolo back in the 80s.  (The second part is
'bolo'bolo' proper; the third is voluminous notes that, for example, explain
the science behind the material possiblity of bolo'bolo).  Still, how to
engage in "dysinformation" etc of the 'planetary work machine' (yes,
wonderful term) in successful ways (which must interact with creating
something new) is I think the fundamental quesion.

I think all of this leaves most of the difficult problems -- but figuring out
a line of approach to difficult problems, defining what they really are, is ,
I think, essential before leaping to where we think is ahead but might be
backwards.

Got to run.  Be well, all.  Monty Neill


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