Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2001 06:02:29 +1100
From: Rob Schaap <rws-AT-comedu.canberra.edu.au>
Subject: Re: AUT: Linebaugh and Rediker, _The Many-Headed Hydra_


G'day Autonomists,

Quoth Chris:

>The idea that racism has an origin in the late 18th/early 19th century does
>not necessarily have any bearing on whether racism as we know it is peculiar
>to capitalism.  Then again, and i have not read the book so I am only
>commenting on what I have read in this discussion, the idea of a starting
>point in this sense, of an origin, has its own problems.  Part of the way to
>unravel the problem requires us to understand that the form of the
>oppression, its mode of existence, is essential to understanding why it is
>different.  That mode of existence has to be connected to our history, as
>well.  And racialization has to be understood as a process, an ongoing
>process which did not "happen" in the 18th century but which continues to
>happen today.

Sounds right to me.  But it's always hard, I think, to draw neat lines
between those components of a living prejudice which draw their nourishment
from current functionalities for capitalism (eg undermining the
'class-for-itself' moment so central to, say, Lukacss theory) and those
which are spawned or sustained by capitalist relations, because they excite
that initial search for alternative meanings, for filling the empty holes
the alienation excavator gouges into us.

Then you get to having to distinguish between (often pre-modern) residual
cultural components (eg Christianity per se) and the tendentious inventions
of the past (and the demagoguery often at the root of it - eg. the
bible-based economics and bible-based public responsibility stuff that's
sweeping the US apre-coup).

I do think that not every component of our being, and not every moment in
our lives, is written by capitalism - some of it is residual, some of it is
stuff not commodified yet, some of it simply coz capitalism can't do the
job, and some of it is, dare I say it, human essence.  But I'm blabbering
off-topic now ...

Anyway, I only mentioned my reservations because it's often well to remind
ourselves, obvious though it probably is, that shit happens in all worlds -
and that we cannot ensure the absence of 'isms', needless cleavages and
lingering exploitations, in a post-prol-revo.  Isms are material realities
- they're structures - and their existence and potential to hang on need
expressly to be factored into our sensibilities, publicity, strategies and
hopes.

I kinda like the sort of approach Albert and Hahnel were talking about in
their *Unorthodox Marxism* way back in '79 - I' seem to have lost it for
the moment - not quite autonomism, perhaps, but a way of signalling to the
many and varied seekers-of-a-better-world and rejecters-of-shit a sense
that stuff's connected and that we are all therefore connected, too.  I'm
no All-Power-To-The-Party man, but neither am I committed to some
fetishised autonomy whereby, for instance, the racially oppressed think
race is all, the sexually oppressed that gender is all, and the pinkoes
among us  mouth sympathies at 'em without actually factoring their concerns
right at the front end of our efforts.

No sign of that here just now - but we've all seen examples of this kinda
stuff on other lefty channels, eh?

Anyway, I'm just avoiding work ...

Cheers,
Rob.




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