Date: Tue, 31 Dec 1996 18:31:21 -0500 (EST)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: M-I: From David Harvey's New Book


I suggested in chapter 5 that anti-capitalist agency (and, hence, 
potentiality for active struggle) is to be found everywhere and amongst 
everyone. It transpires that there is not a region in the world where 
manifestations of anger and discontent cannot be found. In some 
places anti-capitalist movements are strongly rather than weakly 
implanted. Localized "militant particularisms" are everywhere, from 
the militia movements in the Michigan woods (much of it violently 
anti-corporate and against the capitalist state as well as racist and 
exclusionary) to the movements of Indian and Brazilian peasants 
fighting World Bank development projects and the vast array of urban 
social movements struggling against poverty, oppression, exploitation, 
and environmental degradation in all parts of the world. There is a 
veritable ferment of anti-capitalist opposition within the interstices of 
the uneven spatio-temporal development of capitalism. But this 
opposition, though militant, often remains particularist (sometimes 
extremely so), often unable to see beyond its own particular form of 
uneven geographical development. To say such movements are anti-
capitalist is not to say they are pro-socialist (they can just as easily be 
authoritarian, religious, or neo-fascist). These movements lack 
coherence and a unified direction. Political moves and actions on one 
terrain may confound and sometimes check those on another, making 
it far too easy for capitalist processes and interests to divide and rule. 
Anti-capitalist struggle is itself unevenly developed, requiring a rather 
more sensitive approach to wars of position and maneuver than even 
Gramsci was able to devise...

The work of synthesis has to be on-going since the fields and terrains 
of struggle are perpetually changing as the capitalist socio-ecological 
dynamic changes. We need, in particular, to understand process of 
production of uneven spatio-temporal development and the intense 
contradictions that now exist within that field not just for capitalism 
(entailing, as it does, a great deal of self-destruction, devaluation, and 
bankruptcy) but also for populations rendered increasingly vulnerable 
to the violence of downsizing, unemployment, collapse of services, 
degradation in work conditions and living standards, destruction of 
resource complexes, and loss of environmental qualities. It is vital to 
go beyond the particularities and to emphasize the pattern and the 
systemic qualities of the damage being wrought. "Only connect" is still 
one of the most empowering and insightful of all political slogans. 
[This the epigraph to E.M. Forster's great novel "Howard's End.] The 
analysis has, furthermore, to be extended outwards to embrace a wide 
array of diverse and seemingly disparate questions. Issues like AIDS, 
global warming, local environmental degradation, the destructions of 
local cultural traditions, are inherently class issues and it needs to be 
show how building a community in anti-capitalist class struggle can 
better alleviate the conditions of oppression across a broad spectrum of 
social action. This is not, I emphasize, a plea for eclecticism and 
pluralism, but a plea to uncover the raw class content of a wide array 
of anti-capitalist concerns."

(This is from "Possible Urban Worlds", the final chapter of David 
Harvey's brand new book "Justice, Nature and the Geography of 
Difference", Blackwell Publishers, Cambridge, MA. Basically these 
are the same sorts of ideas packaged in much fancier prose that I plan to 
present to the list at the end of the cyber-seminar. I regard David 
Harvey to be one of the top five Marxist thinkers in the world today 
and urge everybody to look for this book.)

Louis Proyect



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