Gramsci is Dead: Anarchist Currents in the Newest Social Movements - Brossura

Day, Richard J. F.

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0745321127 ISBN 13: 9780745321127

Casa editrice: Pluto Press, 2005

Riassunto

"Inspired to contribute to the symbiotic relationship between the academic and activist worlds, Day has decided to pick up the pen instead of the Molotov cocktail. The result is this brilliant book." Ann Hansen Ann was sentenced to life imprisonment for blowing up a cruise-missile component factory, and is the author of Direct Action: The Memoirs of an Urban Guerilla "If revolutionary politics are to be reconstituted for the twenty-first century, all previously existing radical traditions must not only be remade but placed in new relationships with one another. The anarchism of Richard Day's brilliant Gramsci is Dead is not only an explosive break-out from the demoralizing horizons of contemporary social democracy, but also an exuberant intellectual dance-invitation extended to all mutant Marxists, autonomists and species-being activists eager to catch the strains of a new tune: Red Emma would be proud." Nick Dyer-Witheford, Associate Professor, University of Western Ontario and author of Cyber-Marx (1999) Gramsci and the concept of hegemony cast a long shadow over radical political theory. Yet how far has this theory got us? Is it still central to feminism, anti-capitalism, anti-racism, anarchism, and other radical social movements today? Unlike previous revolutionary movements, Day argues, most contemporary radical social movements do not strive to take control of the state. Instead, they attempt to develop new forms of self-organisation that can run in parallel with -- or as alternatives to -- existing forms of social, political, and economic organization. This is to say that they follow a logic of affinity rather than one of hegemony. This book draws together a variety of different strands in political theory to weave together an innovative new approach to politics today. Rigorous and wide-ranging, Day introduces and interrogates key concepts. From Hegel's concept of recognition, through theories of hegemony

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Informazioni sugli autori

Richard Day is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Queen's University, Kingston. In addition to his scholarly work, he is a founder of the Critical U. community education project in Vancouver and has participated in food, housing, and financial co-operatives. He is also active in the anti-globalisation movement and in defending the university as a public, accessible space for critical thought and social analysis.

John Holloway is a Professor in the Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades of the Benemirita Universidad Autonoma de Puebla in Mexico. His publications include Crack Capitalism (Pluto, 2010), Change the World Without Taking Power (Pluto, 2005), Zapatista! Rethinking Revolution in Mexico (co-editor, Pluto, 1998) and Global Capital, National State and The Politics of Money (co-editor, 1994).

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Gramsci is Dead

Anarchist Currents in the Newest Social Movements

By Richard J.F. Day

Pluto Press

Copyright © 2005 Richard J.F. Day
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-7453-2112-7

Contents

Acknowledgements, vii, 
Introduction, 1, 
1. Doing it Yourself: Direct-action Currents in Contemporary Radical Activism, 19, 
2. Tracking the Hegemony of Hegemony: Classical Marxism and Liberalism, 46, 
3. Tracking the Hegemony of Hegemony: Postmarxism and the New Social Movements, 66, 
4. Utopian Socialism Then ..., 91, 
5. ... and Now, 129, 
6. Ethics, Affinity and the Coming Communities, 178, 
7. Conclusion: Utopian Socialism Again and Again, 203, 
Notes, 218, 
References, 227, 
Index, 245, 

CHAPTER 1

Doing it Yourself: Direct-action Currents in Contemporary Radical Activism

'I shit on all the revolutionary vanguards of this planet'

Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, January 2003

As David Graeber has pointed out in a recent article in New Left Review, many of today's activists are rejecting 'a politics which appeals to governments to modify their behaviour, in favour of physical intervention against state power in a form that itself prefigures an alternative' (2002: 62). This politics is radical in the sense I outlined in the Introduction, that is, it is less concerned with affecting the content of current forms of domination and exploitation than it is with creating alternatives to the forms themselves. In this chapter I look at a wide range of activist practices, with the intention of understanding both how they intervene against state and corporate power and how they prefigure, or in some cases create, alternatives to the existing order. For purposes of discussion I will consider an array of non-hegemonic tactics under a handful of analytic headings, arranged in increasing order of their efficacy in addressing forms rather than contents. These include: dropping out of existing institutions; subversion of existing institutions, through parody; impeding existing institutions, via property destruction, 'direct action case work', blockades, and so on; prefiguring alternatives to existing institutions, often via modes of activity that otherwise fall within the purview of a hegemonic politics, for example protests; and finally, construction of alternatives to existing forms that render redundant, and thereby take power from, the neoliberal project.

Some of these approaches have, of course, been used in the past under other circumstances, and none of them can be thought of as 'purely' non-hegemonic. What is at issue here is a matter of nuances, not of totalities. One particularly interesting aspect of contemporary practice is that many of the most effective tactics are non-branded, that is, they tend to spread in a viral way, with no one taking ownership or attempting to exercise control over how they are implemented. Unlike, say, the dictates of the Communist International in the heyday of the Soviet Union, they easily morph into new forms appropriate to different times and places, and thus are beginning to display the kind of diversity and differentiation that is required for 'survival' in the hostile environment of neoliberal societies of control.

Another important nuance is the linkage of these tactics to anarchism, which ranges from implicitly adopting traditionally anarchist methods without an awareness of their origin, to explicit display of the circle-A — which, of course, hardly makes things clear, since this emblem has been appropriated by everyone from suburban consumer rebels to software companies. I will use the term 'anarchistic' to describe (what I see as) implicitly anarchist elements in a group or tactic, reserving the term 'anarchist' for situations where there is an explicit self-identification.

Finally, I should note that in researching this chapter I, along with others involved in the Affinity Project, sometimes felt as though we were working on a report for a counter-intelligence bureau. So, to minimize the chance that our work will compromise the security of any group or network, we have ensured that all of the information presented here or on our website is publicly available, or comes from interviews where the desire for anonymity has been respected.

ZERO-PARTICIPATION: CRUSTY PUNKS AND LIFESTYLE ANARCHISTS

The first current I will address is the zero-work or drop-out tactic, which is associated with surrealism, the Situationist International (SI), and, most recently, anarcho-primitivism. Bob Black's (1985) essay 'The Abolition of Work' is a strong influence here. Black criticizes feminists, liberals, marxists and most brands of anarchism for 'quibbling over the details' of work without questioning the meaning and effects of work itself. 'Almost any evil you'd care to name', he suggests, 'comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working.' Although his argument is highly polemical and more than a little reductive, Black makes interesting links between the ideology of work and centralization, surveillance and authoritarianism. Classical marxists and anarchists, of course, were aware of the deadening and dangerous effects of labour under the capitalist system, but Black refuses the assumption that non-capitalist labour will be any more enjoyable. Rather, following the surrealists and situationists, he generalizes the classical socialist critique to include work in the home and school as well as the factory and office. In the background of this primitivist challenge, of course, there lurks the assumption that life need not be this way, that it has not always been this way. Thus John Zerzan argues that work as we know it is a product of civilization, an imposition upon a non-Hobbesian prehistory 'characterized more by intelligence, egalitarianism and sharing, leisure time, a great deal of sexual equality, robusticity and health, with no evidence at all of organized violence' (Zerzan 2002: 49).

Anarcho-primitivist influences figure prominently within the dropout culture that is burgeoning all over the world, but is particularly strong in inner-city areas of the United States. In an interview for the Affinity Project, Dave Battistuzzi, an organizer for the Northeastern Federation of Anarcho-Communists (NEFAC), notes that there are 'two anarchisms' at work in cities like Baltimore, where the flight to the suburbs has left behind deeply impoverished, primarily Black neighbourhoods with low housing costs and many abandoned buildings. Since the 1980s, these areas have been attractive to White-punk-DIY squatters whom Battistuzzi identifies with what Murray Bookchin (1995) has called 'lifestyle anarchism'— that is, with a 'middle-class, escapist, feel-good' sub-culture (Battistuzzi 2003). They often have no strong links to the surrounding community, and are therefore seen more as first-stage gentrifiers than as a potential source of progressive alliances. In recent years, however, a new kind of drop-out politics has emerged, which is driven more by necessity than choice, and is trying to reach out across the boundaries created by race, class and anarchist subcultures. Rather than simply capitalizing upon impoverishment and strife to acquire cheap or free housing, these squatters contribute to their neighbourhoods by providing much-needed community services. Eleanor, who calls herself 'a White anarchist kid', has lived in a number of squats in inner-city Black areas of Philadelphia. She has been involved in creating community gardens, bike workshops, free art classes and other initiatives, and has found the communities in which she has lived to be 'positive and supportive' (Eleanor 2003). Her experience offers a way out of the stark distinction Bookchin makes between social anarchism and lifestyle anarchism, by showing how living an alternative lifestyle can be combined with other tactics that are more obviously 'political' in nature.

THE INCREDIBLE LIGHTNESS OF CULTURAL SUBVERSION

The past few years have seen a resurgence of another situationist technique: détournement, which the SI defined as the integration of 'preexisting aesthetic elements' into a 'superior construction of a milieu' (Knabb 1981: 45–6). In everyday terms, détournement involves taking images and text from mainstream media and subverting them for other ends. The Situationist International's journal made copious use of this technique, sometimes succeeding in its critical intent, at others failing to adequately distance itself from spectacular representations. Echoing this call for radical cultural-political critique, but with a broader critical awareness, a contemporary website devoted to billboard subversion declares that '[w]e can turn the tables on capitalism if we recognize that we can all be artists — if we don't compete, but play, play hard and play seriously' (urban75 2003). Most diverted advertisements do not take on constituted powers directly, for example by proclaiming that 'Capitalism Sucks!', but work to subvert its attempts to (re)define everyday spaces, values, and subjectivities. The skilful détournement of a billboard, then, can be seen as a form of direct action based on the construction of situations, and can be extended beyond the critique of spectacular commodity relations to include racism, heterosexism, technophilia and the military industrial complex. Some of the more interesting work in this regard can be viewed at the website of the ironically named California Department of Corrections, which has taken up the task of remedying some of the many deficiencies to be found in state and corporate advertising.

Finally, it is important to point out that, unlike their marxist precursors, today's 'situationists' do not see themselves as an artistic-revolutionary avant-garde with a select membership. Rather, billboard liberation is dispersed as a non-branded tactic open to all. The Billboard Liberation Front (BLF) website, for example, contains an online manual entitled The Art & Science of Billboard Improvement (BLF 2004a), which describes in detail the tools, methods and precautions necessary for carrying out successful actions. The BLF Manifesto, taking a characteristically ironical tone, makes clear the desire for wide dispersal of the billboard liberation tactic:

Our ultimate goal is nothing short of a personal and singular Billboard for each citizen. Until that glorious day for global communications when every man, woman and child can scream at or sing to the world in 100Pt. type from their very own rooftop; until that day we will continue to do all in our power to encourage the masses to use any means possible to commandeer the existing media and to alter it to their own design. (BLF 2004b)

The Surveillance Camera Players (SCP) are also doing innovative work in cultural politics that is explicitly situationist-inspired. Like the SI, the SCP operate at the interface between everyday life and its representations within the societies of control. But they have carved out a new niche by performing live plays in front of surveillance cameras, such as their own version of the final scene of George Orwell's 1984, Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi, and original works such as the one in which they reassure watching guards that they're 'just going to work', 'just shopping', and so on.

Their work is intended to be humorous and accessible, but the SCP are also engaged in a theoretically driven critique of the societies of control. 'It is the demand for and imposition of transparency', they argue, 'that unites the apparently isolated spectacle of video surveillance with the general capitalist spectacle' (SCP/NYC 2004a). Transparency here refers to the panoptic visibility of our daily lives via their representation within systems of cybernetic regulation. The most insidious aspect of this transparency, of course, is its own transparency; most of us do not notice, or do not care, that we are photographed hundreds of times in our daily round, tracked by our cellphones or located by the use of our bank cards. In calling attention to the transparency of transparency, the SCP force one of the mechanisms of the societies of control into view, rendering it susceptible — at least potentially — to critical discourse and contestation.

Like BLF, the SCP tactic is spreading virally and rapidly. A flyer used by the New York group contains the following advice:

If you, too, are worried about the destruction of your constitutional rights in the name of 'fighting crime', we encourage you to form your own anti-surveillance camera group. You can even use the name 'Surveillance Camera Players'. (SCP/NYC 2004b)

This call has been taken up enthusiastically, with over 20 groups participating in an International Day Against Video Surveillance in September 2001, and countless autonomous actions taking place from the USA to Europe and Latin America.

While these instances of everyday détournement are important examples of the cultural-political battles being waged today, the struggle for control over the material-symbolic environment becomes particularly intense when an international financial meeting rolls into town. During these events, the arrival of the leaders and their entourages is preceded by months of 'site preparation', which has the goal of turning a particular human-natural community — a 'somewhere' — into a 'nowhere', a wasteland of dead power and its artifacts. Daily life is suspended as a 'safe' zone is fenced off, archaic or newly wrought laws against standing on the streets or wearing masks are trotted out, and snipers occupy the high ground.

In this kind of environment, one might expect dissent to all but disappear. However, in a concrete refutation of the thesis of a pessimistic postmodernism, the heightening intensity of repression at these meetings has been accompanied by an even greater resurgence of an aesthetic of resistance via transformative play. Colourful, mobile performances and sculptures have become increasingly common alternatives to the more traditional modes of discursive communication.

Groups like Art and Revolution and Bread and Puppets have been instrumental in perpetuating and refining this tactic, which has a lineage back to agit-prop and the work of Brecht and Jarry. Although Bread and Puppets has been guided primarily by the vision of Peter Schumann, larger events such as the Domestic Resurrection Circus (held annually from 1975 to 1998) were organized on anarchist principles:

The organizational structure within the Bread and Puppet Theater developed in response to the requirements of the Circus — organically (as it were) in an anarchistic fashion, which is to say, in response to situations as they developed, with individual members of various committees taking on responsibilities as they saw fit. All met regularly with the Schumanns and other puppeteers. (Bell 1999: 108)

Like BLF and SCP, puppeteering has been disseminated as a non-branded, open tactic practised by loose networks of autonomous groups.

Despite the ubiquity of this kind of spontaneous, creative, intervention, the cultural-political aspects of contemporary activism are consistently downplayed in the corporate mass media, in favour of representations of violent conflict. In the mid-1990s, Reclaim the Streets (RTS) began to receive a great deal of attention for its massive impromptu parties, held on the streets and squares of London and, most memorably, on the M41 motorway. Despite the best of festive intentions, John Jordan notes that these actions did not always succeed in their goals. 'The action which we felt failed the most was the Social Justice/Never Mind the Bollocks event — not only did it fail in that we did not manage to carry out our main plan, but also because a street party in Trafalgar Square, followed by newspaper front pages with "Anarchist Riot", "Attempted Murder", etc. is not politically effective' (Jordan 1997).

While the minions of Rupert Murdoch and Conrad Black have continued to ignore the political motivations of street parties, choosing to focus instead on their 'violent', 'irrational' and 'self-indulgent' aspects, the rapid spread of RTS implies that it possesses a certain sort of viability. What began as a tactic of a local coalition against the motorization of Britain has since been employed at the Summit of the European Council in Barcelona, the NATO meetings in Munich, and the World Economic Forum in New York City, all during the first few months of 2002. RTS is an excellent example of the dispersal of a non-branded tactic, on the basis of what the London group call 'disorganization':

In relation to past and expected future press reports concerning trials of RTS 'leaders', Reclaim the Streets London would like to emphasize that it is a non-hierarchical, leaderless, openly organized, public group. No individual 'plans' or 'masterminds' its actions and events. RTS activities are the result of voluntary, unpaid, co-operative efforts from numerous self-directed people attempting to work equally together. (RTS London 2000a)

If this approach sounds anarchistic, that's because it is self-consciously driven, among other influences, by anarchist principles. 'The theft of time and space by capitalism, and resistance to it, along with a fusing of green (ecological), red (socialist) and black (anarchist) politics has always been central to London RTS' (RTS London 2000b).

(Continues...)

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Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: Pluto Press
• Data di pubblicazione: 2005
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0745321127
• ISBN 13: 9780745321127
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 264
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Germania