In the background of radical political discussion in the first world constantly hangs the question of territory--beyond this or that neighborhood, this or that community, what larger political space is actually being fought for? It is too often left up in the air whether the left is seeking to govern the United States or Great Britain, for example, essentially as they are now (same territory, same capitol, same populations, same resources, same industries, etc), but with a certain list of economic and cultural changes carried out, or whether they have in mind the creation of an entirely new polity that is either larger or smaller than the existing nation.
The former option, though on the face of it the most 'realistic' option, not only risks the reproduction on the subjective level of chauvinistic prejudice, but it ignores the extant to which a country's character is determined by where it is in the global division of labor, by the inertia of existing internal economic and administrative arrangements, and by the persistence of patriotic sentiments that manage to survive regardless of the particular nature of a regime at any particular time. On the other hand, the latter option would at best seem to result in something like the World Federalist Movement-a transnational community of an individual united by shared ideas and good will, but with no land and resources to call their own from which to build a new society. It would also make participation in political institution, electoral or otherwise, rather incoherent-how can you ask for inclusion within the bodies of a state you do not feel any loyalty to? Or perhaps more importantly, how do you argue to those who are on the fence, lukewarm, or unconvinced that you should not only be included, but trusted? Its one thing if you are Sinn Fein or the Scottish National Party, where there is a specific territorial entity you are aspiring to join, or create--everyone can understand that, whether they agree with these groups' aims or not-but those cases do not cover the situation of most leftists within the United States and Europe.
This can also explain the (arguably) fatal attraction of the EU among several left-wing political parties , since the European Union still seems to offer to many the prospect of an already partly realized new type of political society that is both 'progressive' and "beyond" the prejudices of the nation state (as if either nationalism or institutionalized xenophobia have been thereby erased-see the recent renewal of vitriol towards African migrants trying to enter Europe).
This rhetorical ambivalence-are we demanding merely changes within the existing territorial units, or their remaking all together- applies less in the cases of left elements attached to separatist projects within an imperialist country, because they can attach their calls for social transformation directly to the movement of exodus out of the larger state, and they always have some hope that the vacuum created by the reorganization of political relations and foreign relations will offer space to reorganize economic power as well. But again, this isn't really even a live option for most leftists, and it is telling that the SNP, the most recently notable examples of this phenomena, is pro-EU. Because ultimately division can only be justified, and be made viable, by unity at a higher level.
Thoughts?
Edited by RedMaistre ()
This is a magic-free thread, I swear.
drwhat posted:my esprit becomes a little less fort every time i read your posts
Let's discuss why that is then. Might as well use this thread for something, after all.
In the context of organizing in the west, I think that the problem is centered around trying to avoid the enormity of scale that true emancipatory justice requires. The engine of empire that makes up the contemporary state, the chauvinistic ideology imbedded into bureaucrats, soldiers, generals, the political class, replicates its claim at legitimacy through the shape of familiar territory to form a rallying banner and propaganda fulcrum for reactionaries in a revolutionary scenario. That power can be forcibly dispersed by the power of the masses in occupied territories where the legitimacy of the state isn't taken for granted, but somewhere like Britain its harmful propaganda value is so high that I think to truly oust it requires some kind of massive reterritorialization like in the formation of the USSR. Besides, the actual territorial composition of many states requires destruction in order for justice to be served, particularly in genocidal settler states (Israel, US, Canada, Australia.)
Even when the creation of a single emancipated territory can be done (Cuba, USSR, PRC etc) we know that it is an enormous challenge truly thrive when under eternal siege by NATO, the IMF, and other limbs of capital. I think that for any truly committed anti-imperialist and good communist (I repeat myself) the necessity of radical reterritorialization is clear.
The rhetorical ambivalence of the left comes from either a flawed understanding of the situation (liberals, neutralized, inert) or a fearful hesitation to embrace in our hearts and bravely declare the enormity of what we know must be done. The mind balks at the enormity of the task: how can we vocally demand the death of territories when we can't even organize our own communities, when we can't keep ourselves safe from COINTELPRO, when we waste our efforts on prideful internal bickering, when people look at us and see misguided eccentrics, idealistic dreamers, cartoon villains? We have been beaten and intimidated into a continuous retreat, slinking around the outskirts, vindictively isolated and divided until we internalize the abuse and replicate it ourselves, cornered into increasingly shrinking horizons of possibility and settling for small inoffensive goals that do not contribute to growing a movement and thus can never truly challenge the forces of empire. To overcome this requires (among other things) an ambitious platform to center ourselves around, a clear uncompromising end goal that can be easily communicated, it is desperately needed good propaganda, it is good organizational practice, and it is a simple litmus test to eliminate obstructive 'activists' that just waste everyone's time.
Consolidating territory in order to build up is a perfectly acceptable logistical need, but we should be ready and willing to boldly declare a strategy of full scale war with the entirety of empire and all its cruel petty divisions.
discipline posted:I think also it's hard to organize around "what must be done" (serious tasks we can't even sit down to discuss) because reds in the core are lured by the siren song of prosperity just as much as their pinkboy peers. the idea is sort of like, I make all these sacrifices that probably won't amount to anything and for what? this is a huge, terrifying gain of empire, to present us with this poisonous attitude. yes, we might as well throw our lives away trying to jam the gears of capital, but we might just as well do by playing video games and smoking weed. when you hoist yourself out of that, you're still presented with a really nice deal by the democrats, and then if you hoist yourself out of that environment (abroad), you're again either approached by the CIA, lured into the incredibly lucrative UN/INGO sector, or become some sort of hack journalist. then you're getting old, and still broke, and think to oneself maybe I'll go back and get my phd ... and we know where it goes from here .......
(the matrix of control) works like the Japanese game of Go. Instead of defeating your opponent as in chess, in Go you win by immobilizing your opponent, by gaining control of key points of a matrix so that every time s/he moves s/he encounters an obstacle of some kind.
so how the hell do you win at go?
this makes a lot of sense to me, and is basically the way i understand the profusion of pseudo-radicalism. while there's certainly a lot of directed violence and aggression it makes clear that in a lot of cases it can simply be enough to provide a profusion of well controlled alternatives.
http://senseis.xmp.net/?NuclearTesuji
Edited by shriekingviolet ()
discipline posted:I think also it's hard to organize around "what must be done" (serious tasks we can't even sit down to discuss) because reds in the core are lured by the siren song of prosperity just as much as their pinkboy peers. the idea is sort of like, I make all these sacrifices that probably won't amount to anything and for what? this is a huge, terrifying gain of empire, to present us with this poisonous attitude. yes, we might as well throw our lives away trying to jam the gears of capital, but we might just as well do by playing video games and smoking weed. when you hoist yourself out of that, you're still presented with a really nice deal by the democrats, and then if you hoist yourself out of that environment (abroad), you're again either approached by the CIA, lured into the incredibly lucrative UN/INGO sector, or become some sort of hack journalist. then you're getting old, and still broke, and think to oneself maybe I'll go back and get my phd ... and we know where it goes from here .......
(the matrix of control) works like the Japanese game of Go. Instead of defeating your opponent as in chess, in Go you win by immobilizing your opponent, by gaining control of key points of a matrix so that every time s/he moves s/he encounters an obstacle of some kind.
so how the hell do you win at go?
discipline posted:like the number one challenge in organizing is convincing people you can win. and how do you win. there has to be leverage, there has to be strategy...
YEAH. I don't know, it's so hard to be always coping with the continuous erosion of our minds, wills, health, trust, security, solidarity, etc from all fronts. There needs to be a dedicated confrontation and sustained attack on all 'controlled alternatives' (good choice of words) but that becomes its own self-sustaining trap, because we can attack the things that suborn us forever but it won't change the fact that we are facing an enemy with more money, more people, more information, more resources.
We need to leverage everything we can, the problem we have right now I think is a deficit of time: empire is essentially slow to react, bureaucratic structures are clumsy and cumbersome at adaptation, so there is a real possibility of outmaneuvering but most of the western left hasn't been taking proper advantage of it since like '68, and in that time they have built up preventative measures. We are exhausted from being besieged on all sides, so we settle for short bursts of activity with dubious 'allies' like Occupy that don't sustain a followthrough, and all they do in the end is immunize empire and teach them ideal responses against another strategy of attack, giving them one more suborned and neutralized strategy that we have to do even more work to denounce and work past.
I think also part of this debate is what people like Tom Gann have been talking about: making radical politics a living part of a neighborhood by providing definite and predictable services to its inhabitants in the wake of the retreat of welfare state.
Finishing preparing this talk, I needed to break off to prepare desserts for the Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth Free Meals Supper Club. I hope that the supper club will become a crucial part of a militant caring infrastructure in South London. I am proud to be involved in, slightly, in building this on the terrain of the revanchist city in which the means of survival are increasingly privatised and inaccessible for large sections of the community.
There are, of course, other parts of this developing infrastructure: legal advice, especially for tenants with problems with landlords or residents who have, often illegally, been denied access to the support from the council which would prevent them becoming homeless. Both the housing groups with which I’m involved have had people referred to them by an increasingly frayed CAB. Alongside legal advice, a militant caring infrastructure includes support at council offices for people trying to obtain housing in the face of deliberately confusing and often intimidating, even violent, bureaucratic structures and language support for those without English as a first language.
In other words: Competing with mainstream NGOs on their own terrain. Not in the sense of subscribing to an Anarchist or Libertarian vision of politics that intends to bypass the existing state all together, but in the sense of a strategic retreat from direct confrontation to better envelop from multiple directions latter on. Because civil society is actual political society; it has to be already in the process of transformation if the state form that contains it is to be altered as well; and the extant and direction of such changes in the latter are determined by whatever elements are really active and living in the former.
Edited by RedMaistre ()
RedMaistre posted:In other words: Competing with mainstream NGOs on their own terrain. Not in the sense of subscribing to an Anarchist or Libertarian vision of politics that intends to bypass the existing state all together, but in the sense of a strategic retreat from direct confrontation to better envelop from multiple directions latter on. Because civil society is actual political societyYour text to link here...; it has to already in the process of transformation if the state form that contains it is to be altered as well; and the extant and direction of such changes in the latter is determined by whatever elements are really active and living in the former.
this mostly makes sense, as long as you know you're not actually directly competing with some random extant NGO, you're absolutely providing something different, a site for resistance, as opposed to a site for further integration into capital/empire etc
Crow posted:I think now is the time of partisan activity.
Agreed. First poster to murk a banker will receive upvotes from me on every post they make for life.
Learning 2 hunt, farm, and survive collapse in general is what everyone not ready to maoist guerrilla should be doing as well...
discipline posted:like the number one challenge in organizing is convincing people you can win. and how do you win.
Very carefully.
discipline posted:Crow posted:I think now is the time of partisan activity.
what do u mean
Nice Try, FBI
shriekingviolet posted:I meant to respond to this earlier, but procrastinated.
In the context of organizing in the west, I think that the problem is centered around trying to avoid the enormity of scale that true emancipatory justice requires. The engine of empire that makes up the contemporary state, the chauvinistic ideology imbedded into bureaucrats, soldiers, generals, the political class, replicates its claim at legitimacy through the shape of familiar territory to form a rallying banner and propaganda fulcrum for reactionaries in a revolutionary scenario. That power can be forcibly dispersed by the power of the masses in occupied territories where the legitimacy of the state isn't taken for granted, but somewhere like Britain its harmful propaganda value is so high that I think to truly oust it requires some kind of massive reterritorialization like in the formation of the USSR. Besides, the actual territorial composition of many states requires destruction in order for justice to be served, particularly in genocidal settler states (Israel, US, Canada, Australia.)
Even when the creation of a single emancipated territory can be done (Cuba, USSR, PRC etc) we know that it is an enormous challenge truly thrive when under eternal siege by NATO, the IMF, and other limbs of capital. I think that for any truly committed anti-imperialist and good communist (I repeat myself) the necessity of radical reterritorialization is clear.
The rhetorical ambivalence of the left comes from either a flawed understanding of the situation (liberals, neutralized, inert) or a fearful hesitation to embrace in our hearts and bravely declare the enormity of what we know must be done. The mind balks at the enormity of the task: how can we vocally demand the death of territories when we can't even organize our own communities, when we can't keep ourselves safe from COINTELPRO, when we waste our efforts on prideful internal bickering, when people look at us and see misguided eccentrics, idealistic dreamers, cartoon villains? We have been beaten and intimidated into a continuous retreat, slinking around the outskirts, vindictively isolated and divided until we internalize the abuse and replicate it ourselves, cornered into increasingly shrinking horizons of possibility and settling for small inoffensive goals that do not contribute to growing a movement and thus can never truly challenge the forces of empire. To overcome this requires (among other things) an ambitious platform to center ourselves around, a clear uncompromising end goal that can be easily communicated, it is desperately needed good propaganda, it is good organizational practice, and it is a simple litmus test to eliminate obstructive 'activists' that just waste everyone's time.
Consolidating territory in order to build up is a perfectly acceptable logistical need, but we should be ready and willing to boldly declare a strategy of full scale war with the entirety of empire and all its cruel petty divisions.
"Do you want to help start the next world war" is actually a fairly insane litmus test.
RedMaistre posted:drwhat posted:
my esprit becomes a little less fort every time i read your posts
Let's discuss why that is then. Might as well use this thread for something, after all.
1, I can't resist making shit posts; 2, I find your writing style unnecessarily exclusionary in its pretentiousness which makes it difficult for me to want to grapple with the content, even though it seems worth grappling with; 3, I'm not one of you smart guys so I don't understand the Rhodes reference. 
Anyway, with regards to the actual content, I agree with shriekingviolet (as usual) but taking it a step further: thinking beyond/without national borders is absolutely essential to everything we're discussing. As difficult as it is to find allies in other countries who, at least, can conceive of alternatives to capitalism, it seems even more difficult to find people who can conceive of alternatives to nationalism, it's even more baked into the matrix through which we make sense of reality.
On the bright side, though, within the existing configurations there is more and more and more balkanization as the gaps widen and the wealth concentrates; people are of course blaming everything they can find that isn't class, but the end product seems to be the same, increased interest in smaller units of administration, and the pressure to unwind capitalist globalization projects even while they're still in progress. Multinational corporations and privatization just make large states seem less and less relevant.
There is more and more growing agreement across the spectrum of non-mainstream modern political thought - among the libertarians and the greens and the techno-fetishists etc etc - that there is a need for more and more locally (de-)concentrated power, and local power is only going to make it easier and easier to have local structures that actually are human/social rather than inhuman/capital.
I know there's a lot of resistance to the idea of incrementalism or intersectionalism, but I think it's happening regardless. I feel like the fight for the near future is going to be between local and personal vs a state seen as increasingly vestigial, with its bullshit neocolonial interests seen as wastes of money and time. I'm sure a lot of the local and personal will be framed as, and intended as, pure individualist-capitalist, like the extreme libertarians in america, but their effect could be very socialist in function, in the end. Which would really be helped along its way if the left decides to show up and participate without trying to break the whole thing up because it isn't revolutionary enough.
What this means for us living in the United States et al however is...unclear.
Edited by RedMaistre ()
drwhat posted:RedMaistre posted:drwhat posted:
my esprit becomes a little less fort every time i read your posts
Let's discuss why that is then. Might as well use this thread for something, after all.1, I can't resist making shit posts; 2, I find your writing style unnecessarily exclusionary in its pretentiousness which makes it difficult for me to want to grapple with the content, even though it seems worth grappling with; 3, I'm not one of you smart guys so I don't understand the Rhodes reference.
Hic Rhodus, hic saltus!
Latin, usually translated: “Rhodes is here, here is where you jump!”
The well-known but little understood maxim originates from the traditional Latin translation of the punchline from Aesop’s fable The Boastful Athlete which has been the subject of some mistranslations.
In Greek, the maxim reads:
“ιδού η ρόδος,
ιδού και το πήδημα”
The story is that an athlete boasts that when in Rhodes, he performed a stupendous jump, and that there were witnesses who could back up his story. A bystander then remarked, ‘Alright! Let’s say this is Rhodes, demonstrate the jump here and now.’ The fable shows that people must be known by their deeds, not by their own claims for themselves. In the context in which Hegel uses it, this could be taken to mean that the philosophy of right must have to do with the actuality of modern society (“What is rational is real; what is real is rational”), not the theories and ideals that societies create for themselves, or some ideal counterposed to existing conditions: “To apprehend what is is the task of philosophy,” as Hegel goes on to say, rather than to “teach the world what it ought to be.”
The epigram is given by Hegel first in Greek, then in Latin (in the form “Hic Rhodus, hic saltus”), in the Preface to the Philosophy of Right, and he then says: “With little change, the above saying would read (in German): “Hier ist die Rose, hier tanze”:
“Here is the rose, dance here”
This is taken to be an allusion to the ‘rose in the cross’ of the Rosicrucians (who claimed to possess esoteric knowledge with which they could transform social life), implying that the material for understanding and changing society is given in society itself, not in some other-worldly theory, punning first on the Greek (Rhodos = Rhodes, rhodon = rose), then on the Latin (saltus = jump , salta = dance ).
As for my style of writing, fair point--I have to admit that, like my speech irl 9but to nth degree), it tends towards the verbose and the pedantic. And as with my speech, i should be mindful of that tendency in order to better temper it.
There is more and more growing agreement across the spectrum of non-mainstream modern political thought - among the libertarians and the greens and the techno-fetishists etc etc - that there is a need for more and more locally (de-)concentrated power, and local power is only going to make it easier and easier to have local structures that actually are human/social rather than inhuman/capital.
I know there's a lot of resistance to the idea of incrementalism or intersectionalism, but I think it's happening regardless. I feel like the fight for the near future is going to be between local and personal vs a state seen as increasingly vestigial, with its bullshit neocolonial interests seen as wastes of money and time. I'm sure a lot of the local and personal will be framed as, and intended as, pure individualist-capitalist, like the extreme libertarians in america, but their effect could be very socialist in function, in the end. Which would really be helped along its way if the left decides to show up and participate without trying to break the whole thing up because it isn't revolutionary enough.
Actually agree alot with these two paragraphs here,
What i don't agree with though is the point that you made earlier about states becoming less relevant. i think much of the talk along those lines more a case of circa 90s capitalist utopianism and the parroting back of the same by its ultraleft shadow. The management of the global economic crisis of 2008, the Arab Spring, and the reawkening of strife between Moscow and Washington all show the dependence on the capitalist system on the state form itself and on the dynamics of interstate competition.
One of the effects of this localization and fragmentation you talk about, I suspect, will be an increasingly felt need for truly global forms of governance to supplant both the American Empire and the centrifugal forces of ethnic-sectarian strife, and to oversee the unprecedented globalization of economic relations. Or least forms of governance that encompass larger units than the existing nation states.
Edited by RedMaistre ()
notciaNOTjew posted:"Do you want to help start the next world war" is actually a fairly insane litmus test.
the "next" world war is already happening right now. it's just common courtesy to let people know they can choose not to be nazi collaborators.
RedMaistre posted:
discipline posted:I think also it's hard to organize around "what must be done" (serious tasks we can't even sit down to discuss) because reds in the core are lured by the siren song of prosperity just as much as their pinkboy peers. the idea is sort of like, I make all these sacrifices that probably won't amount to anything and for what? this is a huge, terrifying gain of empire, to present us with this poisonous attitude. yes, we might as well throw our lives away trying to jam the gears of capital, but we might just as well do by playing video games and smoking weed. when you hoist yourself out of that, you're still presented with a really nice deal by the democrats, and then if you hoist yourself out of that environment (abroad), you're again either approached by the CIA, lured into the incredibly lucrative UN/INGO sector, or become some sort of hack journalist. then you're getting old, and still broke, and think to oneself maybe I'll go back and get my phd ... and we know where it goes from here .......
(the matrix of control) works like the Japanese game of Go. Instead of defeating your opponent as in chess, in Go you win by immobilizing your opponent, by gaining control of key points of a matrix so that every time s/he moves s/he encounters an obstacle of some kind.
so how the hell do you win at go?
this is all correct, but i think it may lack a certain sense of perspective. it's true that the major revolutions were all ignited by the self-sacrifice of revolutionaries, but they were still a small portion of the population, and for everyone one of them, there were ten peasants that were sympathetic to the cause, but more opportunistic with their help--trying to live their lives as best they can. when they felt that they needed to or that the winds were changing, many, if not most, of them did step up.
my grandfather and his twin brother were both sympathetic to communism before 1941, but they weren't terribly involved in the struggle--they were pursuing their studies trying to make it off the farm and help their family. after 1941, both immediately joined the partizans. they stayed involved with the party until they died. i think this is a very common picture of what happened all over eastern europe.
not everyone needs to be a martyr. we need mothers and fathers raising strong and honest children. we will need workers that provide food, water, shelter, medicine, science in the future just as much as we do now. just try to live your life with love and dignity, and do what you can when you feel you can. yes, the later is not always clear--that is why we need discussion and scholarship. however, even if a person never commits themselves to (or retreats from) the deeper levels of struggle, i think they are still worthy of respect.
i realize i may have went beyond the scope of what you were saying, but i wanted to get it out there anyways...
drwhat posted:I'm sure a lot of the local and personal will be framed as, and intended as, pure individualist-capitalist, like the extreme libertarians in america, but their effect could be very socialist in function, in the end. Which would really be helped along its way if the left decides to show up and participate without trying to break the whole thing up because it isn't revolutionary enough.
I'm sure most of us here are pessimistic about The Left based on personal experiences with activism, but I don't think a productive response is to align with neoliberal causes, hoping to nudge them towards outcomes which might at best amount to one step forward, two steps back. It's not that neoliberalism "isn't revolutionary enough" - it is by definition counterrevolutionary, and aggressively so. See also: Gay Marriage; The First Amendment; Uber
drwhat posted:On the bright side, though, within the existing configurations there is more and more and more balkanization as the gaps widen and the wealth concentrates; people are of course blaming everything they can find that isn't class, but the end product seems to be the same, increased interest in smaller units of administration, and the pressure to unwind capitalist globalization projects even while they're still in progress. Multinational corporations and privatization just make large states seem less and less relevant.
There is more and more growing agreement across the spectrum of non-mainstream modern political thought - among the libertarians and the greens and the techno-fetishists etc etc - that there is a need for more and more locally (de-)concentrated power, and local power is only going to make it easier and easier to have local structures that actually are human/social rather than inhuman/capital.
I know there's a lot of resistance to the idea of incrementalism or intersectionalism, but I think it's happening regardless. I feel like the fight for the near future is going to be between local and personal vs a state seen as increasingly vestigial, with its bullshit neocolonial interests seen as wastes of money and time. I'm sure a lot of the local and personal will be framed as, and intended as, pure individualist-capitalist, like the extreme libertarians in america, but their effect could be very socialist in function, in the end. Which would really be helped along its way if the left decides to show up and participate without trying to break the whole thing up because it isn't revolutionary enough.
You've nearly identified a key problem here, as I see it, which leaves me curious why you're suggesting that we exacerbate it. An increase in preferences for local power at the community level combined with the gradual erosion of state faculties into privatized corporate interests won't undermine the crushing hold of capital, or even yield better services for communities because those things require large scale infrastructure. Health, education/research, communication, transport, all of these things are important and require dedicated maintenance, aren't nearly as supportable on a community basis, especially when they are being increasingly devoured and directly controlled by global corporate hegemony.
At the same time, while some structures of the state are becoming decentralized by this process, the ones central to maintaining power for the privileged class aren't going to just evaporate. Even if formal state structures as we know them now completely dissolve you can bet your ass there will still be cops murdering at home and soldiers murdering abroad to keep the gears of capital slick.
The temptations offered (independent energy production, efficient local food production, 3d printing our own consumer goods, community self-policing) to participate in this decentralization ignore the larger structural picture, that all these things are only of true value when they contribute to creation of a just and equitable infrastructure, and offer no defense against predatory corporate domination if they don't oppose it. If we don't agitate to consistently show that these things, while useful, aren't solutions on their own, we're going to wind up in a nightmare world of paying a new kind of company store lease for the IP rights to own and maintain our "independent" energy, paid licenses that periodically expire for the blueprints to 3d print goods, and our 'community police' inflicted on us by the wealthiest by their choice from a catalog of corporate protection rackets, in increasingly insular communities with even less possibilities for solidarity and mass action than we already have.
These things absolutely cannot be trusted to unfold in positive ways on their own, the dissolution of the state structures we're used to do not in any way guarantee the dissolution of the murderous power structures they were designed to maintain, and new innovations or projects that aren't focused on destroying that power aren't going to do it by accident.
Edited by shriekingviolet ()
yo dawg get at me to write this thing, bruv, txt me wit ur deets.
