The Street Shall Rule

a rhizzone community article by — published


In 2003, in the wake of massive protests against austerity, French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said, "The street must express itself, but the street does not govern." This encapsulates the bourgeois view of democracy, with a passive public that is governed by an elite. Its negation is quite simple: Rule of the street. That is, communist-oriented democracy is the public governing itself through direct action. The emerging democracy must be best thought of as insurgent, as interrupting the normal flows. Importantly, insurgent democracy seeks to end the state's monopoly on regulating flows, pulling these tasks down to affected communities and to a restored commons.

John Robb, a conservative military strategist, suggests that a contemporary insurgent movement needs three factors to be successful: A plausible promise; a willingness to work with anyone; and a critical mass of participants. In Iraq, for example, the resistance focused on ejecting the occupation armies and destabilizing the central government, the resistance itself was from various competing faith groups, political perspectives and local peoples, and it was able to sustain an incredible tempo of attacks with resources drawn from local economies.

In the case of the communists, it seems useful to apply the same sort of criteria. Do communists have a plausible promise? Are they willing to work with anyone? Can they build up to a critical mass of participants? So far, outbursts of popular power have been largely negations: Looting, burning down banks, tearing down certain leaders, protesting austerity. The positive factors have been channelled into reformist parties or limited community assemblies. The issue, then, is how to build movements in such a way that the regulation of value by the street and the commons becomes self-sustaining, decentered-horizontal and dominant. There are endless traditional answers to this problem, and it difficult to know where to begin.

One fact of bourgeois democracy is that most of the time most of the people are content with submission to the rule of some elite, especially if they have some perception of a limited say in the construction of that elite. In many countries, this makes liberal-democracy a powerful force for the status quo. What insurgent democracy relies on, then, is the idea that people would make different choices in different forms of democracy. As Rosa Luxemburg suggests, socialist democracy is about the construction of a majority for socialism, not about a majority announcing its adoption. This is a very important (Hegelian) observation because it suggests that insurgent democracy has a justified claim in seizing power prior to having the votes lined up. In some advanced physics, I have heard that a certain particle can "borrow" a certain amount of energy from the future in order to bring itself into being. Revolution must be the same way: It is not based on going against what people believe, but rather is based on borrowing trust from an imaginary but not too distant future, in order to bring that future into being.

The above is not meant as a categorical rejection of liberal-democracy, but rather saying that liberal-democracy is inadequate and, to a certain degree, irrelevant. It is easy to imagine radicalized versions of the reformist projects in Latin America where a husk of a state lumbers on, with perhaps even important national elections, but as a limited force, with real power in the hands of both small associations and mass movements. Insurgent democracy does not have a definite cell form: It is horizontal to the point where people can choose how and where to get involved. Radical democratic organization could be formal workers' councils or informal community assemblies. It seems likely to me that a small number of types of groupings will become viral across social space during an insurgency and come to dominate the political situation. These groups would then coordinate and force the state into a corner, to either negotiate with or displace.

To restate the revolutionary situation outlined above: Networks of radical local-scale groupings will loosely federate into insurgent mass movements and become "firm" in the face of state reaction. Badiou notes that revolutions tend to explode into huge numbers and then concentrate power into a small number of leaders, his solution for this is for everyone to become "guardians" of the revolution. Radical democracy is not just a moment of insurgency followed by a new order, but a constant reordering and renewal of democracy in new forms of dissent and cooperation. In this sense, the street shall rule.

Also by getfiscal on tHE r H i z z o n E:

BREAKING: JOKE WINS JOKE ELECTION
AMERIKKKA STAYS SAME OVERNIGHT
A Partisan View of History
Marxism is centered on the idea that classes can be abolished through the liberation of the proletariat.
Resistance in America: A Perspective
The world-historical consequence of the Occupy movement needs to be put in this perspective. This is the same world and involves one of the same powers. So far, the Occupy movement has involved a tiny minority of Americans, and at very little expense for these people. There are attacks with irritants on protestors, but most violence has been one-sided and limited. Importantly, what are the changes in business-as-usual that this movement seeks to put into place?
More articles by getfiscal.

Discussion of The Street Shall Rule on tHE r H i z z o n E:

#1
Post rating: ~
i'm too lazy to google search, is this your writing?
#2
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: ~
yes it is mine. i already see problems with it but whatever, just some ideas.
#3
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: ~
#4
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: ~
#5
Post rating: ~
i agree with your finale - that is, the bit about everyone becoming a 'guardian of the revolution' being critical. with the acknowledgment that this is from pobedonostsev, we should think of democracies as chains of production: votes come in on one side and representatives come out on the other. and because both of those two categories, voters and candidates, are so numerous and spread out, anyone who wishes to lay hands on the process must therefore do so in the middle, in the process of vote aggregation.

to draw an analogy, rockefeller built standard oil on refining, because there were too many independent oil derricks on one side and independent distribution centers on the other. as such the capital intensive process of refining was the only accessible point for a monopoly, as only a few refineries could handle the whole of America's oil output and oil-product demand.

and so too are there too many voters and too many potential candidates. the aggregation of votes, that is, the translation of potential-voters into voters for a given candidate, is the point at which a monopoly naturally suggests itself. and unless the incentive to control a given country (the incentive being Infinite Money) is removed, then this monopoly will always re-assert itself in a given democratic environment no matter how many brave goons are organized to Oppose Money In Politics.

therefore, mass democracy can never really be relied upon to deliver 'the correct' line. far better that we have something decentralized, without mass elections, complemented by a sort of implicit understanding that any who attempt to disrupt that decentralization be shot by individual 'guardians of the revolution'.
#6
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: ~
i think you are still relying to heavy on the idea of representation, on trying to organize people to deliver them to candidates. i know you probably don't mean that wholly but i don't think democracy, in a radical sense, is about representation at all. if anything i think democracy is properly synonymous with autonomy.

that said, i think you are entirely correct that there is an intermediary role which is most efficient use of our (yours and mine, for instance) time. that is, a position that is not precisely "leadership" in the traditional sense, but not simply the led either. more, ideally, a cultivated resourceful person that can demonstrate and firm up links between the local and the global. not guardian as "protector on behalf" but guardian as "defensive warrior" with a direct interest in the outcome.

i did try to show some ambiguity about decentralization, though, and about the state. i think that democracy can only happen in very small groups, but this does not mean that everything needs to be immediately reduced to small groups, or even over time. it may well be useful to subordinate to an apparatus of capture in order to use it, as lukacs/lenin say, as a weapon. like a weapon, picking it up is a failure in a certain sense: excuse me for what i have to do with this.

i'm not sure, though, it's all musing at this point.
#7
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: ~
i should say that i'm aware of the paradox here: rule by the "street" must ultimately be expressed as class rule on the macro scale. this is also struggle - i'm not suggesting that this is the path of least resistance, a sort of obvious shift in the Trotskyist sense that insists on just convincing people, but rather a difficult project that might bear fruit. so the paradox is that while discussing democracy from the perspective of autonomy, i've also suggested its negation in caesarism/bonapartism/stalinism. that is, to carry forward the revolution, it might be necessary to have leaders capable of defining the broad sweep. so it isn't obvious that this will work, but the delicate balance would be that whatever leadership evolved would have to be a sort of expression of class rule, and not reactionary ritual. that is, the leaders could be interchangeable, could rise and fall, poles of power would shift, but the basic features of the revolution would be sustained by constant mass supervision and deep participation. but there is no real way to ensure this except an incredible process of learning-by-doing.
#8
Post rating: ~

getfiscal posted:
i think you are still relying to heavy on the idea of representation, on trying to organize people to deliver them to candidates. i know you probably don't mean that wholly but i don't think democracy, in a radical sense, is about representation at all. if anything i think democracy is properly synonymous with autonomy.

that said, i think you are entirely correct that there is an intermediary role which is most efficient use of our (yours and mine, for instance) time. that is, a position that is not precisely "leadership" in the traditional sense, but not simply the led either. more, ideally, a cultivated resourceful person that can demonstrate and firm up links between the local and the global. not guardian as "protector on behalf" but guardian as "defensive warrior" with a direct interest in the outcome.

i did try to show some ambiguity about decentralization, though, and about the state. i think that democracy can only happen in very small groups, but this does not mean that everything needs to be immediately reduced to small groups, or even over time. it may well be useful to subordinate to an apparatus of capture in order to use it, as lukacs/lenin say, as a weapon. like a weapon, picking it up is a failure in a certain sense: excuse me for what i have to do with this.

i'm not sure, though, it's all musing at this point.



yeah, my issue is with the nature of representative democracy, but once you arrive at the scale of a nation thats really all there is. but, like you, i do think there is some sort of possible compromise: like the analogy of the ship that engels uses, or the broad ideological impulse of the cultural revolution. codreanu suggested an oath of poverty for all leaders in the iron guard, an idea ive always liked.

getfiscal posted:
i should say that i'm aware of the paradox here: rule by the "street" must ultimately be expressed as class rule on the macro scale. this is also struggle - i'm not suggesting that this is the path of least resistance, a sort of obvious shift in the Trotskyist sense that insists on just convincing people, but rather a difficult project that might bear fruit. so the paradox is that while discussing democracy from the perspective of autonomy, i've also suggested its negation in caesarism/bonapartism/stalinism. that is, to carry forward the revolution, it might be necessary to have leaders capable of defining the broad sweep. so it isn't obvious that this will work, but the delicate balance would be that whatever leadership evolved would have to be a sort of expression of class rule, and not reactionary ritual. that is, the leaders could be interchangeable, could rise and fall, poles of power would shift, but the basic features of the revolution would be sustained by constant mass supervision and deep participation. but there is no real way to ensure this except an incredible process of learning-by-doing.



agreed, but i think its important to not get too caught up in trying to make any given system 'immortal', constantly able to adapt and renew itself. if spengler was right (spoiler:

Spoiler!
) then the decline of every given cultural organism is per-determined and inevitable, and therefore, like the crew of the enterprise in an episode where news has come in from the future that the ship is about to be destroyed, we must refuse to second guess ourselves and move forward with What We Know Is Right.
#9
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: ~
it's true that immortality of a particular social form is problematic. to be honest, I tend to see it as a sort of quest. that is, we can subordinate our economic relations to a planning mechanism, a sort of self-regulated society, rather than a class society. i see this as a sort of authenticity, a liberation, a sort of higher state. it is a society that sets its own goals, rather than having these goals represented through mediated forms of exchange or privilege. i'm not even interested in what would come next after that achievement, it seems like a terrifying question, even. that is, having subordinated society to our collective rational command, we would have to accept the utter irrationality of whatever we set as our task, which would likely create a chaotic period of unimaginable terror. it would be the equivalent of trying to work an entire society through psychoanalysis until it was capable of traversing its own fantasy. but i have no idea what that would mean. here one might turn to the story of the tower of babel: by coming together, by learning a common language, we reach the precise moment where we are most alienated from another and must be scattered to survive. so the achievement of a species-being might be the moment when desperate, chaotic acts take place, with the full knowledge that they are absurd. marx called the achievement of communism the end of the "prehistory" of humanity. the actual history might end up being nasty, brutish and short. obviously i'm invokign nietzsche here as well, but i don't think the last man is necessarily sloth-like, more like building a tower to the heavens for no particular reason.

socialism could make people worse off in material and human development terms and it would still be worth pursuing for this reason. i'm not even particularly interested in lives going somewhat better, the aesthetic completion of the quest and the opening of a new era seem like the key to me. so history takes on redemptive qualities, with every slight of the ruling classes culminating in classlessness, for an indeterminate period to be followed by i have no idea what. this is why i sometimes wonder if i am in heaven: i was fortunate enough to be born in the small window of billions of years of life between the past where slavery was inevitable and the future where full freedom is unbearable.
#10
Post rating: ~
ive also wondered about "the point" of socialist society. ive always been extraordinarily suspect re: marx's idea about endless and unlimited creative self-expression being the highest form to reach for - just from simply interacting with people every day i can really not imagine that being the case. it just stretches to mangling credulity to believe that in every idiot on the street there is an aristotle waiting to come out - if only society would allow it!

also i agree with your second paragraph, in the sense that the moving towards this society is itself more important than what actually is done with that society. fascist writers tend to be better in this regards than their left counterparts: because of the edifying effects of struggle on the individuals and communities which take part in it, the struggle is itself the goal, and in a very real way the critical period of growth for society. the destiny thought of spengler is part of this, for in a recursive sort of way the only nations which have a destiny are those which were strong enough to seize their destiny.

and it is that strength we are after, not the destiny itself!
#11
tardy on these heaters
Post rating: ~
I've read this thread and your guys' conversation at least three times over now and I can't help but conclude that the prophethood of Muhammad and the birth of Islam achieved precisely these things.

The properly revolutionary will comes from a radical alignment of the personal will to the One God, His Divine Law and His Messenger (the Truth, the Way and the Example). This is accomplished first at the individual level and then proceeding gradually and organically outward into the socius to form a nationhood that is founded not on material circumstance (territory, ethnic group, social class, etc., or even religion in the vulgar sense of a faith-community with a clergy class, particularism and vertical communalism) but the content and character of will. Islam is revolutionary in a specific way that differentiates it from secular revolutionary programs (for these purposes I would include Christian fascism in this grouping) in that it opposes domination of the individual and social will by secular zero-sum manipulation and demands allegiance to the Will of God instead, which is to say the creative and sustaining force of all the universe. There is no place in an Islamic community for codified and imposed state power, because the Divine Law is taken to heart by all its members, and every community of material circumstance is self-regulated by their adherence to it. There is a state, with its bureaucracy, military and hierarchy, etc. but these are simply instruments of maintenance, not manipulation. They are regarded as little more than guard dogs and servants, because the higher calling of servitude to God far supercedes the problems of secular politics.

Now, when you begin to talk about the end of history and its terrifying potential, I'd argue that that is our present state: the Revolution wherein humanity achieved its perfected operations occured, in the 7th Century, and it lasted all of 40 years, and so now there is just a steady churn of brutality and chaos that purges from humanity all the traits of civilization, which is the coherence of will with reality.

When Islamists call for shari'a, they are betraying the fundamental concept and demanding secular state power. Shari'a has no need for a throne. There is an obligatory caliph, but he is nothing like a secular leader. He simply represents the sovereignty of God. One does not legitimiately claim caliphhood, the example of the second rightly-guided caliph 'Umar ibn Khattab demonstrates that it is a position deigned by God and made obvious to the believers due to the man's piety and righteousness, or even simply his ability to lead, not by his prowess in vulgar secular matters or his heritage. No Muslim bows to any idol or thing in creation, his allegiance and adoration is entirely focused on the Almighty God. The caliph included; he prays side by side with the weakest and the most powerful alike. The caliphate wields little authority due to the self-sufficiency of Islamic communities and yet is the highest authority, representative of God, to which all Muslims owe their allegiance. The common Muslim who demands shari'a is not demanding a state which cuts off the hands of thieves or reduces the rate of taxation to 2% but a thoroughly radical break in the way his or her community operates, first and foremost in himself.

To sum up, I see the question here essentially being "Revolution is a re-alignment of the will, but to what?" And I believe that was answered by the prophets as "to God, not to the world". In Muhammad's time this was clear, because he was a prophet and it was simple allegiance to him that ensured adherence to God. Less so during the rightly-guided caliphs' time, and now it is even less clear. But at the same time it is stark and plain what is to be done: have faith that there is no god but God, and that living in coherence with the Sunnah of Muhammad is the correct methodology of success.
#12
[account deactivated]
#13
tardy on these heaters
Post rating: ~

discipline posted:

babyfinland posted:
To sum up, I see the question here essentially being "Revolution is a re-alignment of the will, but to what?" And I believe that was answered by the prophets as "to God, not to the world". In Muhammad's time this was clear, because he was a prophet and it was simple allegiance to him that ensured adherence to God. Less so during the rightly-guided caliphs' time, and now it is even less clear. But at the same time it is stark and plain what is to be done: have faith that there is no god but God, and that living in coherence with the Sunnah of Muhammad is the correct methodology of success

I agree with this but I think that the sunnah can be expanded to include innovation in social structure since the time of the prophet. I've never had a problem marrying my belief in various forms of communism to being a muslim. I think the main problem with most social theories is that it doesn't account for a man's soul, or maybe gobbledygooks it up with postmodern theories, and that it's important to have allegiances to ideas and systems bigger than human beings or human made things. perhaps this is why islam has such a root in law and accuracy - because it is designed to bridge the gap between the seen and unseen in such a way that makes it a practical guide to living in harmony with society and the principles of god.



Oh absolutely. Islam doesn't really stand opposed to any particular social program as such (with certain obvious exceptions such as evil and haraam), it simply commandeers it and re-aligns it towards God rather than secular zero-sum manipulations.

#14
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: ~
It's a bizarre coincidence but I found the perfect quote from Orwell today:

"Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache. They wanted to produce a perfect society by an endless continuation of something that had only been valuable because it was temporary."
#15
Post rating: ~
good, but you should know that you need to get away from anything like this and realize that, instead of trying to articulate some positive position and place, the only way you have of saying anything is by being critical, by refusing any positive project and instead analyzing and criticizing those of others.

also, the collision between islam and communism is really interesting and deserves a place apart
#16
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: ~
i'm not sure withdrawing into a place of total criticism makes sense, how do you live without a positive project?
#17
tardy on these heaters
Post rating: ~

sosie posted:
good, but you should know that you need to get away from anything like this and realize that, instead of trying to articulate some positive position and place, the only way you have of saying anything is by being critical, by refusing any positive project and instead analyzing and criticizing those of others.


I really strongly disagree but I'd like to hear your reasoning. This sounds like something Zizek would say.

#18
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: ~
actually zizek says the opposite, that you can't retreat into criticism. see his review of critchley's "infinitely demanding" for example.
#19
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: ~
well he does say that sometimes refusing to act is a powerful act in itself, but that's somewhat different.
#20
tardy on these heaters
Post rating: ~
well its zizek so hes notoriously wishy washy and confused in his messaging (or if you want to frame it nicely, hegelian) so i donno
#21
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: ~
master-theorists have to be vague to effectively fit into confirmation biases. so much of leftism is that by the way. like for any given possible action there are a minimum of four different takes on it, two or three of which will make the action seem stupid. and they apply in every situation. so it seems fairly arbitrary to determine between them.

like imagine you are given the opportunity to seize power and you do so. zizek could say "yes, exactly, jump into the void, choose the revolutionary moment, do not fear "bigness" - go for it, your action will retroactively justify itself!" or he could go against it: "sometimes the truly violent act is not to seize power, to in effect become your enemy and manage the situation, necessarily leading to another failure, but rather to refuse to act, to say "you tempt me with power, but i am more powerful than you already!"
#22
tardy on these heaters
Post rating: ~

getfiscal posted:
master-theorists have to be vague to effectively fit into confirmation biases. so much of leftism is that by the way. like for any given possible action there are a minimum of four different takes on it, two or three of which will make the action seem stupid. and they apply in every situation. so it seems fairly arbitrary to determine between them.

like imagine you are given the opportunity to seize power and you do so. zizek could say "yes, exactly, jump into the void, choose the revolutionary moment, do not fear "bigness" - go for it, your action will retroactively justify itself!" or he could go against it: "sometimes the truly violent act is not to seize power, to in effect become your enemy and manage the situation, necessarily leading to another failure, but rather to refuse to act, to say "you tempt me with power, but i am more powerful than you already!"



true, fair enough

#23
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: ~
comedy option: i was reading the green book today and wacky qaddafi basically says all this shit.
#24
[account deactivated]
#25
Post rating: ~
in speer's book he said that once hitler met w/ a bunch of arab delegates and for like a week afterwards he kept talking about how it was a tremendous shame that germany had ended up with "a flabby christianity" instead of becoming a nation of mohammedans


....hitler-sempai....
#26
Post rating: ~
i love islam
#27
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: ~

Impper posted:
i love islam

the "science" wikiquote page has a richard dawkins semi-atheist quote at the top.

i want to reply:

"La République n'a pas besoin de savants ni de chimistes ; le cours de la justice ne peut être suspendu." ("The Republic needs neither scientists nor chemists; the course of justice cannot be delayed".)

Care to share your thoughts? Sign up for tHE r H i z z o n E and Post your heart out, baby!