AUT: Debate: Wildcat (Germany) and John Holloway (4/4)

[C.FRINGS@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Christian Frings)]

Wildcat (Germany) reads John Holloway - an ongoing debate
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(4/4)

(Wildcat-Zirkular, No. 45, June 1998)

*Open Reply to an Open Letter*

Dearest Wildcat,

Many thanks for your letter. I'm very sorry for not replying sooner,
but ... and then follow all the excuses. I don't know how many letters
I've started in this way.

And yet your letter is very special. You say that it was a 'special
piece of good luck' that you came across our texts, but of course the
converse is also true. You cannot imagine what a pleasure it is, when
one spends most of one's time in that peculiar form of class struggle
(or peculiar vice, perhaps) which is Marxist theory, to discover that
somebody not only reads it but actually discusses it and finds it
helpful. Of course I was at first disappointed that you didn't publish
the Dignity's Revolt paper, but it's actually far more gratifying to
know that you read the paper with care, discussed it and took the care
to write a detailed criticism. Thank you very much.

I would like to take up the points you make in the way that you
suggest: not as an Answer to your Criticisms, but as moving a step
forward in the process of asking and investigating. I want to focus on
three points that seem to be central in your argument: the importance
of the EZLN, the question of class and humanism, and the question of
work.

1. The EZLN:

You say in your letter that the aim of my paper was to defend the EZLN
against criticisms from the left. I think, on the contrary, that I was
more concerned with defending the EZLN from their supporters than from
their critics. As you point out, the movement that has grown up around
the zapatista uprising is very confused and includes a whole range of
different political positions. I think it is very important to engage
within this movement by advancing political-theoretical arguments
about the nature of the movement. The way I chose to do this was by
focussing on the category of 'dignity', which seems to me a
potentially very powerful category.

Part of my argument is, of course, that I consider the zapatista
movement to be an extremely important and original revolutionary
movement. I do not think that they are beyond criticism and the
movement is, as I say, confused and ambivalent in many ways. But then
I find it hard to imagine any revolutionary process that would not be
confused, ambivalent and open to criticism. To refuse to engage with
the movement in the name of theoretical purity or correctness would, I
think, be a great mistake. I also think that any engagement with the
zapatistas must be based on an openness to learn from them, to listen,
and not just to apply pre-cast ideas of what is correct. What they
have done, and what they are doing, and the revolutionary way in which
they are challenging revolutionary ideas, make them for me the most
exciting revolutionary movement in a very long time. 'May 1968' too
was a confused movement, full of mistakes and criticable practices:
then too, the many groups who felt that they had the 'correct line'
stood on the sidelines. The position of the left-wing critics of the
zapatistas, such as Deneuve/ Reeve, seems to me no different.

2. Class and humanism:

You focus your discussion here on the section of the paper which
begins: 'Dignity is the revolutionary subject. Dignity is a class
concept, not a humanisitic one', a section which was obviously
intended to provoke discussion. You accuse me of falling into the
humanism that I claim to criticise and quite rightly link this problem
with the 'sheer unrest of life' which I quote in other texts.

I have already revised this section considerably, partly in response
to your criticisms, but I do not think that this revision affects the
discussion.

Your criticism is that, in the attempt to avoid a definitional or
objectivist concept of class, I throw the baby out with the bath
water, reducing the concept of class to the contradiction between
alienation and non-alienation, a contradiction present in every
person.

I think your characterisation is right. For me, the working class, the
revolutionary subject, is humanity dehumanised, insubordination
subordinated, freedom enchained, the sheer unrest of life entrapped,
indefinition defined, creativity negated, etc. However, these
contradictions do not just float in the air: they are the precondition
of and consequence of, they exist in and through, the daily, hourly
pumping of surplus value from the workers. If exploitation comes to an
end, then there is no dehumanisation of humanity, etc. But similarly,
if there is no dehumanisation of humanity (etc), then there is no
exploitation. Exploitation is the core of dehumanisation, the core of
class struggle. But I do not think that the exploitation of surplus
value producing workers can be separated from the dehumanisation of
humanity that it implies, and this dehumanisation is not just an
external contradiction between us and capital, but a contradiction
that runs through all of us. Thus when you say that 'the subject of
revolutionary change is thus the class of producers who are exploited
by the ruling class', it seems to me that there is a danger here of
'reducing' class conflict, of separating off one aspect of the class
conflict, of impoverishing revolution.

When I say that exploitation is the core of dehumanisation, I do not
mean by that there is a hierarchy between the direct producers of
surplus value and the rest of us, simply that the negation of
creativity (etc) is a material, palpable, historical process. I think
that there might possibly be a case for establishing such a hierarchy
if it could be shown that the direct producers of surplus value play a
particular part in the attack against capital. This has often been the
assumption, and was one of the points that came up in the discussion
when we met in Hamburg: the idea that there are key sections of
workers who are able to inflict particular damage on capital (such as
workers in large factories or transport workers). These workers are
able to impose with particular directness the dependence of capital
upon labour. But I'm not sure that such groups of workers are
necessarily direct producers of surplus value (think of bank workers,
for example), and the impact of the zapatistas on capital (through the
devaluation and the world financial upheaval of 1994-95, for example)
makes it clear that the capacity to disrupt capital accumulation does
not (any longer?) depend necessarily on one's place in the process of
production. Anyway, which does more 'damage to capital' - a prolonged
strike by industrial workers or a rebellion in the jungles of Mexico
which stirs up again the idea of revolution and the dream of a
different type of society?

You argue in your letter that I fall into the humanism that I set out
to criticise. You say: 'there is an insuperable division between
humanistic and revolutionary concepts. While humanistic approaches
refer to an ideal, philosophical human and an abstract, unhistorical
humanity, revolutionary theory starts from the historically real
person.' (37) My problem here is with the 'historically real person'.
If this is understood positivistically, as meaning people as they are
now, then there is no revolution: there might be complaints,
struggles, but that is all. It is only if it is understood negatively,
to mean 'historically real people, as they exist in their negation,
their alienation, their form of being denied' that the term
'historically real people' carries any revolutionary force. But what
is it then that is being negated, alienated, denied? The possibility
of living as humans, free and self-determining. The term 'historically
real people' makes sense only if we understand that real historical
existence as an existence-in-negation, an existence-in-tension, the
tension being towards humanity, self-determining practice. The problem
with humanism is not that it has a concept of humanity, but that it
thinks of humanity positively, as something already existing, rather
than starting from the understanding that humanity exists only in the
form of being denied, as a dream, as a struggle. The zapatista slogan
'humanity against neoliberalism' is ambiguous: humanity can be
understood either positively (socialdemocratically) or negatively. The
argument of my article is that it should be understood negatively.

You object to the idea of 'humanity against neoliberalism' because the
slogan could be just as easily used by supporters of the Socialist
International. Yes, but I'm not sure that that's a problem. Any
categories that we use are terrains of struggle: the PRI-politicians
here in Mexico talk of the importance of the revolutionary tradition,
the hacks of the ex-Soviet Union talked of class struggle, Clinton of
freedom. So what? But, more fundamentally, any situation of
revolutionary upheaval is a situation of confusion, of confused
thought, of confused enthusiasms, of (less confused) opportunism, of
ambiguous categories. That is not a reason for standing aside.

All this feels too negative, too defensive. The point, of course, is
not to defend myself against your criticisms, even less to counter-
attack. Your letter has been very helpful to me in trying to think
things out more clearly. There are some points I agree with, others
that I am still thinking about. One of the points that worries me is
your argument that if one understands the concept of class as the
contradiction between alienation and non-alienation, then it loses all
meaning: 'it can be applied at will to anything at all'. But isn't
that the point of Marxist theory? To understand all social phenomena
as forms of class struggle, and thereby to understand the richness of
class struggle and the fragility of all social phenomena? By focussing
on money as a form of class struggle, for example, as in the articles
you have published by Werner and myself, we can learn a lot about the
current development and fragility of capitalism, which would be closed
if one adopted a narrower view of class struggle and saw money as
something external to class struggle. That the arguments are not
sufficiently developed I agree, but one of the best ways to develop
them is by seeing them in the context of particular movements of
struggle such as the zapatista uprising. I don't understand why a
concept that fits everything is 'therefore without meaning for
practice'.

3. Work is central:

I agree with many of your comments in this section of your letter: for
example, that the question of the relation between creative practice
and work should have been developed more in the article on 'The
Centrality of Work'. I think, however, that the central issue is again
the question of how we think of class. You insist again on seeing
class struggle as centred in the immediate production process: 'This
material, reified form of the production process is the hard core of
capitalist command over our life'. And then you say just at the end:
'Capital flees from the 'insubordinate power of labour', but it can
only flee in the direction of its further socialisation, which it must
build up against the workers as a new 'social power', just as Ford's
River Rouge complex was a 'social power'.' I think I agree with both
of these statements, but I understand them in a different way from
you. For me, for example, the zapatista uprising is precisely an
example of the way in which the flight of capital leads to new forms
of socialisation (the fiercer subjection of the lives of Mexican
peasants into the circuit of capital). I don't think we should limit
the idea of socialisation to the old idea of the growth of the
(industrial) proletarian army (chimney stack after chimney stack - as
Brecht puts it somewhere, does he?), which I suspect underlies your
argument. I think it would be dangerous to limit class struggle in
this way, simply because I think class struggle is much richer and
faster-moving than that suggests.

Capital depends on the exploitation of labour, but exploitation is
impossible without subordination, the transformation of insubordinate
humanity (the 'sheer unrest of life') into subordinate labour.
Obviously, this is a struggle that takes place not only within the
factory but in every aspect of human existence. Primitive
accumulation, capital's violent struggle to subordinate, is not
something in the past but is everyday existence. I see no reason why
an emphasis on the centrality of exploitation should mean restricting
class struggle to the immediate process of production.

But I want to finish on a more positive note. The long article which
you decided not to publish (as well as the shorter version which you
did publish) is a plea for Marxists (and beyond) to listen carefully
to what the zapatistas are saying and doing. They are saying very
original and, on the whole, very good things. It is not just (although
that is important) that they have reawakened the idea of revolution:
it is also that they are re-inventing what revolution means. Central
to this is the idea of changing the world without taking power, which,
I think, has enormous consequences for the way we think about
revolution and about political practice. Certainly part of the
response in Europe has been a deaf romanticism, but far worse than the
deafness of the romantics has been the deafness of the dogmatics, of
those on the independent left who simply do not want to listen to what
might challenge their established ideas. There are many indications
now that the next few months could see a tragic outcome in Mexico: if
so, it would be a tragedy for the world as much as for Mexico. I do
not think the world has so many chances left: when one arises it is
important to fight for it - critically, of course, but to fight for
it.

Again very, very many thanks for your letter. I hope we can continue
to make our disagreements productive and that I shall hear from you
soon. I know there are many points of your letter that I have not
touched. You criticise me for always wanting to round things off, with
over-smooth general answers, instead of leaving problems and questions
open. On this point I think probably .... [here the manuscript breaks
off]

John Holloway



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