Re: AUT: My anti-inauguration flyer

["Chris Wright" <cwright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sean,

Thanks for the response.  I think you are right in that this outlines our
main disagreements sufficiently and constitutes a useful basis for
discussion.  I will try to be succinct and not too cranky.  :)

> Dear Chris,
> the fundamental disagreement we have is that I want to
> help myself and help others to live better
> economically, socially, and to live in a more direct
> democracy now; while you want to wait for an
> unprecedented proletarian revolution (one that doesn't
> turn into state capitalism or revert to capitalist
> dictatorship) to achieve these things.
We have a fundamental disagreement right away.  There is no direct democracy
or more
direct democracy now.  The state is not a state that happens to be
capitalist, but a capitalist state, a state that is a form, a mode of
existence, of the fundamental relation of capital and labor, of a
fetishized, fragmented world.  As such, I don;t see that it offers us any
'uses'.  The state is not an instrument, but a form of the capital's power
over us.  We cannot use a social relation of exploitation.  The state is not
an object we can extract things from.  As a social relation, NOT a thing,
the state exists as a representation, a form of struggle.  In so far as it
is a structure, it is struggle in the mode of being denied: a frozen form of
struggle, the petrification of partial victories and losses, but also of the
continuing power of capital.  We basically disagree on the very nature of
the state, on its constitution.

I also do not propose waiting for anything, but I also don;t think we can
force things to happen.  The patience and suffering of the negative, to use
an old Hegelianism, requires that we do what we can without thinking we can
replace the power of masses of people in action.  I am not looking for
shortcuts or short-term remedies.  We have enough people who want to put
band-aids on the body and give morphine, but band-aids and morphine provide
the illusion of aid, whenthe body is hemorraghing from every pore.  When 40
million
children die of starvation, malnutrition, disease and lack of basic
amenities every four years, it isn't about voting.  When the richest 200
people own as much as the bottom 41% of the world, it isn't about voting or
waiting.  That's why I proposed very small things as examples of what we can
begin to do to organize ourselves now.  Hotlist, the computer-worker
intervention recently listed on here, offered another example of things we
can do.  It is not a question of waiting.  Voting is waiting.  Voting is
hoping for the hopeless.

or you want to
> argue that the tactics you are engaged in around race
> issues, the prison-industrial complex, homeless
> issues, whatever it is you are struggling for, is in
> fact the communist struggle, and therefore voting is
> superfluous.
I think every struggle against oppression, regardless of its formal
character, points to something beyond capital.  It may not be a consciously
communist struggle.  In fact, it rarely is.  but it points to a rejection of
the inhuman world of capital.  Since I see race, gender, etc. as intimately
bound up with the capital-labor relationship, I happen to think that each of
these struggles has a possible revolutionary content, serves to challenge
the system itself, which cannot survive without prisons, racism or
patriarchy.  And in fact, i happen to think that the most consistent of
those struggles requires taking it to the logical conclusion of the
overthrow of capital as a whole, of the whole fetishized, fragmented, insane
world we inhabit.  Voting is superfluous because it starts from the idea
that the state, not our own power, offers a way out or even amelioration.

I don't think voting is superfluous.
> this is where i see you endorsing the old left mantra.
Old Left and new left often endorsed voting.  Look at the excuses the Trots
use to support Labour or the Greens or whoever, not to mention the CP in the
U.S. which has been buried in the Democratic Party since the 1930's and the
Pop Front.  Lenin did not oppose voting or 'using' the state (again, an
instrumentalist view).  Lenin at least knew enough to see the bourgeois
state as simply
providing an arena for propaganda, and not change.  So the old left mantra
does not include not voting.  Some parts of the Old Left and New Left (see
the Situationists and autonomists) did not believe in 'using' the state.
They happen to form the libertarian tradition, not to mention the anarchists
(not anarcho-syndicalists, btw, who rolled over in Spain into the
government and formed part of the counter-revolution.)

> for example, most black americans voted democrat.
Fear of Bush.  A logical fear.  I doubt Gore got many votes out of belief
that he was a great racial saviour (actually, Bradley was the racial radical
in all this, invoking as he did 'white skin privilege'.)   So what?  The
problem of the vote is that it dragged a large section of the Black
population, which only has something to lose from either of the major
philistines involved in this campaign, along with the Democrats.  Should we
fail to pose an alternative politics when the elections are on, how
seriously
can we approach people?  Well, 'be communists until election time, then
choose your favorite henchman' doesn;t not inspire confidence nor sound
terribly logical.  I understand that the current situation looks bleak, but
we have also seen powerful upsurges of anger and resistance in the last 10
years.  Those upsurges, not defensive voting to stave off the lesser
(barely) or two evils, points to our future.

why
> is voting not part of a larger struggle for racial
> equality? why should those people not have voted and
> simply waited for the grass roots struggles to achieve
> what it is they want (or more likely b/c a republican
> was elected nothing they want will be achieved and
> they will have to spend all their time opposing
> reactionary policies instead of building new
> progressive or radical ones; don't get me wrong there
> are lots of things that activists can do without help
> from the state but the state although a capitalist one
> can be useful).
Again, no.  Gore or Nader could not win ANYTHING.  Do you think the African
American working class will be fighting more because of Bush?  Maybe.  Maybe
not.  The Democrats did exactly what Reagan and Bush could not do in
dragging this country so far right, by getting the Black population to
support a Southern Dixiecrat in liberal guise.

Since when did the Democrats give anything to anyone?  The Civil Rights and
Black Power movement fractured the Democrats and drove out the Dixiecrats,
not the good will of Democratic liberals.  The state cannot be useful.
Neither can the Democrats.  We can only force things from the state, from
capital.  power does not reside in the state, but in the capital-labor
relation.  That's why you cannot be a statist communist and expect anything
but statized capitalism.  The state means the maintenance of hierarchical,
exploitative, fetishized relations.  It also means that capital can use the
state because the state is a form of capital's existence.

But to be concrete, you must actually show me where we got anything from the
state that some movement did not squeeze from it.  Let's us move to
the actual history here.  Where has the state ever 'given' anything?  I
would like examples because we clearly do not even have the same view of the
state.

even if we don't let outselves get
> taken in by the mtv rock the vote rhetoric or
> whatever; voting is not totally useless...
>
> i'm not familar with the long view of the state?
> perhaps if i knew this concept we would not be in such
> disagreement.
I hope I have begun to put it out.  The phrase is just mine, but it involves
understanding the progression of the state as a mode of existence of the
capital-labor relation, not as an instrument or object that can be
manipulated or capitured.

> Anyway, you want to consider electoral politics as
> some cloudy abstraction, or something that has little
> or no effect on your life.
Not an abstraction at all.  It is Realpolitik, the pandering to what really
is, as opposed to what can be.  Communists who kneel before what really is
cease to be communists, since out hope is in the possibility of the not-yet
contained in peoples' actual struggles, the not-yet-here that appears in
each strike, every slowdown, every riot, every 'fuck you' to the boss, every
woman who kills her abuser, every fight for dignity and freedom no matter
how small.  That's why it just isn't in the future.  The future, the not
yet, is in every struggle now because it resists, because it negates.  Every
struggle where we can express our refusal of power-over us, of domination,
prefigure in some way what can be.  But voting?  In some cases fighting for
the right to vote, as in the civil rights movement, can be a major field of
battle.  But the struggle for the right to vote, which ultimately meant the
right to be treated as human beings, meant more than the votes ever did.
The struggle contained something beyond voting because it represented a
struggle for dignity, for humanity.  Actually, the limited framework of
voting rights eventually got passed over and surpassed.  However, the
struggle that meant the self-organization of hundreds of thousands and maybe
millions of people mattered, not the goal of getting the vote.  that's why I
support demonstrations against what happened in
Florida.  not to rally to Gore's side, but to point out how both sides
fucked the Black population and accepted that the race was to be decided by
white votes only.  To point out that whiteness and racial privilege still
exist, voting rights or not.  But that requires both not waiting and not
believing that
the vote means anything in and of itself, imo.

and while i agree to a
> limited extent, in that my own personal vote is near
> meaningless, i still firmly believe in supporting a
> candidate who holds a few strong positions that i
> agree with, because the person who actually is elected
> wields a great deal of power and thus if the candidate
> i agree with (to a limited extent) is elected it will
> mitigate the effect of reactionary agendas in relation
> to workers, poor people, minority groups, the
> environment, etc., etc...
Ok, who do you elect that can make laws like this?  The people who enforce
the laws, the people you can't elect, undermine even the best-intended
legislation.  Most basic books on the state by even the worst Marxists and
even liberals like G. Domhoff, make that clear.  The needs of exploitation
and oppression will transfigure any and all legislation.  And again,
adjectives like 'strong' mean nothing to
me.  Give me an example.  Nader certainly said some strong things.  And
Nader's policies could be carried out, if a mass movement or movements so
disrupted capital that Nader offered the only means of survival for capital.
But short
of that (and if we see something that big in our lives again, we may as well
not stop, eh?), no.  And I am not here to tell people to vote for the lesser
of two bastards.  That isn't what I became a marxist and a communist to do.
Liberals can do that.  If we want to mean anything in the here and now, we
can only justify our existence by a ruthless critique of everything
existing, by ALWAYS pointing to the future, to the not yet that can be.  but
we will come back to that.

I realize the fact that
> Nader had no chance of winning problematizes this
> argument, but I guess I was optimistic he would get
> into the debates and numbers would rise which of
> course never happened. i mean people that i never
> suspected would vote for nader were telling me they
> planned to vote for him, it really amazes me that he
> got only 2% of the vote. and i was not naive about the
> more radical parts of his agenda getting through, b/c
> the republicrats certainly would have had to let him
> do something with the sign of insurgency nader would
> have represented if he had been elected.
First, the good thing about Nader is that the more critical and radical he
got, the more excited the rallies were.
Second, Nader drained off hundreds, maybe thousands, of activists from other
important work, and damaged it.  I saw it in Mumia work for sure, and I know
other people who saw the same thing in other areas.  The voting drive for
the Greens
seriously damaged other kinds of political work.  So I think Nader did more
damage than good, frankly.  Even so, he did something right to reach so many
people, and we should learn from that if it is applicalbe beyond electoral
politics.
Third, see my above point on what Nader would mean: a life preserver for a
seriously crisis-ridden capital.  Nothing more.

just b/c
> communism is the real movement of the working class we
> cannot deny that there is an end to what Marx is
> talking about and that we are far from that end; and
> we must support what we feel is right before we get
> there.
communism is not an end.  Not in that sense, of a teleological fulfilling,
but an end to exploitation and a fetishized world.  but that means that we
have to achieve part of that end in struggle now, by opening up spaces, by
taking things back, by consituting our own power now, by defetishizing the
world now in struggle.  We can't do that with votes.  If you disagree, you
must take this to the level of history and show me where and when it has
happened before.  Also, I think you mistake the character of the current
world.  As someone once said, you can give a 3% raise, but how do you reduce
alienation by 3%?  The damage to human beings goes beyond what
capital can offer in more money (which only goes to a handful among the
working class to begin with as a move to fracture and pre-empt working class
upsurges.  Worked wonders in the 1980's.)  The destruction of an alienated,
perverse, twisted world does not begin with voting.  It begins with
self-determination and self-movement.  Voting does not take us there, nor
does fighting for a better voting system.

> never before has a true proletarian revolution
> occurred in an advanced capitalist society and a
> number of theorists, many on the left, argue this will
> never occur. i happen to disagree with these
> theorists, but i can't be certain i will ever see
> communism in my lifetime so i make the best with what
> is offered to me, and struggle to change it.
Ok, now we have the cleavage.  This is what I pointed to in that article by
Bard critiquing Empire.  His conclusion?  Give up, there is no revolution.
work with Attac, to tax financial transactions.  Not only is Attac a
ridiculous scam, it only has any currency in rich countries.  The whole turn
to Foucault and Deleuze is a turn to the rejection of revolution and the
destruction of the capital-labor relation, of alienated humanity.  I think
your position dovetails with this liberalism in some critical ways because
it has a common source, I suspect.  Even though you believe in revolution,
you have similar political formulations to the neo-Spinozists within
autonomism.

> i'm a libertarian communist i'm not interested in
> reproducing the basic economic, and political system
> we have now, but only with a better distribution of
> wealth.
Good, we have that in common.  But you phrased it in a way that seemed
awfully close to that.  maybe it was an awkward formulation that I
misunderstood.

I believe in agitating for communist
> revolution. but i also realize the difficulty that
> lies ahead in bringing about an actual libertarian
> communist society. while capitalism structures my
> world, i will vote for the capitalist candidate that
> makes my world the best place: distributes wealth in
> the best way, pursues the best policies on women's
> rights, race, sexual orientation issues, and saves
> resources for future generations, while curbing
> pollution and environmental degradation in the
> present.
So it is not for me that communism is something out there.  sean, you
believe that communism is something out there.  Not I.  Now, i am not going
to be pissy about feeling bleak.  We all feel bleak and for damn good
reasons.  but I disagree with making a principle of it and placing it on me
as my politics.  as for the
rest, I need proof that such a beast exists.

And again, this resonates with the article by Bard.  He simply provides a
Nietzschean/Deleuzian philosophical basis.  I suspected, and I may be dead
wrong, that you might be a 'Spinozist' libertarian communist, leaning
towards Negri and maybe Deleuze.  The conclusions seemed so close, the line
of argument sufficiently similar, that the resemblance just beat me on the
forehead.  Maybe it beat me too hard, eh?  but please feel free to tell me
if I am on the right or wrong path.

> guess that's about it, if you'd like me to respond
> more (to exact points you addressed) i can i'm not
> sure it would be useful i think i've mentioned the
> main disagreements.
> in struggle,
> -Sean
>
> p.s. i'm not sure where you got the stuff about me
> defending clinton or gore, clinton and gore are new
> democrats and as such they are conservatives
> (particulary economically, a few of their policies
> might be considered centrist or slightly left leaning
> elsewhere i guess). i would not vote for a
> conservative.
Sorry, i apparently misunderstood which democrats you would vote for.  My
bad.

> p.p.s. (marcos style) i didn't understand the
> correlation between your reponse to the empire
> critique, and your response to greens stuff, please
> fill me on what that is exactly.
I hope I answered that a bit.




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