Re: AUT: RE: antiwar movement

[Thiago Oppermann <thiago_oppermann@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 27/3/2004 9:07 AM, "Peter van Heusden" <pvh@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Um, in different language... listen to your situation, but don't imagine
> that you can speak that situation again. Create and discard languages as
> rapidly as you create and discard organisations. Is it now clear why I
> think rhizomatic power and the incommunicability (or shall I call it not-
> necessarily-communicability, ala. a Hollowayism) of struggle are related?
>
> As I mentioned before: in my old Trot sect, there was an insistence on
> relating everything in a "clear language" which ordered all struggles in
> a particular hierarchy of importance and priority. If you insist on an
> ultimate common language, aren't you heading down the sterile path that
> my old Trot buddies ended up in? Its enough to translate when
> necessary...

Clear language isn't.


...but: I think this antagonism to organizations is counterproductive. What
you have to ask is: what happens between organizations? How do people deal
with one another? Who is it that is creating and discarding organizations?
When I look at that closely, I see people scheming and operating in a
political element that is every bit as ordered and hierarchy-inducing as the
maligned organizations. Worse, in fact, since the whole thing is informal
and far more fluid, and so capable of avoiding any of the criticisms which
are so pointlessly easy to level against some party. You have the whole
clique dimension, which becomes very difficult to control, and very
unpleasant. Boy, I just love coming home from meetings feeling like a leper
for eating meat... Or enduring the whole 'cool' thing... Or hearing the
endless bitching that passes for political discussion...  I'd rather take my
chances with Leninists. They are, by comparison to the anti-Leninists in
Sydney, models of openness, tolerance and self-awareness.

The idea that a mobile arrangement of political action avoids the problems
of setting up institutions is entirely illusory. Not only can mobility and
heterogeneity become sites of self-serving forms of power, they can also be
put to as diverse ends as institutions can. Forgive me if that sounds
condescending, but creating and discarding organizations and language is
what the Bush administration does. They do it like there is no tomorrow.
It's what the Socialist Alliance does; in fact, it is exactly what Trot
sects have been doing for the last sixty years. I am yet to see what, except
the fancy language, is the difference between these efforts and what you
suggest. Not that there is anything wrong with it - though the conceit is
pretty amusing.


Thiago



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