AUT: re: 'capitalism promotes homosexuality'

[andrew robinson <ldxar1@xxxxxxxxx>]

A Deleuzian take on this rather silly polemic:

Capitalism deterritorialises and also
reterritorialises (as axiomatics, to get profit).
Hence, capitalism is not necessarily hostile to
freeing repressed desires, when doing so can be
harnessed for profit.  This does not mean that freeing
such desires is somehow reactionary or anti-worker.
What it means is that capitalism has a progressive
dimension, as Marx saw in praising capitalism because
"all that is solid melts into air, all that is sacred
is profaned".  What is reactionary or oppressive about
capitalism is, rather, its insistence on
reterritorialising the freed desires as specific
consumer niches - hence, as the "pink pound", as gay
chic, as specific gay identity, etc.  Have a look, in
this context, at the following incident (taken from
the most recent On the Barricades, originally found on
Indymedia):

Radical gay activists target gay beauty contest over
?body fascism? and commercialisation
http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/10/1697599.php

Two other points should be kept in mind.  Firstly, the
Situationist point that capitalism tries to recuperate
(reclaim as an aspect of its own logic, as a
difference within the capitalist system of differences
rather than an excessive difference which disrupts
capitalism) any difference which threatens to exceed
it, so it is not surprising that capitalists try to
recuperate gay resistance by means such as awareness
training, support for moderate gay groups, etc.

Secondly, the old autonomist point that the evolution
of capital is often an attempt to head off and defuse
flashpoints in the capitalist system, where workers'
resistance undermines older formations of capitalist
society.  It may well be that the Oedipal/patriarchal
family has stopped functioning as well as it used to
as a primary mode of the repression of workers,
because of various modalities of workers' resistance,
and that therefore, an embracing of multiple lifestyle
choices is necessary for capital to reform itself in
response to such resistances.  This does not show that
there is anything wrong with the transition; rather,
it is a partial victory for workers' resistance.  And
the point is that normalisation has shifted elsewhere,
(say) from the Oedipal/patriarchal family to the
"training" of workers or to the organisation of social
space to exclude the "anti-social".

One could repeat this rather silly claim regarding
capitalism "promoting" homosexuality for any of the
various liberation movements - women, black people,
people with disabilities, even to some extent the
working class.  Is it not the case that capitalists
support moderate workers' organisations, the same as
they support moderate gay organisations?  Is it not
the case that capitalists are supposed in theory to
avoid unnecessarily antagonising workers?  Is it not
the case that politicians find ways to attract the
"working class" vote?  That the bourgeois media (the
tabloids, the likes of Fox News) find ways to appeal
to "working class" identity?  Even that bosses
sometimes encourage (moderate business-driven) unions,
as a way to mobilise workers?  That some set up their
own substitute unions and sham forms of worker
participation, to "involve" and "include" workers as a
distinct group?  So the arguments against
homosexuality would equally apply against black
liberation, against women's liberation, and even
against working-class liberation and against class
struggle!!!

There are also still many counterexamples of
discrimination and persecution of gays.  See for
instance the following:

Protest against racism, homophobia in New York, and
Nazi ?quality of life? laws
http://www.workers.org/ww/2004/fierce1028.php

To oppose the freeing and diversification of desire on
grounds of attachment to earlier models of organic
totality is to pose a reactionary critique of
capitalism which goes back to earlier oppressive
models such as feudalism, or which simply harks back
to earlier forms of capitalism.

The point is that NewDem is using a model of workers'
identity which is molar and repressive, and therefore
amounts to an identity of workers-for-capital and a
representational identity which is itself repressive
of workers themselves, subordinating each worker to
the category of "worker" and imposing a normal/proper
mode of life in a repressive manner.  This is the
worst kind of molar, repressive, reactive, arborescent
attachment to representational subjectivities which
ultimately reaffirms the reactive/repressive aspect of
capital itself, when the point should rather be to
side with the "four billion perverts on the stand", to
stand up for the singularity of desire against the
capitalist logics (both recuperative-articulatory and
repressive-reactive) which prevent its self-emergence
as an active social force.

Of course, such a reactive attachment can only lead,
"after the revolution", to a seizure of power by those
who "represent" workers in the normality/propriety of
their ascribed identity, and therefore, to another
"representational" dictatorship and the violent
imposition of a new normality and a new conformity so
as to effectively interpellate people in line with the
representational figure of the normal, decent,
conformist "worker", a war waged against the actual
workers in all their potentiality and diversity.

For a revolution of emancipation, not a new Taleban of
the left!
Andy


		
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