tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1110115832783903104.post7240390753402712393..comments2024-03-20T01:04:27.846-05:00Comments on Permanent Crisis: What form should our movement take?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1110115832783903104.post-74807552003424876562013-04-07T04:46:13.498-05:002013-04-07T04:46:13.498-05:00"The degree of material interconnectedness pr..."The degree of material interconnectedness produced by neoliberalism, as amazing as it is, seems to be a bad thing for the world (climate, resource use and waste, etc). I for one don't want a better Walmart, I want none at all."<br /><br />We aren't actually that far <i>technologically</i> from an energy infrastructure that could allow material plenty without destroying the planet. The obstacle is rather the organization of the economy, which is incapable of making the long-term investments in research and infrastructure that would be needed, in the entrenched interests of the fossil fuel industry and the political corruption that makes them unassailable, and in the failure of vision and will <a href="http://permanentcrisis.blogspot.com/2013/04/neoliberalism-is-road-to-climate.html" rel="nofollow">intrinsic to the neoliberal imagination</a> that make large-scale intentional restructuring of society by the state seem impossible.<br /><br />Of course making a sustainable Walmart still leaves you with Walmart, and that's not particularly attractive. But the strategy we're developing here is essentially to restructure neoliberal society along lines that parallel the restructuring of liberal society in the 1930s and 1940s, out of which we got <a href="http://permanentcrisis.blogspot.com/2011/06/glossary-fordism.html" rel="nofollow">Fordism</a>. That was in many ways a more humane and progressive form of capitalism that could also, incidentally, produce a social imaginary that <i>would</i> be capable of tackling global warming. The most significant difference would be that, instead of the nation-based Fordism, neo-Fordism would have to be global.<br /><br />The idea, which we still haven't got round to developing on the blog yet, is that neo-Fordism would generate conditions of both structure and subjectivity that would make a genuine movement to overcome capitalism much more plausible to a much wider part of the global population. That still needs to be substantiated, but bear with us and we'll get there.Walkerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06912406198051338502noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1110115832783903104.post-42035975204853523342013-04-04T23:41:45.479-05:002013-04-04T23:41:45.479-05:00Paul: "Re-building and realizing a true inter...Paul: "Re-building and realizing a true internationalism today seems like a mirage when we can hardly make a dent in the balance of class forces in our own countries."<br /><br />My response is fairly abstract and ignores all details (where the devil is), but here goes. I feel that the experience of previous generations has shown that labor organizing repeatedly suffers from failures to update targets and strategy as the nature of the economy changes. So worker organizing becomes anachronistic and (as a result) stagnant. The flip side is that there can be transformational bursts of activity when the right target comes into view. When the UAW made the jump from plant-by-plant organizing to taking on the giant of GM in its entirety, at the national level, this was such a moment. Capital was coming to operate as a nationwide system, and needed to be confronted at that level.<br /><br />My thought is that, today, we can't make a dent in class forces in our country because class forces can no longer be confronted on the national level; taking on something like the Walmart global supply chain would then be analogous to taking on GM as a whole. Shu Yundohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18307082342483487924noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1110115832783903104.post-32284175181452605862013-04-04T18:47:33.558-05:002013-04-04T18:47:33.558-05:00I too share many of the questions motivating Eugen...I too share many of the questions motivating Eugene's skepticism. Re-building and realizing a true internationalism today seems like a mirage when we can hardly make a dent in the balance of class forces in our own countries. At the same time, I definitely agree with Deckard that trying to form an anti-capitalist politics around the attempt to flee the spaces and circuits of capital into a space allegedly "outside" them is itself an illusion. It's true that #Occupy and the squatting movement in Europe share many similarities. One such similarity is the definite limitations of it as a tactic, which were glaringly on display in 2011 and early 2012. Occupying space can broadcast a powerful symbolic message reaffirming the value of the commons, and certain occupations can have a significantly disruptive effect on the sleek consumeristic unfreedom of neoliberal society, but, at least thus far, such tactics have proved of limited efficacy, both in terms of what effects they've had and whom they have drawn in among the population. If you're struggling at a shitty job working like a dog just to get by day to day, or your employment situation is precarious because your boss is an asshole who is ready to fire people at a moment's notice, how can you participate in a strategy based on sitting around somewhere for an indefinite amount of time?<br /><br />I also am not at all trying to denigrate the power and importance of, e.g., the anti-foreclosure fight as it is playing out in the U.S. But it can't be the endgame for our strategy; we have to think in broader terms, and this means meeting the problem of internationalism head on, rather than (understandably) feeling overwhelmed by the monumental nature of the project and turning away from it. <br /><br />I think it's important to consider Deckard's point that we have to see phenomena like the multinational corporation, as loathsome as such things are, through a two-dimensional lens, rather than as forms of pure alienation to be abolished and replaced with something <i>entirely</i> new. If we are taking the proposition of a post-capitalist society seriously, then we have to think in terms of where we are now, at this historical moment and in a particular global system of production that cannot be simply destroyed or removed, or at least not without incalculable human cost. This means thinking not just the alienating side of such structures of production, but also how they represent possibilities for structuring a potentially <i>non-capitalist</i> form of production. And it also means attempting, in however tentative a way, to integrate this insight into our praxis. That isn't easy, of course, but I don't think any of us became leftists or socialists because we thought fundamentally changing society would be easy. Jamie https://www.blogger.com/profile/18363083808445009325noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1110115832783903104.post-52410521129891559822013-03-30T12:30:09.027-05:002013-03-30T12:30:09.027-05:00First of all, I will say thanks to Ed Sutton whose...First of all, I will say thanks to Ed Sutton whose thoughtful and provocative article gave me the opportunity to develop these thoughts and make this contribution to the conversation.<br /><br />Eugene, thanks for your comment. Although I'm laying out ideas that we've been developing together both on this blog and off, the question of a movement is still an open one, so I hope that people will continue to share their thoughts on the topic.<br /><br />To clarify, I definitely conceive of this movement as one with an aim that is integral to its conception. The aim is that, in pushing back against neoliberalism, we also begin to shape what will come after it. This should be a system in which we assert democratic control of society’s surplus for the purpose of reinvesting it in the places where people have been most denied its benefits. This seems to me to be both an obvious good-in-itself, as well as a precondition to doing away with wage labor.<br /><br />What form would such a system take, and do we want to reform or do away with Walmart? I think here we need to be attentive to currently emerging contradictions in the economy. On the one hand, it is obvious that corporate power is incredibly centralized and in many ways greater than ever before. In the US, corporate influence is making a mockery of the political system and guiding the austerity agenda. On the other hand, the very concentration of this power is challenging the forms in which corporations currently operate. Amazon prices items in real time to perpetually undercut the competition, and survives on razor-thin profit margins. The stock market has lauded its performance. Walmart offers low prices by effectively setting terms for its suppliers. It’s set up a vast global network that integrates workers across the world into a single, rationalized system.<br /><br />In other words, we have the means to create a rational system of production and distribution that doesn’t rely on the chaos and unfreedom of the market—even though we can now only discern this system all bound up with a different form of unfreedom. Much of the horrible, meaningless work that goes into this system can be mechanized, though of course, we don’t want this mechanization to come as a crisis for workers—so it falls to us to abolish wage labor as a means of earning one’s living, so that we can enjoy the productivity of a mechanized production system rather than suffer from them.<br /><br />If we identify Walmart with the first part of the contradiction, anti-democratic corporate power, then clearly we want to do away with it. But we shouldn’t ignore the fact that Walmart’s organization may also show us how to better meet human needs.Deckardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06918939582411126943noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1110115832783903104.post-58811789489091528082013-03-26T15:47:17.541-05:002013-03-26T15:47:17.541-05:00I absolutely agree with your points (nuances inclu...I absolutely agree with your points (nuances included) about the usefulness of squatting and other varieties of resistance that take the form of a retreat to safer and more humane spaces. We need those spaces, of course, and some people will spend their lives making them, which is wonderful. But they don't liberate anyone from capitalism any more than collective rural living liberated folks in the late 60's.<br /><br />But when I think about organizing from within (as opposed to from without, from a safe/democratic/non-hierarchical space) I often get caught up thinking about ends. <br /><br />Intuitively I agree that global organizing centered on Walmart, to take your example, is in a prime position to show people the effects of neoliberalism and capitalism. But is that what we need a movement to do? To educate people, or to put them in a political network of organizations and campaigns? Will that bring us closer to the goal of humanizing our world, reclaiming the gigantic physical and social powers we've transformed into self-moving and self-centered machines (capital)? I don't know. There have been such organizations before, and there has been such solidarity. Building it back up again, and building it higher and more powerful this time, is not just a daunting task. Given the history of internationalist organizing thus far, it might be a futile one. <br /><br />Yet I have even more skepticism toward attempts to destroy the master's house with the master's tools. I do not believe it makes sense for us to imagine our object as the taking of the reigns from capital/capitalists/etc. The degree of material interconnectedness produced by neoliberalism, as amazing as it is, seems to be a bad thing for the world (climate, resource use and waste, etc). I for one don't want a better Walmart, I want none at all. I think you'd agree with me there, Deckard?<br /><br />So when I think about the future of organizing I become a little bit lost. Consciousness and solidarity building is a good goal, as is the improvement of our power position within the capitalist framework (labor organizing, for example). But do I really think that either one will put us on a path in which capitalism is overcome by something better? I'm a pessimist, but I would love to hear what others think about this.Eugene Guesthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03442711373039279215noreply@blogger.com