----- Original Message ----- From: "Rob Schaap" <rws at comedu.canberra.edu.au> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Friday, May 04, 2001 5:42 AM Subject: Re: Klein kvetches
> G'day Peter,
>
> This is all a bit abstract for me, but I'll blather on about it, anyway.
>
> >Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked - I think one of the problems of the
> >left is its focus on representations - thus evoking 'going to the
> >people' as a contrast to the current ethereal spaces that leftists
> >occupy. I think Klein is hitting on something useful, but phrasing it
> >as talking to your neighbour is a mistake - such talk essentially
> >is based in the old idea that the heritage of the left is rooted in
> >a set of ideas. It cannot be - it must be rooted in a set of practices,
> >which in turn are mediated by left 'counter-institutions'.
>
> Have the autonomists anything to tell us about translating individual
> practices of resistance into these counter-institutions? Anti-capitalism
> has its diffuse networks, but they are a long way from most of these
> individually resisting people, who do not see themselves in Ya Basta, in
> those mainly youthful faces or in those red flags. We have 'diffuse', but
> we certainly don't have any 'biopower', do we? (Outside generally cautious
> and often narrowly focused trades union, anyway.)
>
> I think there's a world of suspicious, alienated but committed democratic
> liberals out there (not to mention the nascent institutional legitimacy
> crisis that surely attends it) - and I think the leftie train has to leave
> from the station marked 'democracy' (and how it is subverted by what
> 'market' has come to represent and, of course, by those creaking old
> institutions of ours) rather than 'sweatshops', 'environment', 'against
> globalisation', 'job-protecting' and general 'anti-all-of-everything'
> kvetching. Democracy is bred into us (an idea as material force, or the
> subjective made objective, if you like) and it's how you get on to the
> other stuff, for mine - it's what all that diversity needs to attain all
> those diverse aspirations, so it's what unites all those diverse aspirants.
>
>
> >To illustrate - the whole routine of out of bed, into work, out of work,
> >into gridlock, into Survivor II, etc. - is a set of practices (rooted
> >in social relations) mediated by various objects and institutions of
> >capitalist society. The Ya Basta! people apparently make a big deal
> >of Foucault's idea of 'biopower' - i.e. the operation of a diffuse
> >network of power upon the body. Similarly, I think the 'left' needs
> >to fight back in a way that the phrase 'mass constituency' doesn't
> >cover.
>
> So I think we shouldn't forget the notion of the 'mass constituency', then
> - that's what all those alienated democratic liberals are. But, yeah, I do
> think we should forget ones like 'the mass line' or 'the party of the
> masses' - those days are long gone - in 'core' societies, anyway. Lending
> real substance to formal liberal rights and obligations is precisely about
> practices. Citizenship ain't nuthin' if it ain't a bunch of practices
> (indeed it's just the formalised rights and obligations they are now), and
> that's whence socialism comes, I think.
>
> >The Ya Basta! types talk about 'rhizomatic' forms of power - our
> >own distributed network which provides the matrix upon which
> >anti- and post-capitalist practices can grow. I think that needs
> >to be taken with a bit of salt, but its heading in the right
> >direction.
>
> This affection for metaphors only gets you so far, I reckon. Rhizomes are
> prostrate, active only in the sense that they emit other, but basically
> identical and similarly inert, prostrate growths here and there. We have,
> and mostly are, that already. How we get a practice-producing matrix out
> of that alone, I just can't imagine.
>
> Cheers,
> Rob.
=========
To play with the metaphor, what practices and counter-institutions can we build that
will get us from Rhizome to Cyclone in the space of a generation or so? Democracy and
ecology are where the issues are in this century. Simple yet "deadly" concepts that
are on the back of every citizen's minds these days. They allow us to put
exploitation back on the map and contextualize it in a manner that those alienated
and committed liberals can relate to. That's why I suggested earlier the
juxtaposition of Sclove and Dyer-Witheford's work. To that I would add the Mary
Mellor's and Kate Soper's scattered arcoss the planet. Clearly we need a theory of
machines and tools that grabs the engineer's imagination [Grundrisse on Sunday for
everybody] that at the same time let's 'em in on the failings of the IP paradigm
[the Napster/MSOFT is of enormous potential for the Michael Perelman's and James
Boyle's of the world to become household names :-)!!]. Then maybe the "argument in
the Greenhouse will get better. If one looks at Joel Kovel's recent piece in Z, we
get a flavor of what we need to do to turn a disaster into an opportunity.
http://www.loka.org/_news1/0000000d.htm
Ian