From: "Patrick Bond" <pbond at sn.apc.org> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Subject: Re: Hardt Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 08:52:14 +0200
----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com>
> Yeah, but it's quicker now. Info spreads almost instantly, and events
> can be planned. I used to see you once a year maybe, and now we
> communicate almost every day.
Ok but genuinely new and different? During previous episodes of capitalist crisis, similar space-time compressions were experienced, and in relation to anti-systemic politics had a similar impact -- throwing up possibilities for homogenising discourses and coordinating resistance processes (see, e.g., Harvey's *Condition of Postmodernity* or Andre Gunder Frank's historical review of social movements). Easier today, sure, but not qualitatively different.
> Since when is symbolism trivial? The kind of anti-US'ism that Hardt
> is talking about not only effaces our domestic left, it ignores the
> complicity of lesser imperialist powers (like the EU) and comparador
> elites in the poorer countries.
That's only if it's taken seriously. How seriously do South Africans take it? The piece I've appended at the very bottom gives you a sense of rhetoric v reality these days, from the standpoint of the mainstream discourse... The more important point about the rise in internationalism, from my own (admittedly distorted) view, is that concrete experiences of the contemporary Third World political cycle -- neoliberalism + disappointments + grievances + IMF rioting + "autonomism" (a new way of describing age-old tactics) + demands + mass-party-building + electoralism + victory through multi-class coalitions + enforced neoliberalism + disappointments + grievances... -- can now be relatively more easily aggregated, compared and resisted.
Is that ease a function of technology? Maybe a bit. More importantly, it's because under neoliberalism, Empire's concrete institutional forms -- Pentagon/WB/IMF/WTO/USAID/CNN/etcetc -- have been collaborating more consistently, hence generating a common enemy, whose neoliberalism on the economic front is stunningly consistent across the Third World and whose resort to US-hegemonic military discipline is fantastically transparent. Here's the site of our differences, Doug: in virtually all cases, that enemy's coalface attack on the multitudes is experienced (from below) via state mediation, making the state not irrelevant as a unit of analysis and contestation (as Hardt/Negri suggest) but instead absolutely crucial.
By the way, the terrific new book Implicating Empire (Aroniwitz/Gautney eds) includes a good Hardt/Negri chapter on globalisation and democracy -- more lucidly conceptualising "sovereignty" and the problems of representative state-bounded electoral democracy -- which our masters/PhD students will be reading next week (with two Empire chapters), alongside (against) Bello's book Deglobalization...
> But landless movements and utility liberators are taking matters into
> their own hands - and learning from each other too. They're not
> petitioning some state to reconnect the water - they're doing it
> themselves.
They're doing both, Doug, that's the point. Once they steal the electricity or water in Soweto, the comrades have to justify and systematise their actions, and make them feasible for replication to all the comrades, no matter how organised and militant. Typically they do so by making decommodification demands -- not on Empire (they want the World Bank OUT of South Africa and even catalysed the World Bank Bonds Boycott to shut down the WB), but on the municipal and national state. Here's what I hear in the meetings of the new social-mvt left (a.k.a. 'ultraleft' in the views of the ruling party and SA Communist Party):
"the constitution gives us a human right to water, shelter, land, healthcare, education";
"50 litres of water and 1 kWh of electricity a day per person free!" (from the state);
"reconnect the electricity properly so the little wires of the township informal electricians aren't running across the dirt tracks";
"the clinic must get some antiretroviral drugs now!";
"the state must speed up land restitution from those dispossessed by apartheid!";
"why can't the state default on the $25 billion apartheid debt and why is it buying $5 billion worth of weapons?";
"the state must give us reparations for our suffering under apartheid";
"the ANC government must stop supporting oppressive regimes -- by selling arms or giving other support: in Israel, Burma, Zimbabwe, the US and the UK";
"the state must give us a free basic income grant each month";
"the state must stop that multinational corporation from dumping toxics in the community";
"the state must raise the minimum wage and enforce safety/health laws";
"the state must give our new free People's Power community school some subsidies";
"we want socialism!"
(The latter is *very* common, believe me, but who knows what it "signifies".)
I could go into the myriad of social-policy proposals that the comrades and their techie helpers are making.
But back to autonomist politics. For lbo-ers who are interested (Doug's seen this), here's a rundown from the main SA newspaper earlier this month; the sneering tone at the beginning does not disguise the profound importance of the struggles described... and I think you'll agree, SA has this very exciting mixture of dual-power practice, mass mobilisation potential, post-nationalist consciousness, and socialist visions... Now to change the balance of forces so the 'talk-left act-right' politics of the ruling party (see below M&G piece) no longer prevails.
***
Mail & Guardian (http://www.mg.co.za)
Social movements: 'ultra-left' or 'global citizens'?
Drew Forrest 04 February 2003 10:49
Depending on one's viewpoint, they are the embryo of a 'global citizens' movement' in South Africa, or President Thabo Mbeki's ultra-left nightmare. They include the 'loony' organisations Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry Ronnie Kasrils has accused the labour movement of befriending.
They are an extremely loose constellation of left-leaning, community-based social movements that vary enormously in focus, size and influence. Most are minuscule. What unites them is a shared desire to help the poor and downtrodden, and, in varying degrees, a common antagonism to hierarchies and bureaucracies, the profit motive, the unfettered market and corporate power.
They are, at the very least, independent of the government and the ruling African National Congress. Some, like the Treatment Action Campaign, are not necessarily anti-ANC, but have clashed with the government. A hard core see themselves as ideological opponents of the post-1994 South African state, which they regard as anti-poor and subservient to domestic and international business interests.
Most would be opposed to corporate globalisation and emotionally partisan to the countries of the South. Some view themselves as part of what the ANC calls 'the Seattle Movement' and have links with grassroots activists in Third World countries like Brazil.
Under the umbrella of the Social Movements Indaba, the latter made their presence felt during the World Summit on Sustainable Development.
[...]