[lbo-talk] A Critical Review of David Graeber's Debt

[Carrol Cox]

A side point. This attitude towards the state does, eventually if not
sooner, cripple anarchist politics. But the empirical fact remains that
anarchists seem better than Marxists in _getting something started_. The
Occupy Movement, if "movement" is the right  label, has generated or been
'home to' a multitude of actions, campaigns, embryonic programs that are
_not_ crippled by this misunderstanding of the state, and I think that it
was in part the _error_ in their theory which enabled the most crucial
feature of the original New York OWS: It's studied refusal to make concrete
demands. Probably, given the attack on them, the Chicago Teachers would have
resisted anyhow, but certainly they have been energized and are being
supported by the Chicago Occupy. Without the 'atmosphere' created by New
York OWS much current activity would, I think, be less lively at best.

Carrol

-----Original Message-----
From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
On Behalf Of Angelus Novus
Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2012 10:33 AM
To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] A Critical Review of David Graeber's Debt

Doug wrote:


> So much of the Occupy movement is - was? - about space and state but has a
lot of trouble talking about production and property. 

Keen observation.  Here in Berlin, a big political orientation point for the
radical left is the struggle against gentrification.  And it has the same
defect: a basic orientation toward "space" rather than class, and an
allergic attitude toward the state, even the merely municipal state.

What irks me about the really existing anti-gentrification movement is how
culturalized the discourse is: basically lamenting that the "wrong" people
are moving into the neighborhood, i.e. "hipsters" or "students" or Swabians
moving in and displacing Turks and leftists.

I've been guilty of some of this culturalism -- I'm always up for bashing
Southern Germany! -- but what sticks in my craw about this stuff is 1) That
white counter-cultural leftists are unable to problematize their own
relationship to gentrification, i.e. students and hipsters gravitate to
neighborhoods where leftists and other assorted oddballs have already formed
a beachhead of gentrification, and 2) how the reflexive anti-statism of this
movement basically inhibit its own ability to do anything effective: like,
rent control would be nice.  Or ending tax incentives to landlords.  But to
get all that stuff done, one has to dirty one's hand with political decision
making and legislation.  So people would much rather engage in symbolic,
marginal politics.

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