POLITICS

The accumulation of capital is Australia remains much stronger than that in much of the world – especially the global North. As long as high rates of growth are sustained in China and India then the resources Boom Mark II will continue to produce high levels of growth here. Even then however there are clear lines of tension: the shortage of labour-power means that there is extra pressures to increase productivity (read work more intensely and longer), and the “patch-work” nature of the economy means very uneven distributions of the benefits and costs of the resource economy (along with the big picture issues of exploitation, alienation, ecological devastation etc.). The fragile nature of the global economy, the inability to achieve sustained global levels of growth, also means there is the ever present possibility of another crash and that the effects of these will be felt in Australia. Revolutionaries need to respond to the tensions and struggles of today, yet keep one eye on the future possibilities, and be prepared to change tactics and strategy as the material conditions of capital shift.

Currently the Left[1] has very little meaningful to offer to the masses of people in Australia. At least three years into the current crisis the state of emancipatory politics is far from impressive. Recompositions are happening, slow and under the surface and probably outside of communication with each other. This short letter is an attempt to engage with these.

There are probably tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people In Australia with some kind of radical understanding of the society we live in and a desire for something else. Some of them would have had personal histories in the organisations of the Left or social movements both in Australia and internationally. The vast majority would be involved in very low levels of activity. That doesn’t mean they aren’t doing important things, maybe involved in local campaigns and unions, taking time to think about the world, building communities in whatever ways they can. But these efforts don’t add up to a coherent challenge to capital. There are small handfuls of highly active people in sects, grouplets, milieus, and branches of the Greens and Labour, campaign groups etc. but equally this doesn’t seem to add up to much.

What we lack is a viable praxis, that is a way of conceiving the world and acting in it that produces a useful critique, poses appealing alternative visions and modes of doing in a way that connects to peoples’ lived experiences and simultaneously offers a real challenge to the social order. And we don’t seem to know how to create one.

There are possibly two very different reasons that contribute to this impasse. One is the massive recompositions of work and society that was launched at the end of the 1970s. This reorganisation of capital’s accumulation process involved a remaking of the everyday. We now work, socialise, talk, hang out, eat, live and think in radically different ways than we previously did. The inherited patterns of social struggle have had their material basis they rested on pulled away from them.

Secondly there has been the long history of defeat – that 2003 anti-war movement is possibly the most important of these in the last decade ( the Accord process in the 80s the most important overall). These defeats are also the experience of attempts to organising collectively and then being ignored and the daily feeling of being caught and ground down by capitalism. “The silent compulsion of economic relations sets the seal on the domination of the capitalist over the worker”(Marx 1990, 899).

Both these two intertwined dynamics are part of the long history of class struggle that in part explains both the general condition of the class and the inadequacies of struggle. People feel defeated and a certain assemblages of political practice that were passed down to us over the last hundred years have been defeated – that is they can no longer really connect with our condition. It is true that they have much to teach us, and the history of class struggles is a history we need to reclaim and defend. Yet if we just carry on with the ideologies[2] of the past we have nothing to say.

What would make a viable praxis? It could perhaps consist of the following elements: a critique of capital that accurately describes the lines of tensions in its material conditions and ideological mystifications; utopian dreams that are optimistic and appealing; practical suggestions and strategies that combine with peoples’ lived experiences; organisational methods that are functioning and self-sustaining; and a way of acting that accumulates and uses power.

Such a practice requires a certain way of thinking about the world. It is important to realise that the possibility of another kind of society doesn’t come from somewhere out there, from good ideas dropping to reality, but from really struggles that exist in the present. “Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from premises now in existence” (Marx and Engels 1973, 56-7). The way life is organised under capitalism conditions both the material possibilities of communism and the potential for struggles to realise these possibilities. And it is the struggles of everyday people, in our millions, that is the only force that can realise these possibilities.

This means a certain way of thinking about class. Class doesn’t simply mean a sociological division into groups, it also means the possibilities of struggling collectively. Marx writes of the notion of “radical chains”, that the way that we are exploited under capitalism means that we exists as a “class which is the dissolution of all classes”(1992, 256). This exploitation is historically specific. It is the concrete ways that we work every day, the ways that we socialise how and where we shop, what we talk about etc. In this historical specific totality exists tensions and antagonisms and these provide the possibility of struggles that could realise radical alternatives. These possibilities exist as tensions in our daily lives. Class consciousness doesn’t refer to simple people taking a set of ideas (becoming socialists or anarchists etc.) it refers to the collective creation of understandings about the nature of the societies we live in, and more importantly the lived experiences of struggle, in which we teach ourselves the nature of our own power and how to use it.

Such a thinking about class means a faith in the masses. That is that even if we can recognize the power of ideology in shaping the way people thinking and the fetishizing effects of commodity society we do so to argue against the idea that people are somehow ‘dumb.’ There is no need to talk down to people. Faith in the masses also means realising that there is a desire for revolt, that rebellion will resonate with peoples’ experiences. And that the people in revolt will often go beyond the ideas and limitations of self-professed revolutionaries.

How can we contribute to the development of such a praxis? What could be the broad suggestions and practical efforts?

Firstly we must be attentive to class composition. What this means simply is that the capitalism constantly revolutionises production, and that it often does this in a relation to struggle. From the 1970s to today capitalism has reshaped our lives in an attempt to decompose the previous ways we worked and lived because these were the bases of our power. We must pay attention to what the new workplace looks like, the new relations of labour and technology, the relation between different sections of work, and the hierarchies that have developed amongst the class. Broadly speaking there has been a rise in the size of the service and tertiary sections of the economy, an increasingly important if numerically small ( in terms of employment) mining industry, and expansion of easy credit which has led to more small businesses and increased consumption, and more employment is organising through contracting. There has been a proportional increase in part-time and casual employment and full time employment itself is also relatively more insecure. The costs of the provision of health, retirement and education are increasingly pushed onto the shoulders of workers themselves as individuals who often finance them through debt. This only scratches the surface. It is possible to say that the shift from Fordism to post-Fordism has been a total change of modes of living.

Emancipatory politics must base itself in these new conditions (even if we draw on historical lessons.) But how to do this? One of the contributions made to revolutionary struggle by the Zapatistas has been the radicalisation of the Maoist conception of the Mass Line. Expressed in such notions as “the inverted periscope” and “walking, we ask questions” the idea is that revolutionary politics are not brought by revolutionaries from outside the class to the class but rather created through actually investigation into the conditions we live in: primarily communicating with people about where they are at, what their concerns are, and trying to generalise these concerns into organised and collective efforts. For the Maoists the party was crucial in this, the Zapatistas free the method from the party.[3] What we can take is the idea that the way to develop a viable practice is through an active engagement with the world, in being part of the world, and attempting to generalise common concerns into a politics of the common.

This hinges on the ability of presenting and organising common desires in a way that goes beyond the restrictions of capitalist normality. Rather than making demands to the state, we need common projects that are aimed ultimately at ourselves as a class.

Thus we also need to increase the level of shared theoretical discussions about the nature of society, to share and communicate experiences of struggle, to generate more spaces where people meet and discuss with each other and become part of each other’s lives directly and encourage experiments in living differently.[4]

We must also be open to spontaneity and to struggles we weren’t involved in initiating.

1) The organisation of collectives and caucuses of workers on a city-wide industrial basis. Let’s get together those revolutionaries who all work in one industry and starting meeting and discussing what is going on and how from there we can start to carry out the ‘mass line.’ All the different collectives and caucuses could then meet once every four to six weeks to generalise the experiences going on and contribute to undermining sectional divisions. Perhaps it doesn’t simply have to be workers. The university group could involve academic and general staff and students, the child care group admin workers, child care workers and parents, transport group could involve workers and users etc.

Each collective and caucus could attempt to make workplace focused media – papers, websites, videos etc.

The larger ‘general’ collective should also publish a regular free newspaper focused on experiences and issues of work. This should be humours, topical, intelligent, informed by theory and clearly written, and also encourage collective writing and participation from readers. I suggest the name ‘The Grind’.

The organisation of collectives and caucuses around issues of reproduction: housing, welfare, education, health etc. Obviously there could be some overlap with the above but it is important to challenge and struggle in the community and well as the work-place ( is there even a clear division anymore?).

2) The organisation of regular and high standard theoretical discussions and research. This could involve public forums, written documents and bottom up enquiries into important issues of the day. These should be held increasingly in suburbs where there is little formal political activity and have an open and relaxed feeling to them

3) A large scale intellectual campaign against reaction in the class. There have always been reactionary currents in the working class. In the absence of viable practice insecurities find expression in a host of reactionary fantasies and conspiracies particularly hostility to Muslims and refugees. Liberal multiculturalism has limit effectiveness in addressing these ideas as it fails to address the causes and is often presented in an elitist and dismissive way. Whilst some success can be found in the direct physical confrontation with organised fascists there is the need to make a broader radical argument in the class. I suggested the formulation of website and free publication under the name of “Mongrel” that makes a proletarian critique of reaction – in full colour and with a sense of humour

On 15^th March a small groups of comrades met to discuss the proposal. It was generally seen as a good thing, and we decided to proceed by starting industry groups in the industries we worked in, and to hold a larger launch meeting in May. For those interested please email bwa@riseup.net

[1] The term the Left will draw the rancour of many people I want to communicate and debate with. Many anarchists reject the term as part of an attempt to reject an entire historical baggage and many ultra-left communists use the term to describe the “left wing of capital.” Whilst the latter term can have some utility, there is no other concept that refers to the area of people in a society that are broadly connected to anticapitalist politics, traditions and practices. As critical as I am of this history, and supportive of it too, I still find the notion of the Left useful to communicate with people. And that after all this is the point

[2] Here ideology is used in a pejorative way, to both explain the separation between thought and action that arises as part of class society and also the way that sets of ideas become rigidified. It means the reification (thing-ificiation) of ideas in general as well as sets of specific ideas. cf.Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The German Ideology Part One, 3rd ed. (New York: International Publishers, 1973); Slavoj Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London & New York: Verso, 1999); Etienne Balibar, The Philosophy of Marx, trans. Chris Turner (London & New York: Verso, 2007).

[3] cf.El Kilombo Intergaláctico, Beyond Resistance: Everything. An Interview with Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos (Durham, North Carolina: Paperboat Press, 2007); Subcomandante Marcos, "The Word and the Silence " in Subcommandante Marcos, Our Word is Our Weapon: Selected Writings, (London: Serpent's Tail, 2001); Subcomandante Marcos and The Zapatistas, "Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle," in The Other Campaign / La Otra Campana, ed. Subcommandante Marcos and The Zapatistas (San Francisco: City Lights, 2006).

[4] “What does it mean to ‘live differently’? Not simply I think ‘dropping out’, or starting a coop or only consuming certain products. Such things are entirely normal to contemporary capitalism. Living differently means a collective process of refusal and creation: so different can you even imagine it?

Reigniting the Struggle- For a Brisbane Workers Assembly(Draft)