Communization

[Heretek]

So, I've got that this is the process of making common the currently privately owned goods, commodities, and property (through the eradication of property in the sense I speak of), and that Gilles Dauve and Kropotkin influenced groups have this kind of analysis (according to Wikipedia). So my question is, is there anything else to it? If its simply making everything common, why don't most groups advocate it? Or is it basically universal only under different names?

[Thirsty Crow]

So, I've got that this is the process of making common the currently privately owned goods, commodities, and property (through the eradication of property in the sense I speak of), and that Gilles Dauve and Kropotkin influenced groups have this kind of analysis (according to Wikipedia). So my question is, is there anything else to it? If its simply making everything common, why don't most groups advocate it? Or is it basically universal only under different names?It's not really that simple.

One basic tenet of communisation is that the process of social transformation - making things and our own beings and actions common - needs to start take place from day one (if one believe's in the dictatorship of the proletariat as well, which groups like Tiqqun don't). In that case, it would be a continued process of communisation, and not a static end point, involved.

Apart from that, communisation as it exists today is marked by several theoretical differences in understanding present capitalism. For instance, Theorie Communiste have made much of Marx's distinction between formal and real domination of capital, and have even built entire historical periodisation around it (Troploin, Dauve and the late Karl Nesic would disagree firmly). Best thing is to actually go to Troploin's site, libcom and download the book about communization (PM if advice needed I can't recall the title know; oh wait fuck I can - Communization and its Discontents).

[Thirsty Crow]

By the way, there's this one interesting article by the group I quote in my sig, and relevant to this discussion (mostly about divergences with Theorie Communiste; though it does illuminate some other things as well, and apparently Dauve's and Nesic's crypto-Bordigism :laugh:): http://endnotes.org.uk/en/friends-of-the-classless-society-on-communisation-and-its-theorists

[Remus Bleys]

By the way, there's this one interesting article by the group I quote in my sig, and relevant to this discussion (mostly about divergences with Theorie Communiste; though it does illuminate some other things as well, and apparently Dauve's and Nesic's crypto-Bordigism :laugh:): http://endnotes.org.uk/en/friends-of-the-classless-society-on-communisation-and-its-theorists


r u laffing because it isnt crypto

[BIXX]

Remus you seem like youd be into Facebook communism.

[Luís Henrique]

One basic tenet of communisation is that the process of social transformation - making things and our own beings and actions common - needs to start take place from day one (if one believe's in the dictatorship of the proletariat as well, which groups like Tiqqun don't). In that case, it would be a continued process of communisation, and not a static end point, involved.

The first problem is that it isn't clear at all what "day one" means. What is that, the "day after the Revolution", ie, the day after the coup d'Etat that topples the bourgeois State? Or is it today? Because the latter cannot help but have clearly reformist overtones under the ultra-revolutionary verbiage: taking the bourgeois State apart piece by piece, starting social revolution without destroying the bourgeois State, etc.

The second problem is at the other hand of the process: what does it mean to have a "continued process of communisation, and not a static end point"? Does this remind me of Stalinist paranoia of an always too fragile socialism that has to be always defended against real and imaginary enemies lest it spontaneously devolve into capitalism?

Surely at some point value will have been abolished, or is going to have to be constantly fought against so that we can have a continuous process without and end point?

Luís Henrique

[Thirsty Crow]

I think people haven't been clear enough on what that means, but I think it is implicit in all sorts of arguments that this amounts to decisively defeating the armed forces of the capitalist state (in one limited region) and consequently that the ruling class cannot rule over social reproduction.

In other versions of communization (Tiqqun) this indeed means right now and today, which brings us to the most important demarcation line in what appears to be a unified field (it is not). Troploin on one hand cleave to the common view on proletarian revolution vis-a-vis the state (with good reason); Tiqqun do not and represent a different kind of beast all in all. I'd say that the latter are beyond reformism (to my knowledge, they neither support any reformist initiatives nor count on policy changes as viable mechanisms) in that one basic point is escaping from the state and capital to "non-occupied zones" from which "revolution" could spread by means of accumulating acts of communization.

The continued process of communization, I believe, refers to the necessity of continued social transformation which would be different from the historical example of building socialism which ended up with an empty ideological vision of communism, transposed into some distant future. Indeed, value production will have been abolished at some point (when social production of useful objects for free access is definitely established as customary "this-is-how-we-do-stuff") with all of the potential social mechanisms of mediating small-scale conflict, were such a thing to arise, and coordinating global logistics. But I don't think this is the focal point of Troploin-like communization (to my knowledge, Dauve and Nesic weren't at all interested in such arguments where it could be said that value production is effectively over; the main crux is the so called "transition period").

EDIT: Just remembered, there's a book that could be of some help for people interested in all of this, especially the internal schism within the communization current, Communization and its Discontents. It can be found here: http://libcom.org/library/communization-its-discontents-contestation-critique-contemporary-struggles

[Sewer Socialist]

The first problem is that it isn't clear at all what "day one" means. What is that, the "day after the Revolution", ie, the day after the coup d'Etat that topples the bourgeois State? Or is it today? Because the latter cannot help but have clearly reformist overtones under the ultra-revolutionary verbiage: taking the bourgeois State apart piece by piece, starting social revolution without destroying the bourgeois State, etc.

The second problem is at the other hand of the process: what does it mean to have a "continued process of communisation, and not a static end point"? Does this remind me of Stalinist paranoia of an always too fragile socialism that has to be always defended against real and imaginary enemies lest it spontaneously devolve into capitalism?

Surely at some point value will have been abolished, or is going to have to be constantly fought against so that we can have a continuous process without and end point?

Luís Henrique

I have a similar question - is all non-commodified labor, its products, is this understood to be part of the communizing process? What of unwaged labor - child raising and the like? Clearly this is part of capitalist society, right?

What, then, is part of communization? How do these things resist assimilation into capitalist society, which seems to dominate and encapsulate everything I know?

[oneday]

Tiqqun do not and represent a different kind of beast all in all. I'd say that the latter are beyond reformism (to my knowledge, they neither support any reformist initiatives nor count on policy changes as viable mechanisms) in that one basic point is escaping from the state and capital to "non-occupied zones" from which "revolution" could spread by means of accumulating acts of communization.

How is this different from utopian socialism or hippie drop out and make commune idealism, if at all?

[Thirsty Crow]

I have a similar question - is all non-commodified labor, its products, is this understood to be part of the communizing process? What of unwaged labor - child raising and the like? Clearly this is part of capitalist society, right?

What, then, is part of communization? How do these things resist assimilation into capitalist society, which seems to dominate and encapsulate everything I know?
I can't remember if I read something on this topic in the field. But I believe that reproductive labor (things you mention) is part of the deal, or that it should be. The reason for this is partly to be found in the abolition of gendered housework, and pretty much housework itself (as far as I'm concerned, bring on robot cleaners hell yeah). I think communization (keep in mind that I'm talking about Troploin-like stuff) should come pretty close to such a view on what should happen with both gender and necessary labor in total (it's not a stranger, this view, to the Marxist tradition after all).

These thing don't resist incorporation; they are effectively incorporated, and a simple fact accounts for this. We're living in capitalism.


How is this different from utopian socialism or hippie drop out and make commune idealism, if at all? I don't know about utopian socialism, but it isn't at all dissimilar to hippie drop out and make communes stuff. Maybe a lot more poetic language, different music, and allowing for violence and sabotage.

To be perfectly clear, I don't think this other variant of communization makes any sense whatsover.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

I think Tiqqun (and currents of a similar theoretical outlook) have a less traditional notion of the operation of state power/exercize of sovereignty. So, for them, the state is not (or at any rate it's no longer) positioning itself "above" society, but is properly totalitarian in that it is, like capital, present in all social activity (and, like capital, is headless . . . and is maybe just inseparable from capital?).
In any case, the conclusion they draw, by my reading, is not that the bourgeois state doesn't need to be destroyed, but that the old methods of coup d'etat or military conquest are ill-suited to the task. The "location" of the state, as it were, has changed.
Actually, I think there are interesting parallels to this in the later work of CLR James/Correspondence (albeit with a distinctly "workerist" bent).

[Thirsty Crow]

I think Tiqqun (and currents of a similar theoretical outlook) have a less traditional notion of the operation of state power/exercize of sovereignty. So, for them, the state is not (or at any rate it's no longer) positioning itself "above" society, but is properly totalitarian in that it is, like capital, present in all social activity (and, like capital, is headless . . . and is maybe just inseparable from capital?).

Honestly, this just seems like a completely mystified notion of the state. What does it mean to say that the state is present in the activity of going out and drinking? It doesn't mean anything at all; on the other hand, one could say that this activity isn't totally free of the workings of the state. Which is true, but so trivial that my head almost hurts (for instance: taxes on booze and prices, common state enforced, through institutions of education, morality and conventions about getting shitfaced and so on).

I know this as a broader idea many people hang on to, but it just seems like a ill-constructed metaphor, personifying capital and the state and thereby making absolutely no sense in the process. Analogical and metaphorical reasoning rules here (e.g. "nothing is outside of capital; that's a spatial metaphor that illuminates not a thing) and clarity is the first price to pay.

[Sewer Socialist]

I can't remember if I read something on this topic in the field. But I believe that reproductive labor (things you mention) is part of the deal, or that it should be. The reason for this is partly to be found in the abolition of gendered housework, and pretty much housework itself (as far as I'm concerned, bring on robot cleaners hell yeah). I think communization (keep in mind that I'm talking about Troploin-like stuff) should come pretty close to such a view on what should happen with both gender and necessary labor in total (it's not a stranger, this view, to the Marxist tradition after all).


I, of course, see the revolutionary necessity of abolishing gendered work, and the abolition of all work.

But how does unwaged work fit into communization?

Am I correct to understand that unwaged work which produces non-commodified use-values is part of this process? And if so, then reproductive labor, at least the unwaged portions of it, is part of the communization process. How is this anything more than part of the reproduction of capitalism? How is it part of the abolition of capitalism?

And if it isn't part of communization - the abolition of capitalism (and patriarchy) - how does the praxis of communization differ? How does it avoid reproducing capitalism?


These thing don't resist incorporation; they are effectively incorporated, and a simple fact accounts for this. We're living in capitalism.


Am I to understand this as saying that the reproduction of capitalism and communization are one and the same? If so, this is implicitly stating that communism is inevitable, a deterministic view, no?


To be perfectly clear, I don't think this other variant of communization makes any sense whatsover.

Are you saying that the ideas I am describing are only to be associated with Theorie Communiste, Tiqqun, etc.? If so, what is the alternative praxis of communization? I think the apparent fact that there is more than one "communization" school of thought is part of what is confusing me.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Honestly, this just seems like a completely mystified notion of the state. What does it mean to say that the state is present in the activity of going out and drinking? It doesn't mean anything at all; on the other hand, one could say that this activity isn't totally free of the workings of the state. Which is true, but so trivial that my head almost hurts (for instance: taxes on booze and prices, common state enforced, through institutions of education, morality and conventions about getting shitfaced and so on).

I know this as a broader idea many people hang on to, but it just seems like a ill-constructed metaphor, personifying capital and the state and thereby making absolutely no sense in the process. Analogical and metaphorical reasoning rules here (e.g. "nothing is outside of capital; that's a spatial metaphor that illuminates not a thing) and clarity is the first price to pay.

I think that, if it is an "ill-constructed metaphor", this is the case insofar as it obfuscates understanding the theorization that underlies it. But, hey, let's talk about "space" and the state!

So, obviously, we have the obvious ways in which the modern state has historically realized its sovereignty within a geographical area (borders, police, etc.). These operate on the premise of establishing certain dichotomies, both spacially (here/there, public/private) and politically (citizen/alien, legal/illegal). If we wanted to mix-and-match hostile theories, we could imagine that this type of "state-ness" corresponds roughly with capital's "formal" rule.

What's novel, however (though not without antecedent - this is one of those "quantity into quality" scenarios), is the ways in which states have begun to overcome these dichotomies. This has taken place on a host of juridical, political, technical, cultural, etc. levels - so that in our current situation it's for all intents and purposes impossible to point to any point where the lines that previously defined the state remain definitive. So, obviously, for example, borders persist - an attempt to cross one will clarify this quickly for anyone in doubt - but the effective sovereignty of states is no longer defined by borders - every state is now, in a way that was not previously possible, responsible for/to the world. Similarly, this has turned inward; Orwell's "thought police" possess capacities that would have boggled the mind in literal 1984. This isn't purely a matter of gadgetry/"high tech" - it also concerns massive "civic" participation in social mapping (via social media), (largely unpaid) production of culture/cultural capital, etc. This is the world where the state/capital has "really" subsumed life.

So, if we want to understand how "going out and drinking" is "in" the state (in a way it wasn't, say, one hundred years ago), we need to look at it in the context of capitalist totality, and not just the points in which the state is "formally" present (as you note, taxes, etc.). So, for example, when one goes to a bar, the bar tracks what booze is sold, in what quantities, etc., this information is used to produce demographic data, this demographic data is used in urban planning, etc. If one gets in a fight and one is arrested this information is put in a searchable database, this database is connected to a whole host of information which can be cross-referenced against the information of a host of national and international agencies, the presence of an anti-racist tattoo on your shoulder links you to a friend's facebook profile, the profile links your friend to a Kurdish militant living in Paris, and your mother is arrested on her next visit to Turkey. Whatever. It sounds ridiculous, but that shit actually happens. Which is to say that there are real, "hard" material consequences to all of this.


I, of course, see the revolutionary necessity of abolishing gendered work, and the abolition of all work.

But how does unwaged work fit into communization?

Am I correct to understand that unwaged work which produces non-commodified use-values is part of this process? And if so, then reproductive labor, at least the unwaged portions of it, is part of the communization process. How is this anything more than part of the reproduction of capitalism? How is it part of the abolition of capitalism?

I think it's useful to take Federici as a starting point (https://caringlabor.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/silvia-federici-wages-against-housework/) here - though obviously these politics have evolved since the 70s. In any case, the point is that once we take reproductive labour as labour it becomes a site of struggle - a potential site of strikes, sabotage, workplace theft, workers' self-organization, etc.

And again, looking to CLR James/Grace Lee/Correspondence, we can draw a parallel to their understanding of how productive labour can be part of the abolition of capitalism. That is, the workers, in the course of working, come to develop the technical capacity to (re)produce society, and begin to produce the social/political forms capable of overcoming capitalism.


Am I to understand this as saying that the reproduction of capitalism and communization are one and the same? If so, this is implicitly stating that communism is inevitable, a deterministic view, no?

A real problem in some schools of thought, for sure. I think you've hit on something real here.

To some degree, I think Tiqqun, for example, try to grapple with this by recentering the subjective revolutionary factors - "the conscious fraction of the imaginary party", etc. So what becomes crucial is the insurrectionary moment in which capital is "recognized" and forcefully dissolved - in which people recognize themselves in their collective activity, and so on.


Are you saying that the ideas I am describing are only to be associated with Theorie Communiste, Tiqqun, etc.? If so, what is the alternative praxis of communization? I think the apparent fact that there is more than one "communization" school of thought is part of what is confusing me.

I think part of what's confusing is that many people tend to take the anarchist approach of borrowing liberally from a variety of thinkers/schools of thought, and recombine them to suit their particular needs. I think this is a good thing, to be honest. But, really, we're talking about the heirs of everything from the Situationist International, Italian Autonomia, French Left Communism, Johnson-Forrest, and fuck knows what else (punk? China's Cultural Revolution?).

[Thirsty Crow]

I, of course, see the revolutionary necessity of abolishing gendered work, and the abolition of all work.

But how does unwaged work fit into communization?

Am I correct to understand that unwaged work which produces non-commodified use-values is part of this process? And if so, then reproductive labor, at least the unwaged portions of it, is part of the communization process. How is this anything more than part of the reproduction of capitalism? How is it part of the abolition of capitalism?

And if it isn't part of communization - the abolition of capitalism (and patriarchy) - how does the praxis of communization differ? How does it avoid reproducing capitalism?



Am I to understand this as saying that the reproduction of capitalism and communization are one and the same? If so, this is implicitly stating that communism is inevitable, a deterministic view, no?



Are you saying that the ideas I am describing are only to be associated with Theorie Communiste, Tiqqun, etc.? If so, what is the alternative praxis of communization? I think the apparent fact that there is more than one "communization" school of thought is part of what is confusing me.
There's a whole lot of problems raised here.

One thing to note first is that communization isn't a practice; it's a term used by communists to denote practices (a whole web of them) which constitute the self-abolition of the proletariat (which is just one way of saying - abolition of social forms of exploitation and alienated social production relations, in short getting rid of capitalism).

About gendered work in the field of social reproduction (housework and so on). It's part of the communization process insofar as automatization and/or communal services, along with the possibility of communal living and non-family child rearing, are a real possibility only in the context of abolishing capitalism. That's why it isn't part of capitalist social reproduction and that's why it isn't argued that somehow we need to start living like that as part of class struggle. It's not that communal living here and now will or indeed can function as an aspect of escalating class struggle to the point of opening up the process of communization.

Again, keep in mind I'm talking about the Endnotes, TC, Troploin communization theory. It's definitely confusing that communization came to be seen as a buzzword with no clear boundaries; for instance, those groups noted above would criticize any notion that alternative living through autonomous zones, "accumulating" tiny acts of resistance, is a viable way to conceive of class struggle escalating to the point of the self-abolition of the working class. Changing the patterns of living (social reproduction in the household) isn't seen as capable of resisting incorporation; on the contrary, only with the abolition of capital will these ways of life stand a chance to be effectively transformed for the better. Does this make sense?

It's pretty much akin to your standard Marxism; seeing class struggle as paramount and seeing changes on relations of social reproduction and gender as something that is also transformed by the transformation of social relations of production.

[Thirsty Crow]

What's novel, however (though not without antecedent - this is one of those "quantity into quality" scenarios), is the ways in which states have begun to overcome these dichotomies. This has taken place on a host of juridical, political, technical, cultural, etc. levels - so that in our current situation it's for all intents and purposes impossible to point to any point where the lines that previously defined the state remain definitive. So, obviously, for example, borders persist - an attempt to cross one will clarify this quickly for anyone in doubt - but the effective sovereignty of states is no longer defined by borders - every state is now, in a way that was not previously possible, responsible for/to the world. Similarly, this has turned inward; Orwell's "thought police" possess capacities that would have boggled the mind in literal 1984. This isn't purely a matter of gadgetry/"high tech" - it also concerns massive "civic" participation in social mapping (via social media), (largely unpaid) production of culture/cultural capital, etc. This is the world where the state/capital has "really" subsumed life.

So, if we want to understand how "going out and drinking" is "in" the state (in a way it wasn't, say, one hundred years ago), we need to look at it in the context of capitalist totality, and not just the points in which the state is "formally" present (as you note, taxes, etc.). So, for example, when one goes to a bar, the bar tracks what booze is sold, in what quantities, etc., this information is used to produce demographic data, this demographic data is used in urban planning, etc. If one gets in a fight and one is arrested this information is put in a searchable database, this database is connected to a whole host of information which can be cross-referenced against the information of a host of national and international agencies, the presence of an anti-racist tattoo on your shoulder links you to a friend's facebook profile, the profile links your friend to a Kurdish militant living in Paris, and your mother is arrested on her next visit to Turkey. Whatever. It sounds ridiculous, but that shit actually happens. Which is to say that there are real, "hard" material consequences to all of this.

Okay, I'm going to focus first on our agreed upon example.

I don't see how bars tracking booze sold can amount to demographic data; the simple fact that this factors in business calculations, aimed at regulating the supply of commodities, doesn't turn it into demographic data of any kind for the simple reason that bars don't trace who bought what. At least that's how it works where I live, the huge majority of bars being cash only and with no reliable way to contribute to demographic data pooling by selling booze. They do trace drinks sold but that has nothing to do with sovereignity or political power, but with business calculations. This data isn't shared and urban planning agencies aren't interested in it as far as I know.

On the other hand, criminal records, and the way technologies make them easily sharable across borders is something that is important.

But here I think is the crux of the matter. It is false, in my view, to focus on this fact and infer from it that the mode of political power or sovereignity changed, for the simple reason that international link-ups only work as link-ups of discrete units of political power; through various agencies who cooperate, and still don't act as spatially localized offices of a primary agency, and so on. The borders are quite definitive; one only needs to look at the complicated process of inter-state negotiation over deportation of citizen's criminally charged in one country when already definitive bilateral agreements (again, agreements signed by two parties, each a juridical agent on its own) either don't exist or are unclear on the specifities.

Now, all of this testifies to how the world has changed and in general there's a greater deal of interdependence; but that's not due to overcoming dichotomies, it's actually a part of managing these dichotomies while they both stand in place and are somewhat modified (prime example being the European Union; that's your best shot at arguing for an effective dissolution of the nation-state, but even here matters are much more complex; however, taking this as a model and then projecting it onto an universal transformation would be sorely mistaken).

It's also true that techniques and methods of social-political control have advanced; and it is also true that valorization has acquired new targets (for instance, gene copyrights and so on). But all of this cannot work as definite evidence for a vague view on a fundamental shift in practices of political power and social control.

[Remus Bleys]

Remus you seem like youd be into Facebook communism.

wat

[Sewer Socialist]

Hm, I'm having trouble sorting all this out. Thirsty Crow, and The Garbage Disposal Unit, you both hint at different currents of communization theory - could you list them, chart them? What is their relationship to each other? Could we place certain groups under the same umbrella, identify a few general tendencies of what we know as Communization Theory?

Reproductive labor is certainly a site of class struggle. But I was only using it as an example of non- commodified labor, building on Heretek's question about communization growing through the promotion of non- commodity labor, to ask how this would differ, and do something other than serving capitalist society - how it might escape capitalist exploitation.

Am I incorrect in understanding the promotion of non- commodified labor as the praxis of some communization theorists?

Regarding demographic tracking - I'm sure that those who track alcohol consumption note the relationship between location and sales. In inner city black neighborhoods, bars sell a lot of a particular product, but not in white suburban neighborhoods. And college campuses seem to be the only place anyone sells this other product, though it's only convenience stores and not bars who sell it. And we have some other unique trend at upscale downtown bars, and another at neighborhood dive bars.

Brand reps target particular types of bars and neighborhoods, marketing targets particular demographics, we all see the resulting advertisements, and the cycle continues.

[Luís Henrique]

In other versions of communization (Tiqqun) this indeed means right now and today, which brings us to the most important demarcation line in what appears to be a unified field (it is not). Troploin on one hand cleave to the common view on proletarian revolution vis-a-vis the state (with good reason); Tiqqun do not and represent a different kind of beast all in all. I'd say that the latter are beyond reformism (to my knowledge, they neither support any reformist initiatives nor count on policy changes as viable mechanisms) in that one basic point is escaping from the state and capital to "non-occupied zones" from which "revolution" could spread by means of accumulating acts of communization.

That may not be the most conventional form of reformism (which would imply a mass political machinery involving elections and trade unions), but reformism it is anyway; it is the idea that we can defeat the system by either working "within" it (ie, putting up "alternative" productive units that produce for the market but are "not privately owned" - cooperatives, communes, whatever) or by founding a whole complete non-capitalist society in some mythical outside. (The contradiction here is glaring - the State is "proteic", it occupies every space, so it cannot be toppled, etc. - and then the weird conclusion is that there are "non-occupied zones" to which we can flee and restart the socialisation process from scratch).

Anyway, it is what can only be summed up as "left-reformism": attempting to have a revolution without a revolution, ie, to transform the social relations within society without having the trouble of a political conflict against the State.

Luís Henrique

[Ele'ill]

@Sewer Socialist, This might help, it's a text that discusses the interconnection and differences across several currents of communization, the pdf links are at the bottom of the introduction- http://libcom.org/library/communization-its-discontents-contestation-critique-contemporary-struggles

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

That may not be the most conventional form of reformism (which would imply a mass political machinery involving elections and trade unions), but reformism it is anyway; it is the idea that we can defeat the system by either working "within" it (ie, putting up "alternative" productive units that produce for the market but are "not privately owned" - cooperatives, communes, whatever) or by founding a whole complete non-capitalist society in some mythical outside. (The contradiction here is glaring - the State is "proteic", it occupies every space, so it cannot be toppled, etc. - and then the weird conclusion is that there are "non-occupied zones" to which we can flee and restart the socialisation process from scratch).

Anyway, it is what can only be summed up as "left-reformism": attempting to have a revolution without a revolution, ie, to transform the social relations within society without having the trouble of a political conflict against the State.

Luís Henrique

Again, I think this is a misunderstanding. The suggestion is not so much that the state cannot be toppled - rather that traditional strategies of toppling it are unsuitable.

And "non-occupied zones" is hardly a foreign concept to much of Marxism - Maoists' "base areas", the Leninist idea of the party with its peculiar consciousness, etc. all parallel it closely in some senses. In a way, it represents a fusion of these ideas about consciousness and geography. So, like, the conception of "The Party" is premised that a section of the class transcends the limits of "trade union consciousness" - though the ideas of every era are the ideas of the ruling class, there is a subjective outside to bourgeois ideology. Similarly, if we approach ideas about a geography of revolution we find that they have a similar "dual" aspect - the state persists, yet its effective sovereignty is relatively strong or weak in particular spaces (the latter mostly in mountains, haha). In Tiqqun, these distinctions - between the individuals that compose The Party, and the spaces which The Party has wrested from the effective sovereignty of the state - begin to breakdown. The Party concerns the circulation of bodies in spaces, rather than formal cadres, staked out borders, etc.

[Ele'ill]

"The State sinks into the Imaginary Party"

From Tiqqun's This Is Not A Program, I think chapters 11-12 get into it a little more but probably based off several previous chapters. https://libcom.org/library/not-program

And another site with synopsis- https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/not-program

[Thirsty Crow]

Again, I think this is a misunderstanding. The suggestion is not so much that the state cannot be toppled - rather that traditional strategies of toppling it are unsuitable.

I don't think it is a misunderstanding at all; LH views the alternatives as briefly presented here as themselves completely unsuitable for class struggle, and I do agree. I don't agree with subsuming this under the rubric of reformism simply because it seems to me that the core notions which enable us to make sense of reformism are stretched way too wide by doing so (any reformism worth its name, in my view, rests on accumulation state-sanctioned policy and legal changes which work in favor of a group having better life conditions). But that's a minor terminological dispute.


And "non-occupied zones" is hardly a foreign concept to much of Marxism - Maoists' "base areas", the Leninist idea of the party with its peculiar consciousness, etc. all parallel it closely in some senses. In a way, it represents a fusion of these ideas about consciousness and geography. So, like, the conception of "The Party" is premised that a section of the class transcends the limits of "trade union consciousness" - though the ideas of every era are the ideas of the ruling class, there is a subjective outside to bourgeois ideology. Similarly, if we approach ideas about a geography of revolution we find that they have a similar "dual" aspect - the state persists, yet its effective sovereignty is relatively strong or weak in particular spaces (the latter mostly in mountains, haha). In Tiqqun, these distinctions - between the individuals that compose The Party, and the spaces which The Party has wrested from the effective sovereignty of the state - begin to breakdown. The Party concerns the circulation of bodies in spaces, rather than formal cadres, staked out borders, etc.

The basic distinction is, it seems to me, that Tiqqun et al seem to parody the Maoist military framework of the people's war without stopping to pose the question of whether it makes sense in contemporary France. The same goes for the poetic and vague formulation of what constitutes revolutionary practice:


Texts such as Call or The Coming Insurrection however, do not even properly ask the question of what the revolution is, for in these texts the problem has already been evaporated into a conceptual miasma. In these texts, the revolution will be made not by any existing class, or on the basis of any real material, historical situation; it will be made by ‘friendships’, by ‘the formation of sensibility as a force’, ‘the deployment of an archipelago of worlds’, ‘an other side of reality’, ‘the party of insurgents’ – but most of all by that ever-present and always amorphous positivity: we. The reader is beseeched to take sides with this ‘we’ – the ‘we of a position’ – to join it in the imminent demise of ‘capitalism, civilization, empire, call it what you wish’. Instead of a concrete, contradictory relation, there are ‘those who can hear’ the call, and those who
cannot; those who perpetuate ‘the desert’, and those with ‘a disposition to forms of communication so intense that, when put into practice, they snatch from the enemy most of its force.’


(Endnotes, "What Are We to Do?"; I recommend the text wholheartedly)

The parallel with the traditional conception of class consciousness is weak; the former doesn't include an idea of an effective creation of "outside-space", but says that consciousness, in the form of the revolutionary party disseminating ideas and rousing workers' to action based on these ideas, is a vital part of the process whereby the power of the capitalist class can be broken. It doesn't represent a model for dropping out in order to better be able to swarm the opponent (this view is untenable and based on some serious misconceptions).

It's one thing to want to live in a way that is so different from what we are used to; it may be beneficial, it may even be a good learning experience and something that is of tremendous value to a group of people, but there's a problem when all of this becomes to function as a platform for projecting vague ideas about large-scale social transformation.

[Ele'ill]

hopefully nobody here thinks tiqqun 'forgot' to mention class struggle

[Sewer Socialist]

hopefully nobody here thinks tiqqun 'forgot' to mention class struggle

I wouldn't phrase it like that, but it is conspicuously absent. Regardless, it seems like you have much more to say in this conversation, but are holding back.

[Ele'ill]

I wouldn't phrase it like that, but it is conspicuously absent. Regardless, it seems like you have much more to say in this conversation, but are holding back.

i haven't had much time to post anything other than what I have already, and often wonder in these threads why anyone with an opposing view wouldn't first state their understanding of tiqqun's position on traditional forms of struggle involving 'the working class', instead of claiming that it is absent in their texts and 'we can't imagine why'. I'd like to know generally if I am about to get involved in an honest discussion or not.

[Sewer Socialist]

I can't recall if they've explicitly stated it in their texts or not, but it seems they do not consider "class struggle" to be revolutionary, if revolution is to abolish class society. I imagine they would say class struggle only affirms and reproduces class. This is also the position of Fredy Perlman in The Reproduction of Daily Life, though he states it in no uncertain terms - I very much prefer his writing to that of Tiqqun and the like.

This will surprise absolutely no one who has been reading this thread, but if that is an accurate characterization of Tiqqun's position, I don't understand. What is class, I'd not a relationship experienced in daily life, experienced through the means by which one sustains oneself? What is daily life free of class struggle? Class struggle is daily life. Daily life reproduces class as well, right?

I am definitely agree with the notion that meaningful revolution is the negation of class society and, with it, the proletariat. I'm halfway through the second chapter of that pdf you linked me to, Ele'ill, but I think I could have a meaningful conversation which will add to it.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

The basic distinction is, it seems to me, that Tiqqun et al seem to parody the Maoist military framework of the people's war without stopping to pose the question of whether it makes sense in contemporary France. The same goes for the poetic and vague formulation of what constitutes revolutionary practice:

[Endnotes quotation]

(Endnotes, "What Are We to Do?"; I recommend the text wholheartedly)

I think that this is too much of a simplification. While there are certainly Gauche Prolétarienne-ish elements to tiqqun/The Invisible Committee, I can't really see where "People's War" is being transplanted to France, except insofar as having a certain notion that The Party has to develop a certain relationship to space, to erode the effective sovereignty of the state.

And while tiqqun/TIC are certainly poetic, I don't think they're particularly vague - the point to a whole host of struggles and strategies, and concretely name what they see as valuable within them (e.g. the struggle against the TAV in Italy, the "ZAD" anti-airport struggle in France, boss-napings, etc.).

I think Endnotes's hostility to the tiqqun/TIC-influenced activity in North America and Britain is a bit of petty intellectual pissing contest, and reeks of that sort of academic self-righteous secular gnosticism - "Communization isn't something to be done by mere mortals in this imperfect world! Only the apocalypse . . . er, we mean revolution . . . can lead to communization!" Euch. A philosophy of philosophy departments. Meanwhile, their students read "The Coming Insurrection" and send police running under a hail of stones.
FaiTexJPtiI


The parallel with the traditional conception of class consciousness is weak; the former doesn't include an idea of an effective creation of "outside-space", but says that consciousness, in the form of the revolutionary party disseminating ideas and rousing workers' to action based on these ideas, is a vital part of the process whereby the power of the capitalist class can be broken. It doesn't represent a model for dropping out in order to better be able to swarm the opponent (this view is untenable and based on some serious misconceptions).

But what is the revolutionary party if not a body which constitutes itself as foreign to the order of capitalism? From where are ideas disseminated if they are not "the ruling ideas"? What is created by "workers roused to action" if not an "outside" to the territorial control of state and capital? And what does any of this have to do with dropping out? One doesn't "drop out" of prison, and the fugitive remains outside of prison only by their constant activity to that end. I have yet to see a reading of "To Our Friends" that suggests quitting work to stay home and smoke pot.


It's one thing to want to live in a way that is so different from what we are used to; it may be beneficial, it may even be a good learning experience and something that is of tremendous value to a group of people, but there's a problem when all of this becomes to function as a platform for projecting vague ideas about large-scale social transformation.

What is building the party if not a form of living differently? Doesn't the communist who attends work to build the party live differently than their co-worker who is there to suffer for their supper?


hopefully nobody here thinks tiqqun 'forgot' to mention class struggle

Mmmm. I will say that a big problem with tiqqun/TIC (but also with Endnotes and their ilk!) is the notion that "the working class" no longer exists as a "positive identity". I think it reflects theorists whose own subjective experience of class society is simply not that of workers. In this regard, I think that it's worth returning to Autonomia/Facing Reality/GP and other groups to get a bit of perspective.

[Luís Henrique]

We discussed something similar, just more concrete, here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/isnt-signed-up-t193100/index.html?t=193100&highlight=crow). It may be interesting that while when this "transformationalist" discourse sounds wonderfully radical in the abstract, where it is put into practice it doesn't look to fulfill its promises.

Luís Henrique

[John Nada]

We discussed something similar, just more concrete, here. It may be interesting that while when this "transformationalist" discourse sounds wonderfully radical in the abstract, where it is put into practice it doesn't look to fulfill its promises.That's not an Imaginary Party(counter-hegemony). It's well within the confines of the Empire(capitalist hegemony). The Paris Commune or Petrograd Soviet would be a closer example. Both were also a trapped in a sea of capitalism, but it has to start somewhere.

[Comradelou]

I think what's happenin man is they(theman) are trying to keep us busy running their society. The one percenters,rich,Masons, whatever you call it the man is everywhere and if we step out of line with they code they come up on you. You see how they're like a gang theman. We need communization as of yesterday homie, reg labor=slave labor. We need to rise up and take down theman. A revolution needs to happen that's facts.

[Die Neue Zeit]

That may not be the most conventional form of reformism (which would imply a mass political machinery involving elections and trade unions), but reformism it is anyway; it is the idea that we can defeat the system by either working "within" it (ie, putting up "alternative" productive units that produce for the market but are "not privately owned" - cooperatives, communes, whatever) or by founding a whole complete non-capitalist society in some mythical outside. (The contradiction here is glaring - the State is "proteic", it occupies every space, so it cannot be toppled, etc. - and then the weird conclusion is that there are "non-occupied zones" to which we can flee and restart the socialisation process from scratch).

Anyway, it is what can only be summed up as "left-reformism": attempting to have a revolution without a revolution, ie, to transform the social relations within society without having the trouble of a political conflict against the State.

Luís Henrique

I am not against communization, provided that it is politically engaged.

What you're labelling - communization without political engagement - isn't even left reformism. It really is another form of utopianism, of literally going nowhere.

The best elements of communization must go hand in hand with the best elements of socialization of production, and with the best elements of "insurrectionist" politics. In modern society, the first group of elements come in the form of cultural societies, recreational clubs, and other worker-class institutions whose services are consumed on a communization basis. (http://www.revleft.com/vb/obrien-three-types-t179447/index.html?p=2592801#post2592801)