Friendship

"Don’t back away from what is political in friendship"
-- TCI

Of course this isn't an idea unique to the text and examples can be found elsewhere;

'Anti-power is in the relations that we form all the time, relations of love, friendship, comradeship, community, cooperation'
-- John Holloway, Change the world without taking power

‘From now on all friendship is political.’
-- Tiqqun, Call

Yet I'm still slightly confused by this. From what I understand the idea is that as the relations of capital extend beyond the workplace to what the autonomists called the 'social factory', domination reproduces itself in every inch of societal life. In this way to find each other and establish friendship in our everyday lives (given that our everyday lives, be they in or out of work are inherently political in themselves) is a political act. That being said I imagine the idea probably goes beyond the rather crass summary I've just attempted to give. Anyway my issue is that are these relations of friendship and such not bound to be inherently temporary? When Holloway talks of 'love, friendship, comradeship' my experience is that these do not last as we would like to believe and in cases such as love can transform themselves very easily into hierarchical power relationships, for example Chuck Klosterman once wrote"every relationship is fundamentally a power struggle, and the individual in power is whoever likes the other person less" and I have to agree with him. But am I fundamentally missing something here by reducing this concept to banal ideas of boyfriend/girlfriend/friend etc. I feel I may well be but I also think the emphasis that this idea places on the individual relations and acts we engage in and form can in many ways reduce praxis to the actions of isolated and atomised actors, leading to equally isolated and, ultimately, temporary, results.

I'd be very interested to hear what others have to say on this, especially if there is someone who can refute everything I've just said.

Actually there was one other thing I wanted to address here although it does take me, in terms of references, completely away from TCI itself. In the same book John Holloway goes on to write;

What is emphasised is not organisational definition (as in a Party), but indefinition (as in a party): not separation from the community, but integration into it. If one thinks of the movement against the war or the social centres in Italy or the neighbourhood councils in Argentina, it is clear that there is no question of formal membership. In many cases, the practices of the organisations are consciously or unconsciously woven into everyday life in such a way that there is no clear distinction between a ‘political’ activity and an act of friendship.

What this seems to emphasise to me is a relationship between friendship (friendship as in 'political friendship) and struggle itself. A similar example in from 'Teaching Rebellion' a book about the 2006 uprising in Oaxaca;

As attacks against occupied areas intensified, the movement came up with a new strategy for self-defence. Hundreds of neighbourhood barricades were erected all over the city to serve as barriers to the now infamous death squads. The barricade quickly became more than just a place where communities gathered in self-defence; it was a space where neighbours got to know each other, shard ideas, and developed new strategies for organising. The barricade was emblematic of the fundamental aims of the social movement to construct autonomy and direct democracy.

To the extent that in this examples individuals are finding each other and building friendship it is directly linked to an ongoing struggle, be it the formation of councils, barricades or whatever. I understand the link between the two but does this not also further buy into the idea that these are bound to be temporary and unsustainable? In the time we live in struggles like this are destined to fade, whether they are victorious or not is essentially irrelevant, if the friendship is built upon the barricades, can it persist once the barricades are gone? In this way does such friendship require perpetual struggle, something in itself which is bound to result in burn out and detachment?

"Don’t back away from what is political in friendship"
-- TCI

Of course this isn't an idea unique to the text and examples can be found elsewhere;

'Anti-power is in the relations that we form all the time, relations of love, friendship, comradeship, community, cooperation'
-- John Holloway, Change the world without taking power

‘From now on all friendship is political.’
-- Tiqqun, Call

Derrida wrote a book called The Politics of Friendship. Although I don't know if it has anything to do with the things that TCI addresses.

The best example of this is creating relationships with your neighbors that make calling the cops a non-issue, where problems are worked out face-to-face in a human manner.

My problem with this is that there are some easy tried and true ways of doing this, and that is forming "organizations" that facilitate building these sorts of relationships. After all, a commune is an type of "organization" either that or they are using the word in an entirely different way that any conventional sense. In which case, I would have to look more into what they mean by "commune."