Can somebody explain, or just generally speak to, how tiqqun's theory of communization differs from other theories?
I'm by no means well versed in it, but it seems to advocate creating the productive and social relations of a post-capitalist society within the framework of capitalist society. Much of the Left would probably discount this as "lifestylism."
How is that different from other conceptions of communization though?
TC's conception of communization stems from a very deterministic and programmatic analysis of "capital" (i put in quotations because there is also a difference between Tiqqun and TC's conception of what capitalism is, nuanced as it may be). They view communization as something that can only happen during an "actual" revolutionary situation, as the very content of revolution. And they almost word for word say (in Communization and its Discontents) that communization as a process of the revolution cannot and will not be known or seen or whatever as communization until after the rev. Historically, they say that in previous periods of capitalist development that were a revolution to happen that it would have taken different organizational forms depending on when it were to have theoretically happen. They mark a turn in capitalist development (and therefore class composition) at around the 60s or 70s with the rise of financial capital. In working class resistance they look to the way that, previous to this era, part of class struggle involved a demand for more jobs, unions, etc. Essentially a worker movement into the factory, whereas in our modern period, there is a pretty distinct flight from the factories, where the worker as identity is no longer something to be heralded. Their periodisation as extends to how the view the revolution to happen, ie there will be a distinct revolutionary phase, and only then can communization take place. Tiqqun on the other hand, situate themselves in a different context. It isn't capitalism itself, as a system, that is in crisis or danger of collapse, but rather the way that capitalism dominates its subjects (essentially that political economy has never been solely economic, but that it is rather a counter-insurrectionary science that had a distinct way of dominating subjects into workers). What is in crisis to Tiqqun is Western Civilization itself, the very anthropology of our world (ie the world of the commodity). Dropping out, as it were, (which is an aspect of their conception of communization) isn't the petty-bourgeois individualism of CrimeThInc and the like. Because they view our era as the slow collapse of an entire civilization, they look to previous collapses of empires and the way new societies were born out of them. In many of the instances they talk about (I honestly cant remember any particular examples at the moment, and am too lazy to look anything up) there is a phenomena of communities "deserting." Forming "communes" (in the sense of groups of people bound by a particular affinity or ethical leaning) outside the empire, or more precisely, on the fringes. Of course there are also the empires that fell due to being besieged by barbarians at the gates, storming the castle, blah blah blah. Tiqquns communization is essentially the melding of these two ideas. "dropping out" and forming communes that becomes the materical and vital resources for the formation of war-machines. They also are able to move beyond the problems that crimethinc runs into of dropping out going no further than isolated individualism and alternativism. The war-machine isn't a war-machine unless it multiplies, as soon as it closes itself off for whatever reason or begins devolving into a normative function (where those that have been there longer are deemed with more respect or whatever than the newest) it becomes a ghetto, a milieu. But without the rhetoric or anything, communization for tiqqun is: create infrastructure (that can actually benefit those in the commune - we dont need anymore infoshops that 6 people a month visit), make friends, strategically attack Empire at its weak points.
Awesome post, thank you, now text me back Haha.
Regarding this issue, I think Bloom nailed it. For those interested, quite close to Tiqqun's approach to communization is that of the 'Batko Group' around the Swedish magazine Dissident of which Marcel (a former member of the autonomist group Kampa Tillsammans and a former editor of the magazine Riff-Raff) is a part. There is a very expansive discussion between Marcel and associates and the other side of the communization current (Theorie Communiste, Blaumachen, Endnotes, Troploin, etc.) in Riff-Raff issues 7 to 9 starting with: Communism as attack & Communism of withdrawal and followed up in issue 8 by: Per Hendrikson's (Riff-Raff) reply to Marcel Marcel's elaboration of his previous article and in issue 9 by: Peter Astrom's (Riff-Raff) comments on Dissident Issue 3 (which isn't translated to English yet) and Per Hendrikson's (Riff-Raff) views on the general communisation perspectives of the Batko group. The discussions within the Swedish milieu are particularly interesting because they come from a completely different angle than the 'Tiqqunist' milieu but arrive at many of the same conclusions (though not identical). In addition there's also some discussion within the less 'voluntarist' (or more 'determinist' depending on your flavor) communisation milieu between those who associate themselves with Troploin (the group of Gilles Dauve and Karl Nesic) and those who associate themselves with Theorie Communiste (like Endnotes and, if im not mistaking, to some extent Blaumachen) about issues of formal and real subsumption and whether communisation has always been an immanent possibility or just a revolutionary perspective that has only been opened up with the current phase of capitalist restructuring and the finalization of real subsumption (as per TC). Personally i'm somewhere in between as I find all perspectives lacking things I can find in the others.
