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Title: Anti-developmentalism Author: Miguel AmorĂłs Date: May 2014 Language: en Topics: capitalism, crisis, development, technology Source: Retrieved on 11th May 2021 from https://libcom.org/library/anti-developmentalism-what-it-what-it-wants-miguel-amor%C3%B3s Notes: Presentation delivered at the Conference in Defense of Territory held on May 17 and 18, 2014, organized by the collective bookstore, Transitant, in Palma de Mallorca. Translated in May 2014 from the Spanish-language text provided by the author.
In one respect, anti-developmentalism emerged from the critical
re-evaluation of the period that ended with the failure of the old
autonomous workers movement and with the global restructuring of
capitalism; it was thus born during the seventies and eighties of the
last century. In another respect, it arose amidst the incipient attempts
at ruralization that had taken place during that same period and in the
popular mobilizations against the presence of factories emitting
pollutants in the core urban areas and against urbanization projects and
the construction of nuclear power plants, highways and dams. It is
simultaneously a theoretical analysis of the new social conditions that
takes the contributions of ecology into account, and a struggle against
the consequences of capitalist development, although those two aspects
do not always proceed in tandem. We may define it as a form of critical
thinking and an antagonistic practice born from the conflicts provoked
by development during the last stage of the capitalist regime, which
corresponds to the merger of the economy and politics, Capital and the
State, industry and life. Due to its novelty, and also as a result of
the spread of submission and resignation among the de-classed masses,
reflection and combativity do not always proceed hand in hand; one
postulates goals that the other does not always want to fight for:
anti-developmentalist thought envisions a global strategy of
confrontation, while the struggle is often reduced to tactical
considerations, which only benefit domination and its supporters. The
forces mobilized are almost never conscious of their historical task,
while the lucidity of critique is likewise not always capable of
contributing to the development of consciousness in these campaigns.
The world market is continuously transforming society in accordance with
its needs and its desires. The formal domination of the economy in the
old class society is being transformed into real and total domination in
modern mass technological society. The workers who were transformed into
masses are now, above all else, consumers. The principal economic
activity is not industrial, but administrative and logistical
(tertiary). The principal productive force is not labor, but technology.
The wageworkers are now the principal force of consumption. Technology,
bureaucracy and consumption are the three pillars upholding the current
form of development. The world of the commodity is no longer susceptible
to self-management. It is impossible to humanize it: it must first be
dismantled.
Absolutely all the relations experienced by humans among themselves or
with nature are not direct, but are mediated by things, or, more
accurately, by images associated with things. A separate structure, the
State, controls and regulates this reified mediation. Thus, social space
and the life that it hosts are modeled on the laws of these same things
(commodities, technology), on those of circulation and those of
security, all of which give rise to a set of social divisions: between
urbanites and those who live in rural areas, leaders and led, rich and
poor, included and excluded, fast and slow, connected and unconnected,
etc. The territory, once it has been cleared of farmers, is transformed
into a new source of resources (a new source for capital), a backdrop
and base for macro-infrastructures (a strategic element of circulation).
Today, this spatial fragmentation and social disaggregation take the
form of a crisis on several fronts, all of which are interrelated:
demographic, political, economic, cultural, ecological, territorial,
social…. Capitalism has exceeded its structural limits, or, to put it
another way, it has hit the ceiling.
The variegated crisis of the new capitalism is the product of two kinds
of contradictions: internal contradictions, which are the cause of major
social inequalities, and external contradictions, which are responsible
for pollution, climate change, resource depletion and the destruction of
territory. The former do not extend beyond the capitalist domain where
they are dissimulated as labor problems, financial issues or
parliamentary shortcomings. Trade union and political struggles are
never posed in such a way as to exceed the framework that demarcates the
boundaries of the established order; and they are even less likely to
oppose its logic. The principal contradictions are therefore either
produced by the clash between the finite nature of planetary resources
and the infinite demand required by development, or by the clash between
the limitations imposed by the unlimited devastation and destruction
that necessarily accompany continuous growth. These contradictions
reveal the terrorist nature of the market economy and the State with
respect to the habitat and the lives of the people. Self-defense against
the terrorism of the commodity and the State assumes the form of both an
urban struggle that rejects the industrialization of life—that is,
anti-developmentalism—as well of a defense of territory that rejects the
industrialization of space. The representatives of domination, if they
cannot integrate these manifestations of self-defense under the aegis of
a “green” opposition, one that respects the rules of the game, will
depict them as a problem of public order posed by a minority, in order
to thus repress and crush them.
At a time when the social question tends to take the form of a
territorial question, only the anti-developmentalist perspective is
capable of serving as an accurate vehicle for its expression. In fact,
the critique of developmentalism is the form assumed by contemporary
social critique; no other critique is really anti-capitalist, since none
of them questions growth or progress, the old dogmas that the
bourgeoisie foisted on the proletariat. On the other hand, struggles in
defense of and for the preservation of territory, by sabotaging
development, cause the order of the ruling class to shake and tremble:
to the extent that they succeed in shaping a collective anti-capitalist
subject these struggles are nothing but the modern class struggle.
Anti-capitalist social consciousness arises from the unity of critique
and struggle, that is, from theory and practice. Critique that is
separated from the struggle gives birth to ideology (false
consciousness); struggle that is separated from critique leads to
nihilism or reformism (false opposition). Ideology often proposes an
impossible return to the past, which provides an excellent excuse for
inactivity (or virtual activity, which is the same thing), although the
most common forms it assumes are, in the economic domain, cooperativism,
and in the political domain, the civil society movement (“citizenism”).
The real function of ideological praxis is disaster management. Both
ideology and reformism separate the economy from politics in order to
propose solutions within the dominant system, whether in the economic or
the political domain. And since in this case changes must derive from
the application of economic, juridical or political formulas, both
ideology and reformism reject action, for which they substitute
theatrical or symbolic replacements. They flee from real confrontation,
since they want to render their practice compatible with domination at
any price, or at least to take advantage of the latter’s gaps and
interstices in order to subsist within and coexist with it. They want to
manage isolated spaces and administer the catastrophe, rather than put
an end to it.
The above-mentioned unity between critique and struggle provides
anti-developmentalism with an advantage that no ideology possesses: it
knows just what it wants and it knows the instrument necessary to pursue
its goals. It can present, in a realistic and credible way, the main
outlines of an alternative model of society, a society that will become
palpable as soon as the tactical level of platforms, associations and
assemblies is superseded and the strategic level of combatant
communities is attained. That is, as soon as the social conflict can be
expressed in every sense of the words as “us” against “them”. Those at
the bottom against those at the top.
The crisis provoked by the repeated instances of capitalism’s flight
forward only confirms a contrario the pertinence of the
anti-developmentalist message. The products of human
activity—commodities, science, technology, the State, conurbations—have
become more and more complex, they have become independent of society
and have turned against it. Humanity has been enslaved by its own
out-of-control creations. In particular, the destruction of territory as
a result of cancerous urbanization is today revealed as the destruction
of society itself and of the individuals who compose it. Development,
like Janus, has two faces: at the present time, the initial consequences
of the energy crisis and climate change, by illustrating the extreme
dependence and ignorance of urban residents, are showing us the face
that was once concealed. The stagnation of gas and oil production
announces a future where the price of energy will rise continuously,
which will increase the cost of transportation, causing food crises
(exacerbated even more by global warming) and the collapse of entire
productive sectors. In the medium term the metropolis will be totally
unviable and its inhabitants will find themselves in the position of
having to choose between creating a new world or disappearing.
Anti-developmentalism wants the inevitable decomposition of capitalist
civilization to lead to a period of dismantling industries and
infrastructures, ruralization and decentralization, or, to put it
another way, it looks forward to a period when a transitional stage
towards a just, egalitarian, balanced and free society will begin,
rather than a social chaos of dictatorships and wars. With such a noble
goal, anti-developmentalism seeks to ensure that sufficient theoretical
and practical arms are available for the use of the new collectives and
rebel communities, the seeds of a different kind of civilization,
liberated from patriarchy, industry, capital and the State.