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Title: Some Random Notes
Author: Miguel Amorós
Date: June 2013
Language: en
Topics: class struggle, crisis, development
Source: Retrieved on 8th May 2021 from http://libcom.org/library/some-random-notes-miguel-amor%C3%B3s
Notes: Translated in November 2013 from a copy of the original notes provided by the author.

Miguel Amorós

Some Random Notes

Economic growth leads to the globalization of finance and the

commodification of public or common space—including that of their

previous gratuitous use. The territory, as the foundation of vast

infrastructures (and also as the site of the second home, a space for

recreation, tourism, nature preserve, garbage dump, logistical platform,

energy production….) is being transformed into the key piece of the

picture of total commodification.

The social question par excellence is not posed from the terrain of

labor, since labor is secondary in the valorization process (in the

conversion of a good into a commodity), but from that of the territory,

because the construction of a suitable space is fundamental in the

constitution of the global market. But this is also its weak point. The

defense of territory directly challenges the nature of globalization and

obstructs its functioning. It is therefore the main factor of the modern

class struggle. The territorial struggle configures a new class, a

proletarian class that is formed to the degree that it undergoes

exclusion, to the extent that it dissolves this valorization process. To

the degree that it does not consume, vote, or work for a wage; to the

extent that it is self-sufficient, takes care of its own health and

educates itself. To the extent that it adopts a rural existence, or even

better, an existence that develops direct relations with the

countryside, in which it creates a rural collective or forms bonds with

one.

From the perspective of the countryside itself, or what remains of the

countryside, the defense of territory does not constitute “a world”, a

place of consciousness inhabited by a historical subject. The inhabitant

of the countryside has lost his memory and he is therefore outside of

history. This rural domain does not exist as a real territorial

community within an abstract official space, in conflict with that

official space. There was once such a community, but not anymore. The

rural is today a subsidiary of the urban. It has, in a way, been

urbanized. It must recreate itself in order to really exist and this can

only be done by opposing urbanization, by de-urbanizing. Paradoxically,

this does not mean the destruction of the urban domain, which has

already been destroyed, but a return to the truly urban, to the agora.

The anti-urbanizing struggle is just as much a struggle for the city as

it is for the country.

The first contradiction of combat in defense of territory arises from

the fact that the population is concentrated in conurbations or

metropolitan areas, where social conflicts often take the form of labor

struggles, within the economy but without questioning the economy. Labor

power must compete with machinery, cost-cutting and efficiency, which is

why the rate of exploitation can rise without the surplus value

necessarily rising in tandem with it. This is the case because the

“value added” to the commodity does not come from low wages, from

over-exploitation, but from technology and hyper-mobility. The owners of

labor power, the workers, are practically unnecessary as producers, but

are necessary, and much more so, as consumers. On the one hand they tend

to be expelled from the labor market, and then lose their class status;

on the other, they tend to be integrated in consumption, and then are

atomized and massified. This is why they no longer fight against

exploitation, but against exclusion. Nor do they reject the consumerist

lifestyle; they simply do not have any other choice than to strive to

uphold it.

The labor conflict does not immediately transcend the dominant order,

because it does not question domination, or the way of life under

domination. It is an urban conflict entirely subject to the imperatives

of the global economy. In the process of decomposition of mass society,

which is an urban society, a multitude of labor conflicts and struggles

of a similar kind take place (over pensions, social benefits, mortgage

foreclosures, small investors….), each limited in scope, contingent, and

incidental. By demanding something that is perfectly plausible in the

framework of the system, they call upon the system to operate more

efficiently, so that the burdens should be more equitably shared. The

labor conflict does not lead to a solution outside the domain of labor.

No organization, much less any community of struggle, is born from such

a conflict. It is repetitive, rather than cumulative. It does not

question the capitalist system, neither objectively nor subjectively,

but appeals for a more comfortable position within it, with higher

wages, secure labor contracts, shorter hours and better working

conditions. All of this is quite legitimate, but if no action is taken

against the system no class will be formed; the class is born in the

struggle against the system. And the reverse is true; there is no real

class struggle without a combative class, but such a class cannot exist

without consciousness of itself. The labor conflict does not provide

this consciousness. In general, without a previous rejection of the

imposed conditions of life, without a will to separation, without a

separation between “worlds”, no questioning is possible, nor is any

consciousness that is worth anything. In view of the current industrial

and financial conditions, today the exploited class is

anti-developmentalist or else it is not a class. The concepts of

commodity, poverty, wealth, exploitation, exclusion, class, etc., must

be redefined from the perspective of anti-developmentalism.

The real critique of the industrial and financial regime first arose in

the conurbation as a critique of everyday life (which is the critique of

patriarchy and also an ecological critique), disconnected from any

territorial base as well as from any base in the labor movement. This

separation of praxis is a major problem that can only be overcome by way

of the unification of globally anti-developmentalist theoretical

critique with urban and territorial conflicts. The conscious factor for

this unification is contributed by the irremediable nature of the

conflict within the framework of the system. Only in this sense can

defeats be victories.

The organizations, formal or informal, defensive or constructive, must

set themselves short-term goals that transcend the limits of the system,

in accordance with the appropriate strategic principles. In order to

accomplish this, the real struggle is compelled to dispense with the

institutions of integration such as parties, legalist associations and

trade unions. It must also distrust social movements that do not

question these institutions, and to make preparations against their

supporters. It must adopt horizontal, assemblyist, anti-statist

structures, countering the effects of particular mechanisms of

obstruction and delegation. At the moment that this is accomplished, it

will transform itself into a struggle for the anti-capitalist urban

community.

The violence of this struggle does not determine its radicality; cunning

is a hundred times more preferable. If it is not conducted for the

purposes of self-defense, violence is nothing but an affirmation of

impotence: impotence with regard to autonomous self-organization,

impotence with regard to the discovery of effective means, impotence

with regard to the ability to separate oneself from political and trade

union conditioning; for not knowing where to shoot, or where one is

going. In that case, it is an act of pure negation, devoid of creative

passion. One system is rejected, but no other system is affirmed.

Nothing can be built on pure negativity. In its worst form it is

converted into an individualist esthetic and attempts to justify itself

as such, going around in a circle and returning to the beginning. The

rage of dissatisfaction cannot proceed on different roads than those of

consciousness, which are the roads of everyday praxis. The answer cannot

be separated from the objective and the latter cannot be limited to

destruction.

The urban social struggle must attempt to assimilate the territorial

problematic and see that the countryside and the metropolis are just

different theaters of the same war. This confluence implies the

assimilation of certain new critical elements associated with the

formulation of a different kind of rights (rights to nutritious food,

water, territory, free training, solidarity-based care and services,

assembly, self-defense, etc.). It is not so much a matter of instituting

a new legal code as of reinstating certain customary traditional

liberties. The most obvious of the elements referred to above are the

critique of consumerism and the critique of politics. The primary

element is the critique of wage labor. Combining all of these critiques

into one, the question of modern dispossession will be posed in a new

way. Anti-developmentalism is one of its corollaries.

The new subject must find his space; he must make his space (his world),

in the conurbation as well as the rural territory. This subject must

desert the conurbation and either re-occupy the territory or else

transform it into territory. Over the course of this desertion and this

change, which will never take place without struggle (for territory, for

the city), the subject will constitute itself as a class. But it will

never be formed in the workplace, which is a non-place, but in the

perspective of its abandonment. It will not be constructed in comfort,

but amidst ruins.