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Title: To Dance With The Devil Author: Aragorn! Date: 2007 Language: en Topics: AJODA, AJODA #64, anti-capitalist, economics Notes: Published in Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed #64, Fall-Winter 2007
We would like our relationship with capitalism to be simple; we are
against it. But behind the simplicity of taking a firm stance is the
tragedy of the anarchist archetype. A fixed stance against capitalism,
hierarchy, god, the state, oppression, racism, sexism, homophobia (and
more); demonstrating curiosity only to find new things to say “no” to.
If anarchism[1] is going to continue being interesting, relevant, or
challenging into this century, then our reactionary pose has to be
confronted.
Let’s establish terms. Let us enclose our understanding of capitalism
within an anarchist framework rather than a dictionary definition or
being enclosed within it ourselves.
Up till now anarchists have defined themselves along the lines of
“people who are against all systems of authority” with the systems
listed (usually in about this order) being the state, capitalism, the
church, civilization, patriarchy, racism, homophobia, etc. This negative
definition follows Hegel’s “critique of everything that was hitherto
held to be the objective truth,”[2] placing anarchists in the role of
being socially conscious solipsists, watching the world they refuse to
participate in.
Why, then, doesn’t anarchism define itself as the idea of being for such
values as freedom and equality? Freedom and equality, much like all the
terms anarchists are against, are open-ended words that demand further
engagement before anyone has any idea what they mean. Does freedom mean
the same thing that the US says it is for and that it institutes as a
personal right?[3] Does equality mean the same thing that Communists
mean when they refer to it? The taint of the varied uses of these terms
has meant that modern anarchists minimize their use of them.
The negative definition of anarchism is not subject to the same
scrutiny. Is this because there has never been, nor will there ever be,
a regime ruled by the tyranny of being against? Is it perhaps because
anarchists do not see their own complicity in the things that they are
against (as demonstrated, for example, by their participation in the
political process of petition and ballot[4])? Anarchists are a part of
the very system they are against. The line between the constituent parts
of that whole and the unified whole is left, by and large, unexamined.
For this, the activist imagination[5] is largely to blame in recent
times. Anarchists draw as much, if not more, on the perception that the
Civil Rights and anti-war movements of the Sixties were effective models
of political and social change. As a result they draw inspiration from
the so-called influential militants rather than the spontaneous actions
of people, from the meeting and the protest rather than the riot or work
slowdown, from the politics rather than the humans. This practice turns
the negative definition of anarchism on its head as a positive and
reactionary view of social change.
To the extent that an anarchist definition of capitalism deviates from
the Marxist one, it does so along the lines of being emotional and
value-laden.
For the capitalist and the property owner it [property] mean[s] power
and the right, guaranteed by the State, to live without working, the
power and the right to live by exploiting the work of someone else,
those who are forced to sell their productive power to the lucky owner
of both[6]
or
Capitalist... economies make human interactions into commodities:
policing, medical care, education, even sexual relations become services
that are bought and sold.[7]
This follows the habit of otherworldliness; defining a system that each
of us partakes in as separate and outside of ourselves and our activity.
While They exploit, force, and commodify, we do something else entirely.
Organize resistance, plant community gardens, group bike rides, or
protesting them, something outside of their recognition.
The useful thing about the negative anarchist definition of capitalism
is that it is not ambivalent, describing capitalism as some post-modern
creature that we can pretend to have a relationship of power with, as
the culmination of history, or something that could be taken or left.
A distinct element of the anarchist understanding of capitalism is that
it uses the same language of personal responsibility (although in this
case, that of others) that is used to determine one’s own behavior. The
way you challenge the commodification of human life is to change your
relationship with commodities personally; by consuming less, consuming
more strategically, or consuming on “your terms.” Capitalism is
understood less as a social phenomenon than as a violation of the
anarchist principle of means and ends being inseparable.
The Marxist definition of capitalism, by contrast, is not subjective.
Capitalism is the mode of production that extracts the greatest possible
amount of surplus value by the class of private owners, and that
consequently exploits labor power (aka the proletariat). This definition
is about value, class, power, and production. Those who hold to this
economic orientation further claim that through a scientific evaluation
of economics, particularly the labor theory of value, the problems with
capitalism can be dissected and deeply understood. Furthermore the
solutions provided as socialism, or more radically as communism,
arguably have been analyzed through this scientific process rather than
a subjective one.
This definition leaves out most human understandings of what living
capitalism is. Capitalism is not living on credit, paying rent, dealing
with bureaucrats, not having the time to spend with friends and loved
ones, but is the exploitation of one’s labor power by the productive
forces, thereby creating class tension. The struggle to understand
oneself in capitalism (by this definition) is the class struggle, a
conflict which, when resolved, is the only hope for the oppressed class.
Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of
one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest
with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to
organize itself as a class; if, by means of a revolution, it makes
itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old
conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions,
have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms
and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own
supremacy as a class.[8]
For anarchists the useful characteristic of this definition is to
understand the objective, in this case economic, gaze. It is often said
that if you want to read a mainstream perspective that takes Marx
seriously you need to read the Wall Street Journal. They may rarely
mention his name but economic tension, class conflict, is managed by the
readers of the Journal while the rest of society obsesses about the
plight of celebrities and reality show outcomes. At the same time that
this objective calculation of our situation is useful, it is also a
mechanism by which our powerlessness to bring about any change in the
situation is rationalized and perpetuated. For every laughable Communist
denunciation of anarchist optimism is an anarchist demand for class war
by the children of the rich. Rhetoric aside, the only real class war is
of the owners against all.
Classic Liberals define capitalism as the social system based on the
principle of inalienable individual rights, including life, liberty, and
property. This definition is the most common ideological understanding
by Americans. It accepts the notion of a society comprised of a balanced
relationship between individuals and the ruling order, ie the state. A
place where self-governing rational individuals respect each others’
rights, the state is checked by the process, and keeps out of the way of
the citizenry. This Lockean notion underscores a kind of theoretical
logical consistency that sits well for many defenders of the current
economic system by placing our role as rational actors on a stage of
somewhat human scale. The disconnect between this idea (with its
ethnocentric notions of property, rationality, and the individual) and
the reality of the state’s monopoly on violence, determines exactly how
much life, liberty, and even property the individual is actually allowed
to have.
Anarchists would do well to recognize liberal capitalism’s reliance on
the social building blocks of principles (rights), negotiation (the
social contract), and checks-and-balances (voting).
Capitalism-as-exchange ends up being invisible in this definition of
capitalism, and that is what makes this definition such an effective way
to defend intellectually the relationship one has to capitalism.
Unchecked domination, inherited power, and the irrationality of
believing in the state’s desire to defend an individual’s rights are
invisible here. Who could be against rights, the ability of individuals
to enter into contracts with each other and the state, and our ability
to keep the state in check? This is the way people can understand
themselves within a functioning social order where their own
invisibility within it is far less important than the obviousness of
defending every aspect of it. Sometimes if it seems believable then it
is believed.
Finally, capitalism is defined in the US as the current economic system
in which the means of production and distribution are privately or
corporately owned, and profits are gained in a free market. Used in this
way, we accept capitalism’s ahistorical nature (always existing, outside
of context, space, or time) and the existence of a free market. This is
another economic understanding that differs from the Marxist one; it has
a different mythological framework, one where capitalism-itself is the
sun, rather than the exploitation of labor.
In this view, capitalism never sets and each of us if free to sell
ourselves as labor and buy cheap products shipped from around the world.
Truly free. The sun was placed there before the US was founded and since
then nothing else has happened; everything here has grown under its
light. The freedom we have as consumers is the same as the freedom we
have as investors. The connections these ideas have to reality wither in
comparison to their rhetorical and propagandistic social power within US
culture. This myth is powerful: powerful enough to keep people in misery
playing the lottery, powerful enough for people to put themselves in
cargo containers to be shipped across the ocean, and powerful enough for
people no longer to see capitalism as something to struggle against.
Conscious class struggle in the US is a non-starter either strategically
or ideologically, Marxist (even marxist-with-a-black-flag) rhetoric to
the contrary.
Whether defined by anarchists, Marxists, political philosophers, or
economists, the assumptions in defining capitalism frame the ability to
think outside, against, and in relation to it. Since anarchists have
assumed that they are somehow outside of capitalism, that it is
something outside of their experience, their daily lives, and their
principles, they have not had a coherent way to engage the liberal
notions of individual rights, the economic view of society, or the
positive perception that capitalist social relations have had on a
preponderance of people.
Tensile strength is the amount of force required to pull something
apart. Most of us test tensility every day and, like many properties, we
do not need to measure it to understand its effects. A romantic
relationship ends because of a series of small inconsiderations. Workers
grumble about an asshole manager but nothing happens besides the
complaining. A radical returns to her family home for the holidays even
after she has declared her rejection of normative values and
relationships. Tensility has a variety of axes: economic, emotional,
cultural.
If we were to be generous in approaching an answer to the question of
why the current economic system works so well (emotionally,
ideologically, materially) for so many people, it would not be because
people are naturally inclined towards shopping, petroleum, or
property-rights but because they prefer greater tensile strength over
less. One desires a connection to the land that they live on that is
greater than what a contract, bank, or surveyor can provide. One desires
relationships that don’t fall easily under the categories of friend,
lover, or family. One desires escapes from even the most pleasant
situation one finds oneself in. The simplistic solutions of against
approaches to these problems are brittle; they crack at the slightest
change in orientation from their strength. Critique weakens tensility
rather than strengthening it.
The coordination of capitalism with the political apparatus, religion,
and cultural expectations regarding relationships makes it seem natural.
These relationships developed over time, largely by force, and are worth
studying. What is the relationship between the people who go to the same
market on Tuesday, the same church on Sunday, and attend the same
concerts on Friday nights? Compare this to a group that meets once a
year under a flag of truce and spends the rest of the year in open
hostility. The anarchist project would be to engage with these examples
not because they are worth emulation but because they demonstrate
principles of tensile strength.
Tensility can be seen as the relationship between frequency, intensity,
variety, and duration of encounters. In the first example we see
relationships with relatively high frequency and variety, with low
intensity (with occasional high intensity around music) that happens
over a long period of time, probably years. In these relationships, even
without knowing each other’s names, we have a closeness that is not
about class composition, shared alienation, or the political project of
the total transformation of society. In the second example there is far
less closeness with low frequency and variety but high intensity that
happens over a long duration. The difference of tensility between these
two examples results not from the participant’s connection to a shared
struggle or idea but from variety, frequency, and manageability.
If there isn’t a simple for to the anarchist against, then perhaps the
problem is one of scale rather than goals. As long as society exists on
an enormous scale, the scale of 300 million, 1 million, or even a
hundred thousand, it is not possible to believe that it will not form a
monopoly on violence, an ideological system that preaches freedom while
practicing constraint, and an economic system that alienates for the
purpose of expediency. Perhaps anarchism is the recognition that a
society worth living in should be of a scale within which one can
actually have some kind of direct impact.
There is nothing that can be done to reclaim capitalism. Not only has it
been the ideological foundation for the extraction of resources and the
economic basis of human suffering for centuries, but the term remains a
meaningless abstraction. At the same time there is the false opposition
of anarchist anti-capitalists; pretending to stand outside capitalism
the same way they would stand in protest outside chain stores or a
gathering of world leaders reflects the weakness of individualistic
action. This isn’t improved by the anti-capitalism of left communist
traditions whose meek declarations of total opposition are only slightly
less individuated than the practices of boycott and self-flagellation.
In this essay there has been no definition of anarchism itself other
than to acknowledge the inadequate definitions that have preceded us. In
addition, the positive anarchist principles[9] are an inadequate
beginning to an anarchism of today; they are the elegant principles of
another time. If anarchism is to face the challenging times ahead it
must become the mongrel beast born of the disparate parts of its stately
and negative origins. It must become capable of recognizing the
complicated relationship between living in the world and against the
world, and instead of erring in the direction of liberalism or
asceticism. Anarchism must never become a contract between anarchists
and a society that doesn’t exist, and it should never be a settled
question. Anarchism is conflict without compromise, without rulers, and
with the choice to engage with the world on our own terms. The fight is
more important than the outcome.
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[1] The term used throughout this article is anarchism. While I
generally support the idea of there being a distinction drawn between a
system called anarchism and the desire for something called anarchy,
with one being critiqued as an ideology and the other as something else,
I also believe that it is a waste of time to confuse the terms with the
distinction. In addition, the amount of attention placed on the
difference between the two terms has created an anarchyism, an ideology
of terms. As a consequence the critique of ideology has become a parody
of itself.
[2] Marcuse, Herbert; Reason & Revolution. Part II, The Rise of Social
Theory
[3] Which isn’t actually true. The Declaration of Independence only
refers to free states; the Bill of Rights refers to the freedom of
speech, the press, assembly, petition, and arms.
[4] Even to the extent of participating in the elections of politicians
(mayor of Arcata, Gonzalez in SF) and petitions (which is what protests
are) to the state.
[5] The activist first and foremost believes in her/his own role in
cause-and-effect. Their imagination leads them to believe, “If we
activists do X, then the government/company/agency/group/person will do
Y. And if Y (or any compromised version of Y) happens, then we are
responsible and should take our bows and issue our press releases.”
[6] Cutler, Robert M. (ed.); From Out of the Dustbin: Bakunin’s Basic
Writings 1869–1871 (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1985).
[7] CrimethInc.; Fighting For Our Lives: an anarchist primer
[8] Marx & Engels; The Communist Manifesto
[9] Solidarity, Mutual Aid, and Direct Action