[P2P-F] Fwd: [Networkedlabour] Beyond the Wage-Labour Fixation and State-Dependency of the Traditional Left

[Michel Bauwens]

it still seems to me that this hope of a purely soft transformation through
self-organisation, without tackling state power, is utopian and illusory:

"In that sense, let’s bear in mind that a precondition for the French
Revolution was that, at a certain point, the social network of bourgeois
relations no longer needed the aristocracy in order to exist. Likewise, we
must work to reach a point where we can say “we don’t care if global
capital isn’t investing in Spain, because we’ve built a mutual support
network that’s strong enough to enable us to live with dignity.”


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: peter waterman <peterwaterman1936 at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Oct 1, 2014 at 10:21 PM
Subject: [Networkedlabour] Beyond the Wage-Labour Fixation and
State-Dependency of the Traditional Left


   -

  *Peter sez:*

*John Holloway, who was once a UK political-economist of the traditional
left, argues in Roar Magazine, the necessity of surpassing the wage-labour
focus and (consequent) state dependency of that tradition. I have been
trying to say this, in arguing the need for a global movement for the
emancipation of labour. But, well, he does it more theoretically, more
forcefully and, I would say, more elegantly than I am capable of doing. He
raises, however, a major challenge to the international left unionism,
represented variously by such bodies as the Global Labour Journal, the
Global Labour Institute, the left unionism in the Third World, and various
other such. One (this one anyway) would really like to see their response
to this piece.*

*Now read on...*
John Holloway: cracking capitalism vs. the state option

by Amador Fernández-Savater on September 29, 2014

[image: Post image for John Holloway: cracking capitalism vs. the state
option]

*With left parties on the rise in Spain and Greece, John Holloway reflects
on his influential 2002 thesis: can we change the world without taking
power?*

*Interview by Amador Fernández-Savater. Translated by Richard Mac
Duinnsleibhe and edited by Arianne Sved* *of Guerrilla Translation
<http://guerrillatranslation.com/>*.

In 2002, John Holloway published a landmark book: *Change the World without
Taking Power* <http://www.plutobooks.com/display.asp?K=9780745329185>.
Inspired by the ‘*¡Ya basta!*’ of the Zapatistas, by the movement that
emerged in Argentina in 2001/’02, and by the anti-globalization movement,
Holloway sets out a hypothesis: it is not the idea of revolution or
transformation of the world that has been refuted as a result of the
disaster of authoritarian communism, but rather the idea of revolution as
the *taking of power*, and of the party as the political tool par
excellence.

Holloway discerns another concept of social change at work in these
movements, and generally in every practice—however visible or invisible it
may be—where a logic different from that of profit is followed: the logic
of cracking capitalism. That is, to create, within the very society that is
being rejected, spaces, moments, or areas of activity in which a different
world is prefigured. Rebellions in motion. From this perspective, the idea
of organization is no longer equivalent to that of the party, but rather
entails the question of how the different cracks that unravel the fabric of
capitalism can recognize each other and connect.

But after Argentina’s “*que se vayan todos*” came the Kirchner government,
and after Spain’s “*no nos representan*” appeared Podemos. We met with John
Holloway in the city of Puebla, Mexico, to ask him if, after everything
that has happened in the past decade, from the progressive governments of
Latin America to Podemos and Syriza in Europe, along with the problems for
self-organized practices to exist and multiply, he still thinks that it is
possible to “change the world without taking power.”

:::::::::::::::::::::::

*Firstly, John, we would like to ask you where the hegemonic idea of
revolution in the 20th century comes from, what it is based on. That is,
the idea of social change through the taking of power.*

I think the central element is labor, understood as wage labor. In other
words, alienated or abstract labor. Wage labor has been, and still is, the
bedrock of the trade union movement, of the social democratic parties that
were its political wing, and also of the communist movements. This concept
defined the revolutionary theory of the labor movement: the struggle of
wage labor against capital. But its struggle was limited because wage labor
is the complement of capital, not its negation.

*I don’t understand the relation between this idea of labor and that of
revolution through the taking of state power.*

One way of understanding the connection would be as follows: if you start
off from the definition of labor as wage or alienated labor, you start off
from the idea of the workers as victims and objects of the system of
domination. And a movement that struggles to improve the living standards
of workers (considered as victims and objects) immediately refers to the
state. Why? Because the state, due to its very separation from society, is
the ideal institution if one seeks to achieve benefits for people. This is
the traditional thinking of the labor movement and that of the left
governments that currently exist in Latin America.

*But this tradition isn’t the only approach to a politics of emancipation…*

Of course not. In the last twenty or thirty years we find a great many
movements that claim something else: it is possible to emancipate human
activity from alienated labor by opening up cracks where one is able to do
things differently, to do something that seems useful, necessary, and
worthwhile to us; an activity that is not subordinated to the logic of
profit.

These cracks can be spatial (places where other social relations are
generated), temporal (“Here, in this event, for the time that we are
together, we are going to do things differently. We are going to open
windows onto another world.”), or related to particular activities or
resources (for example, cooperatives or activities that pursue a non-market
logic with regard to water, software, education, etc.). The world, and each
one of us, is full of these cracks.

The rejection of alienated and alienating labor entails, at the same time,
a critique of the institutional and organizational structures, and the
mindset that springs from it. This is how we can explain the rejection of
trade unions, parties, and the state that we observe in so many
contemporary movements, from the Zapatistas to the Greek or Spanish
*indignados*.

*But it isn’t a question of the opposition between an old and a new
politics, I think. Because what we see in the movements born of the
economic crisis is that those two things come to the fore at the same time:
cracks such as protests in city squares, and new parties such as Syriza or
Podemos.*

I think it’s a reflection of the fact that our experience under capitalism
is contradictory. We are victims and yet we are not. We seek to improve our
living standards as workers, and also to go beyond that, to live
differently. In one respect we are, in effect, people who have to sell
their labor power in order to survive. But in another, each one of us has
dreams, behaviors and projects that don’t fit into the capitalist
definition of labor.

The difficulty, then as now, lies in envisioning the relation between those
two types of movements. How can that relation avoid reproducing the old
sectarianism? How can it be a fruitful relation without denying the
fundamental differences between the two perspectives?

*Argentina in 2001 and 2002, the indignados in Greece and Spain more
recently. At a certain point, bottom-up movements stall, they enter a
crisis or an impasse, or they vanish. Would you say that the politics of
cracks has intrinsic limits in terms of enduring and expanding?*

I wouldn’t call them limits, but rather problems. Ten years ago, when I
published *Change the World without Taking Power*, the achievements and the
power of movements from below were more apparent, whereas now we are more
conscious of the problems. The movements you mention are enormously
important beacons of hope, but capital continues to exist and it’s getting
worse and worse; it progressively entails more misery and destruction. We
cannot confine ourselves to singing the praises of movements. That’s not
enough.

*Could one response then be the option that focuses on the state?*

It’s understandable why people want to go in that direction, very
understandable. These have been years of ferocious struggles, but capital’s
aggression remains unchanged. I sincerely hope that Podemos and Syriza do
win the elections, because that would change the current kaleidoscope of
social struggles. But I maintain all of my objections with regard to the
state option.

Any government of this kind entails channeling aspirations and struggles
into institutional conduits that, by necessity, force one to seek a
conciliation between the anger that these movements express and the
reproduction of capital. Because the existence of any government involves
promoting the reproduction of capital (by attracting foreign investment, or
through some other means), there is no way around it. This inevitably means
taking part in the aggression that is capital. It’s what has already
happened in Bolivia and Venezuela, and it will also be the problem in
Greece or Spain.

*Could it be a matter of complementing the movements from below with a
movement oriented towards government institutions?*

That’s the obvious answer that keeps coming up. But the problem with
obvious answers is that they suppress contradictions. Things can’t be
reconciled so easily. From above, it may be possible to improve people’s
living conditions, but I don’t think one can break with capitalism and
generate a different reality. And I sincerely believe that we’re in a
situation where there are no long-term solutions for the whole of humanity
within capitalism.

I’m not discrediting the state option because I myself don’t have an answer
to offer, but I don’t think it’s the solution.

*Where are you looking for the answer?*

Whilst not considering parties of the left as enemies, since for me this is
certainly not the case, I would say that the answer has to be thought of in
terms of deepening the cracks.

If we’re not going to accept the annihilation of humanity, which, to me,
seems to be on capitalism’s agenda as a real possibility, then the only
alternative is to think that our movements are the birth of another world.
We have to keep building cracks and finding ways of recognizing them,
strengthening them, expanding them, connecting them; seeking the confluence
or, preferably, the commoning of the cracks.

If we think in terms of state and elections, we are straying away from
that, because Podemos or Syriza can improve things, but they cannot create
another world outside the logic of capital. And that’s what this is all
about, I think.

*Finally, John, how do you see the relation between the two perspectives
we’ve been talking about?*

We need to keep a constant and respectful debate going without suppressing
the differences and the contradictions. I think the basis for a dialogue
could be this: no one has the solution.

For the moment, we have to recognize that we’re not strong enough to
abolish capitalism. By strong, I am referring here to building ways of
living that don’t depend on wage labor. To be able to say “I don’t really
care whether I have a job or not, because if I don’t have one, I can
dedicate my life to other things that interest me and that give me enough
sustenance to live decently.” That’s not the case right now. Perhaps we
have to build that before we can say “go to hell, capital.”

In that sense, let’s bear in mind that a precondition for the French
Revolution was that, at a certain point, the social network of bourgeois
relations no longer needed the aristocracy in order to exist. Likewise, we
must work to reach a point where we can say “we don’t care if global
capital isn’t investing in Spain, because we’ve built a mutual support
network that’s strong enough to enable us to live with dignity.”

Right now the rage against banks is spreading throughout the world.
However, I don’t think banks are the problem, but rather the existence of
money as a social relation. How should we think about rage against money? I
believe this necessarily entails building non-monetized, non-commodified
social relations.

And there are a great many people dedicated to this effort, whether out of
desire, conviction or necessity, even though they may not appear in the
newspapers. They’re building other forms of community, of sociality, of
thinking about technology and human capabilities in order to create a new
life.

*John Holloway* *is Professor of Sociology at the Institute of Humanities
and Social Sciences of the Autonomous University of Puebla in Mexico. His
latest book is Crack Capitalism
<http://www.plutobooks.com/display.asp?K=9780745330082&> (Pluto Press,
2010)*.

-- 

   1. *EBook, November 2012: Recovering Internationalism
   <http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/recovering_internationalism/>.  [A
   compilation of papers from the new millenium. Now free in two download
   formats] <http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/world_social_forum/>
   <http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/world_social_forum/>*
   2.
*EBook (co-editor), February 2013: World Social Forum: Critical
   Explorations http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/world_social_forum/
   <http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/world_social_forum/> *
   3. *Interface Journal Special (co-editor), November 2012: For the Global
   Emancipation of Labour <http://www.interfacejournal.net/current/>*
   4. *Blog: http://www.unionbook.org/profile/peterwaterman.
   <http://www.unionbook.org/profile/peterwaterman.> *
   5. *Interface Journal Special (Co-Editor) Social Movement
   Internationalisms. See Call for Papers <http://www.interfacejournal.net/>,
   (Deadline: May 1, 2014). *
   6.
*Needed: a Global Labour Charter Movement (2005-Now!)
   <http://interfacejournal.nuim.ie/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Interface-1-2-pp255-262-Waterman.pdf>*
   7. *Under, Against, Beyond: Labour and Social Movements Confront a
   Globalised, Informatised Capitalism
   <http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/under-against-beyond/>(2011) Almost 1,000
   pages of Working Papers, free, from the 1980 <1980>'s-90's.*
   8. *Google Scholar Citation Index:*
    *http://scholar.google.com.pe/citations?user=e0e6Qa4AAAAJ
   <http://scholar.google.com.pe/citations?user=e0e6Qa4AAAAJ> *


   -


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