[P2P-F] Fwd: [NetworkedLabour] Fwd: [Debate-List] (Fwd) David Harvey on capitalism, labour, consumption, organising and limits to anarchism

[Michel Bauwens]

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Date: Sun, Dec 20, 2015 at 1:55 PM
Subject: [NetworkedLabour] Fwd: [Debate-List] (Fwd) David Harvey on
capitalism, labour, consumption, organising and limits to anarchism
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*From:* Patrick Bond <pbond at mail.ngo.za>
*Date:* 20 Dec 2015 07:19:24 GMT+1
*To:* DEBATE <debate-list at fahamu.org>, progeconnetwork at googlegroups.com, "
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*Subject:* *[Debate-List] (Fwd) David Harvey on capitalism, labour,
consumption, organising and limits to anarchism*
*Reply-To:* pbond at mail.ngo.za

*Consolidating Power *

David Harvey
December 9, 2015
Roar Magazine

https://roarmag.org/magazine/david-harvey-consolidating-power/

David Harvey, one of the leading Marxist thinkers of our times, sits down
with the activist collective AK Malabocas to discuss the transformations in
the mode of capital accumulation, the centrality of the urban terrain in
contemporary class struggles, and the implications of all this for
anti-capitalist organizing.



*AK Malabocas: In the last forty years, the mode of capital accumulation
has changed globally. What do these changes mean for the struggle against
capitalism?*

David Harvey: From a macro-perspective, any mode of production tends to
generate a very distinctive kind of opposition, which is a curious mirrored
image of itself. If you look back to the 1960s or 1970s, when capital was
organized in big corporatist, hierarchical forms, you had oppositional
structures that were corporatist, unionist kinds of political apparatuses.
In other words, a Fordist system generated a Fordist kind of opposition.

With the breakdown of this form of industrial organization, particularly in
the advanced capitalist countries, you ended up with a much more
decentralized configuration of capital: more fluid over space and time than
previously thought. At the same time we saw the emergence of an opposition
that is about networking and decentralization and that doesn’t like
hierarchy and the previous Fordist forms of opposition.

So, in a funny sort of way, the leftists reorganize themselves in the same
way capital accumulation is reorganized. If we understand that the left is
a mirror image of what we are criticizing, then maybe what we should do is
to break the mirror and get out of this symbiotic relationship with what we
are criticizing.

*In the Fordist era, the factory was the main site of resistance. Where can
we find it now that capital has moved away from the factory floor towards
the urban terrain?*

First of all, the factory-form has not disappeared—you still find factories
in Bangladesh or in China. What is interesting is how the mode of
production in the core cities changed. For example, the logistics sector
has undergone a huge expansion: UPS, DHL and all of these delivery workers
are producing enormous values nowadays.

Why would we say that producing cars is more important than producing
hamburgers? Unfortunately the left is not comfortable with the idea of
organizing fast-food workers.

In the last decades, a huge shift has occurred in the service sector as
well: the biggest employers of labor in the 1970s in the US were General
Motors, Ford and US Steel. The biggest employers of labor today are
McDonalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Walmart. Back then, the factory was
the center of the working class, but today we find the working class mainly
in the service sector. And why would we say that producing cars is more
important than producing hamburgers?

Unfortunately the left is not comfortable with the idea of organizing
fast-food workers. Its picture of the classical working class doesn’t fit
with value production of the service workers, the delivery workers, the
restaurant workers, the supermarket workers.

The proletariat did not disappear, but there is a new proletariat which has
very different characteristics from the traditional one the left used to
identify as the vanguard of the working class. In this sense, the McDonalds
workers became the steel workers of the twenty-first century.

*If this is what the new proletariat is about, where are the places to
organize resistance now?*

It’s very difficult to organize in the workplaces. For example, delivery
drivers are moving all over the place. So this population could maybe be
better organized outside the working place, meaning in their neighborhood
structures.

There is already an interesting phrase in Gramsci’s work from 1919 saying
that organizing in the workplace and having workplace councils is all well,
but we should have neighborhood councils, too. And the neighborhood
councils, he said, have a better understanding of what the conditions of
the whole working class are compared to the sectoral understanding of
workplace organizing.

Workplace organizers used to know very well what a steelworker was, but
they didn’t understand what the proletariat was about as a whole. The
neighborhood organization would then include for example the street
cleaners, the house workers, the delivery drivers. Gramsci never really
took this up and said: ‘come on, the Communist Party should organize
neighborhood assemblies!’

Nevertheless, there are a few exceptions in the European context where
Communist Parties did in fact organize neighborhood councils—because they
couldn’t organize in the workplace, like in Spain for example. In the 1960s
this was a very powerful form of organizing. Therefore—as I have argued for
a very long time—we should look at the organization of neighborhoods as a
form of class organization. Gramsci only mentioned it once in his writings
and he never pursued it further.

We should look at the organization of neighborhoods as a form of class
organization.

In Britain in the 1980s, there were forms of organizing labor in city-wide
platforms on the basis of trades councils, which were doing what Gramsci
suggested. But within the union movement these trades councils were always
regarded as inferior forms of organizing labor. They were never treated as
being foundational to how the union movement should operate.

In fact, it turned out that the trades councils were often much more
radical than the conventional trade unions and that was because they were
rooted in the conditions of the whole working class, not only the often
privileged sectors of the working-class. So, to the extent that they had a
much broader definition of the working class, the trades councils tended to
have much more radical politics. But this was never valorized by the trade
union movement in general—it was always regarded as a space where the
radicals could play.

The advantages of this form of organizing are obvious: it overcomes the
split between sectoral organizing, it includes all kinds of
“deterritorialized” labor, and it is very suitable to new forms of
community and assembly-based organization, as Murray Bookchin was
advocating, for example.

*In the recent waves of protest—in Spain and Greece, for instance, or in
the Occupy movement—you can find this idea of “localizing resistance.” It
seems that these movements tend to organize around issues of everyday life,
rather than the big ideological questions that the traditional left used to
focus on.*

Why would you say that organizing around everyday life is not one of the
big questions? I think it is one of the big questions. More than half of
the world’s population lives in cities, and everyday life in cities is what
people are exposed to and have their difficulties in. These difficulties
reside as much in the sphere of the realization of value as in the sphere
of the production of value.

This is one of my very important theoretical arguments: everybody reads
Volume I of Capital and nobody reads Volume II. Volume I is about the
production of value, Volume II is about the realization of value. Focusing
on Volume II, you clearly see that the conditions of realization are just
as important as the conditions of production.

Class struggles over realization—over affordable housing, for example—are
just as significant for the working class as struggles of wages and work
conditions. What is the point of having a higher wage if it is immediately
taken back in terms of higher housing costs?

Marx often talks about the necessity of seeing capital as the contradictory
unity between production and realization. Where value is produced and where
it is realized are two different things. For example, a lot of value is
produced in China and is actually realized by Apple or by Walmart in the
United States. And, of course, the realization of value is about the
realization of value by means of expensive working-class consumption.

Capital might concede higher wages at the point of production, but then it
recuperates it at the point of realization by the fact that working people
have to pay much higher rents and housing costs, telephone costs, credit
card costs and so on. So class struggles over realization—over affordable
housing, for example—are just as significant for the working class as
struggles of wages and work conditions. What is the point of having a
higher wage if it is immediately taken back in terms of higher housing
costs?

In their relationship to the working class, capitalists long ago learned
that they can make a lot of money out of taking back what they have given
away. And, to the degree that—particularly in the 1960s and 1970s—workers
became increasingly empowered in the sphere of consumption, capital starts
to concentrate much more on pulling back value through consumption.

So the struggles in the sphere of realization, which where not that strong
in Marx’s times, and the fact that nobody reads the damn book (Volume II),
is a problem for the conventional left. When you say to me: ‘what is the
macro-problem here?’—well, this is a macro-problem! The conception of
capital and the relation between production and realization. If you don’t
see the contradictory unity between both then you will not get the whole
picture. Class struggle is written all over it and I can’t understand why a
lot of Marxists can’t get their head around how important this is.

The problem is how we understand Marx in 2015. In Marx’s times, the extent
of urbanization was relatively convenient and the consumerism of the
working class was almost non-existent, so all Marx had to talk about was
that the working class manages to survive on a meager wage and that they
are very sophisticated in doing that. Capital left them to their own
devices to do what they like.

But nowadays we are in a world where consumerism is responsible for about
30 percent of the dynamic of the global economy—in the US it’s even 70
percent. So why are we sitting here and saying consumerism is kind of
irrelevant, sticking to Volume I and talking about production and not about
consumerism?

What urbanization does is to force us into certain kinds of consumerism,
for example: you have to have an automobile. So your lifestyle is dictated
in lots of ways by the form urbanization takes. And again, in Marx’s days
this wasn’t significant, but in our days this is crucial. We have to get
around with forms of organizing that actually recognize this change in the
dynamic of class struggle.

*Given this shift, the left would definitely have to adjust its tactics and
forms of organizing, as well as its conception of what to organize for.*

The groups that stamped the recent movements with their character, coming
from the anarchist and autonomist traditions, are much more embedded in the
politics of everyday life, much more than the traditional Marxists.

I am very sympathetic to the anarchists, they have a much better line on
this, precisely in dealing with the politics of consumption and their
critique of what consumerism is about. Part of their objective is to change
and reorganize everyday life around new and different principles. So I
think this is a crucial point to which a lot of political action has to be
directed these days. But I disagree with you in saying that this is no “big
question.”

*So, looking at examples from southern Europe—solidarity networks in
Greece, self-organization in Spain or Turkey—these seem to be very crucial
for building social movements around everyday life and basic needs these
days. Do you see this as a promising approach?*

I think it is very promising, but there is a clear self-limitation in it,
which is a problem for me. The self-limitation is the reluctance to take
power at some point. Bookchin, in his last book, says that the problem with
the anarchists is their denial of the significance of power and their
inability to take it. Bookchin doesn’t go this far, but I think it is the
refusal to see the state as a possible partner to radical transformation.

There is a tendency to regard the state as being the enemy, the 100 percent
enemy. And there are plenty of examples of repressive states out of public
control where this is the case. No question: the capitalist state has to be
fought, but without dominating state power and without taking it on you
quickly get into the story of what happened for example in 1936 and 1937 in
Barcelona and then all over Spain. By refusing to take the state at a
moment where they had the power to do it, the revolutionaries in Spain
allowed the state to fall back into the hands of the bourgeoisie and the
Stalinist wing of the Communist movement—and the state got reorganized and
smashed the resistance.

*That might be true for the Spanish state in the 1930s, but if we look at
the contemporary neoliberal state and the retreat of the welfare state,
what is left of the state to be conquered, to be seized?*

To begin with, the left is not very good at answering the question of how
we build massive infrastructures. How will the left build the Brooklyn
bridge, for example? Any society relies on big infrastructures,
infrastructures for a whole city—like the water supply, electricity and so
on. I think that there is a big reluctance among the left to recognize that
therefore we need some different forms of organization.

The left is not very good at answering the question of how we build massive
infrastructures, for which we need some different forms of organization.

There are wings of the state apparatus, even of the neoliberal state
apparatus, which are therefore terribly important—the center of disease
control, for example. How do we respond to global epidemics such as Ebola
and the like? You can’t do it in the anarchist way of DIY-organization.
There are many instances where you need some state-like forms of
infrastructure. We can’t confront the problem of global warming through
decentralized forms of confrontations and activities alone.

One example that is often mentioned, despite its many problems, is the
Montreal Protocol to phase out the use of chlorofluorocarbon in
refrigerators to limit the depletion of the ozone layer. It was
successfully enforced in the 1990s but it needed some kind of organization
that is very different to the one coming out of assembly-based politics.

*From an anarchist perspective, I would say that it is possible to replace
even supra-national institutions like the WHO with confederal organizations
which are built from the bottom up and which eventually arrive at worldwide
decision-making.*

Maybe to a certain degree, but we have to be aware that there will always
be some kind of hierarchies and we will always face problems like
accountability or the right of recourse. There will be complicated
relationships between, for example, people dealing with the problem of
global warming from the standpoint of the world as a whole and from the
standpoint of a group that is on the ground, let’s say in Hanover or
somewhere, and that wonders: ‘why should we listen to what they are saying?’

*So you believe this would require some form of authority?*

No, there will be authority structures anyway—there will always be. I have
never been in an anarchist meeting where there was no secret authority
structure. There is always this fantasy of everything being horizontal, but
I sit there and watch and think: ‘oh god, there is a whole hierarchical
structure in here—but it’s covert.’

*Coming back to the recent protests around the Mediterranean: many
movements have focused on local struggles. What is the next step to take
towards social transformation?*

At some point we have to create organizations which are able to assemble
and enforce social change on a broader scale. For example, will Podemos in
Spain be able to do that? In a chaotic situation like the economic crisis
of the last years, it is important for the left to act. If the left doesn’t
make it, then the right-wing is the next option. I think—and I hate to say
this—but I think the left has to be more pragmatic in relation to the
dynamics going on right now.

*More pragmatic in what sense?*

Well, why did I support SYRIZA even though it is not a revolutionary party?
Because it opened a space in which something different could happen and
therefore it was a progressive move for me.

It is a bit like Marx saying: the first step to freedom is the limitation
of the length of the working day. Very narrow demands open up space for
much more revolutionary outcomes, and even when there isn’t any possibility
for any revolutionary outcomes, we have to look for compromise solutions
which nevertheless roll back the neoliberal austerity nonsense and open the
space where new forms of organizing can take place.

Narrow demands open up space for more revolutionary outcomes.

For example, it would be interesting if Podemos looked towards organizing
forms of democratic confederalism—because in some ways Podemos originated
with lots of assembly-type meetings taking place all over Spain, so they
are very experienced with the assembly structure.

The question is how they connect the assembly-form to some permanent forms
of organization concerning their upcoming position as a strong party in
Parliament. This also goes back to the question of consolidating power: you
have to find ways to do so, because without it the bourgeoisie and
corporate capitalism are going to find ways to reassert it and take the
power back.

*What do you think about the dilemma of solidarity networks filling the
void after the retreat of the welfare state and indirectly becoming a
partner of neoliberalism in this way?*

There are two ways of organizing. One is a vast growth of the NGO sector,
but a lot of that is externally funded, not grassroots, and doesn’t tackle
the question of the big donors who set the agenda—which won’t be a radical
agenda. Here we touch upon the privatization of the welfare state.

This seems to me to be very different politically from grassroots
organizations where people are on their own, saying: ‘OK, the state doesn’t
take care of anything, so we are going to have to take care of it by
ourselves.’ That seems to me to be leading to forms of grassroots
organization with a very different political status.

*But how to avoid filling that gap by helping, for example, unemployed
people not to get squeezed out by neoliberal state?*

Well there has to be an anti-capitalist agenda, so that when the group
works with people everybody knows that it is not only about helping them to
cope but that there is an organized intent to politically change the system
in its entirety. This means having a very clear political project, which is
problematic with decentralized, non-homogenous types of movements where
somebody works one way, others work differently and there is no collective
or common project.

This connects to the very first question you raised: there is no
coordination of what the political objectives are. And the danger is that
you just help people cope and there will be no politics coming out of it.
For example, Occupy Sandy helped people get back to their houses and they
did terrific work, but in the end they did what the Red Cross and federal
emergency services should have done.

*The end of history seems to have passed already. Looking at the actual
conditions and concrete examples of anti-capitalist struggle, do you think
“winning” is still an option?*

Definitely, and moreover, you have occupied factories in Greece, solidarity
economies across production chains being forged, radical democratic
institutions in Spain and many beautiful things happening in many other
places. There is a healthy growth of recognition that we need to be much
broader concerning politics among all these initiatives.

The Marxist left tends to be a little bit dismissive of some of this stuff
and I think they are wrong. But at the same time I don’t think that any of
this is big enough on its own to actually deal with the fundamental
structures of power that need to be challenged. Here we talk about nothing
less than a state. So the left will have to rethink its theoretical and
tactical apparatus.


David Harvey is the Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography
at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). His most
recent book is Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism (Profile,
2014).

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