Chuck Morse submits "
Chasing the Tornado
Review by Uri Gordon
Review of: The Trajectory of Change by Michael Albert Cambridge, MA:
South End Press, May 2002
Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising by Starhawk Gabriola
Island, BC: New Society Publishers, August 2002
Change the World Without Taking Power by John Holloway London: Pluto
Press, March 2002
From the spring 2003 Issue of
The
New Formulation: An Anti-Authoritarian Review of Books
In the ever-ticklish relationship between practice and theory, a significant
role has always existed for what we can call, for lack of a better name, “movement
literature.” Locke’s Two Treatises, Burke’s Reflections, Paine’s
response in Rights of Man, Marx and Engel’s Manifesto, Lenin’s What
Is To Be Done and Debray’s Critique of Arms—these are only the most
famous examples of works that were deeply rooted in their authors’ concrete
political activity and which reflected and influenced ongoing processes of social
transformation.(1) Not surprisingly, the current upsurge of anti-capitalist
struggle is also accompanied by a great bulk of such literature, with the three
books reviewed here being merely a selection from the most recent crop. Two
of the authors, Michael Albert and Starhawk, are veteran American activists
and the third, Holloway is an involved academic closely following the Zapatista
rebellion. These books all convey an ongoing process of self-assessment by today’s
emancipatory networks. However, each one also displays a completely different
variant of writing-as-activism. Michael Albert’s The Trajectory of Change
adopts a very didactic approach, attempting to identify “problems”
in an allegedly unitary “movement” and sort them out. Starhawk’s
Webs of Power, on the other hand, combines very personal writing with theoretical
reflections that are only gently presented as advice to activists. While Holloway’s
Change the World Without Taking Power could just as well be written without
a coexisting struggle to address—it is an entirely theoretical work in
critical Marxism—it nevertheless captures (and will inevitably impact)
the thinking of activists who read it. Each approach, as we shall shortly see,
has telling results.
A minor point to bear in mind is that all three books were essentially completed
before the September 11th attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. While
the authors still had the time to add some post-September 11th material, they
were limited by the lack of clarity surrounding the full repercussions of these
events and thus unable to take full account of the qualitatively different landscape
of struggle we now face.(2) This might seem to be a significant limitation but
only from a narrow point of view that would assess these books solely in terms
of immediately relevant debates. With Holloway such an approach is pointless,
and even some of the very concrete issues that Albert and Starhawk address remain
timely despite changing circumstances.
The Trajectory of Change
Michael Albert’s collection is the most disappointing of the three. The
articles—most published previously on ZNet and in Z Magazine—are
all aimed at tackling alleged weaknesses of “the movement” in the
United States: slowly expanding participation, defeatist attitudes, activist-ghetto
mentalities, and an over-emphasis on confrontation rather than alternative-building.
Albert doubtlessly has good intentions, and deserves appreciation for being
prepared to face up to such problems (however exaggerated) and offer concrete
suggestions (however flawed). But the main issue I take with this book is, to
risk a cliché, the author’s major attitude problem. Most striking
at first is Albert’s style, which I am sorry to find didactic and patronizing
and which I suspect will alienate many activist readers. Take the following
typical passage:
We need to design movement agendas that inspire widespread interest and provide
means for widespread ongoing participation. We need movement focuses that
are diverse and multiple, that are local, national and international, and
that are continuous, not just annual or bi-annual events.
So which way forward for anti-globalization?
The anti-globalization movement needs to highlight what it is aiming for.
We need to clarify our alternatives for international relations and also what
we mean by a cooperative and just economy.(3)
You get the drift. While making generous use of the first person plural—“we
need,” “we mean”—it is clear that Albert believes he
is addressing an audience rather than collaborating with his equals. An audience,
moreover, that seems to be composed in Albert’s imagination of stereotypically
young, dreddy, campus activists who may have been very cute and doing a nice
job of learning about the world, but now need someone to teach them what real
activism is all about.
But the problem goes deeper than that. Throughout the book the reader will
notice an underlying wish to steer “the movement,” streamline it,
give it a push in the right direction. This betrays not authoritarianism (here
Albert is beyond suspicion), but an almost brute insensitivity to the most basic
logic of activism today. In a nutshell, Albert makes the crucial mistake of
adopting a mechanic rather than organic understanding of anti-capitalist networks.
This consists in the double error of assuming that there is a movement with
clear boundaries and structures, and that it is possible to discursively act
upon it rather than with it. As a result, most of what he says is completely
out of tune with how activists think and operate, and with the values inherent
in both. Who exactly is this ‘we’ that is going to ‘design
movement agendas’? The quarrel here is not that Albert might be imagining
steering committees and vanguards, but that in an organic struggle like this
one, the very idea of “designing” agendas makes no sense. Today’s
movement agendas aren’t “designed,” but rather evolve in the
gradual fruition of a collective consciousness, formed by a million trial-and-error
experiences. Albert should apply the logic of direct action to discourse as
well as struggle. For example, in direct action, when we want something to happen
or stop happening we do not appeal to anyone to do it, but rather make it happen
ourselves and, likewise, if activists believe that struggle should go this way
or another, they do not preach about it to others but rather mount actions or
initiatives that display such a direction and hope that others are inspired
and follow suit. This is precisely the way in which the Zapatistas, Reclaim
the Streets and many others have so successfully made their impact on the evolution
of resistance, often on a global scale, while at the same time living up to
their ideals of decentralization and autonomy.
It seems that Albert never really got around to clicking with this basic dynamic.
His efforts to re-invent the wheel are thus patently out of tune with what is
going on in the activist world—even in the United States, to say nothing
of movements in the global South. One example is his call for a unifying anti-globalization
coalition, which he denominates the “Solidarity with Autonomy Movement.”(4)
This would be some kind of umbrella organization that would stand for the sum
total of everyone’s agenda and enable thorough coordination (of course
with a representative board and a budget). This idea betrays either ignorance
or (worse) a dismissal of the fact that activists in every continent already
have what are probably the most innovative and efficient structures ever seen,
all based on the network model: Peoples’ Global Action, the Direct Action
Network, Indymedia, NoBorder and many named and nameless others. It is networks
like these that have been behind every significant piece of anti-capitalist
organizing and action, South and North, for the past decade—bringing together
everything from millions-strong peasant movements to affinity groups of six.
And such structures provide exactly the kind of “solidarity with autonomy”
that Albert is after without needing a unified platform.
Why is Albert so out of touch? A clue may be found in the essay “My Generation,”(5)
in which he expresses concern about veterans of the 1960s inability to bequeath
their experiences to the young activists of today. And so he goes into a lecture
on the need to avoid sectarian positions, asceticism, “lifestyle politics,”
etc. So here is the key: at heart, Albert is a veteran moved by the hope that
“this time around we can get it right.” He badly wants this cycle
of struggle to be successful, to “win” (whatever that means), and
so he understandably puts his persuasive force behind what he thinks is right.6
However, having a different formative experience as an activist leaves Albert
precisely in “his generation” and out of touch with the very different
logic of today’s struggles. Albert’s political agenda also remains,
to risk a proverbial anarchist accusation, that of a 1960s liberal. While he
occasionally talks of questioning basic social structures, his short-term suggestions
are in no way pregnant with such a project. In fact, for Albert “change
is a combination of a sequence of reforms or limited victories that string together
. . . until, ultimately, we win basic alterations.”(7) This is coupled
with the almost colonial discourse of “bettering the lot of suffering
constituencies,” and the limited notions of “raising the social
costs” of elite actions, so that one can mount demands that they “agree
to implement.”(8)
If this is objectionable, Albert’s response to the post-September 11th
scenario is simply odd: he asserts that the attacks and ensuing war have changed
nothing essential about the basic logic and conditions of dissent. So all he
can recommend is business as usual, with the added anti-war agenda. There is
no mention of the prospects for intense repression, nor of public paralysis
and manufactured social fear. In fact, Albert even thinks that “despite
flag waving patriotic media, way more people than before 9/11 are now seriously
open to discussing world affairs and activism.”(9) A closer look at the
author’s subsequent writing in Z might absolve such statements as stemming
from a momentary lapse of perspective.
Webs of Power
It is an impressive (and somewhat worrying) fact that Starhawk’s personal
announcement e-list has more subscribers than those of the North American and
European networks of Peoples’ Global Action put together. But then again
she has always had an uncanny (magical?) way of putting her finger on the pulse
of anti-capitalist struggle and saying something relevant (if seldom uncontroversial).
Many readers will have thus already encountered the dispatches that form Part
One of this book, covering the two-year period from Seattle to the immediate
aftermath of September 11th. These short pieces combine personal action reports
with reflections on key debates related to each. Starhawk’s very intimate
insiders connection with the development of activism in the North, progressing
as it (unfortunately?) did from one big mobilization to another, provides a
very different reading experience to Albert’s markedly self-distanced
writing. Another contrast is between Starhawk’s very personal and narrative
writing in this section—by itself not without political significance—and
Albert’s didactic and patronizing style. Starhawk is telling her own stories
and sharing her own thoughts and emotions, without pretending to have the entire
picture or full answer.
One of the many interesting threads that runs through Starhawk’s communications
is the development of her position in the violence/nonviolence debate—for
a time the most heated topic surrounding summit protests. Writing after the
International Monetary Fund/World Bank blockades in Prague, she puts herself
squarely on the principled nonviolence side of the dichotomy with statements
such as, “this is a violent system [but] I don’t believe it can
be defeated by violence” and, “as soon as you pick up a rock . .
. you’ve accepted the terms dictated by a system that is always telling
us that force is the only solution.”(10) But after the Quebec City FTAA
protests the picture is different. In the article “Beyond Violence and
Nonviolence”(11) she acknowledges the validity of arguments for “high
confrontational” (no longer “violent”) struggle, and maintains
that couching the debate in the terms she herself earlier used is constricting,
at a time when “we’re moving onto unmapped territory, creating a
politics that has not yet been defined.” By Genoa, Starhawk is prepared
to declare her sisterhood with the black bloc-ers, who represent “rage,
impatience, militant fervor without which we devitalize ourselves.”(12)
Hence she argues for flexibility, diversity of tactics, and above all solidarity
and a collective assessment of the appropriate level of confrontation for each
action. These conclusions—as close as activists have come to solving the
dilemma—are reiterated on the basis of a very deep treatment in the essay
“Many Roads to the Morning” in the second section of the book.
Other essays in the second part address diverse topics such as ecology, direct
democracy and cultural appropriation. These discussions are recommended reading
and it would be impossible to do justice to all of them. So I’ll be nasty
and comment only on what I find to be the weakest part of the book: the penultimate
essay, “What We Want: Economy and Strategy for the End Times.” Here,
Starhawk unfortunately sacrifices the attack on capitalism’s basic relations
for the sake of portraying a non-existent unity of purpose in the “global
justice movement” (whoever coined that term deserves a pie in the face).
As a result, she slips into essentially reformist/regulative positions which
resemble the NGO agenda of the International Forum on Globalization. Most of
the nine principles she cites as “common ground”(13) would have
any attentive anarchist up in arms (and Starhawk says she is one(14)). Saying
that “people who labor deserve to be paid enough to live with dignity”
only makes sense if one assumes that there is someone paying them and one does
not demand the abolition of wage labor. Asserting that there is a “sacred”
realm that should not be commodified or touched by the market “however
it is organized” is accepting that some things can be commodified and
that a market rampant enough to potentially encroach on these areas can be allowed
to exist. Talking about “businesses and enterprises” having to be
“responsible and accountable” to “communities” is to
capitulate to the most insidious capitalism-with-a-human-face jargon (“enterprises”?!
for Goddess’ sake!). That “democratic enterprises” would “encourage
input” from all levels and “favor” self-management and worker
ownership is still a far cry from insisting on worker and community controlled
production. And invoking, of all sources, Hawken, Lovins and Lovins’ Natural
Capitalism to demonstrate the practicality of green technology is hardly entering
into a worthy alliance. Here the devil is not, as Starhawk says, in the details
but rather in the very fundamentals: it is simply false to present such controversial
proposals as matters of agreement. Nor can she fall back on construing them
as merely “minimal” demands while at the same time insisting they
are “commonalities, deep principles and imperatives.” On any consistent
anarchist reading such a program would only serve to rationalize, ameliorate,
and thus delay the overthrow of a system that remains obscenely exploitative
at its base.
But this is really the only major slip. Starhawk’s response to the post-September
11th scenario, for example, is much more encouraging. Far from dismissing it
as Albert does (though unfortunately she does assume a similarly didactic style
here), a very short time after the event she is already clear that the repercussions
would be potentially shattering for radicals. Acknowledging that a major shift
in our thinking is necessary in order to respond to war and social fear, she
recommends several steps. Some of these reflect processes that have subsequently
been happening (continued opposition, open organizing, exposure of the real
aims of the war), but others are still only developing (new strategies and street
tactics, and above all a new political language that can combine and go beyond
existing forms of resistance).(15) If and when these come to fruition in the
future, Starhawk will probably be there to help articulate them.
Change the World Without Taking Power
John Holloway’s text is the deepest and most challenging one among those
reviewed here. One of the things that makes it so interesting is the author’s
attempt to simultaneously negotiate two agendas: rescuing Marxism for contemporary
radical (“negative”) politics and rescuing it from itself (i.e.
from its hegemonization by authoritarian currents).
The Marxist tradition has produced a framework that has often limited and obstructed
the force of negativity. This book is therefore not a Marxist book in the sense
of taking Marxism as a defining framework of reference. The aim is rather to
locate issues that are often described as Marxist in the problematic of negative
thought, in the hope of giving body to negative thought and of sharpening the
Marxist critique of capitalism.(16)
By reformulating the theoretical premises of Marxism to accommodate a globalized
capitalist system and a decentralized anti-authoritarian resistance, Holloway
is in effect attempting a thorough libertarian revision of Marxism—as
a tool for socio-analysis and as an indicator for action. Some readers might
at this point chuck the book across the room, muttering something about “narcissistic
Marxist intellectuals trying to get out of the hole they dug themselves into.”
But a more patient approach is in order here. Not every Marxist is automatically
authoritarian or insincere, and activists today can actually find much of value
in the libertarian elements of this tradition, particular in the young Marx
and the Frankfurt School.
The bulk of material in the earlier chapters of this book is indeed drawn directly
from this tradition.(17) Hence the articulation of capital accumulation in terms
of the conversion of doing into done and of power-to into power-over (chapter
3); the centrality of the concept of fetishism (chapters 4 and 5); the critique
of the “scientific” mainstream of twentieth century Marxism (chapter
7); and the emphasis throughout on the negative character of social struggle
(embodied in Holloway’s pet concept of “the Scream”). The
clear drawback is that readers familiar with these ideas will find little new
in the first 140 pages, with Holloway’s occasional attempt to put this
old (and excellent) wine into new skins sometimes verging on the comical.(18)
But if we look at this part of the book as an introductory text, then it does
a good job of presenting these concepts clearly and accessibly. Importantly,
these ways of conceptualizing social dynamics and struggle will resonate with
contemporary activists, as will Holloway’s clear rejection of both reform
through the state and seizure of state power.
The book really becomes interesting, however, in its closing chapters. Here
Holloway makes an honest attempt to tackle the question of the revolutionary
subject—which now has to be posited afresh in view of the post-structuralist
critique of definitional class categories. Accepting the post-structuralist
premise that all acts of identification are oppressive, he takes a bold step
further by constructing revolutionary subjectivity around the refusal of identification,
the struggle against the social process of class identification and its material
basis:
Class struggle, then, is the struggle to classify and against being classified
. . . the unceasing daily antagonism (whether it be perceived or not) between
alienation and disalienation, between definition and anti-definition, between
fetishization and de-fetishization.
We do not struggle as working class, we struggle against being working class,
against being classified. . . . Struggle arises not from the fact that we
are working class but from the fact that we are-and-are-not working class,
that we exist against-and-beyond being working class, that they try to order
and command us but we do not want to be ordered and commanded, that they try
to separate us from our product and our producing and our humanity and our
selves and we do not want to be separated from all that.(19)
This fundamentally anti-fetishistic stance of the “critical-revolutionary
subject” renders it indefinable, since its act of struggle consists precisely
in escaping the oppressive categories imposed upon it. Here Holloway seems to
be attempting a brave synthesis of post-structuralist and Marxist concepts,
combining the former’s critique of oppressive identity-construction with
the latter’s insistence in the tractability of domination to (in the last
instance) material social relations. Some reworking is still needed here (Holloway’s
insistence on using the term “working class” is one problem—understandable
but also resolvable—as is his retaining of the “us against them”
logic which he earlier rejects), but this is overall a very powerful conception.
It reflects discourses employed today in many struggles, gives an important
place to ubiquitous, everyday-life forms of resistance (from absenteeism to
culture-jamming) and—most importantly—points distinctly towards
the dissolution of all power relations in society rather than their reconfiguration.
The latter aspect can, of course, be easily defined as an anarchist position.
But while Holloway hints at this connection when he defines anarchism as the
set of approaches that fall outside the state-oriented, reform or revolution
dichotomy—which his own project clearly does as well—he refrains
from explicitly using this term to describe what he has to say, or from giving
anarchism any further attention.(20) The objection might be raised that by doing
this he is denying due credit to a 150-year tradition that has aimed precisely
at “changing the world without taking power.” But there is a good
reason for this: the label anarchist is not exempt from the struggle against
identification. Holloway is deliberately avoiding this label and any other,
as do indeed many contemporary activists, even if their visions and organizational
models could be defined as anarchist by an observer. Maybe some self-defined
anarchists will be offended by the lack of credit, but on further reflection
they might understand and let that which does not matter slide.(21)
Holloway goes on to develop his notion of anti-identitarian struggle in the
next two chapters, which are also highly original. First he provides a cogent
critique of some elements in autonomist Marxism, including the first (as far
as I know) critical Marxist engagement with Hardt and Negri’s important
but highly problematic Empire.(22) He then ties his concepts to Marx’s
analysis of crisis in Capital, in reference to the economic crises of the 90s
and the crisis-managing role of today’s “bubble economy.”
Those who begin the book with the hope of receiving a blueprint, a how to “change
the world without taking power,” are left with a question instead. Having
initiated and explored his revision of Marxism for today’s struggles,
Holloway is satisfied with opening up the possibility of revolution in the last
chapter and leaving its meaning for today vague. He does, however, at least
provide an indication:
Revolutionary politics (or better, anti-politics) is the explicit affirmation
in all its infinite richness of that which is denied . . . not just the aim
of creating a society based on the mutual recognition of human dignity and
dignities, but the recognition now, as a guiding principle of organization
and action, of the human dignity which already exists in the form of being
denied, in the struggle against its own denial. . . . [This struggle] is inevitably
both negative and positive, both scream and doing . . .[for example,] strikes
that do not just withdraw labor but point to alternative ways of doing (by
providing different kinds of transport, a different kind of health care);
university protests that do not just close down the university but suggest
a different experience of study; occupations of buildings that turn those
buildings into social centers, centers for a different sort of political action;
revolutionary struggles that do not just try to defeat the government but
to transform the experience of social life.(23)
This is a conception which again will be familiar with many readers. A mature
understanding seems to be shaping in this call-it-what-you-want movement of
ours: the need to complement resistance to power with the investment in new
non-hierarchical, non-commodified spaces of everyday living—social structures
that can deepen and expand until they can replace current ones.24 This is probably
as close as we can come to a transformative strategy that remains coherent and
immediately practicable under any conditions. In more than one way, Holloway
has hit the nail on the head.
Conclusion
This recent crop of movement literature reflects—with all its strengths
and limitations—a collective process of assessment and reconfiguration
that has been taking place in anti-capitalist networks in the North. The capacity
for self-criticism and revision is perhaps one of the strongest attributes of
the current wave of resistance, and it will hopefully carry us through this
difficult stage. As I am writing, activists everywhere are struggling to cope
with a changing landscape of struggle. For the past year, a process has been
taking place which the books I am reviewing here simply could not reflect. Resistance
is quite successfully being diffused, through social fear and the manufacturing
of new enemies, as well as outright repression. Also gaining strength are processes
which seek to co-opt the emancipatory energies created by social movements,
and steer them into reformist strategies and vertical modes of organization.
Both dynamics might result in the collapse (or, more likely, domestication)
of the resistance. Or we could be encountering, very soon, some surprising and
inspiring initiatives. Perhaps our second wind is closer than we think. Maybe
it lies somewhere between a cool April night under the dignified sky of the
Canary Islands and a hot June day on the sun-baked asphalt just outside Evian.
. . .
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Notes
1. This phenomenon is by no means limited to progressive political movements—one
might easily include Mein Kampf in this list.
2. The extent of the systemic reconfiguration that the attacks would excuse,
in terms of both power and ideology, was delineated for us only later. In this
sense the historical marker can be identified not as September 11, 2001 but
as January 29, 2002, with Bush's “Axis of Evil” speech.
3. Michael Albert, The Trajectory of Change (Cambridge, MA: South End Press,
2002), 21.
4. Ibid., 69-73.
5. Ibid., 105-112.
6. Ibid., 113.
7. Ibid., 41.
8. Ibid., vx and elsewhere.
9. Ibid., xv.
10. Starhawk, Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising (Gabriola Island,
BC: New Society Publishers, 2002), 58-9.
11. Ibid., 93-100.
12. Ibid., 123.
13. Ibid., 239-241.
14. Ibid., 93.
15. The current Zapatista initiative around the Basque conflict is probably
the most inspiring response to date (see http://chiapas.indymedia.org). For
perspectives from Western Europe see a discussion paper circulated at the recent
European conference of Peoples’ Global Action (http://global.so36.net/en/2002/08/240.shtml).
16. John Holloway, Change the World Without Taking Power (London: Pluto Press,
2002), 8-9.
17. As a foray into this dazzlingly rich literature see Karl Marx, Economic
and Philosophical Manuscripts (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1844 [1977]); Max
Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno, The Dialectic of Enlightenment (New York: Continuum,
1944 [1999]); Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon, 1964 [1991]);
Ernest Bloch, The Principle of Hope (3 vols.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1959[1986]).
Holloway's use of material stemming directly from contemporary struggle is limited
to a few citations from Subcomandante Marcos' communications. For a very good
selection of these see Marcos, Our Word is Our Weapon (New York: Seven Stories,
2001).
18. One amusing aspect of Holloway's style is that he takes the multi-hyphen
form, invented by translators as a way of dealing with German composite nouns,
and makes it his own. This gives rise to nouns such as “can-ness, capacity-to-do,”
“doing-in-the-service-of-the-expansion-of-ca pital,” or “I-and-we-ness.”
Holloway, Change the World Without Taking Power, 28, 58, 105. Is such second-hand
jargonizing really necessary when writing in English?
19. Ibid., 143-4.
20. Ibid., 12.
21. Cf. David Graeber, “The New Anarchists,” New Left Review 13,
January–February 2002, http://www.newleftreview.net/NLR24704.shtml
22. Holloway, Change the World Without Taking Power, 160-175.
23. Ibid., 212-3.
24. In this context, see also Jared James, Getting Free (http://omega.cc.umb.edu/~salzman/Strategy/Getting Free/Complete.html)
and B. A. Dominick, An Introduction to Dual Power Strategy (http://www.rootmedia.org/~messmedia/dualpower/dpi ntro.htm)
From the spring 2003 Issue of the New
Formulation: An Anti-Authoritarian Review of Books
"
