"Power and the State"

John Holloway

[The following is a transcript of John Holloway’s speech to the London Social Forum in October 2004. Other speakers in the debate were Fausto Bertinotti, Hilary Wainwright and Phil Hearse.]

1. I assume that we are here because we agree on two basic points. Firstly, capitalism is a disaster for humanity and we urgently need a radical social change, a revolution. Secondly, we do not know how such a change can take place. We have ideas, but no certainties. That is why it is important to discuss, respecting our differences and understanding that we are all part of the same movement.

hydrarchist writes: this is from the most recent issue of the multilingual webzine republicart themed around guess what... the Precariat.

A Callcenter In London — A Montage


Marion Hamm

Republicart

"Precarisation" is what the mobilisations for EuroMayday (1) and many publications (2) about the issue of precarity come up with in their search for a missing link between very different life situations in neoliberalised Empire – and maybe even a basis for a shared, radical consciousness. The picture emerging from writings about cognitariat and migration, from the struggles of the US-based "Justice for Janitors" campaign and the intermittents in France, from the intoxicating demonstrations (3) of the EuroMayday Parades and their connectedness with mobilisations for migrant rights, seems to lend justification to the more theoretical reflections.

Nate writes:
Long live the Great Precariat Alliance... and long live the social
precariat's european bio-union



The demonstration saturday [November 6] in Rome has marked the
beginning of a new campaign of union and social mobilization. This
campaign has a transeuropean reach, it breaks with the traditional
sectorial unionism, making the new contradictions of political social
action manifest.

"Homosexuality"

Punkerslut

It was once remarked by Dr. Laura, "What I did say is that when an individual is not so drawn to a member of the opposite sex, in biology, that's some kind of error." Dr. Laura's distaste of Homosexuality is nothing new, and there has been much advocacy against her on part of these views. Others, who hold similar views, have defended her opinions. However, what she said her, it may hold some kernal of truth. It may very well be truth, that biologically, it is an "error," if such a term has any real meaning, for someone to be Homosexual. By pursuing an individual of the same sex, procreation cannot occur. It becomes an impossibility in this scenario. If the natural purpose of every organism is to procreate, that their offspring may also procreate indefinitely, then I have no argument. If it happens to be true, that the purpose of life is simply procreation, of reproducing the old generation, then I cannot deny the truth of the statement, that Homosexuality is "some kind of error." I can present no argument that I genuinely believe, no objection that I sincerely hold as truth. That is, at least, if it is true, that life holds no purpose than creating offspring.

Indyrad writes:

Cyber-movement Against The War
By Adam Roark

On February 15, 2003, 10 million people simultaneously rallied in protest of the pending U.S. invasion of Iraq. It was the largest coordinated protest in the history of the world,(1) kicking off nearly 2 years of mass demonstrations culminating with the 400,000 – 1 million-strong Republican National Convention protest in New York City on August 29, 2004. The swift rise and demise of this movement leads one to question its strength and function; both the spectacular scale of these protests and the coordination of them are noteworthy. The U.S. peace movement in particular largely failed to present itself as ungovernable and effective, acting rather to reaffirm the legitimacy of a political system which had lost substantial credibility following the 1998-2000 crisis.

s0metim3s writes:

The New Protestant Ethic

Arthur Kroker, CTheory

One hundred years after the publication of Max Weber's classic text,
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, the fateful
relationship between Protestantism and capitalism has been renewed in
American political discourse. Except this time it is no longer the
original convergence theorized by Weber between the spirit of
Calvinism and acquisitive capitalism whereby Christianity was
destined to be ultimately secondary to the unfolding historical
project of capitalism, but the opposite. In a contemporary political
climate marked by the resurgence seemingly everywhere of faith-based
politics, capitalism and its historical correlate — modernism —
have actually folded back on themselves, quickly reversing modernist
codes of economic secularism and political pluralism, in the
interests of being reanimated with the evangelical spirit of
religious fundamentalism. What Weber foresaw as a primal compact
between Calvinism and acquisitive capitalism — this migration, first
in Europe and then in Puritan America, of Puritan attitudes towards
personal salvation based on giving witness by habits of frugality,
hard work, and discipline into the essentially acquisitive spirit of
capitalism — has been renewed in new key. On the centennial of The
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, the political
universe is suddenly dominated by the spirit of what might be called
the 'New Protestant Ethic' as the ideological reflex of the age of
networked capitalism and empire politics.

"Corporate Conquest, Global Geopolitics:

Intellectual Property Rights and Bilateral Investment Treaties"

Aziz Choudry, Seedling, January 2005

Since the breakdown of World Trade Organisation talks in Cancun in September 2003, there has been much talk of the rise of bilateralism. But bilateral trade and investment agreements aren’t so much replacing the multilateral agreements that have foreshadowed them in the last decade as working with them to create a ratcheting system to increase the levels of intellectual property protection worldwide. Interestingly, and perhaps more significantly, bilateral trade and investment agreements are also proving to be quite effective in pushing the foreign policy goals of the US and EU.

nolympics writes:

"New New Holland?"
Peter Lamborn Wilson, The Brooklyn Rail

Not for the first time in New York City’s history, a buzz about Secession has begun to be heard—or perhaps a serpentine hiss, depending on your point of view. Several local papers (including NY Press, The Nation, and the Brooklyn Rail,), have recently run articles boosting secession and independence for NYC. People seem to be thinking: “Secession… hmm…What a good idea!”

Jelloul writes:

"Ali Versus Chomsky"

Jelloul

The debate, between supporters of conflicting (either-or) perspectives on Iraq; Sunni Arab versus Shi'i sympathizers, is being increasingly brought into the open — needless to say that our protagonists cannot conceive of any consociational-patriotic alternative.

For example, in a Stockholm conference yesterday evening (April 4, 2005), New Left Review’s Tariq Ali expressed views about the Iraqi Shi’a and the Iranians as "US collaborators;" in particular, he didn’t enjoy the idea of al-Sistani being a Nobel Prize nominee.

Tariq Ali didn’t exactly name Chomsky, whose posture is the opposite in those matters, but the latter’s idea of betting on a Shi’a Crescent-like geopolitical alternative to US domination in the region has been questioned, if only indirectly.

More here.

"Poetry as Revolutionary Praxis:

Philip Lamantia & the Surrealist Movement in the United States"

Franklin Rosemont

"Poetry is neither tempest nor tornado.
It is a majestic and fertile river."
— Isidore Ducasse

"The deepest river makes the least noise."
— Jean du Vergier de Hauranne

The recent passing of our close friend and fellow surrealist Philip Lamantia calls to mind the “difficult first steps” of surrealism in the United States sixty years ago. More importantly, it reminds us of Lamantia’s own dynamic, inspired and inspiring role in the current and ongoing struggle for surrealist revolution — that is, for freedom now and poetry made by all.

Back in the early 1940s — shortly after his expulsion from a San Francisco junior high school for “intellectual delinquency” — Lamantia at fifteen was the first major voice of surrealism in the U.S. André Breton, author of the Surrealist Manifestoes, then living in New York as a refugee from Nazism, wrote him a letter saluting him as “a voice that rises once in a hundred years.”