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en:theorie_communiste:the_glass_floor [Y-m-dH:i]
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| ====== The Glass Floor ====== | ====== The Glass Floor ====== |
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| :: Théorie communiste((This text is the introduction for the book //Les Emeutes en Grèce//, published by Senonevero in April 2009.)) | :: **Théorie communiste**((This text is the introduction for the book //Les Emeutes en Grèce//, published by Senonevero in April 2009.)) |
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| The riots((The Greek term //εξέγερση// [ekseyersi] was widely used by the participants themselves to describe what was going on, this term can be translated as “uprising”, “rebellion”, “insurrection”, “riot”. “Unrest” is too neutral; “llion” does not imply any specific forms of action; “insurrection” is too strong for what really happened in Greece, as what was at stake was never to overthrow the power in place and the relations of production it expresses: there was neither the will, nor the possibility to do such a thing;. “Riot” corresponds to the practical form of the uprising, to its spontaneous character and to the “rebellion” as refusal that manifested itself in it.)) (or the riot, spread out and fragmented in time and space) which broke out in Greece following the murder of the young Alexander on the evening of 6th December 2008, are productive of theory. They are practically -- that is to say consciously -- the self-understanding of this cycle of struggles in its current phase -- they are a theoretical and chronological landmark. With all its limits, this movement is the first proletarian reaction (albeit non-global) to the crisis of restructured capital. In terms of its production of theory, this movement can be considered, more or less arbitrarily, according to six essential characteristics: | The riots((The Greek term //εξέγερση// [ekseyersi] was widely used by the participants themselves to describe what was going on, this term can be translated as “uprising”, “rebellion”, “insurrection”, “riot”. “Unrest” is too neutral; “rebellion” does not imply any specific forms of action; “insurrection” is too strong for what really happened in Greece, as what was at stake was never to overthrow the power in place and the relations of production it expresses: there was neither the will, nor the possibility to do such a thing;. “Riot” corresponds to the practical form of the uprising, to its spontaneous character and to the “rebellion” as refusal that manifested itself in it.)) (or the riot, spread out and fragmented in time and space) which broke out in Greece following the murder of the young Alexander on the evening of 6th December 2008, are productive of theory. They are practically -- that is to say consciously -- the self-understanding of this cycle of struggles in its current phase -- they are a theoretical and chronological landmark. With all its limits, this movement is the first proletarian reaction (albeit non-global) to the crisis of restructured capital. In terms of its production of theory, this movement can be considered, more or less arbitrarily, according to six essential characteristics: |
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| * The praxis and discourse of these riots make of the current crisis of capitalist reproduction a crisis of the //future// of this mode of production. | * The praxis and discourse of these riots make of the current crisis of capitalist reproduction a crisis of the //future// of this mode of production. |
| The riots in Greece show the end of the period that started, in the current cycle, with the strike wave in 1995 in France and the “anti-summit” gatherings of the end of the 90s, that is to say the end of //radical democratism//((What we describe as radical democratism does not only designate an ideology (”citizenism”). It is also a praxis whose content consists in the formalisation and fixation of the limits of the current struggles in their specificity. The revolutionary dynamic of this cycle of struggle is at the very same time its intrinsic limit. The class has no longer any confirmation of its existence for itself in the face of capital. This means that the proletariat produces all of what it is, its whole existence in the categories of capital, and this is why it can abolish it. But radical democratism formalises also the whole limit of the struggles of this period: to fix the existence of the class in capital. All of this is very real in class struggle and there is a //party of the alternative// whose existence becomes the justification of its ideology. For radical democratism, the critique of the capitalist mode of production is limited to the necessity for the proletariat to control its conditions of existence. For this purpose, this social movement finds in the democracy that it calls radical the most general form and content of its existence and its action (management, control). The proletarian is replaced by the citizen and the revolution by the alternative. The movement is large: from forces which only demand an adjustment, capitalism with a human face, to alternative perspectives which see themselves as breaking with capitalism while remaining in a problematic of control and management.)) as the expression and fixation of the limits of class struggle. No other future is possible, because there is no longer a future: //the alternative is dead//. | The riots in Greece show the end of the period that started, in the current cycle, with the strike wave in 1995 in France and the “anti-summit” gatherings of the end of the 90s, that is to say the end of //radical democratism//((What we describe as radical democratism does not only designate an ideology (”citizenism”). It is also a praxis whose content consists in the formalisation and fixation of the limits of the current struggles in their specificity. The revolutionary dynamic of this cycle of struggle is at the very same time its intrinsic limit. The class has no longer any confirmation of its existence for itself in the face of capital. This means that the proletariat produces all of what it is, its whole existence in the categories of capital, and this is why it can abolish it. But radical democratism formalises also the whole limit of the struggles of this period: to fix the existence of the class in capital. All of this is very real in class struggle and there is a //party of the alternative// whose existence becomes the justification of its ideology. For radical democratism, the critique of the capitalist mode of production is limited to the necessity for the proletariat to control its conditions of existence. For this purpose, this social movement finds in the democracy that it calls radical the most general form and content of its existence and its action (management, control). The proletarian is replaced by the citizen and the revolution by the alternative. The movement is large: from forces which only demand an adjustment, capitalism with a human face, to alternative perspectives which see themselves as breaking with capitalism while remaining in a problematic of control and management.)) as the expression and fixation of the limits of class struggle. No other future is possible, because there is no longer a future: //the alternative is dead//. |
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| > Recall the anti-WTO demonstrations and the ‘Battle of Seattle’ in 1999 which opened a new era of non-violent protest and grassroots activism((Mike Davis here forgets the importance of the clashes between the Black Blocks and the police in the importance and the dynamic of these counter-summits. If it does not change anything to the general analysis presented in this quotation, this lack prevents the understanding of the very contradictions of this period of radical democratism and therefore to understand that, in the current situation, are soon to be overcome //both// radical democratism //and// the autonomisation of the dynamic of this cycle of struggle, that is to say the putting into question of one's class belonging as something to be realised //in the face of// capital rather than being intrinsic to the contradiction that is exploitation: in both cases another life was possible as an alternative.)). The tremendous popularity of the World Social Forums, the millions-strong turnouts to protest Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the widespread support for the Kyoto Accord -- all augured enormous hope that an ‘alter monde’ might yet be born. Meanwhile, the war did not end, greenhouse gas emissions soared, and the social forum movement has languished. An entire cycle of protest came to an end just as the Wall Street boiler-room of globalized capitalism exploded, leaving in its wake both more radical problems and new opportunities for radicalism. The revolt in Athens ends the recent drought of anger. Its cadre seems to have little tolerance for hopeful slogans or optimistic solutions, thus distinguishing itself from the utopian demands of 1968 or the wishful spirit of 1999. This absence of demands for reform (and, thus, any conventional handle for managing the protests), of course, is what is most scandalous, not the Molotov cocktails or broken shop windows. It recalls not so much the student left of the 1960s as the intransigent revolts of underclass anarchism in Montmartre in the 1890s or Barcelona’s Barrio Chino during the early 1930s.((Mike Davis, op.cit. http://www.flexmens.org/drupal/?q=Griots_De_rellen_in_Athene_als_vonk_die_het_vuur_doet_oplaaien)) | > Recall the anti-WTO demonstrations and the “Battle of Seattle” in 1999 which opened a new era of non-violent protest and grassroots activism((Mike Davis here forgets the importance of the clashes between the Black Blocks and the police in the importance and the dynamic of these counter-summits. If it does not change anything to the general analysis presented in this quotation, this lack prevents the understanding of the very contradictions of this period of radical democratism and therefore to understand that, in the current situation, are soon to be overcome //both// radical democratism //and// the autonomisation of the dynamic of this cycle of struggle, that is to say the putting into question of one's class belonging as something to be realised //in the face of// capital rather than being intrinsic to the contradiction that is exploitation: in both cases another life was possible as an alternative.)). The tremendous popularity of the World Social Forums, the millions-strong turnouts to protest Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the widespread support for the Kyoto Accord -- all augured enormous hope that an “alter monde” might yet be born. Meanwhile, the war did not end, greenhouse gas emissions soared, and the social forum movement has languished. An entire cycle of protest came to an end just as the Wall Street boiler-room of globalized capitalism exploded, leaving in its wake both more radical problems and new opportunities for radicalism. The revolt in Athens ends the recent drought of anger. Its cadre seems to have little tolerance for hopeful slogans or optimistic solutions, thus distinguishing itself from the utopian demands of 1968 or the wishful spirit of 1999. This absence of demands for reform (and, thus, any conventional handle for managing the protests), of course, is what is most scandalous, not the Molotov cocktails or broken shop windows. It recalls not so much the student left of the 1960s as the intransigent revolts of underclass anarchism in Montmartre in the 1890s or Barcelona’s Barrio Chino during the early 1930s.((Mike Davis, op.cit. http://www.flexmens.org/drupal/?q=Griots_De_rellen_in_Athene_als_vonk_die_het_vuur_doet_oplaaien)) |
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| The lack of future lies not only in the disappearance of the promise of a better life, but also in the putting at stake of the possibility of being able to survive and to reproduce one’s own body, as made of flesh and bones. And, wanted or not, proletarians are made of flesh and bones. This is not their fault: to be made of flesh and bones is a completely //social// constraint and a social condition, the proletarian is the first purely physical worker, a subjectivity without object (he has no objective or personal relation to any means of production or subsistence). When the proletariat is attacked in its physical constitution, it is its social definition which is at stake. | The lack of future lies not only in the disappearance of the promise of a better life, but also in the putting at stake of the possibility of being able to survive and to reproduce one’s own body, as made of flesh and bones. And, wanted or not, proletarians are made of flesh and bones. This is not their fault: to be made of flesh and bones is a completely //social// constraint and a social condition, the proletarian is the first purely physical worker, a subjectivity without object (he has no objective or personal relation to any means of production or subsistence). When the proletariat is attacked in its physical constitution, it is its social definition which is at stake. |
| In certain conditions and configurations of class struggle, practices may arise which //for themselves//, depart from the other moments of exploitation. It is then fundamentally within the relation of exploitation, in practice, that the proletariat produces capital as coercion, as an exterior constraint within the class relation itself. At the same time, at the other pole of the contradiction, the reproduction of capital becomes corruption, racketeering, and nepotism. In a crisis of reproduction that, as in Greece, brings at the forefront as the foundation of society the institutional and business-orientated bodies in charge of its reproduction, the self-presupposition of capital seems to have become crazy. What is nothing but coercion on one side appears as pure racketeering and corruption on the other. The “contract” is broken: | In certain conditions and configurations of class struggle, practices may arise which //for themselves//, depart from the other moments of exploitation. It is then fundamentally within the relation of exploitation, in practice, that the proletariat produces capital as coercion, as an exterior constraint within the class relation itself. At the same time, at the other pole of the contradiction, the reproduction of capital becomes corruption, racketeering, and nepotism. In a crisis of reproduction that, as in Greece, brings at the forefront as the foundation of society the institutional and business-orientated bodies in charge of its reproduction, the self-presupposition of capital seems to have become crazy. What is nothing but coercion on one side appears as pure racketeering and corruption on the other. The “contract” is broken: |
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| > All this [people’s misery] takes place in the midst of a crazy dance of millions landing in priestly businesses [a reference to the land swap scandal of Mount Athos] and doped-up Olympic athletes who are paid extravagantly to ‘glorify the homeland’. Money that ends up in the pockets of the moneyed and powerful. From bribes to ‘compadres’ and haggling of scandalous DVDs with corrupt journalists in order to cover-up government ‘scandals’. While dozens of lives are wasted in forest-fires to allow big capital to turn forests into tourist businesses and while worker deaths in construction sites and in the streets are dubbed ‘work accidents’ (Leaflet, //Nothing will ever be the same//, http://libcom.org/news/nothing-will-ever-be-same-22122008). | > All this [people’s misery] takes place in the midst of a crazy dance of millions landing in priestly businesses [a reference to the land swap scandal of Mount Athos] and doped-up Olympic athletes who are paid extravagantly to “glorify the homeland”. Money that ends up in the pockets of the moneyed and powerful. From bribes to “compadres” and haggling of scandalous DVDs with corrupt journalists in order to cover-up government “scandals”. While dozens of lives are wasted in forest-fires to allow big capital to turn forests into tourist businesses and while worker deaths in construction sites and in the streets are dubbed “work accidents” (Leaflet, //Nothing will ever be the same//, http://libcom.org/news/nothing-will-ever-be-same-22122008). |
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| In Greece, the crisis of reproduction, the running out of future, has designated the sociological categories which are its actors (university and high-school students, second generation immigrants, precarious workers) and constructed the social category that is its synthesis: the youth. | In Greece, the crisis of reproduction, the running out of future, has designated the sociological categories which are its actors (university and high-school students, second generation immigrants, precarious workers) and constructed the social category that is its synthesis: the youth. |
| But this fraction does not content itself with the //denunciation// of the existing union, while waiting for the formation of a new coordination or preparing for it. It appeals to the autonomy and the self-organisation of the working-class. Lastly, the aim to be reached is defined in the text/leaflet //Nothing will ever be the same// (see above): | But this fraction does not content itself with the //denunciation// of the existing union, while waiting for the formation of a new coordination or preparing for it. It appeals to the autonomy and the self-organisation of the working-class. Lastly, the aim to be reached is defined in the text/leaflet //Nothing will ever be the same// (see above): |
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| > The destruction of the temples of consumption, the reappropriation of goods, the ‘looting’, that is, of all these things that are taken from us, while they bombard us with advertisements, is the deep realisation that all this wealth is ours, because we produce it. […] This wealth does not belong to the shop-owners, or the bankers, this wealth is our sweat and blood. […] A society where everybody will decide collectively in general meetings of schools, universities, workplaces and neighbourhoods | > The destruction of the temples of consumption, the reappropriation of goods, the “looting”, that is, of all these things that are taken from us, while they bombard us with advertisements, is the deep realisation that all this wealth is ours, because we produce it. […] This wealth does not belong to the shop-owners, or the bankers, this wealth is our sweat and blood. […] A society where everybody will decide collectively in general meetings of schools, universities, workplaces and neighbourhoods |
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| Such a perspective of appropriation not only does not make any sense but is also the most beautiful homage that one could pay to this society (let us not comment on a “society” where there will still be schools, universities and workplaces). | Such a perspective of appropriation not only does not make any sense but is also the most beautiful homage that one could pay to this society (let us not comment on a “society” where there will still be schools, universities and workplaces). |
| > As far as immigrants are concerned, Albanians of second generation participated mostly in the attacks against cops and buildings and immigrants of other origin -- mostly Afghans and Africans -- confined themselves to looting. (TPTG and Blaumachen, op.cit.) | > As far as immigrants are concerned, Albanians of second generation participated mostly in the attacks against cops and buildings and immigrants of other origin -- mostly Afghans and Africans -- confined themselves to looting. (TPTG and Blaumachen, op.cit.) |
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| The militants of “Athens’ Haunt of Albanian Migrants” distributed a leaflet on the 15th of December at a student picket line outside the police headquarters, stating their share in the riots, //‘These days are ours, too’//. The acid attack against Konstantina Kuneva, the Bulgarian union member of a cleaning company that was a little too recalcitrant, during this period of riots, cannot be just a coincidence. For the capitalist class, it is not simply a matter of fighting but also of //punishing//. Eventually, it is the proletariat as a whole that will have to be treated as //ilots//((The ilots, who belonged to ancient populations under the sway of Sparta, were State slaves, attached to the land and obliged to pay ground-rent, granted by the city to specific citizens. They did not have any political rights, but they were numerous and the Spartans feared their revolts.)) within the capitalist mode of production. | The militants of “Athens’ Haunt of Albanian Migrants” distributed a leaflet on the 15th of December at a student picket line outside the police headquarters, stating their share in the riots, //“These days are ours, too”//. The acid attack against Konstantina Kuneva, the Bulgarian union member of a cleaning company that was a little too recalcitrant, during this period of riots, cannot be just a coincidence. For the capitalist class, it is not simply a matter of fighting but also of //punishing//. Eventually, it is the proletariat as a whole that will have to be treated as //ilots//((The ilots, who belonged to ancient populations under the sway of Sparta, were State slaves, attached to the land and obliged to pay ground-rent, granted by the city to specific citizens. They did not have any political rights, but they were numerous and the Spartans feared their revolts.)) within the capitalist mode of production. |
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| We have to consider seriously the fact that we are engaged in a class struggle which is a large historical movement, with its deep tendencies, its restructurings, its //necessities//, but we are engaged in it //each day as it comes//. It is in the incessant interaction between all these levels, between the specific and the general, that we make our way, that we have to weigh our actions and those of our adversaries. (Along the same lines, Marx says somewhere that one should not take chance into account, because the events which occur by chance, by definition, go in all directions and, at the end, cancel each other; this is true, but within a long series and in the long run). The same can be said about the aggression (at that point) against Konstantina Kuneva and the shooting at the police, which was probably a provocative manoeuvre. It is possible to say that these things have little interest as long as we find ourselves far from them, chronologically or otherwise. But for anybody involved in the events, this position is impossible to hold. In Italy, after Piazza Fontana, the Italicus and Bologna station, it would have been unrealistic to be indifferent to the interpretation of these events. We do not have the possibility to do without a critical and continuous understanding of the course of the events which, before being history, its laws and its necessity, is our unpredictable and ambiguous everyday life. “Provocations” are an ordinary part of the repression and of the management of class struggle by capital and the State. To avoid this type of question is to have a conception of capital in its objectivist virginity, implying that it would content itself simply with being. The process of capital is the process of class struggle and these are composed of living human beings with their decisions, their mistakes, their genius. | We have to consider seriously the fact that we are engaged in a class struggle which is a large historical movement, with its deep tendencies, its restructurings, its //necessities//, but we are engaged in it //each day as it comes//. It is in the incessant interaction between all these levels, between the specific and the general, that we make our way, that we have to weigh our actions and those of our adversaries. (Along the same lines, Marx says somewhere that one should not take chance into account, because the events which occur by chance, by definition, go in all directions and, at the end, cancel each other; this is true, but within a long series and in the long run). The same can be said about the aggression (at that point) against Konstantina Kuneva and the shooting at the police, which was probably a provocative manoeuvre. It is possible to say that these things have little interest as long as we find ourselves far from them, chronologically or otherwise. But for anybody involved in the events, this position is impossible to hold. In Italy, after Piazza Fontana, the Italicus and Bologna station, it would have been unrealistic to be indifferent to the interpretation of these events. We do not have the possibility to do without a critical and continuous understanding of the course of the events which, before being history, its laws and its necessity, is our unpredictable and ambiguous everyday life. “Provocations” are an ordinary part of the repression and of the management of class struggle by capital and the State. To avoid this type of question is to have a conception of capital in its objectivist virginity, implying that it would content itself simply with being. The process of capital is the process of class struggle and these are composed of living human beings with their decisions, their mistakes, their genius. |
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| To conclude: it might well be that this struggle was not really massive, but unifying; it overcame the internal contradictions of the period of the autumn 2005 / spring 2006 in France. The adherence of many people other than the “enragés” or “direct demonstrators” in their offensive attitude against the cops seen as an “occupation army” and its echo in many places of the world, can indicate that what is at stake in Greece, in this conflict, is widely recognised in the world, that the situation of the Greek proletarians is a general situation in this specific moment when the crisis is clearly breaking out and when the concrete consequences are everywhere to be seen. It is the creation of a common position in the relation of exploitation that did not reach completion during the riots in Greece, but whose dynamic within class struggle was posited: that is, to abolish capital and abolish oneself as a class by acting as a class. //Hic Rhodus, hic salta.// | To conclude: it might well be that this struggle was not really massive, but unifying; it overcame the internal contradictions of the period of the autumn 2005 / spring 2006 in France. The adherence of many people other than the “enragés” or “direct demonstrators” in their offensive attitude against the cops seen as an “occupation army” and its echo in many places of the world, can indicate that what is at stake in Greece, in this conflict, is widely recognised in the world, that the situation of the Greek proletarians is a general situation in this specific moment when the crisis is clearly breaking out and when the concrete consequences are everywhere to be seen. It is the creation of a common position in the relation of exploitation that did not reach completion during the riots in Greece, but whose dynamic within class struggle was posited: that is, to abolish capital and abolish oneself as a class by acting as a class. //Hic Rhodus, hic salta.// |