Monday, March 16, 2009
Zizek against protest mode (Posted by Keith) by Keith
Here is Zizek critiquing protest mode. He doesn't use the term protest mode. The interview is a few years old but he makes the point well. Of course he doesn't put forth a strategy or any tactics for a struggle for power either.
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Funny, here's Zizek speaking at a protest.
ReplyDeleteWhich is not to say Zizek is a hypocrite, but I think you're not seeing the point: Zizek is saying that we should go further than safe moralizing positions. Such as, for example, protesting until you can become a White House advisor, and then promptly announcing that your boss (who signed off on a bill that tremendously tilted toward highway construction) the title of "Green President" messiah, whatever.
I don't think Zizek knows what to do. He is critiquing protest mode. We need to combine protests with struggles for power. If we don't the protest is not only moralizing it is a waste of time and resources.
ReplyDeleteHaving allies in Obama's administration is useful if we are serious about seizing power. But taking a position in Obama's administration is awful if our concern is the purity of our soul.
The critique of Van Jones that hegemoonik puts forth is exactly the moralizing critique that we should oppose.
I have yet to see how latching on as a powerless advisor is "useful" to anyone except Obama and, perhaps, Wal-Mart.
ReplyDeleteI mention Wal-Mart and its foundation for a reason, which is that by removing Zizek from the object of his overall critique, it almost makes him say the opposite of what he clearly means. He is not saying to sell out. He is on the contrary saying, if your talking points can be so easily absorbed by the power structure you oppose, or if you are so willing to take their money, then why bother with the farce?
To wit, review his comments on the philanthropic enemy."
Then read up on who sponsored Van Jones's last public policy speech before he went into the White House. In the words of the BBC: This revolution comes courtesy of funding from Wal-Mart, The Ford Foundation and Roche Pharmaceuticals.
Excuse me if I believe that what we have seen here is not a shift in power, but rather a surrender to it.
I am not advocating that we follow Van Jones, only that he is an ally and a useful one. If you think Van Jones is an enemy then you must not have many allies.
ReplyDeleteIf we could get money from Wal-Mart or the Ford Foundation we should take it.
That is what I am talking about-- hegemonik is moralizing. He says Wal-marts money is dirty. Taking it is evidence of surrendering to power and selling out. I would take it every day of the week if they gave it to me. Lots of things we could do with Wal-Mart loot.
A few years ago the Black Radical Congress was offered half a million by the Ford Foundation which they turned down (like fools) to save the purity of their souls-- lotta good it did them too.
Now they will go to heaven when they die.
It is most unfortunate that the traditional US Left continues to misunderstand to nature of power and confuses it with the "government" and "the corporations". Liberal reformists believe this and limit themselves to protesting and lobbying. The "radical" Left (anarchists and orthodox communists) believe it as well and therefore calls everyone that steps into the government or a corporation a "sell-out". Every tool is a weapon, as Ani put it. The only power that exists is coordinated action by groups of people. The government and the corporations are arena of power struggle between people and capital, just as are schools, churches, the military, knitting circles, bowling alleys and video arcades... in other words everywhere in our society, capital tries to dominate and the people try to resist (often without even being conscious of it). Van Jones as Green Jobs advisor is much better than Christie Whitman as head of EPA. It won't save the environment, but it will help us move the struggle to a more interesting place (e.g. building wind farms in the Appalachia as opposed to resisting attempts to eliminate clear air standards). Of course Wal-Mart and the big pharmas are getting involved! They understand that capital needs to get in there to have influence! If only the US Left could get that one clue! Having liberals and even progressives in the White House or on corporate boards can help revolutionary democrats obtain resources and favorable conditions to build dual power for the movement: social power outside of government and corporations (street universities, cooperative businesses, unions, community groups, independent political organizations) but also inside of government and corporations (getting grant money and democratizing governmental institutions, winning democratic governance and profit-sharing agreements for workers, etc.) And at every step of the way, it will be a battle between people and capital (and making allies with certain elements of new economy capital vs. old economy capital is a smart tactical choice to win some of these battles). Revolution is not a momentary romantic fantasy on the barricades. It is the complete transformation of society by people over time. And that requires some serious work and some serious thinking. A little more complex than lining up good guys vs bad guys on a game board...
ReplyDeleteEvery tool is a weapon, as Ani put it.
ReplyDeletePoint agreed. So what's the case: is Van Jones a tool or a weapon for Wal-Mart?
Van Jones as Green Jobs advisor is much better than Christie Whitman as head of EPA. It won't save the environment, but it will help us move the struggle to a more interesting place (e.g. building wind farms in the Appalachia as opposed to resisting attempts to eliminate clear air standards).
You make the mistake of viewing energy policy as if it were a zero sum game. What makes you think that you will not get both massively polluting coal plants and wind farms across the U.S.? That is, at the very least, what Obama believes we will have. And no amount of bickering from a low level bureaucrat like Van Jones is going to change his mind when it's fundamentally made up by GE's contributions.
Having liberals and even progressives in the White House or on corporate boards can help revolutionary democrats obtain resources and favorable conditions to build dual power for the movement
Or it buys the loyalties of liberals and progressives away from the masses of people. Do you really believe dual power can exist as a permanent situation? History suggests otherwise.
What makes you think that even if Van Jones stays mildly progressive, that he will not be purged at the most convenient moment? What makes you think he will be treated any differently from Rev. Wright or Bill Ayers, or any number of people tossed underneath the bus?
And what makes you think that Van Jones will not change his stripes? He already betrayed his ex-comrades in the Bay Area a couple times over… oh yeah, you can't talk about that.
Van Jones is both a tool and a weapon for Walmart. In the same way, Walmart is both a weapon and a tool for Van Jones. That is precisely the point.
ReplyDeleteAccepting that dynamic redifines the relationship between them from a puppet talking head and his backer, to a strateigic maneuver by Walmart and similar interests to align with the motion of the political planets.
And no, this is not a game, zero or any sum. It's war - class warfare. There are lives and futures at stake. As a responsible actor in this, knowing these relationships and seeking out the real factors in play is the only way to overcome our kneejerck reactions to questionable associations.
Once you overcome your own reactions, then solid, actionable plans can be constructed around hard earned facts. The simplest of these facts is that few people in the public eye are anything like what they present themselves to be. We need better eyes than that. That is what we are trying to develop here.
There's a perverted logic here, Rob. Do you mean to say that an individual like Van Jones can "use" a multinational organization like Wal-Mart, in the same way that a multinational organization can use the individual?
ReplyDeleteWhen Van Jones funds Wal-Mart to perform a dog and pony show, I will believe the latter.
There's an old adage: if you dance with the devil, don't expect to lead.
(And for the record, I don't think Van really expects to lead, either -- it's why he didn't take the EPA job).
You are correct that properly speaking, we are talking about class warfare. So let's get down to it: a capitalist who runs a solar panel factory is of the same class as a capitalist who blasts open mountains for coal.
Do you think the solar panels hippies use for their 100% organic farms are made by worker cooperatives? Do you think they're even made in environmentally safe conditions?
Think again
This is class war for class dictatorship. All you describe is a shuffling of the ruling junta. Why bother?
And while the capitalists are doing their damnedest to make sure that their interests are looked out for, working class people see the most awful sorts of cowardice and defection out of our ranks, and we're almost happy about it? Insane.
Maybe it's time to actually face up to the fact of class warfare.
Maybe we should treat this as wartime conditions.
Maybe it's time for some court martials.
Maybe it's time to revoke ghetto passes and throw out poverty pimps who want to "green" the ghetto -- so that more drunk hipsters can move in and more condos get built.
@hegemonik: No, actually you're the one practicing perverted, nigh-fundamentalist logic here. You're fronting as some sort of high priest judging people maneuvering in the reins of power according to whatever progressive tenets you perceive them to be violating.
ReplyDeletePeople like Van Jones et al. have access to resources, networks, and more room to push leftwards within the superstructure. I'll take that over some futile, irrelevant, isolated, run-of-the-mill SDS Anarchlown any day of the week.
Here's a more modern adage: Don't sell out, sneak in. If you wanna believe in supernatural creatures like devils, that's your problem.
Nice strawman on the solar panels. Under that tenet, a petty capitalist like me who sells self-produced comic books is apparently on the same level as a coal producer or a socially irresponsible solar panel manufacturer. Your kung fu is very weak.
Ranks? Warfare? Court Martial? Ghetto Passes? Honestly, how do you expect normal people to take you seriously using this kind of fake, tough-guy rhetoric?
I'm not a fundamentalist. Just somebody not caught up in the illusion that bureaucracy is power.
ReplyDeleteLet's be blunt about Van Jones here. Van Jones was pushed by a number of folks in an organization in the Bay as a "personality" for them. Those folks certainly thought he was mess around with the "superstructure" on behalf of the organization (and fairly large movement base) that pushed him into it.
Very quickly, it was shown that he was far less interested in the organization of which he was a member, and a lot more interested in Ariana Huffington as a sugar-cougar.
"Don't sell out, sneak in?" Well, let's just say Jones certainly thinks you can do both. And I say, that's fine -- but you can't be build a movement out of flunkies.
As for "normal people" -- I seem to be finding the average person to be much less convinced that playing nice with our ruling class is worthwhile (hello? Madoff anyone? AIG anyone?). The whole "if we stand for anything, we'll alienate people!" routine would be far more convincing if this were still the America that had UNITED WE STAND bumper stickers.
But it's not. This is a country where that sticker's faded, the bumper it's on is falling off, and the car the bumper was attached to got repossessed.
Those are the people whose voices are not being heard, much less channeled by smooth operators like Van. If they get led along by Rush Limbaugh, it's because folks like you stubbornly refuse to channel their anger into anything other than the most peripheral, mildew spawning kinds of bureaucracy.
Lest we forget, the "demos" that forms democracy is also translated as "mob." The ruling class has always had a problem with them and their demands.
Self-described "revolutionaries" should not.
No one here claimed bureaucracy is power. That's pure mischaracterization. What has been stated is that in order to attain power, it must be struggled for with the masses of people and within the system as it stands since so many people you ostensibly are in unity with, depend on that very system to survive and maintain their living standards. And apparently you're caught under the delusion that being a militant purist will win you any sort of allies, many of which aren't interested in "wartime conditions" or any of the cheap militant rhetoric you seem so fond of.
ReplyDeleteFunny you mention the building of a movement and "normal people". Not so long ago, there was a movement last year to elect Barack Obama president. That there was a building of a movement that actually got something done i.e. forming a diverse coalition of workers and organizers which successfully managed to defeat the seemingly invulnerable Clinton machine and the Republicans. This is currently where the masses are at right now, this is where the next stage of struggle is to happen, and thankfully, individuals with your divisive manner of thinking are in the extreme minority.
And again, it's funny you mention all the outrage that's gone on with Wall Street and AIG. Ironically, the progressive heretics you like casting judgment on are the most responsible for allowing an environment where that outrage can be voiced and the government pushed to address the issue.
Did you ever stop to think that "those people whose voices aren't being heard," is probably because they're being misrepresented by childish, counter-revolutionary militants pretending to represent them yet not taking any real, productive steps to address their problems?
Your average worker isn't interested in becoming part of any "mob". Given the choice between "movement" and "mob", as last year's election season proved, people will choose to knock on doors and get people interested in taking power, not half-assedly occupying buildings and getting clocked on the head by riot cops and achieving nothing as a result.
A campaign is not a movement. You can talk all you want about the "seemingly invulnerable Clinton machine" but the fact is, they were just like you 12 years ago. They spoke about not dividing people, gave some lively talk about how they would be friends of everyone if people knocked on doors, yada yada yada.
ReplyDeleteAnd what did we get out of it? "The end of welfare as we know it." The largest single expansion of the prison system. "Late term" abortion bans. NAFTA. GATT. Jocelyn Elders run out of Washington.
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
These things happened because the movement stopped being the movement, and started being the Committee to Re-Elect the President.
Nobody wants to knock on doors and nobody wants to kick them down either. Welcome to life under capitalism!
But doing the former seems to work better at lining the pockets of presidents and their favorite NGO's, while doing the latter might actually get the power actually shifted.
Will we get allies if we are actually committed to what we say? No. Fuck "allies." We need comrades. We need people who will keep out repossessors and eviction agents -- not people who will bargain with them. We need people who actually oppose the banks -- not people who throw money on them like strippers.
And if we are not sound in our convictions, it's because folks like you are too wrapped up in "voting blocs" every 4 to 6 years to care that people don't just materialize come election season.
I think hegemonik's view becomes clear when he says "Fuck "allies." We need comrades."
ReplyDeleteThe United States is a dramatically stratified society. The working class is differentiated by race, gender, sexuality, nationality, legal status, wage inequality, skill level, manual vs intellectual work and so forth, to unite just the working class will require tremendous effort and compromise.
But we do not only need to unite the working class we need ALLIES in other social/economic classes. Some of these allies are tactical allies others are strategic.
Tactical allies are allies to accomplish a specific task, action, campaign or what not.
Strategic allies are long term allies. We will have both tactical and strategic allies who are a part of different sectors of the capitalist class. There has never been a revolution that was not made by a multi class alliance.
One reason revolutions are overthrown-- like Allende in Chile, or Mossadegh in Iran-- is because there social base is too narrow and they lack allies. The reason that Chavez was able to return to power without violence following the coup in Venezuela was because of the breadth of his coalition.
If you are interested in democracy then you have to be interested in majorities. We have to determine the most progressive and revolutionary policies that can win majority support.
Within the Obama coalition --and revolutionary democracy is the far left of that coalition are job is to move Obaama to teh left not by protesting him or lobbying him or even criticizing him, but by building a majority fro revolutionary democracy, we have to expand the left of the coalition so Obama can move left and maintain a majority.
The defeat of financial capital within Obama's coalition will produce a dramatic lurch leftward. So at the moment our strategic enemy is financial capital (Wall St in popular discourse)and we should unite every class against them.
It takes massive force to change society. It is constructed by individuals who affix their ideals to institutions and material practice. Institutions of all kinds, states, corporate bodies, universities, schools of painting, are all in the same business: to sustain themselves. They resist change out of pure self defense. Yet institutions and the societies they support do change.
ReplyDeleteOne problem the left has had difficulty with is the pace of this change. Peoples and the nations they cling to change at a geologic pace. The sensitive and devoted people who see a better course want their better world right now. That's simply not the way it works or can ever work.
We live under advanced capitalism today. Seriously consider your history and ask how long it took for capitalism to become the default order of things? How long had capitalism been a force in society before that? It took many lifetimes, however you care to shake it.
If you want to change society, you damn well better accept that you won't change much at all. All you can do is give a little shove. Now if 100 people back you, you can change a community. if 100,000 back you, you can change a state. if 1,000,000 back you, you can change a nation.
The strategies you are elluding to were designed in a different age, for use against a different enemy. Can you seriously say that we should "slam open" some doors when they have tanks, satalites, wire taps, and guided missiles? There will be no bloody revolution. Those plans are isolating and inefective and have been proven so time and again. They amount to someone trying to alter continental drift by standing at a fault line and pushing.
If you follow the flow of society, enter its machinery, and time your actions with the changing material basis of relations, you can leverage monolithic force.
We change what we can, where we can, using the best tools we can muster. We act knowing the world we want can be built, but will be built by our children's children.
The United States is a dramatically stratified society … to unite just the working class will require tremendous effort and compromise … But we do not only need to unite the working class we need ALLIES in other social/economic classes. Some of these allies are tactical allies others are strategic.
ReplyDeleteTactics and strategy are, in the end, subordinate to politics. Thus why I find it strange that folks involved in mass movements put such great emphasis on "allies" in exploiting classes, rather than attempting to build living solidarity among the exploited – who are supposed to be our constituency, but who for the most part get tut-tutted by Leftists fatted on foundation checks from our "allies."
One reason revolutions are overthrown-- like Allende in Chile, or Mossadegh in Iran-- is because there social base is too narrow and they lack allies. The reason that Chavez was able to return to power without violence following the coup in Venezuela was because of the breadth of his coalition.
The reason Allende got overthrown is because he relied on the ballot alone, refused to do something (gasp!) authoritarian while in an actual position of authority, and demand his military be loyal to his regime.
The MIR was perfectly willing to carry out creation of a new popular militia, but Allende decided that he needed "allies." Those "allies" ended up being the so-called "housewives" (who never cooked once in their lives, but somehow managed to find pots and pans) who went on strike.
Allende deluded himself that such an element could be appeased into becoming allies. Nevertheless, the military went on continuing to foment unrest, and in the final analysis the military executed the MIR and pro-Allende forces swiftly – with not one tear shed by the bourgeois "housewives."
Chavez, in contrast, came out of the military himself and had managed (through his own coup and the clandestine organizing that happened beforehand) to significantly divide the military. When he took power through the ballot, he did the right thing: he understood that Venezuela was in a state of low intensity civil war by class, and he decided that he was going to enable the poor to fight.
Chavez also understood that some men, you just can't reach. Rather than promote this illusion that Venezuelans who spend more time in Miami were ever going to care about anybody other than themselves, he was willing to go toe-to-toe with them – strategically, but understanding at each step he was going to face a fight from the AFL-CIA backed unions and such.
Beyond the sort of middle class conciliation that has unfortunately made Chavez look like much more of a liberal than he is, when Carmona showed he was willing to go forward with a coup, it's pretty clear that the Chavistas were willing to fight back – not just with words, but with whatever weapons they had (including the aforementioned supporters in the armed forces). In the end, the confrontation that restored Chavez to power were a bunch of pro-Carmona cops versus much better equipped Army and the popular militias that were in their infancy.
In the end, Chavez won because he understands that war and politics are interchangeable: war is politics by other means, and politics is war without bloodshed.
Allende was never as honest, and as a result ended up shooting himself.