Simon Choat: intervista su "Masse, Potere e Postdemocrazia nel XXI secolo"

Intervista di Simon Choat su "Masse, potere e postdemocrazia nel XXI secolo" a cura dei blog Obsolete Capitalism e Rizomatika. Intervista raccolta il 16 giugno 2013 

 EDIT: E' disponibile e scaricabile online/free download QUI il libro "Nascita del populismo digitale. Masse, potere e postdemocrazia nel XXI secolo" che raccoglie tutte le interviste di Choat, Parikka, Sampson, Newman, Berti, Toscano, Parisi, Terranova e Godani. Abbiamo raccolto l'intervista di Choat in questo PDF. 

Masse, potere e postdemocrazia nel XXI secolo

'Fascismo di banda, di gang, di setta, di famiglia, di villaggio, di quartiere, d’automobile, un Fascismo che non risparmia nessuno. Soltanto il micro-Fascismo può fornire una risposta alla domanda globale: “Perchè il desiderio desidera la propria repressione? Come può desiderare la propria repressione?'

—Gilles Deleuze, Fèlix Guattari, Mille Piani, pg. 271

Sul micro-fascismo
OC Partiamo dall’analisi di Wu Ming, esposta nel breve saggio per la London Review of Books intitolato 'Yet another right-wing cult coming from Italy', che legge il M5S e il fenomeno Grillo come un nuovo movimento autoritario di destra.  Come è possibile che il desiderio di cambiamento di buona parte del corpo elettorale (nelle elezioni italiane del febbraio 2013) sia stato vanificato e le masse abbiano di nuovo anelato –ancora una volta– la propria repressione ? Siamo fermi nuovamente all’affermazione di Wilhelm Reich: sì, le masse hanno desiderato, in un determinato momento storico, il fascismo. Le masse non sono state ingannate, hanno capito molto bene il pericolo autoritario, ma l’hanno votato lo stesso. E il pensiero doppiamente preoccupante è il seguente: i due movimenti populisti autoritari, M5S e PdL, sommati insieme hanno più del 50% dell’elettorato italiano. Una situazione molto simile si è venuta a creare in UK, nel Maggio 2013, con il successo della formazione populista di destra dello UKIP. Le tossine dell’autoritarismo e del micro-fascismo perché e quanto sono presenti nella società europea contemporanea?

Simon Choat In tutta Europa l'autoritarismo e perfino il fascismo rimangono rischi reali. Sempre più spesso vi è la minaccia di un 'fascismo-leggero' o di un 'fascismo dal volto umano': partiti e movimenti che attingono alla retorica populista, contro il grande "business" o contro le banche mentre in realtà propongono politiche pro-capitaliste, autoritarie e (implicitamente o esplicitamente) razziste. In Inghilterra tutto ciò è senza dubbio rappresentato (anche se nel solito tiepido modo inglese) da UKIP (il quale, nonostante il nome, è un fenomeno inglese piuttosto che britannico) - mentre è sempre presente la violenza di strada "vecchio stile" del partito inglese EDL - English Defence League. Penso che vi siano presenti ragioni ma anche pericoli nell'interpretare queste minacce attraverso il concetto di 'desiderare la propria repressione'. Può essere un buon correttivo al concetto obsoleto e inutile di "falsa coscienza", laddove le persone che vogliono la repressione e lo sfruttamento vengono  presumibilmente ingannate per ignoranza o per illusione. Allo stesso tempo - sia in Reich che in Deleuze - c'è il rischio che questa nozione di 'falsa coscienza' venga reintrodotta dalla porta di servizio, con una distinzione implicita tra coloro che godono di un desiderio 'buono' (a favore dell'emancipazione e della rivoluzione) e coloro che lavorano nell'ambito di un desiderio 'cattivo' (per la repressione e per l'autorità) e necessitino di qualcuno (un partito, un leader, un intellettuale) che li illumini. Più in generale, non penso che 'repressione' sia un concetto molto utile: il potere nel capitalismo non opera attraverso la repressione ma inducendo e incitando sia il desiderio che il piacere.
Parlare di 'micro-fascismo' per di più è utile nella misura in cui richiama la nostra attenzione alle pratiche sociali quotidiane e agli investimenti affettivi che rafforzano i centri di potere: il fascismo può svilupparsi, almeno in parte, per il desiderio o di un senso d'ordine o di partecipazione, per sentirsi parte di qualcosa, un desiderio che può diventare particolarmente forte in tempi di crisi e che può manifestarsi in modi autoritari. Questo è il motivo per cui dobbiamo essere particolarmente diffidenti nei confronti del 'populismo digitale' di una forza come il "grillismo": il suo appello al desiderio delle persone di sentirsi parte di un 'movimento' è rafforzato dal potere d'attrazione narcisistico dei social media.
Infine, una spiegazione approfondita dell'attuale ascesa degli autoritarismi richiederebbe un'analisi storica, concreta, di lungo periodo, che comprenda, non solo l'attuale crisi economica, ma anche una serie di altri fattori tra i quali va incluso - ma non limitato a - l'ascesa del neoliberismo negli ultimi trent’anni, l'aumento della disoccupazione, il depotenziamento e declino dei sindacati e della sinistra socialdemocratica.

1919, 1933, 2013. Sulla crisi
OC Slavoj Zizek ha affermato, già nel 2009,  che quando il corso normale delle cose è traumaticamente interrotto, si apre nella società una competizione ideologica “discorsiva” esattamente come capitò nella Germania dei primi anni ’30 del Novecento quando Hitler indicò nella cospirazione ebraica e nella corruzione del sistema dei partiti i motivi della crisi della repubblica di Weimar. Zizek termina la riflessione affermando che ogni aspettativa della sinistra radicale di ottenere maggiori spazi di azione e quindi consenso risulterà fallace in quanto saranno vittoriose le formazioni populiste e razziste, come abbiamo poi potuto constatare in Grecia con Alba Dorata, in Ungheria con il Fidesz di Orban, in Francia con il Front National di Marine LePen e in Inghilterra con le recentissime vittorie di Ukip. In Italia abbiamo avuto imbarazzanti “misti” come la Lega Nord e ora il M5S, bizzarro rassemblement che pare combinare il Tempio del Popolo del Reverendo Jones e Syriza, “boyscoutismo rivoluzionario” e disciplinarismo delle società del controllo. Come si esce dalla crisi e con quali narrazioni discorsive “competitive e possibilmente vincenti”? Con le politiche neo-keynesiane tipiche del mondo anglosassone e della terza via socialdemocratica nord-europea o all’opposto con i neo populismi autoritari e razzisti ? Pare che tertium non datur.

SC L’analisi di Zizek è stata confermata: nel momento della sua più grande crisi, il capitalismo neoliberista è stato rafforzato piuttosto che indebolito. Le ragioni sono complesse, ma un elemento chiave è stata la sua vittoria nella “competizione ideologica”. Nel Regno Unito, ad esempio, la crisi economica è stata accusata di essere figlia delle politiche “dispendiose” del precedente governo laburista - da qui la necessità di ciò che viene eufemisticamente definita  “austerità”. In realtà, questa “narrazione” è ormai così ampiamente accettata che l'attuale governo si è già spostato su una nuova storia che sottolinea la necessità di competere in una “gara” mondiale (e così deregolamentare gli affari,  abbassare le tasse e i salari, togliere i diritti del lavoro, etc.). Abbiamo quindi bisogno di una narrazione alternativa. Ma spero che la nostra scelta non sia semplicemente tra autoritarismo neo-populista e neo-keynesismo! Anzi, questa mi sembra una falsa alternativa: se il populismo è quel movimento che pretende di unire una società, mentre in realtà oscura i reali rapporti di potere e le forme di lotta, allora si potrebbe sostenere che il keynesismo è di per sé una forma di populismo, in quanto propaganda la fantasia di un capitalismo di cui possono beneficiare tutti. Ciò non esclude tuttavia la possibilità che potremmo aver bisogno di una sorta di keynesismo strategico, a difesa dello stato sociale, dei diritti del lavoro, delle provvidenze del settore pubblico, etc.: dato il contesto attuale, difendere il welfare è un gesto radicale.
La sinistra deve tuttavia affrontare una serie di difficoltà nello sviluppare la propria narrazione. In primo luogo,  esiste una concorrenza ideologica all’interno della sinistra stessa. La destra ha un compito più semplice: è più facile difendere lo status quo piuttosto che sfidarlo. In secondo luogo, qualsiasi analisi di sinistra si concentrerà su strutture apersonali, difficili da incorporare all’interno di narrazioni popolari (è il motivo per cui non ci sono molti buoni film o romanzi marxisti). Questa è una delle ragioni per cui, invece, otteniamo narrazioni populiste con protagonisti ben definiti ai quali attribuire ogni colpa (banchieri, immigrati, burocrati, etc.). Infine, vi è la difficoltà di diffondere narrazioni alternative nei canali di diffusione che sono per lo più di proprietà e gestiti proprio da coloro che stiamo cercando di sfidare. I social media qui potrebbero essere utili, ma non operano in un vuoto bensì all'interno dello stesso complesso di relazioni sociali  dei media tradizionali e i suoi attori sono soggetti alle stesse pressioni ideologiche, alle stesse censure statali e aziendali e (come abbiamo visto di recente) allo spionaggio. Inoltre - come si è visto con il M5S in Italia  - i social media si comportano spesso come una gigantesca cassa di risonanza della stupidità: non  sono necessariamente favorevoli al pensiero critico.

Sul popolo che manca
OC Mario Tronti afferma che “c’è populismo perché non c’è popolo”. Tema eterno, quello del popolo, che Tronti declina in modalità tutte italiane in quanto “le grandi forze politiche erano saldamente poggiate su componenti popolari presenti nella storia sociale: il popolarismo cattolico, la tradizione socialista, la diversità comunista. Siccome c’era popolo, non c’era populismo.” Pure in ambiti di avanguardie artistiche storiche, Paul Klee si lamentava spesso che era “il popolo a mancare”. Ma la critica radicale al populismo - è sempre Tronti che riflette - ha portato a importanti risultati: il primo, in America, alla nascita dell’età matura della democrazia; il secondo, nell’impero zarista, la nascita della teoria e della pratica della rivoluzione in un paese afflitto dalle contraddizioni tipiche dello sviluppo del capitalismo in un paese arretrato (Lenin e il bolscevismo). Ma nell’analisi della situazione italiana ed europea è tranchant: “Nel populismo di oggi, non c’è il popolo e non c’è il principe. E’ necessario battere il populismo perché nasconde il rapporto di potere”. L’abilità del neo-populismo, attraverso l'utilizzo spregiudicato di apparati economici-mediatici-spettacolari-giudiziari, è nel costruire costantemente  "macchine di popoli fidelizzati” più simili al “portafoglio-clienti” del mondo brandizzato dell’economia neo-liberale. Il "popolo" berlusconiano è da vent’anni che segue blindato le gesta del sultano di Arcore; il "popolo" grillino, in costruzione precipitosa, sta seguendo gli stessi processi identificativi totalizzanti del “popolus berlusconiano”, dando forma e topos alle pulsioni più deteriori e confuse degli strati sociali italiani. Con le fragilità istituzionali, le sovranità altalenanti, gli universali della sinistra in soffitta (classe, conflitto, solidarietà, uguaglianza) come si fa popolo oggi? E’ possibile reinventare un popolo anti-autoritario? E’ solo il popolo o la politica stessa a mancare?

SC L'analisi di Tronti è, per alcuni aspetti, molto acuta: in senso lato il populismo contemporaneo è considerato, almeno in parte, un prodotto dell’abbandono del riferimento politico di classe, mentre abbiamo bisogno di farlo rivivere. E’ quindi necessario evitare le rappresentazioni populiste di classe che riducono il tutto a una mera serie di caricature (gli avidi banchieri, i politici corrotti, le élite che cospirano, etc.) o  concepiscono la classe solo in termini di significanti manifesti anziché in termini di proprietà, controllo e potere. Occorre così affinare ed evidenziare le divisioni di classe, ma non vedo “guadagni” nell’utilizzare l'etichetta di 'popolo’. Necessitiamo certo di un momento di articolazione politica in cui formiamo alleanze e uniamo le lotte più disparate (piuttosto che ricorrere a fantasticherie spontaneiste sulla 'moltitudine') ma queste alleanze dovrebbero essere radicate nelle nostre esperienze concrete di (dis)occupazione, sfruttamento, etc: non c'è bisogno di invocare un "popolo". In poche parole, il “popolo” non è una categoria marxista, e penso che sia il marxismo il più utile  a spiegare la nostra situazione. Il “popolo” è una categoria populista, e quindi regressiva. Ma forse ho frainteso le affermazioni di Tronti...

Sul Controllo
OC Gilles Deleuze nel Poscritto delle Società di Controllo, pubblicato nel maggio del 1990, afferma che, grazie alle illuminanti analisi di Michel Foucault, emerge una nuova diagnosi della società contemporanea occidentale. L’analisi deleuziana è la seguente: le società di controllo hanno sostituito le società disciplinari allo scollinare del XX secolo. Deleuze scrive che “il marketing è ora lo strumento del controllo sociale e forma la razza impudente dei nostri padroni”. Difficile dargli torto se valutiamo l’incontrovertibile fatto che, dietro a due avventure elettorali di strepitoso successo - Forza Italia e Movimento 5 Stelle - si stagliano due società di marketing: la Publitalia 80 di Marcello Dell’Utri e la Casaleggio Asssociati di Gianroberto Casaleggio. Meccanismi di controllo, eventi mediatici quali gli exit polls, sondaggi infiniti, banche dati in/penetrabili, data come commodities, spin-doctoring continuo, consensi in rete guidati da influencer, bot, social network opachi, digi-squadrismo, echo-chambering dominante, tracciabilità dei percorsi in rete tramite cookies: queste sono le determinazioni della società post-ideologica (post-democratica?) neoliberale. La miseria delle nuove tecniche di controllo rivaleggia solo con la miseria della “casa di vetro” della trasparenza grillina (il web-control, of course). Siamo nell’epoca della post-politica, afferma Jacques Ranciere: Come uscire dalla gabbia neo-liberale e liberarci dal consenso ideologico dei suoi prodotti elettorali? Quale sarà la riconfigurazione della politica - per un nuovo popolo liberato - dopo l’esaurimento dell’egemonia marxista nella sinistra? 

SC Bella domanda! Purtroppo non ha una risposta semplice. La missione iniziale è semplicemente quella di aprire spazi in cui possa essere discussa questa stessa domanda. È per questo che, pur con tutti i suoi difetti e problemi, il movimento Occupy Wall Street è stato, per un breve periodo, promettente. E’ stato criticato per non aver saputo offrire una visione alternativa, ma questa critica non coglie il punto che l’alternativa di Occupy Wall Street era performativa: l'atto di occupazione era un’opzione alla sempre più brutale privatizzazione dello spazio, una rivendicazione di un ambiente in cui, tra l'altro, il dibattito potrebbe fisicamente aver luogo.
Il marxismo ha qui un ruolo importante da svolgere: la sua egemonia può essersi esaurita, nel senso che non domina più la politica di sinistra radicale in Europa - anche se nel Regno Unito è sempre stata marginale - ma fornisce ancora la più rigorosa e potente critica del capitalismo che dovrebbe essere il nostro vero obiettivo. E’ anche un modello da utilizzare per fare politica: come è noto, Marx - alla pari di Foucault - non ha passato il proprio tempo a creare progetti per il futuro bensì a sviluppare e affinare analisi del presente che, anche ai giorni nostri, potrebbero essere utilizzate da coloro che partecipano alle lotte esistenti, da cui poi le alternative concrete si sviluppano. 


    Sulla “Googlization” della politica; l’aspetto finanziario
                del populismo digitale

OC La prima decade del XXI secolo è stata caratterizzata dall'insorgenza del neo-capitalismo definito "cognitive capitalism"; in questo contesto un'azienda come Google si è affermata come la perfetta sintesi del web-business in quanto non retribuisce, se non in minima parte, i contenuti che smista attraverso il proprio motore di ricerca. In Italia, con il successo elettorale del M5S, si è assistito, nella politica, ad una mutazione della categoria del prosumer dei social network: si è creata la nuova figura dell'elettore-prosumer, grazie all'utilizzo del blog di Beppe Grillo da parte degli attivisti - che forniscono anche parte cospicua dei contenuti - come strumento essenziale di informazione del movimento. Questo www.bellegrillo.it è un blog/sito commerciale, alternativo alla tradizione free-copyright del creative commons; ha un numero altissimo di contatti, costantemente incrementato in questo ultimo anno. Questa militanza digitale produce introiti poiché al suo interno vengono venduti prodotti della linea Grillo (dvd, libri e altri prodotti editoriali legati al business del movimento). Tutto ciò porta al rischio di una googlizzazione della politica ovvero ad un radicale cambio delle forme di finanziamento grazie al "plusvalore di rete", termine utilizzato dal ricercatore Matteo Pasquinelli per definire quella porzione di valore estratto dalle pratiche web dei prosumer. Siamo quindi ad un cambio del paradigma finanziario applicato alla politica? Scompariranno i finanziamenti delle lobbies, i finanziamenti pubblici ai partiti e al loro posto si sostituiranno le micro-donazioni via web in stile Obama?  Continuerà e si rafforzerà lo sfruttamento dei prosumer-elettori? Infine che tipo di rischi comporterà la “googlization della politica”?

SC Il compito principale dello Stato, oggi, è di rappresentare il capitale. I politici tradizionali sono legati a questo compito: le micro-donazioni di Obama non hanno reso le sue politiche meno autoritarie o meno neo-liberali. Se esistesse una 'googlizzazione della politica’, allora io suggerirei  che si riferisse a qualcos’altro e cioè al crescente potere politico dell'industria hi-tech: al suo ruolo sempre più potente come gruppo di pressione, allo sviluppo di giganteschi monopoli, al ruolo volontario delle techno-industrie all'interno della sorveglianza di Stato e così via. Google è una società come tutte le altre - e, in quanto tale, non esattamente a sostegno di finalità democratiche o emancipatorie.

Sul populismo digitale, sul capitalismo affettivo
OC James Ballard affermò che, dopo le religioni del Libro, ci saremmo dovuti aspettare le religioni della Rete. Alcuni affermano che, in realtà, una prima techno-religione esiste già: si tratterebbe del Capitalismo Affettivo. Il nucleo di questo culto secolarizzato sarebbe un mix del tutto contemporaneo di tecniche di manipolazione affettiva, politiche del neo-liberalismo e pratiche politiche 2.0. In Italia l'affermazione di M5S ha portato alla ribalta il primo fenomeno di successo del digi-populismo con annessa celebrazione del culto del capo; negli USA, la campagna elettorale di Obama ha visto il perfezionarsi di tecniche di micro-targeting con offerte politiche personalizzate via web. La nuova frontiera di ricerca medica e ricerca economica sta costruendo una convergenza inquietante tra saperi in elaborazione quali: teorie del controllo, neuro-economia e neuro-marketing. Foucault, nel gennaio 1976, all'interno dello schema guerra-repressione, intitolò il proprio corso "Bisogna difendere la società". Ora, di fronte alla friabilità generale di tutti noi, come possiamo difenderci dall'urto del capitalismo affettivo e delle sue pratiche scientifico- digitali ? Riusciremo ad opporre un sapere differenziale che - come scrisse Foucault - deve la sua forza solo alla durezza che oppone a tutti i saperi che lo circondano? Quali sono i pericoli maggiori che corriamo riguardo ai fenomeni e ai saperi di assoggettamento in versione network culture?

SC Il mondo digitale introduce nuove aperture e possibilità offrendo alle persone potenziali modi per diventare politicamente attive ma purtroppo porta con sé anche alcuni rischi: il focus su velocità e simultaneità non aiuta necessariamente  una  riflessione critica profonda e la natura delle attività digitali, spesso individuali e private, non sono sicuramente favorevoli alle lotte collettive. Dobbiamo riflettere su questi problemi senza ricorrere a giudizi morali che   semplicemente li celebrino o li condannino, resistendo sia alla propaganda tecno-utopista promossa dal settore tecnologico-industriale sia all'ansia reazionaria e nostalgica che gonfia la novità della tecnologia digitale catastrofizzando il suo impatto. Quello che ci serve, invece, è un’imparziale  analisi storico-materialista che individui questi sviluppi all’interno del capitalismo contemporaneo, esaminando l'impatto delle nuove tecnologie sulla distribuzione di ricchezza e potere, e collocando gli utilizzi della tecnologia digitale entro i rapporti sociali esistenti.
E, ovviamente, dovremmo evitare di vedere le tecnologie digitali come una panacea. Mi ha sempre colpito una frase di Deleuze che mi sembra, ora, più pertinente: “Non è vero che soffriamo di incomunicabilità; viceversa soffriamo per tutte le forze che ci costringono  ad esprimerci quando non abbiamo granchè da dire” (1). Questo è uno dei nostri compiti oggi: resistere alla richiesta  di dover dire comunque qualcosa.

1) Gilles Deleuze: Pourparler (pg. 183) - Quodlibet, 2000

Simon Choat, inglese, è Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations alla Kingston University, London (Uk) ed è l'autore del libro Marx Through Post-Structuralism: Lyotard, Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze (Continuum, Uk, 2010). L'area di ricerca che sta sviluppando include i Grundrisse di Marx, le filosofie neo-materialiste, le politiche demografiche e il fenomeno della disoccupazione, il marxismo di Alfred Sohn-Rethel. E' membro del Political Studies Association Marxism Specialist Group (PSA-MSG). E' in fase di stampa l'ultimo saggio 'From Marxism to poststructuralism' compreso nella raccolta di saggi curata da Dillet, Mackenzie e Porter (eds.) The Edinburgh companion to poststructuralism. (Edinburgh University Press, Uk, 2013). Attualmente sta scrivendo la Reader's Guide to Marx's Grundrisse per Bloomsbury Publishing di Londra.


—
Bibliografia

1) testi di riferimento alla domanda Sul micro-fascismo
Wu Ming, Yet another right-wing cult coming from Italy, via Wu Ming blog.

Wilhelm Reich, Psicologia di massa del fascismo - Einaudi, 2002 

Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Mille Piani, Castelvecchi, 2010 

Gilles Deleuze, L’isola deserta e altri scritti, Einaudi, 2007 (cfr. pg. 269, 'Gli Intellettuali e il Potere', conversazione con Michel Foucault del 4 marzo 1972) “Questo sistema in cui viviamo non può sopportare nulla: di qui la sua radicale fragilità in ogni punto e nello stesso tempo la sua forza complessiva di repressione” (intervista a Deleuze e Foucault, pg. 264)



2) testi di riferimento alla domanda Sulla Crisi
Slavoj Zizek, First as Tragedy, then as Farce. Verso, Uk, 2009 (pg. 17) 

3) testi di riferimento alla domanda Sul popolo che manca
Mario Tronti, 'C’è populismo perché non c’è popolo', in Democrazia e Diritto, n.3-4/2010. 

Paul Klee, Diari 1898-1918. La vita, la pittura, l’amore: un maestro del Novecento si racconta - Net, 2004 

Gilles Deleuze, Fèlix Guattari, Millepiani (in '1837. Sul Ritornello' pg. 412-413)

4) testi di riferimento alla domanda Sul controllo
Jacques Ranciere, Disagreement. Politics and Philosophy, UMP, Usa, 2004

Gilles Deleuze, Pourparler, Quodlibet, Ita, 2000 (pg. 234, 'Poscritto sulle società di controllo') 

Saul Newman, 'Politics in the Age of Control', in Deleuze and New Technology, Mark Poster and David Savat, Edinburgh University Press, Uk, 2009, pp. 104-122. 

5) testi di riferimento alla domanda Sulla googlizzazione della politica

Guy Debord, La società dello spettacolo, 1967 - II sezione - Merce come spettacolo, tesi 42,43,44 e seguenti fino alla 53. 

Matteo Pasquinelli Google's Pagerank Algorithm, http://matteopasquinelli.com/docs/Pasquinelli_PageRank.pdf 

Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google (New York: W.W. Norton, 2008) 

6) testi di riferimento alla domanda Sul populismo digitale e sul capitalismo affettivo

Tony D. Sampson, Virality, UMP, 2012

Michel Foucault, Security, Territory and Population, Palgrave and Macmillan, 2009 

Michel Foucault, Society Must be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de France 1975—76, Saint Martin Press, 2003

Dipinto: Stelios Faitakis

Simon Choat: Politics, power and the state: a Marxist response to postanarchism @ Journal of Political Ideologies, Volume 18, Issue 3, 2013 - Published 14.Oct.2013

Simon Choat: Politics, power and the state: a Marxist response to postanarchism @ Journal of Political Ideologies, Volume 18, Issue 3, 2013 - Published 14.Oct.2013

Recent years have seen the development of a new form of anarchism. Under the label ‘postanarchism’, writers such as Todd May, Saul Newman and Lewis Call have sought to combine the insights of anarchism with those of recent Continental philosophy, in particular post-structuralism. A central but neglected element of postanarchist thought is its critique of Marxism. The main aim of this article is to counter the postanarchist dismissal of Marxism. It will: introduce the key ideas and arguments of postanarchism; locate its critique of Marxism, demonstrating its importance to the postanarchist project; and highlight weaknesses in the postanarchist critique of Marxism. It argues that the postanarchist portrayal of Marxism is reductive and misleading. Contrary to postanarchist claims, many post-structuralists have drawn inspiration from Marxism rather than rejecting it: as such, Marxism anticipates many of the post-structuralist-inflected ideas of postanarchism, in particular their approach to the state, power, subjectivity and politics. In addition, some Marxist criticisms of classical anarchism apply equally to postanarchism, thus raising questions to which postanarchists should respond.

Read more @ JPI

Read Simon Choat interview on Crowd, Power and Postdemocracy

Simon Choat's interview on Crowd, Power and Post-democracy in the 21st Century

Simon Choat's interview on digital populism and recent European political phenomena, held on 16th June 2013 with the author of this blog and of Obsolete Capitalism. This is the last one of the first instalment of interviews - others will follow soon both in English and Italian. In the meanwhile, we will publish the italian translation of Parikka's interview on Saturday 12 October 2013. The previous interviews were held with: Jussi Parikka 14 September, Saul Newman 21 September, Tony D. Sampson 28 September.

 EDIT: We collected Choat's interview in PDF file that you can download or 

read online. All interviews on digital populism - in English language - are

collected into a single file HERE. The e.book that collects all the interviews - In 

Italian language - is titled "Nascita del populismo digitale. Masse, potere e

postdemocrazia nel XXI secolo" and it's available for free download HERE!

Crowd, Power and Post-democracy in the 21st Century

'Rural fascism and city or neighborhood fascism, youth fascism and war veteran's fascism... fascism of the couple, family, school, and office. Only the micro-fascism can answer the global question: "why does desire long for its repression? how can it desires its very own repression?"'

— Gilles Deleuze, Fèlix Guattari, A thousand plateaus, pg.271

On the micro-fascism
OC Let us start from the analysis Wu Ming set out in their brief essay Grillismo: Yet another right-wing cult coming from Italy and which interprets Grillo’s Five Star Movement as a new authoritarian right-wing faction. Why did the desire for change of much of the electorate long once again for its very repression? We seem to witness the re-affirmation of Wilhelm Reich’s thought: at a given moment in history the masses wanted fascism. The masses have not been deceived: they have understood very well the danger of authoritarianism; but they have voted it anyway. Even more worrying is that the authoritarian Berlusconi's Freedom People (PDL) and Grillo’s Five Star Movement (M5S) conquer more than half of the Italian electorate together. A very similar situation arose in the UK in May 2013, with the UKIP’s exploit in the latest local elections. Why and in what measure are the toxins of authoritarianism and micro-fascism present in contemporary European society?

Simon Choat Authoritarian and even fascism remain genuine threats across Europe. Increasingly there is also a threat from a kind of ‘fascism-lite’ or ‘fascism with a human face’: parties and movements which draw on populist, anti-big business or anti-banking rhetoric while proposing pro-capitalist, authoritarian, and (implicitly or explicitly) racist policies. In England this is arguably represented (albeit in the usual tepid English way) by UKIP (who despite their name are an English rather than a British phenomenon) – though there is also the old-fashioned street violence of the English Defence League.

I think there are both merits and dangers in interpreting these threats in terms of ‘desiring repression’. It can be a useful corrective to the outdated and unhelpful notion of ‘false consciousness’, whereby people are supposedly deceived through ignorance or illusion into wanting repression or exploitation. But at the same time – whether in Reich or Deleuze – there is a risk that this notion of ‘false consciousness’ is reintroduced by the back door, with an implicit distinction between those who enjoy a ‘good’ desire (for emancipation, revolution) and those who labour under a ‘bad’ desire (for repression, authority) and require someone (a party, a leader, an intellectual) to enlighten them. More generally, I’m not sure ‘repression’ is a very useful concept: power under capitalism doesn’t operate by repression but by inducing and inciting desire and pleasure.

Nonetheless, speaking of ‘micro-fascism’ is useful insofar as it draws our attention to the everyday social practices and affective investments that reinforce centres of power: fascism can develop at least in part out of the desire for a sense of order or to feel part of something, a desire that can become particularly strong at times of crisis and which can manifest itself in authoritarian ways. This is why we should be especially wary of the ‘digital populism’ of something like Grillismo: its appeal to people’s desire to feel part of a ‘movement’ is reinforced by the narcissistic draw of social media.

Ultimately, however, explaining the rise of authoritarianism today would require a long-term, concrete, historical analysis that encompassed not merely the current economic crisis but also a variety of other factors, including but not limited to the rise of neo-liberalism over the past thirty years, rising unemployment and disempowerment, and the decline of trade unions and the social-democratic left.

1919, 1933, 2013. On the crisis
OC In 2008 Slavoj Zizek said that when the normal run of things is traumatically interrupted, the field is open for a ‘discursive’ ideological competition. In Germany in the early 1930s Hitler won the competition to determine which narrative would explain the reasons for the crisis of the Weimar Republic — the Jewish conspiracy and the corruption of political parties. Zizek ends his reflection by stating that the expectations of the radical left to get scope for action and gain consent may be deceptive as populist or racist formations will prevail: the Greek Golden Dawn, the Hungarian Fidesz, the French Front National, the UK Independence Party are examples. Italy has had farcical groups such as the Lega Nord or the recent Five Star Movement, a bizarre rassemblement that seems to combine Reverend Jones People's Temple with Syriza, or ‘revolutionary boyscoutism’ with the disciplinarism of the societies of control. How can one escape the crisis? What discursive, possibly-winning narratives should be developed? Are the typically Anglo-Saxon neo-Keynesian politics an answer or, on the countrary, is it the new authoritarian populism that will prevail?

SC Žižek’s analysis has been validated: at the moment of its greatest crisis, neo-liberal capitalism has been strengthened rather than weakened. The reasons for this are complex, but a key element has been its victory in the ‘ideological competition’. In the UK, for example, the economic crisis has been blamed on the supposedly ‘spendthrift’ policies of the previous Labour government – hence the need for what is euphemistically termed ‘austerity’. In fact, this narrative is now so widely accepted that the present government has already moved onto a new story which emphasises our need to compete in a global ‘race’ (and so deregulate business, lower taxes and wages, remove employment rights, etc.).

So we do need an alternative narrative. But I hope that our choice is not simply between neo-populist authoritarianism and neo-Keynesianism! If anything, this seems to me to be a false alternative: if populism is that which claims to unite a society while in reality obscuring actual relations of power and forms of struggle, then it could be argued that Keynesianism itself is a form of populism, propagating the fantasy of a capitalism that can benefit all. (This does not, however, exclude the possibility that we may need to engage in a kind of strategic Keynesianism, defending the welfare state, employment rights, public sector provision, etc.: given the current context, defending the welfare state is a radical gesture.)The left does however face a number of difficulties in developing its own narrative. First, there is ideological competition among the left itself. The right has a simpler task: it is easier simply to defend the status quo than to challenge it. Second, any worthwhile leftist analysis will focus on apersonal structures, and it is hard to incorporate these into a popular narrative (this is why there are not many good Marxist novels or films). This is one reason why we instead get populist narratives with clear protagonists on whom blame can be placed (bankers, immigrants, bureaucrats, etc.). Finally, there is the difficulty of disseminating narratives when the channels of dissemination are mostly owned and operated by precisely those that we are trying to challenge. Social media may be useful here, but social media does not operate in a vacuum: it operates within the same set of social relations as traditional media, its participants are subject to the same ideological pressures, it remains subject to state and corporate censorship and (as we’ve seen recently) spying. And (as can be seen with M5S in Italy) it often just acts as a sort of giant echo chamber of stupidity: it’s not necessarily conducive to critical thought.

On the missing people
OC Mario Tronti states that ‘there is populism because there is no people.’ That of the people is an enduring theme which Tronti disclaims in a very Italian way: ‘the great political forces use to stand firmly on the popular components of the social history: the Catholic populism, the socialist tradition, the diversity in communism. Since there was the people, there was no populism.’ Paul Klee often complained that even in historical artistic avant-gardes ‘it was people who were lacking.’ However the radical critique to populism has led to important results: the birth of a mature democracy in America; the rise of the theory and the practice of revolution in the Tsarist Empire, a country plagued by the contradictions of a capitalist development in an underdeveloped territory (Lenin and bolshevism). Tronti carries on in his tranchant analysis of the Italian and European backgrounds: ‘In today's populism, there is no people and there is no prince. It is necessary to beat populism because it obscures the relations of power.’ Through its economic-mediatic-judicial apparatuses, neopopulism constantly shapes “trust-worthy people” similar to the "customers portfolio" of the branded world of neoliberal economy: Berlusconi’s “people” have been following the deeds of Arcore’s Sultan for twenty years; Grillo’s followers are adopting similar all-encompassing identifying processes, giving birth to the more confused impulses of the Italian social strata. With institutional fragility, fluctuating sovereignties and the oblivion of left-wing dogmas (class, status, conflict, solidarity, equality) how can we form people today? Is it possible to reinvent an anti-authoritarian people? Is it only the people or also politics itself that is lacking?

SC In some ways Tronti’s analysis is very acute: broadly speaking, contemporary populism is at least in part a product of the abandonment of the political reference to class, and we need to revive this reference to class. In doing so we also need to avoid populist representations of class which would reduce it to a series of caricatures (greedy bankers, corrupt politicians, conspiring elites, etc.) or which understand class only in terms of its manifest signifiers instead of in terms of ownership, control, and power. So there is a need to sharpen and highlight class divisions, but I don’t really see what is to be gained in using the label of ‘the people’. Of course we need a moment of political articulation in which we form alliances and unite disparate struggles (rather than resorting to spontaneist fantasises about a ‘multitude’), but these alliances should rooted in our concrete experiences of (un)employment, exploitation, etc.: there’s no need to invoke a ‘people’. Put simply, ‘the people’ is not a Marxist category, and I think it’s Marxism which is most useful for explaining our situation. ‘The people’ is a populist category, and hence regressive. (But maybe I’ve misunderstood Tronti’s claims...)

On Control
OC In Postscript on the Societies of Control, published in 1990, Gilles Deleuze states that, thanks to the illuminating analyses of Michel Foucault, a new diagnosis of contemporary Western society has emerged. Deleuze's analysis is as follows: control societies have replaced disciplinary societies at the beginning of the twentieth century. He writes that ‘marketing is now the instrument of social control and it forms the impudent breed of our masters.’ Let us evaluate who stands beyond two very successful electoral adventures such as Forza Italia (Berlusconi’s first party) and M5S: respectively Publitalia 80 owned by Marcello Dell'Utri, and Casaleggio Asssociati owned by Gianroberto Casaleggio. The incontrovertible fact that two marketing companies stand behind these political projects reinforces Deleuze’s analysis. Mechanisms of control, media events such as exit polls and infinite surveys, im/penetrable databases, data as commodities, continuous spin doctoring, influencers that lead consensus on the net, opaque bots, digital squads, dominant echo-chambering. Evil media. These are the determinations of post-ideological (post-democratic?) neoliberalism. The misery of the new control techniques competes only with that of the glass house of transparency (web-control, of course). Jacques Ranciere says we live in the epoch of post- politics: how can we get out of the neo-liberal cage and free ourselves from the ideological consensus of its electoral products? What will the reconfiguration of left-wing politics be after the exhaustion of Marxist hegemony?

SC A very good question! And unfortunately not one that has a simple answer. Our initial task is simply to open up spaces in which this question can be discussed. This is why, for all its faults and problems, the Occupy movement was briefly promising. It was sometimes criticised for failing to offer an alternative vision, but that criticism misses the point that its alternative was performative, so to speak: the very act of occupation was an alternative to the increasingly brutal privatisation of space, a reclaiming of a space in which, amongst other things, debate could take place. 

Marxism has an important role to play here: its hegemony may be exhausted, in that it no longer dominates radical leftist politics in Europe – although in the UK it has always been marginal – but it still provides the most rigorous and powerful critique of the capitalism that should be our target. It is also a model for a way in which to do politics: as is well known, Marx – much like Foucault – did not spend time creating blueprints for the future, but developing and sharpening analysis of the present that could be used by those taking part in existing struggles, out of which concrete alternatives are developed.

On the Googlization of politics; the financial side of digi-populismOC The first decade of the 21st century has been characterized by the rise of neo-capitalism, referred to as cognitive; in this context a company like Google has established itself as the perfect synthesis of web-business as it does not compensate, if not in a small part, the content-carriers it lists. In Italy, following the electoral success of the Five Star Movement we witnessed a mutation of the typical prosumer of social networks: the new figure of the “prosumer-voter” was in fact born on Grillo’s blog - being essentially the one and only channel of information of the movement. The blog is a commercial activity and the high number of contacts and daily access has steadily increased in the last year. This digital militancy produces incomes both in the form of advertising and online sales of products such as DVDs, books and other material associated with the movement. All of this leads to the risk of googlization of politics whereby the modes of financing political activity radically change because of the "network surplus-value" - an expression coined by the researcher Matteo Pasquinelli to define that portion of incomes extracted from the practices of the web prosumers. Having said this, are we about to witness a shift of the financial paradigm applied to politics? Will the fundings from powerful lobbies or the general public be replaced by micro-donations via web (in the style of Obama’s) and by the exploitation of the prosumer-voters? And if so, will the dominant 'googlization of politics' involve any particular risks?

SC The main job of the state today is to represent capital. Mainstream politicians are tied to that task: Obama’s micro-donations have not made his policies any less authoritarian or neo-liberal. If there is a ‘googlization of politics’ then I would suggest it refers to something else, namely the growing political power of the hit-tech industry: its increasingly powerful role as a lobby group, the development of giant monopolies, the willing role of tech companies within state surveillance, and so on. Google is a corporation like any other – and, as such, not exactly supportive of democratic or emancipatory ends.

On digital populism, on affective capitalismOC James Ballard once said that after the religions of the Book we should expect those of the Web. Some claim that, in fact, a first techno-religion already exists in the form of Affective Capitalism whose technological and communicative characteristics mirror those of network cultures. This notion of a secularized cult can be traced back to Walter Benjamin's thought but is enriched by a very contemporary mix of affective manipulation techniques, politics of neo-liberalism and political practices 2.0. The rise of the Five Stars Movement is the first successful example of italian digital populism; Obama’s campaign in the U.S.A. has witnessed an evolution of micro-targeting techniques - customized political offers via the web. The new frontier of both medical and economic research is producing a disturbing convergence of evolving ‘fields of knowledges’: control theories, neuro-economics and neuro-marketing. In 1976, in the optic of the ‘war-repression’ schema, Foucault entitled his course at the Collège de France ‘Society must be defended’. Now, faced with the general friability of all of us, how can we defend ourselves from the impact of affective capitalism and its digital practices? Can we put forward a differential, local knowledge which, as Foucault said, ‘owes its force only to the harshness with which it is opposed by everything surrounding it’?

SC The digital world introduces new openings and possibilities, potentially offering new ways for people to become politically active, but it also brings with it certain risks: the focus on speed and simultaneity does not necessarily aid thoughtful critical reflection, and the often individualised and privatised nature of digital activities are not necessarily conducive to collective struggle. We need to think through these issues without resorting to moral judgements which either simply celebrate or condemn, resisting both the techno-utopian propaganda promoted by the tech industry and the reactionary, nostalgic anxiety which inflates the novelty of digital technology by catastrophizing its impact. What we need instead is a dispassionate historical-materialist analysis which locates these developments within contemporary capitalism, examining the impact of new technologies on distributions of wealth and power and situating the uses of digital technology within existing social relations. And of course we should avoid seeing digital technologies as a panacea. I’ve always been struck by a comment from Deleuze, which seems ever more pertinent: ‘We don't suffer these days from any lack of communication, but rather from all the forces making us say things when we’ve nothing much to say.’ This is one of our tasks today: to resist the demand that we say something.   

—
Simon Choat, English, is Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Kingston University, London (UK) and is the author of the book 'Marx Through Post-Structuralism: Lyotard, Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze' (Continuum, UK, 2010)'. His current research covers a range of areas, including: Marx’s 'Grundrisse'; philosophies of ‘new materialism’; surplus population and unemployment; and the Marxism of Alfred Sohn-Rethel. He is a member of the Marxism Specialist Group - Political Studies Association. His latest essay 'From Marxism to Poststructuralism' is included in the collection 'The Edinburgh Companion to Poststructuralism.' (Edinburgh University Press, UK, 2013) edited by Dillet, Mackenzie and Porter. He is currently writing a Reader's Guide to Marx's Grundrisse for Bloomsbury Publishing.

Painting: Stelios Faitakis

Simon Choat: Postanarchism from a Marxist Perspective (From Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies, Volume 2010.1)

Simon Choat: Postanarchism from a Marxist Perspective

Abstract

Postanarchists have tended to portray Marxism as an anachronism, taking the alleged redundancy of Marxism as a starting point for their revitalization of classical anarchism via post-structuralism. Critical assessments of postanarchism have so far failed to interrogate this portrayal of Marxism. This is unfortunate, I argue, because Marxism plays an important function within the postanarchist project, and because it allows postanarchist characterizations of Marxism and post-structuralism to go unchallenged. The first part of this paper delineates the role of Marxism in postanarchism, before examining connections between post-structuralism and Marxism: I argue that Marx’s work anticipates post-structuralist concepts of power and subjectivity. The aim of the paper is not to offer a Marxist critique of postanarchism but to establish equal relevance for both anarchism and Marxism to contemporary political thought and practice.

Introduction

The postanarchist attempt to revitalize classical anarchism by rereading it through the lens of post-structuralism has not gone unchallenged. Critics have raised questions concerning both the relevance of post-structuralism to anarchist thought and the accuracy of postanarchist readings of classical anarchism — questions which in turn bring up broader issues about the impact of post-structuralism, the direction and significance of contemporary anarchism, and the relations between theory and practice. One element that has remained largely unquestioned, however, is the place of Marxism within postanarchism. This is perhaps understandable: it is to be expected that not everyone will welcome a Marxist perspective on postanarchism; in fact, it is possibly the last thing that some anarchists want. When Marxists have intervened in debates around anarchism, they have often adopted the condescending and hectoring tone that Marx himself used when dealing with Bakunin, Proudhon, et al: anarchism has been derided by Marxists as a naive or utopian creed that fails to understand present conditions and is forced to resort to a crude voluntarism as its basis for political action. It is not my desire, however, to extend this patronizing dismissal of anarchism to cover postanarchism: to the contrary, it is my contention that postanarchists have been too quick to dismiss Marxism.
The lack of attention that has been given to Marxism’s role within postanarchism is troubling for at least two reasons. First, it effaces the extent to which — as I shall argue below — opposition to Marxism is a key component of the postanarchist project. Thus Marxism is not being introduced here as an alien perspective from which postanarchism can be measured, but elicited as a significant but under-discussed element of postanarchism itself. Second, uncritical acceptance of postanarchist assessments of Marxism obscures the fact that Marxism still has much to offer: Marxism, I argue, has been unfairly represented by postanarchism. This challenge to postanarchism’s understanding of Marxism should not be confused with a Marxist critique of postanarchism. There is much to respect in postanarchism, and its attempt to link contemporary post-structuralist theory with radical nineteenth-century currents of thought is admirable: the problem is that postanarchism’s reevaluation of classical anarchism comes at the expense of Marxism. My aim is not to prolong or revive the dispute between anarchists and Marxists that now stretches across three centuries, but rather to stake a claim for the importance of both anarchism and Marxism to contemporary political thought and practice. This is therefore a Marxist engagement with a current of anarchism that is offered in the spirit of reconciliation rather than denunciation. What follows is not meant to be an exhaustive analysis of the relations between postanarchism and Marxism: it is intended to open up an area of study that hitherto seems to have been closed, and is thus offered as a preliminary investigation rather than the final word. Drawing on postanarchism’s own characterization of post-structuralism as a theory that reconceptualizes power and subjectivity, I shall re-examine these concepts as they appear in the work of Marx, challenging postanarchism’s dismissal of Marxism and its reading of post-structuralism. I begin, however, by examining the place of Marxism within postanarchism, delineating three key functions that the critique of Marxism performs for postanarchism.

The Place of Marxism within Postanarchism

Although the number of writers and activists who identify themselves as postanarchists is relatively small, it is a surprisingly varied current of thought. The basic coordinates are clear enough: ‘the central contention of postanarchism is that classical anarchist philosophy must take account of new theoretical directions and cultural phenomena, in particular, postmodernity and poststructuralism.’ (Newman, 2008: 101) According to postanarchists, post-structuralism can be understood as a radicalization of classical anarchism — meaning both that post-structuralism is in the tradition of classical anarchism and that post-structuralism can act as a remedy to the faults and flaws of classical anarchism without betraying its spirit and aims. But this begs two obvious questions: what is meant by ‘post-structuralism’ and what is meant by ‘classical anarchism’? It is not insignificant that the leading representatives of this project have all given it a different name: Saul Newman refers to postanarchism, Todd May to post-structuralist anarchism, and Lewis Call to postmodern anarchism. These different labels in part reflect disagreement about who can be termed a ‘post-structuralist’. To take only one example: Jacques Lacan plays an important part in Newman’s postanarchism, but he is not discussed by May or Call. Similar problems greet attempts to define ‘classical anarchism’, itself a notoriously elusive category. Who were the classical anarchists, and what did they believe? For Newman (2005: 3), Max Stirner is a ‘sort of “proto-poststructuralist”’, whereas Call and May barely mention Stirner.
These disagreements over definitions and personnel are of course not specific to postanarchism: it is difficult to draw the boundaries of any intellectual movement, but particularly ones as fluid as post-structuralism and classical anarchism — difficulties that anyone will face, whether they are a postanarchist or not.  In turn, this fluidity is not a flaw of either post-structuralism or classical anarchism: one of the great strengths of both currents of thought is their variety and depth. Nor do I mean to suggest that the postanarchist project is incoherent from the start, or that postanarchists fail to define their terms adequately: on the whole they are all careful to explain what they mean by post-structuralism and classical anarchism, and themselves draw attention to the difficulties I have outlined. All I wish to argue here is that it is hard to define a movement in reference to intellectual currents as nebulous as post-structuralism and classical anarchism — or, at least, hard to define it only in reference to these. To say that postanarchism is (for instance) classical anarchism filtered through post-structuralism does not actually tell us much about what it is to be a postanarchist. Of course, this missing content is fleshed out in the detailed studies undertaken by the postanarchists — but these detailed studies differ from one postanarchist to the next. If we are to attribute any kind of unity to postanarchism, then we must look to other factors — one of which, I contend, is a common opposition to Marxism.
This, then, is the first function of Marxism within postanarchism, of three roles that I shall identify: it helps provide coherence to the postanarchist project. Though they may draw upon different thinkers and seek to combine anarchism and post-structuralism in varying fashions, the postanarchists are united in their rejection of Marxism. It might even be said that it is the (alleged) failure of Marxism that is the main motivation behind the entire postanarchist project. Marxism, it is claimed, is in terminal decline: the problems of exploitation and oppression that Marxism sought to address, however, have not gone away (and have if anything intensified). Hence there is a need, according to postanarchism, to rediscover and develop alternative avenues for radical thought and practice. The problem with Marxism, according to postanarchism, is not so much that it is no longer able to provide the appropriate critical resources, but that it was never able to do so: it is not that Marxism is outdated or took a wrong turn somewhere, but that from the start Marxism was on the wrong path. In May’s terms, Marxism is a ‘strategic’ rather than a ‘tactical’ philosophy: its analysis focuses on a central problematic and it aims at a single goal. For Marxism, ‘there is a single enemy: capitalism.’ (May, 1994: 26). Like all strategic philosophies, Marxism is reductive: there is one source of oppression (capitalism), only one theory that can accurately understand this oppression (Marxism), and only one possible agent of struggle (the proletariat, guided by a vanguard party). Tactical philosophies, in contrast, recognize that there is no single site of oppression, and that resistance must take the form of specific, local analyses and interventions. Marxism is thus reductive in two senses, postanarchists argue: it reduces the scope of political analysis by focusing only on capitalist economic relations, and it reduces politics to economics, effectively effacing politics altogether. In terms that May borrows from Jacques Rancière, Marxism is a form of ‘metapolitics’: the real truth of politics lies in economic relations, and political institutions and ideologies merely conceal that truth (May, 2008: 44–5).
Postanarchists claim that to an extent classical anarchism shares these problems with Marxism, though in a different way: whereas the reductionism of Marxism manifests itself as an urge to interpret everything in terms of economic relations, anarchism performs a statist rather than an economic reduction, tending to lapse into an analysis that focuses on the state as the primary locus of power. But in anarchism this tendency is in tension with another trend: anarchism wavers between strategic and tactical thought. Although it focuses on the state, classical anarchism recognizes that there are many other sites of power, and advocates diverse and specific small-scale struggles of resistance against power wherever it manifests itself. This ambivalence marks the advantage of classical anarchism over Marxism: despite its flaws, classical anarchism has advanced the analysis of power, making it a more suitable avenue for contemporary politics than Marxism. This leads us to the second role of Marxism within postanarchism that we can identify: the rejection of Marxism offers a link to classical anarchism.
As we have seen, classical anarchism is itself a diverse and fluid current of thought: in many ways it is easier to define it by reference to what it opposes rather than what it advocates. Newman (2005: 33), for example, suggests that anarchists are united ‘by a fundamental critique and rejection of political authority in all its forms.’ It is the rejection of political authority and representation (especially but not exclusively in the form of the state), rather than any positive political programme outlining an alternative vision of society, that is perhaps the key characteristic of classical anarchist thought. This is not to say that anarchists have failed to think about how a stateless society should be organized: to the contrary, they have offered an incredibly diverse range of visions for how stateless societies might be organized. But it is the very diversity of these visions that makes them poor candidates if we are looking for whatunites classical anarchists. The thread that binds anarchists is not a uniform political programme but a common opposition to political authority. Classical anarchism can be defined not only in terms of an opposition to authority, but also in opposition to other political ideologies, in particular Marxism. Anarchists are anarchists, we might even say, because they are not Marxists. This is not to denigrate the originality of anarchist thought — to suggest that it can only ever be a pale shadow of Marxism and defined in terms of the latter — but only to highlight the fact that one way to isolate the identity of anarchist thought is to distinguish it from Marxism. There is much common ground between Marxists and anarchists in the fight for a stateless society free from economic exploitation and political oppression, and historically most anarchists have been communists (with obvious and important exceptions such as Stirner). But anarchists have distanced themselves from Marxism’s organizational and revolutionary strategies: for classical anarchism, Marx is one those ‘doctrinaire revolutionaries’ identified by Bakunin (1990: 137), ‘whose objective is to overthrow existing governments and regimes so as to create their own dictatorships on their ruins’. Classical anarchists have argued that Marxism’s economic reductionism is dangerous in at least two ways. First, because it posits the state as a mere reflection of economic relations, it does not recognize that the state is a source of power in its own right, and so even a so-called ‘workers’ state’ will be oppressive. Second, the identification of the economic realm as the key site of oppression facilitates the emergence of a vanguard party distant from the oppressed masses — a point well made by May in some critical comments on Marxism: ‘If the fundamental site of oppression lies in the economy, it perhaps falls to those who are adept at economic analysis to take up the task of directing the revolution’ (May, 2008: 80).
These classical anarchist objections to Marxism anticipate those formulated by the postanarchists, who in turn have identified the strengths of classical anarchism in explicit contrast to Marxism. Whereas Marxism is supposedly economically reductionist, viewing all power as merely an expression of class domination, postanarchists argue that classical anarchism correctly saw that power must be analysed in its own right: irreducible to the workings of the economy, power relations exist throughout society and need to be analysed in their specificity, without reference to a uniform model of domination. While Marxism (it is claimed) privileges certain political actors — identifying the industrial working class as the sole possible instrument of political transformation, because of its unique place within the only kind of power relations that really matter for Marxism, namely the relation of exploitation between labour and capital — classical anarchism, in contrast, does not limit revolutionary potential to a single class, instead supporting agents dismissed by Marx, such as the peasantry and lumpenproletariat. If Marxism privileges not only a particular revolutionary actor, but also a particular path to revolution, supporting an authoritarian party and proposing a dictatorship of the proletariat, classical anarchism on the other hand consistently opposes all state forms and all hierarchies, including those of the party. To a great extent, therefore, the postanarchist attitude towards Marxism replicates the standard anarchist criticisms of Marxism, centred on its supposedly reductive analysis of the political situation and its authoritarian organizational structures. Rejection of Marxism places postanarchism firmly in the anarchist tradition.
Where postanarchism goes beyond these standard criticisms, it draws its weapons from post-structuralism, which brings us to the third role that Marxism plays within postanarchism: it provides one point of engagement with post-structuralism. The postanarchists see in post-structuralism a model for their own anti-Marxism. Post-anarchism identifies two key characteristics of post-structuralism. First, is anti-humanist: rather than taking the human subject as something that is given, it reveals the textual and material practices that constitute the subject. As May (1994: 75) puts it: ‘If poststructuralist political thought could be summed up in a single prescription, it would be that radical political theory, if it is to achieve anything, must abandon humanism in all its forms.’ Secondly, it is argued that post-structuralism rethinks the concept and analysis of power: the aim is no longer to establish the legitimate boundaries of power, placing limits between the individual and the state, but to demonstrate that power is coextensive with social relations, acting not merely to suppress a pre-existing subject but also and more fundamentally to constitute subjects in the first place. Power and subjectivity are thus intimately linked within post-structuralist thought. This is contrasted by postanarchists with Marxist thought, where power and subjectivity are also linked, but in a very different way: instead of a productive power that is constitutive of subjectivity, Marxism conceives of a repressive power that constrains our essential nature as human subjects.
This view of power and subjectivity, argue postanarchists, is not unique to Marxism: it is shared by many of the philosophies that developed out of the Enlightenment, including classical anarchism. ‘Like Marxism and most other forms of nineteenth-century radical thinking, classical anarchism purports to liberate some kind of authentic human essence which has supposedly been repressed by capitalism and/or the state’ (Call, 2002: 14–15). Although it may broaden the scope of power, classical anarchists still see subjectivity as given and power as oppressive: like Marxism, postanarchists argue, classical anarchism posits a notion of human nature that both acts as a standard by which forms of power can be criticized and explains the existence of resistance to power. In classical anarchism (it is argued), the relation between subject and power is formulated as an opposition between two poles, with the naturality of the human subject within an organic community on one side and the artificial power of the state on the other. According to postanarchists, then, post-structuralism moves beyond both Marxism and classical anarchism. But classical anarchism, because it at least begins to rethink power — broadening the scope of analysis beyond both the state and the economy — retains its contemporary relevance where Marxism does not. A shared ‘anti-authoritarian ethos’ (Newman, 2007: 194) makes classical anarchism and post-structuralism appropriate partners, while Marxism is dismissed as incompatible with post-structuralism. Indeed, it is argued that to a great extent post-structuralism developed against Marxism: ‘thinkers in this tradition — including Foucault, Lyotard and Deleuze — were all deeply influenced by the political experience of May ’68, and they became critical of what they saw as the totalizing and universalizing logic of Marxist theory’ (Newman, 2007: 3). Whereas anarchism still has something to teach us, Marxism ‘is not nearly radical enough to confront adequately the exigencies of the postmodern condition’ (Call, 2002: 6). An opposition to Marxism therefore provides postanarchism with a point of contact with post-structuralism. It is true that this portrayal of post-structuralism as an anti-Marxist theory is often an implicit or undeveloped assumption within postanarchist writings — but this is perhaps because there is little textual support for the claim: as we shall see next, if one actually looks at what the post-structuralists say about Marx then one can see that they are very far from being anti-Marxist.  Read more @ The Anarchist Library