John Holloway writes:

"Is the Zapatista Struggle Anti-Capitalist?"

John Holloway

The march of the zapatistas is the march of dignity. Not
was: is. And not just of the indigenous, but of all.Dignity is a march. "It is and it is to be made, a path to
walk" (Words of the EZLN, 27th February 2001, in
Puebla). It is a "hard, endangered journey, a suffering, a
wandering, a going astray, a searching for the hidden
homeland, full of tragic interruption, boiling, bursting
with leaps, eruptions, lonely promises, discontinuously
laden with the consciousness of light.". (Bloch 1964, Vol.
2, p. 29)

Dignity does not march on a straight highway. The path
to be walked is many paths which are made in the
process of walking: paths which resist definition. More
than a march, it is a walking, a wandering.

A walking, but not simply a strolling. Dignity is always a
walking-against. Against all that denies dignity.

What is it that denies dignity? All that imposes a mask
upon us and imprisons us within the mask. The world
without dignity says to us "you are indigenous, so that is
what you can do"; "you are a woman, that is why you do
what you do"; "you are homosexual, that is why you
behave in this manner"; "you are old and we know what
old people are like". The world without dignity encloses
us within a definition. It says to us "your walking comes
so far, you cannot go farther". And it says to us "you
must walk on the highway, not just wherever you want".
The world without dignity limits us, defines us, but it
does not define us externally but with a definition that
penetrates our very existence.

But where does this imposition of masks come from? Is
it racism? Is it sexism? Is it homophobia? It is all that.
But it is more than that. All of us are forced to wear
masks. All of us are trapped in linear, homogeneous
time, time that leads only forward, in a straight line,
time that denies our creativity, our ability to
do-otherwise. It is not only the indigenous but all of us
who are forced to see the same film every day: "We want
life to be like a cinema programme from which we can
choose a different film every day. Now we have risen in
arms because, for more than five hundred years, they
have obliged us to see the same film each day"
(Subcomandante Marcos, La Jornada, 25 August 1996)
But there is a change in the film we are forced to watch
each day: it becomes more and more violent. It becomes
clearer each day that the linear time which takes us
forward, the straight highway on which we are forced to
walk, leads directly to the self-destruction of humanity.

What is this force that traps us within linear time, that
makes us walk on the straight road to self-destruction,
that entraps doing within a mask of being? What is it
that negates our dignity?

It is the breaking of doing itself. Our dignity is doing, our
ability to do and to do differently. Ants do not have
dignity: they do, but they can not project a different
doing for tomorrow. For them time is linear. But "that
which [makes] our step rise above plants and animals,
that which [makes] the stone be beneath our feet"
(EZLN, La Palabra, Vol 1, p.122) is that we do have the
ability to do-differently, to create. We can plan to do
something new and then do it. This ability to do is
always social, whether or not it appears to be so. Our
doing always presupposes the doing of others, in the
present and in the past. Our doing is always part of a
social flow of doing in which the done of some flows into
the doing of others.

But in present-day society, the social flow of doing is
broken. The capitalist takes that which has been done
and says "this is mine, mine, mine!" By seizing the done,
he breaks the social flow of doing, since doing always
builds upon that which has been done. By seizing the
done, the capitalist is able to force the doers to sell their
ability to do (which is transformed into labour power) to
him, so that he now tells them what they must do. With
that the doers lose their ability to do-differently: now
they must do what they are told.

Capital is a process of separation. It separates the done
from the doing, and therefore the doers from the done
and from their own doing. In the same movement, the
doers are separated from the wealth they have created
and from their ability to do-differently. We are made
poor and robbed of our subjectivity. Capital is a process
of separating us from the richness of human social
creation, from our humanity, from our dignity, from the
possibility of seeing a different film tomorrow.

By separating the doers from the ability to
do-differently, capital subordinates doing to that which
is. Capitalism is the reign of "that's the way things are",
"that's the way life is", "you are a woman and women are
so", "you are indigenous and the indigenous are like
that". Behind the racism, the sexism, the homophobia
stands a more general problem: the domination of
masks, of labels, of identities. Behind the particular
denial of dignity ("you are an Indian, a woman") lies the
more general denial of dignity ("you are what you are, no
more"). Dignity is the struggle against its own negation:
the struggle for dignity starts as a struggle against a
particular denial of dignity (discrimination against
indigenous, against women), and it leads on and on
towards the mutual recognition of dignities, towards the
uniting of dignities. The paths cross, flow together,
divide and join, flow in the same direction. All dignities,
if they are honest, turn not just against particular
negations of dignity, but against the general negation of
dignity which imposes a label and subordinates our
potential as humans to that label. The march of dignity
leads us not just against the particular insult, but takes
us further, against the general insult. And the general
insult is the labelling of people, the subordination of
doing to being. And this terrible, terrible insult which
now threatens to extend the denial of humanity to the
absolute destruction of humanity, this terrible insult
arises quite simply from the way that doing is organised,
from the fact that capital is the separation of the done
from the doing, with all that follows from that.

The struggle of dignity for dignity, then, is an
anti-capitalist struggle. But this must not become a new
label ("I am a socialist, you are a liberal", "I am a
communist, you are a revisionist"). The struggle against
capital is the struggle against the process of separation
that is capital: the separation of done from doing, the
separation of the wealth that we create from us, the
separation of our subjectivity, our dignity from us. The
struggle for dignity is the struggle against separation, the
struggle to bring together that which capital separates,
the struggle for a different form of doing, a different way
of relating to one another as active subjects, as doers.
The struggle for dignity is the struggle to emancipate
doing from being, the struggle to make explicit the social
flow of doing. The struggle for dignity is the struggle to
create a society based on the recognition of that dignity
in place of one that is based on the negation of dignity.

How can we do it? Is it possible? We can struggle, of
course, but is it really possible to create a society based
on dignity, a society that goes beyond capitalism? Is it
possible to construct alternative ways of doing within
capitalism, or do we not have to destroy capitalism first
in order to create such a possibility? Is it possible to
create and expand spaces of dignity or are such spaces
not bound to be repressed or absorbed by? Is it possible
to create and expand spaces of dignity to the point where
capitalism is destroyed and a society based on the
mutual recognition of dignity is created?

It used to be argued that the only way to build social
relations based on dignity was first to destroy capitalism
and then to build the new society. It was argued that the
transition from capitalism to communism is quite
different from the transition from feudalism to
capitalism. Capitalism grew within the interstices of
feudalism, within the spaces left open by feudal
domination, but, it was argued, the same could not
happen with communism: the construction of new social
relations required the conscious control of social doing
and this could only be introduced at the level of society
as a whole. The change from capitalism to a different
type of society could therefore not be interstitial: it
could only come about by the seizure of power at the
centre of society, which would allow the introduction of a
new sociality.

The problem with the old argument is that, apart from
everything else, it is quite unrealistic. It assumes that
the world is the sum of different societies, each with its
own state, so that each state can be understood at the
centre of its society. But it is now clear that the
capitalist world is not like that and never has been.
Capital is an essentially a-territorial relation, in the
sense that the fact that social relations are mediated
through money means that the capitalist exploiter can
quite easily be in London and his workers in South
Africa, or the producer of a product can be in Puebla and
the consumer in Hong Kong. Capitalist society, then, is
not the sum of many, territorially limited societies: it is
(and always has been) one global society supported by a
multiplicity of states. To gain control of one state is,
therefore, not to conquer power at the centre of society,
but merely to occupy (in the best of cases) a particular
space within capitalist society. In other words, if we
leave aside the possibility of taking power in all or most
of the states at the same time, the only possible way of
conceiving revolutionary change is as interstitial change,
as a change that comes about in the interstices of
capitalist society.

We cannot think of radical social change, then, as
coming about from above, or as the introduction of
central planning. Revolution can only be a construction
from below. But how can we build dignity in a society
which systematically negates dignity, how can we make
it so strong that it negates the society that negates us?

It is a question not of Revolution, but also not just of
rebellion: it is a question of revolution. Revolution (with
a capital "R"), understood as the introduction of change
from above, does not work. Rebellion is the struggle of
dignity and will exist as long as dignity is negated. But it
is not enough. We rebel because we rebel, because we
are human. But we do not want just to struggle against
the negation of dignity, we want to create a society based
upon the mutual recognition of dignity. Our struggle,
then, is not the struggle of Revolution, not just of
rebellion, but of revolution. Not just rebellion, not
Revolution but revolution. But what does it mean and
how do we do it? In this revolutionary struggle, there are
no models, no recipes, just a desperately urgent
question. Not an empty question but a question filled
with a thousand answers.

Fissures: these are the thousand answers to the question
of revolution. Everywhere there are fissures. The
struggles of dignity tear open the fabric of capitalist
domination. When people stand up against the
construction of the airport in Atenco, when they oppose
the construction of the highway in Tepeaca, when they
stand up against the Plan Puebla Panama, when the
students of the UNAM oppose the introduction of fees,
when workers go on strike to resist the introduction of
faster rhythms of work, they are saying "NO, here no,
here capital does not rule!" Each No is a flame of dignity,
a crack in the rule of capital. Each No is a running away,
a flight from the rule of capital.

No is the starting point of all hope. But it is not enough.
We say No to capital in one area, but it keeps on
attacking us, separating us from the wealth we create,
denying our dignity as active subjects. Yet our dignity is
not so easily denied. The No has a momentum that
carries us forward.

The struggles that say No often go further than that. In
the very act of struggling against capital, alternative
social relations are developed. Those in struggle realise
that they are not struggling simply against a particular
imposition of capital, but that they are struggling for a
different type of social relations. Especially in recent
years, many struggles have laid great emphasis on
horizontal structures, on the participation of all, on the
rejection of hierarchical structures which reproduce the
hierarchies of capitalism: thus the mandar obedeciendo
of the zapatistas, the horizontal assemblies of the
students of the UNAM, the asambleas barriales of
Buenos Aires, the structures developed by the
'anti-globalisation' movement in the whole world, the
comradeship developed in strikes. All of these are very
often explicit and conscious experiments, all ways of
saying "We are not just saying No to capital, we are
developing a different concept of politics, constructing a
different set of social relations, pre-figuring the society
we want to build."

But that is not enough. We cannot eat democratic
discussions, we cannot drink comradeship. It is no good
if, after the democratic discussion in the asamblea
barrial or frente zapatista in the evening, we have to sell
our capacity to do (labour power) to capital the next day
and participate actively in the process of separation that
capital means. Yet here too the energy of the struggle
carries us forward, from talking to doing.

The struggles that struggle not just to say No, but to
create other social relations in practice are driven a step
further, to the practical organisation of doing. The
asambleas barriales in Argentina are increasingly
moving on from discussing and protesting against the
government to taking their lives in their own hands and
occupying clinics that have been abandoned, houses that
are empty, banks that have fled, in order to provide
better health care, and to provide places for people to
live and centres for people to meet and discuss. When
factories close, the workers are not just protesting but
occupying them and using them to produce things that
are needed. The fissure becomes a place not just for
refusing, not just for developing horizontal structures but
for building an alternative form of doing.

But that is not enough. The fissures are often small, the
alternative doings isolated. How do we connect these
alternative projects? If it is done through the market,
the market comes to dominate them. It cannot be done
by introducing social planning from above, for that
presupposes structures that do not and cannot exist at
the moment. It is necessarily a process of doing it from
below, in a piecemeal fashion. In Argentina, the
movement of barter, in its best manifestations, is an
attempt to develop other forms of articulation between
producers and between producers and consumers
(prosumidores), but that too is experimental.

But still it is not enough. Revolution cannot be poverty.
The movement of revolution is to make explicit the
richness of social doing. But now capital separates us
from that richness, stands as gatekeeper to the social
doing, telling us that we can have access to that richness
only if we obey the rules of capital, the logic of profit.
How can we circumvent that gatekeeper, find other ways
of connecting with the richness of the doing of so many
millions of people throughout the world who, they too,
are saying No or would like to say No to the social
connections of capital?

At every stage the state offers itself as an answer to our
questions. The state says in effect "Come to me, organise
yourselves through me, I am not capital. I can provide
the basis for an alternative organisation of sociality."
But it is a lie, a trick. The state is capital, a form of
capital. The state is a specifically capitalist form of
social relations. The state is so tightly bound into the
global web of capitalist social relations that there is no
way that an anti-capitalist sociality can be constructed
through the state, no matter which party occupies the
government. The state imposes upon us hierarchical
social relations that we do not want; the state says we
must be realistic and accept capitalist logic and the
calculations of power when we are quite clear that we do
not accept that logic and those calculations. The state
says that it will solve our problems, that we are not
capable of it, it reduces us to victims, denies our
subjectivity. The state is a form of reconciling our
struggles with capitalist domination. The path of the
state is not the path of dignity.

There are certainly many situations in which we can turn
the resources of the state to our own advantage -- as when
the piqueteros close the roads in order to force the state
to give them funds which they, the piqueteros, use to
develop an alternative form of doing. There are also
situations in which it may make sense to vote for one
party rather than another, in order to defend or create
more space for our movement. But the state does not,
can not provide the alternative sociality that it seems to
offer. State-owned industries, for example, do not
provide a different organisation of doing: they transform
doing into labour and subordinate it to the movement of
capital in much the same way as any other industry (the
same in the ex-Soviet Union as in Britain, as in Mexico).
Even if there are situations in which we may want to use
the state, just as we use money, it is important to be
clear that the state, like money, is the embodiment of
relations which deny our dignity. It is not through the
state that we can create a society based on dignity.

Then how? The question torments us. The old solutions
did not work, cannot work. But can any solution work?
Can the struggle against the negation of dignity really
lead us to a society based on dignity, a society in which
the social power of doing is emancipated (a communist
society)? Certainty is not on our side. Certainty cannot
be on our side, for certainty exists only where human
dignity is denied, where social relations are totally
reified, where people are completely reduced to masks.
The only certainty for us is that human dignity means
fighting against a world that denies that dignity.

Flames of dignity, flashes of lightning, fissures in
capitalist domination. Look at the map of capitalism
and see how torn it is, how full of fissures, flames of
revolt. Chiapas, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, Cochabamba,
Quito, Caracas and on and on throughout the world. Our
struggle is to extend the fissures as time-spaces, to fan
the flames of dignity. At times the flames light up the
sky so we can see clearly that which gives us hope: the
rulers depend on the ruled, capital depends on us, on
being able to transform our doing into work which it can
exploit. It is our doing which creates the world, capital
that runs behind trying to contain it. We are the fire,
capital is the fire fighter. To put it in more traditional
terms: the only productive force is the creative force of
human doing, and capitalist relations of production
struggle all the time to contain that force.

Capital is afraid of us. Capital flees from us, just as we
flee from it. Flight and the threat of flight is a central
feature of capitalist domination. Feudal lords did not
flee from their serfs: if the serfs did not behave
themselves, the lords stayed and punished them, often
physically. But in capitalism it is different. Capital says
all the time to us: "if you do not behave yourselves, I
shall go away". We live in great stress, under the terrible
threat that our rulers will go away and leave us. And
often capital does go away, and then millions are left in
unemployment, whole regions or countries are left
without investment, whole generations are left without
the experience of direct exploitation. Under
neoliberalism, this threat of flight and this reality of
flight become more and more central: that is what the
expansion of credit and the rise of finance capital means.
More and more clearly, capital says "behave like robots,
do everything that I say or I shall go away". More and
more, capital flees from the fact that we are not robots,
capital flees from our dignity.

Dignity and capital are incompatible. The more the
march of dignity advances, the more capital flees. When
the indigenous rise up, capital flees. When the workers
occupy the factories, capital flees. When the students
rebel against the restructuring of education, capital
flees. When it seems that a left-wing government might
introduce measures which affect profits, capital flees
(and the government changes its mind). That is why the
question of how we respond to the flight of capital is
crucial for the struggle of dignity (even more basic than
the question of repression, because repression is always
presented as a response to the flight of capital). What
shall we answer when capital says "behave yourselves or
I shall go"? What shall we say when capital goes?

Let it go! Let it flee! That is the great genius of the
Argentinian slogan "¡Que se vayan todos!" ("Let them all
go away!") Capital dominates by threatening us that it
will flee. Well, let it go away, then. We can manage
perfectly well without it. We will survive.

Or can we? That is the big question. Capital is not just a
process of closing fissures. By going and by threatening
to go, it also opens up potential fissures. When capital
threatens too much, then workers may be driven to say,
"right, go then, take your money, but we shall stay with
the machines and the buildings". When capital goes
away from whole areas, then people are driven by choice
and necessity to find other ways of surviving, other ways
of doing. They are driven to build social relations that
point beyond capitalism. The fissures are opened not
just by our own struggles but by capital's flight from our
dignity.

But how do we survive without our exploiters, when they
control access to the richness of human doing? That is
the great challenge. How do we strengthen the fissures
so that they are not just isolated pockets of poverty but
a real alternative form of doing that allows us to say to
capital "well yes, go away then, if that is what you are
always threatening to do"? The next time that capital
makes us unemployed, how can we say "Fine, now we can
do something more meaningful"? The next time that
capital closes a factory, how can we say "Go, then, now
we can use the equipment and the buildings and our
knowledge in a different way"? The next time that
capital says "help our banks or the financial system will
collapse", how can we say "let it collapse, we have better
ways of organising our relations"? The next time that
capital threatens us "I shall go", how do we say "yes, go,
go for ever and take all your friends with you. Que se
vayan todos."? That is the problem of revolution (with a
small '"r").

What does revolution mean? It is a question, can only be
a question. But it is not a question that stands still. It is
not a question that gets stuck in one place, whether that
place be Saint Petersburg or the Selva Lacandona or
Buenos Aires, or in one moment, whether that be 1917 or
the first of January 1994 or 19/20 December 2001. It is
not a question that can be answered with a formula or a
recipe. It is a question that can be answered only in
struggle, but theoretical reflection is part of that
struggle. It is a question with an energy and a rage and a
longing that drives it forward. Let us push the question
forward all the time, as far as we can, with every single
political action, with every single theoretical reflection.
Preguntando caminamos, asking we walk. Yes, but we
walk with rage, ask with passion.

References:

Bloch E. (1964), Tübinger Einleitung in die Philosophie,
Bd. 2 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp)

Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (1994) La
Palabra de los Armados de Verdad y Fuego (Mexico City:
Fuenteovejuna)

Holloway J. (2002), Change the World without taking
Power (London: Pluto)