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Katsiaficas, "Subversion of Politics" review
hydrarchist writes
Since early 2001 theoretical debate has been dominated by Hardt and Negri's work "Empire". For many in the anglophone world this has been a first engagement with 'autonomist marxism', which nonetheless remains enigmatic when it comes to practice, represented in the imagination only by the White Overalls (now recycled as the Disobedients).
Some of the gaps in this picture are now remedied by the appearance online of the full text of George Katsiaficas's The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Social Movements and the Decolonization of Everyday Life. Originally published in 1997, and poorly known until after the Seattle demonstrations of 1999, the book provides a panoramic, although impressionistic, survey of European extraparliamentary politics since the 1970s. Italy's long '68, culminating in Autonomia and the movement of 1977, recieves a chapter to itself, although this influence of the theoretical practical innnovations of the Italian movement are never woven into the fabric of the book (1).
Next Katsiaficas recounts the story of German militant radicals and the emergence of the anti-nuclear movement and evolution into ghettoized terrorist tactics. The author lived in Germany for a year and a half during the period he describes and the perspicacity of his commentary, factual detail and sense of the balance of forces reflects this.
Beyond these two cases, another chapter is dedicated to Copenhagen's Christiania, Amsterdam's kraakers and the epic battle to defend the occupied houses of Hamburg's Hafenstrasse.
Katsiaficas treatment of the autonomous movement in the post reunification period is weaker on every level than his analysis of the 1970s. Too much time is spent exploring the rise of the new right and in vague descriptions of the new political landscape. He also ignores the residual East German opposition movement such as the demonstration of 100,000 on the anniversary of Rosa Luxembourg’s death in 1992, the hunger strike and march against Treuhand Anstalt led by the workers in Bischofferode, and the movement of east Berlin pensioners against rent increases in the period from 1991 until 1993. These were all significant events for the autonomous movement and crystallized their impotence in negotiating what could have been an important alliance with destructured eastern workers. Likewise he ignores the struggles of east german women to retain abortion rights and their generally high level of politicisation in the post reunification period. Women in the GDR (East Germany) had significant gains in terms of education and social position, such as the high level of participation at upper levels of management in state-owned firms and political apparatus. The PDS, which capitalised on such sentiments, developed a relationship with the autonomen similar in nature to that which existed with the Greens/AL in the 1980s, and drew large numbers of squatters into their orbit, as members, sympathisers and workers on their political projects such as Junge Welt. (2).
The book concludes with two theoretical arguments. The first expolores and critiques Negri, particularly with regard to his 'productivism', whereas the second concerns Seyla Benhabib and his wider claim that social movements prefigure relations destined to permeate society in the future.
1. With regard to Italy the Semiotexte, Vol. III No. 3 (1980) 'Autonomia', remains the authoritative, if practically unfindable, collection. The British group Red Notes also produced the useful volume "Living Within an Earthquake".
2. On other retrogade aspects of scene culture see Geert Lovink/ADILKNO, "Cracking the Movement: Squatting Beyond the Media", New York, Autonomedia, 1994, also available online at The Thing.
Here are links to the book's chapters in PDF format.
Chapter 1 - From 1968 to Autonomy
Chapter 3 - Sources of Autonomous
Politics in Germany
Chapter 4 - European Autonomous
Movements
Chapter 5 - The Autonomen in Unified
Germany
Chapter 6 - The (Anit)Politics of
Autonomy
Chapter 7 - The Theory of Autonomy
"
hydrarchist writes
Since early 2001 theoretical debate has been dominated by Hardt and Negri's work "Empire". For many in the anglophone world this has been a first engagement with 'autonomist marxism', which nonetheless remains enigmatic when it comes to practice, represented in the imagination only by the White Overalls (now recycled as the Disobedients).
Some of the gaps in this picture are now remedied by the appearance online of the full text of George Katsiaficas's The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Social Movements and the Decolonization of Everyday Life. Originally published in 1997, and poorly known until after the Seattle demonstrations of 1999, the book provides a panoramic, although impressionistic, survey of European extraparliamentary politics since the 1970s. Italy's long '68, culminating in Autonomia and the movement of 1977, recieves a chapter to itself, although this influence of the theoretical practical innnovations of the Italian movement are never woven into the fabric of the book (1).
Next Katsiaficas recounts the story of German militant radicals and the emergence of the anti-nuclear movement and evolution into ghettoized terrorist tactics. The author lived in Germany for a year and a half during the period he describes and the perspicacity of his commentary, factual detail and sense of the balance of forces reflects this.
Beyond these two cases, another chapter is dedicated to Copenhagen's Christiania, Amsterdam's kraakers and the epic battle to defend the occupied houses of Hamburg's Hafenstrasse.
Katsiaficas treatment of the autonomous movement in the post reunification period is weaker on every level than his analysis of the 1970s. Too much time is spent exploring the rise of the new right and in vague descriptions of the new political landscape. He also ignores the residual East German opposition movement such as the demonstration of 100,000 on the anniversary of Rosa Luxembourg’s death in 1992, the hunger strike and march against Treuhand Anstalt led by the workers in Bischofferode, and the movement of east Berlin pensioners against rent increases in the period from 1991 until 1993. These were all significant events for the autonomous movement and crystallized their impotence in negotiating what could have been an important alliance with destructured eastern workers. Likewise he ignores the struggles of east german women to retain abortion rights and their generally high level of politicisation in the post reunification period. Women in the GDR (East Germany) had significant gains in terms of education and social position, such as the high level of participation at upper levels of management in state-owned firms and political apparatus. The PDS, which capitalised on such sentiments, developed a relationship with the autonomen similar in nature to that which existed with the Greens/AL in the 1980s, and drew large numbers of squatters into their orbit, as members, sympathisers and workers on their political projects such as Junge Welt. (2).
The book concludes with two theoretical arguments. The first expolores and critiques Negri, particularly with regard to his 'productivism', whereas the second concerns Seyla Benhabib and his wider claim that social movements prefigure relations destined to permeate society in the future.
1. With regard to Italy the Semiotexte, Vol. III No. 3 (1980) 'Autonomia', remains the authoritative, if practically unfindable, collection. The British group Red Notes also produced the useful volume "Living Within an Earthquake".
2. On other retrogade aspects of scene culture see Geert Lovink/ADILKNO, "Cracking the Movement: Squatting Beyond the Media", New York, Autonomedia, 1994, also available online at The Thing.
Here are links to the book's chapters in PDF format.
Chapter 1 - From 1968 to Autonomy
Chapter 3 - Sources of Autonomous
Politics in Germany
Chapter 4 - European Autonomous
Movements
Chapter 5 - The Autonomen in Unified
Germany
Chapter 6 - The (Anit)Politics of
Autonomy
Chapter 7 - The Theory of Autonomy
"