hydrarchist writes:

"Crisis Theory in a Crisis Society"

Interview with Norbert Trenkle from the German group Krisis

Interviewers and translators: Timo Ahonen and Markus Termonen. Originally made for the Finnish Magazine Megafoni (http://megafoni.kulma.net).

How can the postindustrialized
situation be reacted to, which is represented as a phase of rupture, and in
which some present solutions solely inside the current model of wage work and
others support a fixed citizen’s income as the central form of social security?
In other words, how can the mechanisms disintegrating solidarity and the capitalist
relations of production be critized without stagnating into the defense of welfare
state or taking on the form of past industrial classes? These questions and
others are discussed in this interview with Norbert Trenkle from the German
Krisis-collective. The group, concentrating on theoretical productivity, aims
to criticize the capitalist society in a constitutive way by focusing on e.g.
work, capital and commodity production. As topics in this interview we also
have the current meaning of "leftism" and some questions concerning action methods.

First of all, could you
give a representation of the origins, stages, productions and efforts of your
group?

To begin with, Krisis
refers to a socio-critical publication of the same name, which we have been
publishing since 1986. The publication was originally called Marxistische
Kritik, which already tells something about our "political" origin.
We have developed out of Marxism, respectively neo-Marxism, in the wake of the
so-called "movement of 1968," although most of the members of the
group are to young to have been part of this movement themselves. In the 1980s,
when the limits of Marxism became increasingly clear, that is, its inability
to formulate an adequate social critique of the state of capitalist development,
we saw no reason to join the advocates of the market economy and the state.
On the contrary. We saw and see the failure of Marxism because it was by no
means a radical enough critique of society. On the whole it remained a bourgeois
modernization theory, and contrary to its own claim, never advanced to a fundamental
critique of capitalist society. Such a critique must start with the basic forms
of society: commodity, value, labor, and money. It is not by chance that Marx,
in his main work, Capital, begins exactly with these categories, and
that he chooses them as starting points of his analysis and critique as a whole.
This is because these categories constitute capitalist society.

However, except for a few
rare exceptions, Marxism has never understood this. It has always focused on
the secondary and derivative level of exploitation and class rule. Because of
that, the decisive dimension of Marx’s theory has been left out. The first years
of our development were therefore characterized by an analysis of Marxism, or
better said: by a fundamental critique of Marxism. For us, it was certainly
never a matter of pitting a somehow interpreted "true Marx" against
Marxism. Naturally Marx must also be historically situated, that means, that
he, just like any other theoretician, was in many ways limited by the perspectives
of his own era. However, he laid down the foundations for a social critique
which is really only becoming relevant today: the critique of capitalism as
a commodity-producing, or in other words, commodity-fetishistic system. In short,
this means comprehending and critiquing capitalism as a society in which social
relations have become autonomous from humans, have power over them and dominate
them as relations between things—that means, commodities.

Our efforts have been and
are directed toward driving this critique forward, in focusing it and above
all, in concretizing it in relation to the actual development of the global
capitalist system. In addition, we do not limit ourselves to publishing Krisis
once or twice a year, but we also organize seminars, participate in discussion
events, publish articles in other periodicals and newspapers, and write books—in
short: we intervene in the discourse of social critique on many levels.

An anti-wage labour proposition
has a very central place in your agenda. In Marxist concepts this would mean
the defense of "living labour" (a non-alienated and non-commodified labour).
Which possibilities or obstacles—concerning this defense—do you see arising
in the development of the new forms of labour, the so-called immaterial work
(the production of information, communication and affects)? Also, what is your
general criticism of the idea of a "citizen’s income"?

Our critique is not only
directed toward "wage labor," but against work as such. Therefore,
for example, we published a pamphlet two years ago that we purposely gave the
name Manifesto Against Work. A fundamental difference to traditional
Marxism is concealed here. That is to say, Marxism has always critiqued capitalism
from the position of labor. Work was regarded as a positive antithesis to capital
and it was therefore also the goal of the class struggle to liberate "living
labor" from capital. However, work is an inherent category of bourgeois
society; it is a very specific form of activity that is characteristic of capitalism
or more precisely: it constitutes the core of capitalist societalization. What
does this mean? First of all, the specificness of work is due to the fact that,
in capitalism, social connectivity is produced by it. Humans enter their social
relations through work by producing, buying, and selling products of work, namely
commodities, and by selling themselves as labor power. It therefore does not
matter, what is produced or how it is produced, but rather if the dealt with
commodity can be sold. Under these conditions, an abstraction of the product’s
properties and production conditions takes place.

The driving force of this
restless movement of production for production’s sake is the valorization of
capital, that is, the abstract end in itself of making more money out of money.
However, the activity form of the same movement is labor itself. Labor, like
capital, is in principle indifferent to the total process. This is quite obviously
expressed in the social-democratic slogan of "work, work, work." And
it becomes especially clear, when wage workers struggle for their jobs in obviously
dangerous or ecologically damaging areas of production such as the nuclear or
auto industry. Of course, as far as that goes, one cannot blame them, because
they, like the majority of people in our society, are also dependent upon selling
their labor power in order to live. But for that very same reason, it shows
that work is not an antagonistic counterpart to capital, but only its other
pole within the taken for granted reference system of the commodity society.

Of course, there is an
inherent conflict of interest between work and capital. For the interests of
the workers in getting as good as possible wages and working conditions which
are somewhat tolerable and not too health-impairing is a cost factor which every
enterprise would like to reduce as much as possible. However, the general tendency
nowadays is to place this conflict of interests directly into the individuals
themselves. That is made clear by the armadas of subcontractors, pseudo self-employed,
and small entrepreneurs that represent capital and labor in one person. But
also the new management concepts of a "flat hierarchy" and self-motivation—especially
in the new sectors of the information, communication, and service industries—have
the "entrepreneur in the enterprise" as an ideal. The same, however,
also applies to the extensive sectors of misery in the "informal economy"
where people are forced to do work as the smallest of entrepreneurs. Here the
fundamental identity of capital and labor as social principles of coercion,
which still remain in effect when humans are no longer needed from the viewpoint
of valorization, becomes perfidiously visible.

That does not mean, that
labor struggles are unnecessary or even wrong. However, it is necessary to make
a change of perspective. It is not a matter of liberating work, but of liberation
from work. That means, creating social conditions under which humans can decide
freely about how, in what form, and for what purpose they want to become active.
In this context, a citizen’s income is a very paradoxical demand. On the one
hand, it wants to remove the coercion of having to work by liberating humans
from the necessity of having to earn money at any price. But with money (which
is to be available to everybody), it uncritically takes for granted the production
of commodities and therefore work. Although the demand is initially positive
because it even questions the ruling fetishism of work, the critique remains
half-hearted and is deflected back before it reaches the fundamental problem.
The citizen’s income has, by the way, practically only a chance in the central
countries of the world market, but even there at the most at a poverty level
and as a replacement for existing social benefits, just as was already demanded
by the early neo-liberal Milton Friedman back in the 1960s.

Is it possible that the
reduction of the wage work institution will bring about—at least temporarily—a
reduction of basic social services and benefits ("security"), and does this
open possibilities for spontaneous and mutual co-operation rather than to the
disappearance of collectivity? These problems are also connected to the questions
of how to encourage people to participate or move their asses in the centre
of the general atomization process, and how to make use of situations of social
crisis (how to create ruptures, but at the same time avoiding futile confrontations
of "revolutionary vanguards" and the repression machinery).

The constant decrease of
work in the core areas of production is an expression of the fundamental crisis
of capitalism, which began in the 1970s when Fordism ended. The cause is the
enormous increase in productivity in the course of the so-called "microelectronic
revolution" that has enabled an ever larger production of commodities with
an ever smaller amount of labor power. As such, this development could be quite
positive because it creates an opportunity for a wealth of material production
and available free time for everyone in the world. However, in capitalist society
this opportunity can not be realizable, because the criterion for production
is not the satisfaction of human needs, but the valorization of capital. The
"microelectronic revolution" therefore leads to the paradoxical result
of increasing pauperization in the middle of an enormous potential for wealth.
More and more people become superfluous for capitalist valorization, have no
chances of selling their labor power, and are cut off from accessing the wealth
of society because they can no longer earn money in a "regular way."
At the same time, this means that the basis of capitalist valorization, which
consists of the economic utilization of living labor power, increasingly shrinks.
That means: The "crisis of work" is necessarily also a crisis of capital.
It manifests itself in an intensification of worldwide competition, an increasing
centralization of capital (corporation takeovers and mergers), and a concentration
of profitable global production into ever fewer locations.

One of the results of this
crisis is the dismantling of social systems which is taking place everywhere.
However, I think it would be overly optimistic to say that it opens possibilities
for a spontaneous cooperation. On the contrary. First of all, with this dismantling
daily competition is increased and a desolidary climate is created. Of course,
as a reaction to this crisis and social dismantling, different forms of self-help
are simultaneously created, but as a rule they have the character of emergency
measures, remain mostly group-particular, and rarely join together with a socio-critical
orientation. They are therefore easily swallowed up by the neo-liberal crisis
administration. It is not easy to answer the question of how to find a way out
of this awkward situation. In any case, a resistance against the ever harsher
unreasonable demands of the neo-liberal crisis administration is necessary.
But this resistance can not only stop with a mere defense of the welfare state—which
would anyway only be a perspective in the few countries of the capitalist center
and then only at the expense of the rest of humanity—but must also develop into
a movement which radically questions the foundations of capitalism: commodity
and money, state and nation, work, and the patriarchal relations between the
sexes.

Your perspective seems
to avoid the old-fashioned, rigid "leftism," but it's still nevertheless "leftist"
in this era when the social-democratic leftism has "progressed" into a "third
way" neo-liberal rip-off (the situations in Finland and Germany being quite
similar actually). Which current social movements are putting into practice
the leftist perspective of yours? Also, is a leftist identity really useful
anymore? What are the most essential claims of these movements?

When we speak of "left"
and "right," it may help to more closely examine the origin of these concepts.
They are derived from the sitting order of the French National Convention in
the era of the French revolution: The radical Jacobins sat on the left, the
conservative powers on the right, and in this respect these concepts only describe
an inner polarity of the bourgeois social order. However, during the previous
two hundred years the left has understood itself a social power that wanted
to transcend capitalism. But by closely examining in retrospect its political
programs and practices, one sees quite clearly, that it only represented an
element of historical development with whose help the commodity society was
able to assert itself. I must only call to mind the nearly religious attitude
towards the state and work. In the historical process the left has never played
the role of a power which transcends the system. Instead, it has contributed
to generalizing work and the production of commodities as social forms.

Therefore, when Tony Blair
and all of the other representatives of the "New Social Democracy"
claim to stand "beyond left and right," they then reveal more, then
they know: namely, the fundamental identity of both of these poles, which is
presently revealing itself because its reference system, the commodity-producing
society, has reached its historical limits. Of course, Blair and associates
do not at all stand outside of this reference system. What they call "realism"
or "pragmatism" is nothing more than the management of its crisis
process in an era when the inherent antithesises of right and left have in reality
become increasingly obsolete.

In comparison, a radical
critique of capitalism is really directed toward a "hereafter" of
the prevailing social order and could then therefore no longer be named "leftist"
in a strict sense. However, it is not a matter of words. It is about a new anticapitalist
orientation that surpasses and transcends the old "leftism" in an
emancipatory sense. Social movements with such an orientation do not yet exist;
and also, last but not least, because the traditional left still symbolically
occupies the place of a system opposition, even though it can less and less
fulfil the expectations of such an opposition.

The main strategy of the
current anticapitalist movements has been to organize global action days (Seattle,
Washington, Prague, etc.), which are, however, possibly facing their end as
the action forms are starting to repeat themselves, as the interest of the mainstream
media gets smaller once the surprising character vanishes, and as the neo-liberal
power structure is practising its repressivity more openly (violating the civil
rights of demonstrators, etc.). Which ways out do you see in this "looming cul-de-sac"—possibly
the opening towards the civil society and taking the alternatives more clearly
into the level of our everyday lives? On the other hand, the organization of
the numerous movements is tied very closely to this difficult question....

I also see the danger that
the anti-globalization protests could wear themselves out, even though the massive
repression in Genoa initially contributed to both a broader awareness and a
certain solidarity within the general public. But no different form of activity
helps against this danger because its most important reason lies elsewhere.
The danger lies in that the protests in their critique and orientation remain
very diffuse and to a large extent do not have an anticapitalist character,
but are directed toward some kind of illusionary "reforms" of the
commodity-producing world system. This initially makes possible a broad movement,
but on the other hand, it only creates a very loose, precarious solidarity which
can fall apart at any time. And this will happen the sooner the socioeconomic
crisis process makes itself felt more severely in the hitherto largely privileged
countries of the world market. But first of all, the completely contradictory
demands and interests which have hitherto been able to peacefully coexist in
the movement, will come into conflict with each other. I am thinking, for example,
of the contradiction between the interests of the Western unions in protectionist
measures and the demands for an opening of the markets for imports from the
Third World. Or also of the contradiction between the leftist-Keynesian cries
for jobs and ecological requirements.

Secondly, it will also
show that the demanded "reforms" of the international finance market
and the appeal to the state to regulate the market more strongly is completely
illusionary. And not because the political will would be lacking—a movement
could certainly give a helping hand to that, if it is strong enough—but because
the economic foundations no longer exist for it. Especially the illusional belief
in the state is a typical example which shows that the ideological bits and
pieces of the traditional left are also still around in the anti-globalization
movement, even though they have long since been obsolete. For the labor movement,
be it "reformist" or "revolutionary," was always to the
greatest extent fixated on the state (this is true of the mainstream labor movement).
But there is no way back to the times of Keynesianism and Fordism, which by
the way, were not so "golden" as the social-democratic nostalgics
would have us believe. Also, there is no way forward to a new system of "regulation,"
for example, on a European or global level, because the crisis of the state
and politics is itself part of the all-embracing and fundamental crisis process.
No solutions should therefore be expected from this side. Nevertheless, in the
capitalist crisis centers the state shall for some time remain a powerful authority;
not in the least because of its repressive function. Therefore social movements
will naturally have to continue to come to grips with it and confront it. But
that is a different matter than cultivating an illusional belief in the state.

In the anti-globalization
movement, however, there is also the illusion of a "civil society."
Because this concept is so diffuse and vague, almost anything can naturally
be projected into it. But it does stand for a widespread basic consensus, namely
the idea of being able to control capitalism, of enriching it by elements of
self-organization, and of "civilizing" it. "Civil society"
concepts generally are therefore not contradictory to the illusional belief
in the state, but only supplement it. It is completely overlooked that the modern
commodity-producing society would still not be a benevolent system if all humans
could permanently make decisions about what is to happen; for the basic logic
of the system is thereby always taken for granted. Therefore, only alternatives
that are compatible with this basic logic can be decided about. Every self-organization
within the existing forms will thus be reduced to absurdity because they result
in a self-organization of competition, "economic rationality," and
cost reduction. This is, moreover, a painful experience which all cooperatives
and self-managed businesses have had to experience time and time again.

Particularly in the crisis
process, a democratic or "civil-social" control reduces it self to
a self-management of the increasing misery, like it can be observed in many
municipalities where associations and citizen’s initiatives and so forth are
allowed to participate in the distribution of ever diminishing budgets. They
can then themselves decide whose money is or is not going to be cut, just like
in the modern management concepts where the employees can decide how they can
reach the always predetermined general goal of a maximum possible work performance
and therefore permanently control themselves. That is not only especially perfidious,
but also even mostly has a system-stabilizing effect because the concerned then
identify themselves even more with the predetermined imperatives and coercions.
They then seem to be "self-placed" and it becomes even more difficult,
to question them.

I thereby do not want to
say that the idea of social self-organization is wrong. On the contrary. An
emancipation from the commodity-society system can only mean that the interconnection
of global society can no longer be transmitted behind the backs of humans through
the repressive channels of market and state, but consciously through staggered,
differentiated, and non-hierarchical structures of social self-organization.
But this is exactly what is not meant by the concept "civil society."
This concept gives the illusion that capitalism can be "tamed" and
"civilized." The praise of the "civil society" to a certain
degree reminds me of the mystification of "the proletariat" and "the
people." The civil society appears as the embodiment of "good"
against the "evil capital" and the "evil state," although
it is nevertheless only an integral part of the system itself. This does not
rule out the possibility that an anti-capitalist movement can develop out of
that sector of society which is commonly called the "civil society."
But this is based on the prerequisite of destroying the "civil society"
illusion. In a certain way the crisis process also has its part in this. For
it is becoming increasingly apparent that the promises by means of system-inherent
improvements can never be redeemed (only has to think of the protection of the
climate and the worldwide pauperization), but on the contrary, the standards
are being increasingly lowered everywhere. It is decisive though, how these
experiences are assimilated. The disappointments can turn into resignation or
can be regressively assimilated into racist, anti-Semitic, and social-Darwinist
patterns.

It is therefore very important
to develop a discourse and carry it into the anti-globalization movement. This
discourse must insist that there can only be a way out of the worldwide spiral
of misery, violence, and destruction of the of the social and ecological life
bases if the foundations of the commodity-producing global system are questioned.
If it is possible to make this clear, the spark might ignite and the movement—or
a part of it—will develop into a radical anti-capitalist movement. The potential
for this certainly exists, because the displeasure with the growing unbearableness
of global crisis-capitalism is widespread, even if it has hitherto mostly expressed
itself in forms which are diffuse or inherent to the system.

The discussion concerning
"The Black Book of Communism" has been vivid from country to country (e.g. in
Finland, where it was published as a translation in autumn 2000) and one of
you, Robert Kurz, has written "The Black Book of Capitalism", evidently as a
reaction to this whole mess. What do we have to learn from these discussions
and what do you think has been their most central function—the legitimation
of the "end of history" (as in the work of Francis Fukuyama) or a pure concern
and shock about the genocides?

The Black Book of Capitalism
by Robert Kurz is not a reaction to The Black of Communism, even though
the title initially suggests this and naturally polemically hints at it. It
has a completely different character. It depicts the bloody, grim, and repressive
history of the modern commodity society and takes a particular look at the interconnection
of real historical processes and ideological reflections. For example, it shows
which role the Enlightenment had in the carrying out and internalization of
capitalist coercions, such as the coercion of having to work.

In comparison, The Black
Book of Communism is a very disgusting work, which has no other goal than
legitimizing the prevailing conditions and disseminating the message that there
is no alternative to capitalism. Empirically the book brings almost no new knowledge
and a fundamental theoretical reflection is of course abstained from. And naturally
the authors could not come upon the idea that the crimes carried out by Stalin
and associates were not at all the results of a somehow failed attempt to transcend
capitalism, but must be understood as a genuine expression of capitalist logic.
For "real socialism" was not an alternative system to capitalism,
but a specific historical form of catch-up capitalist modernization. It was
the form in which the commodity-producing system in the peripheral states (that
is, the lagging states of the world market) was carried through. The brutality
with which this happened, is in a sense the time-compressed repetition of that
what was done to humans in Western Europe and its colonies in the past four
centuries. It is not at all to be relativized, but it does not speak in favor
of capitalism, but clearly against it. This is an integral part of the history
of capitalism, even if the authors of The Black Book of Capitalism and
most of its readers naturally do not want to see this consequence. However,
their horror is not really hypocritical, but it has a projective character.
In the crimes of so-called communism they unconsciously recognize the mirror
image of their own dark history. And that must naturally be vehemently avoided.

Your work has been "only"
theoretical. Exactly what kind of function do you see for theoreticians and
theory in the social movements? How can the unofficial leaderships of intellectuals
and their representative positions be avoided?

Theory is a specific form
of reflection, which is as particular to capitalist society as is work, politics,
nation-state and such things. It is a form of reflection that is separated from
daily life. This is necessary because social relations are quasi automatically
produced behind the backs of the members of society, which then must in retrospect
be arduously deciphered. This also and specifically applies to a socio-critical
theory. It is necessary because the social logic against which it is directed
is not readily apparent. But socio-critical theory thereby finds itself in a
fundamental contradiction: it moves within the framework of that, which it critiques.
But that is, by the way, a contradiction which not even an anti-capitalist movement
on the level of practice can escape from, for no one stands outside of the existing
social order, even if he or she struggles against it.

There is certainly no quick
way out of this contradiction. Although socio-critical theory, in accord with
its own claim, presses forward to become practical, this claim cannot be readily
realized. In any case, the "unity of theory and practice," which is
often readily chanted by the left is wrong. For this always means that theory
commands practice, or vice versa, theory subjugates itself to the tactical demands
of a no longer reflecting practice. In the end, both sides perish, as can be
observed by studying the history of the labor movement. The relationship of
theory and practice can only be that of a mutual exchange. Both sides must respect
each other as being independent, must mutually acknowledge each other, and must
refer to each other under this condition.

What we as theoreticians
can initially accomplish in this process, is the deciphering of the destructive
fetishistic logic of this society and the critique thereof in this manner. By
doing this and trying to concretize the critique of diverse phenomena, also
on the diverse levels of society, something like a negative point of orientation
develops for a possible anti-capitalist practice. Negative in the sense, in
that it becomes clear what must be struggled against and transcended. But socio-critical
theory must also be aware of its own limitations. It cannot and must not give
instructions for such a practice or even create any future plans that must be
"realized." Above all, it must not try to postulate any principle
for a postcapitalist society. For if anything at all can be said about postcapitalist
society, it can be said that it will not be subjugated to an everywhere valid,
abstract-universal central principle, like in the case of the prevailing society
that must for better or for worse obey the dictum of valorization. Although,
out of this critique, rough statements can be made about what a transcendence
of the commodity society could mean, they must remain at a very abstract level
and can in the end only be concretized by a social movement. It can, for example,
be said that in a postcapitalist society humans will no longer and indirectly
form their social relations, which take place behind their back, through the
fetishistic forms of money, work, labor, and state. Above I would have described
it with the expression "structures of social self-organization."

But at the same time, from
this theoretical insight it follows than an anticapitalist movement must not
be orientated toward conquering the state (which is in accordance with the traditional
revolutionary models). As a perspective for action, it can rather be stated:
starting a process of direct appropriation of the social connections (from the
means of production, existence, and communication, and through means of cultural
expression up to the relations of daily life) in the course of which new forms
of social agreements and understandings must be developed. What this means exactly
cannot be anticipated, but must be "discovered" in a long process
and through many experiences and attempts. And in this process the relation
of theory and practice will naturally ultimately change according to the extent
that reflection is carried as an essential part into the social performances
of action.

But we have by no means
reached this point, and it is not even certain, if we are ever going to reach
it. Today the question arises as to what socio-critical theory can contribute
so that an anticapitalist movement develops out of the protest and resistance
against the prevailing conditions. A "strategy" for that does not
exist. But by the intervention of social critique on the level of discourse,
and by playing the own melody of the prevailing conditions back to them, as
was nicely expressed by Marx, a social critique can perhaps function as a catalyst
for the formation of such a movement.

Postmodern theory is a
controversial topic in your work. Have the postmodern intellectuals provided
any useful influences for the new social movements? It must be emphasized that
postmodernity does not "happen" solely in the works of postmodern intellectuals:
many of the current social phenomena—such as the rhizomatic communication networks,
the rapid flow of the capitals, the socio-cultural orientation towards irony
and self-reflection, the ridiculing of ideologies, the fragmentation of popular
culture, etc.—are parts of our everyday lives. Therefore is it reasonable to
ask if the postmodernists are in a way fighting an old enemy, because the Empire
(the current global sovereignty as defined by Negri and Hardt) is able to adopt
postmodern phenomena or at least to "recuperate" them?

We do in fact have a quite
critical relationship to postmodern theory or in any case to most theories that
can be included under this label. However, I do think that some of them have
produced important socio-cultural contributions. That is especially true of
the critique of identity logic and identity politics with their repressive mechanisms
of exclusion and inclusion, which is therewith interrelated with the analysis
and critique of racism, sexism, nationalism, and all such related structures.
Unfortunately, the consequence has mostly been an uncritical pluralism and relativism,
which as such, is certainly compatible with capitalist logic. Moreover, uncritical
pluralism and relativism in a sense correspond to the current phase of social
development in which social atomization is constantly progressing, in which
great flexibility and mobility is demanded, and in which capitalism is undermining
institutions and identity (for example, politics and heterosexual relationships)
of which it itself is dependent on, but without being able to put anything new
in their place. To this situation, the often mentioned virtues of irony and
ambivalence fit like a lid to its pot. They are at the very most critical up
to the point (and normally not even that far) that the basic forms of society
would have to be questioned. They stand for a continuation under social conditions
whose absolute boundaries have been visible for a long time; this is suspected,
however, but does not find a conscious expression. To that extent, one can say
that the fundamental crisis of capitalism in a sense reflects itself in the
postmodern theories, but without them being able to think about this, because
on the level of totality, they have declared a ban on thinking.