dr.woooo writes:

"Europe and the New Movements"

An Interview With Andre Grubacic

From what I can tell Europeans are pretty ignorant of
events in the U.S. left, but, even more so, the U.S.
left, including myself, is horrendously ignorant of
events in Europe. Maybe you can help us do something
about the latter problem. I would like to try to find
out some of the trends you see developing in movements
in Europe, and your view of their virtues and flaws.

Grubacic: You know, I was just reading one essay, a
rather old one, from Barbara and John Ehrenreich, the
pivotal essay for a most excellent book titled
Between Labor and Capital. In this essay, the
authors describe the relation of what they call the
"professional managerial class" to the movement of the
1960's. It strikes me as remarkable how simillar this
is to the main relevant trends of the 'new movement'
we have in Europe.As you know, I subscribe to the pareconist view that
in contemporary capitalist societies we have three
centrally important classes, not just two — workers,
capitalists, and also coordinators, which corresponds
to Ehrenreich's professional managerial class, and I
think is also first put forward, inspired by the
Ehrenreich essay, in that same book.

Coordinators are
the people in the society who largely monopolize
empowering work and gain associated power and status,
all of it justified by educational credentials and
monopolized skills and knowledge (lawers, engeneers,
doctors, high level professors, managers, etc.). A key
thing to note about the coordinator class is that it
is capable of being a ruling class. This is in fact
the true historical meaning of the Bolshevik
Revolution, the Soviet Union, and all the other so
called Communist countries. They were systems with an
economy that empowered the coordinator class, and
whose state, of course, was dictatorial.

And you see this kind of understanding applying as
well to trends now in Europe?

Grubacic: According to my strong conviction, we should
seek to create movements that working class people
will define and that will have working class culture
and values, not only attracting but empowering working
people. We should not only reject capitalist
domination of efforts at social change, but we should
also reject coordinator domination of those efforts.

But that means creating organizations that eliminate
the coordinator worker class hierarchy — and that
incorporate what is called in participatory economics
'balanced job complexes' in the movement itself. So I
am addressing here the unpleasent emergence of an
economic and political bureaucracy inside of the
movement in Europe, inspired by the practice of what
may well be a new kind of Leninist organization of
intellectuals — and that reflects this coordinator
agenda.

So, one trend that I could easily identify in Europe
today is this "return of vanguardism". By vanguardism
I mean an attempt to form an elite that can arrive at
the correct strategic analyses and then lead the
movement to follow, with the movement obeying but not
deciding for itself.

Unlike a good friend of mine, David Graeber, who
recently wrote an article on the "Twilight of
Vanguardism", I am less optimistic. This phenomenon of
a Leninist rebirth takes a familiar form in Britain,
where the Socialist Workers Party dominates a
classical 'front organisation' called Globalise
Resistance. The Leninst 'network' practice of
'monopolizing the resistance' has been customarily
justified by notions of a privileged capacity to
understand and the struggle against capitalism. But
this 'new Leninism' is also noticable in the practice
of the networks and people who I personaly admire, and
whom I regard as part of the same movements I work in,
the new radicalism. And this phenomenon is, I think,
harmful.

We could, roughly distinguish two principles on which
a movement could be built. One is the 'vanguardist'
one, or the coordinator one. The other would be the
"anarchist principle". Anarchism has by now largely
taken the predominant place that Marxism has had in
recent decades in social struggle. Being primarily an
ethics of practice, it is the source of many ideas and
inspiration for the new movement. The anarchist
principle implies that one's means most be consonant
with one's ends; that one cannot create freedom
through authoritarian means; that as much as possible,
one must embody the society one wishes to create. One
network which is built on this principle is the
European part of the Peoples Global Action (see, for
more details: PGA). PGA- Europe is going to
hold it's next conference in Yugoslavia, and this turn
towards Eastern Europe is, in my opinion, one of the
more encouraging trends in European activism.

You ask me how to interpret or explain trends in the
European Left, such as new border activism and the
fight for the rights of immigrants (www.noborder.org),
the European Social Forum (ESF) the
Peoples Global Action, the Social Consultas
( http://www.consultaeuropa.org">Social Consultas), the various European
media-activist initiatives, the days of action like
Evian (see a web page on Evian here.).

First, you see, in Europe, unlike in the U.S., we don't
divide the anti war movement from what is being
called, wrongly, the anti globalization movement. We
think that it is ± to borrow the famous notion of
Imanuel Wallerstein — one single "anti-systemic
movement".

In addition, however, it is my opinion that, when
talking about this so-called anti-globalisation
movement, it is possible to identify two parallel
processes. One, which I call the new radicalism, began
with the Zapatista insurrection, and brought about the
creation of the Peoples' Global Action (PGA) network.
The second one, which I call traditional, has
developed separately, culminating in the creation of
the WSF and regional forums.

The history of these tendencies, which have largely
developed simultaneously, is relatively well known.
Demonstrations, the Global Days of Action, and Forums
— as well as the Indymedia (IMC) project that has
inaugurated a quite specific mode of activist
communication — have become the most significant
manifestations of the new radicalism. The new
radicalism implies an attempt to distance oneself from
the practices of the old left; to move away from the
area of conventional politics and to devise a new
political space, a "politics from below," a
pre-figurative politics (i.e. the modes of
organization consciously resemble the world you want
to create), direct action and social disobedience, and
anti-capitalism and anti-statism.

The traditional approach includes social democratic
reformists, and diverse representatives of NGOs, as
well as members of the old left anti-capitalist
parties. Although certain changes can be felt in their
rhetoric (especially when the notorious "friendly
civil society" is at issue), their practice has
remained familiar: trying to reform and humanize
capitalism, lobbying around and through political
parties, recruiting new party members to fight for a
transformation that will not be another "revolution
betrayed". The traditional paradigm implies loyalty
towards the old practices of political action, as
opposed to the new radicalism's intentional breaking
of the old paradigms.

The traditionalists have understood (and they are to
be congratulated for this), that there is something
really new in the new movement. The evidence is the
very idea of organizing " Social Forums" — their
institution that is "new"
although organized in the "old" way — as well as the
striving of political parties to transform themselves
into networks such as the French ATTAC.

What about the work of Hardt and Negri, Empire, that
seems to be garnering a lot of interest and support
throughout Europe. Where does it and the trends
emerging from it fit in, in your view? Is it
Leninist/coordinatorist, or is it more in accord with
an anarchist principle, as you pose it?

Grubacic: In this context, reading the book that you
have mentioned, Empire, by Toni Negri and Michael
Hardt, becomes very exciting. This book is a result of
a meeting of two traditions: one of the French
post-structuralism (in the first place the ideas of
Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, and their concept of
biopower which "is a form of power that regulates
social life from within" our own lives) and the
Italian critical Marxism of 'autonomist' and
'post-operaismo' variety (including the ideas of
"autonomy" and "workers standpoint".)

Empire is an interesting book. It has become one of
the manifestos of the new movement. It no doubt has
many insights, suggestions and concepts. But it
presents many problems as well.

To begin with, Empire is a book that is very hard to
read. It is written in an academic style that feels as
though it was designed to be understood only by the
cogniscenti. I find troubling this contrast between
the call for a radically egalitarian politics and a
writing style that is so arcane that no one outside a
small group of intellectuals familiar with this
vocabulary and having huge amounts of time to wade
through the words could be expected to understand.
Style, according to radical post-structuralism, is
political. Post-structuralist writers, Hardt and Negri
included, tend to cultivate a style that excludes the
vast majority of potential readers, reduces most of
even the highly educated to a passive audience, and
invites at best a small circle of initiates to the
discussion. The style is, I am afraid, absorbed with
the ideology, and has become an integral part of the
presentation, which often has more to do with
performance than with dialogue.

By performance I take it that you mean like a play or
a show that is predetermined and passively accepted,
and by dialogue that you mean a real exchange among
equals where the results emerge from everyone's
efforts. Yes, and I should probably admit that I have
tried to read Empire three times, each time coming to
a grinding halt in utter disbelief and
incomprehension. I honestly find it hard to believe
that people get through it, understand it, and that
what each understands is consonant with what the rest
of its readers understand. Now I freely admit this
could be my lack of background or capacity and I also
have to admit, it is partly why I am asking the
question. I am hoping you can give me a short course,
as well as offer up your criticisms, etc.

Grubacic: Well, I have to say, I suspect that Hardt
and Negri might question my understanding of what they
have written. But, if we move to the arguments that
they offer, the central argument of the book seems to
be that over the past two decades the powers of the
state have been drained away by the flow of global
networks of production and exchange across its
borders, while sovereignty has been reconstituted at
the higher level of a — still somewhat misty —
'Empire'.

It is an odd and ironic formulation, since it comes at
a time when the U.S. state is working hard to turn
back the clock to nation-driven colonialism and
arguably even further. They are not seeking an
amorphous Empire with center spread in an
international network of relations, but rather an
American Empire with its center in Wall Street,
Washington, and our military command.

Grubacic: This is a great ambivalence at the heart of
Empire. What is the role — the 'privileged position' — of
the US within the coming global sovereign power that
Hardt and Negri depict? The actually existing United
States constantly threatens to challenge the pages of
Empire as, of course, not some kind of transcendent,
deterritorialized sovereign force but as a super-state
within an international state system — as is all too
clear to those who have felt its force.

But isn't the real heart of the book and the trends
around it more about who makes social change?

Grubacic: Yes, doubts about its understanding of
international relations aside, another key concept in
Hardt and Negri is the one of the 'social factory,'
where the working class is not simply composed of the
industrial workers who are losing their 'hegemonical
position,' but also includes all those whose labour or
potential labour creates and sustains the 'social
factory'. This includes housewives, students and the
unemployed. The proletariat is still here but the
arguments shift to using the category of 'multitude'.
Although, as far as I am aware , Hardt and Negri never
clearly fully define what the multitude really is.

That the definition is vague is reassuring since I
have not been able to figure out what is the
difference between multitude and, say, the opposition,
or the left, assuming it becomes very large, that is.
The word multitude means to include other
constituencies than workers, but few deny that other
constituencies are critically important, that I am
aware, and their importance is certanly not a new
idea. It also means to reduce the focus on the working
class as alone key or as above all other elements in
centrality, but then again, that isn't new either.

Feminists, anti-racists, and anti-authoritiarians have
taught the need for a multiply attentive approach to
roles in society for some time. The trouble I feel is
that the word multitude seems to be somehow trying to
replace the other terms, leaving us with one term
covering all, and therefore with very little
comprehension of and attention to differences that are
in fact critical to recognize and relate to.

Grubacic: I also don't see the reason to redefine the
working class as 'multitude' much less to use the word
so centrally as to avoid also highlighting differences
that are important. Radical traditions outside of
Marxism always argued for a viewpoint that paid
attention to various elements Marxism made secondary
or ignored. If we go back to Michail Bakunin, or other
anti-authoritarian socialists of the day, they
addressed both the peasantry and craftsman as part of
the working class, and they also paid serious
attention to intellectuals as having different
position and interests, as well. Not to mention the
New Left atempts in this direction. I just fail to see
what is so new in using this much celebrated concept
multitude.

On the other hand, what seems to me to be much more
important about using the term, and what is my problem
with it, is that having abandoned attention to the
coordinator/working class relationship and anatgonism,
the way is opened to replicating this relationship
within the movement. The vanguard (of the
multitude)/mass relationship comes to duplicate the
old coordinator/working class division inside of
capitalism, with the vanguard providing expertise and
managerial skills. Educational requirements (the study
of Foucault, Althusser, Negri, etc.) and the mysteries
of meeting decorum and language tend to bar actual
working class people from the movement's leadership.
Leadership becomes restricted to professional
revolutionaries, and to 'movement cadre' drawn from
the coordinator class. I hardly need to emphasize the
dangerous nature of this situation which could, like
in times past, leave activists isolated and
fragmented, still based largerly in the coordinator
class, more as a subculture than as a movement.

The Leninists used to have one term, working class, to
cover for working class and coordinator class. In this
way their language obscured the existence of the
coordinators, and their program came to advocate a
coordinator agenda labeled pro worker.

Over the years,
the left got beyond thinking only economics matters.
Activists realized that women and minorities and other
groups matter too, in those capacities and positions
and not just as workers, and that they can be agents
too, as a result of reactions to gender and race and
power relations, not just exploitation. But now along
comes Hardt and Negri and again we have one term,
"multitude," covering everyone. So again there could
be a program and method and style that was actually
serving only one part of that whole — the coordinator
class part, for example. It doesn't have to be that
way, but it could be that way. And when we consider as
you point out, the way they write, the entrance
conditions to be part of the process, the elevation of
"intellect" meaning in practice highly obscure ways of
communicating, and all the rest, it feels like slide
in the wrong direction.

Grubacic: As for their program, Empire comes up with
three key demands for the construction of "another
world". These are the right to global citizenship, "a
social wage and guaranteed income for all," and
re-appropriation, which first of all applies to the means
of production but also to free access to and control
over knowledge, information, and communication.

But it doesnt say much more, for example, nothing
about actual structures for accomplishing the demands.
It is true that Marxists always had the unfortunate
tendency to avoid 'utopian speculations', but I find
lack of reflection about alternatives to be a serious
problem today. It leaves open the possibility for new
hierarchies, or even just arriving at the old ones, by
not proposing structures that really would counter
them.

So, for me one of the greatest problems of the book
Empire and the trends emerging from it is its
resurrecting some of the key aspects of the political
tradition of Leninism from which Empire emerges and
which the authors seem to wish to hold onto.

Of course, the book is also, in many ways, quite
useful. The authors, to their credit, resolutely
refuse any strategic admiration for nation states.
Strategies of local resistance can 'misidentify and
thus mask the enemy', just as they obscure the
potential for liberation within it. The
national-sovereignty defence against the forces of
international capital can present 'an obstacle' to
global democracy.

Likewise, Hardt and Negri refuse, in
particular, any idea of anti-globalisation or "de-globalisation" that favors old-style national
capitalism. And they seem to offer a view of political
organization which favors networks instead of
political parties and other more traditional models of
political struggle, but how a normal person with
normal responsibilities could play a leading role in
such a network, or even participate in its debates, if
you have to be able to read Empire first, I don't
know.

But, again, I cannot help but suspect that this book,
however useful it may be in some respects for the
Marxist part of the movement, contributes to the
"coordinator quality" of the movement and it's 'return
to vanguardism'. We are confronted with yet another
European 'trend', which I call the "Great Man
Problem", and which implies some sort of mystical
worshiping of the figure of the intellectual
(especialy if they come from France!). I have to say
that I don't see anything that remarkable in the role
of the intellectual.

I think that we should celebrate, if anything, the
idea of the activist "intellectual", a non-vanguardist
intellectual, in accordance with what I have called
the "anarchist principle". A non-vanguardist
intellectual should be someone who listens, explores
and discovers. His or her role is to expose the
interests of the dominant elite that are carefully
hidden behind supposedly objective rhetoric. Using
what could be called "participatory action", the role
of the activist intellectual could become teasing out
the tacit logic underlying forms of radical practice,
and then, not only offering the analysis back to the
movement, but using it, with others, to formulate new
and very accessible visions. Really, it is something
everyone can and should do, not some specialist
function.

I agree, Of course everyone is an intellectual. We all
use our minds. Some get to do it more due to social
relations giving them great freedom while others are
saddled with debilitating tasks. Some go overboard,
not only arriving at a paralysis of analysis and exess
of obscurantism, but demanding praise and status for
these ill doings.

But I wonder if you could do two
things in our little remaining time. For the activists
who are influenced by Negri and Hardt's critical
Marxism, how does it affect their actual day to day
priorities and behaviors? Then, you have also
mentioned another strain, following an anarchist
principle of trying to embody their future aims in
their current work. What about them? What is good and
different — truly non Leninist about their day-to-day
priorities and behavior? And what problems do they
have?

Grubacic: I think that some of the activists who are
influenced by "critical Marxism" are doing very
important work. But what I would like to see is them
taking part in coalitions such as Peoples Global
Action,, which are built around what I have labeled
the "anarchist principle", because PGA is a political
space open to all libertarian political practices; I
fail to see why they are so reluctant to do so.

And I
guess I would like them to react to the kinds of views
expressed above and clarify why they don't feel my
criticisms are applicable. On the down side, you can
feel, with many of these folks, despite their desires
for justice and to rid the world of oppression, an
ambivalence about working people and a dismissal of
styles and habits that stem from working class life.

At the same time, there is also a kind of exagerrated
view of the life of the mind. This is subtle and hard
to express or even pinpoint, but I think that that
article I mentioned at the outset, by the
Ehrenreichs, does a fine job of describing the
viewpoints and behaviors and even attitudes involved,
though of course it varies somewhat from country to
country — though, actually, apparently a lot less
than I might have thought.

As for the people who are following the "anarchist
principle" in their activist work, well, we too have a
lot of problems. One of them is a problem with the
misunderstanding of the consensus decision-making
procedure which is, in Europe, often interpreted in a
form of "consensus-imperialism". Another problem which
arises every now and then is an uncritical
transcription of some organizational models imported
from the Global South that just don't apply as well,
or sometimes even at all, in our contexts.

There is
also a serious problem of neglecting Eastern Europe
which, somehow, escapes the attention of many
activists. We also have to understand that the goal of
anti-authoritarianism is not to be small and isolated,
and to disengage ourselves from others by dismissing
their life choices. Sometimes, in this side of the
movement too, this behavior comes from not
understanding and relating positively to working-class
and poor people's situations. Our goal should be
movement building, not "summit-hopping": we should try
to connect our local work and our networking, instead
of getting lost in "networks of networks" and "the
process of procesess".

We should also try to be more
careful with overcoming our extremes of
anti-intellectualism and life-stylism. So there is
much room for improvement, of course — which is a
good thing because as we solve these problems, after
all, we will be more successful — whereas if we had
no problems to solve, how would we improve?