[Nettime-bold] RE: <nettime> Re: the myth of democracy

["Kermit Snelson" <ksnelson@subjectivity.com>]

> I wonder how Ian Andrews feels, now that Kermit Snelson
> has "sided" with him in his critique of nik's original
> post on "the myth of democracy."  Sometimes these
> discussions bring you uncomfortable acquaintances.

Most of my posts to this list have argued essentially that political theory
and practice based solely on knee-jerk opposition, lazy reading, sloppy
thinking and public name-calling results only in great injury to
progressives.  I'd like to thank Brian Holmes for providing this argument
with still more supporting evidence.

It's sad that progressives cannot challenge the premises of autonomism on
this list without being accused of opposing progressive activism in general.
This only proves the extent to which autonomism has infected the progressive
movement and undermined its political, intellectual and moral effectiveness.

So here's yet another attempt to dissipate this sorry fog.  Yes, there is a
critical gap between democratic ideals and capitalist reality.  Organized
activism is our only hope of closing that gap.  Fresh experiments with
democratic process, especially with new media technologies, should form a
crucial part of modern progressive activism.  I agree with all of this, and
that's exactly why I'm on this list.

The point that I and others have been arguing is that autonomism will not
get us there.  It is not a state-of-the-art guide to social change.  It is a
very old, failed idea with a noxious past rife with truly "uncomfortable
acquaintances."  Marx and Lenin recognized its ancestors as such and fought
them bitterly, and today's revolutionaries should do likewise.  Democracy
requires institutions.  Institutions require organization, leadership and,
yes, authority.  It is the task of activism to influence, lead and reform
the institutions we have, and to build the ones we need.

Autonomism, on the other hand, completely denies the effectiveness of
institutions.  In fact, it raises antagonism toward institutions to a level
of ontological totality.  Instead of a society based on institutions, it
advocates one based on permanent militancy of a religious cast.  And
rhetoric aside, it's therefore substantially identical to the "realist"
political agenda of Henry Kissinger and Samuel Huntington, with whom it
shares a Spinozist descent.

And having reached that topic, I'd like to express my disbelief that Holmes
cannot abide a reference to the murderers of September 11 as "our enemy."
In fact, he implies that to do so is a deployment of Huntington's "clash of
civilizations" thesis.  Nobody on this list has been more publicly hostile
to that thesis than I.  I believe that thesis is perhaps the most insidious,
dangerous, self-fulfilling prophecy in the world today.  In several recent
posts to nettime, I have dissected this and other arguments of the
right-wing "realist" school chapter and verse.  I hope the preceding
paragraph has made it clear why.  I reject it for exactly the same
theoretical and practical reasons that cause me to reject Negri.  If some
progressives think that calling these mass murderers "the enemy" is the same
as calling Islam the enemy, then they've incorporated the "clash of
civilizations" thesis into their thinking more deeply than anyone.  This
also shows in their unreasoning eagerness to look for enemies instead among
their own friends.  And that is a tragedy.

Kermit Snelson

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