Re: <nettime> Brexit democracy

Assembly by H&N deals with the problem of organization and exercising power on the part of movements. Their proposal is to invert the relationship between leadership and base, so that the democratic multitude (based on the emerging subjectivities in wealth production and social reproduction) is in charge of strategy and electing and removing leaders (à la communarde), while leaders are in charge of tactics. The social composition of common labor vs technical composition of capital, i.e. insubordination vs domination. They criticize populism for fetishizing sovereignty and creating a new political class detached from movements. The problem of the revolutions of 2011 is that they failed to produce durable organization and to use their term institutions of the common, save for limited success on the municipalist front. Now that nazi-populism is successfully using movement tactics to growing popular consensus, the need for a new dual labor and political strategy and organization is more needed than ever. While in the old anglo-saxon center of neoliberalism, socialism works as a political strategy and social unionism as a labor strategy (labor markets are tightening and wage increases and union wins are becoming more frequent), e.g. corbyn's new old labor and sanders' dsa, in continental europe the official left is disappearing and there is no ready alternative at hand against national populism and centrist neoliberal restoration by merkron, while existing unions have failed to include the precarious youth and the working poor. i totally agree that it's the task of intellectuals in this particular historical moment to provide alternative ideologies and scenarios for anti-capitalist politics that has a mass appeal. fact is we have little to go beyond the nation-state and that's a cage where it's either hard to maneuver (podemos and catalunya) or the worst nationalist nightmares come true (poland's dystopian nationalist demo). europe on the other hand seems to be only responsive to the needs of the political and financial caste and is deaf on the need for economic redistribution and calls for real democratic governance that the majority of the population demands. a european project that would federate various municipalist, feminist, left-populist, regionalist, ecological resistance, anti-racist projects across the continent in an electoral political movement is something that i would like to give my intellectual contribution to. i don't know whether the political conditions are there, though, given the current retreat into sustainable localism. a slightly less daunting task might be to create a european advocacy defending temps, interns, part-timers, the neets, the unemployed: in short the (multiethnic, polygender) precariat. politically, as a minimal safety measure, considering the antifa meme's deserved popularity among the american and european youth, it would be great if antifa networks from berlin to athens (and portland;) could create formal front structures that can be funded by sympathizers and become a more visible presence in all urban areas of the world so that young people can have alternative models of socialization and solidarity with respect to nazi-fascist organizations and their ferocious racism and misogyny.

(ciao Brian!)

On Mon, Nov 13, 2017 at 8:11 AM, Brian Holmes <[email protected]> wrote:

Wendy Brown wrote:
> Insistence that 'another world is possible' runs opposite to this tide
> of general despair... The Left alone persists in a belief (or in a polemic,
> absent a belief) that all could live well, live free, and live together
> - a dream whose abandonment is expressed in the ascendency of neoliberal
> reason and is why this form of reason could so easily take hold.

Ian Alan Paul wrote:

I've already articulated my thoughts on NetTime concerning where I believe this "other" world becomes possible: in powerful, diverse, contagious, collective refusals which create the conditions within which something otherwise can take hold.

Sean Cubitt wrote:
> Rust belt America and the abandoned North of England will not get better
> because of new right policies...
> What happens if we present taking back control as a mission of the
> Left - if, instead of believing that it lacks reason or authenticity, we
> listen to and act on the popular voice?

Ian, your "proposal" is at best a dream and a polemic. On that basis, hope can definitely spring eternal - but it will never get anywhere, because there is a difference between the messianic and the political. The fact is that powerful, diverse, contagious collective refusals are springing up relatively frequently in the world, and even in the US - but since there is no program, no concrete plan or demand, nothing takes hold in the wake of these revolts. Supporting them remains essential, in the way that dreams and utopias are essential. But I think there's another responsibility, which is to imagine and get behind the factors of sweeping systemic change, which is what the times are callling for.

Sean, I think your question is being asked in the US by every would-be consultant to the Democratic Party. However, it will take a quasi-revolutionary aim and some tremendous legislation to provide a real answer. The center left in the US, and surely also in Britain, could overcome its loss of the working-class vote by subsidizing massive construction and repair programs in order to prepare public infrastructure for climate change. This would be a tremendously positive direction for both countries, because it would admit the reality of global ecological change and make it a central issue for the state, *while simultaneously giving disenfranchised working-class people exactly the kinds of employment they are demanding.* In the US this would offer a counter-proposal to the one now being made by the right, which is to restore working-class jobs by becoming the world's biggest energy exporter. Could any more stark alternative be imagined?

The problem is, the right can achieve its goal over the short term by means of existing market arrangements, whereas the left will have to make major changes in both the taxation and monetary systems, in order to free up the credit needed for deep investment in public infrastructure. History shows that this can be done in emergency situations - and increasingly, the emergency situations are at hand. But established center-left politicians are only able to pursue the wealth generated by the urban cognitive and financial sectors, within the global free-trade networks set up by neoliberalism. That's what Obama did, and despite all his reforms he failed politically (which means he failed in every respect). So for any substantial change to happen, we need a missing politics, a missing demand from both popular and professional sectors.

Intellectuals could help to produce this demand. That could be our job, even if we'll never be paid for it. Still I think it would be worth doing. Otherwise, the future is all-too predictable....

best, Brian

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