Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2002 11:22:31 +0900
Subject: Re: AUT: Reply and question for Harry on consciousness


on 2/1/02 11:19 AM, Harry M. Cleaver at hmcleave-AT-eco.utexas.edu wrote:

> On Thu, 31 Jan 2002, Julian Prior wrote:
> 
>> Hi Harry,
>> 
>> I'm having a few problems understanding the objections you raise to notions
>> of 'unified' struggle and post-capitalist 'order'.
>> 
>> For example you wrote:
>> 
>>> the next step is finding or
>>> creating the means to link struggles, to create dialog to facilitate
>>> diverse struggles becoming complementary and mutually reinforcing. This
>>> is part of what some of us mean by the "circulation" of struggle that has
>>> been associated with past, often very powerful, cycles of struggle.
>> 
>> My question is - on what is this means to link struggles to be based if not
>> some notion of 'unity' or common agreement as to (a) what is being struggled
>> against and (b) what is being struggled for. I know you've written before
>> about the 'negative' or 'refusal' element to all struggles and the
>> 'positive' aspect involving taking a step further and forging new worlds
>> (plural). But I'm having trouble understanding how this can happen without
>> some notion of unity - unless of course I'm misunderstanding what you mean
>> by the term?
> 
> Julian,
> 
> It happens through mutual understanding and mutual aid. Of course, if
> you define "unity" as meaning any conjoint alliance or action, then sure,
> there must be unity. What I'm arguing is NOT necessary is identical ideas
> and goals as has often been implied in the old formula "unite and fight."
> Or, in the fervent belief that everyone should "joint THE party to smash
> the state" and the like. In other words, I think that diverse struggles
> can "unite" (link, colaborate, try to be complementary in their actions,
> even come together at the same time and place for action) to opposed their
> mutual enemy, capital, but that it is neither desireable, nor likely for
> them to agree on what they are struggling for, i.e., some common set of
> rules to govern post capitalist society that go beyond a general framework
> within which they can negotiate differences and minimize antagonism.
> 
> To take the case I have been involved with in Mexico. There you find
> diverse indigenous communities with diverse ideas about how to organize
> their lives. Many of those communities have fought for changes in the
> Mexican constitution that would permit them to handle various problems
> differently in different communities rather than all be subject to the
> same set of detailed Mexican laws. So, for example, in one community
> someone steals, is caught and the judgement is that that person must
> reimburse the victims to the full extent, or perhaps even beyond the value
> stolen. In another community, the theif is asked to help the victim bring
> in the harvest and shuck the corn harvested to encourage friendship
> instead of exploitation. As it is, according to Mexican law the two
> different thieves would be tried under the same law and jailed for the
> same length of time. Therefore, these two communities with different ideas
> about how to handle these problems collaborate to fight against the laws
> they dislike and for the right to go their own ways. Certainly there is a
> kind of unity here, but not what I have understood most Leftists to mean
> by it.
> 
> Gustavo Esteva, a grassroots activist in Mexico uses an expression that
> was picked up and used as the title of a Midnight Notes publication: "One
> No, Many Yeses". This expresses the idea rather poetically.
> 
>> 
>> Another question - you wrote:
>> 
>>> there are several problems with the very notion of class
>>> consciousness (including its conception as something unified - a
>>> unfied notion of class consciousness has long been associated
>>> with two undesireable phemonmena: 1. <snip> and 2. a unifed notion
>>> of a post-capitalist world, e.g., the replacement of the capitalist system
>>> with a unified socialist system)
>> 
>> Can you tell me what you mean here by 'unified socialist system'? If you
>> mean a society which is homogenous in terms of culture, language,
>> politics,'work' etc. then I can agree with you.
> 
> Not necessarily completely homogenous, but a society, like capitalism, in
> which everyone is so subject to the same set of rules/laws, the same
> conditions of life, that diversity is constrained to that which is
> compatible with the rules. It seems to me that one of the meanings of
> "domination" is the imposition of the same set of rules on everyone. In
> capitalism people can speak different languages, have their different
> music, and dances, etc., but these things have to subordinated to the
> capitalist rules of the game, e.g., the subordination of life to work, the
> criteria of profit, etc. Marx praised capitalism from time to time because
> he thought that its rules were less restrictive and gave more scope
> for human development than earlier societies (so he believed, right or
> wrong), but condemned it because the restrictions were still too great and
> imposed alienation, exploitation, etc. So, we fight against capitalism
> because it cripples our ability to elaborate our lives, both individually
> and socially, and we want, I think, to craft our post-capitalist worlds
> in ways that reduce those restrictions as much as possible.
> 
>> But doesn't even the most
>> diverse post-capitalist world(s) imaginable still need some kind of 'order'
>> or 'unity', for example to enable decisions to be made regarding production,
>> distribution and consumption on a global scale outside the realm of exchange
>> value and wage labour?
> 
> If by "order" you mean some workable ways of making decisions, then of
> course. My objection is to having "an order", one order, one template for
> decision making. While for truly global isses, that require global
> consultation, such as, for example how to deal with the oceans, or
> antartica, the ozone layer, threats of cometary impact, etc., then sure,
> there needs to be some mutually agreed upon way, at least in the end, of
> reaching agreement. But for a great many, perhaps most, other problems
> that require collective decision making such may not be neither required
> or desireable. I like the bioregionalist notion that the relevant
> decision makers for a particular biosphere (e.g., a watershed) are those
> who live there (as long as what they do doesn't have a negative impact on
> people downstream).
> 
> In some ways this is like the old problem of who gets to decide what
> considered at the time of the writing of the US constitution. What
> decisions need to be made at the level of the whole population and what
> decisions can be left to the descretion of local populations. (At that
> time it was an issue of states vs federal rights. And over time, the
> destribution of responsibility for making decisions --setting rules,
> writing laws and regulations-- has obviously evolved.)
> 
> Basically we're talking here about the political structure(s) of a
> post-capitalist world(s). Commodity and labor markets, money, prices and
> exchange are essential elements of the class politics of decision making
> in capitalism. They are among the things we want, I think, to get rid of.
> But they themselves, being elements of class domination and exploitation,
> are but moments in the whole fabric of domination that includes all kinds
> of other decision making that shapes them as well as other aspects of life
> within this social system. Even today the situation is complex, even when
> the complexity exists within the capitalist rules of the game. As we
> invent new worlds we find ourselves having to invent new rules of all
> sorts, at all levels, and new processes of discussing them and negotiating
> them and coming to agreement about them. One of the reasons we study Marx,
> and capitalism, is to discover what we do not want. We do not want to
> make the mistake trying to substitute one system for another, an inverted
> (but still the same) mirror image for the original. I say "trying" because
> I believe it would be resisted not just by reactionary people who would
> try to go back to capitalism, but by all those folks who colaborated to
> get out of capitalism and found their diverse dreams and projects being,
> once more, subordinated to someone's blueprint.
> 
>>> In friendship and solidarity
> 
> Thanks. Good questions. Hope this clarifies.
> 
> Harry
> 
> 
>> 
>> Julian Prior
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>> 
> 
> ............................................................................
> Snail-mail:
> Harry Cleaver
> Department of Economics
> University of Texas at Austin
> Austin, Texas 78712-1173  USA
> 
> Phone Numbers:
> (hm)  (512) 442-5036
> (off) (512) 475-8535
> Fax:(512) 471-3510
> 
> E-mail:
> hmcleave-AT-eco.utexas.edu
> PGP Public Key: 
> http://certserver.pgp.com:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=hmcleave
> 
> Cleaver homepage:
> http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/index2.html
> 
> Chiapas95 homepage:
> http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/chiapas95.html
> 
> Accion Zapatista homepage:
> http://www.utexas.edu/students/nave/
> ............................................................................
> 
> 
> 
> --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
> 
MIYACHI TATSUO
PSYCHIATRIC DEPARTMENT
KOMAKI MUNICIPAL HOSPITAL
KOMAKI CITY
AICHI Pre.
JAPAN
miyachi9-AT-gctv.ne.jp

" unity of many movements must presuppose that struggle, resistance,
survival are proved to be rooted from same origin. It may be Sachen, which
are produced by people but appear as oppressive force.
To abolish money, commodity, capital are possible. In reality. already LETS
circulate within local community. LET functions merely means exchange tool,
and has not function value-form, ie. money.
IN banking ,for example, in Bangradesh ,local banking as redistribution of
wealth produced by worker or farmer  not making financial capital
Recently in Argentine crisis national wide barter deal spread.
As such, we can destroy civil society without abolishing alternative social
production
Later Marx image cooperative society as form of social revolution instead of
building "vanguard party". In other word, Marx modified image of revolution
from firstry working-class party building and sybsequently became closer to
ongoing social movements
 



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