Organizing for the Anti-Capitalist Transition ∗ Organizándose Para la Transición Anticapitalista 1

Abstract

The current crisis originated in steps taken to resolve the crisis of the 1970s. The political forces that coalesced and mobilized behind these measures had a distinctive class character, and clothed themselves in the vestments of a distinctive ideology called neoliberalism. While this ideology rested upon the idea that free markets, free trade, personal initiative and entrepreneurialism were the best guarantors of individual liberty and freedom, and that the “nanny state” should be dismantled for the benefit of all, neoliberal practice meant that the state must stand behind the integrity of financial institutions, thus massively introducing “moral hazard” into the financial system. The resulting system amounts to a veritable form of communism for the capitalist class. Capitalism can survive the present trauma, and the capitalist class can reproduce its power, but the mass of the people will have to surrender their wages, many of their rights and hard-won asset values to those in power and to suffer environmental degradations, to say nothing of serial reductions in their living standards, which means starvation for many of those already struggling to survive at rock bottom. This may require more than a little political repression, police violence and militarized state control to stifle unrest. Yet crises are moments of paradox and possibilities. So how can the left negotiate the dynamics of this crisis? It has long been the dream of many in the world, that an alternative to capitalist irrationality can be defined, and rationally arrived at, through the mobilization of human passions in the collective search for a better life for all. These alternatives – historically called socialism or communism – have been tried in various times and places. But in recent times both have lost their luster. We urgently need an explicit revolutionary theory suited to our times. I propose a “co-revolutionary theory” derived from an understanding of Marx's account of how capitalism arose out of feudalism. Social change arises through the dialectical unfolding of relations among seven moments within the body politic of capitalism viewed as an ensemble or assemblage of activities and practices: a) technological and organizational forms of production, exchange and consumption; b) relations to nature; c) social relations among people; d) mental conceptions of the world, embracing knowledges and cultural understandings and beliefs; e) labor processes and production of specific goods, geographies, services or affects; f) institutional, legal and governmental arrangements; g) the conduct of daily life that underpins social reproduction. An anti-capitalist political movement can start in any of these. The trick is to keep the political movement moving from one moment to another in mutually reinforcing ways. The left has to look to build alliances between and across those working in the distinctive spheres. Yet the current knowledge structure is clearly dysfunctional and illegitimate. Revolutionary transformations cannot be accomplished without, at the very minimum, changing our ideas, abandoning cherished beliefs and prejudices, giving up various daily comforts and rights, submitting to some new daily life regimen, changing our social and political roles, reassigning our rights, duties and responsibilities and altering our behaviors to better conform to collective needs and a common will. The world around us – our geographies – must be radically re-shaped, as must our social relations, the relation to nature and all of the other moments in the co-revolutionary process. There are various broad fractious currents of thought on the left as to how to address the problems that now confront us. Much work has to be done to coalesce these various tendencies around the underlying question: can the world change materially, socially, mentally and politically in such a way as to confront, not only the dire state of social and natural relations in so many parts of the world, but also the perpetuation of endless compound growth? Communists, Marx and Engels averred, in their original conception laid out in The Communist Manifesto, have no political party. They simply constitute themselves at all times and in all places as those who understand the limits, failings and destructive tendencies of the capitalist order, as well as the innumerable ideological masks and false legitimations that capitalists and their apologists (particularly in the media) produce in order to perpetuate their singular class power. Communists are all those who work incessantly to produce a different future to that which capitalism portends. While traditional institutionalized communism is as good as dead and buried there are, by this definition, millions of de facto communists active among us, willing to act upon their understandings, ready to creatively pursue anti-capitalist imperatives. If, as the alternative globalization movement of the late 1990s declared, ‘another world is possible’ then why not also say ‘another communism is possible'?