The Realism of Audacity – Rethinking Revolutionary Strategy Today

Written on November 24th, 2015 in politics Comments Off

Published on The Bullet, Socialist Project’s E-Bulletin No. 1188, by Panagiotis Sotiris, Nov 23, 2015.

  • In a certain way, I feel a certain unease since the entire Greek Left has some form of responsibility for the fact that Greece is not currently a laboratory of hope; rather it is a reason for despair. What I am going to say should be taken as a form of self-criticism rather than a declaration. I consider myself part of the problem.  
  • The problem is that in the country where the most aggressive experiment in neoliberal social engineering was met with the most massive, almost insurrectionary sequence of struggles, where the political crisis was the closest to a crisis of hegemony Western Europe has seen since the ‘Fall of the dictatorships’, where a relatively small left-wing party was catapulted to power, where a defiant people refused the blackmail of the European Union in the July 5 referendum, Syriza has accepted neoliberal reforms that would make even the infamous ‘Chicago boys’ blush, from an overhaul of the pension system to privatizations and mass foreclosures and evictions, after winning an election where the rest of the Left failed to challenge the left-wing version of ‘there is no alternative’ that set the tone of the electoral debate.
  • Was there another road possible for Greece? Or should we accept the premise that a small country in the European South was not in a position to answer the blackmail of the EU? I strongly disagree … //

… Reopen the Debate on Strategy:

  • Is This the end of the Story? I suggest we oppose this temptation. The economic crisis and the crisis of the failed project of European Integration with its authoritarian disciplinary neoliberalism continue to fuel a social crisis without precedent in the European South … //

…Anti-Politics:

  • Now, can the anti-politics of insurrection, or the celebration of the riot, be the antidote to this? From Alain Badiou to the interventions of the Invisible Committee, there has been an emphasis on the return of mass politics in the streets, the violent confrontation with the police, the direct re-appropriation of the commons. Here strategy is replaced by the desire to prolong the ‘moment’ of the mass riot … //

…The State:

  • What about the state, since we know that not only is the state not identified with government, but also that every attempt to ‘simply use’ it will confront the internalization of the prerogatives of capital and the international markets. The state is indeed the condensation of a relation of class forces, as Poulantzas has stressed, but it is a material condensation not a contingent articulation, producing strategies, knowledges, and discourses, as Foucault has stressed. From the justice system to the forces of order and para-state of intelligence, to enclaves fully controlled by the EU or big business, there are mechanisms that can counter-attack and cannot be just ‘used’ to a better purpose … //

…New Practice of Politics?

  • We need a new practice of politics. Any attempt toward radical transformation must base itself upon the short-circuit between politics and economics that Etienne Balibar suggests is at the heart of the Marxian project, treating the economy as terrain of political intervention and experimentation, insisting that movements representing the working classes have a say in politics, initiating novel forms of democracy from below … //
  • … // …
  • … This means that any process of recomposition of the radical Left must be attentive to this molecular aspect.
  • New forms of movement organization, especially in relation to social strata that lack any form of representation (unemployed, precarious etc), new democratic practices in movements, forms of political self-organization, new forms of coordination and solidarity, expanding the experimentation with forms of self-management, creating alternatives forms of (counter)information, organizing new forms of militant research are more urgent than ever. They also enable us to rethink political organization under this prism of a necessary molecular recomposition, of collective democratic processes for the elaboration of alternatives, of a collective new practice of politics.
  • Communist or revolutionary politics are in the last instance about subterranean currents that came to the surface only in critical moments, because they are dispersed, fragmented, ruptured, the results of encounters that did not last. The challenge is exactly to have the ‘slow impatience’ to learn from defeat, to regroup, to experiment, to rethink all aspects of the conjuncture, from the molecular to the ‘integral’, to ‘organize good encounters’ (Deleuze) and bring these subterranean currents to the surface.
  • The tragic defeat of the Greek Left, opens a period of necessary self-criticism, reflexion and experimentation with new forms of political fronts, organizations and coordination along with all the necessary effort to rebuild the resistance to the new wave of neoliberal reforms, fight collective despair and resignation and bring back confidence to the ability to change things. It is will not be easy and it will be like trying to build a ship when you are already out in rough sea.
  • However, it is the only way to continue to say NO. No to pessimism, no to surrender, no to defeat … //

… (full long text).

Links:

Socialism: the transition to communism, on worker’s power, Nov 23, 2015;

Scots council bosses warn of job losses and vital service cuts, on STV news, Nov 23, 2015;

Scottland: Up to half of economic growth due to public sector building, on STV news, Nov 22, 2015;

Uploaded by The Big Picture RT:

America Was Founded On A Revolt Of Corporate Power! – Thom Hartmann, uploaded by CSPANJUNKIEd0tORG’s channel, Oct 5, 2015;

Syriza split creates Popular Unity, on worker’s power, by Dave Stockton, Sept 14, 2015;

“Transition” and “Communism” in the late Marx, on historical materialism hm, not authored nor dated;

listen again:

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