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Anselm Jappe,
capitalism, commodity Planned strikes against Siemens job cuts in
fetishism, crisis, direct Germany
action, elections Siemens announces massive job cuts in
Germany and worldwide. At the same time, the
Share company is about to realise one of the biggest
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IPOs in German history. IG Metall trade Union
threatens with...
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A critique of Anselm
Anselm Jappe rejects the traditional concept of politics and Jappe's essay, "Who Is
proposes a post-political politics appropriate for the crisis To Blame?"- Roland
conditions of our time, a politics whose task is to at least preserve Simon (Excerpt)
the possibility for future emancipation against the dehumanization From El Viejo Topo:
imposed by the commodity and is based on a combination of non- interview on "curtailing Towards a union of organizers
representational direct action, the rehabilitation of the idea of economic growth"- From the Twin Cities IWW's blog, The Organizer,
sabotage, and anti-capitalist theory that transcends the fixed Anselm Jappe db contests the sentiment that anyone's
boundary between praxis and theory, without succumbing to the Preface to Credit unto workplace is impossible to organize and gives
temptation to seek immediate results by yielding to traditional Death- Anselm Jappe some examples of some preliminary steps one
political attitudes and methods. Voters strike- Octave could...
Mirbeau
Politics without Politics Anselm Jappe What will we do if the
system can no longer
At first, the primacy of politics was the trademark idea of the fhrer jurist, create jobs? An
Carl Schmitt. But for some time now the radical left has hitched its wagon to interview with Anselm
a return of the political in which politics is supposed to be in and of itself the Jappe Alexandra
opposite of the market. Must we be convinced, then, that opposition to Prado Coelho
capitalism, or to its contemporary derivatives, passes for what is commonly
called politics? It is obvious that nothing would have changed if Royal had
School students protest austerity photo
been elected instead of Sarkozy. And even if the Trotskyists, who have taken
Attached files gallery, Italy, October 5th 2012
the place of the social democrats who became liberals, were to share power in
On October 5th, thousands of school students
France, the world would not be turned upside down. In Germany, the Party of
in Italy took to the streets to protest against the
Democratic Socialism participates in regional governments; in Italy,
government's austerity measures.
Rifondazione Comunista has its cabinet posts; even the Italian centri sociali,
Demonstrations were held in cities across Italy
often considered the crme de la crme of the struggle, send some deputy
under the...
mayors to city hall. Everywhere, these representatives of the radical left end
up supporting neoliberal policies. Do we need, then, to form truly radical
parties, parties that will not founder in such swamps? Or are the reasons for
these betrayals structural; does every instance of participation in politics
inevitably lead to surrender to the market and its laws, regardless of any Follow @libcomorg 27.5K followers
subjective intentions to the contrary?
But can anyone think that politics is the social sphere that would allow us to
put limits on the market? That politics is democratic by nature and opposed
to the capitalist economic world, where the law of the strongest rules?
Before acting, men think and feel, and the way they act derives from what they
think and feel. Changing the way men think and feel is already a form of action,
a form of praxis. Once there is a clear consciousness, at least among a
minority, of the goals of an action, the latter can rapidly unfold. We need only
recall May 68, at first glance surprising, but actually silently prepared by lucid
minorities. On the other hand, we have often seenand most of all in the
Russian Revolutionwhere even the best opportunities for action lead when a
real preliminary theoretical clarification is lacking. Such a clarification does not
necessarily take place in books and meetings, yet it must be present in
peoples minds. Instead of identifying politics with the public institutions of
commodity society, one could identify it with praxis in general. But this praxis
must not be abstractly opposed to theory. The theory that we are talking about
here is not the servant of praxis, nor its preparation, but an integral part of it.
Fetishism is not a set of false representations; it is the ensemble of forms
such as moneyin which life really unfolds within a capitalist society. Every
step forward with regard to theoretical understanding, as well as its
dissemination, is therefore in itself a practical act.
Of course, that cannot be enough. The future forms of praxis will certainly be
very diverse and will also involve defensive struggles at the level of material
reproduction (such as the struggles against precarious work and against the
destruction of the Welfare State). While it is necessary to break with the
politics that only proposes to defend, within the framework of the market, the
interests of social categories constituted by the fetishistic logic of the market
itself, along the lines of purchasing power, it is still nonetheless necessary to
prevent capitalist development from destroying the basis of survival for large
sectors of the population and generating new forms of poverty, which are often
more the result of exclusion than exploitation. Thus, to be exploited these days
has become almost a privilege compared to the fate of the masses of those
who have been declared superfluous because they are not profitable (that
is, they cannot be used profitably in commodity production). The reactions of
the superfluous, however, assume many dierent forms and may themselves
tend towards barbarism. The fact that one is a victim does not confer any
guarantee of moral integrity. Today, more than ever before, one fact becomes
of the utmost significance: individuals behavior in response to the vicissitudes
of life in capitalism is not the mechanical result of their social situation, their
interests or their geographical, ethnic or religious background, or their gender
or their sexual orientations. We cannot predict anyones response to
capitalisms collapse into barbarism. This is not because of an allegedly
generalized individualization concerning which the sociologists fall all over
themselves praising so as not to have to speak of the increasing
standardization that it conceals. But the dividing lines are no longer created by
capitalist development. Just as barbarism can arise anywhere, in the high
schools of Finland and the African shantytowns, among the bobos and the
gangbangers in the ghetto, among high-tech soldiers and unarmed rebels, so
too can resistance to barbarism and the impulse for social emancipation arise
anywhere (although with so much diculty!), even where one would least
expect it. While no single social category has answered the call of those who
seek the agent of social emancipation, opposition to the inhuman conditions of
life under capitalism nonetheless always reemerges. This landscape that is
teeming with false friends and unexpected helpers constitutes the terrain,
necessarily only vaguely discerned for the moment, upon which all political
recomposition must now take place.
1. Theres something that astounds me enormously. In fact, I'd even say that
it stupefies me, and thats that at this scientific moment when I'm writing,
after countless experiences, after daily scandals, there can still exist in our
dear France [] one voter, one single voter that irrational, inorganic,
hallucinatory animal who consents to put a halt to his aairs, his dreams,
and his pleasures in order to vote in favor of someone or something. If we
think about it for just one instant, is this surprising phenomenon not one fit
to confuse the most subtle philosophers and confound reason? Where is
the Balzac who can give us the physiology of the modern voter, or the
Charcot who will explain the anatomy and mentality of this incurable
lunatic? [] They voted yesterday, they'll vote tomorrow, and they will
always vote. Sheep go to the slaughter; they say nothing and they hope for
nothing. But at least they dont vote for the butcher who will kill them and
the bourgeois who will eat them. More beastly than the beasts, more
sheepish than the sheep, the voter names his butcher and chooses his
bourgeois. He has made revolutions to conquer this right. [] As I told you,
good man, go home and go on strike (Published in Le Figaro, November
28, 1888, and republished in O. Mirbeau, La Grve des lecteurs, Montreuil-
sous-Bois, LInsomniaque, 2007. English translation available online at:
http://www.marxists.org/subject/anarchism/mirbeau/voters-strike.htm). One
hundred years after this call for a voters strike, it is still possible, and
necessary, to repeat the same arguments. Except for a couple of names,
one could print the text from which these lines are excerpted and distribute
it as a pamphlet; no one would notice that it was not written today but in the
early days of the Third Republic. It is obvious that, over the course of more
than a century, voters have learned nothing. This fact is certainly hardly
encouraging.
2. The criminal is the voter. [] You make the choice, you the voter, you, who
accept what exists; you, who, by way of your ballot, sanction all your
misery; you, who, by voting, consecrate all your servitude. [] You are a
threat to us, free men, anarchists. You are just as dangerous as the tyrants,
as the masters to whom you deliver yourselves, who you elect, who you
support, who you feed, who you protect with your bayonets, who you
defend with brute force, who you praise with your ignorance, who you
legitimate with your ballots and who you impose upon us through your
imbecility. [] If candidates lusting for mandates and bursting with stupidity,
scratch your back and pinch the ass of your paper sovereignty; if you
become intoxicated on the incense and promises in which you are steeped
by those who have always betrayed you, who deceived you before and who
will deceive you again tomorrow; it is because you are like them. [] Go
ahead, vote! Have faith in your delegates, believe in those you have voted
for. But stop complaining. The yokes you bear, you took upon yourself. The
crimes that you suer, you commit. You are the master, you are the criminal,
and, ironically enough, you are also the slave and the victim. See: A.
Libertad, Le Culte de la charogne. Anarchisme, un tat de revolution
permanente (1897-1908), Marseilles, Agone, 2006.
3. On the other hand, one of the new realities that we must confront today is
the fact that anticapitalist praxis resides in the blurring of borders between
supporters and enemies of the system and in the dissemination of
fragments of critical thought among numerous individuals who
simultaneously participate in the ordinary business of this world: they read
Marcuse and work for an advertising firm, they manage a business and they
donate money to the Zapatistas, they claim to be anarchists and work as
administrators of some kind. One has to live, of course, but one does not
want to be taken for a bobo, either. This involves a veritable Mithridatism
against the pangs of conscience that might upset ones existence.
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