SOME NOTES ON MARXIST ANALYSIS:
For Discussion and Debate Toward the
Development
of a Deeper Anarchist Social Analysis
Often it seems that anarchists lack much in the way of
economic theory, leading to conceptions of revolutionary change that seem to be
largely schemes for a change in the form of social management rather than a
total transformation of existence. Even anarcho-communist visions often seem
more like economic schemes than poetic explorations of possibilities. What
little serious economic theory is developed in anarchist circles seems to take
the form of half-digested Marxism in which it is difficult to see any
specifically anarchist aspects. I do not claim to have a deep knowledge of
Marx. I have read The Communist Manifesto
and the first volume of Capital as
well as a few fragments here and there, but I have read a great deal by
Marxists. There certainly may be many analytical tools that anarchists can
steal from Marxism, but we need to do so critically. This article is intended
to open up discussion in this area and deals with one particular problem I have
with much Marxist analysis. There are others as well.
Marxist analysis is aimed at a revolutionary understanding
of the social relationships of capitalism - as such, it is an attempt to
understand the activities and relationships of
people. Marx developed his theory and methodology to provide the movement
toward communism with a materialistic/scientific basis, in opposition to the
quasi-mystical basis behind so many earlier communist ideas.
Unfortunately, the mechanistic basis of modem science,
particularly in its 19th century manifestation, all too readily
eradicates what is living from any situation under analysis in order to make it
fit into the equations developed. Thus, in a great deal of Marxist theory, the
fact that it is relationships between
people that are being analyzed seems to be forgotten. Instead, the
activities of productive forces, value, surplus labor, etc. end up being
analyzed with the reality of human interaction disappearing beneath the
economic concepts. But like gravity, evolution, entropy, inertia, etc., these
concepts are not material realities, but mental constructs that can be useful
tools for developing an understanding of relationships. In other words, they
are not entities that can act for themselves.
Since "laws" of physics general refer to
relationships between entities that, as far as we can tell, have no volition,
these "laws" can be applied - to the extent to which they are useful
- without taking individuality into account. But in dealing with social
relationships � the activities and relationships between individuals with
dreams, desires, passions and wills - the volitional aspect cannot be ignored
without losing one of the most significant aspects of our situation, one of the
most important tools for understanding social reality.
Taking the volitional aspect of social relationships into
account removes some assumptions that often appear in Marxist analyses. First
of all, one can no longer speak of situations that are objectively
revolutionary or objectively non-revolutionary situations. Rather one can only
speak in terms of situations in which uprisings are more likely to occur and
those in which they are less likely to occur, situations in which uprisings are
more likely to flower into revolutionary transformation and those in which they
are less likely to do so. But in recognizing the reality of the human will, the
capacity to defy circumstances, not only individually, but also collectively,
is always there. Thus, as well, one of the more disgusting conceptions of
vulgar Marxism - the idea that capitalism, industrialism and the consequent
immiseration of the vast majority of creatures on this planet are a necessary
development in order to realize communism - is exposed for the determinist
ideology that it is.
Once we recognize that all social relationships are the
activities of individuals in association with each other, it becomes clear that
the continuation of the present social order replies on the willingness of
individuals to continue to act and relate in ways that reproduce it. Of course,
in order to destroy this order, the choice to refuse the cur lent existence
must necessarily become collective, ultimately on a global scale. But from what
would this collective 'refusal arise? The economic and productive forces have
developed to the point that they are tearing the planet apart. In fact, any
further development of these forces seem to guarantee the absolute destruction
of the possibility of a free human existence. The old Marxist idea that
development of the forces of production would bring about the objective
necessity for communism no longer makes sense (even many Marxists now reject
this progressivist perspective), unless one means by this, that the havoc
wreaked by the industrial/cybernetic juggernaut will make it necessary to
destroy the civilization of capital and the state in order for us avoid the
parade of ever more devastating catastrohes and the destruction of life. But in
this latter sense, it is not a determined inevitability, but a necessity to
break out of the habits of acceptance and obedience that one is speaking about.
Thus, it is a question of choice, of volition. As one comrade put it, it is not
so much revolutionary consciousness, but revolutionary will that the exploited need to develop. The current social order
continues not because conditions are not ripe for its destruction (they are, in
fact, well past rotting), but because refusal remains isolated and limited,
because most people prefer the security of their misery to the unknown of
insurrection and freedom.
An anarchist economic analysis would have to include, along
with a serious analysis of the relationship of power and wealth, an analysis of
the volitional in the continued reproduction of the economy. It is here that
the role of desire, of aspirations, of utopian dreams in the development of an
insurrectional practice can become an integral part of our analysis, where the
poetry of revolt encounters the theory of revolution.
From WILDCAT SPAIN ENCOUNTERS
DEMOCRACY
Once the proletariat had tasted this passion for social war
these actions were understood clearly and explicitly by all. The burnings, the
stoning of the police,... banks, firemen, etc acquired a lucidity and meaning
for themselves. They were by no means gratuitous acts subject to the tactics of
fascist [...] but on the contrary were perfectly identifiable with the
proletarian expression of social violence against capital.
And those things which were most attacked, even if they
remained intact, were precisely those things which sustain and maintain
capitalist relations. Thus, when cars were attacked and overturned or even
burnt or just plain moved, it was something more than an attack on a lump of
steel with four wheels and a motor. It was an attack on commodity fetishism,
against a fetish which depends on the spectacle and which transforms it into an
instrument of death. When bank and store windows were stoned it wasn't merely a
question of smashing glass crystals but also of smashing the meaning these
places take on as exhibition centers for the circulation of these products.
These expressions of festive destruction came to be the means whereby
communication was reestablished in the streets.