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EDITORIAL

This issue of Endnotes has been a long time com ing. Its
publ ication was delayed due to experiences and con­
versations that compelled us to clarify our analyses, and
at times to wholly rework them. Many of the articles in
this issue are the products of years of discussion. Some
articles spilled over i nto such lengthy pieces that we
had to split the issue in two. Endnotes 4 will therefore
be forthcoming, not in another three years, but rather,
i n the n ext six months. H ere, by way of explanation
for the delay, we describe some of the q uestions and
quandaries that gave birth to this issue and the next.

1 N EW STR U G G LES

The fi rst two issues of Endnotes called for a renewed


focus on the struggles of our times, unencum bered by
the dead weight of outmoded theories. H owever, we
o u rselves p rovided l ittle analysis of stru g gles. Partly,
that was because class conflict was at a low ebb at the
time we were writing, and that made fl ig hts of abstrac­
tion more attractive. But it was also because we didn't
know what we wanted to say about the strugg les that
were ongoing, and we thought it best not to pretend
otherwise. We began t h i s j o u rnal as a place for the
careful worki ng out of ideas. We d i d n 't want to rush to
conclusions for the sake of being topical.

1
That said, the m i l ieu of which we form a part - the so- 1 R.S., 'The Present
called comm u nising cu rrent - did offer an analysis of Moment', SIC 1
struggles, which we fou n d attractive. (November 2011), 96.

Participants i n the m i l ieu observed that, even i n factory


struggles, the re-emergence of an affirmable worki ng
class identity seemed to be off the table: workers were
self-organising, but without ill usions about the revolution­
ary potential of such self-organisation. For exam ple, in
certain factories - in South Korea, i n France, i n the US,
and elsewhere - workers took over their workplaces, not
in order to run them on their own, but rather, to demand
better severance pay. Meanwhile, many struggles were
erupting outside of the workplace - concerning students,
the unemployed, racialised minorities - with no interest in
finding their way in. Workers in what were once bastions
of working class strength (industry, construction, mining
and utilities) could no longer offer u p their stru g gles
as a container for the needs of the class as a whole.
Strugg les over " reproduction" were supplanting those
over "production", even if the former seemed to lack the
power vis-a-vis capital h istorical ly wielded by the latter.

The comm u n ising current also provided the fol lowing


analysis of these strug gles. They seem to hobble for­
ward on two legs. Their first leg is the limit of struggle:
act i n g as a class means havi n g n o h orizon outside
of the capital-labour relation. Their second leg is the
dynamic: class belon g i n g is then experienced as an
"external constraint", as something to be overcome. In
the anti-globalisation movement, the dynamic of class
struggle became autonomous from the struggle itself:
the aban d o n ment of a class position served as t h e
basis from wh ich to attack capital. T h e present crisis
was supposed to force the legs of class struggle to
walk together. Struggles were expected to re-emerge
within the workplace, around a structurally "illegitimate"
wage-demand. 1 The forms that had characterised class
struggle si nce the restructuring (rad ical democratism ,

Endnotes 3 2
:i.ctivism ) were to be overcome in a retu rn to basics :
:i.bandoning a class position, from within the workplace,
Nas going to be possible only as the generalised over­
::om ing of class society.

rhat wasn't what happened. Instead we got the Arab


Spring, l n d i g nados, Occu py, Taksim, as well as plenty
:if riots. As we d iscuss in "The Holding Pattern", in this
issue, these struggles seemed more l i ke a transforma­
tion of the anti-globalisation movements, as well as their
extension to a wider portion of the population. That is
not to say that recent strugg les u ndermi ned the theory
of com m u n isation ( o r that dynam ic strug g l e s won't
re-emerge wit h i n the workplace) . Much about these
movements confirmed the communising perspective : an
intensification of struggle was not associated with the
retu rn of a workers' identity. As we argue, it was pre­
cisely the unavailability of a constituting identity - around
the working class or otherwise - that was at play i n the
dynamics of the movement of squares.

In light of these struggles, it seems clear that now is


not the time for prono u ncements, but rather careful
analysis. I n Endnotes 1 and 2 we tried to d ismantle
the twi n traps set for us at the end of the last century:
tendencies to either (1) stray from an analysis of capital's
self-underm i n i n g dynam ic, i n order to better focus on
class struggles occurring outside of the workplace, or
else (2) preserve an analysis of crisis tendencies, but
solely i n order to cling to the notion that the workers'
movement is the only truly revol utionary form of class
struggle. We managed to evade these traps, towi ng
along some meagre analytical tools. Now is the time to
put those tools to work, to try to understand the new
sequence of struggles in its unfolding. We must be open
to the present - its tendency to surprise us, to force us to
reconsider every supposedly fixed truth - while remain­
ing intransigent about the revolution as commun isation :
there will be no theoretical compromises.

Editorial 3
2 S U RPLUS POPU LAT I O N S

Endnotes 2 emphasized the role of surplus populations:


popu lations with ten uous connections to waged labour.
Surplus populations have been expanding due to a secular
decl ine in the demand for labour, attendant on a reactiva­
tion of the contrad iction of capital ist society. This social
form , based on the central ity of labour, u ndermines that
centrality over time. Capitalist g rowth thus u ndoes the
terms of the relation on which it is grounded : the produc­
tion of surplus popu lations alongside surplus capital is
the final result of the i m med iate process of production.

That doesn't mean, however, that the surplus population


is g o i n g to become a new revolutionary s u bject. On
the contrary, the g rowth of surplus popu lations under­
m i nes the consistency of the revolutionary subject, as
such. It is no longer possible to see capital as a mode
of production with a future, integrating more and more
people into it through "development", i.e. industrialisation.
I nstead , the industrial working class is shrinki n g , almost
everywhere. The workers' movement, which previously
organ ised itself aro u n d the hegemonic fig u re of the
semi-skilled worker, can no longer provide consistency
to the class. Nor can any other subject present itself as
the bearer of an affirmable fut u re.

The g rowth of surplus popu lations is precisely the dis­


integration, the decomposition of the class. Thus, the
surplus popu lation is not affirmable - not only because it
is a position of subjective destitution, or abjection - but
also because it is massively i nternally d ifferentiated
within itself. More than that : its g rowth is the increas­
ing d ifferentiation of the class as a whole. What role do
surplus popu lations play in strugg les, today? "A Rising
Tide Lifts All Boats", i n this issue, provides a case study
of the 20 1 0- 1 1 British anti-austerity movement and
riots and enquires i nto the empi rical applicabil ity of the
"surplus popu lation" category.

Endnotes 3 4
3 TH E G E N D E R D I ST I N C T I O N

Since the publication of our last issue, "Comm u nisation 2 Benjam i n Nays, ed.,
and the Abolition of Gender" appeared in the anthology Communization and
Communization and its Discontents.2 This text was the its Discontents (Minor
product of a ripening debate with Theorie Communiste, Compositions 2011),
which has since turned a l ittle rotten. 219-236.

I n their attempt to reconcile a fem i n ist dual -systems 3 The notion of a


approach with their previously elaborated theory, TC got 'contrad iction between
lost in a debate with themselves about how many contra­ classes' appears to
dictions there are in modern society. For us, it makes no be of strictly Maoist
more sense to speak of a contradiction between workers l i neage. Some have
and capital than it does to speak of one between men defended its Marxian
and women. I n fact, the only "contrad iction between" is imprimatur by pointing
the one with wh ich Marx begins vol u m e one of Capi­ to a passage i n the
tal, namely, the contrad iction between use value and Peng u i n translation
exchange value.3 U ltimately, capital ist social relations of the Grundrisse,
are contrad ictory because they are based around the where Marx refers
exchange of equivalent values - measu red by the socially to a 'contrad iction
necessary labour time of their production - and, at the of capital and wage
same time, they underm i n e that basis, since they tend labour' ([M ECW 29], go,
to displace h uman labour from the prod uction process Nicholaus trans.). But
(that expresses itself, paradoxically, as overwork for many the term here is Ge­
and un- or underem ployment for others) . gensa tz (opposition),
rather than Wider­
The economy is thus a social activity that is based on a spruch (contradiction).
logical contradiction, wh ich u nfolds, in time, as u nfree­ We can find no refer­
dom, as a practical i m poss i b i l ity for h uman beings to ence in Marx's work
be what they m u st be: "The working popu lation there­ to a contradiction
fore produces both the acc u m u lation of capital and the between 'capital and
means by which it is itself made relatively superfluous; labou r', or 'capital ists
and it does this to an extent which is always increas­ and workers'.
i n g :'4 Th is contrad iction g ives rise to m u ltiple antago­
n isms, wit h i n capital ist societies, of which the class 4 Marx, Capital, vol.1
antagonism is one. Others exist around : race, gender, (M ECW 35), 625. On
sexuality, nation, trade or ski l l , religious faith, i m m i g ra­ the log ical character
tion status, and so on. It would be im possible to t h i n k of contrad iction i n
all the antagonisms o f capital ist society if antagonism Marx a n d Hegel see

Editorial 5
and contrad iction were not clearly demarcated ( other­ Richard G u n n , 'Marx­
wise it would be necessary to come u p with a d ifferent ism and Contrad iction'
contrad iction for every antagonism ) . Common Sense 15
(1994).
The point is that social antagonisms, in capital ist society,
are articulated and rearticulated in relation to capital 's
contradictory logic. As "The Log ic of Gender" demon­
strates, i n this issue, gender i n capital ist societies is
constructed around the d isti nction of spheres, one of
which we cal l "directly market-med iated " and the other
"indirectly market-mediated". Th is d istinction is not sepa­
rate from class society. I nstead, it is fundamental to the
production of value. The capital ist mode of production
could not exist without a d isti nction of spheres, which
until now has never been rigorously defined. I n this issue,
we devote ourselves to a clarification of concepts, to
understand ing the basis and transformation of the gen­
der relation in capital ist society. Th is clarification allows
us to better g rasp the processes of de-natu ral isation of
gender - what B utler calls its troubling - as well as the
complex dynamics, first, of gender's ongoing deconstruc­
tion (the loosening of com pulsory heterosexuality, the
possibility of affirming gender-queer and trans-identities)
and, second, gender's constant re-imposition, especially
in l i g ht of the recent crisis and austerity m easu res.

4 N O N - CLASS I D ENTITI ES

Th is i nterest i n gender is part of a more general theo­


retical turn. The workers' movement privileged the class
antagonism above all others because it saw the work­
ing class as the future of h uman ity - if only it could be
freed from its con nection to capital . The affi rmation
of class identity was supposed to be the o n ly possi­
ble basis on which to overcome capital ism. I nsofar as
workers self-identified along other l ines, that was con­
sidered a false-consciousness, which was opposed to
a true, class-consciousness. The effect of this orienta­
tion was often to emphasize the stru g g les of certain

Endnotes 3 6
workers (wh ite, male, citizen) over others with i n the
class. Equal ly, that pushed the struggles of those "oth­
ers" into channels where they ended u p repl icating the
prod u ctivist perspective of t h e workers' move m e n t :
w o m e n demanded that their labours i n the home b e
recogn ised a s produ ctive, v i a the wage; formerly colo­
n i sed popu lations u n d e rtook their own programs of
heavy industrialisation, with all that that entailed, namely,
a vast toll of h uman suffering.

I n spite of all that, participants in the workers' movement


expected that other forms of identity - non-class based
identity - would disappear with the fu rther development
of the prod uctive forces. The movement described non­
class identities as atavistic holdovers from earl ier modes
of p rodu ction. There was no need to consider them
as anything other than moribund. But capitalist social
relations do not necessari ly undermine non-class forms
of identity. On the contrary, capital ist social relations
transform, or even modernise, at least some of those
identities. To be done with the workers' movement - to
recogn ise that there is no longer a class fraction that
can hegemon ise the class - means that it is necessary
to rearticulate the relation between class and non-class
identities. "The Gender Logic" is part of this theoreti­
cal effort. Chris Chen's "The Limit Point of Capital ist
Equality", an intake in this issue, is another.

It is i m perative to aban d o n t h ree theses of Marxism,


d rawn u p i n the cou rse of the workers' movement : ( 1 )
that wage-labour is the primary mode of su rvival with in
capital ist societies, i nto which al l proletarians are inte­
g rated over time, (2) that all wage-labourers are them­
selves tendentially i ntegrated i nto industrial (or real ly
subsu med) work processes, t h at homogenise t h e m ,
a n d b r i n g t h e m together a s the col lective worker, and
(3) that class consciousness is thus the only true or real
consciousness of proletarians' situations, in capitalist
societies. None of these theses have held true, historically.

Editorial 7
On the one hand, many proletarians lived out large parts
of their l ives outside of the capital-labour relation, lan­
guishing in the home as housewives. On the other hand,
i n workplaces, capital profited from the employment of
workers who were not formally free (or not entirely so) :
slaves, " natives", the undocumented, women. I n the
cou rse of the twentieth centu ry, " race" continued to
play a major role i n determ i n i n g who would be formally
free, who would get work, and especially, who would get
"good" work when it was available. Processes of raciali­
sation and abjection have been intensified - though also
transformed - during this period of the disintegration of
the capital-labour relation, when many proletarians find
themselves excluded, partially or ful ly, from that relation.

5 STRATEG I C V I S I O N S

I n " Lo g istics, Cou nterlogistics and t h e Com m u n ist


Prospect"- another i ntake i n this issue - Jasper Bernes
arg ues that the global restructuring of capitalist prod uc­
tion, i n our times, is capital's response to a situation in
wh ich labour has become sup_e r-abundant: capital lever­
ages huge wage d ifferentials across the g lobe, in order
to red uce costs and control outbreaks of labour u n rest.
Su pply chains exist largely because capital makes use
of them to arbitrage labo u r markets. For that reason,
the log istical i nfrastructure provides no prospects of
a new collective worker appearing on a global scale.
It has, rather, u ndermined such a possibility, by fu rther
fragmenting the working class. Bernes thus concludes
that supply chains are strategic objects of contemporary
strugg les only i nsofar as they may be i nterru pted .

Bernes's article is in part a response to Alberto Toscano,


who has criticised the " partisans of comm u n isation" in
several recent pieces. He accuses them of lacking a
properly strategic orientation, that is, an orientation
towards doing whatever " needs to be done to prepare
t h e kinds of s u bjects that m i g h t take com m u n is i n g

Endnotes 3 8
action".5 For Toscano, there is a lot of preparatory work 5 Alberto Toscano, 'Now
to do: for example, we need to figu re out how to read and Never', i n Noys,
the log istical infrastructure, not as something that needs ed., Communization
to be torn down, but rather, as a site of "anti-capitalist and its Discontents, 98.
solutions".6 Since the com m u n ising current lacks a posi­
tive conception of how to get out of capital ist society 6 Alberto Toscano,
(that is, other than abstractly negat i n g that society) 'Logistics and
Toscano has called it an " intransitive politics", and he Opposition', Mute
l i n ks this perspective, symptomatically, to a lack of a 3:2 (January 2012).
strategic t h i n king.7 With this label, Toscano el ides two
ideas, one concern i n g the transition from revo l ution 7 Toscano, 'Now and
to comm u n ism (the "transitional state") , and the other Never', 87-
concerning the transition from present-day struggles to
revolution ("transitional demands") . With respect to the 8 I bid., gg.
latter, it is of course true that the revolution will not fal l
from the sky. I t wil l not come from nowhere and suddenly
be everywhere. If revolution is to emerge at all, it will do
so only i n response to the l i m its that actual struggles
confront, i n the cou rse of their u nfolding. The rupture
must be a produced rupture. That is the "transitive" posi­
tion that Endnotes has put forward si nce its i nception.

But that position is precisely the one Toscano rejects. For


Toscano does not see how it is possible for revo l ution to
emerge out of the limits of present-day struggles. He can­
not lay "all trust in a kind of learning-by-doing that seems
wantonly indifferent to the gargantuan obstacles in the way
of negating capital " ; with respect to that negation, "you
can't make it up as you go along" ; and again, "the path
is not made by walking it".8 Apparently, the path will have
to be made by individuals who are able - somehow - to
chart out the way for proletarians to take, i n advance.
H ere, we enter the c u n n i n g world of the strateg ists.
I n "Spontaneity, Mediation, Rupture", i n this issue, we
attempt to reconceive the relation between struggle and
revol ution through a re-articulation of central concepts
from the history of revolutionary theory. An open-ended
approach to struggle is necessary, one that is neither
carelessly dismissive nor naively affirmative. Class struggle

Editorial 9
is not simply the site of a spasmodic reaction to capital's 9 Toscano sees our per­
i m positions, but the place where the contradictions of spective as abstract
capital ism play out, i n ways that are i m manent to prole­ (in its 'intransigence'
tarian experience. It is only i n the course of intensifying and concern with
struggles that the strategic q uestions of an era can be 'theoretical purity'),
asked and answered, i n a concrete way ; only here that but it is Toscano who
tactics, strategies and forms of organisation - and even poses the problem
the meaning of comm u nism itself - can take concrete of revolution i n an
shape. Strategies emerge as responses to the specific abstract manner, by
l i m its of a sequence of struggles. They cannot be im­ suggesting that a so­
posed from the outside.9 l ution could be found
to strategic problems
6 CO M M U N IST PROSP ECTS i n abstraction from
the concrete ways in
Endnotes 3 t h u s tries to fash ion tools with which to which those problems
talk about present-day struggles - i n their own terms, emerge in the course
with all their contradictions and paradoxes brought to of actual strugg les.
light, rather than b u ried. The q uestion remains, h ow do
those struggles relate to revolution? Here, we insist:
revolution is a possible outcome of struggles today, but
only as comm u n isation. That's because the revolution
will have to be the abolition of the valu e form, for that
form is no longer a viable way to organise our existence.
D i rect h uman labour accou nts for a d i m i n ishing portion
of social produ ction, while an i m posing mass of tech­
nolog ies and i nfrastructures, destroying the ecological
conditions of h uman life on earth, confronts us as the
primary force in social l ife. Yet the buying and sel l i n g of
labour stil l structu res every aspect of l ives, and capital
remains our main mode of i nteraction with one another.
H ow m i g ht we actually g et on without it? There are no
easy answers - especially considering that the repro­
d uction of each of us, today, depends on a prod uct ive
apparatus fl u n g far across the continents. The q u es­
tion of revolution is nonetheless sti l l posed - abstractly,
speculatively, but necessarily so - by the contradictory
character of the central relation on which society pivots.
And this question can only begin to approach concretion
i n struggles themselves.

Endnotes 3 10
THE HOLDING PATTERN
The ongoing crisis and the
class struggles of 2011-2013

12
I n 2007, fol lowing the deflation of the housing bubble 1 On the long-term
that had held it aloft, the world economy p l unged into decl ine, see below,
a deep d epressio n . H o meow n e rs fou n d themselves p. 24, as well as
underwater. Firms were inundated. U nemployment shot 'Misery and Debt' i n
upwards. Most d ramatically, the financial architecture of Endnotes 2 .
the world economy nearly collapsed. Pirouetting their
way onto the scene, government m i nisters u ndertook
coordinated action to prevent a repeat of the 1 930s.
Shortly thereafter, those same m i n isters were forced to
i mplement austerity i n order to assu re bondholders that
they remained in control of the slow-motion catastrophe.
Public employees were sacked ; those that persisted
saw t h e i r wages slas h e d . Schools, u n iversities a n d
hospitals faced massive cuts. Meanwhile, i n spite o f
the crisis, food and o i l prices remained elevated. U n ­
employment, too, remained stu b bornly h i g h , a n d youth
unemployment above all. Final ly, despite the best efforts
of politicians - or perhaps, precisely because of those
efforts - some national econo m i es fou n d themselves
m i red i n not one or two but three separate recessions,
i n the space of a few years.

Under these conditions, increasing n u m bers of proletar­


ians have been forced to rely on government assistance
in order to survive, even as that assistance is under
threat. Outside of the formal wage relation, i nformal ity
is proliferating, from u nder-the-table work to petty crime.

Yet, i n spite of all t h at, both wage-earners and t h e


u nwaged mostly responded to the o nset of t h i s cri­
sis - which is itself merely the latest consequence of a
decades-long economic decline - by adapting to it. 1 Of
course, that was not un iversally true: many proletarians
set about defending their conditions of l ife. In 2008- 1 0,
there were demonstrations, some of which included
blockades of roads and refineries. There were riots, as
wel l as incidents of lootin g . General strikes stopped
work for a day. Students occupied u niversities, and pub­
lic sector employees occupied government buildings. I n

The Holding Pattern •


response to plant closures, workers not only took over 2 Kosmoprolet, 'The
their workplaces ; i n a few locales, they also kidnapped Crisis, Occu py, and
bosses or burned factories down. Other Odd ities i n the
Autu m n of Capital',
Some such actions occurred i n response to pol ice kill­ Kosmopro/et 3 (2011).
ings or workplace accidents. Many more had as their
goals to stop t h e i m p l e m e ntation of j o b losses and
austerity, and to reverse rising inequality and corruption.
However, as Kosmoprolet noted , "conventional means
of class struggle were unable to put enough pressu re
behind their demands anywhere and the protests failed
in every respect despite the enormous m o b i l i sation
efforts". 2 Then, i n 2 0 1 1 - a year portentously accom pa­
n ied by earthquakes, nuclear meltdowns and floods - a
wholly unanticipated form of struggle washed onto the
shores of the Med iterranean .

1 T H E M OVE M E NT O F SQUAR E S

Starting i n Tun isia, the movement of squares spread


throughout the M i d d l e East and across the Med iter­
ranean before arrivi n g in the a n g l o p h o n e world as
Occu py. I n reality there were m o re d ifferences than
similarities among the many square movements, such
that it might seem fool hardy to try to generalise across
them. Yet it is not we, the commentators, who d raw the
connections, but the movements themselves, both in the
form of their emergence and in their day-to-day practice.
An international ist phenomenon from the beginning, the
movement of squares linked struggles across a mosaic
of high- and low-income cou ntries. Oakland and Cairo
were suddenly "one fist".

U n li ke the anti-globalisation protests - but l i ke the anti­


war movement of 2003 - a growing conflictual ity was not
contained within one city, nor did it hop sequentially from
one city to the next. Instead, occupations proliferated
across city centres, attracting precarious wage-earners
and frightened middle strata, as well as organised labour,

Endnotes 3 14
the slum-dwellers and the new homeless. Nevertheless,
besides chas i n g a few ageing d i ctators d own from
their perches, the movement of squares achieved no
lasting victories. Like the 2008- 1 0 wave of protests,
this new form of struggle proved u nable to change the
form of crisis management - let alone to challenge the
dominant social order.

H owever, the movement of squares did change some­


thing : it allowed the citizenry - a cross-class formation - to
come together, to talk about the crisis and its effects on
everyday l ife ( i n North Africa, it really freed them to do
so) . Previously, such discussions had occu rred only i n
private : individuals were made to feel personally respon ­
sible for unemployment, homelessness, arbitrary police
violence, and debt; they were never g iven a chance to
discuss collective solutions to their problems. For that
reason alone, all the talk of occupy was no trifling matter.

As the occupations u nfolded, occup iers' own activity


became the main topic of debate. What should they do
to defend the squares against the police? How cou ld
they extend the movement i nto new areas? The popu lar­
ity of such d iscussions, even outside of the occupations
themselves, suggested that a g rowin g portion of the
population now recognised that the state was powerless
to resolve the crisis. At the same time, no one had any
clue what to do with this knowledge. The occu pations
became spectacles. The occupiers were spectators of
their own activity, waiting to find out what their purpose
had been all along.

The main problem the occupiers faced was that the


very manner i n which they came together made them
too weak to pose a real threat to the rei g n i n g order.
The occupations concerned everyone, but - with the
exception of the homeless - they concerned no one
d irectly. The occupiers found one another, but only by
abandoning the concrete situations ( neighbourhoods,

The Holding Pattern •


schools, j o b centres, workplaces) t h at m i g ht h ave 3 Holding the squares
provided them with leverage. As a result, occupiers meant more in some
controlled no material resources and no choke points places than i n others.
or territories, aside from the squares themselves.3 It In Tunis and Cairo, the
was rare for people to arrive at the occupations as a police were not only
delegate of a neighbourhood or workplace, let alone pushed out of the
some other fraction of the social body. The occupiers squares. They were
had little to offer one another but their own bodies, prevented from enter­
their "indignant" cries echoing across hitherto barren ing the su rrou nding
central plazas. Outside of certain cities in North Africa, area for weeks or
occupiers largely proved incapable of transmitting their months. By contrast,
indig nation from the squares into everyday l ife, where in lower Manhattan
self-activity would necessarily i nvolve larger n u m bers an area of only 100 by
and more substantial risks. 330 feet was (more or
less) 'liberated'.
In this context, the occupiers opted for a set of negative
demands: ash -sha'b yurid isqat an-nizam (the people
want the reg ime to fall) and que se vayan todos (they
all should go) . H owever, to get rid of governments, to
reverse austerity, to lower the price of food and hous­
ing - even under the most favou rable conditions, what
might these demands achieve? If they could prevent the
implementation of austerity, occupiers might be able to
spook holders of government debt, thereby forcing the
state i nto bankruptcy. To drop into the abyss : not even
the most opportunist political parties - with the possible
exception of the Tea Party i n the US - have been willing
to take u p that call .

A n d yet, without t h e ability t o demand a reflation, let


alone re-industrialisation of the economy, what is left
but the sectional interests of various fractions of the
proletariat (and other classes) ? If they have no choice
but to accept the economic status quo, how can these
fractions divide u p a limited set of resources - of both
public handouts and private employment - without an­
tagonising one another? It is easy enough to say that
there is noth ing left to do but make the revolution, but
which revol ution will it be?

Endnotes 3 16
I n the twentieth centu ry, proletarians were able to u n ite
under the flags of the workers' movement, with the goal
of rebu ilding society as a cooperative commonwealth .
The coordinates o f t h i s older form o f l iberation have been
thoro u g h ly scrambled. The i n d u strial workforce was
formerly engaged i n building a modern worl d ; it could
understand its work as having a pu rpose, beyond the
reproduction of the class relation. N ow, all that seems
ridiculous. The industrial workforce has been shrinking
for decades. The oil-automobile-industrial complex is not
building the world but destroying it. And since cou nt­
less proletarians are employed i n dead-end service jobs,
they tend to see no purpose i n their work, besides the
fact that it allows them to "get by". Many proletarians
today produce l ittle more than the conditions of their
own domination. What prog ramm e can be put forward
on that basis? There is no section of the class that can
present its i nterests as bearing a u n iversal sign ificance.
And so, instead, a positive project would have to find its
way through a cacophony of sectional interests.

I n lieu of that, the movement of squares took shape as a


new sort of frontism. It collected together every class and
class fraction that had been negatively i mpacted by the
crisis, as well as by the austerity measures that followed
corporate bailouts. Thus, the sinking m iddle classes, the
frightened but still-securely employed, the precarious and
the newly unemployed, and the u rban poor - individuals
from these g roups came together as an i mpassioned
cross-section of society because none of them could
accept the options that the crisis had put in front of them.
H owever, their reasons for not accepting those options
were not always the same. I n North Africa these fronts
could be mobilised to topple governments, but i n this
case their success was precisely their factional isation.

Ou r c o n t e n t i o n i s t h at the m o v e m e n t of s q u ares
t o o k this form for a reas o n . In essence - altho u g h
certainly not i n every manifestation - its struggle was

The Holding Pattern •


an anti-austerity struggle. That it was such a struggle
should stri ke u s as odd. Every tal king h ead seemed
to know, i n 2008, that a deep recession, comparable
to that of the 1 930s, s h o u l d elicit n ot austerity but
its opposite, namely massive fiscal spending. Certain
low-income cou ntries (China, Brazil, Turkey and I ndia,
among others) took this route - often i n a l i m ited way,
and sometimes only after experiencing deep recessions.
But crucially, the high-income countries did not go down
that road. Where is the much vaunted g reen capitalism,
which was supposed to set the global economy on a
new path? The last few years seem to have provided the
chance for capital to wholly reinvent itself as humanity's
saviour. That hasn't come to pass. Our sense is that it is
precisely the depth of the crisis that has forced states
in high-income cou ntries into slashing budgets. They
are locked into a dance of the dead.

As we will show below, those states have been made


to dance i n the face of two contrad ictory pressu res.
On the one hand , they have had to borrow and spend ,
in order to stave off deflation. On the other hand, they
have been forced to implement austerity, in order to slow
the g rowth of what were al ready massive public debts
(attendant on decades of feeble economic growth). This
spinning-in-circles has not resolved the crisis. H owever,
it has blunted its fal lout, so that it has become the crisis
of certain individuals or sections of society - and not of
society as a whole.

That is what has g iven struggles an odd character: by


implementing austerity, in the face of the crisis, the state
made it seem as if it also had the power to reverse the
crisis. I n short, it seemed as if the state was acting i rra­
tionally. According to occupiers everywhere, if the state
was acting i rrational ly, then that had to be the resu lt of
corruption : the state had been captured by moneyed
interests. Whereas, i n fact, what appeared to be the
state' s strength was actually its weakness. Austerity

Endnotes 3 18
is a sym ptom of the inability of the state - in the face
of decades of slow g rowth and period ic crisis - to do
anything except to continue to temporise. That, it has
done, for now. Order reigns.

2 A H O L D I N G PATTE R N WITH A G RADUAL L O S S O F ALTIT U D E

The present e c o n o m i c malaise certai n ly began a s a 4 An earl ier version of


financial crisis.4 Mortgage-backed securities and cred it th is section appeared
default swaps suddenly became the topics of an end­ as a dispatch on the
less televisual discourse. Lehman Brothers col lapsed . Endnotes website
AIG was loaned $ 8 5 b i l l i o n . Reserve Primary F u n d (endnotes.org.uk).
"broke the buck", causing commercial paper markets
to seize up. Acting as lenders of last resort, central s All statistics taken
banks were able to keep financial flows from freezing from the World Bank,
entirely - thereby averting a repeat of the G reat Depres- World Development
sion. Where do we stand now, fou r years after the end Indicators, 2013
of the "G reat Recession"? How are we to understand edition, and the I M F,
the crisis? Was it merely a momentary setback along the World Economic
highway to the Chinese Century? Recent developments Outlook, 2013, un less
suggest otherwise. otherwise noted.

After recovering in 2 0 1 0 from two years of deep reces- 6 I n the us, unemploy-
sion, G D P-per-capita g rowth-rates in the high-income ment levels have
cou ntries began to decelerate i n 2 0 1 1 and 2 0 1 2.5 In fal len to 7.3 percent
the latter year, they grew at a meagre rate of 0. 7 percent. (in Autu m n 2013);
The recovery has been h istorically weak - the only rival, however, this fal l was
i n terms of the length and severity of this downturn, is only ach ieved through
the G reat Depression - and is weake n i n g further. I n a massive reduction
fact, i n t h e high-income countries a s a whole, G DP per i n the labour force
capita i n 2 0 1 2 was sti l l below its 2007 peak. That has partici pation rate
made it extremely d ifficult to red uce u n e m ployment (LFPR). The latter fel l
( especially g iven that, i n the i nteri m , labour productivity from 66 percent i n
has contin ued to rise ) . U nemployment levels peaked at 2007 to 63 percent
1 0 percent in the US and over 1 2 percent in the Euro­ in 2013. That's the
zone - they have hardly fallen to the present.6 I n some lowest LFPR, in the
hard-hit countries, unemployment is much higher. In mid US, si nce 1978. In
2 0 1 3, it continues to g row: in Cyprus, unemployment fact, 2000-2013 saw
levels h ave reached 1 7. 3 percent ; in Portugal, 1 7. 4 the fi rst sustained

The Holding Pattern •


percent; in Spai n, 26.3 percent, and in G reece, 2 7. 6 fall i n t h e LFPR since
percent. Youth unemployment, in those same countries, women 1oined the
has reached astronomical proportions : 37.8 percent, 4 1 labour force e n masse
percent, 56. 1 percent, and 62.9 percent, respectively. 7 in the mid 1960s.

More potentially explosive are recent developments in the 7 Statistics taken from
so-called emerging markets which seemed - for a moment 'Unem ployment in the
at least - to be capable of pulling the entire world economy Eu rozone', The Wash-
forward. N ow, all are slowing down. In Turkey and Brazil, ington Post, Aug ust
per-capita G DP growth-rates fell precipitously, in 201 2, to 11, 2013.
0.9 and 0 percent, respectively. The Chinese and Indian
juggernauts are also decelerating. In China - despite one a On surplus capital and
of the largest sti m u l u s programs i n world history - eco- surplus population,
nomic g rowth rates fel l , i n per capita terms, from 9.9 in s e e 'Misery a n d Debt'
2 0 1 0 to 7.3 in 2 0 1 2 . In Ind ia, g rowth rates fel l further, in Endnotes 2, and
from 9 . 1 i n 2 0 1 0 to 1 .9 i n 2 0 1 2 (the latter is I n d ia's figure 1 , opposite.
l owest per capita g rowth rate in over two d ecades) .

Nevertheless, in spite of the extremely weak recovery and


stubbornly high unemployment levels, a new consensus
reigns i n the high-income countries: the Keynesian mo­
ment is over; governments need to cut back on spending.

As the crisis evolves past its opening act, it is becoming


clear that the real problem is not a fai l u re to regu late
finance. If anyth ing, the banks are now too cautious, too
reluctant to take on risk. The real problem is the g rowth
of surplus populations alongside surplus capital.8 Misery
is the long-term tendency of the capital ist mode of pro­
d uction, but m isery is mediated by debt. Massive pools
of su rpl us capital formed i n the 1 9 6 0s, and have only
expanded since then. Internationally, these pools appear
mainly as an excess of dol lars : eurodollars in the m id-
1 9 6 0s, petrodol lars in the 1 970s, Japanese dollars i n
1 9 80s a n d 9 0 s , a n d Chi nese dol lars in the 2000s. As
these dollars scour the earth in search of returns (because
they were not used to purchase goods) , they have caused
a rapid decl ine in the price of money, and thus, in turn,
they have blown u p a series of bubbles, the largest of

Endnotes 3 20
surplus capital

the immediate process


of production

arbitrage

investment employment

reserve army (floating)

surplus population (stagnant)

Figure 1: Surplus capital and surplus population as disi ntegrating circu its of capital and labour

which, i n the last centu ry, were i n Latin America i n the 9 See Richard Duncan,
mid-1 970s, Japan in the mid- 1 980s, and East Asia in the The Dollar Crisis
mid- 1 9 9 0s. In the lead u p to this crisis there were the (Wiley 2005) Chapter
US stock market and housing b u bbles of 1 9 9 8-2007.9 7, 'Asset Bubbles and
Banki ng Crises'.
As US stock market i ndexes and house prices c l i m bed
ever higher, individuals with assets felt richer. The val ue
of their assets rose towards the sky. Rising asset val­
ues then led to a long-term decline in the savings rate.
And so - i n s p ite of decl i n i n g rates of i nvest m e nt, a
long-term slowdown in economic g rowth-rates, and an
i ntense i m miseration of the workforce - bubble-d riven
consumption kept the economy ticking over, and not only
in the US. The US economy sucked in 1 7.8 percent of
the rest of the world's exports i n 2007. US i mports were
equivalent to 7 percent of the rest of the world's total
G DP i n 2007. Suffice to say: it was a huge sti m u l u s to
the world economy. But debt-based consu mption in the
US was not allocated equally across the US population.
Proletarians increasingly find that they are superfluous
to the capitalist production p rocess; the demand for

The Holding Pattern •


their labour has been low. Consequently, workers' real 10 Robert Frank, 'U.S.
wages have been stag nant for going on 40 years. That Economy Is I ncreas­
has caused a massive shift in the composition of demand, ingly Tied to the Rich',
in the United States. Consumption increasingly depends Wall Street Journal,
only on the changing tastes of the super-rich : the top 5 August 5, 2010.
percent of income-earners account for 37 percent of US
spendi n g ; the top 20 percent of income earners account 11 Robert Brenner,
for more than the majority of spending - 60.5 percent . 1 0 'What's Good for
Goldman Sachs is
N ow, w i t h falling h o u s i n g a n d stock market prices, t h e G ood for America',
wealth effect is moving in reverse. 1 1 Households are pay­ 20og (sscnet.ucla.
ing down al ready accumulated debts. They are trying to edu), 34-40.
reduce their debt-to-asset ratios. As a result, businesses
are not investing, no matter how low the interest rates 12 Charles Roxburgh
fall. And we still have a long way to go. Total debt - state, et al., 'Debt and
businesses and households - is rou g h ly 350 percent of Deleverag i ng: U n even
G D P in the US. I n the U K, J apan, Spain , South Korea Progress on the Path
and France, total debt levels are even h i g her, up to 500 to G rowth', McKinsey
percent of G DP. 1 2 De-leveragi n g has only j u st beg u n . Global Institute, 201 2
Meanwhile t h e slowdown i n high-income countries has (mcki nsey.com).
been transmitted to low- income cou ntries by stag nant
or decl ining US and E U i m ports. The resu lt is pressu re
on government spending, from two d i rections:

1 ) Governments are forced to spend i n order to prevent


the retu rn of recession. If they are unable to pass large
stimulus programs, then they rely on automatic spending
increases (or the maintenance of spending i n the face of
falling revenues) . G ross debt to G D P in the G 7 countries
rose from 83 percent in 2007 to 1 24 percent in 20 1 3. Over
the past six years, the US government took on a debt larger
than the entire yearly output of the cou ntry in 1 9 9 0 , just
in order to prevent the economy from going into a tailspin!
Why are economies ru n n i n g so hard to stay i n place?

I n essence, there has been l ittle private borrowing - i n


spite o f zero percent short-term i nterest-rates a n d h is­
torically low long-term rates. That people continue to
save rather than borrow, across the private economy,

Endnotes 3 22
has opened u p a so-called "spending gap". The private 13 See Richard Koo,
economy would shrink if the government did not step i n 'OE2 has transformed
t o fi l l that gap. T h e p urpose o f fiscal sti m u l u s today is commodity markets
not to restart g rowth. That would only happen if people i nto liquidity-driven
spent the money that the sti m u l u s put i n their pockets. markets', Equity Re­
I n stead, households are using that money to pay down search, May 17, 2011
debts. I n the present crisis, the point of state spending
is to buy time - to g ive everyone a chance to reduce
debt-to-asset ratios without causing deflation . 1 3 By low­
ering asset val ues, deflation would make those ratios
even worse, causing a debt-deflation spiral.

Meanwhile, at the heights of the i nternational economy,


certain states are experimenting with other ways to restore
health to private balance sheets: they are trying to raise
asset values rather than lower debts. The US Federal
Reserve and Bank of England, with other central banks
have engaged in "quantitative easing". They pu rchased
their own governments' long-term bonds, lowering interest
rates on those bonds. I nvestors were thus pushed out
of bond markets, where yields were fal l i n g , into riskier
assets. Tem porary success was reflected i n a return
of rising stock prices. The hope was that rising prices
would reduce debt-to-asset ratios of businesses and
wealthy households - not by paying down or writing off
their debts, but rather by re-i nflating the value of their
assets. The problem is that the effects of quantitative
easing seem to last only as long as the easing itself. Stock
markets aren't rising because the economy is recovering.
A spate of bad news - and worst of all the news that
central banks will end quantitative easing - causes these
m i niature stock-market b ubbles to collapse.

More than that : it is only now becoming clear how m uch


of an effect q uantitative easing has had, outside of the
U S and U K, that is, on the world economy. Most i mpor­
tantly, it caused the prices of commodities ( e.g. food
and fuel ) to rise immensely - i m m i serating the world's
poor, and inducing the food riots that directly preceded

The Holding Pattern •


2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Canada -0.5 -3.9 2.0 1.5 0.6
France -0.6 -3.6 1.2 1.5 -0.5
Germany 1.3 -4.9 4.3 3.0 0.6
Greece -0.6 -3.5 -5.2 -7.0 -6.2
J apan -1.0 -5.4 4.7 -0.9 2.1
U nited Kingdom -1.6 -4.6 1.0 0.2 -0.5
U nited States -1.3 -4.0 1.5 1.1 1.5
S pain -0.6 -4.5 -0.7 0.2 -1.5

B razil 4.2 -1.2 6.6 1.8 0.0


Egypt 5.4 2.9 3.4 0.1 0.5
China 9.0 8.7 9.9 8.8 7.3
I ndia 2.5 7.1 9.1 5.0 1.9
M exico -0.1 -7.1 4.0 2.6 2.6
Turkey -0.6 -6.0 7.8 7.4 0.9
Russian Federation 5.4 -7.8 4.2 3.9 3.0

World 0.2 -3.3 2.8 1.6 1.0


H igh income -0.4 -4.2 2.3 1.2 0.7
Low & middle income 4.2 1.8 6.3 4.9 3.6

Table 1: GDP per capita percentage growth rates for selected countries, 2008-2013

the Arab Spri n g . 1 4 At the same time, OE also gave rise 14 M. Lag i, K.Z. Bertrand,
to m assive fore i g n -exchange carry trades: investors Y. Bar-Yam, 'The Food
the world over have been borrowing at extremely low Crises and Political
interest rates i n the US, i n order to i nvest in "emerg i n g Instabil ity in North
markets". That strengthened some low-income countries' Africa and the Middle
c u rrencies, severely weake n i n g what had previously East', 2011 (arXiv.org).
been vigorous export mach ines. States i n low-income
cou ntries counteracted that weakening with huge pro­
grams of fiscal sti m u l u s (partly relyi ng on the i nflows
of foreign capital to do so) . That sti m u l u s explains why
low-income cou ntries were able to recover so q u ickly
from the Great Recession, compared to the high-income
countries. But they recovered - not on the basis of a real
increase in economic activity - but rather, through the
sort of bubble-fueled construction booms that pulled

Endnotes 3 24
2007 2013 change
I reland 25 122 +97
Greece 107 179 +72
Iceland 29 92 +63
J apan 183 245 +62
Spain 36 92 +56
Portugal 68 122 +54
U nited Kingdom 44 94 +50
U nited States 66 108 +42
N etherlands 45 74 +29
France 64 93 +29
I taly 103 131 +27
D enmark 28 52 +24
Finland 35 57 +22
N ew Zealand 17 38 +21
Canada 67 87 +21
Australia 10 28 +18
Czech Republic 28 45 +17
B elgium 84 100 +16
Germany 65 80 +15
A ustria 60 74 +14

Table 2: Government debt as a percent of GDP for selected OECD countries, 2007-13

the rich cou ntries along in the 2000s. N ow, with the
possibil ity that OE will come to an end, it is not only the
weak recovery i n the US, but apparently also the bubble­
fueled recovery in the emerg i n g markets, that has been
put in danger. States will have to keep spend ing to keep
the temporary fixes they've put in place from falling apart.

2 ) But there is a second pressu re on g overn ments: i n


t h e US and EU, sti m u l u s has g iven way t o austerity, i n
order t o reassure bondholders. I n G reece, I reland, Italy,
Portugal and Spain, long-term interest rates rose rapidly,
relative to the German ten-year bund. G reece had to
default, partially. Elsewhere, austerity measures have
been necessary to keep interest rates from rising further.
The problem is that government debts were already large

The Holding Pattern •


in 2007, at the start of crisis. This fact has been entirely 15 We use the us
ignored by Keynesians. Over the past 40 years, debt- statistics, here,
to-G D P ratios tended to rise d u ri n g busts, but refused because these are the
to fall , or rose even further, d u ri n g booms. States have only ones that allow
been unable to use growth during boom years to pay for a com parison
off their debts, because booms have been increasingly between 1929 and i n
weak, on a cycle-by-cycle basis. Any attem pt to pay 2007. B u t t h e U S is a
down d e bts risked u n d e rm i n i n g i ncreas i n g ly frag i l e u n ique case; because
periods o f g rowt h . As a result, state debts expanded, the dol lar is an
slowly but surely, i n many h i gh-income cou ntries, over i nternational reserve
a period of decades. But the g rowth of that debt only currency, it is more
m itigated an i mplacable slowdown i n g rowth rates. Per or less im possible
capita GDP growth-rates fell , decade by decade, in high­ for the U S state
i ncome cou ntries, from 4.3 percent in the 1 9 60s, to 2.0 to be pushed i nto
percent i n the 1 970s, to 2 . 2 percent i n the 1 9 80s, to bankru ptcy through
1 .8 percent i n the 1 9 90s, to 1 .1 percent i n the 2000s. over-borrowing.

And so, at the start of this crisis, debt levels were already
much higher than they were in 1 929. For example, on the
eve of the Great Depression, US public debt was val ued
at 1 6 percent of G DP; ten years later, by 1 93 9 , it rose
to 44 percent. By contrast, on the eve of the present
crisis, i n 2007, the US public debt was already valued
at 6 2 percent of G D P. It reached 1 00 percent just fou r
years later. 1 5 That's why rising debt levels have raised the
spectre of default, throughout the high-income countries.

H i g h levels of state debt, carried over from p revious


decades, limit the capacity of states to take out debt
today. They need to keep their powder dry - to main­
tai n , for as long as possible, their abi l ity to d raw on
i nexpensive l ines of credit. States will need credit as
they attempt to ride out the coming waves of financial
turbulence. Austerity i n the m idst of the crisis has been
the paradoxical result. States need to convince bond­
holders of their abil ity to rei n i n d ebt now, i n order to
preserve capacity to take out debt later. Some states
(Ireland, G reece, Italy, S pain , Portugal) seem to have
already maxed out their credit l i m its.

Endnotes 3 26
These two pressu res - to spend in order to stave off
deflation and to cut spending in order to stave off de­
fault - are equally i m placable. Thus, austerity is not only
the capital ist class attacki n g the poor. Austerity has
its basis in the overg rowth of state debt, which is now
reaching an i mpasse (as it had i n the low-i ncome coun­
tries i n the early 1 9 80s) .

G reece is at t h e centre o f t h e resu lting austerity storm,


having been bailed out twice by the EU and I M F. The
first bai lout package came i n May 2 0 1 0 and the second
i n J u ly 2 0 1 1 . That there will need to be a third package,
i n 2 0 1 4, seems almost i nevitable. I n order to win these
bailouts, G reece was forced to implement at least five
separate austerity packages, the worst of which was voted
through in J u n e 2 0 1 1 . Public sector workers' salaries
were cut by 1 5 percent. 1 5 0,000 public sector work­
ers are to be laid off by 20 1 5. The retirement age was
raised. There was a 36 percent reduction in spending on
pensions and social benefits. Many utilities (telephones,
water and electricity) , as well as state-owned ports,
m i nes, airports, were partially privatised. I ncome taxes
and sales taxes were raised. Deep cuts came, again , i n
J u ly 2 0 1 3, when 25,000 public employees were sacked,
i n spite of high levels of u nemployment i n the private
sector. As a result of austerity, G reek i ncomes shrank
by a fifth between 2007 and 2 0 1 2 . Since that shrink­
age also meant a red uction in govern ment reven u es,
austerity m easu res have o n ly pushed G reece further
from fiscal health. Like so many low-income cou ntries
i n the 1 9 80s, structural adjustment has made G reece
ever more dependent on outside financing.

I n Portugal, Spain and Italy, s i m ilar austerity measu res


have been implemented, at a lower level of intensity. But
even the US has seen schools closing, rising tuition and
health care costs, and disappearing retirement benefits.
Public sector workers have been laid off en masse;
those that remain have seen wages cut.

The Holding Pattern •


Coordinated action of central banks, massive assistance
to financial firms, i ncreasing levels of state debt, and
now - in order to prevent scares on bond markets - turns
to austerity: all have prevented the G reat Recession
from turning i nto another G reat Depression. The way
these operations were undertaken has fu rther central­
ised control i n the hands of government m i n isters in
the US and Germany, which function as spenders and
lenders of last resort for the world economy. But as is
clear - given very high levels of public and private debt,
slow or even persistently negative economic growth, and
extremely elevated levels of unemployment ( especially
youth unemployment) , in many countries - the turbulence
is far from over.

We l i ke to think of the present period as a holding pa t­


tern. But we note that the economy is losing altitude all
the time. For that reason, the holding pattern can only be
temporary. Perhaps it is possible, through some m i racle,
that the world economy will achieve enough speed, pull
u p on the throttle and soar through the sky. But there
are "sign ificant downside risks". The turn to austerity
is endangering the stabi lity that it is meant to prop up,
since austerity means that governments are doing less
to make u p for the lack of spending i n the private sec­
tor. That raises, once agai n , the spectre of deflation ; an
indefin ite prog ram of quantitative easing remains the
only force pushing back against deflationary pressures.
Yet, even without deflation, there is sti l l a h i g h l i kelihood
that the present economic turbu lence may end with a
crash . After all , sovereign defaults - when examined on a
world-scale - aren't actually that rare : they come in waves
and play a major part in the global unfolding of crises.

Can states s o m e h ow d efy the worki n g of the l aw


of val u e , massively i n c reasi n g t h e i r d e bts w i t h o u t
decreasing the expected future growth-rates o f t h e i r
economies? Those w h o bel ieve they w i l l be a b l e t o do
so will have their thesis tested i n the coming period.

Endnotes 3 28
We can't rule out the possibility that they will be right:
after all, a massive accu m u lation of d e bts - held by
corporations, households and states, and always in
novel ways - has deferred the onset of a new depres­
sion over and over agai n, for decades. Who is to say
whether the present pattern will be maintained only for
a few more weeks, or for a few years?

H owever, if it is to be maintai n e d , t h i s w i l l req u i re


that there not be a blowout, somewhere in the world
economy, that would test the strength of the world's
financial arch itectu re once again . AIG may have been
too big to fail, but Italy is too big to save. The Eurozone
h as been p u l l e d back from the b ri n k a n u m be r of
times, but the Eurozone crisis has not been resolved
definitively. Potentially more turbulent is the possibil ity
that the ongoing slowdown in the B RICs will g ive way
to what is euphem istically called a "hard land ing". That
al ready seems to be happening in India and Brazil, but
the real worry remains a blowout i n China. M assive
government stimulus, si nce 2007, has only exacerbated
over-capacity in construction and manufacturing. Banks
are h i d i n g h u g e n u m be rs of bad loans in a m assive
"shadow banking" sector. Most tel ling ly, there has been
an extremely rapid increase in housing prices - orders of
magnitude larger than the housing-price bubble that just
popped in the US. The Chi nese government reassu res
us that "this time it's different", but the US government
said exactly the same thing i n the mid 2000s . . .

3 T H E R ETU R N O F T H E S O C I A L QU ESTI O N

The capital ist mode of prod uction is caug ht, at present,


i n a deep crisis; however, we m ust guard against the
tendency to mistake the crisis of this mode of produc­
tion for a weakness of capital i n its struggle with labou r.
I n fact, crises tend to strengthen capital's hand. For, in
a crisis, the demand for labou r falls at the same time
as, due to massive layoffs, its su pply rises. That alone

The Holding Pattern •


weakens the bargain i n g position of workers. But more
so: w h i l e it is true that capital suffers losses i n t h e
cou rse o f a downturn, it is nevertheless the case that
ind ividual capital ists rarely face an existential threat as
a result of those losses. On the contrary, it is workers
who, in a downturn, are th reatened with the loss of their
jobs - and thus the loss of everything they have. Crises
weaken the position of workers, as workers.

That is why, in the m idst of a crisis, capital i sts can


argue - correctly, from the point of view of many work­
ers - that the restoration of the rate of profit must be
put before all else. As l o n g as workers accept t h e
t e r m s of t h e class relation, t h ey find that t h e i r l ives
(even more than those of capitalists) depend on the
health of the system. Restoring the profit rate is the only
way to create jobs, and i n the absence of a massive
assault on the very existence of class society, individual
proletarians have to try to find jobs or to keep them. It is
thus no surprise that many workers have responded to
the onset of the crisis by accepting austerity measures.
It is because workers are vulnerable, now more than
ever, t h at capital ists a n d t h e i r representatives are
pressing their i nterests ; they are defi n i ng what it will
take to restore the system to health in ways that directly
benefit them.

That's why austerity never means just tem porary red uc­
tions i n social spending i n the m idst of an economic
downturn. On the contrary, social-spending programs
have not only been cut back; they are being gutted or
done away with entirely. I n many cou ntries, the crisis is
being used as a lever with wh ich to destroy long-held
rig hts and entitlements, including the right to organise.
And everywhere, the crisis has served as an excuse to
further central ise power in the hands of tech nocrats,
acting i n the service of the most powerful states (the
US, G ermany) . These manoeuvres are not merely cycli­
cal adjustments in response to an economic downturn.

Endnotes 3 30
They are about restoring profits in the most d i rect way 1& Bru n o Astarian, 'Crisis
poss i b l e : s uppressing wages. The Keynesian notion Activity and Com­
that, if states were acti ng rational ly, they could some­ m u n isation', Hie Salta
h ow convince capital not to press its advantage, i n the (hicsalta-com m u n isa­
cou rse of the downturn, is the pu rest ideology. tion.com).

Paradoxical ly, it is for these very reasons that crises are


associated - not with a continuation of class struggle
along normal l ines - but rather, with "crisis activity". 1 6
Self-organising struggles break out more frequently: big
demonstrations and general strikes, riots and lootin g ,
a n d occupations o f workplaces a n d government b u i l d ­
i n g s . I n the midst o f a crisis, workers f i n d that they can
only lose if they continue to play by the rules of capital's
game. That is why more and more workers have stopped
playing by those rules. I n stead, they are e ngaged i n
struggles that challenge t h e terms o f t h e capital-labour
relation (without necessarily challenging its existence) .

The q u estion then arises : what specific sorts of sponta­


neous strugg les are p roletarians engag ed in today? I n
Endnotes 2 , w e focused on t h e appearance a n d expan­
sion of surplus populations, as the h uman embodiment
of capital 's contradictions. For that, we were criticised in
some q uarters. After all, surplus populations make little
direct contribution to accumulation ; they lack the leverage
of traditional productive workers, who can bring the sys­
tem to halt by withdrawing their labour. Moreover, surplus
populations can be marg inalised, i mprisoned, and g het­
toised. They can be bought off with patronage ; their riots
can be allowed to burn themselves out. How could surplus
populations ever play a key role in the class struggle?

I n late 2 0 1 0, surplus populations answered this q u es­


t i o n , t h e m se lves. On Dece m be r 1 7, Mohamed B o u ­
azizi set h imself on fire outside a police station i n S i d i
Bouzid. Two days later H ussei n N a g i Fel h i climbed an
electricity pole in the same town, shouted "no to m is­
e ry, no to u n e m pl oyment", and electrocuted h i m se lf.

The Holding Pattern •


With i n days riots had spread to almost every city, and 17 Since Egypt i m ports
withi n weeks the president had fled. In the month that most of its wheat, ris-
followed, acts of self- i m molation, l i ke signal flares, l it ing global food prices
u p the slums of North Africa: in Algeria, in Morocco, i n in late 2010 helped
Mau ritania, a n d i n Egypt. to undermine the
subsid ised provision
Abdou Abdel-Moneim, an Egyptian baker, self-immolated of bread to the Egyp­
on Jan 1 7, 2 0 1 1 , after being refused an allocation of tian poor. Flour sold
subsidised flour. Trad itional patronage relations were by the govern ment
breaking down . 1 7 That was one side of a vice pressing at d iscou nted prices
down on Egypt's poor. The other, signalled by the brutal was hemorrhagi ng
murder of Khaled Said in police custody the year before, i nto a black market
was a ramping up of police repression. Here was the characterised by high
context i n which Egypt's young activists - taking their prices and rampant
cue from the overthrow of Ben Ali i n Tunisia - decided adu lteration.
to take t h e i r stand agai n st M u barak. Crucial ly, t h ey
began their marches, on January 25 (a day trad ition­
ally reserved for celebrating the pol ice) , from Cai ro's
poorest neighbourhoods, and they added "bread" to
their already promulgated demands for "freedom " and
"social justice". I n response, people from these neigh­
bourhoods spil led out i nto the streets. Em boldened by
the exam ple of Tu n isia, this new, amalgamated strug ­
gle - bringing together class fractions whose struggles
had previously u nfolded in isolation - qu ickly spread to
every major city ( u n l i ke the failed-strike-cum-bread-riot
in Malhalla, in 2008).

And so, if the self-immolations were the i n itial moment


of this stru g g l e , then the anti-govern m e n t p rotests
that followed were its culmination. The tactics of the
current wave of struggle were solidified : ( 1 ) mass riots,
capable of widespread d iffusion, but often focusing on
a territory; (2) the transformation of that territory i nto
an occupation, a centre of debate and display (and
confrontation with the pol i ce) ; and (3) attem pts to
extend from that centre out to the surrounding areas,
by m e a n s of w i l d d e m o n strat i o n s , n e i g h b o u rh o o d
assembl ies, solidarity stri kes, a n d blockades.

Endnotes 3 32
Of c o u rse, s l u m-dwe l l e rs were neither t h e o n ly n o r 18 Pau l Mason, Why
even the principal constituents of this new wave. Who It's Still Kicking Off
else located themselves in the squares? Paul Mason, Everywhere (Verso
a B B C journal ist who was on the g round for most of 2012), 61.
the movements, identified three class fractions, which
all played key roles in the 2 0 1 1 movement of squares : 19 See 'A Rising Tide
g rad uates with no future, the youth underclass, and Lifts All Boats', in this
organised workers . 1 8 It is the first i n this l ist - that is, issue.
indebted graphic designers, impoverished administrative
assistants, unpaid interns and, in North Africa, graduates
on long waiting lists for bu reaucratic jobs - who take
the centre stage in Mason's accou nt. However, looki ng
back on 2 0 1 1 , it is apparent that the strugg les of these
disaffected graduates only became explosive when they
were i nvaded and overwhelmed by the poor. I n Egypt,
as we saw, the January protests took off because the
you ng activists started their marches i n the slums. The
same was true in Eng land : a key turning point i n the
2 0 1 0 student protests was the entry of the young and
restless, who came out i n force to protest the d iscon­
tinuation of the Education Maintenance Al lowance . 1 9

T h e point here is a more general one: i nsofar a s t h e


2 0 1 1 protests general ised, they tended to d o so i n
ways that destabilised their central demands. There was
a pressu re towards generalisation, which nonetheless
fai led to u n ify the class. After all, what does it mean to
demand freedom in a sea of Cai ro's s l u m-dwellers?
There is no chance that they w i l l be i nteg rated - as
normal workers/consumers - into any economy, whether
that of an autocratic or a l iberal Egypt. By the same
token, what does it mean to fight tuition hikes alongside
youth from the cou ncil estates? They are l i kely to be
excluded from the very economy into which u n iversity
students are seeki ng entry. For that reason, alliances
between college students and poor youth have been
u neasy. N evertheless, we should be clear: this tension
is not the same as the one that rent the 1 9 60s, d ividing
middle-class from working-class youth.

The Holding Pattern •


That's because higher education has been thoroughly 20 Mason, Why It's Still
transformed in the half-century si nce 1 9 6 8 . I n the rich Kicking Off, 70.
cou ntries, u niversities are populated , not o n ly by the
children of the el ite, but also - and largely - by children 21 To poi nt that out is not
of the working class. These students typically work their to down play the inter-
way through college. Even so, they rack up massive debts generational solidarity
in order to get a degree. In that sense, the so-called neo- d isplayed i n these
l iberal era was not only about the globalisation of m isery. movements. All the
It was also about the global isation of hope. Ed u cation square occu pations
plays a central role, here : the American Dream - freedom were at least i m plicitly
through private enterprise - universalised itself by means testament to this; the
of an expan d i n g access to u n iversity ed u catio n . Get 'Casseroles' i n s u p-
yourself a degree has replaced Guizot's enrichissez-vous. port of the Quebec
student strike were
Heed ing the call, fami lies everywhere are trying to send explicitly so. Solidarity,
at least one of their children to school (even Mohamed however, presupposes
Bouazizi was putting money towards his sister's degree) . a material separation.
In this context, "the sheer size of the student population
means that it is a transmitter of u n rest to a much wider
section of the population than before. This applies both
in the developed world and i n the g lobal south. S ince
2000, the g lobal participation rate i n higher education
has g rown from 1 9 to 2 6 percent; i n Europe and North
America, a staggering 70 percent now complete post­
secondary ed ucation:'2° For that reason, the 1 9 9 0 s
a n d 2000s were a n era, n o t only o f class defeat, but
also of class compromise. N ow, that compromise has
been shaken, or u nderm i ned, by the crisis. The kids are
screwed, and that makes a lot of sense : someone had
to pay, and it was easier to delete their futures, with a
keystroke, than to take away the actual jobs of older
workers. I n Egypt, today, unemployment is almost 1 0
times as h i g h for college g rads as it is for people who
have only gone through elementary school. The crisis
played itself out as a generational confl ict.21

For Mason, it was the " lack of synthesis" between, on


the one hand, the struggles of the two youth fractions,
and on the other hand, those of the organised workers,

Endnotes 3 34
that broke the protest movements' strength : hence, the 22 Jbid., 57 and 'A Rising
disj u nction between the "black bloc" tearing u p Oxford Tide Lifts All Boats'.
Street and the TUC demonstrators massing in Hyde Park,
for the biggest (and most ineffectual) trade-union demo in
British h istory. 22 Hence also, we m i g ht add, the strained 23 In Spain and Portugal,
relation between the I LWU longshoremen's union on the where the gen-
West Coast of the U n ited States and Occupy. From the eral strikes generated
first port blockade on November 2 against the repression more momentum, it
of Occupy Oakland, to the second blockade on December seems to have been
1 2 in defence of the union in Longview, tensions rose as precisely because
both sides feared co-optation. Things played out similarly the organ ising was
in G reece. Partly in response to the Syntagma Square not dominated by the
occupiers and other social movements, the Greek unions u n ions, i nstead taki ng
annou nced one-day general strikes. But i n spite of their the form of blockades
high t u rnout those stri kes had only a m i n imal i mpact, i nvolving n u m erous
and this im pact d i m i n ished over time. In response, the class fractions.
u n ions increased the frequency of the general strikes,
at t i m es exten d i n g t h e m to 48 h o u rs i n stead of the 24 I bid, 2t
usual 24; yet the strikes remained auxiliaries to the mass
demonstrations and riots taking place on the same days,
in which u n ion stewards were reduced to bystanders.23

The strained relation of workers to the broader protest


movements was overcome only in Egypt - and even
there, only momentarily. I n the final days of the M ubarak
reg i m e , workers began to form auto n o m o u s organ i ­
sations, separate from the corrupt, state-run u n ions.
More and more workers went out on strike agai nst the
regime. Mason describes this process of contagion with
a phrase l ifted from a psych iatrist i nterviewed i n Cai ro :
what he saw was "the collapse of invisible walls".24 Th is
psychiatrist was referring to the walls between fractions
of workers. I n the hospitals, doctors, n u rses and por­
ters all began talking to each other as equals, making
demands together. The walls came down.

Mason's central argu ment is that, if these walls did not


come down, elsewhere, this was due to a clash between
organisational form s : w h i l e the g rad uates without a

The Holding Pattern •


fut u re and the u rban yout h - u n derclass both formed
n etworks, workers continued organ ising themselves
into hierarchies. A deeper l i m it was confronted here,
however, one bearing not only on the form of the strug­
gle, but its content as wel l . There was a real conflict
of interests at stake in the movement of the squares.

A m o n g t h e protesters, t h e re w e re t h o s e w h o ex­
p e r i e n c e d t h e c r i s i s as a n exc l u s i o n from s e c u re
employment: students, you ng precarious workers, ra­
cial ised m i n orities, etc. But among those who were
a l ready i n c l u de d in s e c u re e m p loyment, the c r i s i s
was experienced a s one more th reat to their sector.
I n short, "youth" were locked out of a system that had
fai led them ; whereas the organised workers were con­
cerned with trying to preserve what they knew to be a
very frag ile status quo ante. That status quo ante had
to be preserved - not merely agai nst the onslaug hts of
the austerity state, but also against the hordes of stu­
dents and the poor who were trying to force their way
in. That became clear in the aftermath of the protests,
when, continuing an earl ier trend, "youth" were easily
rebranded as "immigrants", stealing jobs from deserving
citizens. Here, we are concerned with the q u estion of
the content of the struggle. But what were protesters
fighting for, in 2 0 1 1 ?

4 TO B E D E L I V E R E D F R O M T H E B O N DAG E O F C O R R U PT I O N

Cairo and Tu nis, Istan bul and Rio, Madrid and Athens,
New York and Tel Aviv - a great cacophony of demands
was on d isplay in the occupied spaces of these cities.
But if one demand stood out, from among the many, it
was to put an end to "crony-capitalism". The shibboleth
of the occupiers was "corruption", to get money out
of politics was their goal. I n every square, one found
signs painted with d isgust : corrupt businessmen and
politicians had destroyed the economy. Under the cloak
of freeing up markets, they helped one another to the

Endnotes 3 36
spoils. Perhaps that clarifies some of the other generic 25 Neoli beral ism has
demands of the movements: demands for "democracy" also become a catch­
and "equal ity" were precisely demands that everybody all term for an entire
count as one, in a world where some i n d ividuals clearly era, one that all-too­
cou nted for m u ch more than others. easily conflates state
policy with economic
I n opposing corruption, the occupiers found themselves turbulence, d istract­
taking up two m utually contrad ictory positions. ( 1 ) They ing from the capital ist
criticised neoli beral ism in terms of its own ideals: they tendencies that really
wanted to erad icate corruption - handouts for the cro­ un ite them.
nies - to establish a level playing field for the play of
market forces. At the same time, (2) they called for the
replacement of neol i beral ism with a more egalitarian
form of patronage: they wanted to red i rect government
patronage from the e l ites to the masses (a popular
bailout to replace the bailout of the banks) . It is worth
pausing to consider these demands - to try to fig u re
out what was behind them, and why their appeal was
so u n iversal, across the global movement of squares.

Leftists typically think of neoliberal ism as a conspiracy


to c o n s o l idate class power.25 H owever, i n its self­
presentation - as a technocratic agenda - neoli beral ism
is first and foremost concerned with opposing corrup­
tion, in the form of " rent-seeki n g " by "special interests".
What is supposed to replace rent-seeki n g is m arket
competition, with its promise of fai r outcomes. In that
sense, neoliberal ism is not so m u ch about sh ifting the
balance of power from the state to the market ; rather, it
is about fashioning a state that is compatible with market
society: a capitalist state. The paradox, for neoliberal
ideologues, is that their reforms have everywhere led
to rising inequal ity, and concomitantly, to the captu re
of state power by a class of t h e extre m ely wealthy
( centred on finance, insurance and real estate, as well
as the m i l itary and oil extraction ) . That class has itself
come - through dodgy deals and bailouts - to represent
the epitome of corru ption. Neoliberalism then provides
a framework with wh ich to oppose its own resu lts.

The Holding Pattern •


But what is corruption, exactly? To define it in a precise
way is rather d ifficu lt. In many ways, corruption simply
names the imbrication of capital ism with non-capitalist
old reg imes. Corruption is then synonymous with patron­
age. Non-capitalist elites as well as u pstart notables
compete to capture fractions of the state. They fight over
ownership of income streams - so, for example, elites
may control the import of flour or command state-run
enterprises that weave textiles. Elites then use state­
generated i ncomes to fund retinues, which trade their
allegiance for a slice of the pie. Where property rights
are stil l politically constituted, everyone - from the lowl i­
est ticket-col lector to the h i ghest politician - m u st play
the game of bribes and kickbacks.

Modernisation is, in part, a project of eradicating patronage


arrangements. By central ising the state, i ncreasing tax
efficiency, and replacing d i rect transfers to constituents
with i nfrastructu ral i nvestment and targeted subsid ies,
modernisation su pposedly forces everyone to secure
i ncomes, not by state capture, but rather by competing
in markets. Of cou rse, modernisation remains woefu lly
incomplete, in this sense. The incompleteness of the
modern ising project was one of the main targets of neo­
l iberal programs of structural adjustment. But far from
implying an end to corruption, the modernisation of the
state - n ow i n a neoliberal g uise - actually exacerbated
it. In the context of a sagging world economy, neoliberal
reforms had l ittle chance of expand i n g participation in
markets, i n virtuous cycles of g rowth (that was espe­
cially true, since neoliberalism was associated with a
decline in public i nvestments i n i nfrastructure, without
which modern economic g rowth is all but i m possible) .

What neoli beral ism achieved , then, was to make cor­


ruption more d iscreet, while fu nnelling it towards the
u pper e c h e l o n s of society. Corru pti o n is n ow less
u b i q u itous but i nvolves m u c h larger s u m s of money.
The small-scale bribery of officials has been supplanted

Endnotes 3 38
by the large-scale bribery of corrupt privatisation deals
and p u b l i c i nvestment p rojects - w h i c h flow to t h e
wealth iest c l ients. The fam ily m e mbers of d i ctators,
Gamal M ubarak above all, have become prime targets
of popu lar hatred, for that reason. The massive payouts
they receive look all the more egregious now that ( 1 ) the
state is supposed to be erad icating corruption, and (2)
those lower down are no longer i n on the game. This
is why neol i beral ism is about inequ ity: when old forms
of patronage are undone with the promise that new
sources of wealth will come to replace them, the fail u re
of that promise reveals the new as a version of the old
patronage, only now more eg reg ious, more unfair.

I n the high-income cou ntries, a s i m ilar process of neo­


l iberal isation took p lace. The target of reforms i n the
rich cou ntries was not, h owever, old-reg ime patronage
arrangements but, rather, social democratic corporatism.
The latter had replaced the former in the course of the
twentieth century; now, it was itself to be d ismantled.
Once again, the much-vau nted freeing of the market was
supposed to benefit everyone. When economic g rowth
failed to appear, neoliberalism meant only that handouts
had been fu nnelled up towards the top.

That process was perhaps most clear on the Northern


and Eastern shores of the Mediterranean, where state
funds (and flows of hot money) were channeled i nto
i nfrastructu ral i nvestment. From the l ate 80s to t h e
2 0 0 8 crash, t h e economies o f Spain, Greece and Turkey
were largely kept afloat by a massive construction boom.
Constru ction is, by its very natu re, a temporary form
of stim u l u s : many people can be employed, to build a
road network, but only a few are needed for upkeep or
maintenance, once that network has been built. For that
reason, urban development projects can offset a decline
i n profitability o n ly temporari ly. An i nfrastructu re boom
merely defers the crisis by locking u p surplus capital
i n the expansion of the built environment.

The Holding Pattern •


When this growth machine runs out of fuel, it sometimes 26 It is not only around
leaves behind impressive but useless ruins. Corruption the shores of the
today appears as em pty airports i n isolated corners of Mediterranean that
Spai n ; half-built tower-blocks overlooking an Athen ian anti-corruption de­
port ; and plans for a shopping mall i n a poor neighbour­ mands circulated. Li ke
hood of Istan b u l . What makes these projects corrupt is Tu rkey, Brazil also
not so much the i nsider deals that d irected government witnessed a construc­
agencies to throw away their money on fol lies. I n truth, tion bonanza, putting
those deals appeared as corrupt only retrospectively: money i n the hands of
when the tou rists stopped comi n g , the housing market stad i u m builders even
col lapsed and consumer spe n d i n g declined. In that as the cost of l iving
moment, insider deals were no longer experienced as was rising sharply for
relatively harmless accompaniments to economic growth. the u rban poor. Added
Instead, they started to look l i ke the old patronage, but to that, a series of
now, with much larger sums of money at stake (due to the political scandals
greater borrowing capacity of states in the run-up to the made it i n evitable that
crisis) and also, a much smaller circle of beneficiaries. 2 6 denunciations of cor­
rupt politicians would
I n the U K and US, too, corruption was a common theme be a major theme of
of U K U ncut and OWS. 2 7 However, i n both countries, the the riots that swept
demand to end corru ption was not a matter of shady the country i n J u n e
construction projects and political kickbacks. Instead, that 2013.
demand was formulated in response to the gigantic corpo-
rate bailouts orchestrated in the aftermath of the collapse 21 A dbusters i n itially
of Lehman Brothers and RBS. But the same rule holds here, proposed that the
as elsewhere: what made these bailouts "corrupt" was less 'one demand' of OWS
the shady circumstances under which they were made, be to get Obama to
than the fact that they seemed to have nothing to do with start a 'Presidential
restoring economic growth (that is, creating jobs, etc.) . Commission tasked
with ending the influ­
In opposing these different manifestations of corruption, ence money has over
the occu piers of the squares seemed to be promoting our representatives
two somewhat d ivergent ideas. in Was h i n gton: In the
end this demand was
1 ) The rich should be made to feel the pain of the crisis, not taken up, but the
and of the austerity that followed . After all , neol i beral one demand that was
ideologues argued that everyone should take "personal passed by an OWS
responsibil ity" for themselves and their actions; i n that general assembly, to
sense, everyone should aspire to be petty bourgeois. support the Citizen's

Endnotes 3 40
The target of this discourse were the u n ions, as well U n ited cam paign
as anyone d rawi n g state benefits. As we saw above, against corporate
however, the biggest handouts went not to the u n ions personhood, was also
or the ultra-poor, but q u ite visibly to the ultra-rich . They centrally about the
made out l i ke band its, w h i l e everyon e else suffered , undue i nfluence of
through not o n ly eco n o m i c crisis, but also austerity. corporations on the
To get money out of pol itics would m ean : to force the government. Such
u ltra-rich to take responsibil ity for their own actions. sentiments were
constantly on view at
2) At the same time, to the extent that venal politicians were occu py, e.g. 'I can't af­
cutting supports for the poor while handing out money ford my own pol itician
to the rich, the occupiers demanded, not a levelling of so I made this sign:
the playing field, but rather, its tilting in their favour. State
patronage should be d i rected away from fat cats and
towards populist constituents ("the nation"). Occupiers
thus demanded a popular bailout, both out of a sense
of what is freq u ently called "social j u stice" and also
because, l i ke good Keynesian economists, they hoped
that a popular bailout would restore the economy to health.

Behind this second demand rests a truth that has become


increasingly obvious: a large portion of the population
has been left out of the economic g rowth of the past
few decades, and there is no plan to bring them back i n .
Th roughout low-income cou ntries, d i rect state patron­
age to the poor - a crucial fou ndation of the clientelist
state - has g radually eroded, while privatisation deals
benefit a slim layer of the el ite. The l i m ited partnership,
i n which the poor had been able to enjoy some of the
gains of the national ist project, is being d ismantled.

It is worth noting that this dismantling has a generational


aspect - particularly important in developing countries
where popu lation g rowth rates are h i g h . Pol iticians
know that popul ist measures can not be wou nd down
across the board without provoking mass anger and
potentially mass rebellion. I nstead, the state proceeds
sector by sector. It beg ins by taking away the as yet
unrealised privileges of the next generation. This process

The Holding Pattern •


is clearly at work in the shrinking u rban formal sector i n 28 L.S. 'Hanging by a
Egypt - now accounting for rou g h ly ten percent of the Thread : Class, Corrup-
workforce (including food processing, textiles, transport, tion and Precarity in
cement, construction, and steel ) . You n g people fi nd Tu nisia', Mute, January
themselves locked out of "good" jobs. Instead , they are 2012 (metamute.org).
confined to the non-agricultu ral i nformal sector, which
absorbs over two-th i rds of the workforce.

H owever, the state has not only retreated . When it can


no longer afford to keep up its side of the patrimonial
bargain, the state replaces handouts to the poor with
police repression. The l ines of patronage are thereby
contracted and rearranged : the police and army benefit
from an increased access to patronage, even as many
other sectors lose such access. The police and army come
to employ a fraction of those who would otherwise have
found themselves on the outside of the new patronage
system, but they employ that fraction only to keep the
rest in line. Hence the potent symbolism of Bouazizi and
Abdel Moneim. One body burnt to signal police repression,
the other to signal a breakdown of popular state patron­
age. These two experiences are d i rectly i ntertwined.28

It is for these reasons that the police have become the


most potent manifestation, and the most hated symbol,
of corruption. The expansion and m i litarisation of the
pol ice force seems to be the worst sign of the times.
States everywh e re are d e m o n strat i n g that t h ey are
willing to spend huge amounts of money paying police,
constructing prisons, and so on - even while they cut
funding for schools and hospitals. States are no longer
oriented, even superficial ly, towards treating their popu­
lations as ends i n themselves. On the contrary, states
now see their populations as security threats and are
willing to pay to contain them.

Such contain ment is an everyday reality, especially for


marg inalised sections of the proletariat. S ince the police
are usually underpaid, they often supplement their incomes

Endnotes 3 42
with bri bes and kickbacks that are extracted from the
poor. Daily interactions with the pol ice thus reveal the
latter to be some of the last remaining beneficiaries of
the old corru ption. At the same time, in squeezing the
most vulnerable sections of the popu lation, the police
enforce the new corru ption : they q uash any resistance
to an increasingly wealthy, neo-patrimon ial elite.

The police do not only extract money from the poor; they
are also out for blood. The overgrowth of police forces
has everywhere been accompanied by a rise in arbitrary
pol ice violence and police kil l i n gs, often the trigger for
riots. Each time another body hits the ground, a section of
the population receives the message loud and clear: "you
no longer matter to u s ; be gone". Th is same message is
on display, in a more punctuated way, in the anti-austerity
protests. The police are there, on the front-l ines of the
conflict, making sure that the population stays in line and
does not complain too much about the i njustice of it all.

O pposition to corru ption thus has a real basis i n the


immediate experience of the protestors. The fight against
corru ption reg isters a b itter experience of getting shut
out, i n a double sense. On the one hand, i n d ividuals
are u nable to enjoy the g rowing wealth of the new glo­
balised economy, which is on d isplay in the conspicuous
consu m ption of the new rich. On the other hand, those
same ind ividuals find that they have been equally shut
out of older systems of patronage - which were also
systems of recog n ition (whether i n its old reg i m e or
workerist form ) . Thus, to complain of corruption is not
only to reg ister the extremes to which inequal ity has
risen, or the unfairness with which wealth is redistributed
u pwards in so many shady contracts. It is also about
decrying a lack of recog nition, or the fear of losing it:
ram pant corru ption means that, at a basic level, one
does not really cou nt (or is i n danger of not counting)
as a member of the nation. What takes the place of a
national comm u n ity is only the police, as the arbiters

The Holding Pattern •


of the shakeout. What would repair this situation, and
restore the com m u n ity? The occupations were them­
selves an attempt to answer this q uestion.

5 TH E P R O B L E M O F COM POS I T I O N

The 2 0 1 1 protesters put their bodies and their suffer­


ing on display, in public squares, in order to reveal the
human conseq uences of an unrelenting social crisis. But
they did not remain in that conceptual space for long.
Occu piers spontaneously opted for d i rect democracy
and m utual aid, in order to show the powers that be
that another form of social ity is possible: it is possible
to treat h u man beings as equal i n terms of their right
to speak and their right to be heard.

I n the course of the occupations, horizontal ist models


of organisation tended to become ends in themselves.
Faced with i mplacable and/or i nsolvent state-power,
the occupiers tu rned i nwards, to find with in their self­
activity a h u man com m u n ity - one in which there was
no longer a need for hierarchy, leadership or status d if­
ferentiation. It was enough to be present in the squares,
in order to be counted. N o other affil iation or alleg iance
was necessary ; indeed, other affiliations were often
viewed with suspicion. I n this way, anti-govern ment
protests - which took it as their goal to shoo the pluto­
crats out of office - became anti-government protests
in another sense. They became anti-pol itical. Of course,
this transformation should not be seen solely as a pro­
gression : it marked an oscillation in the orientation of the
protesters, from outwards to inwards and back out again.

Searching for precu rsors to this featu re of the move­


ment of squares has proven difficu lt. The movement's
h o rizontali s m was there in Argentina, in 2 00 1 . The
movement also replicated the forms - consensus-based
decision-makin g , above all - of the anti-gl o balisation
protests ( and before that, of the anti-nuclear protests) .

Endnotes 3 44
But the movement of squares was different because the 29 See Rust Bunnies
square occupations lasted for so long. For that reason, & Co., 'Under the
the occupiers were forced to take their own reproduc· Riot Gear' i n SIC 2,
tion as an object.29 The occupiers had to decide how to forthcom ing.
l ive together. Their abil ity to persist i n the squares - to
occupy for as long as it took to have an i mpact - was 30 G iorgio Agam ben, The
their only strength ; their leverage was that they refused Coming Community
to leave. They adopted forms of g overnance that they (Un iversity of M i n ne·
claimed were better than the ones on offer in this broke sota Press 1993), 85.
and broken society.
31 Ibid., 85.
It may be that the most relevant precursor to this feature
of the movements is to be found in a previous square 32 I bid., 86.
occupation, one that seems not to have been a d i rect
reference for the 2 0 1 1 protesters. That is Tiananmen 33 I bid., 85. The term
Square. Despite his simplifications, Italian philosopher is explained in the
G iorg io Agam ben captu red someth ing of the spi rit of book's opening
Tiananmen, in a way that is prescient of the 2 0 1 1 protest chapter.
movement. In The Coming Community, Agamben, speak·
ing of "a herald from Beij i n g ", characterises Tiananmen
as a movement whose generic demands for freedom
and democracy belie the fact that the real object of the
movement was to compose itself.30 The com m u n ity that
came together, in Tiananmen, was med iated "not by any
condition of belong i n g " nor " by the simple absence of
conditions", but rather, " by belonging itself".31 The goal
of the demonstrators was to "form a comm u n ity without
affirm ing an identity" where " h umans co-belong without
any representable condition of belonging".32

Agam ben claims that, by d isassociat i n g themselves


from al l markers of identity, the occupiers of Tiananmen
became "whatever singu larities".33 These whatever sin·
g ularities remain precisely what they are, regard less of
the q ualities they happen to possess i n any g iven mo·
ment. According to Agamben, i n presenting themselves
in this way, the occupiers necessari ly ran aground on
the representational logic of the state: the state sought
to fix the occupiers i nto a specific identity, which could

The Holding Pattern •


then be included or excluded as such . Thus, Agamben 34 I bid., 87.
concludes: "wherever t hese s i n g u larities peacefu l ly
d e m o n strate t h e i r b e i n g - i n -co m m o n , t h e re w i l l be a
Tiananmen, and, sooner or later, the tanks will appear".34

To form a com m u n ity med iated by belonging itself, i n


Agamben's sense, means the following : ( 1 ) T h e com­
m u n ity is composed of all those who happen to be
there ; there are no other conditions of belonging. (2)
The com m u n ity does not mediate between pre-existing
identities, i n a coal itional politics ; instead, it is born ex
nihi/o. (3) The com m u n ity does not seek recognition by
the state. It presents itself, at the l i m it, as an alternative
to the state : real democracy, or even the overcom i n g
o f democracy. (4) T h e task o f s u c h a com m u n ity is to
encourage everyone else to desert their posts, in society,
and to join the comm u n ity, as "whatever singu larities".
This description matches t h e self-conception of t h e
2 0 1 1 occupiers. They, too, wanted to be whatever sin­
g ularities, even if they referred to themselves i n a less
philosophical fashion.

But we should be clear: for Agamben, Tiananmen already


consisted of whatever singularities. The separation be­
tween students and workers that pervaded the square,
down to the details of where one could sit, falls out of his
accou nt, entirely. Yet despite its failings as a description,
Agam ben's account captu res something of the norma­
tive orientation of the movements. For it seems that in
Tiananmen - as in the Plaza del Sol, Syntagma Square
and Zucotti Park - the participants believed themselves
to be beyond the determ inations of the society in wh ich
they l ived. The 2 0 1 1 protesters certainly felt that way:
they proposed to fight crony capitalism on that very basis.

The truth was, however, that the protesters remained firmly


anchored to the society of which even their squares were
a part. That was clear enough in the d ivisions between
more " m iddle class" participants and the poor. But it

Endnotes 3 46
wasn't only that : individuals with all sorts of pre-existing 35The best accou nts of
affin ities tended to congregate in this or that corner of anti sexual harass-
the square. They set up their tents in circles, with the ment organ ising in
open flaps fac i n g i n wards. M o re i n s i d i o u s divisions Egypt can be fou n d in
emerged along gender lines. The participation of women the videos produced
i n the occupations took place under the threat of rape by the Mosireen col-
by some of the m e n ; women were forced to organise lective ( mosireen.org ) ,
for their self-defence.35 Such d ivisions were not d issolv- and the testi monies
able into a unity that consisted only of consensus-based translated on the
decision-making and collective cooking. facebook page of
OPANTISH (OPeration
Here's the t h i n g : the fact that the 2 0 1 1 movements ANTI-Sexual Harass-
p resented themselves as already u n ified, as al ready ment) .
beyond the determ i nations of a horrible society, meant
that t h e i r i nternal d ivisions were usually d isavowe d . 36 Because it went so
Because they were d isavowed, those d ivisions could m uch further than all
only appear as threats to the movement. That is not to the other movements,
say that i nternal d ivisions were simply suppressed : it Egypt was someth ing
was rather that d ivisions could only be resolved - within of an exception in
the confines of the squares - by forming another com­ this respect. After the
m ittee or promu lgating a new rule of action.36 massacres of Mo-
hamed Mahmoud St.,
The movement was forced to look i nward , i n this way, the division between
because it was barred from looking outward . Without the Brotherhood and
the capacity to move out of the squares and i nto soci­ everyone else was
ety - without beg i n n i n g to d ismantle society - there is clearly marked, with
no possibility of undoing the class relation on which the irreversible resu lts.
proletariat's i nternal divisions are based. The occupiers
were thus contained with i n the squares, as i n a pres­
sure cooker. Class fractions that typically keep their
distance from each other were forced to recogn ise one
another and sometimes l ive together. I n the tensions
that resulted, the movement came u p against what we
call the problem of composition.

The composition problem names the problem of com­


posing, coord i nati n g or u nifyin g proletarian fractions,
i n the cou rse of their struggle. U n l i ke in the past - or
at least, u n l i ke i n ideal-typical representations of the

The Holding Pattern •


past - it is no longer possible to read class fractions 37 We should remember,
as already composing themselves, as if their un ity were however, that there
somehow g iven "in-itself" (as the un ity of the craft, mass are many d ivisions
or "social" worker) . Today, no such u n ity exists ; nor that escape these
can it be expected to come i nto existence with further terms - or that are
changes i n the techn ical composition of production. I n i nvented only in the
that sense, there is no predefined revol utionary subject. cou rse of concrete
There is no "for-itself" class-consciousness, as t h e struggles. The prole­
consciousness o f a general i nterest, shared among a l l tariat is d ivided u p in
workers. O r rather, s u c h consciousness c a n o n l y b e ways that can not be
the consciousness o f capital , o f what u n ifies workers named i n advance.
precisely by separating them. Thus, the point is not
to name the terms of
The composition of the class thus appears, today, not the composition prob­
as a pole of attraction within the class, but rather, as an lem, but on ly, to name
unresolved problem : how can the class act against capi­ the problem itself, as
tal, in spite of its d ivisions? The movement of squares a key strategic ques­
was - for a while - able to suspend this problem. The tion of our times.
virtue of the occupations was to create a space between
an i m poss i b l e class strug g l e and a tepid p o p u l i s m ,
where protesters could momentarily unify, in spite o f their
d ivisions. That made for a q ual itative leap i n the i nten­
sity of the struggle. But at the same time, it meant that
when the protesters came u p against the composition
problem, they found that problem impossible to solve.

For the occupiers came together by sidestepping the


composition problem. They named their u n ity i n the
most abstract way : they were " i n d i g nant citizens" or
"the 9 9 percent". It wou ld have been u nfashionable to
say that they were the working class or the proletariat,
but it wou ld have made no d ifference : every u niversal
is abstract when the u n ity it names has no concrete
existence. For these reasons, the u nity of the occupi­
ers was necessarily a weak u n ity. It could hold together
only so long as the occupiers cou ld contain the d ivi­
sions that reappeared i nside the camps - d ivisions that
were al ready present in everyday social relations: race,
gender, nation, age, etc.37 Is it possible to approach

Endnotes 3 48
the composition problem from the opposite angle, to
begi n from the d ivisions with i n the proletariat, and on
that basis, to pose the q u estion of u n ity?

Perhaps it is only by deferring unity, to make d ivisions


appear as such, that proletarians will be forced to pose
the question of their real u n ification, against their u n ity­
in-separation for capital . In that case, in order to really
u n ite, proletarians will have to become the beyond of
this society - and not in an i magined way, but rather, by
relating to one another, material ly, outside of the terms
of the class relation.

Why is the proletariat so hopelessly d ivided, today, as


compared to the past? This question is more accurately
posed as follows : why do divisions within the proletariat
appear so clearly on the surface of society? How did
identity pol itics come to replace class-based politics?

I n the past, it seemed possible to d isavow non-class


identities, on the basis of an all-encompassing class
identity. That d isavowal was supported by o n g o i n g
transformations i n the m o d e o f prod uction : capital had
created the industrial working class; it seemed that it
would now d raw more and more workers into the facto­
ries (or else, that all work would be transformed after the
fashion of the factories) . As the industrial working class
grew in size and strength, it was expected to become
more homogeneous. The factory would render divisions
of race, gender and religion inessential, as compared
to class belo n g i n g - t h at was t h e s o l e i d e ntity t h at
mattered , at least according to the workers' movement.

We would l i ke to suggest that this vision of the future


was possible only on the basis of a h i g h demand for
labour in industry. Of course, a h i g h demand for labour
has never really been a reg u lar feat u re of capital ist
societies ( long booms are actually few and far between
i n capital's history) . N evertheless, it is possible to say

The Holding Pattern •


that the demand for labour i n i n d u stry was typically 38 However, this process
higher i n the past than it has been since the 1 970s. of u n ification was
For, in the past, workers were d rawn into the industrial always incomplete.
sector, not completely, but tendentially. That had effects: The workers' move-
when the demand for labou r i n industry is h i g h , capital ment constituted itself
is forced to h i re workers who are normally excl uded as an attem pt to force
from high value-added segments of production, on the its com pletion (see 'A
basis of gender, race, religion, etc. A high demand for History of Separa­
labour breaks down prejudices among both managers tion', forthcoming in
and workers, on that basis. What is supposed to follow Endnotes 4).
is a material convergence of workers' interests.

That convergence d i d take place, at least to s o m e


extent, i n t h e cou rse o f the workers' movement.38 For
example, in the US, agricultural mechanisation in the
South d isplaced black sharecroppers, propelling their
m i g ration to boom i n g N o rthern cities. There, blacks
were absorbed into factories, and so also, i nto workers'
u n ions. The integration of black workers into u nions did
not occur without a struggle, nor was it ever completed.
N evertheless, it was underway in the 1 9 60s.

Then, this i ntegration ran u p against external l i m its. J ust


as the door to i ntegration was beg i n n i n g to open, it
was suddenly slammed shut. The industrial demand for
labour slackened, first in the late 1 9 60s and then, again,
in the crisis years of the early 1 970s. The last hired were
first fired . For black Americans, jails replaced jobs. The
g rowth of the prison popu lation corresponded closely
to the decl ine in industrial employment.

A similar turn of events took place on the world-scale.


D u ring the postwar boom, low-income cou ntries were
tendentially i ntegrated i nto the c l u b of i n d u strialised
nations. But they were i nteg rated only as the postwar
b o o m was reac h i n g its l i m it s . I n d ee d , t h ey w e re
i ntegrated precisely because it was reach ing its l i m its :
as competition i ntensified, firms were compelled to

Endnotes 3 50
scour the globe in search of cheap labour. Once the
boom gave way to a long downturn, that i nteg ration
broke down.

What has happened, since the 1 970s, is that the surplus


popu lation has g rown stead i ly. I n essence, the g rowth
of surplus populations put class integration into reverse;
integration became fragmentation. That's because the
industrial demand for labour is low. With many applica­
tions for each job, managers' prejudices (e.g certain
" races" are lazy) have real effects, i n determ ining who
does or does not get a "good" job. As a resu lt, some
fractions of the class pool at the bottom of the labour
market. What makes those fractions u n attractive to
certain employers then makes them very attractive to
others - particularly in jobs w h e re a h i g h e m ployee
tu rnover is not really a cost to employers. The existence
of a large surplus population creates the conditions
for the separation out of a su per-exploited seg ment
of the class, which Marx cal led the stag nant surplus
population. That separation reinforces prejudices among
privileged workers, who know (on some level) that they
got their "good" jobs based on employers' prejudice. It
also reinforces non-class identities among the excluded,
since those identities form the basis of their exclusion.

H owever, while capital is no longer overco m i ng divi­


sions, the very scrambled nature of the new d ivisions
seems to weaken them, in certain ways. Because it is an
ongoing process, we can perhaps say that, tendentially,
the unfolding of the general law of capital accumu lation
u ndermines stable identity formations i n all segments
of the labour market. More and more people are falling
i nto t h e surplus p o p u l ati o n ; anyon e can, potentially.
I ncreasingly, the stable-unstable d istinction is the one
that regu lates all the other d istinctions within the work­
i n g class. That leads to a widespread sense that all
identities are fundamentally inessential, i n two senses:

The Holding Pattern •


1) Not everyone, even within the most marg inal ised sec­
tions of the class, is exc l uded from stable jobs and
public recognition. The present era has seen the rise of
ind ividuals from marg inal ised populations to the heig hts
of power. That there are many women CEOs - and one
black US president - gives everyone the impression that
no stigma, no mark of abjection, is wholly insurmountable.

2) But also, the very nature of precarity is to dissolve fixed


positions. Very few proletarians i d entify any of t h e i r
q ual ifications or capacities a s essential determinants
of themselves. I n a world without secu rity there can be
no pretence to normality, to identities that remain stable
over time. Instead, l ives are cobbled together, without a
clear sense of progression. All l ifestyles are commodi­
fied , their parts i nterchangeable. These features of a
fragmented proletariat were present in the squares.

6 C O N C L U S I O N : P O I NTS O F NO R ETU R N

What comes next? It is i m possible t o say i n advance.


What we know is that, at least for the moment, we live
and fight within the holding pattern. The crisis has been
stalled. I n order to make the crisis stall , the state has
been forced to undertake extraordi nary actions. It is
hard to deny that state i nterventions, over the past few
years, have seemed l i ke a last d itch effort. I nterest rates
are bottoming out at zero percent. The government is
spending b i l lions of dollars, every month, j ust i n order
to convince capital to i nvest i n a trickle. For how long?
And yet, for this long, at least, state i nterventions have
worked. The crisis has been petrified. And its petrifica­
tion has been the petrification of the struggle.

I n d ee d , since t h e crisis has been stal led, t h e class


struggle remains that of the most eager and the worst
off. Everyone else hopes that, if they keep their heads
down, they will survive until the real recovery beg ins.
Meanwhile, those engaged i n struggle are themselves

Endnotes 3 52
mostly lost in false hopes of their own : they hope that
the state can be convinced to act rationally, to undertake
a more rad ical Keynesian stim u l us. The protesters hope
that capital ism can be forced to rid itself of cronies and
act in the interest of the nation. U n l i kely to abandon this
perspective - as long as it seems remotely plausible - anti­
austerity struggles are themselves stuck in a holding
pattern. They confront the objectivity of the crisis only i n
t h e state's impassiveness in response t o their demands.

We see three scenarios, going forward :

1 ) The holding pattern could be maintained for a w h i l e


longer, s o that a second wave o f struggle, l i ke t h e 2 0 1 1 -
1 3 wave, might emerge within its confines. That second
wave may remain tepid, l i ke its predecessor often was.
But it is also possible that it could become stronger, on
the basis of real bonds that have been created over the
past few years. If that happens, we cou ld see the resu r­
gence of a radical democratic movement, more popular
than that of the anti-globalisation era. This movement
wou l d not necessarily focus on square occupations;
it may announce itself by means of some other tactic,
impossible to foresee. Such a movement, were it able
to find a leverage point, might be able to renegotiate the
terms on which the crisis is being managed. For example,
protesters may be able to foist the fal lout of the crisis
on to the super rich : with a new Tobin Tax, progressive
i ncome taxes, or l i m itations on CEO pay. Perhaps riot­
ers will form substantial organisations, wh ich are able
to press for the end of arbitrary police violence and a
partial de-mil itarisation of police forces. Maybe Arab
states can be made to raise public employment levels,
in order to absorb a backlog of unemployed u n iversity
graduates. In any case, all of these demands, even if they
were achieved, would be l i ke forming a workers' council
on the deck of the Titanic. They would be self-managing
a sinking ship (though, adm ittedly, since the icebergs
are melting, what that ship would h it is as yet u n known) .

The Holding Pattern •


2) The holding pattern cou ld be maintained for a while
l o n g e r, b u t t h e second wave of stru g g l e , w it h i n its
confines, could look rad ically d ifferent than t h e first
one. Perhaps - taking their cue from the movement of
squares - proletarians w i l l see an opening for a new,
more or less i nformal, ran k-and-file u n ionism. This u n ­
i o n i s m , if it i nfected t h e h u g e m a s s of u n o rganised,
private-sector service workers, could radically transform
the terms wit h i n which the crisis is managed. It m i g ht
be possible, on that basis, to approach the composition
problem from the other way around. Fast food workers
are currently striking in the U n ited States, demanding
a doubling of their wages. What if they succeed and
that success acts as a signal for the rest of the class to
pour out onto the streets? It is i mportant to remember
that a massive sh ift i n the terms of the class struggle
does not always correspond to a rise in the i ntensity
of the crisis. The objective and subj ective moments of
the class relation do not necessarily move in sync.

3) Final ly, there cou ld be an i ntensification of the crisis, a


global bottoming out, beginning with a deep downturn in
India or China. Or else, the winding down of Quantitative
Easing could spiral out of control. The end of the hold­
ing pattern would scramble all the terms of the era we
have described. Ours would no longer be an austerity
crisis, but rather, something else entirely, affecting much
broader sections of the popu lation. To blame corrupt
politicians would no longer be possible, or at least, it
would no longer be useful , since the possibil ity of a
state management of the crisis wou l d be foreclosed.
That is not to say that revolution will suddenly appear
on the table, as the o n ly option l eft. To get worse is
not necessarily to get better. The d ivisions within the
proletariat run deep, and they only deepen with the
further g rowth of the surplus population. It is entirely
possible to i magine that class fractions will turn against
each other, that hating one another, and ensuring that
no one gets slightly better than anyone else, will take
precedence over making the revolution.
54
THE LOG I C O F G END ER
On the separation of spheres
and the process of abjection

56
Wit h i n marxist fem inism we encounter several sets of In the broadest
b i nary terms to analyse g e n d e red forms of d o m i na­ strokes, marxist femi­
tion under capital ism.' These include: prod uctive and nism is a perspective
reprod uctive, paid and u n paid, public and private, sex which situates gender
and gender. When considering the gender q uestion, oppression i n terms
we found these categories imprecise, theoretically defi­ of social reproduction,
cient and sometimes even m isleading. This article is an and specifically the
attempt to propose categories which will g ive us a better reprod uction of labour­
g rasp of the transformation of the gender relation since power. Often it consid­
the 70s and, more importantly, since the recent crisis. ers the treatment of
such topics i n Marx
The account that follows is strongly infl uenced by sys­ and in su bsequent
tematic d ialectics, a method that tries to understand marxist accou nts of
social forms as interconnected moments of a total ity.2 capital ism deficient,
We therefore move from the most abstract categories to and i n light of the
the most concrete, tracing the unfolding of gender as a 'unhap py marriage' and
" real abstraction". We are only concerned with the form 'dual systems' debates,
of gender specific to capital ism, and we assume from it general ly supports a
the outset that one can talk about gender without any 'single system' thesis.
reference to biology or prehistory. We beg in by defining It is also worth noti ng
gender as a separation between spheres. Then, having that this article is
done so, we specify the ind ividuals assigned to those meant to conti nue a
spheres. Importantly, we do not define spheres in spatial conversation from the
terms, but rather i n the same way Marx spoke of the 1970s, the 'domestic
two separated spheres of production and circu lation, labour debate,'
as concepts that take on a material ity. which turns on the
relationship between
The bi naries listed above appear to limit one's g rasp val ue and reproduction,
of the ways in w h ich t h ese spheres function at pre­ and which deploys
sent, as they lack h istorical specificity and promote a Marxist categories
transhistorical understand ing of gendered "domination", i n order to consider
which takes patriarchy as a feature of capitalism without whether 'domestic'
making it historically specific to capitalism. We hope and 'reprod uctive'
to delineate categories that are as specific to capital­ labour are prod uctive.
ism as "capital" itself. We arg u e that these b i naries
depend on category errors whose fau lts becom e clear 2 See 'Co m m u n isation
once we attempt to illuminate the transformations within and Val ue-Form
capital ist society s i n ce t h e 70s. Forms of d o m estic Theory', Endnotes 2
and so-called " reprod uctive" activities have become (April 2010).

The Logic of Gender 57


increasingly marketised, and while these activities may
occupy the "sphere" of the home, just as they did before,
they no longer occupy the same structu ral positions
with in the capital ist total ity, despite exh ibiting the same
concrete features. For this reason, we found ou rselves
forced to clarify, transform, and redefine the categories
we received from marxist fem inism, not for the sake of
theory, but to understand why humanity is still powerfully
i nscribed with one or the other gender.

1 PRO D U CTI O N / R E PR O D U C T I O N

Whatever the form of the process of production i n 3 Marx, Capital, vol.1


a society, it m u st be a cont i n u o u s process, m u st (M ECW 35), 565.
continue to go periodically through the same phases.
A society can no more cease to prod uce than it can
cease to consume. When viewed, therefore, as a
con nected whole, and as flowing on with incessant
renewal, every social process of production is, at the
same time, a process of reproduction.3

When Marx speaks of reproduction he does not refer


to the production and reprod uction of any commod ity
in particular; rather, he is concerned with t h e repro­
d u ction of the social total ity. H owever, when marxist
fem inists speak of reproduction, what they often aim
to specify is the production and reproduction of the
commod ity labou r-power. This is because, i n Marx's
critique, the relationship between the reprod uction of
labour-power and the reprod uction of the capital ist
totality is i ncomplete.

When M a rx speaks of l a b o u r - power, h e c l a i m s it i s a c o m m o d ity with a


d i st i n ct i ve cha racter, u n l i ke a n y oth e r

Although Marx speaks of the specificities of the com- 4 Marx, Capital, vol. 1
mod ity labour-power,4 there are some aspects of this (MECW 35), chapter 6.
specification which req u i re more attention.

Endnotes 3 58
First, let us investigate the separation between labour­
power and its bearer. The exchange of labour-power pre­
supposes that this commodity is brought to the market by
its bearer. However, in this particular case, labou r-power
and its bearer are one and the same l iving person. Labour­
power is the l iving, labouring capacity of this person, and
as such, it can not be detached from the bearer. Thus the
particularity of labour-power poses an ontological question.

Going back to Capital, at the outset of Chapter One we


encou nter the commodity, and it is only a few chapters
later that we will fully discover its most peculiar mani­
festation, that is to say, labou r-power. I n accord with
Marx, it is correct to begin with the nat u ral ised and
self-evident real m of commod ity circu lation, i n order
to render the commod ity a curious and u nnatu ral thing
i ndeed. We will not, however, enquire only about what
organises these "things", these objects; but rather - in
terms of a gender analysis - we will enquire into these
other bodies, h uman objects, which bum ble about in
their own " n at u ral" way, and who, l i ke the fetish ised
commodity, appear to have no h istory. Yet they surely do.

For at the h eart of the c o m m o d ity form is the d ual


character of labour - both abstract and concrete - and
accord i n gly, Chapter One of Capital i ntrod uces the
contrad iction between use-value and (exchange) value.
This is the contrad iction wh ich u nfolds from the fi rst
pages of Marx's critiq u e to the very end. I ndeed, the
split between these two i rreconcilable aspects of the
commodity form is the guiding th read that allows Marx
to trace and disclose all the other contrad ictory forms
that constitute the capitalist mode of production.

Let us summarise briefly this contradiction. On the one


hand, the commodity i n its aspect as use-value stands,
i n all its singularity, as a particular object d ifferentiated
from the next. It has a definite use which, as Marx claims,
is necessary for its production as exchange-value. In

The Logic of Gender 59


addition, because it is singu lar, it is a single u n it, one
of many which add u p to a sum, a q uantity of ind ividual
thi ngs. It does not amount to a sum of homogeneous
labour-time i n the abstract, but a sum of concrete indi­
vidual and separable labours. On the other hand, i n
its aspect a s exchange-value, it represents an aliquot
portion of the "total social labour" with i n society - a
quantum of socially necessary labour time, or the aver­
age time requ i red for its reproduction.

This contradiction, the contradiction - far from being spe­


cific only to "th ings"- is fundamentally the very condition
of being in the world for a proletarian. From this stand­
point, the proletarian confronts the world i n which the
capitalist mode of production prevails as an accumulation
of commodities ; the proletarian does this as a commod­
ity - and therefore this confrontation is at once a chance
meeting between one commod ity and another, and at
the same time an encounter between subject and object.

This ontological split exists because labou r-power is


neither a person nor just a commodity. As Marx tells us,
the commodity labou r-power is pecu l iar and u n l i ke any
other. The pecu liarity of the commodity labour-power
is what g ives it a central place in a mode of prod uction
based on val ue, as the very use-val ue of labour- power
(or living labour capacity) is the source of (exchange-)
value. Furthermore, the contradiction between use-value
and (exchange) value has add itional impl ications, when
we consider the very production and reproduction of
labou r-powers. Th is pecul iar " prod uction" is specific
enough to deserve extra attention, for, as far as we know,
at no time does a labour-power roll off an assembly line.

How then is labour-power produced and reproduced ?


M arx i d entifies t h e part i c u l arity of t h e use-val u e of
labou r-power. But does he adequately d istingu ish the
production of labour-power from the production of other
commod ities? He writes :

Endnotes 3 60
t h e labou r-time req u isite for t h e prod uction of la- s Marx, Capital vol. 1
bour-power redu ces itself to that necessary for the (MECW 35), 18t
production of [its] means of subsistence.5

When raising the problem of the value of labou r-power,


Marx concludes that it is equal to the labour-time nec­
essary for its prod uction, as is the case for any other
commod ity. H owever, i n this case, it is mysteriously
reduced to the labour-time necessary for the production
of the worker's means of subsistence. But a cart fu l l of
"means of subsistence" does not produce labou r-power
as a ready-made commod ity.

If we were to compare the prod uction of labou r-power


with the prod uction of any other commod ity, we would
see that the " raw materials" used for this production
process, i.e. the means of su bsistence, transmit their
value to the end prod uct, while the new labour needed
to t u rn these commodities i nto a function i n g labour­
power adds no value to this commod ity. If we were to
push this analogy further, we could say that - i n terms
of value - labour- power consists only of dead labour.

I n the above q u ote, Marx red u ces t h e n ecessary la­


b o u r req u i red to produce labour-power to the " raw
materials" p u rchased in order to acco m p l i s h its ( re )
p rod u ct i o n . A n y l a b o u r necessary to t u rn t h i s raw
m aterial, t h i s basket of g o o d s , into t h e c o m m o d ity
labour-power, is therefore not considered living labour
by Marx, and i n d e e d , in the capital i st mode of pro­
duction it is not deemed necessary labour at all. This
means that however necessary these activities are
for the production and reproduction of labou r-power,
they are structurally made non -labour. This necessary
labour is not considered as such by Marx because
the activity of turning the raw materials equ ivalent to
the wage i nto labou r-power takes place in a separate
sphere from the production and circulation of values.
These necessary non-labour activities do not produce

The Logic of Gender 61


val ue, not because of their concrete characteristics, 6 Such as Leopoldina
but rather, because they take place i n a sphere of the Fortunati: see The A r­
capital i st mode of p ro d u ction which i s not d i rectly cane of Reproduction
mediated by the form of value. (Autonomedia 1981).

There m u st be an exterior to val u e i n order for val u e 7 On this point, we are


to exist. Similarly, f o r labou r to exist a n d serve a s t h e very m uch i nfluenced
measure o f value, there m u st be an exterior t o labou r by Roswitha Scholz's
{we will ret u rn to this in part two ) . Wh i l e the autono­ val ue-dissociation
m ist fem i n ists would conclude that every activity which theory, even if there
reproduces labou r-power produ ces value,6 we would remain major differ­
say that, for labou r-power to have a val u e , some of ences in our analyses,
these activities have to be cut off or dissociated from especially when it
the sphere of value produ ctio n . 7 comes to the

ii T h e refo re, the re production of l a b o u r- powe r pres u p poses the separa­


t i o n of two d iffe rent s p h eres

As articulated above, there is a sphere of non-labour dynamics of gender.


or extra-necessary labour which envelops the process See Roswitha Scholz,
of transform i n g dead labour, that is commod ities pur­ Oas Gesch/echt des
chased with the wage, i nto the l iving labour capacity Kapitalismus (Harle­
found on the market. We must now look at the specifici­ man 2000).
ties of this sphere.

Terms l i ke the " reprod u ctive sphere " are i n s ufficient


for identifying this sphere, because what we are trying
to name cannot be defined as a specific set of activi­
ties accord ing to their use-value or concrete character.
Indeed, t h e same concrete activity, l i ke clean i n g o r
cooki n g , can t a k e p l a c e i n either s p h e re : it can be
val ue-producing labour i n one specific social context
and non-labour in another. Reprod u ctive tasks such
as clean ing can be pu rchased as services, and prefab
meals can be bought in place of t i m e spent p re par­
ing meals. H owever, to fu l ly appreciate how - beyond
labou r-power - gender is reprod uced, it will be neces­
sary to d ifferentiate reproduction that is commod ified,
monetised, or mass produ ced from that which is not.

Endnotes 3 62
Because the existing concepts of production and re­
p ro d u ct i o n are themselves l i mited, we need to fin d
more p recise terms t o designate these two spheres.
From now o n we w i l l use two very descriptive (and
therefore rather c l u n ky) terms to name them : (a) the
directly market-mediated sphere ( D M M) ; and (b) the
indirectly market-mediated sphere (I M M ) . Rather than
comi n g up with jargonistic neologisms, our aim is to
use these as placeholders and to concentrate on the
structural characteristics of these two spheres. I n the
cou rse of our p resentation (see Part 2) we will have to
add another set of descriptive terms (waged/unwaged)
to sufficiently elaborate the n uanced characteristics of
these spheres.

The production and reproduction of labour-power ne­


cessitates a whole set of activities; some of them are
performed in the directly market-mediated or DMM sphere
(those that are bought as commodities, either as product
or service) , while others take place in that sphere which
is not d i rectly mediated by the market - th e I M M sphere.
The d ifference between these activities does not lie i n
their concrete characteristics. Each o f these concrete
activities - cooking, looking after children, washing/mend­
ing clothes - can sometimes produce value and some­
times not, depending upon the "sphere", rather than the
actual place, i n which it occurs. The sphere, therefore,
is not necessarily the home. Nor is this sphere defined
by whether or not the activities taking place wit h i n it
consist of those that reproduce labou r-power. It is de­
fined by the relationsh ip of these reprodu ctive tasks to
exchange, the market and the accumulation of capital.

This conceptual distinction has material consequences.


Within the directly market-mediated sphere, reproductive
tasks are performed u nder directly capitalist conditions,
that is, with all the requ i rements of the market, whether
t h ey are performed wit h i n the manufacturing o r the
service sector. U nder the constraints and command of

The Logic of Gender 63


capital and the market, the production of goods and s That is, homogeneous
services, regardless of their content, must be performed time. See Moishe
at competitive levels i n terms of productivity, efficiency Postone, Time, Labour
and prod u ct u n iform ity. The i ndex of prod u ctivity is and Social Domination
temporal, while that of efficiency pertains to the ways i n (Cambridge U n iversity
which inputs are economically utilised. Furthermore, the Press 1gg3), chapter 5,
u n iform ity of the product of labour requ i res the u n iform- 'A bstract Time'.
ity of the labouring process, and of the relationship of
those who prod uce to what they produce.

One can immed iately see the d ifference between tasks


performed i n this sphere, and that outside of it. In the
D M M sphere, the rate of return on a capitalist investment
is paramount and therefore all activities performed - even if
they are "reproductive" in their use-value character - must
meet or exceed the going rate of exploitation and/or profit.
On the other hand, outside the D M M sphere, the ways
in which the wage is util ised by those who reproduce
the use-value labour-power (via the reproduction of its
bearer) is not subject to the same req uirements. If those
ways are u n iform at all, they are nevertheless h i g h ly vari­
able in terms of the necessary util isation of time, money
and raw materials. U n l i ke in the DMM sphere, there is no
di rect market-determ ination of every aspect of the repro­
duction process. {In Part 2 we wi!I add ress the indirectly
market-mediated sphere of state-organised reproduction) .

The i n d i rectly m arket-m e d i ated s p here has a d iffer­


ent temporal character. The 2 4 - h o u r day and 7-day
week8 still organise the activities within this sphere, but
"socially necessary labour time" (S N LT) is never directly a
factor in that organ isation. S N LT applies to the process
of abstraction occurring through the med iation of the
market, which averages out the amount of time req u ired
with in the labour process to competitively sell a product
or service. Ban kruptcy and the loss of profit are factors
weig h i n g on this process ; l i kewise the innovative use
of machinery in order to decrease the time requ i red to
produce goods. Thus, the increase of profit or market

Endnotes 3 64
share domi nates the D M M sphere. Of course, mecha- 9 The gendered
nisation is also possible i n the I M M sphere, and there i nternalisation of this
have been many innovations of that sort. In this case, allocation of IMM
however, the aim is not to allow the production of more activities, what we will
use-val ues in a g iven amount of time, but to red u ce call 'naturalisation',
the time spent on a g iven activity, usually so that more obviously plays a
time can be dedicated to another I M M activity. When it large role in this. We
comes to the care of children, for example, even if some will look closer at this
activities can be performed more q u ickly, they have to mechan ism i n Part 4.
be looked after the whole day, and this amount of time
is not flexible (we will retu rn to this i n part 5) .

I n add i t i o n , d ifferent forms of d o m i n ation character­


ise these spheres respectively. Market dependency,
or i m personal abstract d o m i nati o n , organises D M M
relations of prod uction and reprod uction, through the
mechan ism of value-comparison in terms of socially nec­
essary labour time. The kind of "direct market-mediation"
wit h i n this sphere is abstract domination, and as such,
it is a form of indirect compulsion determ i ned on the
market ("behind the backs of the producers") . Hence,
there is no structu ral necessity toward d i rect violence,
or plan n i n g , i n order to allocate labour per se.

I n contrast, there is no such mechanism comparing the


various performances of the concrete activities occurring
i n the I M M sphere - which is to say, as being socially
determined. They cannot be dictated by abstract market
domination and the objective constraints of SNLT, except in
an indirect way such that the requ irements of production
transform the requirements of labour-power's maintenance
outside of the D M M sphere. Instead , other mechanisms
and factors are involved i n the d ivision of I M M activities,
from direct domination and violence to h ierarchical forms
of cooperation, or planned al location at best.9 There is
no i mpersonal mechan ism or way to objectively q uan­
tify, enforce or equalise " rationally" the time and energy
spent in these activities or to whom they are allocated.
When an "equal and just" sharing of these activities is

The Logic o f Gender 65


attem pted , it must be constantly negotiated, since there
is no way to q uantify and equalise "rational ly" the time or
energy spent. What does it mean to clean the kitchen,
what does it mean to look after a child for one hour: is
you r hour of childcare the same as my hour of childcare?
This al location cannot but remai n a conflictual q u estion.

2 PAI D/ U N PAI D

Marxist fem i n ists have often added to the d isti nction 10 The fact that the
between production and reproduction another one: that wage itself does not
between paid and u n paid labo u r. Like many before us, come with a trai ning
we find these categories imprecise and we prefer to use manual is i nteresti ng.
the waged/u nwaged distinction. As we fu rther expl icate One may do with it 'as
the spheres of D M M and I M M in relation to that which one pleases' - particu­
is waged or u nwaged, we elucidate the overlapping of larly those who are its
these spheres through the principle of social validation. d i rect reci pients - and
En route we will explore the ways in which the activities so it is not d istrib­
in question can be called labo u r or not; that is, if they uted accord ing to the
qualify as labo u r or not in this mode of production. specificities of the
IMM sphere, i.e. the
The d ifference between paid/unpaid on the one side, size of one's fam ily,
and waged/unwaged on the other is b l u rred by the standard of living or
form of the wage, by what we m u st name the wage the responsible/
fetish. The wage itself is not the monetary equivalent to economical use of
the work performed by the worker who receives it, but a particular i ncome
rather the price for which a worker sells their labo u r­ stream. This point
power, equ ivalent to a sum of value that goes one way would req ui re more
or another into the process of their reproduction, as they attention, but for now
must reappear the next day ready and able to work. 1 0 it will suffice to say: it
H owever, it appears that those w h o work for a wage is just not the capital­
have fu lfilled their social responsibility for the day once ist's responsibility.
the workday is over. What is not paid for by the wage
appears to be a world of non-work. Therefore, all "work"
appears to be paid tautologically as that which is work,
since one does not appear to get paid for that which
one does when not "at work". H owever, it is i m perative
to remember that Marx demonstrated that no actual
living labour is ever paid for i n the form of the wage.

Endnotes 3 66
O bviously, t h i s does not mean that the q u esti o n of 11 Clearly, all activities
whether an activity is waged or not is irrelevant. I ndeed, taki ng place in the
she who does not go to work does not get a wage. capital ist mode of
Wage-labour is the only way the worker can have access production are social,
to the means necessary for their own reproduction and but certai n reprod uc­
that of their fam i ly. Moreover, val idation by the wage tive activities are
qual itatively affects the activity itself. When an activity rejected by its laws
that was previously u nwaged becomes waged, even as non-social, as they
when it is unproductive, it takes on some characteristics form an outside within
that resemble those of abstract labour. I ndeed, the fact the inside of the totality
that labou r-power is exchanged for a wage makes its of the capitalist mode
performance open to rational isations and comparisons. of production. This
In return, what is expected from this labour-power is at is why we use the
least the socially-average performance - including all its social/unsocial binary,
characteristics and intensity - regulated and correspond­ sometimes fou n d in
ing to the social average for this kind of labour ( clearly fem i n ist accou nts, with
the absence of value makes it impossible to compare it caution. A problem
with any other kind of labour) . An ind ividual who can not with the term is that it
del iver a proper performance i n the necessary amount can i m ply that 'repro­
of time will not be able to sell their labou r-power in ductive labour' occurs
the future. Therefore, the wage val idates the fact that in a 'non-social sphere'
labo u r-power has been e m ployed adequately, whilst outside of the capital­
u niversally recognising it as social labou r, whatever the ist mode of prod uction,
concrete activity itself m i g ht have been, or whether it in either a domestic
was "prod uctively" consumed. mode of prod uction
(see Christine Delphy,
Now we m ust consider this d istinction between the Close to Home: A
waged and u nwaged, i nsofar as it i ntersects with that Materialist Analysis of
between the I M M and D M M spheres. When we consider Women 's Oppression
those activities which are waged, we are referri ng to [H utch inson 1984]),
those w h i ch are social 1 1 ; those which are u nwaged or as a vestige of a
are the non-social of the social: they are not socially previous mode of
validated but are nonetheless part of the capitalist mode production. It can
of prod uction. I m portantly, however, these do not map even sometimes be
d i rectly onto the spheres of I M M and D M M . used to arg ue that it is
another mode of pro­
We see that within t h e i nterplay o f these four terms there duction left unsocial
are some waged activities which overlap with those of because of its lack of
the I M M sphere : those organ ised by the state (the state rationalisation and that

The Logic of Gender 67


sector) . With i n this i m bricated set of categories, the what is needed is the
sphere of IMM activities i ntersects with the sphere of socialisation of this
waged labour. These waged and I M M activities are forms sphere. We think it is
of state-organised reproduction that are not d i rectly less confusing, and
market-mediated (see fig u re 1 opposite) . These activi­ far more tel li ng, to
ties reprod uce the use-value of labou r-power but are focus on the process
waged and thus socially val idated. Nevertheless, these of social val idation
activities are not productive of value, nor are they subject itself.
to the same criteria of d i rect market-med iation (see
above) . They are social because they are remunerated 12 Services that are paid
through the social form of value. Because they are not from revenue are
productive of val ue, they are the forms of reproduction u n productive, and, in
w h i ch are a collective cost to capital : they are paid this sense, are part
i n d i rectly t h ro u g h deductions from collective wages of the waged I M M
and surplus-valu e i n the form of taxes. sphere.

Let us now turn things round one more time and look at 13 Marx provides a
what the wage buys ; that is, what is an element of the useful insight i nto the
wage, what constitutes the exchange-valu e of labo u r­ process of natu­
power. The wage b uys t h e commod ities necessary ral isation: 'Increase of
for the reprod u ction of labou r- power, and it also b uys popu lation is a natu ral
services which participate in this reprod uction, whether power of labour for
d i rectly (by paying a private nanny, for example) or indi­ which noth ing is paid.
rectly (for example, by paying taxes for state-expenditure From the present
on education, which is part of the indirect wage) . These standpoi nt, we use
services, whether they are productive of val ue or not,1 2 the term natural
have a cost that is reflected in the exchange-value of power to refer to
labour-power: they imply, in one way or another, a deduc­ social power. All natu­
tion from su rplus-val ue. ral powers of social
labour are themselves
What remains are the activities that are non-waged, historical prod ucts:
and that therefore do not increase the exchange-valu e Marx, Grundrisse
o f labou r-power. These are the non-social o f the social, (MECW 28), 327.
the non-labo u r of labo u r (see Addendu m 1 ). They are
cut off from social production ; they must not only appear
as, but also be non-labour, that is, they are naturalised. 1 3
They constitute a sphere w h o s e d issociation is nec­
essary to make the production of valu e possible: the
gendered sphere.

Endnotes 3 68
In the next part we will finally turn to the ind ividuals who
have been assigned to this sphere. However, we should
first consider another binary: public/private.

waged I M M sphere (the


state, unproductive labour)

Figure 1. A g raphical
representation of the
relation between the
DM M/I M M and waged/
unwaged spheres.

ADDE N D U M 1 : ON LABO U R

For us, labou r will be defined, in its opposition to non­


labour, as an activity that is socially validated as such,
because of its specific function, its specific social char­
acter in a g iven mode of produ ction. Other bases for
defi n itions of labo u r are also possible, to cite a few :
exchange between man and nature, expense of energy,
distinction between pleasant/unpleasant activities. How·
ever, we t h i n k that none of these defi n itions can help us
understand anything about the character of unwaged I M M
activities. These definitions only take i nto account their
concrete characteristics, and i n the case of u nwaged
I M M activities, t h i s leads to banal o r absurd descrip·
tions. Is comforting a child an exchange with nature?
Is sleeping a labou r that reprod uces labour-power? Is
brush ing one's teeth labour? Brushing somebody else's
teeth? We think that our defi n ition of labou r, while it may
seem banal at first g lance, is the only one capable of
passing over these mean ingless q u estions, and that it
constitutes the right starting-point for research i nto the
specific character of these activities.

The Logic of Gender 69


3 P U B L I C/ P R IVATE

Many people use the category "public" to designate 14 For Marx, civil
the state sector. And marxist fem in ists often use the society - or what in
concept of the "private" sphere to designate everything most pol itical theory
with i n the sphere of the home. We find it necessary to is considered 'natu ral'
hold fast to the trad itional dichotomy of private/public society - stand s op­
as that which separates the economic and the political, posed to the state.
civil society and the state, b o u rgeois i n d ividual and
citizen. 1 4 Prior to capital ism the term "private" referred
to the household, or oikos, and it was considered the
sphere of the economic. With the advent of the capital­
ist era the private sphere moved outward beyond the
household itself.

Here we beg in to see the i nadequacy of the concept


of "the private sphere" as a place outside of "the pub­
lic sphere" that includes the economy, as for example
i n fem i n ist theory. For the p rivate i s n ot m e rely that
which is located in the domestic sphere, and associ­
ated with domestic activities. Rather, it is the total ity of
activities inside and outside of the home. As a result of
the structu ral separation between the economic and
the political (political economy) - corresponding to the
spread of capitalist social (prod uction) relations - the
private sphere becomes i ncreas i n g ly d iffuse, render­
i n g the home only one amongst many moments of "the
economic" or "the private". Therefore, contrary to most
fem i nist accounts, it was only wit h i n the context of pre­
modern relations - prior to the separation of the political
and the economic u nder capitalism - that the private
sphere constituted the household. In contrast, in the
modern capital ist era, the scope of private exploitation
spans the entire social landscape.

Where then is "the public" if the private is the total ity


of produ ctive and reprod uctive activities? Marx claims
that the p u b l i c is an abstraction from society i n the
form of the state. This sphere of the political and the

Endnotes 3 70
j u ridical is the real abstraction of Right separated from ts See Marx, On the
the actual d ivisions and d ifferences constituting civil Jewish Question
society. For Marx, this abstraction or separation must (MECW 3).
exist in order to attain and preserve the formal equality
(accom panied, of course, by class i nequal ity) n eces-
sary for self-interested private owners to accumu late
capital in a manner u n i n h i b ited rather than controlled
or dictated by the state. This is what distinguishes the
modern state, which is adequate to capitalist property
relations, from other state systems corresponding to
other modes of production, whether monarch ical or
ancient democratic.

This means that t h e modern capital i st state and its


" p u b l i c sphere " is not an actually exist i n g place, but
an abstract " co m m u nity" of "equal citizens". Hence,
the d ifferentiation between the sphere of economic
relations and that of the political - including relations
between u n e q uals m e d iated by relat i o n s betwee n
"abstract e q u a l citizens"- renders " citizens" o n l y fo r­
mally equal accordi n g to the state and civil rights. As
a result, these " i n d ividuals" appear as equals on the
market - even though i n " real l ife" (the private sphere
of civil society) they are anything but.1 5 This abstraction,
"the public", m u st exist p recisely because the d i rectly
market-mediated sphere is mediated by the market, a
space of mediation between private labours, produced
independently from one another i n private firms owned
and operated by private (self- interested) individuals.

What then is the relationshi p between on the one hand,


the spheres of public/private, political/economic, state/
civil society, and on t h e oth e r hand, t h e spheres of
direct and indirect market-mediation? The meeting-point
of these spheres marks the moment of their constitu­
tive separation, and defines those anchored to one as
distinct from the other, as different. This d ifference is
determi ned by whether those individuals defined by the
state d i rectly exchange the labour-power commodity

Th e Logic of Gender 71
they bear with i n t h e i r person as t h e i r own property,
or - if that exchange is med iated i n d i rectly - t h ro u g h
those with formal equal ity.

Now we are ready to look at the individuals who have


been assig ned to each sphere. What we see at fi rst,
w h e n we look at t h e dawn of t h i s mode of p ro d u c­
tion, is ind ividuals who have d ifferent rig hts, which are
defined by the law as two different ju rid ical beings: men
and women. We will be able to see how this j u ridical
d ifference was inscribed on the "biolog ical " bodies of
these i n d ividuals when we come to analyse the sex/
gender binary. For now, we must see how the dichotomy
between p u b l i c and p rivate does the i n itial work of
anchori ng ind ividuals as men and women to the differ­
ent spheres reprod ucing the capital ist total ity through
their differential right not merely to private property, but
to that property which individuals own in their persons.

Th is pecul iar form of property is necessary to general­


ised wage-relations because value presupposes formal
equal ity between the owners of commodities so that
"free" exchange (capital and labour-power) can occur
despite the fact that there is a structural " real " inequal­
ity between two d ifferent classes : those possessing
the means of production and those dispossessed of
that form of property. H owever, "free exchange" can
only occur through a disavowal of that class d ifference,
through its deferral to another binary: citizen and other,
not between members of opposed classes but between
those with in each class. I n order to found the bourgeois
mode of prod uction, it was not necessary for all work­
ers to be g iven equal ity under the sign of "the citizen".
H istorically, "citizen" only names a specific category to
which both property owners and certain proletarians
are able to belong. As capital ist j u rid ical relations disa­
vow class through the reconstitution of the d ifference
between c itizen and other, the h i storical conditions
under which the bourgeois mode of prod uction was

Endnotes 3 72
itself constituted were various forms of u nfreedom. For 16 See Chris Chen's
this reason we have citizen and other as mapping onto : 'The Limit Point of
male (white)/ non-(white) male. Capitalist Equal ity' i n
t h i s issue.
For i nstance, under the conditions of slavery in North
America, the classification of wh ite was necessary to 17 Marx, Capital, vol.1,
maintain the property of masters over slaves. Women (MECW 3 5 ) , 179.
were also classified as other, but for d ifferent reasons,
as we shall see. One factor worth mentio n i n g h e re
is that with i n this relation of w h ite/person of colour/
woman, t h e preservation of t h e p u rity of t h e "wh ite
master", as opposed to the "black slave" is of the utmost
i mportance - as well as the strict preservation of the
domi nant master signifier of equality ( "white blood" and
therefore "wh ite mothers" ) across future generations of
the bourgeoisie. Therefore the d ivision between wh ite
and non-white women was also closely reg u l ated i n
order t o preserve such a taxonomy, with i n t h e m ixed
context of both plantation-based commodity prod uction
i n the N ew World and the rise of industrial capital ism . 1 6

H owever, what constitutes t h e citizen/other b i nary i n


this mode o f production is not based upon a negative
definition of slavery but rather upon "free" labour, con­
sisting of those with, as opposed to without, the same
formal freedom. " Free labour" as Marx identified it - that
is, t h e tech n i cal defi n ition of freedom for t h e wage
labourer - requires what we might call "double freedom":

For the conversion of his money into capital, therefore,


the owner of money m u st meet in the market with
the free labou rer, free i n the double sense, that as a
free man he can d ispose of his labou r-power as his
own commod ity, and that on the other hand he has
no other commodity for sale, is short of everything
necessary for the realisation of his labou r-power. 1 7

Nevertheless, haven't women always been wage-labourers?


Of course, since the origi n of capitalism, women have

The Logic of Gender 73


been bearers of labou r-power, and t h e i r capacity to 18 In France, before
labour has been util ised by capital ; but they have only 1965, women cou ld
q u ite recently become the owners of their labou r-power, not engage in
with "double freedom". Prior to the last q uarter century, wage-labour without
women were indeed free from the means of production, the authorisation of
but they were not free to sell their labour-power as their their husband. In West
own. 1 8 The freedom of ownership, which includes mobility Germany, that was not
between l ines of work, was h i storically only for some before 1977 - see Part
at the expense of others. Those struggling for pol itical 5 below.
and "publ ic" freedom, or double freedom, were caught
in a double-bind. They were forced to make argu ments 19 We find the need for
on behalf of their ( " but-different" ) equal ity, while at the a class analysis which
same time having i nterests i n contrad iction with those can cut through this
of others who identified with the same fight for equality thicket of intra-class
on different terms. 1 9 disparities, while
attending to the
This i s especially true i n t h e case o f women, w h o were disparities of each
caught between demanding freedom as the ideal, equal with regard to their
human, and freedom as different. This is because their own particu lar and
"real difference" under capitalism is not ideal or ideologi­ d ifferential relation to
cal but embodied, and structurally reproduced through capitalist domination.
the practices wh ich defin e women as d ifferent. Th is I n short, proletarian
" real d ifference" is entangled withi n a web of m utually identity, as an abstrac­
constitutive and reinforcing relations which necessar­ tion based upon a
ily presuppose the citizen, state and public sphere to common form of
wh ich women m i g ht appeal for h uman and civil rig hts u nfreedom, was never
on the one hand, and reproductive rig hts on the other. going to account for
everyone, even at the
Therefore, even if it is true that formal freedom itself most abstract level.
was a precondition for value production and exchange, Another more nu­
nevertheless, what it organised - the civil society of anced analysis would
bourgeois individuals - was necessary for the continu­ be needed - one
i n g reprod uction of t h e public o r legal s p here. The which would come
right to "be equal" and thus equally free, does not itself u p against the
reorganise the d istribution of property, nor as we shall problematic of work­
see, the conditions of possibil ity for capital accumu la­ ers' identity itself.
tion. These spheres work in concert. If this were not the
case, it would be possible to abolish the actually existing
forms of historically-specific "difference" through legal

Endnotes 3 74
and "pol itical" actions, within the state. This would
amount to the abolition of the private through the public
sphere -a revolution through reform which is structur­
ally impossible.

" Eq ual ity" as double-freedom is the freedom to be struc­


t u rally dispossessed. This is not to say that it is not
worthwhile. The question is, can it also become "worth­
while" to capital, the state and its attendant apparatuses
of d o m i natio n ? As most of us will have experienced
fi rst-hand, the gender d isti nction has persisted long
after d ifferential freedom was abolished for the majority
of women. If this d ifferential freedom was in fact what
anchored women to t h e i n d i rectly market-m e d i ated
s phere, why did its abolition not "free" women from
the category "woman" and the gendered sphere of
reprod uction?

D o u b l e -freedom a n d the sex- b l i n d m a r ket

When looking at the history of the capitalist mode of


prod uction, it is stri king that, in many cases, once ine­
q ualities have been secured by j u rid ical mechan isms,
they can take on a l ife of their own , making their own
basis i n law superfl uous. As women in many cou ntries
slowly but s u rely received equal rig hts i n the p u b l i c
sphere, the mechan ism that reinforced this inequal ity
in the " private sphere" of the economic - of the labour­
market - was al ready so well established that it could
appear as the enactment of some mysterious natural law.

I ronical ly, the reprod uction of d ual spheres of gender


and the anchori ng of women to one and not the other
is perpetuated and constantly re-established by the
very mechanism of the "sex-blind" labour-market, which
obtai ns not for the man/woman disti nction d i rectly but
rather for the price distinction, or the exchange-value of
their labou r-power. I ndeed, labour markets, if they are
to remain markets, must be "sex-blind". Markets, as the

The Logic of Gender 75


locus of exchanges of equ ivalents, are su pposed to blur 20 Because the creation
concrete differences i n a pure com parison of abstract of a future genera­
val ues. How then can this "sex-blind" market reprod uce tion of workers who
the gender difference? are for a period of
their l ife non-workers
O nce a group of i n d ividuals, wom e n , are defi ned as is a cost to capital
"those who have c h i l d re n " (see Addend u m 2) and which it disavows, and
once this social activity, " having chi ldren", is structu r­ because this activity
al ly formed as constituting a hand icap,20 women are is posited as a non­
defined as those who come to the labour-market with labour that steals time
a potential disadvantage. Th is systematic d ifferentia­ away from labour.
tion - through the market-determi ned risk identified as
childbearing " potential" - keeps those who embody the
signifier "woman" anchored to the IMM sphere. Therefore,
because capital is a "sex- b l i n d " abstract i o n , it c o n ­
cretely p u nishes women f o r having a sex, even though
that "sexual d ifference" is produced by capitalist social
relations, and absolutely necessary to the reproduction
of capital ism itself. One could imag i n e a hypothetical
situation in which employers did not enquire about the
gender of an applicant, but only rewarded those who
have "the most mobil ity" and those who are "the most
rel iable, 24/7 " ; even in this case gender bias wou l d
reappear a s strong a s ever. A s a n apparent contradiction,
once sexual difference becomes structurally defined and
reproduced, woman as a bearer of labour-power with a
higher social cost becomes its opposite: the commod ity
labour-power with a cheaper price.

Indeed, the better-remunerated jobs - that is, those which


can tendentially pay for more than the reproduction of
a single person - are those for which a certain deg ree
of ski l l is expected. In those skilled sectors, capital ists
are ready to make an investment in the worker's skills,
knowing that they will benefit from doing so in the long
term . They will therefore privi lege the labour-power that
is l i kely to be the most rel iable over a long period. If the
worker is potentially going to leave, then she will n ot be
as good an i nvestment, and will get a lower price. Th is

Endnotes 3 76
lower price tag , fixed to those who look l i ke the kind of 21 See Paola Tabet,
people who "have children", is not determined by the sorts 'Natu ral Fertil ity,
of skills that are formed in the I M M sphere. Even though Forced Reprod uction'.
the sphere a woman is relegated to is full of activities in Diana Leonard and
which req u i re l ifelong train i n g , this does not increase Lisa Ad kins, eds, Sex
the price of her labou r-power, because no employer has in Question: French
to pay for their acq uisition. As a resu lt, capital can use Materialist Feminism
women's labour-power in short spurts at cheap prices. (Taylor and Francis
1996).
In fact, the general tendency towards "femin isation" is not
the gendering of the sex-blind market, but rather the move­
ment by capital towards the utilisation of cheap short-term
flexibil ised labour-power under post-Ford ist, globalised
conditions of acc u m u lation, increasingly deskilled and
"just-in-time". We must take this definition of feminisation
as primary, before we attend to the rise of the service
sector and the increasing importance of care and affective
labour, which is part and parcel of the "femin isation tu rn".
This turn comes about through the dynam ic unfolding
of capital ist social relations historically, a process that
we will see in the last two parts of the text. But first we
must summarise what we have learned about gender
until now, and attempt a defi nition. This req u ires analysis
and criticism of another common binary: sex and gender.

ADDEN D U M 2 : O N WO M E N , B I O LOGY A N D C H I LD R E N

T h e defi nition o f w o m e n a s "those who have children"


presupposes a necessary link between 1 ) the fact of hav­
ing a biological organ, the uterus 2) the fact of bearing a
child, of being pregnant 3) the fact of havi ng a specific
relation to the result of this preg nancy. Conflating the
three obscu res :

1 ) On the one side, the mechanisms that prevent, favour,


or i m pose the fact that somebody with a uterus w i l l
go through preg nancy, a n d h o w often that will occur.21

The Logic of Gender 77


These mechanisms include: the i nstitution of marriage,
the availabil ity of contraceptives, the mechan isms that
enforce heterosexual ity as a norm, and (at least for a
long time and still in many places) the interdiction/shame
associated with forms of sex that do not risk leading to
pregnancy (oral/anal sex, etc.).

2) On the other side, the changing definition of what a child


is and what l evel of care a child necessitates. Wh ile
there was a period i n which children were considered
as half-animal, half-human creatu res who only had to be
cleaned and fed until they became small ad u lts - that
is, able to work - the modern real ity of childhood and
its requ i rements often make " having children" a never­
ending business.

4 SEX/G E N D E R

We are n o w prepared to address t h e gender q uestion.


What then is gender? For us, it is t h e anchoring of
a certai n group of i n d ividuals i n a specific sphere of
social activities. The result of this anchoring process
is at the same time the continuous reproduction of two
separate genders.

These genders concretise themselves as an ensem ble


of i deal characteristics, defi n i n g either t h e " masc u ­
l i n e " or t h e "fe m i n i ne". H owever, these characteristics
themselves, as a l ist of behavioural and psychological
q ual ities, are subject to transformation over the cou rse
of the history of capital ism ; they pertain to specific peri­
ods ; they correspond to certain parts of the worl d ; and
even wit h i n what we m i g ht call the "West" they are not
necessarily ascri bed i n the same way to all people. As
a binary however, they exist in relation to one another,
regardl ess of t i m e and space, even if their mode of
appearance is itself always in flux.

Endnotes 3 78
Sex is the fl ip side of gender. Fol lowing J u d ith Butler, 22 See her critique of
we criticise the gender/sex b inary as found in fem i n ist Simone de Beauvoi r's
l iteratu re before the 1 9 9 0s. Butler demonstrates, cor­ 'uncritical reproduc­
rectly, that both sex and gender are socially constituted tion of the Cartesian
and fu rthermore, that it is the "socializing" or pairing distinction between
of "gender" with culture, that has relegated sex to the freedom and the body:
"natural" pole of the b i nary natu re/culture. We arg ue J u d ith Butler, Gender
s i m i larly that they are binary social categories which Trouble ( Routledge
simu ltaneously de-naturalise gender while natu ralising 1990), chapter 1 : 'Sub­
sex. For us, sex is the natu ralisation of gender's d ual jects of Sex/Gender/
projection upon bodies, agg regating biolog ical differ­ Des i re:
ences i nto d iscrete natu ral ised semblances.

Wh ile Butler came to this conclusion throug h a critique


of the existential ist ontology of the body,22 we came to it
through an analogy with another social form . Value, l i ke
gender, necessitates its other, "natural" pole (i.e. its con­
crete manifestation) . Indeed, the dual relation between sex
and gender as two sides of the same coin is analogous
to the d ual aspects of the commod ity and the fetishism
therein. As we explained above, every commodity, including
labou r-power, is both a use-value and an exchange-value.
The relation between commod ities is a social relation
between things and a material relation between people.

Fol lowing this analogy, sex is the material body, which,


as use-value to (exchange) value, attaches itself to gen­
der. The gender fetish is a social relation which acts
upon these bodies so that it appears as a natural char­
acteristic of the bodies themselves. Wh ile gender is the
abstraction of sexual d ifference from all of its concrete
characteristics, that abstraction transforms and deter­
m ines the body to which it is attached - just as the real
abstraction of value transforms the material body of the
commodity. Gender and sex combined g ive those in­
scribed within them a natural semblance ("with a phan­
tom l i ke objectivity") , as if the social content of gender
was "written upon the skin" of the concrete ind ividuals.

The Logic of Gender 79


The transhistoricisation of sex is homologous to a fore­
shortened critique of capital , which contends that use­
value is transhistorical rather than historically specific to
capital ism. Here, use-value is thought to be that which
positively remains after revolution, which is seen as free­
ing use-value from the integument of exchange-value. In
terms of our analogy with sex and gender, we would go
one step further and say that both gender and sex are
h istorically determined. Both are entirely social and can
only be abolished together - just as exchange-value and
use-value will both have to be abolished in the process of
commun isation. In this light, our feminist value-theoretical
analysis mirrors Butler's critique in so far as we both view
the sex/gender binary as being socially-determined and
produced through social conditions specific to modern ity.

T h e d e n a t u ra l i sation of g e n d e r

But gender is not a static social form. The abstraction


of gender becomes increasingly denatural ised, making
sex appear all the more concrete and biological. In other
words, if sex and gender are two sides of the same coin,
the relation between gender and its naturalised coun­
terpart is not stable. There is a potential d iscrepancy
between them, which some have called a "trou bling",
and we term "denaturalisation".

Over t i m e gender is ever m ore abstracted, defi n i n g


sexual ity more a n d more arbitrarily. The marketisation
and commodification of gender appears increasingly to
de-naturalise gender from naturalised biological concerns.
One might say that capitalism itself deconstructs gender
and denaturalises it. Nature - whose increasing superfluity
is in juxtaposition to gender's ongoing necessity - appears
as the presu pposition of gender rather than its effect. I n
more fam i liar terms, reflecting capital 's "problem" with
labour: "nature" (the "natural" side of the sex/gender binary)
becomes increasingly superfl uous to the generational
reproduction of the proletariat, while the "cost" assig ned

Endnotes 3 80
to "female" bodies - or the counter-pole to sex - becomes
i ncreasingly i m perative to capital acc u m u lation as the
tendency toward fem i n isation. Hence, the reproduction
of gender is of utmost i m portance, as labou r-power with
a lower cost, while a reserve army of p roletarians as
surplus popu lation is increasingly redu ndant.

What the female gender sign ifies - that which is socially


inscribed upon "naturalised", "sexuated" bodies - is not
only an array of "fe m i n i ne" or gendered characteristics,
but essentially a price tag. Biological reprod uction has
a social cost which is exceptional to average (male)
labou r-power; it becomes the burden of those whose
cost it is assigned to - regardless of whether they can or
will have children. It is in this sense that an abstraction, a
gendered average, is reflected back upon the organisation
of bodies in the same way exchange-value, a blind market
average, is projected back upon production, molding and
transform ing the organ isation of the character of social
production and the d ivision of labour. In this sense, the
transformation of the condition of gender relations goes
on behind the backs of those whom it defines. And in this
sense, gender is constantly reimposed and re-naturalised.

5 T H E H I STORY OF G E N D E R WITH I N CAPITA L I S M : from the creation


of the IMM s p h ere to the co m m od ificati o n of g e n d ered activities

To understand this dialectical process of de-naturalisation


and re-natural isation we fi rst have to retrace the transfor­
mations withi n the gender relation over the course of the
capitalist mode of produ ctio n , and attempt a period isa­
tion. At this more concrete level, there are many possible
poi nts of entry to take, and we opt for a period isation
of the fam i ly, since it is the economic u n it that brings
together the indirectly market-mediated (I M M) and the
d i rectly market-med iated ( D M M) spheres wh ich delimit
the aspects of proletarian reprod uction. We must try to
figure out whether changes in the family form correspond
to transformations in the process of labou r's valorisation.

The Logic of Gender 81


Pri m itive accu m u lation a n d t h e exte n d e d fa m i l y

D u ring the era of prim itive accumu lation, a major prob- 23 See M i chael Perel-
lem facing the capital ist class was how to perfectly man, The Invention of
cali b rate the relationshi p between the I M M and D M M Capitalism: Classical
spheres such that workers would, on the one hand, be Political Economy and
forced to survive only by sel ling their labour-power, and the Secret History of
on the other, be allotted only enough personal property Primitive Accumula-
to continue self-provisioning without bri n g i n g up the tion (Duke U n iversity
cost of labou r-power.23 Indeed, at the moment when Press 2000).
the I M M was constituted, it had to take on as m u ch as
possible of the reproduction of labou r-power, to be as
big as possible, but just enough so that the proportion
of self-provisioning allowed nevertheless requ i red the
habitual re-emergence of labour-power on the market.
Therefore, the sphere of I M M supplementing the wage
was subordinated to the market as a necessary presup-
position of wage-relations and capital ist exploitation,
and as its immediate result.

I n the course of the transition from the 1 8th to the 1 9th


century, the fam i ly - centred in the home as a u n it of pro­
duction - became the economic unit mediating between
the IMM and DMM spheres of labou r-power's reproduc­
tion. H owever, for the fi rst part of the 1 9th century, as
long as no retirement benefits existed and as long as
it was also the case that children were expected to go
to work before they even reached puberty, the fam ily
comprised several generations residing i n one home.
I n add ition, the activities of the IMM sphere were not
carried out by married women alone; i ndeed they were
done with the participation of children, g randmothers
and other female relatives, even lodgers. If it was the
case that only the "singly free" adult male members of
the fam ily could legally be owners of the wage, this did
not mean that ad ult women and young children did not
also work outside the home.

Endnotes 3 82
I ndeed, at the beg i n n i n g of i n d ustrial isation, women
represented one third of the workforce. Like children,
they did not decide if or where they would take employ­
ment, or which job they would perform ; they were more
or less s u bcontracted by t h e i r h usbands or fathers.
(Marx even com pared it with some forms of the slave
trad e : the male head of the fam ily bargained the price
of the labou r-power of his wife and children and chose
to accept or decl ine. And let us not forget that i n some
countries, such as France and Germany, women only
got the right to work without the authorisation of their
husbands i n the 1 9 60s or 70s) . Far from being a sign
of the emancipation of women, or of the modern views
of the h usband, women worki ng outside the home was
a blatant ind icator of poverty. Even if married women
were generally expected to stay at home when the family
could afford it (where they often did home-based pro­
duction, especially for the textile industry) , many women
never married - for it was an expensive business - and
some were not supposed to become preg nant, forming
their own fam i ly. You nger daughters were often sent to
become servants or helpers in other fami l ies, remaining
"officially" single. Therefore, even if those responsible
for the I M M sphere were always women, and those
responsible for the wage were always men (one could
say, by defi n ition) , the two genders and the two spheres
did not map one to one in that period.

ii T h e nuclear fa m i ly and Ford i s m

I n the second part of the 1 9th century, what some call


the second industrial revolution, there was a prog res­
sive move towards the n uclear family as we t h i n k of
it today. Fi rst, after decades of labour strugg les, the
state stepped i n to l i m it the employment of women and
childre n , partly because it was faced with a crisis in
the reproduction of the work force. Labou r-power was
expected to become more skilled (for example l iteracy
i ncreasingly became a ski l l requ i red to access a job) ,

The Logic of Gender 83


and i ncreasing attention was g iven to the education of 24 For the effects of
children. A new category emerged, that of child hood, com pu lsory education
with its specific needs and phases of development. on worki ng-class
Looking after children became a complicated business, fam i l ies see Wal ly
which could no longer be provided by elder sibli ngs.24 Seccom be, Weather­
ing the Storm:
This process c u l m i n ated with Ford i s m , and its new Working-Class
standards of consum ption and reproduction. With the Families from the
general isation of retirement benefits and retirement Industrial Revolution
homes, generations came to be separated from each to the Fertility Decline
other in i n d ividual h ouses. The allocation of fam ily (Verso 1993).
respo n s i b i l ities between h u s band and wife became
strictly defined by the separation between the spheres.
I M M activities that used to be carried out together with
other women (such as washing clothes) became the
ind ividual responsibil ity of one adu lt woman per house­
hold. The married woman 's l ife often came to be entirely
confined to the I M M sphere. It became the fate of most
women, and their entire l ives (including their personality,
desires, etc.) were shaped by this fate.

It was therefore with the nuclear fam ily (in a specific


period of capital ism, and importantly, i n a specific area
of the world) that gender became a rigid binary, map­
ping one to one with the spheres. It became a strict
norm, which does not mean everyone fitted i nto it. Many
fem i n ists who refer to gender as a set of character­
istics that defin e "fe m i n i n ity" and " masc u l i n ity" have
the norms of that period in mind. From this point on,
i n d ividuals identified as women were born with d iffer­
ent l ife-destinies than individuals defined as men - they
l ived "on two d ifferent planets" (some on Mars . . . ) , and
were socialised as two d istinct kinds of subjects. This
disti nction cut across all classes.

No longer helped by other mem bers of the fami ly, doing


the IMM activities isolated behind fou r wal ls, married
women were made to bear the entire burden of I M M
activities on their own . This isolation would n ot have

Endnotes 3 84
been possible without the i ntrod uction of household
appliances turning the most extreme physical tasks into
chores that could be carried out alone. The wash ing­
mach ine, the i ndoor water-tap, the water heater - these
helped to d ramatically reduce the time spent on some
I M M activities. But every m i n ute gained was far from
i ncreas i n g the housewife's leisure time. Every spare
m o m e nt had to be used to i nc rease the standards
of reprod ucti o n : clothes were was h e d m o re often ,
meals became ever more varied and healthy, and most
importantly, childcare became an all-consuming I M M
activity from i nfant care t o the facil itation of children's
leisure activities.

iii T h e 70s : real s u b s u m pt i o n and t h e c o m m o d ificat i o n of I M M activities

The commodification of I M M activities is clearly not a


new phenomenon. From the beg i n n i n g of capital ism it
was possible to buy ready-made meals instead of cook­
ing them, to buy new clothes instead of mending them,
to pay a servant to look after the children or to do the
housework. However, those were privileges of the middle
and upper classes. Indeed, each time an I M M activity is
turned into a commodity, it has to be paid for in the wage.
Therefore, the mass-consumption of these commod ities
wou ld only have been l i kely i n periods of steady wage
increases, since these services, as long as they were
only formally subsumed, i ncreased the exchange-value
of necessary labour in an inverse ratio to surplus-value.

H owever, as a resu lt of t h e poss i b i l ities opened by


real subsu m pt i o n , the val u e of some of t hese c o m ­
mod ities can decrease a t the same t i m e a s they are
mass-produced. Advances in prod uctivity make these
commodities more and more affordable, and some of
them - particularly ready-made meals and household
appliances - slowly but surely became affordable with
the wage. N evertheless, some I M M activities are more
d ifficult to commod ity at a price low enough to be paid

The Logic of Gender 85


for by every wage. I ndeed, even if it is possible to com- 25 We take this term
mod ify childcare, it is not possible to make advances in in its etymological
prod uctivity that wou ld allow its cost to become ever sense: ab-ject, that
cheaper. Even if the nou rish ing, washing of clothes, and which is cast off,
so on, can be done more efficiently, the time for childcare th rown away, but from
is never reduced. You can not look after children more something that it is
quickly: they have to be attended to 24 hours a day. part of.

What is possible is to rationalise childcare, for example,


by having the state organ ise it and thereby reducing
the adu lt-to-child ratio. However, there are l i m its to how
many ch ildren one ad ult can possibly handle, especially
if, i n that process, this ad ult has to im part a specific
standard of socialisation, knowledge and discipline.
Th is work can also be performed by the cheapest labour
possib l e ; that is, by women whose wage will be lower
than the wage of a working mother. But in this case, I M M
activities are sim ply deferred t o t h e lowest-paid strata
of the total population. Therefore the problem is not
red uced. Rather, its negative effects are red istributed,
often to poor i m m i g rants and women of colour.

So we see that all these possibil ities are l i m ited : there


is always a remai nder, w h i ch we w i l l refer to as the
abject,25 that is, what cannot be subsumed or is not
worth su bsu ming. It is obviously not abject per se - it
exists as abject because of capital , and it is shaped
by it. There is always this remai nder that has to remain
outside of market-relations, and the q u estion of who
has to perform it i n the fam ily will always be, to say the
least, a confl ictual matter.

6 C R I S I S A N D AUSTE R ITY M EAS U R ES : TH E R I S E OF TH E ABJ ECT

With the cu rrent crisis, all signs indicate that the state
w i l l be i ncreas i n g ly u nw i l l i n g to organise I M M activi­
ties, si nce they are a mere cost. Expenses i n childcare,
elderly-care and healthcare are the fi rst to be cut, not to
mention education and after-school programs. These will

Endnotes 3 86
become D M M for those who can afford it (privatisation) , 26 See the previous
or lapse into the sphere of u nwaged indirect market­ article in this issue,
mediation - therefore i ncreasing the abject. 'The Holding Pattern'.

The extent of this remains to be seen, but the trend 27 Francesca Bettio,
i n countries affected by the crisis is already clear. In 'Crisis and recovery
the US, and i n most cou ntries of the Eurozone (with in Europe: the labour
the notable exception of Germany) , governments are market i m pact on men
cutt i n g t h e i r s pe n d i n g to red uce t h e i r d e bt-to-G DP and women; 2011 .
ratios.26 Countries l i ke G reece, Portugal and Spain, but
also the U K, are drastically scaling down their expenses 28 Fem i n ist Fig htback
in healthcare and childcare. In G reece and Portugal Collective, 'Cuts are
public kindergartens are closing down. I nfringements a Fem i n ist Issue'.
o n the rights of pregnant women to m aternity l eave Soundings 49 (Wi nter
and benefits, or to resume their jobs after matern ity, 2011).
have been reported in G reece, Portugal, Italy, and the
Czech Republic.27 I n the U K, where state-ru n n u rseries 29 Speech by David
are closing one by one, the situation is described by Cameron on 'the Big
an anti-capital ist femin ist group involved in the Hackney Society', Liverpool, 1 9
n u rseries cam paign, Fem i nist Fight Back: J u ly 2010.

All over the UK local authorities have begun to announce


sign ificant red uctions of funding to social services,
from libraries and healthcare to playgrounds and art
groups, from rape crisis centres to domestic violence
services. Of particular relevance to women are the
profound effects that will be felt in children's services,
both i n cou ncil and community n u rseries and i n New
Labour's flagship Sure Start Centres, which provide a
variety of services to parents on a "one-stop" basis.28

In a country where the Prime Minister h imself advocates


the organisation of comm u nity services on a "volu ntary
basis", u nder the central policy idea of the "Big Society",
a culture "where people, in their everyday l ives, in their
homes, i n their neighbou rhoods, i n their workplace . . .
feel both free and powerful enough to help themselves
and their own com m u n ities",29 anti-state fem inists are
faced with a dilemma:

The Logic of Gender 87


O u r aim is for p rovision " i n and agai nst the state". 30 Fem i n ist Fig htback,
This raises a core question in the struggle over public 'Cuts are a Fem i n ist
goods and shared resou rces and labour: how are we Issue'.
to ensure that our autonomous efforts to reproduce
our own communities do not simply create Cameron's 31 Women with I n itiative
Big Society for h i m ? - thereby endorsing the logic (from lnicjatywa
that if the state will no longer provide for us we will Pracown icza-Workers'
have to do it ou rselves?30 I n itiative), 'Women
workers fight back
The struggle around kindergartens which took place in agai nst austerity i n
Poznan (Poland) in 2 0 1 2 also reflects this d i lemma. The Poland', lndustna/
m u nicipality is slowly transferring all the public kinder­ Worker 1743, March
gartens to private i nstitutions to save costs. When the 201 2.
workers of one of the n u rseries protested with parents
and activists, agai nst privatisation, the local authorities
came u p with the option of letting the workers organise
the n ursery, but without providing them with any su bsi­
dies or g uarantees. This made it a very dim option that
was eventually rejected by the workers and parents.31

H owever, some marxist fem i n ists seem to glorify the


self-organisation of I M M activities by women as a nec­
essary step in the creation of an alternative society. For
exam ple S i lvia Federici, in her 2 0 1 0 text " Fe m i n is m
a n d the Pol itics o f t h e Common i n a n Era o f Primitive
Accumu latio n " :

If t h e house is t h e oikos on which t h e economy is


built, then it is women, historical ly the house-workers
and house-prisoners, who must take the i nitiative to
reclaim the house as a center of col lective l ife, one
traversed by m u ltiple people and forms of coopera­
tion, providing safety without isolation and fixation,
allowing for the sharing and circulation of commun ity
possessions, and above all providing the fou ndation
for collective forms of reproduction. [ . . ] It remains to
.

clarify that assigning women this task of commoning/


collectiviz i n g rep rod uction is not to concede to a
naturalistic conception of "femininity". Understandably,

Endnotes 3 88
many fem i n ists would view this possibil ity as "a fate 32 Silvia Federici, Revolu-
worse than death :' [ . . . ] But, quoting Dolores Hayden, tion at Point Zero,
the reorganisation of reproductive work, and there- Housework, Repro-
fore the reorgan isation of the structu re of housing duct/on, a n d Feminist
and public space is not a question of identity; it is Struggle ( Common
a labo u r q u estion and, we can add , a power and Notions 201 2) , 147.
safety question .32
33Th is is obviously not to
Silvia Federici is right - we do consider this possibil ity say that we don't val ue
worse than death. And her answer to t h i s o bjection, the whole of Federic1's
w h i c h q u otes Dolores H ayden rat h e r freely, m i sses contribution to the
the point: the labour question is an identity question .33 marxist fem i n i st de-
Even if we m ig ht, in the crisis, have no choice but to bate. Along with Dalla
self-organise these reprod uctive activities - and even Costa and James's,
though, most l i kely, abject reprod uction will i n the end The Power of Women
mainly be foisted upon women - we must fight against and the Subversion
this process which rei nforces gender. We m u st treat of the Community,
it as it is: a self-organ isation of the abject, of what no Silvia Federici's texts
one else is willing to do. are s u rely the most
interesting pieces
It is i mportant here to state that, even if u nwaged I M M from the 'domestic
activities and the abject might refer to the same concrete labour debate' of the
activities, these two concepts must be d ifferentiated. 1970s. What we want
Indeed, the category of the abject refers specifically to criticise here is a
to activities that became waged at some point b u t position that is cur­
are i n the process o f returning i n t o the u nwaged I M M rently influential within
sphere because they've become too costly for the state the 'commons' debate,
or capital. Whi l e I M M is a p u rely structu ral category, and that we consider
i ndependent of any dynam ic, the concept of the abject h i g h ly problematic.
g rasps the specificities of these activities and the pro­
cess of their assignment in our cu rrent period. I ndeed,
we can say that, if many of our mothers and g rand­
mothers were caught i n the sphere of IMM activities,
the problem we face today is d ifferent. It is not that we
will have to "go back to the kitchen", if only because
we cannot afford it. Our fate, rather, is ha ving to deal
with the abject. Contrary to the I M M activities of the
past, this abject has al ready been to a large extent
denatu ral ised. It does not appear to those perform ing

The Logic of Gender 89


it as some u nfortunate natu ral fate, but more l i ke an 34 'A massive and sud­
extra burden that one must deal with alongside wage­ den emergence of un­
labour.34 Being left to deal with it is the u g ly face of can n i ness, wh ich, fa­
gender today, and this helps us to see gender as it is: m i l iar as it might have
a powerful constraint.35 been in an opaque
and forgotten l ife, now
I ndeed, the process of de-nat u ralisation creates the harries me as rad ically
possibility of gender appearing as an external constraint. separate, loa thsome.
Th is is not to say that the constraint of gender is less Not me. Not that. But
powerful than before, but that it can now be seen as a not noth ing, either.
constraint, that is, as something outside oneself that it A "something" that
is possible to abolish. I do not recognise
as a thing. A weight
A last t h o u g ht, to concl u d e : if it happens to be true of mean ing lessness,
that the present moment al lows u s to see both o u r about which there is
class-belonging a n d our gender-belonging a s external noth i n g insign ificant,
constraints, this can not be purely accidental. Or can and which curses me.'
it? This q u estion is critical for an understanding of the Julia Kristeva, Power
struggle which leads to the abolition of gender, that is, of Horrors: An Essay
to the reproduction by non-gendered ind ividuals of a on A bjection (Colum­
l ife in which all separate spheres of activity have been bia U niversity Press
abolished. 1982), 2.

35 Obviously there are


nowadays some men,
even if few, who do a
considerable part of
the abject. And they
get to know what
many women experi­
ence: that the abject
sticks to one 's skin.
Many of these men,
especially when they
end up havi ng to do
most of the childcare,
seem somehow to be
u ndergoing a process
of social castration.

Endnotes 3 90
A RISING TID E LI FTS ALL BOATS

Crisis era struggles in Britain

92
M O N DAY, 8 AUG UST 2 0 1 1 1 For Siiri and Finn,
whose entry i nto
Wandering north u p Mare Street towards central Hack­ this world fired the
ney helicopters throbbed in the air ahead, tightening starti ng pistol, and
an atm o s p he re al ready tense with A u g u st h u m i d ity for their parents to
and tales of riot. 1 The road was pecul iarly desolate for whom we owed a gift.
evening rush hour, barren of the usual steady flow of
traffic that trudges n o rth-south along t h i s i n ner-city Thanks to Larne, C h ris,
artery. Remnants of some episode were visible: bins Richard and Sean
dismantled, tu rned over; rubbish sprawled, broken glass for useful feedback.
g l ittering on the open road ; probably a confrontation
with the cops. A fai r few loitered, curious, oddly lacking
intent - h ipster riot tou rists and other locals. A group
of kids, mostly black, gathered nonchalantly about a
pawn shop where a shutter and window were bro ken
in, making a hole j ust big enough for a child or someone
small to weasel through. A "gang" perhaps, or just some
opportunists : were those casual fig u res playing lookout,
while one or two went about steal ing what they could?
A few shopkeepers too, concerned for their property,
m i l led about the street ; a l ittle fu rther up, a smattering
of police in fluorescent jackets.

Approaching the N arrowway, central Hackney's main


shopping street, smoke billowed on the horizon in the
direction of the helicopters, which seemed focused still
a l ittle further north, around Clarence Road . Half way up,
the police had taped a cordon, preventing pedestrians
from venturing further. On the corner a black couple stood
resol ute while a g rizzled wh ite drunk bawled, vitriolic
i nto their faces. Rout i n g aro u n d the cordon towards
Dalston Lane a g roup of kids, scarves pulled over faces
black-bloc style, gl ided past on bikes holding what m ight
have been minor looted goods. Almost all the businesses
were closed . A shop on Am h u rst Road had its shutters
fu ll down, while d i m ly through the gaps the shapes of
women could be seen avidly watching the news, probably
scared to leave, either for their own safety or the shop's.
At Clapton Square, an older Afro-Caribbean couple merrily

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats 93


joked with a TV news crew, "we ' re the parents - come 2 As a Peabody
interview us ! " Entering this square, architectu ral relic of representative
an old Hackney bourgeoisie, smoke hung in the air, acrid. put it, in 1881 : 'we
Smouldering wheelie bin barricades lay in the street at house the deservi ng
the top. Tu rn ing into Clarence Road, a car was on fire. class . . . there are
some people that
Clarence Road r u n s down the Eastern fla n k of t h e are so low, that they
Pemb u ry Estate - one of Hackney's most stigmatised could not l ive with
neighbourhoods, establ ished by London County Coun­ our people'. Gareth
cil fiat i n the era of i nterwar slum clearance, and now Stedman Jones,
associated i n the local press with salacious tales of Outcast London
t u rf war between the " Pe m b u ry B oys" and other lo­ (Pantheon 1 984), 185.
cal gangs; this is the Hackney sentimental ised i n the
months following the riots in Top Boy, a supposed Brit­
ish counterpart to The Wire. Through the late 1 980s
and early 1 99 0 s e m pty u n its o n t h e Pem b u ry were
a m a g n et for s q u atters from H ackney's n u m e r o u s
anarcho a n d activist scene, who established conviv­
ial relations with the estate's tenants. And it was on
Clarence Road that the Col i n Roach Centre - named
after a you n g black man shot dead in the notorious
Stoke N ew i n gton Pol i c e Stat i o n in 1 983 - was es­
tablished with a remit of p u rsu i n g complai nts about
such things as police planting and deal i n g of drugs.
The estate was cleared of squatters i n 1 993, just as
the borough's long-term depopu lation halted , though
enough u n its remained empty for whole blocks to go
derelict. After a grad ual d ivestment under successive
Tory and Labour govern ments, Hackney Council sold
off the whole estate, with promises of improvements, to
the Peabody Trust, a private housing association with a
history of paternalistic i nvolvement i n housing London's
poor dating back to Marx's day.2 The Pem bury's notori­
ety for "anti-social behaviour" subsequently legitimated
Peabody's demolition of a large part of it to make way
for " Pe m b u ry Circus", a large reg e n e rati o n p roject
that now aspi res to b ri n g m ore owner-occupiers i n ­
t o t h e neighbourhood. A s well a s crime, t h e Pem b u ry
has a reputation for tightly-knit com m u n ity ; something

Endnotes 3 94
embodied in residents' organisations, and a sometimes
vocal presence in the local med ia. On summer days
l i ke this strains of dancehall and reggae sometimes
drift from the row of small shops that line one side of
Clarence Road .

Now, diverse crowds of people milled about in the street,


ran g i n g from c h i ldren to pensioners; asians, wh ites,
slightly more blacks than others - unsurprising, given the
demographics of the area. Overall probably only slightly
more men than women, but the largest and most active
contingent, you ng men, probably ranging later teens to
thirty-somethings. Further down the street an abandoned
black cab, door gaping open, windows smashed, rear
bumper dang ling off; a local convenience store offering
Western U n ion money transfer, shutters broken through.
A m iddle-aged black man setting out looted bottles on
the pavement for people to take, finding this h i larious,
shouting "free booze ! free booze ! " Tentatively, i n itially
one by one, a l ittle stream of people ducked through the
broken shutters, then emerged agai n, clutch ing m i nor
trophies: alcohol, Wal kers crisps. Bedragg led-looking
whites, perhaps alcoholics or homeless, took the oppor­
tun ity; others just seemed to want to take part in the fun.
All the while a police helicopter hovered close overhead,
filling the air with tension, observing, yet the police did
noth ing. A gaggle of journalists, conspicuously large
cameras surveilling those entering the shop, p rompt­
ing cries of "no photos", "they're fucking feds" ; then a
momentary boil i n g over, threatening q u ite rationally to
snatch or smash a camera. But they let h i m get away,
under a barrage of curses. If they had known how the
state would su bsequently use images l i ke that i n their
mass-prosecution . . .

There was l ittle overt sense of "gangs" operating here,


n o r t h e simple opport u n istic materialism of a "feral
youth" : the composition seemed to be something of a
cross-section of the community, plus a smattering of riot

A Rising Tide Lifts A ll Boats 95


tou rists and jou rnalists, and the looting was perfu nctory, 3 Being a g randmother
a sideshow to the main event, which was about keeping with a wal king stick
the area cop-free. The mood was predomi nantly jovial, etc etc, and appeari ng
people revel l i n g i n the creation of a small l i b e rated to brave a feral mob
zone wh ich the pol ice seemed ill-eq u ipped to q uash . m id-pil lage t o give i t a
Wh ile the more "active" role tended to be played by good moral dressi ng-
the younger men, oth e rs offered a passively sym pa- down, Pearce was
thetic presence, egging them on or making justifying easily canon ised as
argu ments to on lookers. An older Afro-Caribbean man one of the riot-wave's
alternately giggled and shouted jokes across the street sai nts. It's worth
in the d i rection of the looted shop. A riot dynamic l i ke noti ng though, that
this partly selects its own crowd : the terrified and the Pearce seems to have
d isapproving of course mostly vacate the scene once been responding as
t h i n g s get g o i n g , u n l ess they have to stay to g u ard much to media cover-
homes or property, leaving behind just those who want age of riots elsewhere
to make, support or observe the continuing riot. It was as to the activities of
further up Clarence Road , on the periphery of the Pem- the crowd the viewer
bury's rioting area and after this local riot's peak that projects beh ind the
Pau line Pearce - the nationally-celebrated " Heroine of camera: the Pembury
Hackney"- gave her speech : Estate lacks anything
l i ke a Foot Locker
Low up the fucki n ' b u r n i n g the property. Low u p store to loot. After the
burning people's shop that they work hard t o start riots Pearce would
their business. You understan d ? Poor [ . . . J 's shop be feted by senior
u p there, she's working hard to make her business politicians. Though it
work and then you lot want to go and burn it up, for would emerge that
what? So that you can say you're "warring" and you're she had served three
bad man. This is about a fuckin ' man who got shot in years for smug-
Tottenham, its not about having fun on the road and gling cocai ne from
busti ng u p the place. Get it real black people, get Jamaica, the Liberals
real. We' re here for a cause, and if we' re fighting for employed her to give
a cause let's fight for a fuckin ' cause. You lot piss me words of support
the fuck off. I'm ashamed to be a Hackney person to local businesses
coz we' re not all gathering together and fighting for a affected by the riots.
cause, we' re ru n n i ng down Foot Locker and thieving
shoes. D i rty thief ru n off.3

On the corner next to the anarch ist Pogo cafe a dis­


tressed woman lay on her back i n the street, attended

Endnotes 3 96
to by passers-by, including some black-clad types, pre­
sumably from Pogo, who brought water, trying to keep
the atmosphere around her calm. Along the street were
one smouldering car wreck after another, some on side
streets. A motorbi ke had also been b u rned out, and
more bins. Incongruously, amongst the wisps of smoke
two priests in full robes were engaged in conversation
with some locals; saintly nodd ing, downcast eyes; an
older black man speaking of a need for black youth to
stick up for themselves, final ly. Others describing m iser­
able conditions, the impossibility of finding jobs, feeling
discrim i nated against by the "feds". Some red g raffiti
chorused : "fuck da feds" ; further up, "fuck Cameron".
The name Mark Duggan, and the police m u rder of a
black man were on some lips, but not all ; still, that event
was clearly a sym bol. The priests just l istened. Debris
indicated a pitched battle had taken place. A row of
teenagers, some wearing the archetypal hoodies, on the
front steps of a terraced house, consu m i n g beer and
crisps, probably looted from the convenience store ; a
foam ing beer can lobbed at a friend.

Back down Clarence Road a new car was now i n fu ll


blaze, worryi ngly close to a house. Residents leaned
out of windows looking pecul iarly calm , g iven the situ­
ation. N ight was g radually fal l i n g , and the flames stood
out in the dark. The crowd had parted around the car,
worried about potential explosion. A stream of looters
were still making off with items from the shop: crates of
beer, bottles of Lambrini. We braved the flames to dash
further up the street and i nto the crowd . U n prompted, a
you ng black guy enthused to us "this is it ! The fucki ng
revolution ! The people taking back the streets ! " Another
compared the events favourably to the student move­
ment of 2 0 1 0- 1 1 : this was "real protest". The owner
of a wool shop stood in his doorway, p rotect i n g h is
business, and the cabbie whose vehicle had been half
destroyed attempted to extricate what was left.

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats 97


After a while the police helicopter flew in low for a bit,
as if to intim idate the crowd , but the cops themselves
were sti l l b izarrely absent, perhaps content to leave
the riot as long as it was contained in an area al ready
deeply stigmatised. The sound of sirens and a stroll
around the neighbourhood found them massed, inac­
tive on Pembury Road , wh ich cuts through the estate
on the west side of the area of conflag ration. Were
they m u steri ng forces, waiting for a strategic moment,
or just observing from afar? At the bottom of Clarence
Road , the crowd was now restive, u neasy about the
long absence of a their main partner in riot. "There are
no cops man ! ", someone shouted, "where the hell are
the police ! ? " while the chopper j ust t h robbed i n the
sky above - catalog u i n g , presumably, all of our faces,
clothes, postures, interactions, ready for the systematic
analysis that would later convict thousands.

It is a perversity of a riot l i ke this, b u i lt entirely around


l iberation of territory from the cops, that the complete
absence of this protagonist, while seemingly realising
the riot's very aim, deprives it of the dyn a mic which ena­
bles it to develop. The police, in this sense, are not an
external force of order applied by the state to an al ready
rioting mass, but an i nteg ral part of the riot : not only its
standard component spark-plug, acting via the usual
death, at police hands, of some young black man, but
also the necessary ongoing partner of the rioting crowd
from whom the space m ust be l i berated if this l iberation
is to mean anything at all ; who must be attacked as an
enemy if the crowd is to be u n ified in anything ; who
must be forced to recognise the agency of a habitually
subjected g roup. N ow, without d i rect confrontation i n
a n um ber o f hours, the riot was starting t o sag . People
seemed actually to be willing the cops to return, even
perhaps to the point of self-destruction. A you ng wh ite
man d ressed l i ke an anarch ist cried " MARE STRE ET ! "
repeated ly, gesturing for t h e crowd to follow h i m that

Endnotes 3 98
way. We drifted along with the flow as it crossed the
boundary of the estate to enter the Narrowway, with its
g reater supply of shopfronts.

Those massed troops we'd seen had evidently been


primed to oblige the crowd in response to such prov­
ocation. Almost immed iately a riot van screeched i n ,
prompting a wave o f heckling : " M U RDERERS ! ". Some
i n the crowd , too, were prepared, immed iately letting
forth a q uite intense volley of rocks, beer cans etc, which
clattered i nto the van as it sped past. A can rebounded
and thudded hard i nto my chest, spraying beer down
my front. Some of the men started gathering around a
ban k on the Narrowway, smashing at its windows. A
kid let off a fi re extingu isher poi ntlessly i nto the street.
As they penetrated the bank, a riot van sped into the
crowd , forcing it to part back towards the Pembury, but
suffering a broken window from one well-aimed brick
as it slid by. Cops were now moving i n from the south
i n fu ll riot gear, at the bottom end of the Narrowway. At
the end of Clarence Road a new convoy of riot vans
rolled in. Again the crowd was well prepared, unleashing
volleys of m issiles. One flew straight for the head of a
driver, shattering the window but not passing through.
Kids kicked obstacles in front of the vans, trying to block
their way, without success. Anyt h i n g - tree branches
were pul led down, rammed flailingly at the cop veh icles.
Now an u nfortunate bus rolled u p behind the riot vans
blocking Dalston Lane, its front windows already gap­
ing - sign of an i ncident elsewhere in the city - and was
forced to turn awkwardly around in the street, to avoid
another riot that now filled the road ahead of it. Police
charged. "Clear the area! " We ran, fearing a kettle.

Separated from the bulk of the crowd , we moved off.


The road was clear but several shops had been hit: J D
Sports, a posh sandwich shop, Lad brokes. A gaggle
of friendly alchies accosted us, an inebriated woman

A Rising Tide Lifts A ll Boats 99


grabbing and kissing us. " B O O ! " she shouted at a pass- 4 It should also be
ing h ipster, tense from the goings-o n : he j u m ped a mile remem bered that
before she headlocked him, declaring her love and show­ Scotland in gen-
ering h i m with the same kisses. Were they deliberately eral has experienced
heading for the riot? Similar types had been present in much less rioti ng
the midst of the crowd : just those left when the streets than Eng land over
cleared of the " respectable", perhaps, or looki ng for recent decades.
opport u n ities u nder cover of the riots? In more or less
deserted streets, as we rambled through Hackney, we
found only drunks and some Tu rkish g uys - perhaps out
to protect their businesses - hang ing out with police. In
a kebab shop we asked one cop if this was happening
anywhere other than Hackney. He laughed : "Are you
joki ng love? It's l iterally everywhere".

They were completely overwhelmed. Pol ice organisa­


tional and com m u n ications structu res seem to have
more or less col lapsed around this point, strained by
the sheer n u m bers of pol ice officers being d rafted i nto
the capital from elsewhere in the country. I n d ividual of­
ficers were reduced to communicating horizontally with
each other, using their personal mobile phones, while
the backu ps d i d n ot have proper e q u ipment o r any
instructions as to what they should do. Camden, Lew­
isham, Catford, Croydon, Kilburn, Peckham , Battersea,
Balham, B arnet, Clapham J u n ction, Eal i n g , Barki n g ,
Enfield, Brom ley, Chingford Mount, East H a m , Birm ing­
ham, Liverpool , Bristol, N otti n g h a m , Woolwich and
B romwich were all now experiencing riots or related
distu rbances : the rioting had clearly spread far, far be­
yond its original trigger point - far even beyond G reater
London's vast metropolitan sprawl ; something missed
in the freq uent i nternational nam i n g of these as " Lon­
don" or "Tottenham" riots. These were England riots :
halting at the small market town of Gloucester, before
the Welsh border, spreading a long way north to Man­
chester, but sparing the northernmost reaches of the
country, and the whole of Scotland, perhaps due to the
wet weather further north.4

Endnotes 3 1 00
WHY R I OT

So who were these rioters, and why were they rioting?


A certain explanatory, justificatory discourse was already
present in the midst of the Pembury riot itself, uttered by
rioters and especially by the older, more passive partici­
pants to anyone who cared to l isten. These explanations
were not the post festum fabrications of journal ists or
social scientists, eager to slot the events from afar i nto
their own pre-formed narratives or theoretical contrap­
tions, nor the retrospective rational isations of kids who,
in the spur of the moment, acted merely on i m p u lse,
or for the opportun ity of getting some loot. They were
an organ ic aspect of the riot itself, part of its general
ambience, i mmed iately perceptible to anyone present.
Looting was in any case a marg inal, tokenistic aspect of
at least this particular moment in the national riot-wave ;
there were scant opport u n ities for effective looting on
the Pemb u ry Estate anyway, ruling out some i mmediate
"consumerist g reed" as a s i g n ificant m otivation. And
the extended timespan of the Pem b u ry riot, the crowd
largely inactive, palpably wondering what to do, for long
i ntervals while the cops gathered their forces nearby,
u ndermi nes any appeal to " i m pulse" or the vagaries of
mob i rrational ity. N o : this riot came from the start with
its own conscious j u stifications, and sustained them
through the cou rse of a primary confl ict with the cops.
The m u rder of a black man, poor conditions, unemploy­
ment : d iverse explanations were g iven. And no doubt
there were some people merely seizing an opportun ity
for some free booze. But, while various, there is an obvi­
ous coherence to this set of explanations, descri b i n g
a world o f condensed u rban deprivation, a n d the need
for revolt against it. What's more, one explanation in
particu lar stood out in its freq u e n cy : the role of the
police and the need for Pem bury youth to stand u p for
themselves against the systemic harassment exemplified
in generalised stop-and-search ; the need to finally take
a stand, to stage a real protest against such treatment.

A Rising Tide Lifts A ll Boats 1 01


Contrary both to the authoritarian refusal to allot any
legitimate agency to rioting subjects, i n order to con­
demn them as u nworthy of recog nition (and thus as
worthy of exemplary punishment) , and a rad ical reversal
of signs on this read ing wh ich would l i ke to hold up the
riots as some pure space of l u m pen negativity, devoid
of any meaningful intention (for fear of the taint of "poli­
tics"), a coherent struggle was being waged here, with
a defin ite and q u ite transparent content: to i nsist upon
respect from the cops, force recognition of a subject
where daily g rind sees o n ly an abject. The Pem b u ry
riot itself already carried this content ; the verbal ised
j u stifications i n its m i d st m e rely clarified somet h i n g
already evident. This riot demanded t h e presence o f the
police, as the i mmed iate i nterlocutor for whom it was
performed, whose recogn ition it insisted upon, whose
presence and participation it invited, and through whose
efforts it was constituted.

The b u i l d i n g national riot wave which had been trig­


gered a couple of days previously, j u st a few m i les
north in the adjacent borough - and the mounting so­
cial tensions of the years running up to it - supplied its
broad conjunctural context ; a deep neighbou rhood his­
tory of abjection and stigmatisation, most directly at the
hands of the cops, its local one. At fou r o'clock i n the
afternoon the police had supplied an add itional proxi­
mate cause : manhandling two you n g black men i n a
stop-and-search at Hackney Town Hall, just a few m i n ­
utes walk from the Pemb u ry Estate, i n an area al ready
pumped for riot, and correspondingly swam ped with
expectant coppers ready-equ ipped with NATO-style hel­
mets. The Pem b u ry riot, that is to say, was before all
else an anti-police riot. It would be a bitter experience
for those involved that the d i rect outcome of such ri­
ots - of their fleeting rebellions against a d isrespecting
Pol ice - was an extreme escalation of the social logic
of abjection, i n wh ich they would be projected as l ittle
better than wild animals; yet, looking back from a year

Endnotes 3 1 02
or two's hindsight, many of them wou ld come to affirm
the experience as somethi n g they'd happily do again .

MARG I N S

Such riots are a habit o f B ritain ' s d e prived estates,


dating back to the area-based policing that developed
fol lowing the Notting H i l l Carn ival riots of 1 976 - the
long, hot summer that also gave us p u n k. From the late
1 9 6 0 s , Enoch Powel l ' s voice in the wilderness had
helped to set the agenda of both the National Front's
reborn, post-C N D Mosleyism, and a nascent New Right
with i n the Conservative Party that, in response to its
d efeat at the hands of the m i n e rs, would eventually
push beyond the l ingering one-nationism of the Heath
G overnment to i ncarnate itself in an I ron Lady. N ow,
w h i l e a s i m mering m onetari s m , emanat i n g from t h e
I nstitute o f Economic Affai rs, made i t s way even into the
ruling cabinet of " Labour Party Capitalist Britain", and
while the struggles of the workers' movement reached
their crest, a contested reconfig u ration of class rela­
tions was al ready underway at the level of u rban space,
with " race" as med iation constituting the sharp edge. A
metropol itan pol ice force that had finally come rou n d
to the conclusion that black people actually were more
l i kely to be criminals, after al l ; a far right eager to capi­
talise on this revelation through such trad itional pursu its
as the provocative march through m i nority neighbour­
hoods; urban communities increasingly resistant to such
harassment ; a rebellious p u n k youth who coveted the
anti-authoritarian credentials of the riotous rastas: by
these vectors there cohered a new pol itics of space
in Britai n , focused by - b u t not red u c i b l e to - race.
U nder the 1 824 Vagrancy Act's "sus law", the police
increas i n g ly targeted residents of p re-identified and
preem i nently black " problem" areas for routine stop­
and-search, now that residency in such places was
considered enough in itself to provide g rounds for sus­
picion. Th us the stigma already placed upon areas such

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats 1 03


as Brixton by their particu lar positions in the distribution 5 See Lol'c Wacquant,
of u rban misery was given a reflexive reinforcement i n Urban Outcasts
the new style of policing aimed at their contain ment. (Pol ity 2008) for a
com parative analysis
Defined as spaces on the marg ins of society, inherently of the American
lawless, to be managed under a reg ime of mere "social and French cases.
control", these sti gmatised neighbourh oods came to
represent the internal l i m its of the restructu red capital­
ist state ; enactments of a nasty, brutal state of natu re
which would provide exemplary justification for the con­
solidating Leviathan. U nder this c rystal lising reg ime,
the residents of such places are only representable as
warn ing signs to the rest of the nation, the g rab-bag of
failed subjects who constitute what has recently come
to be known as "broken Britai n " : the dole scrou ngers,
hoodies, i llegal immigrants, single mothers, chavs, drug
dealers, fatherless blacks, gang mem bers, et cetera.
Yet this has never been the "ghetto" in anything oth­
er than a metaphorical sense : the sym bolic exclusion
represented by the margi nal housing estate does not
amount to a l iteral exclusion from economy or state,
and such areas have always maintained some variety
in terms of ethnic composition. And, while the develop­
ment of these places cannot ultimately be separated
from general g lobal logics, the British case should be
d ifferentiated from others such as the US and France.5
Shaped by the encounter of post-colonial immigrants
with remnants of an "indigenous" worki ng class, with
the decayed remainder of a post-war social-democratic
housing often providing the architectu ral setting, the
poor u rban n e i g h bo u rhood i n B ritain shares certain
characteristics with the French case. But, i n Britain, it
was never relegated to the periphery of the city. Rather,
it has typically fi lled the spaces left by a particular mix
of ( 1 ) i nterwar inner-city s l u m clearance, (2) the raz­
ing of large areas of working class habitation by the
bl itz - which left sizable bomb sites i n London right up
to the 1 970s, and (3) post-war "wh ite flig ht" to sub­
u rban d evel o p m e nts. From these factors L o n d o n ' s

Endnotes 3 1 04
popu lation was actually in decl ine for most of the 20th 6 Probably i n part
Century, after the peak of the Victorian sl u m ; a tenden- reflecting these
cy that only turned around i n the 1 9 9 0s. spatial d ifferences,
accord ing to census
The inner-urban and "white flight" connections here invite data i ntermarriage
com parison with the American ghetto, but the latter is a rates are sign ificantly
much more pronounced structu ral aspect of a society higher i n England; a
forged d i rectly i n plantation slavery - as opposed to mixing that seems to
profiting off the latter from a distance before moralising find a cu ltu ral coun­
about it when it suited. " Black" as a declared eth n icity is, terpart i n the history
of course, m u ltiples higher as a percentage of the popu­ of British pop m usic.
lation i n the U n ited States, and the American g h etto is
an expansive u rban area, much larger than the marginal
blocks and estates of British cities, and more a world
u nto itself.6 I n Britain, while these places do, of course,
condense unemployment and other social "dysfunctions"
relative to other zones in the urban geography, residents
typically continue their existences as workers, consum­
ers or students elsewhere, beyond the bounds of these
merely residential areas. Nor does the state hold back
from penetrating such spaces with its own i nstitutions:
youth services ; social workers ; one or another remedial
neighbourhood scheme. If the state posits such places
as its own i nternal l i m its, it is thus i m portant not to take
it too l iteral ly at its word, for while these developments
reinforce real long-term deprivation, the most salient
d imension on which this exclusion occurs is a social
logic of abjection experienced first and foremost i n the
encou nter with the repressive arm of the state. Every­
thing else follows : med iatised victimisation of residents,
u nending chain of aspirant cabinet mem bers fei g n i n g
deep concern , think-tan k concept creation, crypto-racist
scandals about a feckless, parasitic underclass.

ANTI - C O P

Faced with this dynamic, residents do not always remain


passive. Indeed, the i m position of such policing can
contribute to the formation of at l east the negative

A Rising Tide Lifts A ll Boats 1 05


u n ity of a com m u n ity self-organ ising agai nst the cops: 7 In 1991 and 1995
some neigh bou rhood "defence cam paig n ", for exam­ there were
ple, oriented around retri bution for the death i n police also sign ificant
custody of a com m u n ity mem ber, or the ind ifference of riots of this type in
state and media to one or another racist tragedy. Such Meadow Wel l estate,
things have been a persistent, if often submerged , cur­ Newcastle upon
rent in London l ife throughout the decades of capital ist Tyne, and Brixton,
restructuring - decades in wh ich hundreds of deaths in respectively, but
police custody, typically of blacks, have not resu lted i n neither precipitated
a s i n g l e convicted officer. Though it typically r u n s u p the sort of broader
against a n impassive state, this sort o f com m u n ity self­ wave we find i n
organ isation only rarely issues in a full-blown riot-wave : 1981, 1 9 8 5 a n d 2011.
it is never on its own a sufficient condition. It does, Displaying a curious
however, provide a compact social measu re of h i g h ly periodicity, other
combustible material which, g iven a broader climate of sign ificant riots also
social tension , risks setting the country at large ablaze. occu rred i n 2001
1 98 1 , 1 9 85, 2 0 1 1 : the pivotal riots of all these years and 2005, though
have found their i mmed iate causes in the deaths - real these - especially
or perceived - of black people at the hands of the cops, 2005 - were of
in marg inal areas.7 I n this period, only the Poll Tax riot d ifferent types: a
stands out as a major national example of a riot i n which confrontation with
a d ifferent foundational logic was at play : that of the the far rig ht, and
conventional central London demonstration wh ich tips an i nter-commu nal
over i nto crowd violence. 'race' riot.

And, o n o n e level at least, such riot i n g works. As a 8 The Stephen


Broadwater Farm resident told u s : the nation will long Lawrence campaign
remem ber the name of Cynth i a Jarrett, whose d eath is an exception.
d u ri n g a police raid of her h o u se sparked the 1 9 8 5 Lawrence was
Totten ham riot in wh ich police attending g o t what local stabbed to death
leftist MP Bernie G rant described as "a bloody good hid­ i n a racist attack in
ing"- including the hacking to death of PC Keith Blakelock; 1993 at the age of 18.
"and it' l l sure as hell remember Mark Duggan ". But J oy Though police have
Gard ner, who suffocated to death when two cops and been impl icated i n
an immigration official wrapped thirteen feet of surg ical various ways, the
tape around her head ; Roger Sylvester, a mentally i l l fact that the d i rect
man they held in a restraining position that induced brain perpetrators here
damage and cardiac arrest ; Coli n Roach, who d ied from were not police but
a shotg u n i nj u ry in the entrance of Stoke N ewington just a group of wh ite

Endnotes 3 1 06
police station . . . these people enter the canon of martyrs racists probably
for a minor genre of long-term sing le-issue com m u n ity explains the greater
cam paign that has left l ittle lasting impression on the scope for success
country at large.8 Such campaigns run up against a wal l withi n the British
o f si lence, obstruction a n d intim idation, a n d a media state. The Lawrence
landscape that has typically been tilted against them cam paig n has even
from the very fi rst police press statements - rushed out become a national
after the i ncident to provide a conven ient frame for the cause celebre with
subsequent discourses : the deceased was a gangster/ Lawrence's mother
a drug dealer/ i nsane, or had assaulted a police officer. gai n i n g an OBE,
Deleg itimised in advance, they then tend to be pushed a l ife peerage,
towards an apologetic position, where the victim must be and a spot i n the
painted an "angel", a " peacemaker" etc, while the police Olym pic cer-
just go about their business. The only sort of "justice" emony as em blem
possible i n such circumstances is obviously a retribu­ of a harmonious
tive one, and with a complete shut-out from the state's m u lticu ltural Britai n
legitimacy-generating organs, the logical place for the (though the Tory
playing out of such retribution is in a public confrontation far right 'Trad itional
with the cops i n wh ich a crowd presence can generate a Britai n G roup' con­
momentum not available to individual, orderly campaigners. tinue to arg ue for her
Donald Douglas, whose brother B rian was beaten to 're patriation'). Similar
death by two police when on a n i g ht out, reg retted his campaigns where
efforts to defuse a riot situation when tensions mounted the pol ice are the
between a c rowd of m o u rners and atte n d i n g cops: d i rect object typically
run u p against a wal l
I n h i ndsight, because you haven't reached a kind of of state obstruction;
conclusion that you want to, you think "well I won­ the anti-police
der, if I wasn't so disciplined and organised and just riot then presents
al l owed people to go and tear u p the situation . . . " itself as an obvious
p robably in h indsight that's the best that could've tactic for making
been achieved, and at l east it would've been a day them listen. The
to remember, if nothing else. And some property or Lawrence cam paig n
whatever would've been destroyed and that would've is an exception that
represented the death of Brian . . . 9 helpfully obscu res
a repressive rule.
When a similar i ncident a few months later - the death
of Wayne Douglas (no relation) - did erupt in the Brixton 9 From Ken Fero and
riots of 1 9 95, Donald thought t h i s probably a m o re Tariq Mehmood's
fitting outcom e : f i l m , Injustice, 2002.

A Rising Tide Lifts A ll Boats 1 07


Obviously it led to a catastrophe really in terms of
shops being broken, cars being broken, but it clearly
got the message home . . . because, i n a sense, none
of our demonstrations hit the front page of the paper
q u ite to that extent, so it almost seems that if you
want to be l istened to, you 've got to go and break
something or burn something down or something.

It is probably no coincidence that the death of Wayne


Douglas - a Brixton resident - precipitated a riot, and
that of Brian Doug las d id n 't. The precedent of a local
history of rioting, active in the memories of residents, or
persisting in the local folklore - plus a history of community
identification against the cops - seems to play a significant
part in precipitating riots in some places rather than others.
Hence a particular set of names recu rs in the history of
neoliberal riots : Brixton, Broadwater Farm, Handsworth.

B ritish race relations have changed sign ificantly d u r­


ing the decades of capitalist restructuring, tendential ly
erod ing the status of the black as what we m ight cal l
"primary abject" of the neoliberal state - feared immigrant,
"wide-gri nning piccan i n n ie", mugger, yard ie, rudeboy - in
favour of a more diffuse and less expl icitly racialised set
of fig u res: asylum seeker, single mother, chav, hood ie,
b e n efits c heat. Second and t h i rd g e n e rati o n s h ave
g rown up less problematically " British", while the Right
has turned instead to Islamic and European bogeymen
to define its prog rammes. Nonetheless London's poor
black neighbou rhoods have been at the lead i n g edge
of the logics of abjection throug h which a punitive state
has come i nto being, and i ndeed their strugg les within
this logic are organically related to the transformations
of " race" itself. If the black of the late 1 970s and early
1 9 8 0s was, to state it crudely, the prototype for today's
"feral underclass", the major l i n king thread here is not
"race" as any essential trait, nor even any stable, coherent
sociological category, but a social logic of abjection by
which specific fig u res, associated primarily with poor

Endnotes 3 1 08
urban neighbourhoods, are posited as the limit concepts
of affirmable social class - just as the traditional l u m pen
was the necessary negative corollary to a positive work­
ing class identity. A result and constitutive moment of
this logic is the riot as rebel lion against the police.

RESTRUCTU R I N G R I OT

Prior to the beg i n nings of capital ist restructuring in the


mid-to-late 1 970s, this sort of community anti-police riot
did not occur; its relative frequency over the last three
decades - occurring i n about 1 of every 6 years - is a
notable characteristic of the period. Probably due to
the dominance of an orderly system of wage bargaining
over other sou rces of social antagonism, the riot had
largely faded out as a form of struggle during the era of
the workers' movement. And where confl icts did erupt
around immigrant com m u n ities, these were of a differ­
ent character, such as the 1 95 8 Notting H i l l riots, when
Teddy Boy racists attacked the houses of West Ind ian
residents. The 1 970s were a transitional phase in which
police fears of leftist and black m i l itancy, and tensions
around the perceived hedonistic culture of blacks, under­
lay a ramping-up of tensions in some deprived inner city
neigh bourhoods, while the broader social crisis of that
era set i n . I m m i g rant workers of the 1 970s entered a
job market structured around a heavily corporatist and
predominantly white, male labour movement that was
c o m i n g up again st its own l i m its at the i ntersection
of the long secular decl ine of Britain's manufacturing
base and the beg i n n ings of a more global downturn i n
man ufactu res. Wh ile s o m e i m m i g rant workers fought
hard for u n ion isation, such as the Asian women strikers
in the famous Gru nwick d ispute, the labour movement
was predomi nantly elsewhere, representing someone
else, and fig hting its own concl uding battles. Thus the
demands of these workers lacked the kind of systemic
integration by which governments wou ld be, as a matter
of course, compelled to consult Jack Jones, General

A Rising Tide Lifts A ll Boats 1 09


Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union, 10 O u r overview of the
on matters of policy. And when unemployment hit, it of racial politics of this
course tended to h it such workers harder. period draws particu­
larly on Pau l G i l roy's
At the same time, proliferating militancies, threads of rasta, classic, There Ain 't
black power and other positive identities, and elements No Black in the Union
of a certain " refusal of work" attitude, provided forms for Jack (Un iversity of
the expression of an antagonistic culture, particularly for C h icago Press 1 987),
the young.10 It was in this context that the police came to especial ly, 108-142.
revise earlier assessments of blacks as a low-crime group,
and to start showing frustration with a militant anti-police 11 The London Metro-
d iscourse that had developed in organ ic relation with pol itan SPG had been
a series of m i nor riots, raids and repressions from the set u p i n the early
early 1 970s. A turning point here was the Notting H i l l 1 960s to deal with
Carn ival Riot o f 1 976, i n which more than 1 00 officers public d isorder and to
were hospitalised after a conflict broke out between police respond to terrorist
and carn ival-goers when a bunch of black youths tried th reats. Its namesake
to de-arrest an alleged pickpocket. White p u n ks in the and equ ivalent in
area - Notting Hill was sti l l at that time associated with Northern I reland was
a certain squatty, rad ical m i l ieu - rushed to the scene, associated with loyal-
hankering after the boldly anti-authoritarian credentials ist param i l itaries, and
of black yout h : an encou nter famously encapsu l ated was the fi rst section
in The Clas h ' s "Wh ite R iot". From t h i s point on, po­ of the British police
lice would establish a "contai nment policy" for black to be g iven trai ning
neigh bou rhoods i n areas such as B rixton and Hackney, by the British Army
targeting youths in particular for stop-and-search under i n the anti-riot tactics
the sus law, and send i n g i nto these areas special ized developed th ere.
un its such as the notorious Special Patrol G roup. 1 1 As a
political actor, the Metropol itan Pol ice now found in the 12 G i l roy, A in 't No
emphasis on black crime an effective tool for enhancing Black, 1 20.
its legitimacy amongst the popu lation at large. 1 2 And it
was in this period that " m u g g i n g " took off as a term 1 3 , 13 British usage of this
identifyi n g particu larly black street cri m e : a concept term suddenly in-
that would play a key role i n j u stify i n g an escalat i n g creased eig ht-fold be-
experimentation with pun itive styles of policing that had tween 1975 and 1 980.
not previously been used by the British police outside In American English
of Northern I reland - perenn ial testing ground for the a s i m i lar rise began
British state's mechanisms of repression. All of this was i n 1960. Source:
a convenient context for an ascendant National Front, Google Ngrams.

Endnotes 3 110
proffering a neo·Nazi message which exchanged the East 14 A key moment here
London Jews of the 1 930s for the Afro-Caribbeans and was the 1 977 ' Battle
Asians of the 1 970s. The resulting conflicts with anti· of Lewisham'. i n
fascists - emerging from the punk, student, and Trotskyist which t h e National
scenes of the moment - and black and Asian communities, Front clashed with a
when the NF would march through their neighbou rhoods, newly consolidated
provided further pretext for heavy police intervention i nto anti-fascist movement,
neighbourhoods wh ich were sinking i nto deeper abjec· and the pol ice
ti on as the social crisis of the late 1 970s escalated. 1 4 used riot shields
for the first time on
1 979's Winter o f D iscontent, and t h e i n ab i l ity o f Cal· main land Britain.
laghan ' s Labour g overnment to begin in earnest the While the h istories
capitalist restructuring that had been set at its place, of the two forms are
brought a Tory N ew Right to power with a programme closely entwined,
of i nflation-busting monetary restraint. U nemployment, such encou nters with
rising through the 1 970s, now rocketed, underm i n i n g the far right should
the bargain i n g power of an already-embattled labour be d istingu ished
movement and further rei nforcing the margi nal status from the com m u n ity
of some u rban commu n ities. The 1 9 8 0 riot i n St Paul's, anti-pol ice riot that is
Bristol demonstrated to the authorities that it was not only a focus of this article.
the more enduringly troublesome black com m u n ities of
London that could constitute a threat, and - anticipating 1s G i l roy, Ain 't No Black,
historian David Starkey's racist comments three decades 1 26. Starkey, casting
later - that even wh ites could evidently prove similarly around on national
disruptive when exposed to the morally corrosive example television for an ex·
of their black neighbours, for they had constituted at least planation for the 2011
50 percent of the crowd . 1 5 Exposi n g the constellations riot·wave, claimed
of a superstitious copper's cosmology, i n which u rban that 'the wh ites have
u n rest was paired up not only with blackness but also become black'. See
l iteral istically with 1 970s leftist m i l itancy, some police BBC Newsnight,
apparently read the appearance of Tariq Ali i n B ristol 1 2 August 2011 .
shortly before the riot as evidence that they must have
been the work of that eternal agent of social disturbance :
the outside agitator.

But the real epochal explosion was to come a year later. In


early 1 98 1 thirteen black teenagers died in an unexplained
house fire in Deptford, South East London, with many
suspecting a fascist attack. I n difference of state and

A Rising Tide Lifts A l l Boats 111


media prompted a demonstration in central London led 16 The name, presu mably
by the Race Today collective on 2 March, on which the was not arbitrary:
police suffered a bloody defeat when attempting to cut it notions of an
short. Shortly after, perhaps smarting from these events, ind igenous population
the Metropol itan Police launched "Operation Swamp being 'swam ped'
81 " 1 6, a "sat u ration pol icing" strategy that sent large with th reatening
n u mbers of plainclothes Special Patrol G roup officers strangers have been
into the area around Brixton's Railton Road, notorious a mainstay of British
as a sort of lawless semi-liberated zone in which pol ice racism for decades.
were often reluctant to tread, thus making low-level crime
such as street-level ganja-selling more viable. J ust as in
2 0 1 1 , this escalating stop-and-search raised tensions in
the area. Then, when a pool hall brawl spilled over i nto
a stabbing on Friday 1 0 April, and police on the scene
were suspected of preventing the victim from getting to
hospital, a riot dynam ic began to develop, with crowd
attempts to i ntervene, and more police being d rafted
in. Overn ight, rumours spread , the i ncident m utating
i nto a case of death by police brutal ity, and cops were
warned about the risks of further i nciting an al ready
restive neighbourhood. But, eager to play their hand, they
decided to push on with the stop-and-search. The next day,
working class youths from the surrounding area - black
and wh ite alike - flocked i nto Brixton, expecting some
excitement. The second trigger-point came with the
stop-and-search of a cabby on Railton Road. Plainclothes
police on the scene were claimed to have been found
weari n g N ational Front badges. For the n ext several
hours there ensued the worst bout of civil unrest seen in
Britain in at least a century as looting and arson spread
throughout the Brixton area, and the police completely lost
control of the streets, under hails of bricks and molotov
cocktails against which they were ill-defended, g iven
the lack at this time of the standard tools of the riot cop.

Indeed, it was the 1 9 8 1 Brixton riot and the "summer of


a thousand Julys" which followed it - reverberations being
heard around the country until late July, with another major
peak in Toxteth , Liverpool, also triggered by racial ised

Endnotes 3 1 12
stop-and-search - wh i c h really crystallised a new ap­
proach to policing. The friend ly, bicycling com m u n ity
bobbies of yesteryear came to be replaced by something
resembling a medieval army : hel meted, sh ielded foot­
soldiers equipped with hand-held cudgels for cracki ng
proletarian sku lls, plus a caval ry of m o u nted officers
capable of moving at speed and striking from above,
and the ever-present threat of CS gas, water cannon, or
plastic bul lets, should this not prove to be enough. This
repressive configuration - pioneered by an occupying
army in Northern Ireland - was now imported into mainland
Britain to deal with the enemies with in. And it would see
its first fu ll deployments here with the breaking of the last
holdouts of the workers' movement: the m i ners at the
Battle of Orgreave in 1 984, and the printers in Wapping
in 1 9 8 6-87. At the same time, the sus law - now widely
perceived to be a contributory factor in the generation of
riots - was scrapped, barely a month after the end of the
riot wave, while the Scarman Report, commissioned in
response to the riots, found some fau lt in the policing of
black neighbourhoods, and contributed to a bureaucratic
reconfiguration of policing in which the preservation of
an image of race neutral ity would be a priority. Wh ile
mainstream m e d i a cont i n ued to d e p l oy an a n i malis­
ing discourse about these neigh bou rhoods as social
sinkholes brimming with rampant, asocial cri m i nal ity - a
sort of " heart of darkness" i n the midst of the city - they
remained home to m u ltifarious cultures of m i l itancy, m ix­
ing black nationalism, rastafarian ism and varied leftisms
i nto a campaigning culture of neighbourhood defence.

Local government i n this era, especially i n London, had


been entered by leftists who set about promoting various
anti-racist and positive discrimination policies, encourag­
ing the flow of black workers i nto state i nstitutions i n
particular. A n d in response there developed a neoliberal
variant of anti-racism, agai nst skin colour as identity­
marker, agai nst special treatment of particular g ro u ps
as such, rather than as util ity-maxi m is i n g i n d ividuals.

A Rising Tide Lifts A ll Boats 1 13


Th us it was that the Thatcher government cam paigned 17 For this claim, see
for re-election, at the height of nationalist j i ngoism after Rocamad u r, 'The
the Falklands War, boasting of scrapping the sus law, Feral Underclass
and arg u i n g that if " Labour say he's black, Tories say H its the Streets', SIC
he's British ". Anti-racism of one type or another had 2, forthcoming.
become a matter of state policy, no matter how bigoted
Thatcher and her i l k as ind ividuals. Then, as the 1 980s
progressed, pushing for a more positive prog ramme i n
com parison to the spasmod ic activism o f rioters, a gen-
eration of reform ist black leftists such as D iane Abbot
establ ished footholds i n a Labou r Party now beg i n n i n g
to u ndergo i t s own restructuring beyond the pol itics o f
the labou r movement.

If an anti-racist politics was on the political agenda in


this period, and if certain m i l itant identities were i n the
air i n some of the com m u n ities that rioted , t h i s does
not make the 1 9 8 1 riot wave as a whole immed iately
reducible to a demand of blacks to become " no rmal
proletarians". 1 7 It is i m po rtant to rem e m ber that black
com m u n ities were here - as i n 2 0 1 1 - on ly detonation
poi nts for a riot-wave which brought i n many others ;
even the Brixton riots d idn't just i nvolve t h e local black
com m u n ity. And w h i l e the self-org a n isation of such
comm u n ities against the police of course expresses a
certain demand to be treated another way, the immedi­
ate norm h e re i s that of an eq ual s u bject before the
law - more d i rectly a matter of citizenship than of class
belong i n g . Wh i l e issues of marg i nal ity on the labo u r
market no doubt contributed sign ificantly to tensions,
and the repressive role of the police cannot ultimately be
extricated from a certain social imperative to keep the lid
on such marginal strata, it is important to avoid collapsing
mediations here which, i n their d istinction, constitute
the only intel l i g i ble structu re of such events. Wh ile they
are certainly related - u n iversal manhood suffrage was
a m ajor demand of the workers' movement - there's
no law in capitalist society that automatically equates
the normal proletarian with the full citizenship rights of

Endnotes 3 1 14
the bourgeois subject. And, while the specific cultural
em bod iments of the pol itics of race which persisted in
the Britain of the early 1 980s have indeed faded, the
same demands have persisted, for the cops have not
ceased harassing black people i n the street, beating
them to death i n cells, and attempting to smear their
names when conflicts get out of control. Campaigns over
deaths in police custody persist, now with a generational
cross-section that leaves rastas and a certain residual
rhetoric about "Africa" in the older brackets, alongside fully
"natural ised" younger generations expressing similar de­
mands in a language inflected more with grime or hip-hop ;
people u n ified thus i n at least one negative sense - the
conviction that pol ice behaviour is not fair. And i n this
m ix, the odd th read about pol ice treatment of "worki ng
class" com m u n ities persists as a minor element, from
those stil l attempting to conjure some broader solidarity.

If we are to periodise Britai n's u rban riots, the clearest


rupture is not between some positive black identity i n
t h e early 1 9 80s a n d a putative negativity that followed
it, but between a more consensual mode of policing i n
t h e era o f t h e post-war settlement - a n era in which class
compromise was em bodied in a much less polarised
u rban geography - and the organically entwined devel­
opment of a more repressive mode with an i ncreasing
abjection of particu lar u rban neighbou rhoods, as that
settlement u n ravelled from the 1 970s. In contrast to the
vagaries of pol itical identity formations there is a clear
measure here for periodisation : the anti-police riots we
fi nd exemplified in 1 98 1 and 2 0 1 1 were a novelty when
they emerged i n the 1 970s, and they have persisted
since. The logic that compels these developments is
not reducible to race, but it is not incidental that black
neighbourhoods were at the lead i n g edge: shut out of
a corporatist white labourism that was already in crisis
as industry wound down and unemployment mounted,
anyone outside and demanding entry into that movement
could only swim with the flow of this crisis. Black workers

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats 1 15


would never come to be systematically incorporated
i nto the labour movement, but black people could be
formally i ncorporated i nto the one entity with which
they i ncreasingly came face-to-face as the workers'
movement receded : the state. This has been the real
development of "race" from the 1 980s on. But while
these are i m po rtant transformations - particu larly in
institutionalising efforts to support force with consent - a
social logic of race tends to persist in asserting itself
through such formal isations. The structu ral locations
of poor neigh bou rhoods with i n the economy, and the
symbolic constructs by which black = street = crime, lin­
gered on. Black deaths in police custody continued, and
neighbourhoods such as Broadwater Farm remained
marg i nal " no-go areas", off-l i m its enough to the police
for them to preserve at times a certain nominal sense of
autonomy, making them, for example, conven ient places
for the positioning of the pi rate rad io anten nas which
have played such an important role in the prol iferation
of London's u rban cultures during the restructuring.

I NSECU RE

Meanwh ile, w i t h the complete defeat of the workers' 18 While extreme waves
movement and a breathtaking pace of deindustrialisation of deindustrialisation
that outstri pped anyth ing seen elsewhere, the traditional also occu rred el se­
worki ng class that had been a central p rotagon ist of where, such as the
B ritish society since the industrial revolution, with its American m id-west,
own pecul iar corporatist culture and conservatism, found the national-level
itself staring into the abyss. 1 8 I n gestu res of neol i beral scuttling and sinking
populism, appealing to its industrious, l iberal val ues, this of industry i n general
class was i nvited to remake itself as a sort of pseudo­ was a pecu liarly Brit­
petit bourgeoisie : everyone a l ittle entrepreneur, with ish phenomenon.
their l ittle stock of capital , their l ittle stake i n some ideal
future catallaxy. N ot only the famous flogg i n g cheap of
cou ncil housing stock, but also the inducement to take
out shares in the privatising ex-state utilities, the "Big
Bang" opening of the City to barrow-boy geezers, who
wou ld make a q u ick wad on some reckless speculation

Endnotes 3 1 16
and end u p a parvenu " l oadsam o n ey", flas h i n g cash
i n sprouting cocktail bars by the end of the 1 9 80s . . .
Those who were not i n a position to make the necessary
leap - especially those in the more emphatically indus­
trial areas further north - got long-term unemployment,
often masked as "incapacity". And they stayed there: U K
unemployment d id n 't even get back t o t h e level o f the
end of the turbulent, crisis-ridden 1 970s until around the
millennium, and it has only increased from there. If workers
were lucky, they got absorbed into the burgeon ing state
sector that has remained by far the biggest employer i n
Britain t o the present, or eventually made t h e i r way i nto
one or another precarious service sector job. But either
way, from here on, being "working class" was either an
increasingly vague, nostalgic identity construct, tethered
to Grim Up N o rth/ Stuck-up South binaries and rosy
Coronation Street images of a dead world, or something
to be d isavowed i n favou r of glib assertions that "we're
all middle class now". Even appeals to a generic post­
i n d u strial wage-labo u r became i ncreasingly tenu o u s
evidence f o r a positive class identity, g iven the u b i q u ity
of the wage-form in rem unerating everyone from CEO
to streetsweeper. Wh ile class, of course, persisted as
a deep, structuring logic - and wealth polarised to an
ever-g reater extent - the British working class had been
thoroughly decomposed, and this brute fact of polarisation
translated less and less clearly i nto any straightforward
sociological, political-economic, or even cultural schema.

The heightened structural role of unemployment in this


era, med iating a broader g lobal tendency towards the
prod uction of a surplus popu lation t h ro u g h B ritai n ' s
pecul iarly d ramatic post- i n d u strial ism, contri buted t o
a generalised precarisation o f the wage. T h e workers'
movement al ready having been d ivided and defeated ,
at legal and policy levels employment rights were now
curtailed i n favour of an extreme flexibilisation. As these
developments rippled thro u g h the economy, the key
surface distinctions came i ncreasingly to be between

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats 1 17


those who were more successful in navigating the tides
of an insecu re labour market, and those who were less
so. Thus a fundamentally relative, ambiguous mode of
social d istinction substituted itself for the faux ontology
of corporatist class culture. On this shifting scale all
positive positions are defi ned and structu red agai nst
a negative someone else. There's "us", and there are
those who've failed ; who don't try hard enou g h ; who
are lazier than the rest of us; who parasitise the col­
lective taxpayer ; w h o d o n 't even care for t h e i r own
neighbourhoods. Thus a fractal logic by which wh ite
professionals - come rou n d to anti-racism - measure
t h e mselves u p agai n st feckless chavs ; poor w h ites
against an i m m i g rant bogeyman ; South Asians against
lazy Afro-Caribbeans; Afro-Caribbeans against Somali
cri m i nal ity, and so on.

Contrary to the pseudo-soc i o l o g i cal taxo n o m ies of


media stereotypes, the "less so" here, the someone else,
has never come to constitute any coherent "underclass",
defi nable by its relation to welfare recei pts, unemploy­
ment etc. I ndeed, through this period the opposition of
welfare and work came to be undermined by a prolif­
eration of welfare u ntethered to unemployment, such
as child benefit, or actually h i n g i n g d i rectly o n work,
such as tax credits. At the same time, unemployment
itself has been redefined as an ever-steeper ch ute back
into the labour market ; recent developments in "work­
fare" are only the latest extension of this longer term
logic. Thus, while massive unemployment was the direct
conseq uence of Thatcherite restruct u r i n g as w h o l e
major industries were demolished, this h a s g iven way
to a reg ime of insecu rity in wh ich structu ral tends to
segue i nto frictional u nemployment, and worklessness
appears as "jobseeking". On the other hand, employment
itself has become increasingly unstable as a category,
with rising temp work, short-term contracts, and most
recently the "zero-hour contract", by which employees
are g uaranteed no m i n i m u m n u m ber of hours of actual

Endnotes 3 1 18
work, but must simply hope for the best from one week 19 Out of the 270 sample
to the n ext. I n t h ese senses, comparisons of actual rioters i nterviewed
e m p l oyment levels with those of the 1 970s can be in the Reading the
deceptive, since the meaning of the work/unemployment Riots study, half
d istinction has changed so significantly over the period. were students and
If unemployment fig u res remain h i g h compared to the about a quarter were
years of the post-war settlement, employment itself is unem ployed. Never­
q ualitatively less distingu ishable from unemployment. theless, many rioters
retrospectively cited a
For these reasons it is important not to read the ten­ lack of job prospects,
dential precarisation of the wage as leading necessari ly unem ployment or the
to the constitution of any neatly delimitable "surplus fear of unem ployment
population", identified simpl istically by a lack of formal as a reason for their
employment or residency in some marginal zone : it was rioting. Reading
never d i rectly "the surplus popu lation" that took u p the Riots (G uard ian
residency i n Britain's poor u rban estates, n o r was i t i n and LSE 201 1), 4.
any immediate sociological sense a "surplus population"
of unemployed that developed a propensity to riot over
this period. I ndeed, a majority of rioters in 2 0 1 1 seem to
have been either in full-time education or employed, and
though unemployment remains of cou rse higher in the
marginal areas in which riots tend to generate - and was
spiking significantly in the period leading up to the riots,
making it legible, perhaps, as a sign ificant contributing
factor - it has remained markedly low in hyper-flexibilised
Britain, compared to other European countries. 1 9 While
the general law of capitalist accumu lation is to produce
a surplus population, and this is a central dynamic of
this epoch, we should also be wary of identifying these
developments with a clearly specified "precariat" class,
for the erosion of the stabi lity of the wage is something
socially general, not neatly confinable to a specific part
of the population : insecurity is everywhere, only with
varying types and degrees of i ntensity. The production
of a surplus population is a matter of the deep inner
logic of the capital relation ; its forms of appearance are
mediated with too much complexity to be easily mapped
"at the su rface of society", equated simplistically with
unemployment or marg i nality.

A Rising Tide Lifts A ll Boats 1 19


If the "someone else" is identified by a d ifferent social 20 0 u r usage of the
logic, it is not however an u n related one. With general­ concept of abjection
ised precariousness and the erosion of the stabi l ity of here derives from
the wage-form as the core i nteg rative moment in social I mogen Tyler, who
reproduction, those who navigate these turbulent waters in turn derives it
with less success come to em body in themselves the from Kristeva. Tyler
insecurity of the entire social order. The secu rity of eve­ applies the concept
ryone else is premised on a constant repetition of acts to a set of case
of social d istinction which cast out and stigmatise the studies: travellers,
less successful. The state of insecurity that u nderpins women, 'chavs', i l legal
the social whole demands management, contain ment i m m ig rants etc. I n this
in condensed areas ; a perpetual making safe of society usage the term has
for capital. Along a sh ifting but constitutive perimeter, a certain descri ptive
the Pol ice establ ishes itself as a substitute i nteg rative val ue, but Tyler herself
moment, defining the security of all those who are within, doesn't su pply any
against the insecurity of those without; building consent real u n ified historical
from the former with force against the latter. The social or material basis
logic at play here is what we've been calling "abjection".20 for the phenomena
By this logic, those expel led or abjected are not l iterally she describes. See
externalised, but rather remain i n an i nternal , mutually­ I mogen Tyler,
constitutive relation with that which abjects them. The Revolting Subjects:
restructured capitalist state is built upon its abjects, and Social Abjection
can never expel them entirely, for the logic of abjection and Resistance in
is an integral aspect of the general reg ime of labour in­ Neoliberal Britain
secu rity. I n place of a reg u lation of social reproduction (Zed Books 2013).
by collective bargai ning around the wage relation, as
that reciprocal i ntegration of capital and labour u nrav­
els, social order is maintained increasingly by a forced
s ubord i n ation of society to capital 's rule, in the form
of a hypertrophied repressive apparatus constantly re­
applied to those who fail. Though at a very general level
such stigmatising distinctions have a long and stu bborn
history, with even Beveridge's blueprint for the welfare
state designed to exclude some set of sub-proletarian
u nworth ies, this is not a retu rn to a Victorian distinction
of deserving and undeserving poor, as is often rhetori­
cally claimed. What Beatrice Webb i n 1 88 6 cal led the
"outcasting force" was a shaking-off of the disorderly
from the rigours of growing productive industry, whence

Endnotes 3 1 20
they wou ld trickle i nto d issolute pools of i rreg ular em- 21 Beatrice Webb, My
ployment in the East London slums of the time.21 That Apprenticeship
world is, of course, long-gone. The precarious and the (1926), 166. Cited
irregu lar are no longer pecu l iar to some residuum left by in Stedman Jones,
a growing industrial working class ; as that class dwindles, Outcast London, 1 2.
these tendentially become u n iversal . The cu rrent logic
of abjection - the new outcasting force - is incompre- 22 The term 'chav' reput-
hensible in abstraction from this broader restructuring edly has etymological
of the capital relation since the 1 970s. associations with
Romani gypsies - an­
The m arg i nal u rban n e i g h b o u rhood of t h i s period is other perm utation of
the exemplary sym bolic location for the playing out of the abject. It came
this outcasting force, and the black i m m i g rant its first i nto general use as
exemplary subject - what we above cal led the "primary a sort of pseudo­
abject" of restructu red capital ist society. But this logic racial ising term of
does not l i m it itself simply to distinctions of " race". Over class hatred in Britain
the last three and a half decades the u rban abject has i n the early 2000s.
mutated to encompass a broader range of figures, while
retaining an umbil ical l i n k to the immigrant commun ities
of the 1 970s. Thus the "chav", pecu l iar rendering of the
new "residuum" : the poor remainder of the white working
class after its Thatcherite liqu idation, as if this class had
become a race. 22 The riotous inner-urban subjects of the
late 1 970s and early 1 980s were never really any single
mono-ethnic g ro u p ; even then, the m ean ing of " race"
was g iven less by any notional biological attribute than
by the urban environment itself as a place of danger and
cri m i nal ity, calling for tougher law and order. And there
were plenty of wh ites who wanted to riot in N otting H i l l ,
S t Paul's, Brixton. B u t over t i m e t h e significations o f the
u rban abject have sh ifted : the b lack m i l itant is gone as
a figu re of fear, but the fatherless petty criminal remains,
alongside the scandalously fertile mother. To the set
has been added the Eden Lake i mage of the hood ied
teenage chav, slouch ing along behind an agg ressive
l ittle dog, and the m u lti-generational dole-scrounging
fam i ly. By the social logic of abjection, those who fal l
fou l of the reg i m e of generalised i nsecu rity tend to be
constructed as one or another of these stigmatising

A Rising Tide Lifts A ll Boats 1 21


fig u res, especially where their marg inal ity is mediated 23 The reintroduction
through a specific spatial configuration, tethering them of stop-and-search
to some notorious place i n the u rban geography. And under Section 44
as such they come d i rectly face-to-face with the most of the 2000 Terror­
punitive side of the state, worthy of suspicion by virtue ism Act removed the
of their clothes, their place of residence, their seem ingly need for 'reasonable
intention less loitering in public places . . . suspicion'. Though
the conceptual and
Wh ile deaths i n police custody remain a particu larly practical association
racialised affl iction, a b roade r police harassment of for the state between
the poor is of cou rse m u ch more widely experienced. terrorism and area-
The incomplete i ncorporation of blacks into the British based crime is clear,
state from the 1 9 80s, and the reconfi g u ration of polic­ in 2009, 100,000 stop-
ing around a stronger bureaucratic neutrality, helped to and-search proce-
de-centre race as a trigger-point for large-scale social d u res were recorded
unrest. Most significantly, perhaps, the scrapping of the without a single
sus law and thus a de-prioritising of stop-and-search terrorism convic-
tactics from the early 1 9 80s, eroded one of the major lion being made. The
bases of common anti-police sentiment, perhaps going withd rawal of Section
some way to explaining why anti-police riots fol lowing 44 i n March 201 1, and
the usual black deaths i n 1 99 1 and 1 99 5 did not spill the reintroduction of
over i nto the kind of larger-scale conflag ration seen 'reasonable suspicion'
in 1 9 8 1 or 1 9 85. But with the rash of anti-terrorism neither alleviates the
legislation in the 2000s, we have seen a retu rn of gen­ tensions accrued over
eralised "sus law"-style policing, this time with the need those 11 years, nor
for " reasonable suspicion" entirely d ro pped . 23 Once prevents Police con-
again the residents of poor u rban neighbourhoods have ti n u i n g area-based
been s u bj ected to i n c reas i n g levels of routine stop­ stop-and-search.
and-search backed by legislation ostensibly intended
for something entirely other. Wh ile, in this context, the 24 The tie of such ab-
Muslim has come to be identified as the major figu re jectifyi ng processes
for racial ised suspicion24 - alongside the immigrant, of to notions of race,
unspecified race - anti-terror legislation has been used even when the identi­
for the persecution of blacks, chavs, travellers, activists fier i n question is
etc. Other legislation too, such as the i ntroduction of actually a religion,
the AS B O (Anti-Social Behaviour Order) has helped to was on display i n
criminalise the urban proletariat (typically identified with responses t o t h e 2 2
its more disruptive, youthfu l embod iments) . May 2013 killing of

Endnotes 3 1 22
Of course, the social logic at play is never merely one­ soldier Lee Rigby
sided. The state does not merely decide to punish the in Woolwich: Police
poor, but rather evolves its tactics i n organ ic relation apparently descri bed
to the practices of the com m u n ities in q uestion, as well the attackers as 'of
as broader social dynam ics. No doubt certain modes of Muslim appearance'.
crim i nal ity and black market activity do become more
pronou nced in these areas as prospects for an orderly,
stable incorporation into the labou r market and broader
society d i m i n ish. But the relation is a d istinctly asym­
metrical one, in which what are at play for the police
are not only the direct law-and-order issues of particular
neighbourhoods, but also their own legitimacy for capital,
state, and a society at large whipped into ever g reater
levels of b i g oted frenzy by a media that well knows
how to sell stories. Indeed, l ike the Vietnam body-cou nt,
stop-and-search has been propelled over recent years
by b u reaucratically-driven q u otas, in which i n d ividual
officers are expected to conduct a specified n u m ber in
a specified time, but must at the same time su pposedly
demonstrate that they are not doing this on the basis of
any racial profi l i n g - which is of course irrelevant if the
area i n q u estion is predom inantly black.

Nonetheless, as Britain paddled in the low waters of the


"Clinton boom" and beyond, such ordnance lay mostly
dormant, and the locus of what l ittle rioting did occ u r
shifted to Muslim com m u n ities w i t h a partial 9/1 1 -era
redistribution of the abj ect. For a while asset b ubbles,
an ever-expanding higher education sector, the auratic
q ualities of new tech, and "cool Britann ia" b u l lshit pro­
j ected an optimistic future i n wh ich all might hope to
have a role, no matter how encum bered i n debt and
degradation. As the systemic wage increases of the
post-war settlement receded i nto the past and wealth
cont i n ued to polarise, g l i m me rs of hope came from
other areas. The education sector - which had already
grown dramatically in the mid-20th Centu ry to pump out
escalating quantities of white collar to fill the transformed
business environment of that era - continued its ascent,

A Rising Tide Lifts A ll Boats 1 23


while the actual economic opportun ities dropped away.
In place of the stable, pseudo-g u i l d qualities of the old
labour movement, the labour market of restructured capi­
tal ism would be a meritocracy i n wh ich it was sim ply a
matter of demonstrating one's individual worth. Everyone
could aspire to be, if not wealthier than their parents,
then at least better educated. The gleam of qualifications
would offer the semblance of class advancement, and
further break the back of those recalcitrant old proletar­
ian ressentiments which dictated that each should stick
to their rig htfu l place ; that fancy words are not for me;
that fi ne talk and poncing around are so much noth ing
compared to my cal l used, honest hands. New Labou r
made it policy t o entice half o f a l l school leavers i nto
higher education, while it set about demolishing student
g rants. Even those you n g proletarians who wou l d n 't
make it i nto the u niversity system tended to do some
other post- 1 6 education, often backed by benefits, with
the hope of securing a stable, wel l-paid job and aspiring
ultimately to buy in to the ever-i nflating property bubble.

All this vanished with the 2008 crisis. Saved from outright
bu rst by one or another state endeavour, the housing
bubble hovered , frozen i n air, no longer presenting itself
as a proxy pension fund, yet still freezing out most re­
maining aspirants. When the all-out crash did not come,
it was o n ly to be a long, slow d eflation i nstead . The
g rade inflation-wage deflation couplet came q u i ckly to
show itself for what it was, with fees escalating and job
prospects contin u i n g to van ish. And, with the almost
overnight doubling of unemployment and a rash of auster­
ity measu res which wou ld d i rectly im pact standards of
l iving, the " u rban outcast" was left with l ittle prospect
but further p u n ishment for their own pred icament as
the police tried to keep the lid on a society riven with
rising tensions. The general horizon of immiseration and
d i m i nishing fut u re where all this has taken place is one
of fractal d ifferentiations i n which broader solidarities
h ave been generally lacki n g - each reach i n g for their

Endnotes 3 1 24
own l ittle l ife-raft, kicki ng the others away. Distinct but
downwardly-convergent trajectories, capable sometimes
of un ifying negatively into a fleeting movement of rage at
this descent, only to d isperse agai n, each to their own
particularity. Despite this negativity, this decomposition,
these were years i n wh ich a long-reced ing tide turned.

TURN

If the longer-term logics of abjection help us to identify


the typical trigger-points of modern urban riots in Britai n,
with their focus on police, on stop-and-search , and their
racial inflections, this cannot explain the specificity of the
riot-wave of 2 0 1 1 as a whole. The anti-police trigger­
point is only that : beyond this, the wave overspills into a
m u ltitude of events and actors too g reat and too various
to be leg ible in the same terms. At such point our object
becomes a national phenomenon, combusting a large
part of u rban England and sendi n g the major organs of
a capitalist state i nto convulsions. We must then pose
the q u estion of why a conventional local anti-police riot
should precipitate i n so large-scale a conflagration at
this particular time rather than another. There can be
l ittle doubt that the general answer to this question lies
i n crisis era sequences of struggle, and that the riots
of 2 0 1 1 m u st u l t i mately be viewed as a moment i n
t h e broader global upsurge now encapsulated b y that
year - an upsu rge in which the form of the riot has played
no small part. But w h i l e the general u n ifying context
for all these strug g les is of c o u rse that of eco n o m i c
crisis, it is d ifficult to identify w i t h precision a n y d i rect
articu lations between the England riots of 2 0 1 1 and
other struggles on a world-level . What is clear is that
it was no coincidence that the rapid contag ion of this
riot-wave occu rred i n a country that was already boil i n g
from o p e n strugg les w h i c h h a d b e e n building through
years of social crisis. These strugg les had come to a
head in 2 0 1 0-1 1 only to sense their own impossibility in
the face of a state that would brook no demand, but the

A Rising Tide Lifts A ll Boats 1 25


prol iferation of riots wit h i n the student and trade union
demonstrations of that period, and the shifting composi­
tion in these towards younger and more proletarian kids,
had transformed the h o rizon of poss i b i l ity, establish­
ing new modes of violent excitement and contestation
as an immed iate precedent. If inner-city comm u n ities
un ited against the pol ice provide a com pact measu re of
socially combustible material then, the sustained heat
of the period, and the brittle d ryness of the b roader
terrain, set the stage for Tottenham to become England.

T h e fi rst s parks of acc u m u lative u n rest came w i t h


a scatt e ri n g of s t r i k e s , o c c u p at i o n s a n d walkouts
between January and November 2 0 0 9 . The Lindsey
O i l refi nery saw wildcat actions that appeared as a
th rowback to a previous era of British class struggle,
when workers occupied t h e s ite i n response to the
new Italian contractor I R EM giving a h i g h percentage
of its new contracts to Italian and Portug uese work­
ers. These strikes rapidly led to nationwide solidarity
actions - i l legal in the UK since the 1 9 9 0 Employment
Act - in other oil refi neries, and later power plants.
Though new jobs were created to appease demands
for a 50/50 d istri bution of work, the su bcontractors
had to t u rn on t h e i r h e e l s a n d make half of t hese
workers redundant agai n in J u ne, provoking a second
wave. I n March, Ford Visteon was declared i nsolvent
and p u t i nt o receivers h i p , res u l t i n g in t h e c l o s u re
of t h ree of its factories. Aro u n d 6 1 0 workers were
dism issed at the close of the day with no guarantee
of red u ndancy o r pension packages. A seven-week
occu pation of t h e B elfast factory won i ntense s u p­
port from the nearby com m u n ity, where workers l ived .
Workers at Basildon smashed u p t h e i r site - w h i c h
contained no real valuable mach inery - a n d t h e n h e l d
a 2 4 - h o u r picket. Visteon workers also occupied a site
in Enfield for nine days. And, in October and N ovember,
Royal Mai l went out on strike over the "modernisation"
of postal work. These actions were small, particularised

Endnotes 3 1 26
and very l i mited, but occurrin g with the onset of major 2s l n itial demands of
crisis, and against a sterile h i storical backd rop, they the S ussex Stop the
appeared as the first m u rm u rings of an approaching Cuts campaign after
period of contestation. Yet they were to prove atypical their first meeting
in relation to the c o m i n g wave, in w h i c h i m med iate i n October 2009.
workers' struggles were margi nal at most : i n B ritain's
peculiarly post-industrial economy even the problem
of struggles breachi n g a "glass floor" i nto production
seldom puts itself on the agenda.

Meanwhile, localised and largely i ndependent u niversity


campus struggles had been bubbling away i n the back­
g ro u n d . For some u n iversities, detailed restructuring
plans had been set firmly i n place before the crisis had
materialised, often with outside h it-men parachuted i n
t o swiftly make drastic cuts a n d departmental rearrange­
m e nts before gett i n g out q uick. Tendencies towards
privatisat i o n , modernisati o n and outso u rc i n g w h i c h
have accelerated i n this crisis, were o f course already
proceeding apace in preceding years. But while these
generalised conditions caused ripples of localised protest
between 2007 and early 2009, only Israel's attacks on
Gaza provoked a national wave of university occupations
at this point. Though quite unrelated, these were the direct
precursors for the anti-cuts occupations which followed.
Campus-based anti-cuts g roups emerged mostly in the
second half of 2009 when Treasury fig u res revealed a
£ 1 00 m i l l ion cut i n education fun d i n g schedu led for
the fol lowing year - the first such cut since the 1 9 80s.
Students swiftly responded with counter-demands which
were as impossible as they were predictable, the simple
negation of the announcement itself: no redundancies,
no increase in tuition fees, no funding cuts, reductions in
executive pay, assurance of academic freedom.25 Though
the formu lation of such demands i n current conditions
produces distinct cognitive dissonance, the gap opened
up by this dissonance permitted analysis to begin to
develop through a variety of p rotests, occupations, ac­
tions, discussion g roups and collective texts. It was a

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats 1 27


gap not merely between some "capitalist realism" and
what this real ism rules out of bounds, but between our
capacity to revise long-held expectations downwards
and the rate of acceleration at which prospects were
really dropping away : the systemic logic by wh ich both
"stop the cuts" and the "graduate with no future" are
placed on the agenda. These early localised campus
struggles never began from an entirely positive, stable or
homogenous identity or programme. As well as uttering
the h e l p less pleas of anti-austerity, and reac h i n g for
the usual garb of 1 960s slogans, they took u p memes
developed through the student movements in Austria and
Germany, New York and California: " Demand Nothing,
Occupy Everything" and " N o Futu re".

T E ETH

A shift came i n December when N ew Labour let forth


a "Christmas kick in the teeth ", announcing further cuts
in funding of £ 1 35 m i l l ion, this time specifically to u n i ­

versities, a n d additional to the £600 m i l l ion general
"efficiency saving" cuts of the pre-budget report ear­
lier that month. Festive inebriation temporarily d u l led
reflexes to the first real-term cuts to public spending
per stu d e n t in decades. B u t these localised strug­
gles soon intensified wit h i n their own bounds, and a d
hoc c o n n ecti o n s of solidarity with oth e r campuses
began to develop. Nevertheless, as individual depart­
ments in each u n iversity were left to creatively g loss
and bind the budget cuts into their own personalised
age n d as, stud e nts remained largely l ocked i nto lo­
cal and sectional battles over redu ndancies, cuts to
union fund i n g , eradication of services and the butch­
ering of unprofitable H umanities departments. One by
one, cuts hit u niversities across the country, resulting
i n a spontaneous prol iferation of activities : gestures
of solidarity, days of joint action, carnivals, parties and
meetings. By spring 2 0 1 0, a wave of occupations had
occurred, the most prominent being Middlesex, whose

Endnotes 3 1 28
left-lean ing philosophy department - one of a handful in
the U K - was threatened with closure. These occu pa­
tions motivated greater movement between campuses,
but with occupations also came property damage and
g reater levels of repressi o n . Whe n fifty S u ssex stu ­
dents occupied t h e u n iversity's adm i n istrative building,
six were suspended for trespassing and "holding staff
hostage" in a protest that ended with riot police fight­
ing students on u n iversity soil, while a tweeded Vice
Chancellor su rveyed the action from the h i l lside above.

The general election of May 2 0 1 0 was a major turning


point. With no political party manag ing to gain enough
support to win outright, Gordon Brown - who, throughout
his career in the Treasury, had claimed to have "put an end
to boom and bust"- resigned, and the UK saw a coalition
government of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, the
fi rst true coal ition si nce the Second World War. Many
students had voted for N ick Clegg's Lib Dems, based on
their pre-election promises not to raise tu ition fees, on
which they reneged almost instantly. Tory leaders h i p i n
t h e m idst o f a severe economic crisis gave t h e moment
resonances with the Thatcher era; combined with a "little
l iar" sidekick, this conj u red sentiments of heig htened
contempt with i n the nascent student movement. The
n ew coal ition soon released t h e i r S pend i n g Review,
fixing the budgets for every governmental department
u ntil 20 1 4- 1 5 , with the stated aim of e l i m i nating the
structu ral budget deficit t h ro u g h d rastic cuts, over a
five-year rol l i n g horizon. The hole i n education fu nding
was to be fi lled t h ro u g h a m ajor restruct u r i n g of the
education system : the Browne Report, released at the
same time, recommended removing the cap on tuition fees,
wh ich were to be paid for by comm itting undergraduate
students to mortgage-sized debts.

The lashes dealt by the ru l i n g cabi net's Old Etonians


were not confi ned, though, to t h i s fai rly isolable tier.
As if welco m i n g the b roade r confl i ct that could not

A Rising Tide Lifts A ll Boats 1 29


but threaten to ensue, the state took on m u ltiple other 26 EMA (Education
subj ects simu ltaneously with a rash of austerity meas­ Mai ntenance Al­
u res impacting d iverse strata. Dramatic cuts in public lowance): a benefit
spending led to the e m e rgence o r rem o b i l i sation of payment of £10-30 a
m u ltiple g ro u ps who wou l d change the dynamics of week for 16-19 year
anti-austerity struggles. Before the election, the Save olds from low-income
EMA Campaig n , created the previous year, had made fam i lies towards
David Cameron promise to p rotect the E MA g rant.26 travel and equipment
Even after the election, Education Secretary M i chael expenses, enabling
G ove had official ly stated his comm itment to it. N ev­ them to stay at school.
ertheless, the Coalition announced plans to cut EMA
fu n d i n g by 9 0 % . A parl i a m entary vote was consid­
ered u n necessary d u e to it being departmental rather
than governmental spending - signalling for many that
the government did not even recognise them as sub­
jects. The Save EMA Campaig n held m u ltiple protests
all over the UK in 2 0 1 0 and wou ld later beg i n to filter
into the central demonstrations of the student move­
m e nt. At t h e s a m e t i m e , in H a ri n g ey - t h e L o n d o n
boro u g h contai n i n g Totten ham - res i d ents returned
after t h e summer h o l i d ays to d iscover eight of t h i r­
teen youth c l u bs mysteriously closed. Save Haringey
Youth Services, a local project of around 3000 mem­
bers 2000 of whom were young people - embroiled
-

itself i n a long and frustrat i n g campaign n ot j ust to


get their youth clubs back, but firstly to d i scover what
had actually happened to them. On 1 0 N ovem ber they
were forced to raise a freedom of i nformation requ est
merely to obtain confirmation of the closure. On the
same d ay, c o i n c i d e ntal ly, came the s i g n al event in
the rad icalisation of the anti-cuts movement: though
a rang e of u n iversity and other more general anti-cuts
movements had been building i ncreasing momentum
throughout this period, the real qual itative sh ift came
when the building housing the Tory H Q at M i l l bank was
smashed i nto and occu pied by a bunch of A-level stu­
dents and you n g underg raduates during a u nion-led
student demonstration.

Endnotes 3 1 30
M I LLBA N K

A week earl ier, David Wi lletts, Minister o f State for U n i - 27 Territorial Support
versities and Science, had accepted the Browne Review, G roup: launched in
but decided to cap tuition fees at £9,000, essentially 1987 as a reincarna­
tripling them overn ight. I n response, the University Col­ tion of the notorious
lege Union (UCU) and the National U n ion of Students Special Patrol G roup,
(N US) - now com ing round to a recog n ition of the spon­ whom we encoun­
taneous student struggles, and at least lending them tered earl ier. One of
a national frame - had cal led the demonstration, which the major aspects of
attracted around 50,000 university, A-level and Further the retooling of the
Education students, as well as lecturers, teachers and British police force
other staff. It was not simply to be about tuition fees, after the 1981 riots.
however; at stake were also the EMA g rant, unemploy­
ment, generalised precario usness. The N U S and its
then president Aaron Porter - soon to become a £ 1 25/
hour education consu ltant - cooperated closely with
the police i n the build-up to the march, helping design
the route, then acting as g uard dogs on the day, guar­
anteeing protesters wou ldn't stray from the rig hteous
path. The march was to pass through Whitehall and
Westminster and end at Tate Britain where Porter would
g ive a speech. Thousands of people didn't get that far.

Outside Parl iament, texts and tweets flew about how


t h i n g s were kicki n g off at M il l b an k - once h o m e of
New Labou r, now home of the Tories - just down the
road . About 1 00 people had charged i nto the building
s h o u t i n g " To ry s c u m , h e re w e c om e ! ", w h i l e t h o u ­
sands - overwhelmingly school kids and undergraduate
students - had flooded the cou rtyard and were cheer­
i n g at t h e occ u p i e rs above. " G reece ! France ! N ow
h e re too ! " Whe n t h e Territorial S u pport G ro u p27 ar­
rived they were attacked simultaneously at ground level
by the crowd , and from those above with eggs, sticks,
bottles and, i n one case, a fire extingu isher. A row of
nervous-looking N U S representatives l i n ked arms in a
chain , attem pting to prevent more from getting i nside,
to heckles of "You're all Tories too ! S hame on you for

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats 131


turning b l ue ! " Angry and excited conversations in the 2s See Adrian
crowd : the moribund ity of the N U S, the potential top- Cousins, 'The crisis
p i i n g of the Coal ition. Bonfi res lit; effigies of Cameron o f the British reg ime:
and Clegg b u rned ; people ecstat i c ; sound system s democracy, protest
blasted - a big party that lasted for several hours. Many and the u n ions',
of the chants, ban ners and slogans were fam i l iar from Counterfire, 27
localised campus struggles of the preced ing year; a si­ Novem ber 2011.
m u ltaneous sense of cont i n u ity and discontin uity. Thi s Cousins' findings are
d ramatically symbolic event h a d ind uced a sh ift i n t h e perhaps cou nter­
horizon o f possibi lities: gone the inevitable boredom intu itive, given the
and futil ity of the conventional central London A-B cu rrent relative lack
demonstration, and i n its place the possibil ity at least of the sort of leftist
for some destructive and powerful ly symbolic fu n for a demos that were a
generation of kids born after the Pol l Tax riots. reg u lar event in the
1970s and 1980s. The
Wh ile the strike had declined over preced ing decades stats measu re not
as a major form of struggle, the demonstration had ap­ demonstration size
parently g rown as a means for the orderly expression or frequency, but
of pious dissent. 28 The lim itations of this form had been n u m bers of people
ram med home back i n 2003 when the largest protest declari ng themselves
ever in the U K - against the I raq War - failed to do more to have taken part
than help establish a national consensus of polite objec­ in such action. It
tion to the inevitable.29 At most, the "violence of a tiny may be that such
m i nority" on the fringes of such demonstrations could partici pation has
hope to create some media spectacle which would become more socially
otherwise be entirely lacking i n the trudge to Speaker's general while repeat
Corner or Trafalgar Square. Thus a certain rational ity partici pation from a
to an anti-g lobalisation-style "diversity of tactics", and a core of 'usual sus-
tedious ritual of dividing u p "good" and " bad " protest­ peels' has declined.
ers. The i nvasion of M i l / bank set in trai n a crisis in this
construct. N US, govern ment and media sang i nitial ly, of 29 It would take
course, from the same trad itional hymn sheet, with Aaron another decade for
Porter descri bing M i l / bank as the "despicable" work of that consensus to
a "tiny rogue minority", and offering that time-honoured actualise itself at the
weapon of struggle - the candlelit vig i l - as alternative. level of state, with
Havi ng crawled out of the shadows of the Blair years, the fail u re of the Tory
the N U S thereby promptly confirmed its own i llegitimacy government to gain
in relation to a student movement that was elsewhere, adequate su pport
doing something much more exciting. From here on, less for war on Syria.

Endnotes 3 1 32
pol ite tactics would proliferate - destruction of property, ao Patrick Sm ith, 'Stu-
fig hting cops, occupying b u i l d i ngs - and the swe l l i n g dent protest: the N U S
groups o f masked-up schoolkids a t the heart o f m u c h lobby wasn't enough
of this activity looked l e s s and l e s s l i ke a m i nority o f for us'. Guardian, 10
" p rofessional anarchists". I n these demonstrations we Novem ber 2010.
repeatedly witnessed arg uments between people in the
street over this spreading fractiousness, uncomfortable at
the giving-way of conventional distinctions. Oxford Street ;
a wealthy-looking woman, bags of shopping ; screaming
at a group of masked-up and very young-looking teens:
"Why must you cover your face? ! Don't you realise that
we are not you r enemy? We do suppo rt you but don't
cover your face ! " The fear of a loss of order was palpable.
A Guardian jou rnal ist registered su rprise after talking
to M i l l bank occu piers : "Those d ressed i n black were
children too, and several fresh-faced excited students
said this was their fi rst demonstration:'30 Standard nar­
ratives of "outside agitators" and " m i l itants" were now
being forcibly displaced by one of "students radical ised
by the cuts". Instead, a new d isti nction now came i nto
play with the emergence of g roups such as UK Uncut
and Arts Against Cuts providing the fig u re of the "good"
rad icalised student, able to more eloquently articulate
their radical ity and transform acts of property damage
and occupation into something more palatable, window­
dressed with poetry read ings and performance art.

M I D D LE· CLASS

It has been a trope of some interpretations of the student


movement and riots to read their relation by analogy to
the French banlieue riots and CPE movement of 2005-6,
as another case of a middle-class student movement
being troubled by more l u mpen elements - sometimes
with an implicit plotting of these terms on a trad itional
reform-revolution axis. It is a banal truth of that moment
that the social d istribution of misery tended to favour
elements of the student movement who were not also
present i n t h e riots : o n e would be hard -pressed, of

A Rising Tide Lifts A ll Boats 1 33


course, to find anywhere in the riots the sort of l iberal­
prog ressive sentiments of U C L stu d e nts who knew
perfectly well that there would be many g raduates with
rather less future than themselves.

But it would be a major distortion to grasp this as a mat­


ter of " m iddle-class" students having "their" movement
invaded by some "underclass". Unsurprisingly, there were
plenty of u n iversity students involved in these struggles
who were rather less than midd le-class : i n 2 0 1 1 the
U K higher education participation rate was around 5 0
percent. Though participation is obviously d istributed
in favou r of the better-off, it remains the case that going
to u n iversity is a normal proletarian pursu it, and it is not
at all u nusual for kids from marg i nal estates to aspire
to some academic ach ievement. One might even say
that the polarisation in Britain is as m u ch about which
u n iversity you go to, and wh ich subject you study, as
it is about whether or not you get a degree - the Me­
dia student from London South Bank vs the PPE from
Oxbridge or LS E ; the call-centre Literatu re g rad vs the
unlettered worker with a real trade. And, with the general
debasement of coinage in higher education, what might
once rig htly have been viewed a privilege has turned
increasingly i nto a debt b u rden. By 2 0 1 0 the B ritish
student al ready typ i cally m ixed stu d ies with precari­
ous part-time employment to supplement their student
loan, or depended on welfare - conditions that were only
worsening with the deepening of crisis. It was thus no
accident, nor any entirely external intrusion, that sh ifted
the student movement towards a more negative, rebellious
composition as it felt the emptiness of its own demands.

The student movement was always in some sense a "pro­


letarian " movement, albeit one in which some members
were distinctly less proletarian than others. Convention
dictates that one imag i n e the l u m pen proletarian to be
you n g , for the young tend to blend i nto the idle and
feckless more or less by definition - sitting as they do

Endnotes 3 1 34
at the frontier of the job market. But youth, of cou rse,
is not a class : it cannot be assu med that the you nger
participants and "EMA kids" who came i nto the move­
ment from M i l l bank onwards, represented in any clear
sense a class d istinct from those already i nvolved in
the movement. While EMA m i g ht be needed to support
post- 1 6 vocational - rather than academic - training, it
was at the same time not a fundamentally separate issue
from university fees: both EMA cuts and fee-increases
could potentially affect the same person , who might
need financial support to continue education post- 1 6,
in order to then go to u niversity. And the same person
could s i m u ltaneously be affected by youth c l u b clo­
s u res - and even stop-and-search. But what can be
said with certai nty here is that the d i m i n ishing futu res
of that moment h it not only the poorer, but also the
younger, harder: while those already at u n iversity might
scrape through with moderate fees for their last year
or two, those a couple of years below them would get
the fu ll £9000/year for their whole u niversity ed ucation,
if they made it that far, lose the state support for their
pre-un iversity studies, enter a tougher job market when
they got there, and so on. And of course, the young tend
to be less cowed in their relations with the cops, having
not yet been fully schooled i n such things . . .

OCC U PAT I O N

Following t h e excitement of M i l l ba n k another h u g e


national wave o f occupations took place - around thirty­
five in total - provid i n g sites for the plan ning of further
actions. Students were becoming increasingly combat­
ive in relation to policing ; one occupation, for exam ple,
putting together a custom mon itoring system for map­
ping police action d u ring protests. Occupations set up
websites and twitter accou nts, Facebook pages and so
on, comm u n icating around the clock with each other
and with a general public. They attracted a huge num­
ber of visitors - lectu rers, i ntellectuals, activists, actors,

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats 1 35


schoolkids. B u t t h ey were fu ndam e ntally i n capable 31 NCAFC: the National
of t u r n i n g themselves into anyt h i n g really confronta- Campaign Against
tional : for the most part u niversity adm i n i strations just Fees and Cuts,
tolerated them, and any attempts to i ntervene d isrup- self-described as a
tively i nto the flows of everyday u n iversity l ife - such 'network of student
as that at Goldsmiths, where students occupied the and education worker
l i b rary - tended to immediately delegitimise the occu- activists', emerged
pations in the eyes of the broader student body. With from U n iversity
these struggles ostensi bly aiming to defend education, College London i n
d isruption of the u n iversity appeared an i mmed iately February 2010; ULU:
self-contradictory tactic, leaving most of these occu pa- U n iversity of London
tions to subsist in u neasy cooperation with university U n ion - by far the
authorities, working at most as bases for planning the largest students'
larger demonstrations. Groups in Brighton, frustrated at union in London, and
the l i m its of their cam pus occupations, began making often a central or-
efforts to incorporate even younger kids, visiting schools ganisation i n student
to encourage walkouts and protests. demonstrations.

On 24 and 3 0 November the N CAFC and U LU,31 both 32 Th is cal l appeared on


freshly mobilised after Millbank, called national walkouts the NCAFC website,
and p rotests for students of all ages, encourag i n g a anticuts.org.uk.
viral spread ing of the word : " . . . chalk the details on the
pavement outside your place of education . . . req uest
that fol k 'send the text viral ' - i.e. text it to you r own
friends to text onto their friends . . . send texts to all you r
friends in d ifferent schools and different colleges telling
them you've walked out." 32 Around this time a network
of younger students emerged called "School and Fur­
ther Education Students Against the Cuts" who were
in constant com m u n ication with the u n iversity g roups.
There were n oticeably m u ch m o re young people at
these demonstrations, and the atmosphere more l i ke
a big party. Like the riots that followed, the police had
been completely unprepared for M i l l bank, d rafting only
225 officers for a pred icted crowd of 20,000 - there
were actually 50,000. Consequently, later demos saw
a heightened police presence, more violence and the
implementation of kettling. This tactic seems to have first
been used in London in 1 995 against disabled people

Endnotes 3 1 36
in a Disabil ity Rig hts protest outside Parliament, before 33 0nly 5 percent of
being fine-tuned in the 1 9 9 9 WTO protests, and employed 'suspected cri m i n als'
again at the 200 1 May Day protests. But the bending typically appear in
of the j u d icial syste m towards the rapid and severe the Crown Court.
p u nish ment of activists - sending them to the Crown
Cou rts, where penalties are much harsher - had no such
precursor.33 This seems to have set a precedent for the
punishment of rioters the following August. That Edward
Wool lard , the student who threw a fire ext i n g u isher off
the roof of M i l / bank, was arrested for attempted m u rder
and later sentenced to two and a half years i n jail for
violent d isorder, resulted i n bays of approval from a
large section of the publ ic. Taking no chances, a Ch ief
Su perintendent for domestic extremism - appoi nted a
week earl ier - began an intelligence operation to monitor
the dangerous incitement of "fringe elements", while on
24 November, the Met swamped central London with an
extra thousand G reater London cops, both riot-geared
and mounted. Blocking protesters from Parliament Square,
their typical site of enforced contai nment, huge games
of cat and mouse came to characterise these protests,
with students ru n n i n g down back al leys, dod g i n g and
trying to outwit the cops, until eventually getting kettled.
Initial atmospheres were festive, with du bstep and grime
sound systems, lots of dancing and coloured flares being
set off, but as h o u rs passed the crowd became frus­
trated and started vandal ising and setting fire to things.
After several hours of dancing, interspersed with violent
confrontations, they fi nally released everyone. Around
the city, those not trapped i n kettles were i nvolved i n
a mass array o f fleeting actions, a n d u n iversities and
schools nationwide were either i n protest or occupation.

STI CK

Tho u g h violence had been b u i l d i n g and prol iferating


t h ro u g h o u t t h e p rotests, t h e d ay of t h e vote i n D e ­
c e m b e r - w h e n t h e fee-h i kes w o u l d pred ictably b e
passed - was t h e pinnacle o f heavy policing. The police

A Rising Tide Lifts A ll Boats 1 37


response to M i l l bank was the blan ket implementation 34 M uch l i ke a death in
of kettling, mou nted charges on crowds and , increas­ police custody, the
ing ly, generalised attacks on protesters : the baton to police inverted the
the head. The fact that the composition of these pro­ story and charged
tests now involved an infusion of younger students and Alfie and his friend
more turbulent kids seemed to solicit ever heavier re­ Zak King with violent
sponses from the cops. On the day of the vote, field disorder, a charge
hospitals were set u p to deal with the antici pated vic­ they have o n ly
tims and an estimated thirty protesters were treated for recently succeeded
head i nj u ries, leading to over fifty recorded complaints i n having d ropped.
to the I PCC. Midd lesex student, Alfie M eadows was
beaten with a truncheon as he tried to leave a kettle i n
Parliament Square, a n d had t o be rushed t o hospital
for immed iate l ife-saving brain surgery.34 Another pro­
tester, Jodi Mci ntyre, was p u lled from his wheelchair
and d ragged across the floor by cops. These were the
stories that attracted the imagination of media and pub­
lic, and were campaigned for by friends and support
groups, but there were many more such cases.

The whole of Westminster was established as a series


of mass kettles, some m o b i l e , others c o m pressed,
which provoked frustrated bu rsts of fighting. I n a hyper­
symbolic gesture, a masked- u p protester managed to
break free and scale Whitehall, before smas h i n g the
windows of the Treasury, and people set fire to whatever
they could find, including the g iant Christmas tree on
Parliament Square, to keep warm in icy temperatu res.
We received a text to say that the National Gallery
was in flash-mob occu pation. Meanwh ile, on Regent
Street, another h i g h ly symbolic attack occu rred, this
t i m e agai nst a caricat u ral British institution, when a
car carrying Prince Charles and Camilla to the London
Palladium for a Royal Variety Performance was attacked
by protesters shouting "off with their head s ! " That one
protester had managed to poke the Consort of the Heir
Apparent with a stick, thro u g h the car's open window,
apparently sent chills down authority spines over the
proximity of the "mob". But a large group was contained

Endnotes 3 1 38
in a tight kettle on Westminster Bridge without food, 35 '0ur Story So Far',
water or toilet facilities for hours in the freezing cold, Save Hari ngey Youth
some needing treatment for respi ratory problems, chest Service webs ite.
pains or bru ised ribs after severe crush ing.
36 It is woth noti ng that
I n January, as eyes tu rned to another wave of struggle at least some cuts­
now picki ng u p i n the Arab world, parliament inevitably d riven restructuring of
voted to cut the EMA g rant. Wh i l e the presence of youth services had an
younger and more t u rb u lent kids had lent dynamism overtly pun itive focus,
and kick before the December tuition fee vote to an prioritising the jobs of
otherwise more l i m ited student movement, there was those special ising in
a relative lack of reciprocal participation from u niversity youth crime. See Alex
students on the day of the EMA. In the same month the Newman, 'Hackney
press informed Haringey residents that the council had Council Youth
officially agreed to cut youth services by 75%. A coun­ Services Job C uts
cillor had erroneously claimed that the com m u n ity had Slammed', Hackney
al ready been consu lted and al l was fine, as there were Citizen, 4 Apri l 2011.
a plethora of voluntary organ isations ready and willing
to step i n to pick u p the extra work. The council then
warned that if the com m u n ity did not cooperate over
the cuts, it would be at the expense of "disabled and
abused" children,35 but it would happily compromise and
offer a consultation over the remaining 25%. Youth work­
ers across London soon noticed the mounting tension
around these issues, and some began predicting riots.36

With the tuition fee and EMA votes both lost and nothing
comparably concrete on the horizon, the subsequent
protests became chaotic, theatrical, fun and frustrated.
The T U C (Trades U n io n Cong ress ) " M arch for t h e
Alternative" i n March 2 0 1 1 was the second biggest
demonstration ever on British soil, bringing out onto
London streets much of the remnant workers' movement,
and providing another organ isational skeleton for the
heterogeneous and more chaotic elements that had
emerged through the student movement. The point of
destination for all u nion-led marches is Hyde Park, once
the site of the 1 855 S u nday Trad ing B i l l riots ( consid­
ered by Marx at the time to herald the coming Engl ish

A Rising Tide Lifts A ll Boats 1 39


Revolution37 ) , the main assembly point for the Chartist 37 Marx, 'A nti-Church
movement and the Reform Leag u e ; long a standard Movement Demon­
arena for the performance of political gestu res, at a safe stration in Hyde Park',
d istance from the institutions and shopfronts of central Neue Oder-Zeitung,
London. A good ch u n k of the estimated q uarter of a mil­ 28 J u n e 1855 (M ECW
l ion people present that day trudged the weary old track 14), 303.
to Hyde Park, to be reassured by Labou r Party Leader,
Ed M i l iband , totteri ng on a plinth, that they could relax,
for they had arrived at "the alternative " : the deficit need
not be reduced by q uite such nasty means. Through the
unfolding of the student movement, building n u m bers
had reached their l i m its of tolerance for such forms,
preferring to hang back and preserve energy for more
organ ic and spontaneous break-off activities, starting
from one or another of the various feeder marches.

At Oxford Circus, UK U ncut were conducting a day of


action agai nst tax-avoiding corporations, and the police
protectively swarmed the largest and most expensive.
Riot vans su rrou nded the Apple Store entirely, which
was nevertheless bri m m i n g with shoppers ; Topshop,
d renched i n paint and g raffiti, with several broken win­
dows, was now fortified with layers of riot cops. Nearby,
Scientologists handed out pamph lets m i m icking the
aesthetic of a socialist newspaper. O u r day consisted
of arriving at the fresh destruction of a recently expired
action or event, having been d irected to the scene by
tweet or SMS. Everything felt more fleeting and mobile
than the previous events leading u p to the vote, and
you could bounce from pocket to pocket of actions or
i nterventions; some real, some performance. B H S oc­
cu pied by poets ; a s u ited woman chas i n g a h uman
£20 note ; a gang of Robi n Hoods rid ing, for hours, on
imag i n ary horses. Again a m ixture of students, school
kids, artists, anarch ists ; smal l, diverse groups in a large,
mobile flow ; a swarming mass on a tangent to the main
u n ion march, but sti l l managing to occupy large areas
of central Lon d o n . Piccad i l l y was now u n d e r siege,
and the Ritz had been smashed i nto. A sharper spatial

Endnotes 3 1 40
d istinction into d ivergent forms of action seemed ind ic­
ative of a red uced concentration and widened scope,
in comparison to the kettled concentrations of preced­
ing demonstrations. UK U ncut had occupied Fortnum
and Mason - the Queen's favourite grocery shop - and
some occupiers were on the balcony, glugging bottles
of cham pag ne swiped on the way through. The atmos­
phere outside g rew tense as riot pol ice were p u m ped
i nto t h e area and began l i n i n g every s i d e street. It
seemed a conscious tactic that day to avoid the need
to kettle by simply ind icating it as a threat. Following
those violent long hours of containment i n December,
the fear of kettling was explosive, and any signal sent
huge booing crowds lau nching towards the cops un­
til they backed off. A group of protesters momentarily
su rrou nded the police, chanting " kettle the cops ! " ; a
woman posed for a photo, holding a kettle and with
a sign saying " Cameron, don't put the bloody kettle
on"; a severely i nj u red man stu m bled aro u n d , blood
gushing down his face, reeling in shock and p u m ped
with adrenal i n : "they're crazy ! " Concerned for his l ife,
we pleaded with cops for paramedics or an a m b u ­
lance : " n o , that ain't my job love". T h e bleed ing man
ran off into the crowd , to haunt the rest of the day. As
a kettle began , the crowd went mad , frantically trying
to break through police l i nes, and violent fig hts broke
out, distracted eventually by an attem pted break-in of
a bank. The streets were bri m m i n g until late, and as
we wandered the city that evening to get a sense of
the damage, almost every bank we came across had
been smashed i n . Forensic teams on their hands and
knees dusted for fingerprints. And as that day d rew to
a close some activists made an abstract fi rst stab at
establishing a resonance with the Arab Spri n g : Trafal­
gar was to become Tahrir. The cops had l ittl e d ifficulty
moving them on, and it was not to be until after Brit­
ai n ' s own wave had crashed in A u g ust that a m o re
self-consciously international squares movement would
sprout in the alluvium . . .

A Rising Tide Lifts A ll Boats 1 41


I n April 2 0 1 1 , reggae star and DJ, S m iley Culture - key 38 IPCC: I ndependent
emblem of a naturalised London Afro-Caribbean culture Pol ice Com plaints
ever since his 1 9 80s tracks Cockney Translation and Commission, a major
Pol ice Officer - died from a single stab wound to the part of the bureau­
heart d u ring a pol ice raid on his home, i n advance of cratic apparatus
his u pcom ing trial on a drug-related charge. The I PCC developed i n this
report - which was kept from both the public and his own period to underwrite
fam i ly - predictably dismissed the i ncident, concluding the nomi nal neutral­
that there h ad been no crim i nal conduct . . .38 That same ity of the police. The
month, as the cuts to the benefits system came into effect, IPCC is the latest in
unemployment started to mount again - especial ly, as a series of acronyms
always, for the young - from the altiplano it had reached perform ing the
back in 2009 after the fi rst outbreak of the crisis . . . But, same basic fu nction,
briefly, the nation was tickled i nto stupefaction by the dating back to the
royal wedding. Over the days before this event, the police beg i n n ings of cu rrent
made a series of pre-em ptive i nterventions, send i n g policing styles i n the
warning letters, maki ng arrests o f suspected activists late 1g7os, before
and prominent student protesters, as well as conducting which complai nts had
blanket stop-and-searches all over London. Sixty people been handled d i rectly
arrested during the previous student march had bail terms by local forces. These
that disallowed entry i nto central London the week of structu res were sig­
the wedding, and a series of raids were carried out on nificantly reworked in
well-known sq uats to scavenge for DNA samples and response to the 1g81
other identity clues, under the pretext of search ing for riots on the basis of
stolen bike parts. Crudely profiled "troublemakers" were recommendations i n
detained in custody, apparently not being signalled for the Scarman Report.
release until the newlyweds h ad safely sealed it with
the public " balcony kiss". On the day of the wedding,
central London became a free-for-all stop-and-search
zone with face masks, fancy d ress, drunkenness - even
singing - incurring a possible charge of i ncitement to
violence.39 Such moves towards zero-tolerance and pre­
emptive action had been developed through the course
of student strugg les, with students being arrested for
such t h i n g s as "fai l u re to comply with a d i rection to
leave when the police have reasonable bel ief that you
may commit aggravated trespass".40 This set the scene
for the "total pol icing" strategies that would cohere and
consolidate d u ring and after the riots.

Endnotes 3 1 42
The student movement had rapidly come u p against its 39 Fou r people were
limits and frothed over into a fissiparous, disorderly state, arrested in Starbucks
with no real positive horizon but a bit of fun at the expense for being dressed
of the cops. Where there had been vague semblances of as zombies. As Amy
a positive programme at moments in this movement, this Cutler explained: 'we
had always seemed dubious, half-hearted, tinted with the were just dressing u p
baseline cynicism of a certain "capitalist realism". All that a s zombies. It's nice to
was available as a framework for u n ity was a bland set dress up as zombies'.
of negative, umbrella demands: stop the cuts. And even
this seemed - and u ltimately proved - impossible. What 40 Steph Pike of U K
else to do then but raise some hell? At least it would U ncut was arrested
mean that there had been a fight. And what response on this charge at
could this i nvite but a further ramping-up of policing? a tax avoidance
That, ultimately, was the "mean ing" of M i l l bank. J ust as demonstration.
the sinister g ri n of the Cheshi re Cat i ntensifies as its
more seemingly contingent parts dissolve, through the
development of these protests the police had increasingly
appeared as the visceral presence of the state in the
face of its supposed retreat or rollback. Yet somehow the
consol idation of an abstract enemy i nto a single tangible
one meant that the city - wh ich h ides itself behind the
police - felt, for fleeting moments at least, more open
and vulnerable, more reachable and breakable.

SWAR M I N G

A short documentary published by the Guardian i n late 41 Chavez Campbell,


July presented Haringey teenagers discussing the impact interviewed i n
of youth club closures. Chavez Campbell, a local teenager Alexandra Topping
from Wood Green - which borders Tottenham - noted that and Cameron
the loss of a fixed and protected space "cuts kids' roots Robertson, 'Haringey
off and l i n ks, and then they don't really have anywhere youth club closures:
to go".41 Th rown out onto the streets, kids were both There'll be riots',
m o re prone to get caug ht up with gangs and m o re Guardian, 31 J u ly 2011.
vulnerable to police harassment. Campbell concluded
the documentary with a famous pred iction :

I t h i n k it's g o n n a be swarmi n g , I t h i n k people are


gonna be trying to find things to do, people are gonna

A Rising Tide Lifts A ll Boats 1 43


want jobs, and that's going to be frustrating . . . There's
going to be a riot, there ' l l be riots, there ' l l be riots.

This was the climate in which Mark Duggan was shot i n


Ferry Lane, Tottenham, a t about 6 : 1 5pm on Thursday
4 A u g u st 2 0 1 1 . Officers from O peration Trident - a
specialist unit within the Metropol itan Pol ice which fo­
cuses on g u n crime in predomi nantly black areas had
been fol lowing his taxi. It has never been clear exactly
what happened, but we know that they shot D u g gan
in the chest. Attempts to resuscitate h i m fai led, and
paramedics who rushed to the scene swiftly turned to
walk away, heads bowed. The usual gears went swiftly
into motion : an i nvestigation i n itiated by the I PCC, and
the scene cordoned off. As is often the case, the I PCC
seems to have first engaged in some public relations
damage-limitation on behalf of the police, communicating
to the media the claim that there had been an exchange
of fire between Duggan and Trident officers - a claim
that would be discredited just days later, in the midst of
a national riot-wave i n itiated in Duggan's name, when it
would be shown that the only piece of evidence -a bullet
lodged in a police radio - had actually been fired from a
police g u n . Pol ice did not inform Duggan's fam ily of his
death, and when they pushed for i nformation on where
he was - having heard via the media that he had been
i nvolved i n an i ncident - they were simply told to follow
an air ambulance from Tottenham. Trailing this helicopter
a few m iles south to Whitechapel Hospital, they found
only the police officer who had been inj u red at the scene.

In t h e absence of any official com m u n i cati o n from


the police, rum o u rs q u ickly began c i rc ulatin g i n the
n e i g h b o u rhood that D uggan had been d e l i b e rately
executed, with some evidently worried about possi­
ble consequences: by the next morning David Lammy,
the local M P, was already calling for calm in the face
of comm u n ity "anxiety". That there was a typical riot
dynam i c formi n g h e re i s obvious in retrospect, and

Endnotes 3 1 44
i ndeed it was probably obvious at the time to anyone 42 These events are sti l l
present who had the slightest acquai ntance w i t h t h e playing through the
recent history of u rban u n rest : cops had not only killed British legal system
a you ng black man, but also a resident of the Broad­ to this day, with
water Farm estate, with its long and d ramatic history a new arrest - 28
of antagon istic relations with the police; and now they years late r - timed
were again fail i n g to su pply any i nformation to fam ily conveniently to
or com m u n ity. After years of building tension on an es­ correspond to the
tate al ready considered a serious problem area by the second ann iversary of
early 1 970s, Cynthia Jarrett's death at police hands Mark Duggan's death
i n October 1 9 8 5 had precipitated an extraord i narily and the beg i n n i n g
violent riot i n wh ich pol ice came under armed attack, o f a n inquest i nto
culminating in the killing of PC Keith Blakelock.42 In the its ci rcu mstances.
2000s, with regeneration projects and decl i n i ng crime
statistics for the neighbourhood, those events might
have seemed consigned to the past. But police sti l l
considered Tottenham i n general a hotspot f o r (black)
g u n crime, d r u g - d eal i n g and gang-related violence,
and pun itive policing had been stepped u p over recent
years around "The Farm", as it had in other such neigh­
bourhoods. At least a day before rioting actually broke
out, John Blake, who had g rown up here with Duggan,
saw it com ing :

There's hostil ity here, there might even be an uprising


here, you don't know. Mark held Broadwater Farm
together.

As n i g ht fel l on Friday 5 A u g ust about 4 0 0 people


gathered at Duggan's parents' home on the estate to
pay their respects, i n an already tightening atmosphere.
But it was not until 1 pm the fol lowing day that police
summoned commun ity representatives to a meeting. At
this point they were warned clearly about the potential
for u n rest, but d eferred to the I PCC, and sti l l failed
to send anyone to d iscuss matters with the family or
com m u n ity - perhaps the example of Keith Blakelock
lingered here for police, just as that of Cynthia Jarrett
did for Broadwater Farm residents. At about 5 :30pm,

A Rising Tide Lifts A ll Boats 1 45


u nder the watchfu l eyes of The Farm 's CCTV cameras, a
small demonstration crowd gathered and left the estate
for the police station, lead by the prom inent Broadwater
Farm activist Stafford Scott, to demand some add ress.
But the j u n ior officers who were left at the station could
only defer to the I PCC and Operation Trident, who were
based elsewhere. Demands for dialog u e with a senior
officer were thus not met, with the crowd g rowing - and
g rowing increasingly frustrated.

Anyone who, for pol itical reasons, wants to hold that


"The Riots" were entirely "demand"-free, a mere mat­
ter of the " n egative languag e of vandalism" etc, w i l l
a t m i n i m u m n e e d to offer s o m e explanation a s to how
they w o u l d separate these events, at w h i ch clear
demands - on banners, i n chants, i n attempts to nego­
tiate with cops - were present, can be separated from
the riot-wave in which they issued, and which would not
have occurred in their absence. Other key moments of
the riot-wave i n which comparable anti-police dynamics
were domi nant, such as Hackney, Salford , and probably
Brixton , would also seem to requ i re such explanation :
for sure, in all of these cases a negative, violent mode
of behaviour was prominent, rather than some orderly
bargain i n g , but then demanding is not pol itely aski ng.

CONTAG I O N

A s the evening pressed on, the composition changed,


with mothers and children head i n g home, an i nfusion
of football supporters, a larger q uotient of youn g men,
and a significant eth nic d iversity - apart from the local
black com m u n ity, also Tu rkish, Polish, white British etc.
At 8pm riot police turned up to protect the station from a
rowdy but stil l non-violent crowd. A 1 6-year-old girl came
forward to again press the demands, perhaps throwing
something, and i n response the cops moved forwards,
shovi ng her, and p robably attacking with riot shields
and batons. This seems to have been the moment at

Endnotes 3 1 46
which the emergent logic of crowd action kicked i n , and
comm u n ity demonstration ti pped over into riot. Even for
a crowd that knows full well in advance what may be
com ing there is a first-mover problem which prevents
the riot itself from being a straig htforwardly i ntentional
act ; no individual or group can simply decide u n i l ater­
al ly to riot, u nless the riot is already i n process. Th is is
why the immed iate trigger very often appears as some
relatively m i nor act of the police which u n ites a crowd
in indignation against them ; but such tipping-points do
not come out of the blue - rather, they are themselves
produced from some escalating dynam ic, i n wh ich a
crowd can certainly play an active role. By 8 : 20pm the
crowd was attacking nearby police cars, setting them on
fire, and pushing one out i nto Tottenham H i g h Road as
a sort of burning barricade. It then broke through pol ice
lines to attack the pol ice station, throwing bricks, bottles,
eggs. Unrest was now spreading throughout the area. At
around 1 0 . 1 5pm, Tottenham post office was set alight
and wit h i n half an hour, more police cars and a double
decker bus. The Aldi supermarket and the now famous
Carpetright store too were soon burnt down - and with
the latter went a number of people's homes. More police
were drafted i n , including specialists from the Territorial
S u pport G roup, armed and with dogs and horses, with
reinforcements from City of London Pol ice. These arrived
to jeering and chants : "we want answers"/ " n o jus­
tice, no peace"/ " rest i n peace Mark D uggan"/ "whose
streets, our streets". They attem pted to seal off t h e
side streets to prevent the riot from spread i n g , w h i l e
the u s u a l helicopters throbbed overhead. But they had
already defin itively lost control of events.

During the n i g ht the windows of the local courthouse


were smashed, and the probation service next door was
set on fire, while the Opera House club in which Mark
D uggan apparently used to rave was left u ntouched - a
poi nted selection of targets, as o pposed to the sort
of random mob i rrationality which the scared and the

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats 1 47


u nsympathetic have trad itionally perceived in rioting 43 Nor is it u n usual for
crowds since Gustav Le Bon and beyond. I n the fi rst responses to such
clear exam ple of the sort of mass-looting which would riots to involve
come to be associated with the riot-wave as a whole, attem pts to appeal to
rioting spread overn ight to the nearby Totten ham Hale looting as evidence
Retail Park where almost every single shop was looted that noth ing else
and a supermarket set on fire. At around 3am in Wood was at stake. I n 1985,
G reen - another n earby n e i g h b o u rhood - some fires for exam ple, Home
were started, and many shops looted. But again , some Secretary Doug las
d iscrim ination was in evidence: they apparently spared H u rd claimed that
a clothes shop named " Loot", and the pound shop. By the Handsworth
most accou nts, there was l ittle violence in these places, riots had not been
the activity being mostly focused on the beg i n n i ngs of 'a cry for hel p', but
the largest bout of focused "proletarian shopping" the 'a cry for loot'.
cou ntry has ever seen.

The rapid tip-over of an anti-police riot i n the centre of


Totten ham i nto this widespread loot i n g was noth i n g
particularly surprising : w h e n a large anti-police confla­
gration provides cover enough, it is entirely typ ical for
the next step to i nvolve looting, whether as a seizing
of opport u n ities, or as another disorderly gestu re to
capital or state.43 Where shops are available to a rioting
crowd, they will typically be looted. Appeals to factors
l i ke "consumerism" are entirely superfluous here - as
if t h e desire to appropriate material goods needed
an ideology to explain it ! And loot itself aside, when
shops are at hand they constitute one of the obvious
o bj ects for crowd violence, along with the prem ises
of one or another hated institution, and things read i ly
available in the street which will burn spectacularly and
obstructively, such as motor vehicles. B rixton 1 9 8 1 ,
too, q u ickly crossed over into looting, once the cops
had been driven from the area by swe l l i n g , aggressive
crowds ; also, Brixton and Handsworth 1 985, Meadow
Wel l 1 9 9 1 , Brixton 1 995 - but not B roadwater Farm
1 9 8 5 , w h e re m ost shops had l o n g closed down. A
d istinction of 2 0 1 1 was perhaps the rapid ity with which
u b i q u itous means of i n stantaneous com m u n i catio n

Endnotes 3 1 48
enabled the word to spread that pol ice were on the
back foot, opening up snowballing opportun ities to take
advantage of this, for straightforward ly i nstrumental rea­
sons or with some other aim - such as revenge against
shops that had rejected job appl ications, as one looter
would retrospectively claim. Thus the famous Blackberry
messenger com m u n iq u e that circu lated widely as the
disorder spread into Sunday 7 August, exhorting poten­
tial rioters to abandon the more destructive actions and
enjoy the commod ity free-for-al l :

Everyone i n edmonton enfield woodgreen everywhere


i n n o rt h l i n k u p at enfield town station 4 o clock
sharp ! ! ! ! Start leaving u r yards n l i n king u p with you
niggas. G uck da feds, bring your ballys and your bags
trollys, cars vans, hammers the lot ! ! Keep sending this
around to bare man, make sure no sn itch boys get
d is ! ! ! What ever ends you r from put your bal lys on
l i n k u p and cause havic, just rob everything. Pol ice
can't stop it. Dead the fires thoug h ! ! Rebroadcast ! ! ! ! !

I t i s worth remembering though, that the contemporary


state of means of comm u n ication is often appealed
to i n explai n i n g the prol iferation of riots : the pagers
and "portable telephones" of the 1 9 9 0s, CB radio i n
1 9 8 1 . . . A n y spontaneous unfo l d i n g o f social u n rest
l i ke this of course takes place in a context significantly
shaped by the "affordances" of current commun ications
technolog ies - technolog ies whose rapid development
and prol iferation has been one of the salient dynamics
of the era. But these can only ever contribute a weak
form of causality, shaping possi b i l ities rather than d riv­
ing things forward .

And while these actions should certai n ly be taken seri­


ously as one of the most prominent aspects of the wave
as a whole, we should avoid modes of explanation which
project such things as some essential indicator of "what
the riots were about", as if national riot-waves were a sort

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats 1 49


of vessel which could contain a singular, u n p roblemati­
cally identifiable content. No large-scale social event, no
uprising l i ke this, can straightforwardly be read as the
simple expression of an inner content, for the actors and
circumstances involved are too vastly heterogeneous
to be susceptible to the kind of red uction that would
be req u i red. Everyone has their own reasons - many
of them no doubt held in common - but it would be a
fallacy to t h i n k that one could abstract from this mess
some sort of singular social meta-intention without doing
significant theoretical violence to the object. Better to
focus on mapping the objective and subjective contin­
gencies of which the riot wave was a precipitate, and
tracing its u nfold i n g logic. And i n this logic, it is clear
that the looting, d ramatic as it was, kicked off only in
the space al ready opened by an anti-police riot, before
developing its own logic of contag ion.

By Su nday morning, as riots continued i n the Totten ham


area, eight police officers were being treated in hospital,
and there were reports of bystanders getting attacked.
At 7am the police convened the first of a series of crisis
meetings, drafting thousands of reinforcements into Lon­
don from other regions. Standard official condemnations
began to issue from the usual locations: Prime Minister's
Office, local M P, commander of the Metropolitan Police.
As social media - the encrypted Blackberry messenger
service in particu lar - buzzed with speculation and incite­
ments, police took notice that Enfield - an area q u ite
close to Totten ham - was prominent as a possible point
of eruption . Hackney carnival was preventively cancelled
last m i n ute, though this d i d n 't stop rioting spread ing
into Dalston i n the even ing, with several shops and the
Kingsland shopping centre looted. B rixton's carn ival
went ahead as planned, but as the sound systems were
tu rned off and a noticeable tension filled the evening
air, a young man was chased, d ragged to the g round
and bundled i nto a police van . A few h u n d red mostly
masked youths gathered, and began to attack. Chain

Endnotes 3 1 50
stores such as Vodafone, H&M, Footlocker, WH Sm ith,
Currys and JD Sports were looted ; KFC and Mc Donalds
had their windows smashed ; Footlocker and Nando's
were set on fire after a till was stolen. But, i n another
show of crowd d iscernment, the h i g h ly central Ritzy
cinema - with its many windows - was left u ntouched.

As antici pated , hundreds of youths gathered with the


onset of eve n i n g i n Enfield centre, at an apparently
pre-planned destination. And of course, plenty of cops
were there to meet them. Rioting erupted sporadically,
and in a very mobile manner - presumably of necessity,
in d i rect response to the police presence - rioters gen­
erally evad ing them to attack shops, vehicles, etc. At
9 :30pm police tried to turn Enfield i nto a "sterile area",
bringing in h u n d reds of riot cops, dogs etc. D ispersed ,
the crowd ran off to attack and loot a retail park, stealing
televisions and alcohol as they went. Around 1 2 : 45am
3 officers were taken to hospital after being run over by
a fast-moving veh icle. Then, d u ring the n ig ht, the riot­
wave spread to many other parts of Londo n : Denmark
H i l l , Streatham, I s l ington, Leyton, S h epherd's B u s h ,
Walthamstow; even Oxford Circus s a w s o m e d istur­
bances. Crowds of young people gathered i n streets
around London, expecting local riots to trigger. Stand­
offs between restless, expectant crowds and the police
sometimes occurred without a full-blown riot breaking
out - a negative demonstration that the riot is an emer­
gent social event, rather than something produced by
a singu lar decision, some l inear i ntentional ity.

M E D I AT I O N

Sporad ic loot i n g ; smashed shop windows; arson : a


welter of the standard particu lars of riot. We here find
that any attempt at a singular narrative of the events
n ecessari ly beg ins to b reak down, d u e to their vast
spread and prol iferation i nto a m u ltiplicity of local inci­
dents. Thus the riot-wave becomes a d ifferent object

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats 1 51


for us, one necessitating a d ifferent kind of abstraction
or summary. Someth i n g far beyond its roots i n a few
particular l ocal h i stories of abjection and anti-police
strugg le, and something necessarily more "theoretical ".
At the same time we pass defin itively from particular
immed iate strug g les to a national med iatic event, in
which practices are spread not only laterally and locally
by word of mouth or by social media but by a g rowi ng
awareness, crystallised i n mainstream media coverage
and official press releases, that much of the country is
rising i n some sort of revolt. And it is largely from this
vantage point that we are constrained to track events
the best we can. Rioters themselves are of cou rse not
constrained to the level of immediate strug gles, but
relate to these as they are med iated socially, not only
on a level of lateral contagion via social media, word
of mouth and SMS, but also by cohering national rep­
resentations via mainstream media. With the inherently
m imetic way in which such struggles prol iferate too,
a d iscussion of this med iation becomes u navoidable.

On Monday morning, as the rioting continued, doubts


first emerged about the claim that there had been an
exchange of fire between Duggan and the police. At
1 2 :30pm Scotland Yard announced a quad rupling of
police n u m bers in the capital. Meanwhile the Metropoli­
tan Police finally offered an apology for their handling
of the death to Duggan's family; the I PCC, on the oth­
er hand, blamed police for the lack of contact. I n the
early afternoon, shops began to shut i n areas expect­
ing u nrest as rumours circulated on social media about
further targets. It was at this point that central Hackney
emerged as the Monday flashpoint with which we be­
gan this article. Wh ile rioting spread out from Hackney
Town Hall to the Pembury Estate, down Well Street and
to other areas of Hackney, 1 5 m iles south, in Croydon,
crowds of youths gathered to attack shops, buses, and
bystanders. Aro u n d 7pm 200-300 ran t h ro u g h out­
lyi n g neighbourh oods looting and setting small fires.

Endnotes 3 1 52
Around 9pm events spread to the town centre, where 44 Th is choice term
several large and very severe fires were started, in­ seems to have
c l u d i n g the Reeves Furniture shop - now famous as skulked in the annals
photogenic emblem of the most destructive aspects of of cri m i n al justice
the riots. One man was shot ; a wh ite m iddle-class g uy policy for some years
was chased, tri pped and beaten ; another man p u l led before emergi ng as a
off his scooter and also beaten. synonym for 'chav' i n
t h e late 2000s, and
S i m ultaneously, in Eal ing, crowds who again seemed finally gai n i n g general
to have been organised through social media moved cu rrency as an ab­
to attack rich areas - cars, cafes, boutiques and com­ jectifying keyword i n
mercial properties - apparently without interest in looting. t h e midst o f t h e riots,
Bystanders were assaulted. A 68-year-old man was being bandied around
attacked when trying to put out a fire in a dustbin, and by government fig u res
later died. In Birmingham around 200 rioters set fi re to l i ke Ken Clarke.
an u nmanned police station in an i n ner city area, and
tried to attack the city centre. Police fended them off
with extra officers, but later in the n i g ht kids retu rned
to l oot many shops. In B attersea bystanders i d e nti­
fied rioters as "blues, yellows and reds"- members of
local gangs who had apparently called a truce for the
eve n i n g . I n Camden some shops were attacked and
confrontations with riot cops drifted u p to Kentish Town
and Chalk Farm . In Peckham a h u n d red-strong group
cheered as a shop was set on fire, shouting "the West
End is going down next". Cycl ists and motorcycl ists
were violently dismounted with rocks, their bikes taken.
With this l itany of chaotic and often dark events com­
ing to form a carousel of l u m pen depravity, rotated on
barely changing loops to ever-more plaintive, moralis­
ing tones, the authorised version of the riots began to
consolidate : this cou ldn't all be "about" Mark Duggan ;
no, it was the work of a deranged, feral underclass44,
out to get whatever t h ey c o u l d , at best because of
some misguided "consumerism", at worst because they
came from t h e work-shy u rban cesspits of " b roken
Britain ", lacking the authority of proper father fig u res
who would have soon set them right, with a good old
paternal clip round the ear. " I m moral ity" or "cri m i nality"

A Rising Tide Lifts A ll Boats 1 53


had somehow become independent variables, spiking
from out of nowhere, anthropomorphising themselves
into a monstrous l u m pen s u bject out to terrorise the
g reat and good of the nation.

SCU M

Passi n g over i nto Tuesday 9 A u g u st, as t h e nation­ 45 For this concept


al "disgust consensus"45 conso l idated, the m ajor i n ­ see Tyler, Revolting
ner-London generation poi nts o f the riot wave, with Subjects, 23-24.
t h e i r l o n g e r local h istor i e s of a n t i - p o l i c e a n t a g o ­
n i s m - Tottenham, Brixton , Hackney - were n o w q u iet­
ening down ; inner London boroughs were now flooded
with police from aro u n d the country. But the u n rest
persisted i n the outer London boroughs, and had now
spread West and North far beyond London. N ow came
the vario u s com m u n ity responses, start i n g with t h e
self-righteous clean - u p squad s of t h e m o rn i n g , and
e n d i n g w i t h armed Tu rkish a n d K u rd is h s h opkeep­
ers and far right vigilante g roups i n the evening. The
clean - u p s q u ad - a n ew type of what we m i ght call
"anti-abject" com m u n ity self-org a n i sation - played a
convenient role here as the positive pole in a develop­
ing manichaeism, projected as everything the rioters
were not. The bl itz-spirited neighbourl iness and social
responsibil ity with which these people came together,
symbolised by their brooms and rubber gloves - which
were for the most part merely symbolic, since state­
employed street-sweepers had al ready done the job
earl ier i n t h e m o r n i n g - stood i n s u pposed contrast
to the atom ised, bestial anomie of the rioters: mere
vandals, absent of all com m u n ity, citizens w h o had
failed and thus j u stly been cast into the state of natu re
there below. As one of these " riot wombles" penned
across her vested torso : " looters are scu m ". I n the d is­
courses that now u nfolded, the positive subjectivities
constituted in local rebe l l ions against this logic were
defi n itively erased. N o agency here ; no reason ; no in­
tention ; no g rievance ; no cause ; no wil l ; no morality; no

Endnotes 3 1 54
commun ity: j ust a big hole in society into which the bad
ones fal l. Pol iticians, of course, took care to be photo­
g raphed amidst this smug convu lsio n ; " Boris ! Bori s !
Bori s ! " cried t h e broom-brigade, a s t h e tousle-haired
Tory buffoon turned u p to ensconce h imself i n the col­
lective anti-chav backslap.

The gears of political reaction were now engaged. At


1 1 am David Cameron made his fi rst statement outside
N u m ber 1 0, after cutting short his holiday to return to
London. He announced the recall of Parliament, and that
there would be 1 6,000 police officers on London streets
from that even ing. Further north, in Birm i ngham, N ick
Clegg was booed and heckled as he tried to assess the
damage. D u ring the day, special measu res were i ntro­
d u ced to enable the processing of the vast n u m bers of
people who had al ready been arrested, and who were
now apparently herded i nto overcrowded, u nsan itary
cells, lacking in food and water. Meanwhile, on the i nter­
national level, an I ranian foreign m i n i stry spokesperson
called for British police to "exercise restraint", and for
h uman rig hts organisations to i nvestigate the shooting
of Mark D u ggan ; Syrian media covered t h e riots in
depth, focusing on the possibility that the m i litary might
be brought in; the Li byan state described the riots as a
" popu lar uprising". I n Egypt, social media buzzed with
debates as to whether the riots should be seen as the
Arab Spring come to England. The Metropol itan Pol ice
described Monday night's events as "the worst the [Met]
has seen in current memory", and stated that they would
now use plastic b u llets if necessary. This wou ld be the
first time on mainland Britain (Northern I reland having
already, of course, had its share) . Hoping to stem the
tide of youths entering onto the streets to take part in
the events, local councils now started sending out email
and SMS warnings to parents, advising them to keep
children inside. Even the online world now saw its own
man ifestations of riot-related behaviour. Amazon's top­
selling sport and leisure items now included police-style

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats 1 55


telescopic batons and baseball bats, sales of which
had i n c reased by 5 0000/o i n the p revious 2 4 h o u rs.
And at around 3 :30pm hackers defaced the website of
Research in Motion in retaliation for the suggestion that
Blackberry users' data wou ld be released to the police.

As afternoon wore on towards evening, and many began


to expect the return of the riots, shops closed early. I n
some areas - especially heavily Turkish and Kurdish areas
such as Dalston and Walthamstow - they remained open,
but guarded by large groups of vigilantes. At 5 : 25pm the
I PCC annou nced that no shot had been fi red by Mark
Duggan before he was shot dead by a police firearms
officer. It seemed bizarre at the time - i ndeed it still does
now - that they would release such potentially explosive
i nformation at this point. Having no food at home, and
with shops all shuttered, we headed for the only area
where anyt h i n g seemed open - th e stretch of Tu rkish
restaurants on Kingsland Road which had t h e i r own
protection. A few shops and banks had been smashed
i n the night before, but the normally traffic-clogged area
was now a g h ost tow n . At Dalston J u nction a lonely
l ittle Christian group sang hymns tunelessly in the dusk.
Reach ing the restaurant stretch, h u n d reds of Tu rkish
people stood out in the street, jovial but ready for trouble:
mostly you ng men, but also middle-aged guys and young
g i rls, even entire fam i l ies. But i n the restaurant we were
the o n ly customers, alone with the M uzak. Staff were i n
good spirits ; a sense o f com m u n ity sol idarity palpable.
Outside some dudes hauled bundles of baseball bats ;
the odd siren blari n g ; cops doing a route u p and down
the street seem ingly more to announce their presence
than anyt h i n g else. We h u n g out in the c rowd for a
while. A gaggle formed i n front of the Efes pool hal l ,
with one m a n clearly i n charge, giving orders i n Tu rkish
to the footsoldiers, but nothing came of it. This crowd
was as p u m ped as the Pembury rioters of the previous
evening, glorying i n its sense of collective strength. At
one point a few mostly white and hoodied teenagers

Endnotes 3 1 56
hurried through the congregation, visibly on guard. A mob
of Tu rkish men started fol lowin g them down the street,
turning and whistling for back-up, bristling for a fight, but
it came to noth ing. A little later a black couple showed
up further down the street and the crowd bristled once
more . . . but they were j ust there, l i ke us, to get food.

We d ucked i nto a half-sh uttered conve n ience store.


Showing off pepper spray and an old extendible police
truncheon, the young Turk at the counter bragged : "bruv, I
ain't never been so tooled up as this !" His mate brandished
a heavy length of stiff wire - a makeshift bludgeon. "We
got no choice, you know, these is o u r livelihoods; if we
lost this business that would be everything gone:' Outside,
the crowd occasionally parted for police vehicles; those
brutal-looking black armo u red vans tru n d l i n g up the
road i n convoy. We spied people inside. 7 or 8 of these,
followed by a similar n u mber of normal wh ite riot vans.
As this long convoy made its way thro u g h the crowd,
many whistled and cheered raucously at the sign of mass
arrests, treating the cops l i ke heroes. A you n g copper
i n a soft hat wandered along the street, chan nelling the
national consensus: "it's not pol itical ; it's j ust mind less
violence now - these people are just going around smash­
ing things up and looting - it's got noth ing to do with
that shooting." On our way home we passed two police
officers stop p i n g and search i n g t h ree b lack teenag­
ers, tal king tensely; it wasn't because they were black.

Ten miles to the southeast, in racist old Eltham, community


self-organ isation agai nst the riots had some d ifferent
n uances. A vigilante crowd of around 200-300 people
gathered in the street with the stated aim of protecting
their com m u n ity: mostly men, some clai m i n g E D L (Eng­
lish Defence League) membersh ip, fans of the Charlton
Athletic and M i l lwall football c l u bs - the latter long as­
sociated with far right hooliganism. EDL leader Stephen
Len non : "We're going to stop the riots ; police obviously
can't handle it:' Reported threats in the air that a " nigger"

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats 1 57


would "get it ton ig ht". S i m ilar vigilante crowds gathered
in Enfield, and S i khs with sheathed swords and hockey
sticks came out in Southall. O m i n o u s s i g n s of what
m i g ht be in store - visions of building i nter-comm u nal
strife - but l ittle more : it all passed with l ittle event since,
while widespread conflagrations continued elsewhere the
country, London had al ready quietened significantly - in
response to such communal self-defence perhaps, or to
the deployment of 1 6,000 police. Vigilante crowds would
persist i n coming out i n Eltham even on Thu rsday - a
day after the national riot wave had crashed, and two
days after it had ebbed in London - sti l l with the stated
aim of protecting their com m u n ities from rioters, only to
break i nto their own anti-pol ice riot when cops came to
clear the area. Thus the pol itical ambivalence of com­
m u n ities organ ising i n self-defence - whether against
pol ice or another com m u n ity - came starkly i nto focus.
By a perverse social logic, the m o b i l isation of a few
territorial ly-defined inner-London com m u n ities against
processes of abjection and police racism, its side-effects
rippling out across the social fabric, had precipitated
in further territorial self-organ isations that were often
racist, and that understood their role as one of policing ;
expelling the abject from the comm u n ity. It is unsurpris­
ing which mode was preferred in the gathering national
consensus. Many i n the traditionally leftist Kurd ish and
Tu rkish comm u n ity would come to distance themselves
from the ways in which their pragmatic self-organisation
had been i ncorporated into this d iscou rse, expressing
a q ualified solidarity with the rioters of Tottenham i n a
m arch north from Kingsland Road to the area of the
original trigger-point, a couple of weeks later.

O n Tuesday n i g ht riot i n g cont i n u ed i n B i r m i n g h a m ,


B ristol and N otti n g h a m , and s p read to Manchester,
Salford , B u ry, West Bromwich, Leicester, G l o u ces­
ter, Wirral, Sefton and Wolverham pton . Though pol ice
claimed otherwise, it is tempting to wonder whether the
massive reallocation of police to London gave rioters

Endnotes 3 1 58
more opportu n ities elsewhere. However one explains
it, Tuesday n i g ht was the n i g ht on which the country
beyond London really burned : in Nottingham, at around
1 0.30pm, 30-40 men firebombed a pol ice station ; in
Liverpool a crowd of youths assembled at 1 1 :30pm,
t h rowi n g m issiles at police and attacking shops; at
Birm ingham's New Street station, police fought up to
200 l ooters who had attacked shops and set fi re to
cars - shots were fired at police, including at a helicopter,
and petrol bombs thrown; from 1 1 pm in Gloucester - a
small provincial market town , which had nonetheless
seen riot i n g before - riot i n g and loot i n g took place ;
i n Manchester, t h o u g h the t h i rd larg est force i n the
cou ntry, pol ice lost control of the city centre as loot­
ing and arson kicked off in the shopping area. But the
most dramatic events were probably i n Salford , a city of
about 250,000 in the Manchester area, where another
anti-police riot ignited.

S alford : pred o m i n antly w h ite ; above average u n e m ­


ployment; 1 5th most deprived area in the country. At
aro u n d 3 p m on Tuesday rumours started c i rcu lati ng
there about the possi b i l ity of riots, and "th reaten i n g
behaviour" was reported on t h e m a i n shopping street.
In response, pol ice descended en masse. Around the
corner on the B rydon Estate they filmed hundreds of
youths stockpiling bro ken-up breezeblocks. Riot police
were deployed, but were i m mediately ambushed with
i ntense levels of violence and much larger crowds than
they had anticipated. While fires burned and a shopping
centre was looted, outnumbered and overwhelmed, they
persisted in trying to d isperse the crowd. At one point,
600-800 rioters were attacking a g roup of 3 0 cops
with rocks, and at 7.40pm the police were ordered to
p u l l out of Salford, d u ring which time Lidl supermarket
was looted and set on fire, along with several cars i n
the car park. T h e office o f a local housing association
was set on fire, as well as a looted shop, burning out
the family home above it. From 1 0.45pm the local police

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats 1 59


were bolstered by officers from 1 0 other forces, and
re-entered Salford to g rad ually regain control. While
looting, as ever, had occu rred , what was notable about
Salford was the violently anti-police focus of the events.
Another deprived area subject to i ncreasing stop-and­
search , Salford's youth had followed the example of
rioters elsewhere in the country and used the riot-wave
as an opportunity to take some revenge.

D I S G UST

As the riots contin ued overn ight into Wed n esday, at


around 1 am a fatal h it-and-run i ncident occu rred i n the
Winson Green area of Birmingham. In another example of
community self-defence, around 80 British Asian people
had been guarding local businesses when a car hit some
people in the crowd at high speed, ki lling two men and
critically i nj u ring a third who later d ied in hospital. Th is
depressing event came to su pply the icing on the cake
of the national "disgust consensus", with media endlessly
re-rolling the pleas of Tariq Jahan, father of one of those
killed, for inter-commu nal solidarity, and for people to
"calm down and go home". Winson G reen borders the
Handsworth and Lozells areas, which both have recent
histories of rioting. In 2005 these areas had erupted into
inter-communal race riots between Afro-Caribbeans and
Asians, after rumours had spread about the gang-rape
of a black g i rl. N ow, with ru mours circulating that the
d river of the car had been black - and that the h it-and­
run had been a deliberately orchestrated m u rder, with
one car somehow allegedly being used to " l u re" the
men i nto the road before they were hit with another
veh icle - the spectre of full-blown race riot reared its
head, with mem bers of the surro u n d i n g Muslim com­
m u n ity apparently readying themselves for the exaction
of reprisals. Jahan's speech was a d i rect intervention
into this local situation, tel l i n g the ang ry you n g men
around him to "grow up" and avoid escalating existing
tensions. But, decontextual ised as flagship video clip

Endnotes 3 1 60
i n the national media spectacle, Jahan's speech came 4& Jahan h i mself
to stand for the sane, moral voice of the nation at large, would later explicitly
against the madness of rioters in general. Disembedded distance h i mself from
from its local referent, it came to imply that those around the demon isation
the country who continued to riot were now complicit i n of rioters and the
violence w h i c h , among other things, had cost a father p u n itive escala-
his son. And as such, it seemed to work. tions against them,
acknowledging the
It would later emerge that the incident had been an acci­ problem of stop-and­
dent, that some of those impl icated had actually known search. See Jahan
the victims, and that a cop involved in the case had l ied interviewed by Mehdi
under oat h ; all of the 8 accused of m u rder were acq u it­ Hasan, 'I don't see
ted, and an I PCC i nvestigation was lau nched i nto the a broken society',
conduct of the police. Many of those i nvolved also turned New Sta tesman, 24
out to be white. Associations of the incident with the riot­ August 2011.
ous behaviour or anti-Asian violence of local blacks thus
unravelled, leaving it an u nfortunate but highly contingent
event. I ndeed, the more terrifying social dynamics that
were at play in this case were less a matter of rioting i n
itself, than o f a potential inter-communal strife emerging
as racial l y and territorial ly-defi ned com m u n ities self­
organised against the spread of the riots, and against
looting in particu lar. Tuesday had put this prospect on
the table, from broom-brigades to baseball-batted Turks,
from Birm i n g ham's Asian comm u nity to the EDL. But:
nowhere the blacks. Out of this ambivalent social logic
a distorted national consensus forged a bl itz-sp irited
smugness against the asocial ity of the rioter, as the gal­
lery of riot horrors rotated endlessly on our screens: the
burning of a carpet warehouse and al l the flats above it;
the burning of a longstanding family fu rniture business;
the mugging of a bewi ldered Malaysian student; and
finally, poor, noble Tariq Jahan.46

D isti n ctly d ifferent types of incident were b e i n g ag­


g regated here : on the one hand the arson that comes
as a standard practice of rioting crowds; on the other,
crimes contingent to the riots themselves, merely oc­
curring amidst the general social chaos. Mugg ings, of

A Rising Tide Lifts A ll Boats 1 61


cou rse, occur all the time in London ; h it-and-ru ns are 47 As we've al ready
not u n usual either - though they seem to have a hab­ noted, at least one
it of occu rrin g amidst the frenzied action of a riot.47 other h it-and-run oc­
Lumped together as aspects of "The Riots"- a strange cu rred i n this m idst of
synthetic object - it perhaps real ly did look l i ke there this wave - of police,
had been some sort of ex nihi/o upsurge of "cri m inal ity i n Enfield. H it-and-
pure and simple", an inexplicable irruption of u nad ult­ runs have occu rred i n
erated immorality i nto British society, as authoritarian other modern u rban
d iscourses from state, media and beyond were by now riots, such as in 1981,
i nsisting.48 U n less this object is decomposed i nto its when a d isabled
constitutive events and dynam ics, u n less we contest man was killed by
the coherence of this object, "The Riots", we end u p police chasing stone­
confi ned t o s p i n n i n g one or another alternative i nter­ throwing youths.
pretation of the same set of incidents accord ing to our
more or less " rad ical" pol itical persuasions: Cameron 48 'Cri m i n ality pure and
says The R i ots are about " c ri m i na l ity" / I say t h ey' re s i m ple': a ph rase
about "politics" ; state and media see a lack of commu­ rolled out by David
n ity-spirited ness underlyi ng The Riots/ I say "fuck off Cameron and others
with your comm u n ity - I ' m with the rioters " ; Cameron su pposedly to identify
says The Riots are about cri m i nality/I say "great ! " What the singu larly nega­
e n s u es can o n l y be a sort of weak rhetorical m u d ­ tive, loot-centric focus
wrestling match t o wh ich t h e opponent doesn't even of the 2011 riots. This
show up. And h owever i m pressive a fig h t we m i g ht stock phrase, however,
stil l put up, most of the g round is al ready conceded is a recu rrent meme
in the acceptance of a fundamentally spurious o bject. i n the history of
We cannot respond to the question of what "The Riots" British u rban riots.
were "about" with any s i n g u lar, u n ivocal answer, be­ Doug las H u rd used
cause they were not, and cou l d not be, about anything, it to describe the
in the sense of expressing some essential , singular, uni­ Handsworth Riots of
fied intentional ity, g rievance, desire etc. As emergent 1985, and the same
social events, riots - and even m ore, riot-waves - ab­ phrase seems to
stract themselves from the contexts from which they have occu rred in 1981.
preci pitate to u nfold in forms and patterns entirely i r­ I nteresti ng ly, this
reducible to any single factor, subjective or objective.49 term - the function
of which is to
Much better instead then, to break them down i nto the posit cri m i nal ity as an
chain of events and h i g h ly overdetermined social log­ essential trait of the
ics that they are. When we do that, what is left is not i nd ividual, ru ling out
merely some empiricist chaos of facts and i ncidents, any further-reaching

Endnotes 3 1 62
but a rising tide of spontaneously u nfold i n g actions, explanation - seems
a perceptible mechanics of social u p heaval by which to have some
a fairly standard com m u n ity a n t i - p o l i ce d e m o n stra­ historical association
tion spills over i nto riot ; by wh ich this creates cop-free with the anti-semitic
space for the usual lootin g ; by wh ich this looting then fig u re of the Jew as
spreads at a startling rate, afforded fi rstly by the scale physical embodiment
of the i n itial conflag ration, and secondly by the u biq­ of crime itself.
u ity of lateral means of com m u n ication ; by which other
com m u n ities who recogn ise a common cause with the 49 It is surely this quality
rioters of Tottenham then come out to wage their own of the riot-wave as
anti-police riots, amidst the general ising d isorder; by emergent social event
which this g rowi ng contagion precipitates a broader that makes it such a
national crisis of law and order as the police struggle seductive, enigmatic
to respond ; i n which context there prol iferates a cha­ object for phi loso­
otic mass of behaviours normally kept somewhat at bay phers and pundits,
in the "social peace", and in response to wh ich other who read ily queue
com m u n ities feel compelled to self-organise agai nst u p to scrutinise this
the breakdown of order; which self-organisation then charm ingly i nscruta­
t h reaten s to eru pt i nto i nter-co m m u nal strife ; which ble thing, in whose
all compels the formation of a national consensus of depths, it is supposed,
disgust at the whole u nfolding thing, before it all dies there m ust be h idden
down, we a l l g o home, and t h e mass-i ncarceration some secret.
beg ins. The last embers of the fi re faded i n Liverpool
and Manchester that Wed nesday, with only the Eng­
lish Defence League sti l l carrying the torch , i n Eltham,
of a riot-wave that had its clearest roots i n anti-racism.

PU N I S H M E N T

The precedent established by the end of the student


strug gles for pre-emption, tech nological s u rveillance
and i ncreas i n g ly severe p u n itive response, was con­
solidated i n the state's handling of the riots. And the
country was exceptionally well equipped for it too, having
sleepwalked its way i nto being one of the most spied­
upon nations in the world, with an estimated one CCTV
camera for every 1 1 -1 4 people. What followed was one
of the biggest i nvestigations in the history of the pol ice
force, Operation VERA, i n which h u ndreds of specialists

A Rising Tide Lifts A ll Boats 1 63


trawled through video footage in a race to identify the so Ian Blair on
thousands of faces caught on camera. And though a Newsmght, 5
n ew generation of student protesters had felt they had Decem ber, 201 1 .
learnt their fi rst crucial lesson i n adopting black-bloc
tactics, having you r face covered seemed to offer no
g uarantee of protection i n the case of the riots. The
sheer extent of CCTV coverage - in designated "problem"
areas especially - provided the technological capacity
for resol ute detectives to trail individuals over a series
of hours, or even days, trying to catch just one g l i m pse
of their u nmasked faces, and assembling, in the process,
incrimi nating montages of each one, their successive
actions and, importantly, their networks. Within weeks of
the riots, 4000 people had been arrested, mostly male
and mostly between the ages of 1 8-24. That the very
fi rst batches of suspects to be rou nded u p were those
easiest to identify - whose data tethered them firmly
to the cops - allowed the g overnment to confidently
assu re the nation that the riots were not the work of
any average person , your normal British citizen, but that
of " known cri m i n als". Effectively, the police had i n itially
identified and then recal led those people most fami l iar
to it, most close-to-hand, those so candidly referred to
by ex-Metropol itan Police Com m issioner Ian Blair as
"pol ice property".50 Why wou l d the pol ice refer to such
people as their property? Because i n some sense they
do own them : their solid criminal records j u stify that
they be constantly accessible, p u l led i nto the station
at will. As police property, they are defined, somewhat
tautolog ically, by cri m inal ity - akin to a character trait.
And as we have repeatedly been rem inded, the acts
of rioters are not just simple crimes l i ke any other, but
criminality per se; crim i nal ity pure and simple. That the
only content to be found in the riots - and, by implication,
the rioters - is cri m inal ity itself, exemplifies the logic of
abjection at work here, turning those who rioted i nto
mere "property" ; a homogenous, i l legitimate l u m p that
can be separated out and cut off at will, like dead wood,
from an otherwise function i n g social whole.

Endnotes 3 1 64
This perceived homogeneity would appear in the blanket 51 C h ief Constable
sentencing of vastly d ifferent acts accord i n g to norms Peter Fahy in
completely other than those which would apply in normal, Panorama, 'Inside
non-riot circumstances. I n its generalised exemplary the Riots', BBC One,
sentencing of rioters, the state seems to impl icitly rec- 22 Novem ber 2011.
ogn ise the riot's real character as an emergent social
event. U n l i ke individual crimes, as a socially generalis-
ing logic the riot impl icitly puts society itself at stake ;
rather than the riot being a sum of the particu lar acts
of rioters, these acts then become i n stances of this
general logic. Each can thus be judged as such - as
the putting at stake, u ltimately, of society as a whole.
The response of the Chief Constable of the G reater
Manchester Pol ice was clear:

If you as an i n d ividual g o out and s h o p l ift, that's


bad , but if you go out i n a mob, that is something far
more serious . . . because it threatens society itself.
It th reatens society itself. You know, we have to be
honest, we' re a thin blue line out there as pol ice offic­
ers . . . the system will only work if the vast majority of
people observe the law.51

The necessary size of this majority has yet to be defini­


tively established. But that the thin blue l i n e suffered
at least a d rastic stretch i n g , that the city was rendered
fleetingly, yet palpably, vulnerable and breakable, meant
that every event and action was potentially explosive.
Th is point had become clear in the student protests, but
even clearer in the riots, and their respective repressions
in part reflected this.

An onslaught of attention-grabbing sentences followed :


1 6 months for snatch ing an ice-cream , 6 for a bottle of
water and 5 for receiving a pair of stolen shorts. The
newspapers abounded with such trag i-comic examples.
Disorder and the th reat of d isorder became b l urred in
convictions, sometimes even being treated equally. The
1 8 year-old Amed Pelle got almost two years in jail for

A Rising Tide Lifts A ll Boats 1 65


post i n g messages on Facebook, i n c l u d i n g o n e per­
ceived to be inciting riots i n Nottingham, " Nottz Riot,
whose o n it?", and one with a clear anti-police mes­
sage "kill one black youth , we kill a m i l l ion fedz, riot
until we own cities". The same sentence was g iven
to Dwai ne Spence, who apparently led a 40-stron g
you n g , angry crowd o n the " rampage" t h ro u g h Wol­
verham pton , attacki n g t h e police. B ut w h i l e A m e d
Pel l e ' s case i nvolved utterances, s u g g esti n g i ntent
and m otivation, other social media activities that led
to convictions were more ambiguous. And severe pun­
ishment for such i ntent did not requ i re that there had
been any actual consequence. Though nobody showed
up at McDonald's, the meeting point for the Facebook
event "Smash Down i n Northwich Town "- except the
pol ice - its creator received fou r years in jai l . The same
sentence was g iven to the poor you ngster who drunk­
enly set u p a website called "The Warrington Riots",
despite no resulting event. And this, of course, con­
stitutes the dark side of social med ia, the contents of
which can first be seized by the police, and then treat­
ed, at wil l , as though al ready constitutive of reality.

S pectacular exam ples aside, the majority of charges


were for b u rg lary, property damage and the vag u e
b u t - b y t h i s point i n t h e wave o f strug g les, u bi q u i ­
tous - category o f "violent diso rder". B y mid-October,
o u t of t h e 2 0 0 0 p e o p l e w h o a p peared before t h e
mag istrates' cou rt on more m i n o r charges, 4 0% had
received i mmed iate custodial sentences, compared to
1 2% in 2 0 1 0. But, as in the case of the student u nrest
before it, many minor incidents had been sent straight
to the Crown Courts (where over 9 0% of cases end
in jail terms) , whose sentencing of the rioters were an
estimated 1 8-25% higher than i n non-riot conditions.
Certain London courts i n particu lar became i n d u stri­
al-style justice m ills, staying open 2 4 hours a day, to
rapidly c h u rn through t h o u sands of rioters, w h o , i n
t h e face o f t h e tem porarily- i m p l e mented q u a d r u p l e

Endnotes 3 1 66
custody rate, had been left to wait in cells below the s2 Nick Clegg, speaki ng
courtroom , often crammed to their m ax i m u m capac­ in Manchester
ity. The spectrum of candidates in the 2 0 1 2 London to businesses
mayoral election would propose the standardisation affected by the riots :
of this industrious spectacle for the city as a whole on Guardian News Blog,
their glossy campaign flyers. And if this display was not 13 Aug ust 2011.
enough to appease a nation h u n g ry for "justice", the
Prime M i n ister would soon advise local councils that
they should consider withholding the shrinking welfare
cheques of all those fam i l ies harbou r i n g a rioter, or
even, perhaps, evicting them - signal l i n g to a mass of
panicked parents that they should shop in their delin­
quent kids, to save their homes. As N ick Clegg echoed :

If you go out and trash other people's houses, you


b u rn cars, you loot and smash up shops - in other
words, if you show absol utely no sense of respect to
your own community - then, of course, questions need
to be asked, whether the com m u n ity should support
you in living in that com m u n ity . . . the principle that if
you are getting some support from the comm u n ity,
you are going to have to show some support for that
com m u n ity, is a real ly, really i m portant one.52

Com m u n ity, c o m m u n ity, com m u n ity. Who ' s in and


who's out? Clegg evidently understands the logic very
well . A com m u n ity without qual ities, entirely negatively
defined - the agglomerated mass of all those who do
not trash other people's houses, burn cars, smash up
shops etc. What does this commun ity hold i n common?
O n ly t h e fact of not riotin g , and only this i nsofar as
someone else can perform that role. Rioting produces
the com m u n ity that abjects the rioter who riots against
t h i s abjection. The comm u n ity produces the abjects
who riot against this abjection to make it a commun ity.
Sentencing closes the c i rcle of abjection, seals the
bounds of community in law, and - just in case we hadn't
noticed - prominent politicians step i n to lard the whole
t h i n g i n extra added legitimacy. J ust as wel l , for the

A Rising Tide Lifts A l l Boats 1 67


bounds of that comm u nity - marked out by a thin blue 53 Riots Com m u n ities
line - had started to look pretty dodgy. J ust the line of and Victi ms Panel,
a tense and faltering smile without a face. A fter the Riots, 3.

The social logic of abjection doesn't let u p . After the


riots, rad icalisation of t h e e n d less restruct u r i n g u n ­
der the c u rrent Con-Dem coal ition proceeded a t a
startling place. Wh ile talking toug h , the state began
to make a wary few adjustments aimed at staving off
s i m i lar u p h eavals. Every wh iff of p rotest for a w h i l e
met com plete pol ice lock-down . I n t h e alluvi u m left
by the crashed wave there sprouted Occu py, but i n
t h i s context a t least, somehow sadder, even more de­
feated than what had preceded it. The cou ntry had
been stu n ned i nto silence by the riots ; the mass of
people i nvolved in anti-austerity struggles largely put
on pause ; m uted, mouths gaping open, heads turned,
l eft to watch the spectacl e of the riots b u rn t h e m ­
selves out. T h e fi rst few attempts a t post-riot protest
sig nalled complete deflation. The march against pen­
sion reform on 3 0 November 2 0 1 1 in central London
resem bled a state funeral process i o n , with approxi­
mately one pol ice officer for every two protesters, and
ten-foot-tall solid steel crowd-control fencing to fu nnel
us along in a red uced and hyper-controlled version of
that al ready-l i m ited trudge. Wh ile the kettl i n g of the
student movement had provided the intense physical
proxim ity, the compression to generate heat and esca­
late tension, the steel cordon left us utterly cold ; this
was autumn, turning into winter. Not only had the crisis
struggles weakened, fi rst in the face of the complete
i l legitimacy of their demands, second through the sheer
mag n itude of the systematic repression that followed
the riots - the riots had also u n ified the country at large
against the enemies within, the scum who had saddled
an al ready crisis-ridden country with a whopping extra
bill, estimated at around half a billion pounds.53 And we
would surely sink from the weight of it too, perhaps l i ke
those poor G reeks !

Endnotes 3 1 68
In an Olympic opening ceremony a couple of miles from
the sites of Hackney's riots, while order is ensured with
param i l itary-style pol icing, a patriotic spectacle is sum­
moned from Britai n's disorderly h istory, throwing wh ite
p u n ks and black grime kids from the nearby district of
Bow against top-hatted Industrial Revolution bourgeois;
an anarchic multicultural explosion about which we are to
feel proud, included. A year after Smiley Culture's death,
Dizzee Rascal decants the last of London's autonomous
black subcultures onto the stage. Doreen Lawrence
carries the torch through the South East London that
lit the fuse of 1 9 8 1 ; that m u rdered her son in 1 99 3 ;
where the EDL concluded t h e riot-wave i n 2 0 1 1 . J ust
outside, a Critical Mass demonstration - ord inarily toler­
ated by the cops - is stamped on hard. Young black men
continue to be stopped and searched m u ltiples of times
more than any other g roup, while a m uted recog nition
that there may be problems with this approach slowly
seeps t h ro u g h the post-riot pol itical landscape, j u st
as it did in the early 1 9 8 0s. And in this sense at least,
these riots may be said to have "worked''. Persecution of
the supposed feckless agai n ramps up, with the state­
managed class-cleansing of London estates. Thatcher's
long-awaited death lets loose a national outburst of
schadenfreude as the su rvivors of the 1 980s pour into
central London to drunkenly celebrate something that
feels vaguely l i ke a victory : at least we outlived her.

It would take q u ite an optimist to find in all this any l iteral


harbingers of revolution or of building class struggle. At
most, for a few exh ilarating moments, some had at last
stood u p - and it was exciting while it lasted . And the
i mprint of that exh i laration perhaps will persist i n the
pol itical memory of a generation. But let's not imag i n e
t h i s wave could, of itself, h ave d o n e anyth i n g o t h e r
t h a n crash a n d leave a long ebb t i d e b e h i n d . T h e anti­
austerity strugg les had nowhere to go, no real sense of
possib i l ities but a gleefu l breaking-through into some
newly raucous situation, always without aim or positive

A Rising Tide Lifts A ll Boats 1 69


horizo n ; all demands im possible; the only mean ingfu l
modes of struggle - to at least give cops and Con-Dems
a hard time - ruled by defi n ition out of bounds. As such
they could only i nvite an escalating p u n ishment. The
broader wave of strugg les had crested and threatened
to break as it came u p against this impossibility. It would
have needed some d ramatic exogenous event to d rive
it further - another deep-sea earthquake, perhaps, from
the juddering plates of the g l o bal economy, or some
major harmonic resonance from global convergences
of struggle. But such did not come, and here the wave
i ntersected with the longer-term social dynamics of
abjection which would make its i nevitable crash all the
more sudden and catastrophic.

Anti-police rioters too had been bound at best to rai l


i n their i l legitimacy against a police l o g i c that makes
them so. In themselves such riots will, of course, never
constitute a sign ificant chal lenge to a capitalist state
whose vastly hypert ro p h ied repressive apparat u s is
o n ly the outer ring aro u n d deep social structu res of
consent which solid ify all t h e m o re as t h e i r abjects
struggle agai nst them, even reproducing the function
of police at the level of com m u n ity self-organisation.
Sti l l , they can g ive us a good im pression of what the
"thi n blue line" i n crisis looks l i ke. And let's not moralise
about these riots after the fashion of a venerable leftism
which once could have taken them as a th rowback to
the past - before the workers matured and really started
organising to win ; for the workers' movement is all out
of actuality, long d efunct as such a normative meas u re.
And in recognising the sadness, the catastrophe of this
wave, let's not pretend there was some other obvious
way it could have gone, if we had only had the right
X - for if X had real ly been on the cards it would almost
certainly have been taken u p . Past waves of struggle
don't need armchair generals. But if we can scrape away
the bullshit in wh ich these things get caked, and look at
them honestly, we can at least hope to fig u re out where

Endnotes 3 1 70
we are now. Stuck in modes of struggle that rebound
upon us. Residue of positive class belonging only at
someone else's expense. And for them: class branded
onto their very being as mere objects of d isg ust. Class
declared by rule of law, enforced by police patrol. Thus
class, at least, put at stake.

A Rising Tide Lifts A ll Boats 171


LOGISTICS, CO UNTERLOGISTICS
AND THE CO M M UNIST PRO S P E CT

Jasper Bernes

1 72
What is theory for? What good is it, in the fight against 1 Karl Marx, 'Letter
capital and state? For m u ch of the left, the Marxist left to Arnold Ruge'.
in particular, the answer is obvious: theory tells us what September 1843
to do, or what is to be done, in the strangely passive (M ECW 3), 144.
formula often used here. Theory is the pedagogue of
p ractice. Thus, the essential l i n k between Comrade
Len in and his putative enemy, the Renegade Kautsky, the
master thinkers of the Th i rd and Second I nternationals:
despite their storied d isagreements, both believed that
without the special, scientific knowledge d ispensed by
intellectuals and dedicated revolutionaries, the work­
ing class was doomed to a degraded consciousness,
incapable of making revolution or, at any rate, making it
successful ly. The task of theory, therefore, is to weap­
onise proletarian consciousness, to turn it toward right
action. This d idactic view of theory extends across the
entire range of M arxist i ntel lectual work i n the 20th
century, from the comparatively crude Bolshevist pro­
g rammatics of Len i n and Trotsky to the sophisticated
variants offered by Antonio Gramsci and Louis Althusser.

There are other, non-didactic theories of theory, however.


We might look, for instance, to Marx's own very early
reflection on such matters. There is no need to play
teacher to the working class, Marx tells his friend Arnold
R u g e : " We s h a l l n ot s ay, A b an d o n y o u r strug g les,
they are m ere folly; let u s provide you with the true
campaign-slogans. I n stead we shall simply show the
world why it is struggling, and consciousness of this
is a thing it will acq u i re whether it wishes or not." 1 The
final turn i n this formulation is crucial, since it implies
that the knowledge theory provides already abounds
i n the worl d ; theory s i mply reflects, synthesizes and
perhaps acc e l e rates the " s e lf-clarificat i o n . . . of t h e
struggles and wishes o f a n age". Theory is a moment i n
t h e self-education o f the proletariat, whose cu rricu l u m
involves i nflammatory pamphlets a n d beer-hall oratory
as much as barricades and streetfig hting.

Logistics, Coun terlogistics a n d the Comm unist Prospect 1 73


I n this regard, theory is more a map than a set of d i rec­ 2 Fred ric Jameson,
tions: a survey of the terrain i n which we find ourselves, 'Postmodern ism, or
a way of getting our bearings i n advance of any risky the Cu ltu ral Logic of
course of action. I am thinking here of Fredric Jameson's Late Capital ism', New
essay on the "cultural logic of late capitalism", and his Left Review 146 (J u ly­
call for "cognitive maps" that can orient us withi n the August 1984), 84.
new spaces of the postindustrial world. Though Jameson
must surely count as an exponent of the pedagogical 3 See the forthcom i n g
view of theory - call i n g for cogn itive maps by way of 'A H i story of Separa­
a defense of d idacticism in art - part of the appeal of tion' in Endnotes 4 for
this essay is the way h i s call for maps emerges from a a full exposition of
vividly narrated disorientation, from a phenomenology of the betrayal thematic
the bewildered and lost. Describing the i nvoluted voids with i n the ultraleft.
of the Bonaventure hotel, Jameson situates the reader
with in a spatial allegory for the abstract structures of
late capitalism and the "incapacity of our minds . . . to map
the g reat g lobal m u ltinational and decentered commu­
nication network i n which we find ou rselves caught as
i n d ividual subjects".2 Theory is a map produced by the
lost themselves, offering us the d ifficult view from within
rather than the clarity of the O lympian view from above.

Langu ishing in the shadow of its dominant counterpart,


antid idactic theory has often remained a b itter i nver­
sion of the i ntellectualist presum ptions of the Len i nist
or G ramscian view. Whereas the d idactic view tells us
that revolution fails for lack of theory, or for lack of the
right theory - fails because the correct consciousness
was not cultivated - the communist ultra-left that inherits
the antididactic view offers instead a theory of i ntellec­
tual betrayal, a theory of m i l itant theory as the corrup­
tion of the organic i ntelligence of the working class.3
The role of theorists, then, is to prevent these corrupt­
ing i nterventions by i ntel lectuals, in order to allow for
the spontaneous self-organisation of the working class.
As a consequence, the h i storical u ltra-left, congeal i n g
i n the wake of the fail u re o f the revolutionary wave o f
the early 2 0th cent u ry and the victory of a d isti n ctly
counter-revolutionary Marxism, adopts a reflective and

Endnotes 3 1 74
contemplative (if not fatalist) orientation to the u nfold­
ing of strugg les, offering d iag nosis at most but never
any strateg ic reflection, lest it comm it the card inal sin
of " intervention", playing the pedagogue to the masses.
The result is a perversely u n happy consciousness who
both knows better and yet, at the same time, feels that
such knowi ng is at best useless and at worst harmful .
T h i s g u i lty self-consciousness plagues even those i m ­
portant theories - b y G i l les Dauve and Theorie Com­
m u n iste, for i n stance - wh ich emerge after 1 9 6 8 as
critiques of the historical u ltra-left.

But if we really believe that theory emerges as part of the


self-clarification of strugg les, then there is no reason to
fear i ntervention, or strateg ic thought. Any perspective
m i l itants and i ntellectuals m i g ht bring to a struggle is
either already represented with i n it or, on the contrary,
capable of being confronted as one of many obstacles and
impasses antagonists encou nter in their self-ed ucation.
Strategic thought is not external to strugg les, but native
to them, and every set of victories or fai l u res opens u p
new strategic prospects - possible futures - which must
be exam ined and whose effects in the present can be
accou nted for. In descri bing these prospects, theory
inevitably takes sides among them. This is not to issue
orders to struggles, but to be ordered by them.

TH E O RY F R O M THE G RO U N D

The following essay is a n experiment in theory writing. I t


attempts t o render explicit t h e l i n k between theory a s it
u nfolds i n the pages of comm u n ist journals and theory
as it u nfolds in the conduct of struggles, demonstrating
how reflections about the restructuring of capital ism
emerg e as the conseq uence of particu lar moments
of strugg le. From these theoretical horizons, specific
strategic prospects also emerge, and inasmuch as they
are d iscussed on the g round and affect what happens
there, we can only with g reat effort avoid them.

Logistics, Counterlogistics and t h e Comm unist Prospect 1 75


We can (and perhaps should ) always ask of the theories
we encou nter, Where are we ? In response to which
practical experience has this theory emerged? I n what
follows we are, for the most part, in the port of Oakland,
Cal iforn ia, beneath the shadows of cyclopean gantry
cranes and contai ner ships, pacing around anxiously
with the 20,000 other people who have entered the port
in order to blockade it, as part of the so-called "General
Stri ke" cal led for by Occupy Oakland on N ovem ber
2 , 2 0 1 1 . Every participant i n the b lockade that day
surely had some i ntu itive sense of the port's central ity
to the northern Cal ifornian economy, and it is with this
intu itive orientation that theory beg ins. If asked, they
wou l d tell you that a sizeable fraction of what they
consumed originated overseas, got put onto sh ips, and
passed through ports l i ke Oakland's en route to its final
destination. As an i nterface between production and
consum ption, between the US and its overseas trading
partners, between hundreds of thousands of workers
and the various forms of circu lating capital they engage,
the quieted mach inery of the port q u i ckly became an
emblem for the complex totality of capitalist production
it seemed both to eclipse and to reveal .

For o u r blockaders, then, a l l manner of questions unfolded


d i rectly from t h e i r e n c o u nter with t h e space of t h e
port a n d i t s machinery. H o w m i g ht w e prod uce a map
of the vario u s com panies - th e flows of capital and
labou r - d i rectly or indirectly affected by a blockade of
the port, by a blockade of particular termi nals? Who sits
at one remove? At two removes or three? Additional ly,
questions emerged about the relationship between the
blockade tactic and the g rievances of those who took
part. Though organised in col laboration with the local
section of the I LWU (the dockworker's union ) , in soli­
darity with the th reatened workers in Longview, Wash­
ington, few people who came to the blockade knew
anything about Longview. They were there in response
to the pol ice eviction of Occupy Oakland's camp and

Endnotes 3 1 76
in solidarity with whatever they understood as the chief 4 For an exam ple, see
grievances of the Occupy movement. How, then, to char­ 'Blockading the Port
acterise the relationship between the blockaders, many Is Only the Fi rst of
of whom were unemployed or marg i nally employed, and Many Last Resorts'
the highly organised port workers? Who was affected ( bayofrage.com ) , a
by such a blockade? What is the relationsh i p between text that add resses
the blockade and the strike tactic? Once asked, these many of the questions
questions l i n ked the moment of the blockade to related outlined above, and
mobilisations: the piqueteros of the Argentine uprisings which was d istrib­
of the late 1 990s and early 2000s, unemployed workers uted with i n Occu py
who, absent any other way of prosecuting their demands Oakland after the first
for government assistance, took to blockad ing roads in blockade and before
small, dispersed bands; the piquets volants of the 2 0 1 0 the second, m u lti-city
French strikes against proposed changes in pension law, blockade. In many
bands of dispersed picketers who supported blockades regards, the essay
by workers but also engaged in their own blockades, here is a formalisation
independent of strike activity ; the recent strikes by work­ and refi nement of a
ers in I KEA's and Wal-Mart's supply chains; and every­ process of d iscussion,
where, in the season of pol itical t u m u lt that fol lows on reflection and critique
the crisis of 2008, a prol iferation of the blockade and a i n itiated by that text.
waning of the strike as such (with the exception of the
industrial "BRIGS", where a renegade labour formation
has i n itiated a new strike wave ) .

LOGISTICS AN D HYD RAU L I C CAPITA L I S M

These are not q uestions that belong solely to formal


theory. They were d ebated i m m ed iately by those
who partici pated i n t h e blockade and who planned
for a second blockade a month later.4 Some of these
d ebates i n voked t h e c o n cept of " g l o ba l isati o n " to
make sense of the i ncreasing central ity of the port and
i nternational trade with i n capitalism, i n an echo of the
alter-global isation movement of the early 2000s. But it
has always been u nclear what the term "globalisation"
is supposed to mean, as marker for a new h istorical
phase. Capital ism has been global from the very start,
emerg i n g from with i n the blood-soaked matrix of the
mercantile expansion of the early modern period. Later

Logistics, Coun terlogistics and the Communist Prospect 1 77


on, its factories and mills were fed by planetary flows 5 'Lean manufacturing'
of raw material, and prod uce for a market which is l i ke­ beg ins as a formalisa­
wise i nternational . The real q uestion, then, is what kind tion of the principles
of globalisation we have today. What is the differentia behind the Toyota
specifica of today's globalisation? What is the precise Prod uction System,
relationship between production and circulation? seen d u ring the
1980s as a solution
Today's supply chains are d istingu ished not j ust by their to the ailments of
planetary extension and i ncred ible speed but by their American manufac-
d i rect integration of manufactu re and retail, their harmo- turing firms. See
nisation of the rhythms of production and consum ption. James P. Womack et
Since the 1 9 80s, business writers have touted the value al., The Machine That
of " l ean" and "flexible" prod uction models, i n w h i ch Changed the World
suppliers maintain the capacity to expand and contract (Rawson Associates
production, as well as change the types of commodities 1990). The concept
produced , by relyi ng on a network of subcontractors, of 'flexi bility' emerges
temporary workers, and m utable organisational struc- from debates i n the
tu res, adaptations that req u i re precise control over the late 1970s about
flow of goods and information between un its.5 Originally the possibil ity of an
associated with the Toyota Production System, and Jap- alternate manufactur-
anese man ufactu rers in general, these corporate forms ing system based on
are now frequently identified with the loose moniker J ust 'flexible specialisation'
I n Time (J IT) , which refers in the specific sense to a form rather than Fordist
of inventory management and in general to a produc- economies of scale, a
tion philosophy in which firms aim to e l i m inate standing system thought to be
inventory (whether produced i n-house or received from enabled by h i g h ly-
suppliers) . Derived in part from the Japanese and in part adj ustable Computer
from Ang lo-American cybernetics, J IT is a circulationist N u merical Control
production philosophy, oriented around a concept of (CNC) mach ines.
"continuous flow" that views everything not i n motion M ichael J. Piore and
as a form of waste (muda) , a d rag on profits. J IT aims Charles F. Sabel, The
to submit all prod uction to the condition of circulation, Second Industrial
pushing its velocity as far toward the l i g ht-speed of Divide: Possibilities
information transmission as possible. From the perspec- For Prosperity (Basic
tive of our blockaders, this emphasis on the q u ick and Books 1984).
continuous flow of commodities m u ltipl ies the power of
the blockade. In the absence of standing i nventories, a 6 Busi ness writer Barry
blockade of just a few days could effectively paralyse Lyn n's End of the
many manufactu rers and retailers.6 Line is devoted to

Endnotes 3 1 78
In J IT systems, manufacturers must coordinate upstream demonstrating the
suppl iers with downstream buyers, so speed alone is dangerous frag i l ity
insufficient. Timing is crucial. Th rough precise coord i na­ of today's distributed
tion, firms can invert the trad itional buyer-seller relation­ production system,
ship i n which goods are first prod uced and then sold to where a 'breakdown
a consumer. By replenishing goods at the exact moment anywhere i ncreasingly
they are sold, with no build-up of stocks along the way, means a breakdown
J IT firms perform a weird sort of time-travel , making it everywhere, much
seem as if they only make prod ucts that have al ready i n the way that a
been sold to the end-consumer. As opposed to the older, small perturbation
"push prod uction" model, i n which factories generated i n the electricity grid
massive stockpi les of goods that retailers would clear i n Ohio tripped the
from the market with promotions and coupons, i n today's g reat North American
"pull" production system " retailers share POS [poi nt-of­ blackout of August
sale] i nformation with their vendors who can then rap­ 2003'. Barry C Lynn,
idly replenish the retailers' stock". 7 This has lead to the End of the Line: The
functional i nteg ration of suppl iers and retailers, under Rise and Coming Fall
terms i n wh ich the retailers often have the u pper hand. of the Global Cor-
Massive buyers l i ke Wal-Mart reduce their suppl iers to poration ( Doubleday
m ere vassals, d i rectly control ling product design and 2005), 3.
pricing while still retain i n g the flexibil ity to terminate a
contract if needed. They gain the benefits of vertical 7 Edna Bonacich
integration without the liabil ity that comes from formal and Jake B Wilson,
ownersh ip. Whereas in the early 1 9 80s some thought Getting the Goods:
that the emphasis on flexibility and dynamism would shift Ports, Labor, and the
the balance of power from big, inflexible multinationals to Logistics Revolution
small, agile firms, lean production has instead only meant ( Cornell U n iversity
a phase change rather than a weakening of the power Press 2008), 5.
of m u ltinational firms. The new arrangement features
what Bennett H arrison has called the "concentration a Bennett Harrison,
without central isation" of corporate authority.8 Lean and Mean: The
Changing Land­
Lean manufacturing, flexibility, just-in-time inventory sys­ scape of Corporate
tems, " p u l l " production : each one of these innovations Power in the Age of
now forms a component part of the so-called "log istics Flexibility (G u ilford
revolution", and the corresponding "logistics industry", Press 1 997), 8-12.
which consists of in-house and third-party specialists in
supply-chain design and management. Enabled by the
technical transformations of the shipping and transport

Logistics, Coun terlogistics and the Comm unist Prospect 1 79


industry, containerisation in particular, as wel l as the pos- 9 Marx, Grundrisse
sibilities afforded by i nformation and comm u n ications (MECW 28), 448
tech nol ogy, logistics workers now coord i n ate d ifferent (Nicolaus trans.).
productive moments and circulatory flows across vast
i nternational d i stances, ensuri n g that the where and
when of the commod ity obtains to the precision and
speed of data. Confirming the veracity of the oft-q uoted
passage from Marx's Grundrisse about the tendential
development of the world m arket, t h ro u g h log istics,
capital "strives simu ltaneously for a g reater extension
of the market and for g reater an n i h i lation of space by
time".9 But log istics is more than the extension of the
world market in space and the acceleration of com-
mod ital flows : it is the active power to coord i nate and
choreog raph , the power to conjoin and split flows ; to
speed u p and slow down ; to change the type of com-
mod ity produced and its origin and destination point;
and, finally, to collect and distribute knowledge about
the production, movement and sale of commod ities as
they stream across the grid.

Logistics is a m u ltivalent term . It names an i n d ustry


i n its own right, com posed of firms that handle t h e
adm i n istration o f s h i p p i n g a n d receiving f o r other cor­
porations, as wel l as an activity that many businesses
handle i nternally. But it also refers, metonymical ly, to
a transformation of capital ist prod uction overal l : the
"logistics revolution". In this latter sense, logistics i ndexes
the su bord i nation of p rod uction to the conditions of
circu lation, the becoming-hegemonic of those aspects
of the prod uction process that i nvolve circu lation. I n
t h e idealised world-picture o f log istics, man ufactu re i s
merely o n e moment in a continuous, Heracl itean flux;
the factory dissolves into planetary flows, chopped up
i nto modu lar, component processes which, separated
by thousands of m iles, combine and recombine accord­
ing to the changing whims of capital. Log istics aims to
transmute all fixed capital i nto circulating capital, the
better to i mitate and conform to the purest and most

Endnotes 3 1 80
liquid of forms capital takes : money. This is i m possible, 10 G i l les Deleuze and
of cou rse, since the valorisation process req u i res fixed Felix G u attari, Anti­
capital outlays at some point along the circu its of repro­ Oedipus: Capitalism
duction, and therefore someone somewhere will have to and Schizophrenia
shoulder the risk that comes with i nvesting in immobile ( U n iversity of Min­
plant and mach inery. But log istics is about m itigating nesota Press 1983),
this risk, it is about transform ing a mode of prod uction 227-228.
into a mode of circu lation, in which the frequencies and
channel capacities of the circu its of capital are what 11 Braudel, notably,
matters. In this the log istics revolution conforms to the treats capital ism as
hydrau lic conception of capital ism outlined by Deleuze the i ntervention onto
and Guattari in the 1 970s, in which surplus value resu lts a pre-existing plane
not so m u c h from t h e i rreve rs i b l e transformation of of market transac­
worked matter but from the conj u nction of one flow tions by powerful
(money) with another (labour) . 1 0 In this accou nt, infl u­ actors who are able
enced by Fernand Braudel's description of the origins to suspend the rules
of capitalism, and its revision by world-systems theory, of fai r play for their
capital is noth ing so m u ch as the commander of flows, own benefit. Capital
breaki n g and conj o i n i n g various cu rrents in order to is, fundamental ly, a
create a vast i rrigation and d rainage of social power. manipu lation of circu­
Logistics turns solids i nto liquids - or at its extreme, into lation and the flows
electrical fields - taking the movement of discrete ele­ of a market economy.
ments and treating them as if they were oil in a pipeline, Fernand Braudel, The
flowing continuously at precisely adjustable pressures. 1 1 Wheels of Commerce,
( U n iversity of Califor­
TH E U S E -VAL U E O F LOGISTICS nia Press 1992), 22.

So far our project of cogn itive mapping has successfully


situated our blockaders with i n a vast spatial horizon, a
network of reticulated flows, against the backd rop of
which even the gargantuan containerships, even the
teem ing thousands of blockaders, are mere flyspecks.
But the picture we have g iven is without depth, without
history; it is, i n other words, a picture, and we might
wonder whether some of the disorientation to which the
concept of the cogn itive map responds is aggravated
by the spatial (and visual) approach . Perhaps " map"
functions as metaphor more than anything else, refer­
ri ng to an elaboration of concepts and categories i n

Logistics, Coun terlogistics a n d the Communist Prospect 1 81


both spatial and temporal d imensions. A map, but also 12 I n Marxist value
a story, chart, and d iagram, because once we adopt theory, circu lation is
the view from somewhere, the view for somebody, we often treated as an
place ou rselves between a past and a futu re, at the 'unproductive' sphere
leadi n g edge of a chain of causes that are as much separate from the
i n need of mapping as the spatial arrangement of the value-generating ac­
supply chain, especially if we want to have any sense tivities of the sphere of
of what m ight happen next. prod uction. Because
no s u rplus val ue can
In other words, we will want to know why capital tu rned be added through
to logistics. Why d i d capital reorganise in t h i s man­ 'acts of buying or sell­
ner? I n pursuit of wh ich advantages and in response to ing', which i nvolve o n ly
which impasses? One answer, h inted at above, is that the 'conversion of the
logistics is a simple accelerator of commod ity flows. same val ue from one
Log istics is a method to decrease the tu rnover time form i nto another', the
of capital, and thereby raise total profits. Short turno­ costs associated with
ver t i m es and q u ick p rod u ction cycles can prod uce these activities (book­
very h i g h total profits with even the very low rates of keeping, i nventory,
profit (per tu rnover) which capital ists encou ntered i n retai ling, adm i n i stra­
the 1 970s. Log istics was one solution, t h e n , to "the tion) are faux frais pure
long downturn" that e merged i n t h e 1 970s and the and s i m ple, ded uctions
general crisis it ushered i n , as opportun ities for profit­ from the total surplus
taking through investment in the productive apparatus val ue (Marx, Capital
(in new plant and mach inery) began to van ish. As we Vol. 2 (M ECW 36), 133).
know from n umerous accou nts, one result is that capi­ However, Marx arg ues
tal flowed i nto financial assets, real estate, and the l i ke, that certai n activities
amplifying the velocity and bandwidth of the money sup­ associated with cir­
ply and the credit market, and concocting novel forms culation - t ransport, i n
of finance capital. But this well-documented process particular - are val ue­
of financialisation had as its hidden cou nterpart a mas­ generating, for the
sive i nvestment of capital i n the complementary sphere persuasive reason that
of commod ity (rather than money) circulation, increas­ it would be i nconsist­
ing the throughput of the transportation system and ent to treat the trans­
accelerating the velocity of commod ity capital through port of coal from the
a buildout i n the form of tan kers, port complexes, rail­ bottom of the m i n e to
yards, robotically-control led d istribution centers, and the top as prod uctive
t h e d i g ital and n etwork technology needed to m a n ­ but its transport from
a g e the increased volume a n d complexity o f trade. The the m i n e to a power
shipping container and the commodity future were thus plant as u n prod uctive.

Endnotes 3 1 82
complementary technical innovations, streamlining and C i rculation, then, refers
su percharging d ifferent segments of the total circuit of to two different pro­
reproduction. The ever-faster rotations of credit and cesses that are con­
commodities around the globe are m utually enabling ceptually distinct but in
relays. H owever, i nvestment i n these areas is not j ust practice almost always
about brute velocity ; it also aims at reducing the asso­ intertwined. Fi rst, there
ciated costs of circu lation and thereby increasing the is a metamorpho-
total load of the transport systems. Alongside the obvi­ sis in the form of the
ous economies of scale and mechanisation afforded by commod ity, as com­
container technology, i nteg rated i nformation systems modities change into
vastly reduce the adm i n istrative costs associated with money and vice versa.
c i rc u lation, freeing up more m oney for d i rect i nvest­ This is 'circu lation' not
ment in production. 1 2 in actual space but in
the ideal phase-space
But these developments cannot b e understood in terms of the commodity-form.
of q uantitative increase and decrease alone : increase As Marx notes, 'mov­
in speed and volume of commod ital flows, decrease in able commod ity values,
overhead . There is an important q ual itative goal here such as cotton or pig
as well, described by log istics as "ag i lity"- that is, the i ron, can remain in
power to change, as q u ickly as possible, the speed, the same warehouse
location, origi n and destination of products, as well as while they u n dergo
product type, in order to meet volatile market conditions. dozens of circu lation
Corporations aim for " responsive supply chains", as the processes, and are
chapter title of one popular log istics handbook has it, bought and resold by
"such that [they] can respond i n shorter time-frames specu lators'. We need
both i n terms of volume change and variety changes". 1 3 to distinguish this type
I n t h e i r interventive role, log istics experts m i g ht seek of properly u n produc­
to identify and remedy bottlenecks in order to maintain tive circulation - 'where
ag i l ity. But as a matter of preventive design, specialists it is the property title
w i l l strive to syn c h ro n ise and d i stribute i nformation to the thing and not
across the entire supply chain so that suppl iers can the thing itself' that
take appropriate action before i ntervention becomes moves - from the phys­
necessary. Th is d istributed i nformation is referred to as ical circu lation of the
a "virtual su pply chain", a chain of transm itted sym bolic object in space, which
representations that flows o p posite to t h e p hysical might be thought of
movement of commodities. Entirely separate firms might as an extension of the
use d i stributed data of t h i s sort to coord i n ate t h e i r val ue-generating activ­
activities. T h e result, a s Bonacich a n d Wilson note, is ities of the prod uctive
that "competition . . . sh ift [s] from the firm level to the sph ere ( ibid., 1 53).

Logistics, Coun terlogistics a n d the Communist Prospect 1 83


supply chain leve l ". 1 4 But transparency of data does 13 Martin Ch ristopher,
not level the playi n g field at all ; typical ly, one of the Logistics a n d Supply
actors i n t h e s u pply-cha i n network w i l l retain d o m i ­ Chain Management
nance, without necessarily placing itself a t the centre (FT Press 2011), gg.
of operations - Wal-Mart, for i nstance, has insisted its
suppl iers place Radio Frequency Identification (RFI D) 14 Bonacich and Wilson,
tags on pallets and containers, allowi ng it to manage Getting the Goods, 5.
its inventory much more effectively, at considerable cost
to the suppliers. 1 5 15 Erick C. Jones and
Ch ristopher A C h u ng,
Before w e consider t h e final reason for t h e log istics RFID in Logistics (CRC
revolution, a brief historical note is in order. Until WWI I, Press 2010), 87.
the field of corporate or business logistics did not ex-
ist at all. I nstead , log istics was a purely m i l itary affair, 1& The story of Malcolm
referring to the methods that armies used to provision Mclean and Sea­
themselves, moving suppl ies from the rear to the front Land is narrated i n
l i ne, a m u ndane but fundamental enterprise which m i l i­ Marc Levi nson, The
tary h istorians since Th ucydides have acknowledged Box (Princeton 2010),
as a key determ i nant of the success of exped itionary 36-75, 171-178.
wars. Business log istics as a distinct field evolved i n
t h e 1 950s, building upon in novations in military logistics,
and drawing upon the interchange of personnel between
the m i l itary, industry and the academy so characteristic
of the postwar period, i nterchanges su perintended by
the fields of cybernetics, i nformation theory and opera­
tions research. The con nection between m i l itary and
corporate log istics remained i n t i m ate. For i n stance,
though Malco l m Mclean i ntrod uced stackable s h i p­
ping containers in the 1 950s, and had al ready managed
to containerise some domestic transport l ines, it was
his Sea-Land Service's container-based solution to the
log istics crisis of the Vietnam War that general ised the
tech nology and demonstrated its effectiveness for in­
ternational trade.1 6 Likewise, RFI D tech nology was first
deployed by the US mil itary in I raq and Afghanistan, at
which point Wal-Mart begi n exploring its use. Shortly
afterwards, the Department of Defense and Wal-Mart
issued mandates to their largest suppliers, requ i ri n g
t h e m to u s e RFID tags on t h e i r merchandise. T h e l i n k

Endnotes 3 1 84
between corporate log istics and m i l itary log istics is 11 Wal mart CEO Bill
so strong that the many of Wal-Mart's managers and Simon, a former Navy
executives - who set the standard for the industry as a officer, i n itiated pro­
whole - come from the m i litary. 1 7 g rams which recru it
managers and execu­
Log istics, w e might say, is war by other means, war by tives from the m i l itary.
means of trade. A war of supply chains that conquers Michael Bergdahl,
new territories by suffusing them with capillarial d istribu­ What I Learned From
tions, ensuring that commodities flow with ease to the Sam Walton (John
farthest extremities. From this martial perspective, we Wiley 2004), 155. He
might useful ly distinguish, however, between an offensive has also established
and a defensive logistics. The offensive forms we have 'leadership' prog rams
already described above : logistics seeks to satu rate modeled on m i l itary
markets, red uce costs and outproduce com petitors, academ ies.
maintain maxim u m throughput and maxim u m p rodu ct
variety. In this offensive aspect, logistics emphasises 18 Ch ristopher, Logistics
flexi bil ity, plasticity, permutab i lity, dynamism, and mor- and Supply Chain
phogenesis. But it finds its complement in a series of Management, 1 89-210.
protocols which are fundamental ly defensive, m itigating
supply chain risk from blockades and earthquakes, strikes
and supplier shortages. If "ag i lity" is the watchword of
offensive logistics, defensive logistics aims for "resilience"
and emphasises the values of elasticity, homeostasis,
stabi lity, and longevity. But resilience is only ostensibly a
conservative principle; it finds stabi lity not in i nflexibil ity
but in constant, self-stabi l ising adaptivity.1 8 In this sense,
the defensive and the offensive forms of logistics are
really impossible to d isentangle, since one firm's agi lity
is another's volatil ity, and the more flexible and dynam ic
a firm becomes the more it " exports" uncertainty to the
system as a whole, requiring other firms to become more
resi lient. In any case, we can expect that, in the context
of the economic crisis and the loom ing environmental
col lapse, log istics will become more and more the sci­
ence of risk management and crisis m itigation.

Logistics is capital's art of war, a series of tech n iq u es


for i ntercapitalist and i nterstate competition. But such
wars are, at the same time, always fought through and

Logistics, Coun terlogistics and the Communist Prospect 1 85


agai nst workers. One of the most significant reasons
for the extension, complication and l u b rication of these
planetary supply chains is that they allow for arbitrage
of the labo u r market. The sophisticated , permutable
supply chains of the contemporary world make it pas :
sible for capital to seek out the lowest wages anywhere
in the world and to play proletarians off of each other.
Log istics was therefore one of the key weapons in a
decades-long global offensive against labou r. The plan­
etary supply chains enabled by containerisation effectively
encircled labou r, laying siege to its defensive emplace­
ments such as u n ions and, eventual ly, over the cou rse
of the 1 9 8 0 s and 1 9 9 0s, completely cru s h i n g them.
From there, with labour on the run, logistics has enabled
capital to qu ickly neutralise and outmanoeuvre whatever
feeble resistance workers mount. Although capital must
deal with the problem of sunk investments in immovable
b u i l d i ngs, mach ines, and other i nfrastructures, recon­
figurable supply chains allow it unprecedented power to
route around, and starve, troublesome labour forces. By
splitting workers i nto a "core" composed of permanent
workers (often conservative and loyal) and a periphery
of casualised, outsourced and fragmented workers, who
may or may not work for the same fi rm, capital has d is­
persed proletarian resistance quite effectively. But these
organisational structures require systems of coordination,
communication and transport, opening capital up to the
danger of disruption in the space of circu lation, whether
by workers charged with circulating commodities or by
others, as with the port blockade, who choose circulation
as their space of effective action, for the simple reason
that capital has already made this choice as wel l . The
actions of the participants i n the port blockade are, in
this regard , doubly determ i ned by the restructuring of
capital. They are there not only because the restructur­
ing of capital has either left them with no jobs at all or
placed them into jobs where action as workers accord­
ing to the classical tactics of the worker's movement
has been proscribed, but also because capital itself has

Endnotes 3 1 86
i ncreasingly taken the sphere of circu lation as the object
of its own i nterventions. In this regard, theory provides
us not only with the why of capital's restructuring but
the why of a n ew cycle of struggles.

VIS I B I LITY A N D P R A X I S

It should be obvious by now that logistics is capital's own


project of cognitive mapping. Hence, the prominence
of "visibil ity" among the watchwords of the log istics
i n d u stry. To manage a supply chain means to render
it transparent. The flows of commod ities i n which we
locate our blockaders are doubled by flows of information,
by a s i g n ifying chain that su perintends the commod­
ity chain, sometimes without h u man intervention at all.
Alongside the pred ictive models of finance, which aim
to represent and control the chaotic fl uctuations of the
credit system and money, log istics l i kewise manages
the complex flows of the commod ity system t h ro u g h
structu res o f representation. We m ig ht imag i n e , t h e n ,
a log istics against logistics, a cou nter-logistics which
employs the conceptual and techn ical equipment of the
industry in order to identify and exploit bottlenecks, to
g ive our blockaders a sense of where they stand within
the flows of capital . Th is cou nter-log istics m ight be a
proletarian art of war to match capital's own ars be/Ii.
Imagine if our blockaders knew exactly which commod i­
ties the containers at particu lar berths, or on particu lar
ships, contained ; imagine if they could learn about the
origin and destination of these commodities and calcu­
late the possible effects - functionally and i n dollars - of
delays or interru ptions in particular flows. Possession
of such a cou nterlog istical system, which m i g ht be as
crude as a written i nventory, would allow antagonists to
focus their attention where it would be most effective.
Taking, for example, the situation of the French pension
law struggles of 2 0 1 0, i n which mobile blockades in
groups of twenty to a hundred moved throughout French
cities, supporting the picket l ines of striking workers but

Logistics, Coun terlogistics and the Comm unist Prospect 1 87


also b lockad i n g key sites i ndependently, the powers 19 The blockades I am
of coord ination and concentration perm itted by such a tal king about differ
system are immediately apparent. 1 9 This is one example of from the classical
the strategic horizons which unfold from within struggles, barricade in that they
even if most d iscussions of such cou nterlog istics will are offensive rather
have to be conducted with particular occasions i n mind. than defensive. The
main pu rpose of the
But beyond the practical value of counterlogistic informa­ barricades of the
tion, there is what we might call its existential val u e : the 19th century was
way in which being able to see one's own actions alongside that they dispersed
the actions of others, and being able to see as well the the state's forces so
effects of such concerted action, i m bues those actions that small groups of
with a meaning they m i g ht have otherwise lacked. The sold iers could either
contagiousness of the Arab Spring - for example - arises be defeated with
i n part from the affirmative effect of transm itted i mages force or fraternised
of struggle. Being able to see one's own action in the with and converted.
face of state violence reflected i n and even enlarged But the weakness of
by the actions of others can be profoundly galvanising. the barricade fig ht,
Th is is another one of the values of theory with regard as described by writ­
to praxis - the ability to p lace struggles side by side, to ers from Blanqui to
render struggles visible to each other and to themselves. Engels, was that par­
tisans defended par­
Th i s i m po rtance of visibil ity - or leg i b i l ity, as he cal ls ticular territories (their
it - is essential to one of the best d iscussions of the own neigh borhoods)
restructuring of labour i n late capital ism, Richard Sen­ and could not sh ift
nett's The Corrosion of Character. Sennett suggests around as needed.
that the "weak work identity" of contemporary work­ See Louis-Auguste
places - d isti n g u ished mai n ly by com puterisation, i n Blanqui, 'Manual for
his treatment - results from t h e utter illegibility o f the an Armed Insu rrection'
work processes to the workers themselves. Visiting a (marxists.org) and
bakery which he had studied decades earl ier for his first Engels, 'I ntrod uction
book, The Hidden Injuries of Class, Sennett finds that, to Karl Marx's "Class
i n place of the physically challenging processes of the Struggles i n France"'
1 9 60s bakery, workers now used computer-controlled (M ECW 27), 517-519.
mach ines which can produce any kind of bread accord ­
ing to changing market conditions, simply by pressing a
few buttons. As a resu lt, u n l i ke bakers i n the past, the
workers do not identify with their jobs or derive satisfac­
tion from their tasks, precisely because the functioning

Endnotes 3 1 88
of the mach ines is fundamentally opaque to them. The 20 Richard Sennett, The
d ifference between enteri ng val ues i nto a spreadsheet Corrosion of Char­
and baki ng bread is neg l i g i ble to them. Concrete labour acter: The Personal
has become fundamentally abstract, scrambling at the Consequences of
same time d istinctions between material and immaterial, Work in the New Capi­
manual and mental labour: talism (W. W. Norton &
Co. 2000), 68.
Computerized baki ng has p rofo u n d ly changed the
balletic physical activities of the shop floor. N ow the
bakers make no physical contact with the materials or
the loaves of bread , monitori ng the entire process via
on-screen icons which depict, for instance, images of
bread color derived from data about the temperatu re
and baking time of the ovens; few bakers actually see
the loaves of bread they make. Their worki ng screens
are organized i n the fami liar Windows way; i n one,
icons for many more d ifferent kinds of bread appear
than had been prepared i n the past - Russian, Italian,
French loaves all possible by touch i n g the screen .
Bread had become a screen representation.

As a result of working i n this way, the bakers now no


longer actually know how to bake bread. Automated
bread is no marvel of technolog ical perfection ; the
mach ines frequently tell the wrong story about the
l oaves rising wit h i n , for i n stance, fai l i n g to gauge
accu rately t h e strength of the rising yeast, o r the
actual color of the loaf. The workers can fool with
the screen to correct somewhat for these defects;
what they can't do is fix the mach i nes, or more i m por­
tant, actually bake bread by manual control when the
mach ines all too often go down. Program-dependent
laborers, they can have no hands-on knowledge. The
work is no longer legible to them, i n the sense of
understanding what they are doing.20

There is an interesting paradox here, which Sennett draws


out very nicely in the fol lowing pages: the more transpar­
ent and "user-friendly" the computerised processes are,

Logistics, Coun terlogistics and the Communis t Prospect 1 89


the more opaque the total process they control becomes. 21 Fredric Jameson, The
His conclusion should trouble any simpl istic conception Geopolitical A esthetic:
of the powers of visi bil ity or the "cogn itive map" as such, Cinema and Space
a problem that Jameson recogn ised early on, declaring in the World System,
" informational tech nology the representational solution (Indiana U n iversity
as wel l as the representational problem of [the] world Press, 1995). 10.
system's cogn itive mapping".21 The problems for Sen­
nett's workers, as well as for our blockaders, are practical
as much as they are epistemolog ical, a matter of doing
and knowing together. U nless the representations such
systems provide widen our capacity to do and to make,
to effect changes upon the world, they will make that
world m o re rather than less opaq u e , no m atter how
richly descriptive they m ight be. And though Sennett's
discussion is geared only toward the world of labour (and
i m bued with typical l eft-wing nostalgia for the sa voir­
faire and stable identities that skilled work entailed) the
problems of leg i b i l ity pertain as much to our b lockaders
as to the dockworkers at the port. To persist beyond an
i n itial moment, struggles need to recog n ise themselves
i n the effects they create, they need to be able to map
out those effects, not j ust by position i n g themselves
with i n the abstract and concrete space of late capital,
but with i n a political sequence that has both past and
future, that opens onto a horizon of poss i b i l ities. All of
this req u i res knowledge but it requ i res knowledge that
can be practiced , that can be worked out.

Our blockaders are therefore dispossessed of usable


knowledge by a techn ical system i n which they appear
only as incidental actors, as points of relay and inser­
tion wh ich requ i re at most a stenographic compression
of their i m m e d iate e n v i ro n s i nto a few k i l o bytes of
usable information. Bernard Stieg ler, who despite an
often ted ious Heideggerian theoretical apparatus is
one of the best contemporary theorists of tech nology,
describes this process as "cognitive and affective pro­
letarianization", where proletarians are dispossessed, as
prod ucers, of sa voir faire and, as consumers, of sa voir

Endnotes 3 1 90
vivre. This is part of a long h i story of what Stiegler cal ls 22 Bernard Stiegler, For
"grammatization", in which knowledge and memory is a New Critique of Po­
d iscretised i nto reprod ucible and combinatorial bodily litical Economy, (Polity,
gestures - phonemes, graphemes, keystrokes, bits - and 2010 ), 40-44,
then exteriorised t h ro u g h i nscription in matter.22 The
d i g ital and teleco m m u n ication technology of contem­
porary grammatisation is the final stage of this process,
such that our memories and cog n itive facu lties now
exist in the data cloud, as it were, part of a d istributed
technological prosthesis without which we are effectively
incapable of orienting ourselves or functioning. In this
largely persuasive account, which thankfully cuts against
the optim istic read ings of i nformation tech nology as a
progressive socialisation of "general i ntellect", we are
d ispossessed not just of the means of production but
the means of thought and feeling as we ll.

I n many ways, Stiegler shares a g reat deal with the rich


exploration of the concepts of alienation, fetishism and
reification that followed the popularisation of the early
Marx in the 1 9 60s, by H erbert Marcuse, Guy Debord
and others. We might, for this reason, wonder about the
latent humanism i n Stiegler. Sennett, however, provides
us with an i m portant caveat against reading Stiegler in
humanist terms : whereas a certain kind of classic Marxist
analysis might expect his bakers to want to reappropriate
the knowledge of which they had been d ispossessed
by the mach ines, few of them have any such desires.
Their real l ives are elsewhere, and hard ly any of them
expect or desire d i g n ity and mean ing from their jobs as
bakers. The only person who conforms to the expected
outl ine of the alienated worker, in Sennett's bakery, is
the foreman, who worked his way up from apprentice
baker to manager, and takes the wastage and loss of
ski l l in the bakery as a personal affront, imag i n i n g that
if the bakery were a cooperative the workers might take
more interest in knowing how things are done. The other
workers, however, treat work not as the performance of
a skill but as a series of ind ifferent appl ications of an

Logistics, Coun terlogistics and the Comm unist Prospect 1 91


abstract capacity to labour. Baking means l ittle more 23 Sennett, The Corra-
than "pushing buttons in a Windows prog ram designed sion of Character, 70.
by others".23 The work is both i l l e g i ble to them, and
utterly alien to their own needs, but not alien i n the clas­
sic sense that they recogn ise it as a lost or stolen part
of themselves they hope to recover through struggle.
This is one of the most i mportant conseq uences of the
restructuring of the labour process superintended by the
logistics revolution : the casualisation and i rregu larisa­
tion of labour, the d isaggregation of the work process
into increasingly illegible and geographically separate
component parts, as well as t h e i nc re d i b l e powers
which capital now has to defeat any struggle for better
conditions, mean that it is not only impossible for most
proletarians to visualise their place within this complex
system but it is also impossible for them to identify with
that place as a source of d i g n ity and satisfaction, since
its ultimate mean i n g with regard to the total system
remains e l usive. M ost workers today can not say, as
workers of old could (and often d id) : It is we who built
this world! It is we to whom this world belongs! The
restructuring of the mode of production and the subor­
d ination of production to the conditions of circulation
therefore forecloses the classical horizon of proletarian
antagon ism : seizure of the means of production for the
pu rposes of a worker-managed society. One cannot
imagine seizing that which one can not visualise, and
inside of which one's place remains u ncertain.

T H E RECO N F I G U RAT I O N T H E S I S

The d ifficulties which Sennett's bakers (or our blockad­


ers) encounter are not simply failures of knowledge, ones
that can be solved through pedagogical intervention; as
valuable as a cog n itive map of these processes m ight
be, the problems we confront i n visualising some self­
management of existing productive means originate from
the practical difficulties - in my view, impossibilities - that
such a prospect wou ld encou nter. The opacity of the

Endnotes 3 1 92
system, in this regard , emerges from its intractabil ity, 24 Alberto Toscano,
and not the other way around. In an insig htfu l article 'Logistics and Op-
on the log istics industry and contem porary struggle, position', Mute 3, no. 2
Alberto Toscano (who has lately devoted considerable (metam ute.org).
effort to critiq u i n g theorists of com m u n isation) fau lts
the "space-time of much of today's anticapitalism" for
its rel iance on "su btraction and i nterru ption, not attack
and expansion ".24 Toscano proposes, as an alterna­
tive, an anticapitalist logistics which treats the various
productive sites and infrastructu res of late capitalism
as "potentially reconfigurable" rather than the o bject of
"mere negation or sabotage". No doubt, any struggle
which wants to overcome capital ism will need to con­
sider "what use can be d rawn from the dead labours
which crowd the earth's crust", but there is no reason
to assume from the start, as Toscano does, that all exist­
ing means of prod uction m u st have some use beyond
capital, and that all technological i nnovation m u st have,
almost categorically, a prog ressive d imension which is
recu perable through a process of "determinate nega­
tion". As we saw above, the use-value which the logistics
industry produ ces is a set of protocols and tech niques
that enable firms to seek out the l owest wages any­
where i n the world, and to evade the inconven ience of
class struggle when it arises. In this sense, u n l i ke other
capitalist tech nologies, logistics is only partly about
exploiting the efficiencies of mach ines i n order to get
products to market faster and more cheaply, since the
main purpose of the faster and cheaper tech nologies
is to offset the otherwise pro h i bitive cost of exploiting
labour forces halfway around the world. The tech nologi­
cal ensemble which logistics superintends is therefore
fundamentally d ifferent than other ensembles such as
the Ford ist factory; it saves on labour costs by decreas­
ing the wage, rather than i ncreasing the productivity of
labour. To put it in Marxist terms, it is absol ute surplus
value masquerad ing as relative surplus val ue. The use­
value of log istics, for capital , is exploitation i n its rawest
form, and thus it is truly doubtful that logistics might form,

Logistics, Counterlogistics and the Communis t Prospect 1 93


as Toscano writes, "capitalism's pharmakon, the cause 25 Marxist theories of
for its patholog ies (from the damag i n g hypertrophy of tech nology often di-
long-d istance transport of commod ities to the aim less verge along two paths,
sprawl of conte m po rary conu rbation ) as well as the each o f which c a n b e
potential domain of anti-capitalist solutions". traced to the works
of Marx. The domi-
For workers to seize the commanding heights offered nant view holds that
by logistics - to seize, in other words, the control panel capitalist tech nolo­
of the global factory - would mean for them to manage gies are fundamen­
a system that is constitutively hostile to them and their tally prog ressive, first
needs, to oversee a system i n which extreme wage d if­ because they reduce
ferentials are b u i lt i nto the very i nfrastructure. Without necessary labour time
those d ifferentials, most supply-chains would become and thereby potentially
both wasteful and unnecessary. But perhaps "repu rpos­ free h u mans from the
ing" means for Toscano instead a kind of making-do with necessity of labouring,
the mach inery of log istics as we find it, seei n g what and second because
other p u rposes it can be put to, rat h e r than i m ag i n ­ industrialisation ef­
i n g a n appropriation o f its commandi n g heig hts? Any fects a fundamen-
revolutionary process will make do with what it finds tal 'socialisation' of
available as a m atter of necessity, but it is precisely production, obliterating
the "convertibil ity" or " reconfi g u rabil ity" of these tech­ the h ierarchies that
nologies that seems questionable. The fixed capital of once pertained to
the contemporary production reg i m e is designed for particular crafts (e.g.
extraction of maximum surplus val u e ; each component e.g. Marx, Grundrisse
part is engi neered for i nsertion i nto this global system ; [MECW 29], 90-92
therefore, t h e presence o f c o m m u n ist potentials as [N icolaus trans.]). I n
u n i ntended features -"affordances", as they are some­ this Orthodox accou nt,
times called - of contemporary tech nology needs to comm u n ism is latent
be arg ued for, not assumed as a matter of course.25 with i n the socialised,
Much of the mach inery of contemporary log istics aims cooperative arrange­
to streaml i ne the circulation of commodities and not ment of the fac-
use-values, to produce not the things that are necessary tory, whose technical
or beneficial but those that are profitabl e : i n d ividually su bstrate increasingly
packaged boxes of cereal, for instance, whose complex enters i nto crisis-pro­
insignia distingu ish them from the dozens of varieties of ducing contrad iction
nearly identical cereals (sold and consumed i n sizes and with the i n efficient and
types that reflect certain social arrangements, such as u nplanned nature of
the nuclear fam ily) . How m u ch of the vau nted flexibil ity the capitalist market­
of the log istics system is really the flexibility of product place. But there is also

Endnotes 3 1 94
variety, of wage d ifferentials and trade i m balances? a heterodox Marxist
How m uch would become useless once one eliminated perspective on tech nol­
the commodity-form, once one eliminated the necessity ogy, whose exemplars
of buying and sel l i n g ? Furthermore, the contemporary are writers such as Ra­
logistics system is designed for a particular international n iero Panzieri and Da­
balance of trade, with certain cou ntries as prod ucers vid Noble, and whose
and others as consumers. This is a fact fu ndamentally clearest sources lie in
entangled with the wage imbalances mentioned earl ier, the chapter i n Capital
which means that the i nequal ity of the global system i n on 'Mach inery and
part has t o do with t h e u nequal d istribution o f produc­ Large-Scale Industry,'
tive means and the infrastructu res of circulation - the and in particular, the
concentration of port capacity on the West Coast of the section on the factory.
US rather than the East Coast, for instance, because of There, Marx suggests
the location of manufacturing in Asia. Rebalancing the that, in the modern fac­
amount of goods produced locally or at a distance - if tory system, capital's
such a thing were to be a part of a break with capital ist domination of labour
prod uction - wou ld mean an entirely d ifferent arrange­ 'acqu i res a tech n ical
ment of infrastructures and probably d ifferent types of and palpable real-
infrastructu re as wel l ( smaller ships, for i nstance ) . ity'. In the factory 'the
gigantic natu ral forces,
We m ig ht also q u esti o n t h e reconfi g u rati o n t h e s i s and the mass of social
from the perspective o f scale. Because o f the uneven labour embodied i n the
d istribution of productive means and capitals - not to system of mach inery . . .
mention the tendency for geograph ical specialisation, constitutes the power
the c o n c entrat i o n of c e rt a i n l i n e s i n c e rt a i n areas of the master' (Marx,
(textiles i n Bang ladesh, for i nstance ) - the system is Capital vol.1 [MECW
not scalable i n any way b u t up. It does not permit 35], 420-430 [Fowkes
partitioning by continent, hemisphere, zone or nation. trans.]). But if mach in­
It must be managed as a total ity or not at all. Therefore, ery is a material isation
n early a l l proponents of t h e reconfi g u rati o n thesis of capital ist domi na­
ass u m e h i g h - vo l u m e a n d hyper- g lobal d i stri b u t i o n tion - an objectification
i n t h e i r socialist o r c o m m u n ist syst e m , e v e n if t h e of the 'master' - then
usefu lness o f s u c h distributions beyond prod uction for we have every reason
profit remain u n clear. Another problem, though, is that to doubt that we can
adm i n istration at such a scale intro d u ces a s u b l i m e undo such domi nation
d imension to t h e concept o f "plan n i ng " ; these scales without negati ng the
and mag n itudes are rad ically beyond h uman cogn itive 'techn ical and palpable
capacities. The level of an impersonal "admin istration of aspect of mach inery. If
things" and the level of a "free association of prod ucers" workers were to seize

Logistics, Coun terlogistics and the Comm unist Prospect 1 95


are not so m uch in contrad iction as separated by a production mach inery
vast abyss. Toscano leaves such an abyss marked by and self-manage the
an ominous appeal to Herbert Marcuse's concept of factories, this might
"necessary alienation" as the unfortunate but necessary only amount to another
concom itant of maintenance of the techn ical system . mode of ad m i n ister­
O t h e r partisans o f the reconfi g u ration thesis, w h e n ing the domination
q u esti o n e d about t h e scal i n g - u p of t h e e m a n c i pa­ sed i mented inside the
tory desires and needs of proletarian antagonists to production mach inery.
a g l o bal ad m i n i strat i o n i n variably d e p l oy the l iteral The heterodox per­
deus ex machina of supercomputers. Com puters and spective is obviously
algorithms, we are told, will determine how commodities i n line with the conclu­
are to be d istributed ; computers w i l l scale up from sions of this article, but
the demands for freedom and equal ity of proletarian m uch work remains to
antagon ists and fig u re out a way to d istribute work be done in developing
and the products of work in a manner satisfactory to all. an adequate theory of
But how an algorithmically-mediated production would tech nology. We can­
work, why it would d iffer from p rod uction med iated not merely i nvert the
by c o m p et i t i o n and t h e p r i ce - m e c h a n i s m rem a i n s Orthodox, progressivist
radically unclear, and certainly unmuddied by any actual accou nt of machinery
argument. Would labour-time still be the determi nant of which assumes that
access to social wealth ? Would free participation ( i n every advance of the
work) and free access ( i n necessaries) be facil itated productive forces
in such a system? If the goal is rather a simple equality constitutes an enlarge­
of prod ucers - equal pay for equal work - how would ment of the possi­
one deal with the i mbalances of productivity, morale bilities for com m u n ism
and i nitiative, which result from the maintenance of the and declare, i n opposi­
requ i rement that "he who does not work does not eat"? tion, that all tech nology
Is this what "necessary alienation" means? is pol itically negative
or i n herently capital ist.
But the n o n-scalarity ( o r u n i d i rectional scalarity) of Rather, we have to
the logistics system i ntroduces a much more severe exam ine technolo-
problem. Even if g lobal commun ist adm i n i stration - by gies from a techn ical
s u perco m p uter, or by asce n d i n g tiers of delegates perspective, from the
and assembl ies - were possible and desirable on the com m u n ist prospect,
basis of the g iven tech nical system, once we consider and consider what
the historical character of comm u n ism, things seem affordances they re­
much more doubtful . Com m u n ism does not drop from al ly do allow, g iven the
the sky, but must emerge from a revolutionary process, trag ic circumstances
and g iven the present all or noth ing character of the of their birth.

Endnotes 3 1 96
i nternational d ivision of labo u r - the concentration of
manufacturing in a few cou ntries, the concentration of
productive capacity for certain essential l ines of capital
in a handful of factories, as mentioned above - any
attempt to seize the means of production would requ i re
a n immedia tely global s e i z u re . We w o u l d n e e d a
revol utionary p rocess so q u ickly successful and exten­
sive that all long-d istance supply chains ran between
n o n-capitalist producers with i n a m atter of months,
as opposed to the m uch m o re l i kely scenario that a
break with capital will be geographically concentrated
at first and need to spread from there. In most cases,
therefore, maintenance of these d istributed production
p rocesses and s u pply- c h a i n s w i l l mean t rade w i t h
capital ist partners, an enchai n ment to p roduction for
p rofit (necessary for s u rvival, we w i l l be told by the
pragmatists) the results of which will be nothi n g less
than d isastrous, as a study of the Russian and Spanish
examples will show. In both cases, the need to maintain
an export economy in order to buy crucial goods on the
international markets - arms i n particular - meant that
revolutionary cadres and m i l itants had to use d i rect
and indirect force i n order to induce workers to meet
prod uction targets. Raising p rodu ctivity and increas­
ing produ ctive capacity now became the transitional
step on the way to achieving comm u n ism then, and in
anarchist Spain, as much as Bolshevist Russia, cadres
set to work m i micking the dynamic g rowth of capital ist
accumulation through direct political mechanisms, rather
than the i n d i rect force of the wage , t h o u g h in both
cases economic incentive structures (piece rates, bonus
pay) were eventually i ntroduced as matter of necessity.
It is hard to see how anything but a new insu rrectionary
process - one mitigated against by the establishment of
new d isciplines and repressive structures - could have
restored these systems even to the labour-note based
" l ower phase of comm u n ism" that Marx advocates i n
" Crit i q u e o f the Gotha Pro g ram", l e t alone a society
based upon free access and non-compelled labour.

Logis tics, Coun terlogistics and the Comm unist Prospect 1 97


The trad itional discussions of such matters assume that,
whereas underdeveloped countries like Russia and Spain
had no choice but to develop their prod uctive capacity
first, proletarians in fully ind ustrialised cou ntries could
immediately expropriate and self-manage the means of
production without any need for forced development.
This m i g h t have been true i n the i m m e d iate postwar
period, and as late as the 1 970s, but once deindustriali­
sation began i n earnest, the chance had been officially
missed - the global restructuring and red istri bution of
prod uctive means leaves us in a position that is probably
as bad as, if not worse than, those early 20th-cent u ry
revolutions, when some large percentage of the means
of prod uction for consumer goods were ready to hand,
and one could locate, in one's own region, shoe factories
and textile m i l ls and steel refineries. A brief assessment
of the workplaces i n one's i mmediate environs should
convince most of us - i n the US at least, and I suspect
most of Europe - of the utter u nworkabi lity of the recon­
fig u ration thesis. The service and ad m i n istrative jobs
which most proletarians today work are mean i n gless
except as points of i ntercalation withi n vast planetary
flows - a megaretailer, a software com pany, a coffee
chain , an i nvestment ban k, a non-profit organ isation.
M ost of these jobs pertain to use-values that would
be rendered non-uses by revolution. To meet their own
needs and the needs of others, these proletarians would
have to engage in the production of food and other nec­
essaries, the capacity for which does not exist in most
cou ntries. The idea that 1 5% or so of workers whose
activities would still be usefu l would work on behalf of
others - as caretakers of a com m u nist future - is politi­
cally non-workable, even if the system could produce
enough of what people need, and trade for inputs didn't
prod uce another blockage. Add to this the fact that the
development of log istics itself and the credit system
alongside it, g reatly m u ltipl ies the power of capital to
discipline rebellious zones through withdrawal of credit
(capital fl ig ht) , e m bargo, and p u n itive terms of trade.

Endnotes 3 1 98
H O R IZ O N S A N D PROSPECTS

The whole is the false, in t h i s case, not so m u ch be­


cause it can't be adeq uately represented or because
any attempt at such representation does violence to
its i nternal contradictions, but because all such g lobal
representations belie the fact that the whole can never
be possessed as such. The totality of the logistics sys­
tem belongs to capital. It is a view from everywhere (or
nowhere) , a view from space, that only capital as total­
ising, d istri buted process can i nhabit. Only capital can
fight us in every place at once, because capital is not i n
any sense a force with which w e contend, but the very
territory on which that contention takes p lace. Or rather,
it is a force, but a field force, something which suffuses
rather than opposes. U n l i ke capital, we fight i n particular
locations and moments - here, there, now, then. To be
a partisan means, by necessity, to accept the partiality
of perspective and the partiality of the combat we offer.

The weak tactics of the present - the punctual riot, the


b l ockade, the occupation of p u b l i c space - are not
the strateg ic product of an antagonist consciousness
that has m isrecog n ised its enemy, or failed to exam ine
adequately the possibilities offered by present technolo­
gies. O n the contrary, the tactics of our blockaders
emerge from a consciousness that has already surveyed
the possi bilities on offer, and understood, if only intui­
tively, how the restructuring of capital has foreclosed
an entire strategic repertoire. The supply chains wh ich
fasten these proletarians to the planetary factory are
radical chai ns in the sense that they go to the root, and
must be torn out from the root as well. The absence of
opportu nities for "reconfiguration" will mean that in their
attempts to break from capitalism proletarians will need
to find other ways of meeting their needs. The logistical
problems they encounter will have to do with replacing
that which is fundamentally u navai lable except through
l i n kage to t h ese planetary n etworks and the baleful

Logistics, Coun ter/ogistics and the Comm unist Prospect 1 99


consequences they bring. In other words, the creation of
communism will require a massive process of delinking
from the planetary factory as a matter of survival. We will
not have the opportunity to use all (or even many) of the
technical means that we find, since so many of these
will be effectively orphaned by a break with capitalist
production. But what, then, of strategy? If theory is the
horizon which opens from present conditions of struggle,
strategy is something different, less a horizon than a
prospect. Strategy is a particular moment when theory
reopens to practice, suggesting not just a possible but a
desirable course of action. If a horizon places us in front
of a range of possibilities, the strategic moment comes
when struggles reach a certain crest, an eminence, from
which a narrower set of options opens up - a prospect.
Prospects are a middle ground between where we are
and the far horizon of communisation.

What are our prospects, then, based upon the recent


cycle of struggles? We now know that the restructuring
of the capital-labour relationship has made intervention
in the sphere of circulation an obvious and in many ways
effective tactic. T he blockade, it seems, might assume
an importance equal to the strike in the coming years,
as will occupations of public space and struggles over
urban and rural environments remade to become better
conduits for flows of labour and capital - as recent strug­
gles in both Turkey and Brazil have demonstrated. Our
prospects are such that, instead of propagandising for
forms of workplace action that are unlikely to succeed
or generalise, we might better accept our new strategic
horizon and work, instead, to disseminate information
about how interventions in this sphere might become
more effective, what their limits are, and how such limits
could be overcome. We might work to disseminate the
idea that the seizure of the globally-distributed factory
is no longer a meaningful horizon, and we might essay
to map out the new relations of production in a way
that takes account of this fact. For instance, we might

Endnotes 3 200
try to g raph the flows and l i n kages around us in ways
that comprehend their brittleness as well as the most
effective ways they m i g h t be b locked as part of the
conduct of particu lar strugg les. These would be sem i­
local maps - maps that operate from the perspective of
a certain zone or area. From this kind of knowledge, one
m ight also develop a functional understanding of the
i nfrastructure of capital, such that one then knew which
technologies and productive means would be orphaned
by a partial or total delinking from planetary flows, wh ich
ones m ight alternately be conserved or converted, and
what the major practical and techn ical questions facing
a revolutionary situation m i g ht look l i ke. How to ensure
that there is water and that the sewers function? How
to avoid meltdown of nuclear reactors? What does local
food production look l i ke? What types of man ufactu re
happen nearby, and what kinds of things can be done
with its production machinery? This would be a process
of inventory, taki n g stock of t h i n g s we encou nter i n
our i mmed iate envi rons, that does not imag i n e mastery
from the standpoint of the global totality, but rather a
process of bricolage from the stand point of partisan
fractions who know they will have to fight from particular,
embattled locations, and win their battles successively
rather than all at once. None of this means setting u p
a blueprint for t h e conduct o f strugg les, a transitional
program . Rather, it means prod ucing the knowledge
wh ich the experience of past struggles has already de­
manded and which future struggles will likely find helpful.

Logistics, Counterlogistics a n d the Communist Prospect 201


THE L I M IT P O INT O F
CA P ITAL I ST E QUAL ITY Notes toward an
abolition ist antiracism

C h ris Chen

202
Without an account of the relationsh i p between "race" 1 See 'The Logic of
and the systematic reproduction of the class relation, the Gender' i n this issue.
question of revolution as the overcoming of entrenched
social d ivisions can o n ly be posed in a distorted and
incomplete form. And without an u nderstanding of the
dynamics of racialisation - from capital ism's h istorical
orig i n s in " p r i m itive acc u m u l at i o n " to the US state' s
restructuring i n the post-World War I I era - continuing
struggles against evolving forms of racial rule can only
be m isrecog n ised as peripheral to an ultimately race-
neutral confl ict between capital and labour. Rather than
wan ing with the decl ine of what is sometimes construed
as a vestig ial system of fol k beliefs, resistance to racial
su bordination i n the US has continued. " Race" has not
withered away: rather, it has been reconfigured i n the
face of austerity measures and an augmented "post-racial"
secu rity state which has come i nto being to manage the
ostensible racial threats to the nation posed by black wage-
less l ife, Latino immigrant labour, and "Islamic terrorism".

Through "race", black chattel slavery in the United States


constituted "free" labo u r as wh ite, and whiteness as
unenslaveabi l ity and u nalienable property. The formal
abolition of slavery has su bseq uently come to defi ne
the American achievement of what Marx called "double
freed o m " : the "freedom" of forcible separation from
the means of prod u ction, and the "freedom" to sell
labou r-power to the collective class of owners of those
means.1 However, "race" doesn't sim ply complicate any
periodisation of the h istorical orig ins of capitalism ; it
was the protagon ist of a global array of national l i bera­
tion, anti-apartheid, and civil rights movements in the
m id-twentieth century. A planetary anti-racist offensive
called i nto question nearly fou r and a half centuries of
racial "common sense" and largely d iscredited wh ite
supremacy as explicit state policy. " Race" has been
reconfi g u red i n response to this world-h istorical anti­
racist u ps u rge, and conti nues to exist as a body of
ideas - but also as a relation of domi nation inside and

The Limit Point of Capitalist Equality 203


outside the wage relation - reproduced through superfi­
cially non-racial i nstitutions and policies. Two dynamics
have reprod uced " race" i n the US since the m id-twen­
tieth-cent u ry anti-racist move m e nts : first, eco n o m i c
subordination through racial ised wage differentials and
s u perfl u isation, and seco n d , the racial ising violence
and g lobal reach of the penal and n ational secu rity
state. Most contemporary ascriptive racialisation pro­
cesses are to a g reat extent politically u n representable
as " race" matters because they have been superficially
coded as race-neutral - disciplinary state apparatuses,
for example, defined through d iscourses of " national
security threats", "illegal immigration", and "urban crime".

Without an understanding of the structuring force of


" race" in US foreign policy and as a d river of the rise of
the US carceral state in response to the end of legal
segregation, one can have only a partial understand­
ing of the i nstitutional fusion and seemingly u n l i m ited
expansion of police and m i l itary power over the last
forty years. The anti-racist critiques of recent social
movements l i ke Occupy Wal l Street, and the consoli­
dation of opposition under the banner of a politics of
decolonisation, illuminate a major faultline i n US political
l ife cleaving a "politics of race" from a "politics of class".
The i ntellectual polarisation between these two political
formations has revealed the inadequacy of both Marxist
approaches to class, and theories of " race" couched in
an idiom of cultural d ifference rather than domination.

Overlapping with - yet conceptually distinct from - class,


culture, caste, gender, nation, and ethnicity, " race" is
not only a system of ideas but an array of ascriptive
racialising procedu res which structure multiple levels of
social l ife. Despite its comm itment to challenging racial
ideology as the assignment of d ifferential value to physi­
cal appearance and ancestry, m uch anti-racist analysis
and practice continues to treat " race" as a noun, as a
property or attribute of identities or g roups, rather than

Endnotes 3 204
as a set of ascriptive processes which i mpose fictive 2 See Nancy Fraser
identities and subord inate racialised populations. To dis­ and Linda Alcoff, who
tingu ish racial ascription from voluntary acts of cultural stake out n uanced,
identification - and from a range of responses to racial though largely op­
rule from flight to armed revolt - requ i res a shift in focus posed, theoretical po­
from " race" to racism. But focusing on the phenomenon sitions on the political
of racism tends to narrow the terrain upon wh ich " race" possibilities and l i m its
is structu rally enforced to personal attitudes or racial of 'identity politics'. As
ideologies rather than institutional processes which may this article goes on
generate profound racial disparities without requ i ri n g to arg ue, both posi­
i n d ividual racist beliefs or i ntentions. tions are fundamen-
tally i nformed by the
As a result, " race" gets theorised i n d ivergent cultural h i storical promise of
or economic terms as evidence of the need to either a social-democratic
affirm denigrated group identities or i nteg rate i n d ividu­ coal itional subject,
als more thoroughly i nto capitalist markets momentar­ u n iting labour, femi­
ily distorted by individ ual prejudice. On the one hand , nist, and anti-racist
" race" is a form of cultural stigmatisation and m isrepre­ pol itical cam paigns.
sentation req u i ring personal, institutional, and/or state See Alcoff, Visible
recogn ition. On the other, " race" is a system of wage identities: Race, Gen­
d ifferentials, wealth stratification, and occupational and der, and the Self (Ox­
spatial seg regation. Whether defended or derided by ford U n iversity Press
critics across the pol itical spectru m , the concept of 2006); and Fraser,
racial or cultural identity has become a kind of proxy 'Reth inking Recog ni­
for d iscussi n g " race" m atters in general. Conversely, tion', New Left Review
dism issals of " identity politics" g rounded in functional­ 3 (May-J u n e 2000).
ist or epiphenomenalist accou nts of " race" propose an
alternative social ist and social democratic "politics of
class" based upon essentially the same political logic of
affirming subjects - i.e. workers - withi n and sometimes
against capitalism. Th is division between economic and
cultural forms of " race" naturalises racial economic i n ­
equal ity a n d transforms the problem o f racial oppres­
sion and exploitation into either an epiphenomenon of
class or the m isrecogn ition of identity.2

Both the cultural and economic stratification theories


have tended to frame racial inequality as fundamentally a
problem of the unequal d istribution of existing privilege,

The Limit Point of Capitalist Equality 205


power, and resou rces w h i l e cont i n u i n g to posit t h e 3 S e e 'Spontaneity,
economy as fundamentally race-neutral or even as an Med iation, R u ptu re' i n
engine of racial prog ress. A dearth of materialist analy- this issue.
ses of the bundle of ascriptive and pun itive procedu res
organised under the sign of " race" has meant that critics
from across the pol itical spectrum have conti nued to
downplay the severity and extent of racial domination
organised by putatively "colourbl ind" social institutions.
Saddled with d isco u rses of m eritocratic racial upl ift,
" race" continues to be represented either as a cultural
particularity o r as a deviation from colo u r b l i n d civic
equality. I n either case, " race" is articulated i n terms of
real or illusory difference from a political or cultural norm
rather than as a form of structu ral coercion.

If " race" is thus understood i n terms of d ifference rather


than domination, then anti-racist practice will req uire the
affirmation of stigmatised identities rather than their abo­
lition as indices of structural subord ination. Formu lating
an abo l itionist anti-racism would req u i re imag i n i n g the
end of " race" as hierarch ical assignment, rather than a
denial of the political salience of cultural identities. "Race"
here names a relation of su bord ination. The conceptual
elision of the d ifference between racial ascription and
individual and group responses to racial i nterpellation is
endemic i n much of the literatu re either denouncing or
defending a pol itics of identity. From the point of view
of emancipation, a social order freed from racial and
gender domination wou ld not necessarily spell the end
of identity as such, but rather of ascriptive processes so
deeply bound up with the historical genesis and trajectory
of global capital ism that the basic categories of collec­
tive sociality would be transformed beyond recognition.3

A preci pitous 2 1 st century decli n e i n the U S labour


share of business income, and the transition to aus­
terity, has completely altered the terrain , the stakes,
and the chances of s u ccess for n ot o n ly the Ameri­
can labour movement but all contemporary anti-racist

Endnotes 3 206
pol itical stru g g l es as wel l . The legacy of racial and 4 Ch ristopher Kyri­
gender exclusions which have structured the US labour akides and Rodolfo
movement has been steadi ly eroded at the same time Torres, Race Defaced:
that the relative size and strength of organised labour Paradigms of Pes­
has dwindled. Because the public sector, with its robust simism, Politics of
anti-discrim i nation mandates, represents the last bas­ Possibility (Stan­
tion of US organised labou r, hostility to the US labour ford U n iversity
movement is frequently couched i n racist rhetoric. As Press 2012), 119.
Kyriakides and Torres argue, 1 960s-era visions of a Third
World, non-al igned, or anti-colonial coal itional subject 5 Barbara J. Fields,
i n the US have, i n an age of decl i n i n g growth, fractu red 'Wh iteness, racism,
i nto m u ltiple "ethnically determi ned subjects of identity and identity', Inter­
in competition not only for a shred of an ever-shrinking national Labor and
economic settlement but for recog n ition of their suffer­ Working Class History
ing conferred by a nation-state in which the Right won 60 (Fal l 2001), 48-56.
the pol itical battle and the Left won the culture war." 4

ADDENDU M : O N T E R M I N O LO GY

" Race" has been variously described as an i llusion, a


social construction, a cultural identity, a biological fiction
but social fact, and an evolving complex of social mean­
ings. Throughout this article, "race" appears in quotation
marks i n order to avoid attributing i ndependent causal
properties to objects defined by ascriptive processes.
Simply put, "race" is the consequence and not the cause
of racial ascription or racialisation processes which
j u stify h i storically asymmetrical power relat i o n s h i ps
through reference to phenotypical characteristics and
ancestry: "Substituted for racism, race transforms the
act of a subject i nto an attribute of the object:'5

I have also enclosed " race" in quotation marks in order


to suggest three overlapping dimensions of the term : as
an i ndex of varieties of material i nequal ity, as a bundle
of ideologies and p rocesses which create a racially

The Limit Point of Capitalist Equality 207


stratified social order, and as an evolving h i story of
struggle against racism and racial domination - a h is­
tory which has often risked reifying " race" by revalu i n g
i mposed identities, or reifying " racelessness" b y affirm­
ing l iberal fictions of atom istically isolated ind ividual ity.
The i ntertw i n i n g of racial d o m i n ation with t h e class
relation holds out the hope of systematically dismantling
" race" as an indicator of u nequal structural relations of
power. " Race" can thus be imagined as an emancipatory
category not from the point of view of its affirmation, but
through its abolition.

1 A B R I E F H I STO RY O F RACIAL S U B O R D I NATI O N : f r o m limpieza de


sangre to g lo b a l su perfl u ity

The trajectory of racial domination, from slavery to racial­


ised surplus populations, traces a long historical arc
between the colonial creation of " race" i n 1 6th century
Spanish notions of "purity of blood" (/impieza de sangre) ,
and its structu ral reprod uction u n d e r a restructu red
g lobal capital ism - a history which can only be briefly
sketched here. The genealogy of " race" and its p re­
cursors can be traced back to the spatial expansion
of European colonialism - from the baroq ue racialised
caste system of Spanish and Portuguese colonial admin­
istrations to the later, more Manichaean racial order
produced by the British colon isation of the Americas,
Africa, and Asia. The extermination, enslavement, or colo­
n isation of racialised populations - often at the hands of
a colonial class of i ndentured servants - consolidated
" race" through the waning of Eu ropean servitude and
the emergence of black chattel slavery. This was the
flipside of what Marxists call "proletarianisation". Marked
by ongoing histories of exclusion from the wage and
violent subj ugation to varieties of " unfree labour", racial­
ised popu lations were i nserted i nto early capital ism
in ways that continue to define contemporary surplus
popu lations.

Endnotes 3 208
The cu rsory treatment of racial violence in the h istorical
narration of "prim itive accumu lation" remains a funda­
mental blind spot in Marxist analyses of the relationsh ip
between " race" and capitalism. I n the era of the con­
quista and in the transition to capital ism, " race" came
into being through plu nder, enslavement, and colonial
violence. At the very same time, primitive accumulation in
England prod uced a d ispossessed and superfluous ex­
peasantry, for the factory system that might absorb them
had not yet been created. Many of these ex-peasants
were eventually sent to the colonies, or inducted into
imperial enterprises - the navy, merchant marines, etc.
I n the 1 8th and 1 9th centuries, more of these surplus
popu lations were i ntegrated i nto the developing capi­
talist economy, whether as chattel slaves or as wage
labou rers, accord ing to an increasingly i ntricate typol­
ogy of " race". Finally, after decades of compou nding
increases i n labour productivity, capital began to expel
m o re labour from the p rod uction process than was
absorbed . That, in turn, produced yet another kind of
superfluous population in the form of a disproportion­
ately non-white industrial reserve army of labour. At the
periphery of the g lobal capital ist system, capital now
renews " race" by creating vast superfluous u rban popu­
lations from the close to one billion slum-dwelling and
desperately impoverished descendants of the enslaved
and colonised.

I n the 2 1 st century, the substantial over-representation


of racialised US g roups among the unemployed and un­
deremployed -"last h i red and first fired "- demonstrates
the concessionary, uneven incorporation of these groups
i nto a syste m of h i g h ly racialise d wage d ifferentials,
occupational segregation, and p recarious labour. As
capital sloughs off these relative surplus populations
in the core, the su rplu s capital produced by fewer and
more i ntensively exploited workers i n the G l o bal N o rth
sco u rs the globe for lower wages, and reappears as
the racial threat of cheap labour from the Global South.

The Limit Point of Capitalist Equality 209


In the US, with the end of secure wage labour and the 6 See Nikhil Pal Singh,
withd rawal of public welfare provisions, a massive "post­ 'Racial Formation i n
racial" secu rity state has come i nto being to manage the an A g e o f Permanent
supposed civilisational th reats to the nation - by policing War' i n Dan iel HoSang,
black wageless l ife, deport i n g i m m i g rant labour, and Oneka LaBen n ett,
wag ing an u n l i m ited "War on Terror". The catastrophic and Lau ra Pu lido, eds,
rise of black mass i ncarceration, the hyper-militarisation Racial Formation in the
of the southern US border, and the continuation of open­ Twenty-First Century
ended secu rity operations across the M u s l i m worl d , ( U n iversity of Cal ifor­
reveal h o w " race" remains n o t o n l y a probabil istic as­ nia 2012), 276-301.
signment of relative economic value but also an i ndex
of d ifferential vulnerability to state violence.6

2 READ I N G W H ITE S U P R E M ACY BACK I NTO T H E " BASE"

Wh ile Marx and Engels generally insisted on the need 7 Marx's pronou nce­
for workers to oppose racism i n its more blatant 1 9th ment that 'labour i n
century manifestations, they did not attempt to articulate t h e wh ite s k i n can
the relation of " race" and class at a categorical leve l . 7 never free itself as
A s Derek Sayer observes, " Marx was a m a n o f h i s time long as labour in the
and place" : black skin is branded'
([M ECW 35] , 305) is
Like most other Victorians, Marx thought both " race" often quoted by his
and family natural categories (even if subject to some defenders, as are h i s
"historical mod ification"), and had l ittle trouble in d is­ denunciations of anti­
tinguishing between "civilisation" (wh ich for h i m was I rish racism. Less often
w h ite, western and modern) and " barbaris m �' H i s mentioned are Marx
views on t h e beneficial resu lts o f European colonial­ and Engels's opinions
ism would embarrass many twentieth-century Marxists, about 'lazy Mexicans'
notwithstanding his denu nciations of the violence of and the cause of the
its means . . . 8 political i m m atu rity of
Lafarg ue, Marx's son­
The theoretical relation between " race" and class has in-law, being 'the stig­
su bsequently become the subject of a long debate i n ma of his Negro herit­
t h e varieties o f academic Marxism that emerged a s a age' and 'Creole blood'.
" N ew Left" generation inspired by the strugg les of the See Frederick Engels,
sixties e ntered the u n iversity. I n an early and i nfluential 'Democratic Pan-Slav­
contribution to this conversation, Stuart Hall asserted ism', Neue Rheinsiche
that "race" was "the modality in which class is ' lived', the Zeitung 231 (M ECW 8),

Endnotes 3 21 0
med i u m through wh ich class relations are experienced, 362; Babacar Camara,
the form in which it is appropriated and 'fought through'�'9 Marxist Theory, Black/
Hall and other cultural theorists su pplemented Marxist A frican Specificities,
categories of "base" and "su perstructure" with the ideas and Racism (Lex­
of Western Marxist fig u res such as Lou i s Alt h u sser i ngton 2008), 71-2.
and Anton i o G ramsci. G ramsci i n particular, and his
development of the concept of "hegemony"- with its 8 Derek Sayer, 'I ntro­
room for more n uanced theories of culture, ideology, d uction' to Readings
and pol itics - has been a central reference i n aca­ from Karl Marx (Rout­
d e m i c att e m pts to reart i c u l ate the relation of " race" ledge 1989), ixx-xx.
and class. I n this vei n , anti-racist struggle is viewed as
a contest for "democratic hegemony", which followed 9 Stuart Hall, 'Race,
from the m id-twentieth cent u ry d iscrediting of wh ite Articulation, and So­
supremacy as expl icit state policy. 1 0 U ntil recently, the cieties Structured i n
G ramscian analytic of hegemony, which has informed Dominance', Black
both Marxist cultural theory and many h i g h ly i nfluential British Cultural Stud­
critical accounts of " race" and slavery, has largely gone ies (Un iversity of Chi­
unq uestioned . 1 1 cago Press 1gg6), 55.

Recent critical writing by Frank Wilderson - part of a 10 M ichael Omi and


g roup of contemporary theoreticians of black politics Howard Winant, Ra­
whom Wilderson has broad ly labelled "Afro-pessim ist", cial Formation in
i n c l u d i n g Said iya H artman, Hortense S p i l l e rs, J ared the United States
Sexton, and J oy James - sharply challenges the appro­ (Routledge 1994).
priateness of t h i s G ramscian framework. Wilderson
assesses t h e l i m its of a pol itical economy of " race" 11 For Marxist alterna­
centered on wage work, rather than on d irect relations tives to the G ramscian
of racial violence and terror - from black chattel slavery analytic of hegemony,
to black mass i ncarceration. I n contrast to a Marxist see Bonefeld Hol­
perspective that focuses on the struggle around the loway, Richard G u n n ,
wage, or around the terms of exploitation, Wilderson a n d Kosmas Psycho­
identifies "the despotism of the u nwaged relation" as pedis Open Marxism,
the engine that d rives anti-black racism. 1 2 vols. 1-3 (Pl uto 1995).

Wi l d e rs o n presents a d evastat i n g c r it i q u e of t h e 12 Frank Wilderson 1 1 1 ,


relevance of a G ramscian analysis of hegemony for 'G ramsci's Black Marx:
u n de rstand i n g structural anti-black violence. For Wil­ Whither the Slave in
derson it is the focu s on the wage which leads to the Civil Society?' Social
inability of Marxism to conceptualise gratuitous violence Identities 9 (2003), 230.

The Limit Point of Capitalist Equality 21 1


against black bodies, a " relation of terror as opposed 13 Ibid., 230.
to a relation of hegemony". 1 3 Wilderson is right to point
out that "the privileged subject of Marxist discourse is 14 I bid., 225.
a su baltern who is approached by variable capital - a
wage:' 1 4 Th is is because access to the wage was a 1s For a book-length
prerequ isite for both labour and later identity-based civil critique of the fiction
struggles after the end of legal segregation, throughout of 'colour-blind' and
the 20th century. From the point of view of the classi­ gender neutral par­
cal worker's movement, racism was thus seen as an ticipatory parity which
u nfortunate i m pediment to a process of progressive governs much social
integration i nto an expand ing working class. Yet it is contractarian thought,
precisely the racialisation of the u nwaged, u nfree, and see Charles W. M i l ls,
excluded w h ich constitutes civil society as a space The Racial Contract
where recog nition is bestowed via formal wage con­ (Cornell UP 1997);
tracts and abstract citizenship rights for its members . 1 5 Carole Pateman,
T h u s for Wilderson "the black subject reveals Marxism's The Sexual Contract
inabil ity to t h i n k white supremacy as the base:' 1 6 ( Stanford U P 1988);
Pateman and M i l ls,
Against a G ramscian read i n g o f M arx, with its affi r­ Contract and Domina-
mation ist focus o n wage labo u r, value-form theorists tion ( Polity 2007).
prov i d e a n alternat i v e f ramework for c h a rt i n g t h e
complex interplay between d i rect and indirect forms of 16 Wilderson, 'G ramsci's
domination. If capital is fi rst and foremost an i n d i rect Black Marx: Whither
or im personal form of domination (unlike black chattel the Slave i n Civil
slavery or feudalism, for example) , in which production Society?', 225.
relations are not subordinated to direct social relations,
there is no necessary incompat i b i lity between this and
the persistence o r g rowth of d i rect, overt forms of
racial and gender domination. At play here are not only
u nwaged, coerced or dependent forms of labour, but
also, crucially, the management of those popu lations
which have become red u ndant i n relation to capital .
S u c h p o p u l at i o n s are expendable b u t n onetheless
trapped wit h i n the capital relation, because their exist­
ence is defined by a generalised commod ity economy
which does not recognise their capacity to labour. The
management of such popu lations could be said to be
"form-determ ined" by the capital relation without being
subsumed by it.

Endnotes 3 212
The "form-determi nation" theory of the state may also 17 See Evelyn Nakano
help overcome some of the l i m its of a G ramscian view G lenn, 'From Servi-
of the state as an object over which contending social tude to Service Work:
forces struggle to gain control. From the "state-deriva­ H istorical Conti n u ities
tion debate" of the 1 970s there emerged an alternative in the Racial Division
view of the state as a particular man ifestation of the of Paid Reprod uctive
capital relation - constituted by the separation of the labour', Signs 18: 1
indirect, i mpersonal relations of production from d i rect (1992), 1-43.
political power. Thus the state, with its expanded penal
or carceral capacities, can i m pose d i rect relations of 1a As P. Valentine has
racial domi nation while for instance i nvolvin g itself i n observed, 'rigorous
the disciplinary regu lation and expulsion of i m m i g rant efforts to engage
labour. I n those relations mediated by "free" exchange, with and integrate
where wage labour as a commodity is traded, the state analyses of race
is obliged to ensure the terms of exchange and contract, that do not mesh
while u nwaged relations put one or both parties in the seamlessly with
relation potentially outside o r beyond the law. The in­ Marxist categories'
creasingly pun itive cri m inal isation of the purchase, sale, will inevitably require
and transportation of i l licit drugs provides perhaps one both reth inking some
of the most i nfamous examples of a racialised and ra­ of those categories
cial ising i nformal economy fundamentally structured by and challenging
state violence. Women's former legal status as chattel some entrenched
vis-a-vis marriage offers another, in which women did not orthodoxies of
trad itionally have protection from their husbands wit h i n anti-racist thoug ht: P.
t h e law, b u t only protection from men w h o were n o t their Valentine, 'The Gender
h usbands. The l i m ited protection of this legal status as Distinction i n Com­
chattel was revoked in the case of black domestic labour­ m u n isation Theory',
ers in order to rationalise widespread rape and sexual Lies 1 (2012), 206. This
exploitation by white male employers . 1 7 In either case, the article is in part an
racial division of both productive and reproductive labour attem pt to respond
consistently maintains racial hierarchies within gender cat­ to this i nvitation.
egories, and gender hierarchies within racial categories. 1 8

T h e workers' movement - w i t h i t s valorisation o f wage­


labour, work, and the worker as the subject of history-failed
to g rasp that wage-labou r is not the only stable form of
exploitation on the basis of which capital ists can profit.
Capitalism has not only proven fully compatible with un­
free labour - from slavery, indentured servitude, convict

The Limit Point of Capitalist Equality 213


leasing, and debt peonage to gendered forms of home- 19 Marx, Capital, vol. 1
work and unwaged reproductive labou r - it has required (MECW 35), 739.
the systematic racialisation of this labour through the
creation of an array of effectively non-sovereign raced
and gendered subjects. These modes of exploitation
are not dest i n ed to d isappear with the expansion of
capital ist social relations around the world - e.g. through
the massive campaigns of independent states i n Africa,
Latin America, and Asia to subjugate local popu lations
to projects of industrial isation. Instead they are repro­
duced through the creation of caste-l i ke surplus popula­
tions, deserted by the wage but sti l l imprisoned with in
capital ist markets. " Race" is not extri nsic to capital ism
or simply the product of specific historical formations
such as South African Apartheid or Jim Crow America.
Likewise, capitalism does not simply incorporate racial
domi nation as an incidental part of its operations, b ut
from its orig ins systematically begins p rod ucing and
reprod ucing " race" as g lobal surplus h uman ity.

As Marx famously noted , the basis for "primitive accu­


mulation", requ i ri n g the d ispossession of the peasantry
in England and Scotland, lay in N ew World plantation
slavery, resou rce extraction, and the extermi nation of
non-European populations on a world scal e :

T h e d iscovery o f g o l d a n d silver i n America, the extir­


pation, enslavement and entombment in m i nes of the
aborig inal population, the beg i n n i n g of the conquest
and looting of the East I ndies, the turning of Africa
i nto a warren for the commercial h u nt i n g of black­
skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist
prod uction. These idyl lic proceed ings are the chief
moment of prim itive acc u m u lation. O n t h e i r heels
treads the commercial war of the European nations,
with the globe for a theatre. It beg ins with the revolt
of the Netherlands from Spai n , assumes g iant dimen­
sions in England's Anti-Jacobin War, and is sti l l going
on i n the opium wars agai nst China, &c. 1 9

Endnotes 3 214
While non-racially determined varieties of slave labour 20 M i ke Davis, Planet of
predated the European colonial "Age of D iscovery", capi- Slums (Verso 2006), 19.
talism bears the unique distinction of forging a systematic
racist doctrine from the 1 6th to 1 9th centuries - culminat-
ing in 1 9th century anthropological theories of scientific
racism - to justify racial domination, colonial plunder, and
an array of racially delineated varieties of unfree labour
and u nequal citizenship. The history of capitalism isn't
simply the h istory of the proletarianisation of an inde-
pendent peasantry but of the violent racial domination
of populations whose valorisation as wage labour, to re-
verse a common formu lation, has been merely h istorically
contingent: "socially dead" African slaves, the revocable
sovereignty and terra nu/lius of indigenous peoples, and
the nerveless, supernumerary body of the coolie labourer.

Racial disparities have been reproduced as an inher­


ent category of capitalism since its origins not primarily
through the wage, but through its absence. The i n itial
moment of contact between a European colonial order
and an unwaged, racialised "outside" to capital has been
progressively systematised wit h i n capitalism itself as a
racialised g lobal d ivision of labour and the permanent
structural oversupply of such labour, which has produced
"one billion city-dwellers who inhabit postmodern slums".20

I nsofar as labou r markets organise the ratio of paid to


u n paid labou r, " race" as a marker of economic subor­
d ination is grounded both in a permanently superfluous
popu lation and entrenched racialised wage d ifferen­
tials. The expulsion of living labour from the production
process places a kind of semi-permeable racialising
boundary bifurcating productive and unproductive popu­
lations even wit h i n older racial categories : a kind of
flexible global colour line separating the formal and infor­
mal economy, and waged from wageless l ife. Though
this wageless colour line is m i n i mally permeabl e and
expl icit racial criteria are no longer formally sanctioned,
the material reproduction of racial domination, including

The Limit Point of Capitalist Equality 215


the proliferation of intra-national non-white ethnic hierar­
chies, is grounded in intertwined processes of exclusion
from the wage, the i ncreasing criminalisation of informal
economies, and elevated vulnerability to state terror.

3 RACIAL D O M I NAT I O N AFTER T H E " RACIAL B R EAK"

What H oward Winant and M i chael Omi have called 21 Recent studies of
the racial "break" or "great transformation"- d riven by the history of armed
a world-historical anti-racist upsurge of decolon isation, self-defense i n the
civil rights, and anti-apartheid social movements in the Civil Rights Movement,
mid-twentieth century - has discredited white supremacy for example by g roups
as explicit state policy across the g lobe. For Omi and l i ke the Deacons for
Winant, racial domination has g iven way to the struggle Defense and Justice,
over racial hegemony, and coercion has g iven way to have emphasised
consent. But fifty years after the racial " break", racial the complexity of
d o m ination has also evolved. Many ostensi bly " post­ the com m itment of
colonial" states have resorted to racial violence and movement activists
ethn i c cleansing in the name of nati o n - b u i l d i n g and to G handian strategic
economic development. After the " racial break", capital nonviolence. See
and race intertwine both inside and outside the wage Akinyele O mowale
relation. I nsofar as labour markets organise the ratio of Umoja, We Will Shoot
paid to u n paid labour, " race" as a marker of economic Back: A rmed Resist­
subord i nation is g rounded both i n a permanently super­ ance in the Mississippi
fl uous population and entrenched wage d ifferentials. Freedom Movement
After the repeal of most Jim Crow laws and racialised (NYU Press 2013);
national immigration restrictions, two anti-racist political Simon Wendt, The
orientations emerged. In the case of US black-freedom Spirit and the Shotgun:
struggles after World War II, persistent racialised wage A rmed Resistance
d ifferentials - and racial d iscri m ination in housing, edu­ and the Struggle for
cation, and credit markets - became the target of a late Civil Rights ( U n iversity
civil-rights-movement politics of equitable inclusion and Press of Florida 2007).
electoral representation. At the same time, racial exclu­
sion from the wage, de facto seg regation i n g hettos
and exposure to systemic police violence, made state
i nstitutions - l i ke welfare, prisons, and policing - the
target of a black fem i n ist welfare-reform m ovement,
waves of ghetto and prison riots, and a more m i l itant
politics of self-defense and self-assertion.21

Endnotes 3 216
S i nce the attacks of September 1 1 , 200 1 , popular US 22To be clear, these
stereotypes of the relative economic productivity of racial popu lations are not
subgroups have j ustified the exposure of such groups to outside but firmly
state surveillance, policing or incarceration - from border with in capitalism-with
patrol shootings of "illegals" to black mass-incarceration. labour regulation
At the same time, the " post-racial" civi l i s i n g m ission enforced by an array
of the US, and its prosecution of a m ulti-trillion dollar of pun itive state appa­
m i litary campaign across the Islamic world, has been ratuses-so that while
vouchsafed by a national mythology of the p rogressive the wage no longer
overcoming of the legacy of slavery and legal segregation. d i rectly mediates col­
lective access to basic
The chan g i n g relationship between the U S state and n eeds l i ke food and
su perfluous domestic populations h i g h l ights the global, shelter, a vast informal
fou ndational role of state violence as a racialisation pro­ economy has arisen
cess. The role of the state itself as an ostensibly neutral for secu ring the basic
agent of racial reform, rather than the principal agent of means of survival. In
racial violence, provides the missing third term in theoris­ the exam ple of the
ing the relationsh i p between race and capital . Contem­ partial proletarianisa­
porary US racial pol itics is fundamentally structured by tion of the C h i nese
the decline of US global economic hegemony and by peasantry and the
the hyper- m i litarisation of a "post-racial" security state creation of a massive,
in response to three racialised "civil isational" threats: 160-million-person
the cri m inal threat of black surplus populations, the rural migrant labour
demographic threat of Latino immigrant labour, and the force, ag ricu ltu ral
unlimited national security threat posed by an elastically workers, or small
conceived Islamic terrorist menace whose adherents are peasants, have often
subject to collective punishment, torture, and preemptive become unwaged,
eradication. All th ree are d i rectly targeted and racial­ self-employed infor­
ised by the state's penal, citizenship-conferring, and mal sector workers.
domestic security institutions. The rise of the anti-black The historical workers'
US carceral state from the 1 970s onward exe m pl ifies movement's dream
rituals of state and civilian violence wh ich enforce the ( a d ream which also
racialisation of wageless l ife, and the racial ascription of sustained the U S civil
wagelessness. From the point of view of capital , " race" rights movement and
is renewed not only through persistent racial ised wage an array of anti-colo­
differentials, or the kind of occupational segregation pos­ n ial national l i beration
ited by earlier "spl it labour market" theories of race, but movements) , of pro­
through the racialisation of unwaged surplus or superflu­ g ressive i n corporation
ous populations from Khartoum to the slums of Cairo.22 into the wage, has run

The Limit Point of Capitalist Equality 217


4 " RAC E" A N D S U R P L U S H U MAN ITY

The colonial and racial g e n ealogy of E u ropean capi­ up against the real ity
talism has been encoded d i rectly i nto the econo m i c of persistent struc­
" base" through an o n g o i n g h i story of racial violence tural unem ployment
which structu res both u nfree and i nformal labou r, and and su perfl u ity.
which binds surplus populations to capitalist markets.
If superfl u ity, stratification, and wage d ifferentials are
deracialised and the racial content of such categories
rendered conti ngent, then " race" can only appear as
epiphenomena!, and possess a de facto "specificity",
which severs any causal l i n k between capital ism and
racialisation. The racial typologies wh ich emerged from
and enabled the spatial expansion of European capi­
talism as a mode of production, have been renewed
over the course of centu ries by an i mmanent tendency
wit h i n capital ism to prod uce surplus popu lations i n
ghettos, slu ms, a n d favelas throughout t h e world. After
the mid-twentieth century racial " break", formal decolo­
nisation - i n places l i ke Brazil, su b-Saharan Africa and
South Asia - left i n its wake developmental ist states
which absorbed ideologies of ind ustrialisation and, so
also, racialised i n d igenous populations, eth n i c g ro u ps,
and stigmatised castes as peripheral to the wage rela­
tion. Such popu lations will never be fu l ly integrated into
capital ist accumu lation processes except as bodies to
be policed, warehoused, or exterminated.

I n the US, the postwar Keynesian state' s g r u d g i n g


exten s i o n of p u b l i c s o c i a l prov i s i o n s t o n on - w h ite
com m u n ities i n the 1 9 60s has now been withd rawn
and largely replaced by carceral and state-mandated
work regimes applied to d isposable populations who
i n habit the politically u n representable dead zones of
raced, g e n d e re d , and sexual ised poverty. The o n l y
alternative to l o w wage , p recarious service w o r k for
these populations is a criminal ised i nformal-economy
abutt i n g America's vast carceral system. The U S i n
particu lar has served a s a g l o bal model for a "new

Endnotes 3 218
govern ment of social i nsecu rity" founded on a pun itive 23 Lol'c Wacquant,
upsurge in survei l lance, pol icing, and i ncarceration i n Punishing the Poor:
response t o the d isappearance o f secure wage work.23 The Neoliberal
Government of Social
" Race" is t h u s rooted in two overlapping p rocesses Insecurity ( Duke Uni­
of al location and control. Past and present racial dis­ versity Press 2009).
c ri m i n at i o n i s c u m u lative and d istr i butes p recarity, See 'A Rising Tide
u n e m ployment, and i nformal ity u n evenly across the Lifts All Boats', i n this
economy along " race" and gender l ines. But " race" is issue, for a discussion
also operationalised in various state and civil ian politi­ of how such a model
cal projects of social control which classify and coerce was developed i n the
"deserving" and "undeserving" fractions of various racial case of Britai n.
g roups while determ i n i n g their fitness for citizenship.
Erod ing the institutional separation between policing,
border securitisation, and global warfare, a massively
expanded secu rity state now sends 1 i n 3 black men
to prison in their l ifetime, deports nearly half a m i l l ion
undocumented immigrants annually, has extermi nated
anywhere from 1 00,000 to over a million civilians in I raq
alone, and is now gearing up for a $ 4 6 billion dollar
" border surge" which includes d rone surveillance and
biometric exit scann i n g . 2 1 st century " race" emerges
from this matrix of securitisation.

5 THE TRO U B L E WITH " C LASS" : class pol itics as i d e ntity p o l i t i cs

As a rhetoric of racial diversity has been used increas­


i n g ly to conceal or even j ustify deepening economic
inequal ity, recent theorists from Slavoj Z izek and Ellen
Meiksins Wood to Walter Benn Michaels contend that
what they call m ultinational or neol i beral capital ism has
come to champion a "pol itics of race" against a "politics
of class". For these critics, identity-based social move­
m ents, and l i beral m u lticulturalism in particular, is at
best ind ifferent and at worst hostile to what Michaels
considers the more u rgent problem of class i nequal ity.
Conversely, anti-racist theorists from Howard Wi nant
to David Theo G o l d berg have arg ued t i relessly for
the i rred u c i b i l ity of " race" to pol itical economy. The

The Limit Point of Capitalist Equality 219


institutionally rei nforced division between anti-racism
and Marxism has a l o n g h i story. It has been a com­
m o n place of recent popular h i storical accou nts of
the political trajectory of the 1 9 6 0s-era " N ew Left" to
blame the "frag mentation" of a u n itary revolutionary
class su bject on the emergence of various anti-racist
struggles: from US eth n i c nationalisms aligned with
m i d -twentieth century African and Asian anticolonial
movements; to black fem i nist critiques of the centrality
of wh ite, heterosexual, middle class women's experi­
ences i n second-wave femi n i s m ; to what both l iberal
and conservative critics have lamented as the rise of a
balkan ising "identity politics".

The i ntellectual polarisat i o n of theoretical trad itions


which address either race or class could be termed the
"un happy marriage of anti-racism and Marxism". In the lat­
ter half of the twentieth century, with the waning of Third
Worldist, Maoist, G uevarist or World-Systems Marxist
analyses of " race" and colonialism - and of bodies of
writing aligned with and informed by mass anti-capitalist
and anti-racist political movements - academic theorists
have i nvoked Marx to reread " race" as historical con­
tingency. " Race" typically persists i n academic Marxist
d iscourse as a social d ivision i nternal to the working
class and sown by economic elites i n order to d rive
down wages, fragment worker insu rgency, and create
the permanent th reat of a nonwh ite reserve army of
labour. I n these accou nts " race" becomes a functional
or derivative component of class rule. This functional­
ist or "class reductionist" account of " race" has been
thoroughly challenged by anti-racist scholars over the
last half century, yet these challenges have customarily
emphasised the i rreducibil ity or relative autonomy of
"race" as one among many equivalent though entangled
systems of domination which can be simply superadded
to "class". In turn, both Marxist and anti-racist theories
assert, though for vastly d ifferent reasons, that there is
no constitutive relation between " race" and capitalism.

Endnotes 3 220
Sweeping critiques of "identity politics", or of l i beral 24 See Wood, Democra-
m u lt i c u lturalism as neoliberal mystificat i o n , conceal cy against Capitalism:
a deeper elision of the identitarian logic at work in a Renewing Historical
social ist and social democratic " pol itics of class". The Materialism. (Aakar
classical workers' movement, with its concept of "class Books 2007), 258;
consciousness", was prem ised upon a d ream that the and 'Marxism Without
widespread affirmation of a working-class identity could Class Strugg le?'
serve as the basis for workers' hegemony - within nation- Socialist Register 20
ally constituted zones of capital accumu lation - and so (Merlin 1983), 242.
also for a workers' revolution. Like m uch contemporary
anti-racist scholarsh ip, the Marxist critique of identity
pol itics typically remakes capitalism as a problem of
identity, specifically of class identity, and reduces struc-
tural exploitation to distributive inequalities i n wealth .
Labou r a n d identity-based struggles, assumed to b e
qual itatively d ifferent in s u c h accou nts, are i n fact struc-
tured by the same representational logic of affi rmi n g
identities within capitalism. "The 'difference' that consti-
tutes class as an ' identity';' Ellen Meiksins Wood writes,
" is, by defi n ition, a relationshi p of inequality and power,
in a way that sexual or cultural 'd ifference' need not be":

the working class, as the d i rect object of the most


fundamental and d etermi n ative - t h o u g h cert a i n ly
not the only - form of oppression, and the one class
whose interests do n ot rest o n the o ppression of
other classes, can create the conditions for liberating
all h u man beings i n the struggle to l i berate itself.24

This argument from Wood h i g h l i g hts three i nterrelated


problems of fram ing the interaction between systems of
racial, gender, and economic domination wh ich plague
both Marxist critiques of "identity pol itics" and contem­
porary theories of racial d ifference. If for Wood race,
gender and sexual ity are defi n itionally non-economic
categories of social l ife which index economic inequal­
ity only contingently, then it is sim ply a tautology that
these identities are not constitutive of capitalism as
such. The abolition of sexual or racial domination, here

The Limit Point of Capitalist Equality 22 1


u n d e rstood primarily as vestigial forms of h i storical
i nj ustice, therefore would not i n principle be i ncompat­
i b l e with capital ism. Final ly, the reason i n g goes, the
q ual itative d ifference between class and other forms of
identity rests on the fact that class identity can not be
"celebrated". And yet the arg ument elides a fundamental
contradiction between the abolition of class inequality
and an implicit agent of emancipation in the figure of the
working class. Wh ile poverty may not be a form of d if­
ference which can be "celebrated", Wood nevertheless
produces an impl icitly affirmationist account of the work­
ing class as that social agent both responsible for and
u n i quely capable of ending capital ism. The question of
how the affirmation of such an identity could bring about
the end of class oppression, without simply reaffirm ing
capitalism under the g u ise of worker self-management,
is passed over in silence. Despite the attempt to criticise
the logic of identity-based struggles, Wood u ltimately
offers what I want to call an affirmationist politics of class
structurally indistingu ishable from similarly affirmationist
accou nts of race and gender d ifference.

But what if we did not center anti-racist struggles on


difference but on domi nation? To understand " race" not
as a marker of d ifference but as a system of domination
poses the question of the material abolition of " race" as
an ind icator of structu ral subord ination. Both anti-racist
critics of class reductionist Marxisms and Marxist critics
of l iberal reformist, "merely cultural" anti-racisms gloss
over the strategic similarities between the i ncreasingly
desperate, defensive struggles of the US labour move­
ment and the race and gender-based "identity politics"
to which it is so consistently counterposed. As the 2 0 1 1
labour struggles in Wisconsin so dramatically revealed,
the US labour movement's turn toward the state and
electoral politics to secure its very right to exist m irrors
the extreme d ifficulty of securing even m i n i mal racially
red istributive programs i n the aftermath of the G reat
Society programs of the 1 9 6 0s. Which is to say that, i n

Endnotes 3 222
an era of declining membership i n mass-based labour 25 Kyriakides and Torres,
and civil rights organisations, the prospects are d i m for Race Defaced: Para­
both a "politics of race" and a "pol itics of class". S hift­ digms of Pessimism,
i n g the analytic focus from d ifference to d o m in ation Politics of Possibil-
d i rects our attention to the entanglement of race and ity, 36.
superfluity, as well as the racialising i mpact of violence,
imprisonment, and warfare. Rejecting an understanding
of capitalism as an increasingly inclusive engine of racial
uplift, and the state as an ultimate guarantor of civic
equality, an abolition ist anti-racism would categorically
reject the contin u i n g affirmatio n of the fundam e ntal
respectability, productivity or patriotism of racial i sed
g roups as a way to determ ine their relative fitness for
racial d o m in ation. B eg i n n i n g from radically d ifferent
histories of racialisation, abolitionist anti-racist struggles
would aim to d ismantle the machinery of " race" at the
heart of a fantasy of formal freedom, where the " l im it
point of capitalist equal ity is laid bare as the central
protagonist of racial ordering:'25

The Limit Point of Capitalist Equality 223


S P ONTAN E ITY, M ED IATION, R U PTUR E

224
We do not know whether the [contrasting] destinies 1 Sergio Bologna,
of Luxemburg . . . and Lenin were to be tied to the fact 'Class composition
that Lenin and his group armed the workers, while and the theory of the
the Spartacists continued to view the organisation as party at the orig ins of
coordination . . . and the refusal to work as the only the workers' council
adequate workers ' weapon. The essence of Lenin ­ movement' (1972).
ism shifts from the relationship between spontaneity
and the party to the relationship between the party
and insurrection. 1

Are present-day struggles unfolding towards revolution?


We try to find our bearings, with respect to this q u es­
tion, i n the only way we can : not only in our experience
of the present, but also, by consulting the revolutionary
theories of the past. However, to look to past revolution­
ary theories is a problematic ventu re : those theories
emerged i n response to a set of problems which arose
in the course of a particu lar era - an era that is not our
own . I ndeed, the revol utionary theories of the twenti eth
century were developed in the course of a sequence of
strugg les that we call the workers' movement. Those
theories do not o n ly bear the traces of the workers'
movement i n general. They formed in response to the
l i m its that m ovement confronted at its h i ghest point of
intensity - that is, i n the era of revolutions, 1 9 05-2 1 .

The l i m its of t h e workers' m ovement had everyt h i n g


t o do with t h e problem o f instilling a class conscious­
ness i n a population that had been proletarianised only
incompletely. Facing a large peasantry in the countryside
and a motley assortment of worki ng classes in the cities,
the strategists of the workers' movement looked forward
to a future moment, w h e n f u l l proletarian isation - at­
tendant on a furt h e r development of t h e produ ctive
forces - wou ld erad icate existing d ivisions among pro­
letarians. The objective u nity of the class would then
find a subjective correlate. As it turned out, this d ream
never became a reality. The further development of the
prod uctive forces reinforced certain d ivisions among

Spontaneity, Mediation, Rupture 225


proletarians, w h i l e creat i n g oth e rs. Meanwh i l e , that 2 See 'A History of
development e rad icated t h e basis of workers' u n ity. Separation', forthcom-
Workers found that they were no longer the vital force ing i n Endnotes 4.
of the modern era; instead, they were made over into ap-
pendages - attachments to a sprawling set of machines 3 The mass strike of the
and i nfrastructu res that escaped their control.2 early twentieth century
had l ittle in common
Ret u rn i n g , h owever briefly, to the revolutionary h i g h with the d ream of the
point o f t h e last century - before t h e destitution o f the general strike, the
workers' movement - may help u s to understand the grand soir, of the late
context i n which the revolutionary theories of the past nineteenth centu ry.
were born. On that basis, we will beg i n to articulate a
revolutionary theory for our own times. But we should
be wary i n undertaki ng such a project today : the emer­
gence of revolutions is, by its very nature, unpredictable;
our theory must somehow i ncorporate this u n p redict­
abil ity into its very core. The revol utionaries of an earl ier
era m ostly refused to open themselves towards the
unknown - even though the revolutions they experienced
never played out as they had imag i ned.

After all , twentieth-century revol utions turned out not to


be the result of methodical projects, of slowly building up
un ion and/or party memberships, which were expected
to expand in ste p with the industrialisation and homog­
enisation of the class. Instead, the revolutionary waves
of 1 905-2 1 emerged chaotically, with self-organising
struggles formi n g around the tactic of the mass strike.
Neither the emergence nor the development of the mass
strike was foreseen by revolutionary strateg ists, in spite
of decades of reflection (and the h istorical examples of
1 848 and 1 87 1 ).3

Among t h e few revol utionaries who d i d n ot oppose


this new form of stru g g l e outright, Rosa Luxe m b u rg
came to identify it as the revolutionary tactic par excel­
lence. Her book, The Mass Strike, is one of the best
texts in the h i story of revolutionary theory. H owever,
even Luxe m b u rg saw the mass strike as a means of

Endnotes 3 226
revital ising the Germany Social Democratic Party. As 4 G i l les Dauve and
Dauve poi nts out: " if [Luxembu rg] was the author of Denis Auth ier, The
the form u la, 'After August 4, 1 9 1 4, social democracy Communist Left in
is nothing but a nauseating corpse,' she proved to be Germany, 1918-192 1
q u ite the necrophil iac:'4 (1976), Chapter 4.

P R E LU D E : THE MASS STR I KE

The history of the mass strike is a su bterranean h istory ; 5 See Philippe Bour­
it is largely u nwritten. But it can be outlined a s follows.5 rinet, 'The workers'
councils i n the theory
I n 1 90 2 , roving strikes occu rred i n Belgium and Swe­ of the Dutch-German
den, as a means of pressing for u niversal male suffrage. com m u nist l eft:
The tactic then spread to the N etherlands and Russia
before arriving i n Italy, in 1 904, as a protest against the 6 Carl Schorske,
violent repression of workers' uprisings. In Italy, workers' German Social
councils were formed for the first time. Th is first wave Democracy, 1905-1917
reached its h i g h point in the enormous Russian mass ( Harvard U niversity
strikes of 1 905, which culminated in an insurrection - the Press 1955), 39.
first Russian Revolution - in December of that year. With
the Russian example serving as the model, the mass­
strike tactic circu lated rapidly through Eu ropean cities.

It soon appeared in Germany, the heart of Second Inter­


national Marxism, where the question of the "purpose"
of the mass strike - which had al ready been used to
a variety of d ifferent ends - was first raised. For union
representatives, the mass stri ke appeared to be an
obstacle to their u n ions' own, plodding attem pts to
organise the class. A German trade-union ist declared :
"To build our organ isations, we need calm in the workers'
movement:'6 Yet the tactic continued to spread , and
its scope widened, despite the pronouncement of the
Second I nternational that it supported the mass-strike
tactic only as a defensive weapon .

After the wave o f 1 9 0 2 -07, struggles q u i eted down


before bursti n g forth again i n 1 9 1 0- 1 3. I n the cou rse
of these two waves, u nion membership surged ; the vote

Spontaneity, Mediation, Rupture 227


was won in Austria and Italy, while the Scandi navian
states were forced to l iberal ise. Anarcho-syndicalism
and Left Com m u n ism appeared as d istinct tendencies.
The start of World War I put an end to the second
stri ke wave, which was al ready beg i n n i n g to peter out.
But this seem i n g ly permanent blockage turned out to
be another temporary impediment. Across Europe, the
n u m ber of stri kes was already rising from low levels
i n 1 9 1 5. Activity spilled outside the workplace : there
were rent strikes i n Clydeside and d e m onstrations
against food prices in Berlin. In 1 9 1 6, mass strikes were
called in Germany, but this time in order to protest the
imprisonment of Karl Liebknecht, a symbol of principled
opposition to the War. By 1 9 1 7, labour u n rest was
matched by mutin ies i n the army and food riots i n the
streets, among other actions. These actions proliferated
throug h new forms of organ isation : the shop-stewards'
movements i n England and G ermany and the " internal
comm issions" i n Italy.

Thus, even before the Bolshevik Revolution in October,


struggle was heating up across Eu ropean cities. Mass
strikes in Austria and Germany were the largest ever
in each country's history. People forget that World War
I ended, not because of the defeat of one side, but
because more and more of the countries i nvolved in
host i l ities collapsed i n a wave of revolutions, which
surged and then receded from 1 9 1 7 to 1 9 2 1 . We will
not dwell on this final wave of struggle, except to q u ote
the words that Friedrich Ebert, leader of the SPD, spoke
to the frightened German bourgeoisie, in 1 9 1 8 : "We
are the only ones who can maintain order" . . .

What can we learn from this brief history of the mass­


strike tactic? Were a revolution to occur today, it would
also have to emerge out of a massive i ntensification of
spontaneous, self-organising struggles. Those struggles
would have to break out and extend themselves across
vast geographic spaces, in an ebb and flow that lasts

Endnotes 3 228
for decades. It is only with i n such a context - that is, a
context of an unfo l d i n g sequence of strug g l es - that
revolution becomes possible, not just theoretically, but
actually. It is thus also only i n the course of i ntensifying
struggles that the strategic q u estions of an era can be
asked and answered, i n a concrete way.

H owever, we cannot learn m u ch more than that, from


the past. The tactic of the mass strike was specific to
its time, a time that witnessed : ( 1 ) an u n p recedented
consolidation of firms and workplaces ; (2) the arrival, i n
new industrial towns, of recently proletarianised peasants,
bringing with them certain cultures of solidarity ; (3) the
fight of workers to defend their control over the labour
process, against mechanisation and rationalisation ; and
finally, (4) the fight against a persistent old reg ime - a
fight for equality of citizenship, the right to organise, and
the vote - wh ich elites refused to g rant proletarians. The
horizon of struggle is very d ifferent today, yet the tools that
we have for grasping the relation between struggles and
revolution still bear the traces of the workers' movement.

Those tools m u st b e re-forged. The q u otation from


B o l og n a, with which we began, touches on the key
concepts of revolutionary theory, as it was u nderstood
in the course of the workers' movement: spontaneity and
organ isation, party and insurrection. The question that
faces us is: how do we articulate the relations among
this constellation of concepts today, that is, after the
end of the workers' movement (which has meant also,
and necessarily, the end of all the revolutionary trad i­
tions that animated the last century: Len i n ism and the
u ltra-left, social democracy and syn d ical ism, and so
on) ? We offer the following reflections on three con­
cepts - spontaneity, mediation, rupture - as an attem pt
to re-fashion the tools of revolutionary theory, for our
times. By takin g cogn isance of the gap that separates
us from the past, we hope to extract from past theories
someth ing of use to u s i n the present.

Spontaneity, Mediation, Rupture 229


T H E COO R D I NAT I O N PRO B L E M

Before we discuss the key concepts of revolutionary 7 Gangs and rackets


theory, we m u st pause to say somet h i n g about t h e act to ensure that
specificity o f struggle i n capital ist societies. Outside some proletarians
of those societies, h uman beings are mostly organised get 'good jobs' at the
into face-to-face com m u n ities. When they clash, they expense of others.
do so as com m u n ities that pre-exist those clashes. By
contrast, in capitalist societies, human beings are mostly
atom ised. Proletarians confront o n e another, not as
members of face-to-face comm u n ities, but rather, as
strangers. Th is atom isation determines the character of
contemporary struggles. For the basis on which proletar­
ians struggle does not pre-exist those struggles. Instead,
the foundations of struggle have to be b u i lt (out of the
materials of social l ife) in the course of struggle itself.
This feature of capitalist societies has two basic causes :

1 ) In the markets where they sell their labou r-power, pro­


letarians com pete with one another for jobs. It is g iven
i n the nature of the exploitative relation that there are
never enough jobs to go around. I n this situation, some
proletarians find it worthwh ile to form gangs and rack­
ets - based on gender, race, nation, creed - and to oppose
other g roups of workers on that basis. 7 The opposition
between proletarians plays out, not only with respect
to jobs and wage d ifferentials, but also with respect to
worki ng conditions, fam i ly time, educational opportuni­
ties and so on. Intra-class competition is also reflected
outside of labour markets, in ruthlessly enforced status
hierarch ies, on display through conspicuous consump­
tion (flashy cars) and cou ntless l ifestyle markers (tight
pants) . Thus, an increasingly universal situation of labour­
dependence has not led to a homogen isation of i nter­
ests. On the contrary, proletarians are internally stratified.
They carefully differentiate themselves from one another.
Where collective interests have been cultivated by or­
ganisations, that has often re-i nscribed other competitive
differences in the boundaries of race, nation, gender, etc.

Endnotes 3 230
2) Lab o u r-de p e n d e n cy not o n l y issues i n com p etition 8 Not all who are
between workers, repelling them from one another. Inso­ labour-dependent
far as individuals are able to secu re work, the wage also have ach ieved the
frees proletarians from having to deal with one another. autonomy that comes
No longer dependent on an i n heritance, wage-earners with it. For exam ple,
are not beholden to their parents or anyone else (except proletarian women
their bosses !).8 They can escape from the cou ntryside have always worked,
to the cities, from the cities to the suburbs, or from the at least for part of
suburbs back to the cities. As long as they find work, their l ives. But for
proletarians are free to m ove about as t h ey p l ease. another part of their
They can flee the admonishing eyes of ancestral and l ives (especially
religious authorities, as well as former friends and lovers, before 1970), they
in order to partner with whomever they want, to pray to were relegated to
whatever gods, and to decorate their homes any wh ich a domestic sphere,
way. Proletarians do not have to see anyone they do where they earned no
not l i ke, except at work. Thus, the com m u n ity d issolves wages of their own.
not only by force; its d issolution is also actively willed. Even when women
The result is an h i storically unique social structure, i n did earn wages,
which people don't really have t o depend on each other, their wages were
directly, for much of anything. Yet, proletarians' individual sometimes handed
autonomy is won at the expense of a col lective power­ over d i rectly to their
lessness. When revolt ends, proletarians tend to revert husbands. I n this way,
to atomisation. They dissolve back i nto the cash nexus. the development of
the capital ist mode of
Because proletarians begi n from a situation of nearly production prevented
u n iversal ato m isat i o n , t h ey face a u n i q u e coordina­ women from w i n n i n g
tion problem. Proletarians have to find ways to band t h e autonomy from
together, but i n order to do so, they have to overcome fathers and husbands
the real opposition of their i nterests. I nsofar as they that young men
have not yet overcome these barriers, they find that were able to achieve,
they are powerless in their struggle with both capital early on. That women,
and the state. Thus, the problem proletarians face - in today, do earn and
non-revo l utionary t i m es - is not the lack of a proper retain their own
strategy (which could be d ivined by clever intellectuals) , wages has g iven
but rather, the presence of real power asymmetries, them an increased
attendant on their atomisation. N oth ing i n the individ ual autonomy, even
workers' arsenal can match the power of capital ists though they are sti l l
to h i re and fi re at will, or the procl ivity of policemen to sadd led with most o f
shoot, beat or jail. t h e domestic work.

Spontaneity, Mediation, Rupture 231


Workers have historically overcome their atomisation - and 9 See, for exam pie,
the power i m balances that resu lt - in waves of coordi­ Robert Alexrod, The
nated, disruptive activity. But workers face a double-bind: Evolution of Coop­
they can act collectively if they trust one another, but eration (Basic Books
they can trust one another - i n the face of massive risks 1984).
to themselves and others - only if that trust has already
been realised in collective action. If revolutionary activity
is exceptional, it is not because ideology d ivides work­
ers, but rather because, u nless revolutionary action is
already taking place, it is suicidal to try to "go it alone".
The ideas in our heads, no matter how revolutionary they
are, mostly serve to justify - and also to help us to cope
with - the suffering borne of this situation.

The seem ingly indissol uble problem of struggle, of the


double bind, is finally solved only by struggle itself, by
the fact that struggle unfolds over time. Computationally,
this solution can be described as the possible result of
an iterated prisoners' dilemma.9 Our term is spontaneity.

1 S P O N TA N E ITY

Spontaneity is usually understood as an absence of 10 See Robert Pippin,


organisation. S o m eth i n g spontaneous arises from a Hegel's Idealism
momentary i mpulse, as if occurring natural ly. Second (Cam bridge U n iversity
I nternational Marxists believed that workers' revolt was Press 1989), 16-24.
spontaneous, in this sense : it was a natu ral reaction to
capitalist domination, which must be given shape by the
party. This notion rel ies on what might be called a deriva­
tive m eani n g of the term spontaneity. In the eig hteenth
century, when Kant described the transcendental unity of
apperception - the fact that I am aware of myself as hav­
i n g my own experiences - he called this a spontaneous
act. 1 0 Kant m eant the opposite of someth ing natural. A
spontaneous act is one that is freely undertaken. In fact,
the word spontaneous derives from the Latin sponte,
m ean ing "of one's own accord , freely, willingly". I n this
sense, spontaneity is not about acting compu lsively or
automatically. It is a matter of acting without external

Endnotes 3 232
constraint. We participate in capitalist social relations 11 I nd ividuals act
everyday : by going to work, by making pu rchases, etc. spontaneously, in this
But we are free to decide not to do that, whatever the sense, all the time.
consequences may be (in fact, the consequences are Sometimes they have
sometimes severe, because our participation in capital· a plan and sometimes
ism is not a choice, but rather, a compulsion) . ' ' they do not. We are
i nterested, however,
Four points follow, from this re-interpretation of the term : not in such i nd ividual
acts of freedom, but
1 ) Spontaneity - precisely because it is freely willed - is in her· rather, in collective
ently unpredictable. For this reason, there can be no fixed acts of spontaneity.
theory of struggle. There can only be a phenomenology That is to say, we are
of the experience of revolt. Of course, revolt does bear interested, here, o n ly
a relation to crisis, economic or otherwise, si nce crises in mass activity.
make proletarians' existing ways of l ife u ntenable. But
the relation between crisis and revolt is never mechanical. 12 To point that out is not
Revolt remains fundamentally un· or overdeterm i ned : it to denig rate m i l itants :
never happens just when it is supposed to, and when it it is to rem i nd us that
does happen, it often arises from the unlikeliest of corners. while m i l itants are an
Discontent may simmer, but then a police murder or a rise active agent in any
in bread prices suddenly "triggers" revolt. However, no one wave of struggle, they
knows beforehand what will be the trigger event, in any do not hold the key
g iven case. This is not to say that revolt is unplanned - or to it. They solve the
that militants do not play a role in sparking revolts. In fact, coordination problem
m i litants try to spark revolt all the time. The point is that much as computers
their success lies in someth ing outside of themselves solve math problems:
(that someth ing reveals itself i n key moments, when the by trying every possi·
human material on which m i litants work suddenly stops ble solution, until one
responding to their micro-management - a struggle either of them fits.
leaps out in an unexpected d i rection, or else, it wilts) . 1 2
Who can predict when showing up at a park will lead t o just
another protest, and when it will explode i nto a civil war?

2) Spontaneity - being a break with the everyday - is also


necessarily disruptive. Spontaneity appears as a set of
d isruptive acts: strikes, occupations, blockades, loot·
ing, rioting, self-reduction of prices and self-organisation
more generally. But spontaneity is not merely a concoc·
tion of these ingredients. Spontaneity has a h istory, and

Spontaneity, Mediation, Rupture 233


in the history of spontaneity, there is a primacy of partic­
ular tactics, in two senses. (a) Tactics are what resonate,
across workplaces or neighbourhoods, across countries
or even continents. Someone sets themselves on fire,
or some individuals occupy a public square. Spontane­
ously, other people start doing something s i m ilar. I n the
course of events, proletarians adapt a g iven tactic to
their own experiences, but what is key is that - i nsofar
they are adopting tactics that are taken from somewhere
else - there is an i nterruption of the continuous flow of
time. Local h i story becomes something that can only
be articulated globally. ( b ) The primacy of tactics is also
g iven i n the fact that people take part i n waves of d is­
ruptive activity, even while debating why they are doing
so. Partici pants may make contrad ictory demands; the
same tactics are used towards d ifferent ends, i n differ­
ent places. Meanwh ile, as struggles g row in i ntensity
and extent, participants become more bold in making
demands - or in not making any at all. Barriers between
people beg i n to break down. As the walls fall , i n d ivid­
uals' sense of collective power increases. The risks of
participation d rop as more and more people participate.
In its unfolding, the struggle b u i lds its own fou ndations.

3) Spontaneity is not only d isruptive, it is also creative.


Spontaneity generates a new content of struggle, which
is adequate to proletarians' everyday experiences. These
experiences are always changing, along with changes in
capital ist social relations ( and culture more generally) .
That ' s why revolt that arises from wit h i n - spontane­
ously - tends to spread more widely and wildly than
revolt that comes from the outside - from m i l itants, etc.
This is true, even when m i litants i ntervene on the basis
of their own prior experiences of revolt ( i n the sixties,
many m i l itants denounced sabotage and absenteeism
as " i nfantile" forms of struggle; i n fact, they presaged a
massive wave of wildcat strikes) . Thus, m i litants place
themselves in a difficult position. Militants are the human
traces of past confl ict, mobile across time and space.

Endnotes 3 234
If there are local/national histories of struggle, that is 13 Hegel, The
partly because m i l itants establish conti nu ities of expe­ Encyclopedia Logic
rience. Strong m i l itant formations can become agents (Hackett 1991)
of i ntensification in the present; however, in trying to § 133, p. 202.
apply lessons learned in the past to an ever changing
present, m i l itants run the risk of trivial i s i n g the new,
i n the moment of its emergence. This is a dangerous
position, i nsofar as it remains axiomatic, for us, that we
have to put our trust in the new as the only way out of
capitalist social relations.

4) Spontaneous revolt i nvolves, not only the creation of a


n ew content of struggle, but also, necessarily, of new
forms of struggle, adequate to or matching u p with that
content. Hegel once said, " regarding the antithesis of
form and content " : "it is essential to remember that the
content is not formless, but that it has the form withi n
itself, just a s m u c h a s t h e form is something external
to it". 1 3 That form may be incipient at first ; it may exist
only in potential, but it comes into its own as strug ­
gles extend a n d i ntensify. H e r e , t o o there is something
creative - the emergence of a form without h i storical
precedent. History bears witness to this fact, again and
again : newly emergent strugg les d isdain existing forms.
Instead , they generate their own forms, which are then
disdained, i n turn, in future waves of revolt. Th is feature
of spontaneity, its tendency towards formal innovation,
u nderm ines any accou nt of com m u n isation that makes
it seem as if a comm u n ising revolution would be fun­
damentally formless. We can not know what forms of
spontaneous organisation will play a rol e i n - and will
have to be overcome in the moment of - communisation.

Against the revolutionary theories of the past, we can


say today that organisation is not external to spontaneity.
On the contrary, mass revolt is always organised. To give
this term a definition proper to its role in revol utionary
theory, we m ight say that organisation is the necessary
accompan iment to the coordination and extension of

Spontaneity, Mediation, Rupture 235


spontaneous d isru ptive activity. But that does not mean
that organisation is always formal. It can also be com­
pletely i nformal, and i n fact, at the highest levels, it is
always informal. Coordination means the spread of tactics
by word of mouth, newspapers, rad io, television, videos
captu red on cell phones, etc. (not that any particu lar
technology is necessary : a global strike wave already
spread across the British Empire in the 1 930s; technolo­
g ies merely afford d ifferent opportunities for struggle).

Within any revolt, debates take place around the question


of organisatio n : "what is the best way to coordinate and
extend this particular d isruptive activity?" The answers
to this q uestion are always specific to the context of the
revolt i n q uestion. Many individuals, whether out of igno­
rance or fear, ask themselves d ifferent q u estions: " h ow
can we bring this disruption to an end?" " how can we
wrap it u p or get a win, so we can return to the fami liar
m iseries of our everyday l ives?" Overcoming ignorance
and fear - coming to trust one another to act and to
do so i n a coord inated way, with h u n d reds, thousands,
m i l l ions and finally billions of people - th i s coord ination
problem cannot be worked out i n advance. It is only
solved in and through an unfolding sequence of struggles.

2 M E D I AT I O N

We usually come across the term mediation i n its priva­


tive form, as i m mediacy, taken to mean, " now, at once".
Again , t h i s mean i n g i s a derivative o n e . I m m e d i acy
means, first and foremost, lacking mediation. What, then,
is mediation? It is the presence of an intervening term
(in its early usage, the word "med iation" described the
position of Jesus Christ, who i ntervened between God
and man) . To speak of the i mmediacy of the revolution
does not mean to cal l for revol ution " i m mediately", in
the sense of " right now", but rather, " immed iately", i n
the sense o f " lacking a n i ntervening term". But which
term is lacking, in this case?

Endnotes 3 236
It should be clear that the immediacy of the revol ution is 14 See 'Logistics, Coun-
not simply a matter of lacking organisation (although any terlogistics and the
revolution will be chaotic) . On the contrary, d isruptive Com m u n ist Prospect'
activities must be highly coord inated and extensive - in a in this issue.
word , organ ised - so much so as to precipitate a deser-
tion from the armed forces (which is the sine qua non
of a revol utionary moment) . Nor is this point clarified by
saying that the revolution will take place without an inter-
vening, or transitional period. Because in fact, there will
inevitably be a transition, even if there will be no "transi-
tional economy" or "transitional state" in the sense these
terms had in the twentieth century. The comm u nisation
of social relations among seven billion people will take
time. It will involve sudden surges as well as devastating
setbacks, zones of freedom emerg i n g alongside zones
of unfreedom, etc. Even if communisers were to rout the
counter-revolution, there would inevitably follow a period
of de- and reconstruction. Relations among i n d ividuals,
no longer mediated by markets and states, would have
to realise themselves, in the world, as a thoroughgoing
transformation of material i nfrastructu res . 1 4

For u s , it is not so m uch t h e revolution a s a process that


should be understood with the category of "immediacy".
To speak of i mmediacy, with respect to the revolution,
is merely a shorthand for the fact that the revolution
abolishes the med iations of the modern world. To speak
of the immed iacy of comm u n ism is thus to affirm that,
u n l i ke the revol utionaries of the past, comm u n isers will
have to take seriously the coherence of the m odern
world. The worker, the mach ine, the factory, science
and tech nology: none of these terms appears as an
u n q ual ified good, to be opposed to capital and the
state, as unqual ified evils. There is no neutral ordering
of this world that can be taken over by the working class
and run in its interest. Thus, the revolution cannot be a
matter of fi nding new ways to mediate relations among
workers, or between human beings and nature, the state
and the economy, men and women, etc.

Spontaneity, Mediation, Rupture 237


Instead, the revol ution can only be a set of acts that
abolish the very d isti nctions on wh ich such med iations
are based. Capital ism is a set of separations, or onto­
log ical cleavages - between h u man beings and their
i n nermost capacities - that are subseq uently mediated
by value and the state. To undo these mediations is to
destroy the entities that u nderlie them : on the one hand
to recon nect everyon e to their capacities, in such a
way that they can never be forcibly separated, and on
the other hand, to empower each singu lar ind ividual to
take on or divest from any particu lar capacity, without
thereby losing access to all the others.

The actual means of recon necting ind ividuals to their


capacities, outside the market and the state, are i m pos­
sible to foresee. But that does not mean that h uman
existence will take on an ineffable qual ity, a sheer flux.
N ew mediations will i n evitably be erected out of the
wreckage of the old. Thus, communism will not mean the
end of mediation. It will mean the end of those media­
tions that fix us i n our social roles: gender, race, class,
nation, species. J ust as the end of abstract domination
will not mean the end of abstraction, so too, the over­
com ing of these mediations will leave plenty of others
i ntact : language, music, games, etc.

However, that is not to say these mediations won't be fun­


damentally transformed by the end of asocial socialisation.
Take language for example, as the primordial mediatio n :
language has been transformed b y g lobal commerce,
which has led to a massive reduction i n the n u m ber of
languages, and to the corresponding dominance of a few:
Spanish, English, Mandarin. We do not know whether the
overcom i n g of this world will continue to maxim ise com­
m u n ication between social groupings around the world.
Perhaps, instead, it will issue in a proliferation of languages.
Universal comprehension may be sacrificed to make words
more adequate to m utually u n i ntel l i g ible forms of l ife.

Endnotes 3 238
3 R U PT U R E

D u ring periods o f q uiescence, revolt takes place. B u t


it remains disarticu lated. T h e clash between classes
breaks out, here and there, but then subsides. Periods
of q u iescence last for decades, but eventual ly, they
come to an end. The re-emergence of class struggle an­
nounces itself in a torrent of activities. A new sequence
of struggles begins. Waves of proletarian activity ebb
and flow, over a period of years, as new content and
new forms of struggle develop. The intensity of the fight
rises, althoug h never i n a l inear way, as proletarians l i n k
up, extending t h e i r d isruptive activities. T h e articulation
of those activities begins to reveal the outlines of that
wh ich is to be overcome. I n this way, there is a tension
towards the rupture, which throws off sparks in all direc­
tions. A rupture is, by definition, a break - a break that is
q ualitative in nature - but a break with or withi n what?
Where do we locate the ruptu re that is synonymous
with the advent of a revol utionary period?

It is all too easy to speak of spontaneous disruption as if


it were itself a rupture, that is, with the everyday. Revolu­
tion would then be understood as an accu m ulation of
ruptures. There is some truth in this perspective. After
all, struggles never extend themselves along a l inear
path of rising i ntensity. On the contrary, the clash moves
by means of discont i n uities. Its dynamism g ives rise to
period ic sh ifts in the very terms of the struggle: i n one
moment, it may be workers versus bosses, but i n the
next, it becomes tenants versus landlords, youth versus
the police, o r a confrontation among self-organ ised
sectors (all of these fig hts can occur simultaneously
as well ) . Th is i n stabil ity - i n the very basis o n which
ind ividuals are called to confront one another - is what
makes it possible to cal l everything i nto q uestion, both
generally and i n every specificity.

Spontaneity, Mediation, Rupture 239


Yet these terms m u st be kept separate : on the o n e 1s In The Eighteenth
hand, spontaneous d isruption, and on the other hand, Brumaire, Marx writes
the rupture , which s p l its open spontaneous disrup­ of a polarisation of
tion itself. The rupture forces every i n d ividual, who is social forces i nto a
engaged i n struggle, to take sides : to decide whether 'Party of Order' and
they align themselves on the side of the com m u n ist a 'Party of Anarchy'.
movement - as the movement for the practical destruc­ Here, it is not a mat­
tion of this world - or else, on the side of contin u i ng to ter of pre-existing
revolt, on the basis of what is. I n that sense, the rupture social g roups, but
is a moment of partisanship, of taking sides. 1 5 It is a rather, of emergent
question of joining the party and of convincing others to ones, finding their
do the same (it is by no means a matter of lead ing "the organ isational forms
people") . J ust as we separate spontaneity from rupture, in the struggle itself:
we must also d raw a d isti nction between organisation, the bourgeoisie and
which is proper to spontaneity, and the party, which is its supporters coa­
always the party of rupture. 1 6 lesce around a force
that offers the best
The party cleaves its way through proletarian organ isa­ chance of restoring
tions, since it calls for the destitution of the social order order, while the prole­
(and so also, the undoing of the d istinctions on which tariat gathers around
proletarian organisations are founded). The d ifference a force that is trying
between organisations and the party is, therefore, the to create a situation
d ifference between , on the one hand, comm ittees of 'which makes all turn­
the unemployed, neighbourhood assembl ies and rank- ing back i m possible'.
and-file u n ions - wh ich organise the d isruption of capi-
talist social relations - and on the other hand, g roups of 1& The concept of the
partisans - who reconfig u re networks of transportation party merely registers
and comm u n ication and organ ise the creation and free this fact: l i ke spon­
distribution of goods and services. Com m u n ist tactics taneous revolt itself,
destroy the very d istinctions (e.g. between employed the rupture will not
and unemployed) on which proletarian organisations are proceed automatical ly,
based.17 In so doing, they initiate the unification of humanity. out of a deep or even
'fi nal crisis' of the
And so, while revolts disrupt the old world, the rupture is capital-labour relation.
its over-turning (thus, the standard term for the rupture : The proletariat will
revo l ution) . T h i s overturning has both quantitative and not suddenly find
q ual itative d imensions, which distinguish it from revolt. itself holding the
For exam ple, the scale of revolt is typically restricted ; levers to power, after
whereas the revolution today can only mean seven billion which point it is only

Endnotes 3 240
people trying to fi nd ways to reprod uce themselves, i n a matter of fig u ring
non-capitalist ways. O f these billions, even a n active out what to do with it.
m i nority wou ld have to n u m ber in the h u n d reds of mil­ I nstead, the revol ution
lions (that is to say, if individuals are able to determine will be the project of
the course of events, that in itself suggests that we are a fraction of society,
sti ll far from a revolutionary moment) . The revolution will i.e. the party, which
requ i re that b i l l ions of i n d ividuals d raw diverse aspects solves the coordina­
of their l ives into an open struggle, which ends in those tion problem in the
individuals calling the total ity of their l ives into question. o n ly possible way - by
The rupture calls l ife itself i nto q uestion, but i n a way abol ishing class
that allows us to carry on living. society.

Accord ing to Theorie Communiste, the revolutionaries 17 This is a d ifficult point


of an earlier era did not have a concept of rupture. They to make rigorously. It
s u pposedly saw revolution as a matter of strug gles is clear that, insofar
"growing over", that is, of struggles extending themselves as spontaneously
across society and i ntensifying towards a tipping point, self-organising strug­
when they wou l d spill over i nto a revo l u t i o n . In t h e gles build their own
course o f the twentieth centu ry, many theories o f this foundations, they often
kind were proposed (the term itself apparently comes connect individuals
from Trotsky, but the idea i s m o re c o m m o n a m o n g to one another i n
autonomists) . However, those sorts o f theories were not ways that b e l i e their
very common . 1 8 Most revol utionaries, including Trotsky, un ity-i n-separation for
d rew their own d istinction between revolt and rupture. capital. For exam ple,
individuals may oc­
So, for example, i n Italy, i n the course of the bienno c u py a government
rosso ( 1 9 1 9-20) , when revol ution seemed l i ke a real building, even though
possibil ity, Amadeo Bord iga, future leader of the Italian they have no everyday
Com m u n ist Party, announced the followin g : connection to it. In so
occu pying, they may
We wou ld not l i ke t h e working masses t o get h o l d of organise themselves
the idea that all they need do to take over the factories according to a shared
and get rid of the capitalists is set up councils. This trait that has no mean­
would indeed be a dangerous illusion. The factory ing, for capital. The
will be conquered by the worki ng class - and not only key point here is that
by the workforce employed i n it, wh ich would be too spontaneously organ­
weak and non-co m m u n ist - o n ly after the worki n g ising struggles disrupt
class a s a w h o l e has seized political power. U nless the u n ity-i n-separation
it has d o n e so, the Royal G uard s , m i l itary police, of capital, but they

Spontaneity, Mediation, Rupture 241


etc. - i n other words, the mechanism of force and do not overcome it,
oppression that the bourgeoisie has at its d isposal, in a permanent way.
its pol itical power apparatus - wi l l see to it that all Th us, the tendency of
i l l usions are dispelled . 1 9 d istinctions of gender,
race, national ity, etc.,
I n essence, Bordiga (like many com m u nists i n t h e twen­ to reappear in the
tieth century) arg ued as fol l ows: by taking over t h e square occu pations of
factories and demonstrating in t h e street, it is sometimes 2011 , that is, precisely
possible to bring society to a halt, but not to produce a where those d istinc­
rupture. The rupture will only take place when proletar­ tions were su pposed
ians risk civil war, in an attempt to permanently transfer to have been rendered
power to themselves. It followed that the primary task of inoperable.
the party was, at the critical moment, to distribute arms
among the workers and to cal l for a transfer of power to 18 The insu rrectionists
these armed bodies. I ndeed, "arming the workers" might may be the true
be thought of as the key "programmatist tactic" (other in heritors of the
such tactics included establishing political bodies of 'growing-over' theory
recallable delegates) .20 The link between this concept of revolution. For them,
and Bologna's, q u oted earlier, should be apparent. the intensification of
existing struggles is al­
Thus, it is clear that the revolutionaries of an earl ier ready the ru ptu re. The
era d i d h ave a concept of rupture (the revolutionary concept of revolution
was the o n e who, i n every open i n g , p ronounced De is thereby abandoned
Sade's famous slogan : "one more effort, comrades . . . ") . as overly 'hol istic' - a
N evertheless, it is true that, for us, such a concept is false u n iversalisation
inadequ ate. A revolution today can n ot take place by i n time and space. In
means of armed bodies taki ng state power - or even fact, struggles u n iver­
over-t u r n i n g it, accord i n g to the anarc h i st concep­ salise themselves - not
tion - with the goal of setting up a society of associated by merging together,
workers. Even if that sort of revolution remains appealing so that everyone can
to some, it is pred icated o n the will and the capacity march behind the
of workers to organ ise around their identity as workers, one true banner - but
instead of around other identities (i.e. nationality, reli­ rather, by posing uni­
gion, race, gender, etc) . Workers only share a common versal questions about
interest to the extent that they can project a u n iversal the overcoming of ·

solution to their coord ination problem ("an injury to one this world. In that way,
is an i nj u ry to all" is not u n iversally true) . struggles themselves
construct the u n iversal,
not as an abstract

Endnotes 3 242
Facing u p to the pressu res of com petitive labour mar­ object of an idealised
kets, workers did construct their common i nterest, in revolution, but as the
the course of the twentieth century, by building workers' concrete object of an
organ i s at i o n s , w h i c h were l i n ked together t h r o u g h actual revolution.
the workers' movement. That movement forged - from
among a multitude of specific workers' experiences - an 19 Amadeo Bord iga,
actually general interest. But the actuality of this general 'Seize Power or Seize
i nterest was predicated on two t h i ngs. First, it was the Factory?' (1920).
pred icated on winning real gains, both with i n capitalist
societies and agai nst an old regime, which sought to 20 Certai n com m u nists
exclude workers from the pol ity. Second, it was pred i­ have taken a d ifferent
cated on a l ived experience of many proletarians: they tack. They take it as
identified with their work, as the defining trait of who their primary task to
they were (and they imag ined that, with the extension identify and i nfi ltrate
of the factory system to the entire world, this identity what they perceive to
would become a common h uman condition) . Workers be the 'key' economic
felt that they shared a common destiny as the vital force sector(s), the part that
of modern society, which was g rowing all the time. represents the whole.
M i litants withi n that
All that is now i n the past. A massive accumu lation of sector will su pposedly
capital has made the p roductive process ever more be able, at the right
efficient, rendering workers ever more superfl uous to moment, to i ntervene
it. Under these conditions, capital ist economies have decisively, to prod uce
g rown slowly, due to chro n i c overprod uction ; at the the revolution, or else
same time, most workers find it hard to win any real gains, to prevent the betrayal
i n a context of h i g h levels of unemployment. Moreover, of the revolution (which
this superflu ity of workers has found its correlate in a was su pposed to come
changed experience of work itself. I nsofar as they are from elsewhere). See,
employed , most proletarians do not identify with their for exam ple, Monsieur
work as the defin i n g trait of who they are. Either they Du pont's Nihilist
are peripheral to a more or less automated production Communism, on the
process - and thus, cannot see themselves as the vital question of the 'essen­
force of modern society - or else they are excluded from tial proletariat' (Ardent
production altogether, and toil away in dead-end ser­ Press 2002). These are
vice sector jobs. This is not to say that there aren't still false solutions to real
proletarians who d ream of doing similar jobs in a better problems, but again,
world, where they could organise their work democrati­ for that reason, they
cally. It is just that this minority can no longer claim to will find their actual
represent the future of the class as a whole - especially solutions in time.

Spontaneity, Mediation, Rupture 243


when so many proletarians are un- or underemployed ,
or else are lost i n the i nformal sector, where seventy
percent of workers are self-em ployed, because they
can not find jobs.

As a result of these transformations, the revolutionary


h o rizon of strug g l e is itself transformed. It m u st be
s o m et h i n g other t h a n w h at it was. We can neither
remain who we are, nor take over things as they are.
That is all the more true, i nsofar as the apparatuses
of modern society (factories, networks of roads and
airports, etc.) - which proletarians helped to build - have
turned out not to presage a new world of human freedom.
O n the contrary, those apparatuses are destroying the
very conditions of human l ife on earth. It is d ifficult to
say, therefore, what would constitute a com m u n ising
tactic, replacing the programmatist tactic par excellence,
namely the "arming of the workers" or "general ising the
armed struggle". We know what those tactics will have
to do: they will have to destroy private property and the
state, abol i s h the d isti nction between the domestic
sphere and the economy, etc. But that tells us noth ing
about the tactics themselves. Wh ich will be the ones
that break throu g h ?

I n t h e e n d , com m u n is i n g tactics w i l l t u rn out to be


whichever tactics finally destroy the link between finding
work and surviving. They will reconnect h uman beings
and their capacities, i n such a way as to make it i mpos­
sible to sever that connection ever agai n . In the cou rse
of struggle, a process may u nfold, somewhere in the
world, which seems to go all the way, to bring an end,
once and for all, to capitalist social relations. J ust as
today, proletarians adopt and adapt whatever tactics
resonate with them, so too, some proletarians will adopt
these com m u n ising tactics. However, these tactics will
not exten d the struggle. O n the contrary, they will split
that struggle open, turning it back against itself.

Endnotes 3 244
If there are such breakthroughs, anywhere in the world,
it is possible to imagine that, as a feature of partisanship,
commu nist parties will form (or will align themselves with
the new tactics) . They may not call themselves parties,
and they may not refer to their tactics as com m u n ising
tactics. N evertheless, there will be a separation out of
those who, with i n struggle, advocate and apply revolu­
tionary tactics, whatever they may be. There is no need
to decide in advance what the party will look l i ke, what
should be its form of organisation, if it should be for­
malised at all, or whether it is j ust an orientation shared
among many individuals. Comm u n ism is not an idea or a
slogan. It is the real movement of h istory, the movement
which - i n the ruptu re - g ropes its way out of h istory.

CO N C L U S I O N S

The concept of comm u nisation marks out an orientation :


an orientation towards the conditions of possibil ity of
comm u n ism. The concept enjoins us to focus on the
present, to d iscover the new world through the critique
of everyt h i n g that p resently exists. What wou l d h ave
to be overtu rned o r undone, in order for comm unism
to become a real force i n the world? There is both a
deductive and inductive way of approach ing this q ues­
tion : ( 1 ) what is capitalism, and therefore, what would
a com m u n ist m ovement h ave to abo l i s h , i n order for
capital ism to no longer exist? (2) What, i n the strug­
g les and experiences of proletarians, points towards or
poses the question of comm u n ism? I n fact, our answers
to this first q u estion are shaped by our answers to the
second. Proletarians are always fighting capital i n new
and unexpected ways, forcing us to ask, again, "What is
capital, such that people are trying to destroy it, like that?"
The theory of comm u nisation sets itself up, i n relation
to these q u estions, as a set of propositions, regard i n g
the m i n i mal conditions o f abolishing capitalism. These
propositions can be enumerated, briefly, as follows:

Spontaneity, Mediation, Rupture 245


( 1 ) The unfolding crises of capital ism cause proletarian
struggles both to proliferate and to transform in character.
(2) These strugg les tend to generalise across society,
without it becoming possi ble to u n ify concu rrent strug­
gles under a single banner. (3) In order for fundamentally
frag mented stru g g les to pass over i nto a revolution,
comm u n ising m easu res will have to be taken, as the
only possible way of carrying those strugg les forward.
(4) It will thus become necessary to abolish class d ivi­
sions - as well as the state, d isti nctions of gender and
race, etc.- in the very process of revolution ( and as the
revolution ) . Finally, (5) a revolution will therefore establish,
not a transitional economy or state, but rather, a world
of i n d ividuals, d efined i n their s i n g u larity, who relate
to one another i n a m u ltitude of ways. This last point
will hold true, even if those ind ividuals i n herit a brutal
world, ravaged by war and climate catastrophe - and
not a parad ise of automated factories and easy living.

We must recog nise that this set of propositions is rather


weak: a starting point rather than a conclusion. It should
also go without sayin g : these propositions tell us noth­
ing about whether a com m u n ist revolution will actually
happen. Having gone through a conceptual topology of
revolutionary strategy, the q u estion remai ns: does any
of this affect what we do? Do these reflections have
any strateg ic consequences?

Today, those who are interested in revolutionary theory find


themselves caught between the terms of a false choice :
activism or attentisme. It seems that we can only act
without thinking critically, or think critically without acting.
Revolutionary theory has as one of its tasks to dissolve
this performative contrad iction. H ow is it possible to act
while understanding the l i m its of that action? In every
struggle, there is a tension towards u n ity, which is g iven
i n the d rive to coord inate disru ptive activity, as the only
hope of ach ieving anything at all. But, i n the absence
of a workers' movement - which was able to subsume

Endnotes 3 246
d ifference i nto a fundamental sameness - th i s tension
towards u nity is frustrated. There is no way to solve the
coord ination problem on the basis of what we are. To be
a partisan of the rupture is to recogn ise that there is no
collective worker - no revolutionary subject - wh i ch is
somehow h idden but already present i n every struggle.

On the contrary, the intensification of struggles reveals,


not a pre-existing u nity, but rather, a conflictual prolifera­
tion of d ifference. This d ifference is not only suffered ;
it is often w i l l e d by part i c ipants i n stru g g l e . U n d e r
these conditions, t h e weak u n ities o f t h i s or that anti­
g overnm e n t fron t - w h i c h are i m posed o n so many
differences - merely offer yet another confirmation that,
withi n struggle, we remain disunited. I n that sense, we
m i g ht even say that, today, all struggles lead away from
revol u t i o n - except t h at it is o n l y t h ro u g h activat i o n ,
i ntensification, and failed attem pts a t generalisation
that u nification may one day become possible, i n and
through a revolutionary rupture with struggle itself.

This observation raises a paradox. There is nothi n g for


u s to do but support the extension and i ntensification of
struggles. Like everyone else engaged in struggle, we may
seek to i ntroduce a new content i nto our struggles. We
may try out new tactics and forms of organisation (or else,
we m i g ht adopt tactics and forms of organisation from
elsewhere, when they occur in a way that resonates with
us) . We may put forward what we believe to be the watch­
words of the moment. In any case, we understand that the
l i mits of our own power are the l i m its of everyone else's
participation : the extent of their coordi nation, the degree
of their m utual trust, and the i ntensity of their d isruption.

But we also recognise that, as we participate i n strug­


gles - as we organise ourselves - we are pushed towards
or fixed i nto identities from which we are fundamentally
alienated. Either we can no longer affirm those identi­
ties, or else do not want to, or else we recogn ise that

Spontaneity, Mediation, Rupture 247


they are sectional and for that reason i m possib l e to
adopt among the broad mass of h uman ity. Struggles
pit us against one another - but often not for reasons
that we experience as absolutely necessary. O n the
contrary, sometimes, we come to see our d ifferences
as i nessential - the result of a fractious d ifferentiation
of status or identity, withi n capital ism.

I n fac i n g these l i mits of struggle, we are completely


powerless to overcome them. The trouble for activists is
that an awareness of l i m its appears as loss and defeat.
Their solution is to desperately force a resolution. We
recog n ise, by contrast, that the fight will not be won
d irectly, by leaping over the l i m its. Instead, we will have
to come up against those l i m its, again and again , until
they can be formalised. The i m possibil ity of solvi ng the
coord ination problem - wh ile remaining what we are, i n
this society - must be theorised wit h i n struggle, a s a
practical problem. Proletarians must come to see that
capital is not merely an external enemy. Alongside the
state, it is our only mode of coord i nation. We relate to
one another though capital ; it is our u nity-i n-separation.
Only on the basis of such a consciousness-not of class,
but of capital-will revol ution become possible, as the
overturning of this society.

In the meantime, what we seek is not premature answers


or forced reso l utions, b u t rat h e r a t h e rapy agai n st
despair: it is only in wrestling with the l i m it that prole­
tarians will formal ise the question, to which revolution is
the answer. As it stands, ours is thus a meagre offering,
based more on speculative argument than hard evidence.
Except among a tiny m inority of participants, a concept
of com m u n i sation (or a concept bearing its essential
characteristics) has not yet arisen with in strugg les. We
are sti l l speaking of a new cycle of struggle in the worn­
out language of the old. We can refine that language as
best we can , but we have to recogn ise that it is nearly,
if not completely exhausted.

Endnotes 3 248

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