Now certainly I agree that flags are such ugly things (and that irony is the refuge of the educated – always complaining but they never quit), but I do have an affection for the old black and red. My wife and I ended up in a conversation about this tonite.
It started with some wordplay of the sort that we are wont to do, in which I used the phrase “the pot calling the kettle black” to which she responded “our kettle is white, and our pot is red, what are you talking about?” (which is true – we have a lovely electric tea kettle that I bought when I lived in a hotel in Missouri – my best souvenir of that era, by far – and a very nice pot with a ceramic lining that we got as a wedding gift). I made some quip back about black and red, like the flag, and she said “like our politics.” Then she said “but you’re more red than black.”
We then proceeded to discuss that. It’s not true in one sense – I’m definitely an anarchist and not any of the state centered varieties of politics I associate with the various Reds of the world. I said so. She said “sure, but I didn’t mean your politics. I meant … culturally. You’re an organization person. Not that there can’t be anarchist organization, but you know what I mean.” This is true. In my (limited) experience with north american anarchist circles, I feel more affinity in terms of immediate outlook, priorities, and sensibilities with many of the reds I know. Simply put, my feeling is that average red vs the average anarchist I know is more serious and just more focused on the issues that I’m most concerned with – which are exclusively workplace focused. These reds tend to have more experience in workplace (and tenant) struggles and in workplace based organizations, and to have more experience with the existing reformist mass organizations. There are of course exceptions to this, some of whom are among my dearest and closest comrades. But it remains the case that I will feel more immediate affinity to a rank and file red vs a typical north american anarchist in my experience. This is despite a strong disagreement on many historical matters and on future directed matters like what the revolution should look like and often very serious disagreements over what should happen (and what energy should be directed to) in the short-term. So while I won’t actually be saluting any flags (I’m not any kind of patriot though I will admit to what friends jokingly call a bit of nationalism on my part about the Great Lakes section of the Midwest – with Chicago being our proud capital of course), and while I would certainly follow the marching orders (*ahem*) that came from the black half, the part that most warms my heart is the red portion of the flag. (Not trying to draw lines and stand behind them, just saying.)
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In other news, in the continuing discussion between Le Colonel and Le Mike here, the Colonel asked about Negri’s appeal – why does he say such odd things sometimes and why do those things speak to people, basically – which reminded me of this old post I wrote trying to sort through a similar question. Since then, in a nutshell – I’ve become less sympathetic on a few points like the historical questions about gender and immaterial labor. I’m now pretty convinced that imperialism is the case and empire is not. And I remain convinced of the utility of the end-run around the (gatekeeping functions of the) anti-imperialist left that some of us got out of Empire.
The other part of appeal that I didn’t address in that old post was the social base part. Part of what spoke to me about the immaterial labor stuff was that much of the work I had (and have) done was of that variety (though for Negri all labor is undergoing immaterialization, allegedly, but we’ll leave that out for now). This is true of a lot of other people I know, especially those who got excited about all of this. I think this relates to the social base of the people I mentioned in old post, the people from anarchist and counter-globalization circles of the late 90s and early 00s, at least the stuff I was familiar with. This is connected to how I understand an idea from Love and Rage circles, the ‘reproles’ idea. (For more on L&R see here and here. The book under the first link includes some stuff on the ‘reproles’ idea, see also this and this.) Basically that idea amounted to noting the fact that there was a generation of folk who were experiencing economic decline noticeably, growing up into worse economic circumstances than they were raised in, and this was the social base of L&R.
Much of this group involved some sort of tie to immaterial labor, it seems to me, and is similar to the social base that got most excited about Negri’s recent work (in my experience, and I should say I’m of that stratum so I may be exaggerating its reach or whatever). What the immaterial labor thing did was dramatize our presence and the presence of our experience – its “fit” if you will – within Marx and marxist categories in a way that provided a new sort of confidence and helped underwrite a feeling of “Marx is ours too” so to speak. Negri helped facilitate (or solidify) a transition back to Marx. I’m generalizing here a bit from my own biography, and actually I’m distorting that as I was already a marxist and that’s what led me to Negri, though the stuff that helped get me to Negri – Harry Cleaver’s work, among other things – is what broke me out of a bad understanding of Marx and marxism and of an overly narrow and simplistic grasp of the line (or not) between the black and red parts of ye olde flagge, so to speak. (Part of my frustration with the Negri stuff has also been in a nutshell the incompleteness of the back-to-Marx transition. The other frustration is with the gender stuff.) In any case, the Negri stuff spoke to me and I think to people like me who got jazzed about if because it helped us understand our experiences – by pointing out how other resources (like Marx) could describe those experiences in ways we hadn’t realized as fully – and because it facilitated stepping past/around the anti-imps. That’s my sense of the appeal of Negri’s stuff in the moment it got people fired up – the moments in time w/ the summit protests and all that were a big part of this too, of course, and which I think involved somewhat similar dynamics practically to the changes at the level of theory that I described. (I could be wrong on some of that. I missed out on L&R and came late to the black bloc etc kind of thing, I was doing campus feminism and antihomophobia stuff in the late 90s instead.)
1194! 1194 words! Ah ah ah! [Lightning flash, thunder strike.]
i think this is true. i tend to relate to reds about the work i’m doing (except 99% of the time they think independent social organizations are dumb), but i think there’s additional factors. anarchists are mostly young. the movement is totally young, and i think that plays a large role. as the movement gains colllective experience i think it will go the way of nefac and european anarchism, which is finding a root in community-based organization.
personally i opt for the black flag without red, except people from latin america associate the black and red flag with strikes which is awesome (because of the anarchosyndicalist base in unions from back in the day). i just associate reds too much with economism, determinism, dialectics, and being all biblical-exegesis on marx or some related theorist. people like you prove me wrong, but having been a trot, i gots to keep up the street cred by hatin’
todd the age of the movement thing is a raelly good point and suggests some potential better response to the black flag than just lamenting like I do here. we’ll have to talk more about all this when I get a breather.
Hey Nate,
Really interesting post. I reckon you’re right about the ‘social base’ of the autonomist stuff. As far as I can tell in Sydney it’s been a bridge for anarchists to Marx and for ex-Trots to something else. A good bridge to build I think, in both cases.
The thing that really turns me off autonomism is the tone of the analysis. Not sure how to put it exactly but it is both too philosophical and too hysterical for my taste. I think Harry Cleaver is great, though, because his writing is very down-to-earth. Also I have seen great work done by people influenced by those Italians, so there must be something in it.
As for the eternal anarchists vs. Marx… I think the important divisions are within those categories rather than between them. I started out in politics attracted to anarchism, and I’m still a libertarian socialist, but drifted to Marx for the analysis. Never joined a Trot group, and I’ve seen them do damage to movements, but I have an affinity for their relatively sober analysis. (Well, some of them anyway.)
One more thing… something that keeps anarchism ineffective in my view is an ultra-sectarian attitude towards reformism/social democracy. The far left has always fed off a viable social democratic movement, and I think it’s the only plausible way forward at the present. Anarchists generally seem more concerned about preaching to the converted and lifestyle rather than meeting working people where they are at.
Thanks nate.
Mike: “something that keeps anarchism ineffective in my view is an ultra-sectarian attitude towards reformism/social democracy”
I think that’s true often, but there are really hopeful exceptions, around certain issues – third world debt, environment – where you can see basically progressive bourgeois keynesian suits and black flag students in agreement, and if not able to coordinate activity then to put pressures of different sorts in the same points, sort of independently trying to hold the same line against the most aggressive capitalist agenda.
But Nate, if I understand you, basically you’re saying the Negri and Hardt success is a kind of response to their attitude, to the imaging of a new resistance, the slogans and portraiture, which involves just throwing out or ignoring the analysis which is effectively and often explicitly US apologist. I think this is what I have observed also. Hardt especially for example was pretty much in love with the clinton administration, and very supportive of the most barbaric, destructive, and merciless imperialist policies; very inclined to read bloodbaths and death squads as good news on the celestial plane; but among those excited by his work with Negri this was just not picked up at all and his positions were not shared. The proto-rumsfeldian “new and old europe” aspect of their work sort of caught on but it was a portrait of Clinton or rather a kind of regurgitation of Clinton propaganda, an effect of the propaganda of that administration, a summing up and adoption, and unsurprisingly it couldn’t survive the very different dramaturgy of the Bush regime for long.
In 2002 Hardt made it is explicit that “Empire” was in their view a good thing, at once a bit of wishful thinking and a (rather troubling) vision of the harmony of interests between global capital and humanity. And he consistently sees supranational capitalist coordination – the strengthening of the cooperation of the global capitalist class in the global class war – as a kind of blessing in disguise, without giving any reason other than a gesture to the notion that if the capitalists are better coordinating their camp it will be easier for their victims/opponents to coordinate, simply, it seems, because some kind of god of symmetry rules human affairs or something. It’s one thing to say multipolar world is better than one dominated by a single ruthless imperial capitalist clique – powers keep eachother in check and people can manoeuvre between them, like the non aligned. It’s another to celebrate this fantasy of global etherial neoliberal capitalism as a centreless web of merely abstract power, whose genetic code was the US constitution’s checks and balances, which is basically what Hardt and Negri were doing.
on the old post there were some comments saying Empire offered middle class anarchist young people a way out of their guilt. I don’t know if that is quite true, “guilt” is a propaganda buzzword to discourage people from having solidarity with those they are trained to see as their inferiors, to make people ashamed of their sense of justice and impulses of compassion and fellow feeling. But there is something to the suggestion if you compare prior generations’ movements which had a lot to do with enfranchised Americans, children of the long economic boom, in relatively comfortable circumstances, feeling a sense of responsibility for the policies of the US government. People losing their standard of living – as you describe, living worse than their parents did – perhaps were less inclined to base their political commitment in a sense of responsibility and more inclined to find it in their own grievances. This is a mixed bag I think – because of course only grievances can keep a sustained resistance going. Voluntary, morally motivated people with choices of collaboration make a new decision every day. But on the other hand, the relief from a sense of responsibility also went along with and reflected an enormous sense of disempowerment vis à vis the US state. People feel not responsible for the policies – domestic as well as imperialist – because they really feel they have no power over them at all. While clearly this is a partly just an accurate assessment of a dire situation, it also indicates giving up on regaining any influence over the state, and it predated the really dire present. That’s really bad and it goes along with joining the imperialist propagandists in demonising popular movements which do strive for and achieve some influence as well as the traditional left and social dems in the imperial core. In hindsight, the US public passivity about the fraudulent election of 2000 looks like a real lost opportunity and has had tremendous consequences. This passivity is due to myriad causes, a whole situation, but the currency on the left, especially among younger people, of this attitude that Negri and Hardt capitalised on, this extreme distance from and indifference to the workings of the state, may have critically contributed to the success of crucial early steps by the most ruthless and daring block of capital to consolidate its power, over the capitalist class as a whole, over the state and its real resources and weapons, and over everybody else. Of course this is not to “blame” Hardt and Negri, but just this kind of way of thinking they codified and became standard bearers of, looks like at once a symptom of a series of capitalist successes in the class war in the late 70s and 80s, the cold war “victory” over global humanity, and a contributing factor to the consolidation of those successes and the intensification of capital’s aggression that followed.