Re: <nettime> The False Defences of Utopian Thought.

[Dmytri Kleiner <dk@telekommunisten.net>]

On 02.11.2011 05:03, Angela Mitropoulos wrote:

> And I'm always surprised to find the charge of utopianism being made in
> the name of the idealised abstractions of representational politics.
Hi Angela, thanks for you comments, I read them with interest.

Just to be clear, I was not making any charge of utopianism. From what 
I have read, neither Bookchin nor Graeber deny class conflict, and I 
believe both would, like Marx, reject political views that do. My 
objective was only to gainsay common misrepresentations of the basis for 
the rejection of Utopianism.
> Occupation and default are strategies that have not always been chosen,
> but they are indeed the most effective strategies I can see.
Let us not forget that any occupations and default that exist currently 
are symbolic, it is public squares being symbolically occupied as a form 
of demonstration, we have not seen any tactical occupation of commercial 
or residential space, nor are we likely to on any large scale. And we 
haven't seen any organized default at all, and again, nor are we likely 
to on any large scale.
> And they are the ones that should be supported. Parties, demands, etc are
> a distraction.
Yet, demands exist, and they are big ones. Our class conditions prevent 
us from addressing those demands without undertaking a political 
struggle to make sure that our governments allow us to provide the 
support you suggest, rather than crush our ability to support anything.
Parties and demands are a distraction as much as the discussion of 
avoiding icebergs may be for those engaged in the pressing mater of the 
arrangement of chairs on the proverbial deck of the Titanic. As Graeber 
points out in a recent interview, you can't really distinguished between 
slaves and the modern worker. Slaves do not have everything they need to 
create a new society, they may only go as far as their chains allow. To 
go farther they need to break those chains, which means class conflict. 
We can't pretend that the fact that a few people have sufficient freedom 
and leisure to participate in a tent demo has shown that the chains are 
now broken for the masses.  The vast majority do not and can not have 
such freedom and leisure.
"And, I might add, if Aristotle were around today, I very much doubt he 
would think that the distinction between renting yourself or members of 
your family out to work and selling yourself or members of your family 
to work was more than a legal nicety. Heâd probably conclude that most 
Americans were, for all intents and purposes, slaves."  -- David Graeber
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/08/what-is-debt-%E2%80%93-an-interview-with-economic-anthropologist-david-graeber.html

As mentioned earlier, the party form is not of our choosing, it is 
dictated by our existing form of governance, our only choice is to make 
our representation ourselves, or, to repeat my earlier characterization, 
to treat the plutocrats' parties as cruel gardians we direct tantrums 
against in hopes of placation.

--
Dmyri Kleiner
Venture Communist


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