Against Capital in the Twenty-First Century
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Praise for Against Capital in the Twenty-First Century “In Against Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Asimakopoulos and Gilman- Opalsky have assembled a collection of texts that traverses the borders of Marxism, feminist radicalisms, anarchism, and the interstices existing be- tween them. This will be the leading collection for contemporary students of radical thought and practitioners of freedom for decades to come.” —Deric Shannon, editor of The End of the World as We Know It? Crisis, Resistance, and the Age of Austerity and coauthor of Political Sociology: Oppression, Resistance, and the State “Against Capital in the Twenty-First Century is more than just a reader. Draw- ing upon a vast body of theoretical, scholarly, and political literature, rang- ing from the theoretical ideas of Cornelius Castoriadis to the transformative analysis of Staughton Lynd, this book generates stunning insights into the continuity and transformation of radical thought. It deserves the widest pos- sible readership.” —Andrej Grubačić, Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology and Social Change at the California Institute of Integral Studies “In this extremely timely volume, Asimakopoulos and Gilman-Opalsky do an excellent job of weaving together the loose and disparate ends of transfor- mative theory into a unified, mutually reinforcing whole. Against Capital in the Twenty-First Century is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the theoretical and practical trajectory of radical thought in today’s world.” —Nathan J. Jun, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Midwestern State University Against Capital in the Twenty-First Century Edited by John Asimakopoulos and Richard Gilman-Opalsky Against Capital in the Twenty-First Century A READER OF RADICAL UNDERCURRENTS TEmplE UNIVErsitY PREss Philadelphia • Rome • Tokyo TEmplE UNIVErsitY PREss Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122 www.temple.edu/tempress Copyright © 2018 by Temple University—Of The Commonwealth System of Higher Education All rights reserved Published 2018 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Asimakopoulos, John, editor. | Gilman-Opalsky, Richard, 1973– editor. Title: Against capital in the twenty-first century : a reader of radical undercurrents / edited by John Asimakopoulos and Richard Gilman-Opalsky. Description: Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 2018. | Includes index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017022629| ISBN 9781439913574 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781439913581 (paper : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781439913598 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Socialism. | Equality. | Capitalism. Classification: LCC HX73 .A344 2018 | DDC 335—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017022629 The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992 Printed in the United States of America 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To Plato —John Asimakopoulos To a world ungoverned by capital —Richard Gilman-Opalsky Contents Acknowledgments xi Introduction: Against Capital in the Twenty-First Century • Richard Gilman-Opalsky and John Asimakopoulos 1 1 | Theory/Praxis 31 1.1 Think Hope, Think Crisis • John Holloway 31 1.2 The New Spaces of Freedom • Félix Guattari 38 1.3 The Theory of State-Capitalism: The Soviet Union as Capitalist Society • Raya Dunayevskaya 47 1.4 Death, Freedom, and the Disintegration of Communism • Raya Dunayevskaya 52 1.5 Revolution and Counterrevolution in Hungary • Raya Dunayevskaya 53 1.6 Dialectics: The Algebra of Revolution • Raya Dunayevskaya 54 2 | Ideology 56 2.1 Socialism or Barbarism • Cornelius Castoriadis 56 2.2 Ideology Materialized • Guy Debord 59 2.3 American “Common Sense” • Fredy Perlman 62 2.4 Radical Learning through Neoliberal Crisis • Sayres Rudy 65 viii | CONTENTS 3 | Class Composition and Hierarchy 78 3.1 Karl Marx’s Model of the Class Society • Ralf Dahrendorf 78 3.2 Sex, Race, and Class • Selma James 84 3.3 Wageless of the World • Selma James 89 3.4 Hierarchy of Wages and Incomes • Cornelius Castoriadis 94 3.5 A Brief Rant against Work: With Particular Attention to the Relation of Work to White Supremacy, Sexism, and Miserabilism • Penelope Rosemont 99 4 | Racialization and Feminist Critique 107 4.1 The Lived Experience of the Black Man • Frantz Fanon 107 4.2 The Negro’s Fight: Negroes, We Can Depend Only on Ourselves! • C.L.R. James 114 4.3 Harlem Negroes Protest Jim Crow Discrimination • C.L.R. James 116 4.4 Feminism and the Politics of the Common in an Era of Primitive Accumulation • Silvia Federici 122 4.5 #BlackLivesMatter • Alicia Garza 134 5 | Critical Pedagogy 139 5.1 Beyond Dystopian Visions in the Age of Neoliberal Violence • Henry A. Giroux 139 5.2 Chapman Democracy Activist Offers a Radical Critique of Capitalism: Interview with Peter McLaren • Jonathan Winslow 156 5.3 Neoliberal Globalization and Resistance in Education: The Challenge of Revolutionary Critical Pedagogy • Constantine Skordoulis 160 5.4 Transformative Education, Critical Education, Marxist Education: Possibilities and Alternatives to the Restructuring of Education in Global Neoliberal Times • Dave Hill 171 6 | Capitalist Culture and Cultural Production 186 6.1 The Revolution of Everyday Life • Raoul Vaneigem 186 6.2 Info-labor/Precarization • Franco “Bifo” Berardi 193 6.3 Imaginal Machines • Stevphen Shukaitis 204 CEONT NTs | ix 7 | Language, Literature, and Art 214 7.1 How We Could Have Lived or Died This Way • Martín Espada 214 7.2 My Name Is Espada • Martín Espada 215 7.3 Vivas to Those Who Have Failed: The Paterson Silk Strike, 1913 • Martín Espada 216 7.4 Factotum • Charles Bukowski 219 7.5 Interview with Robert Greenwald • John Asimakopoulos 226 7.6 Sound of da Police • KRS-One 230 8 | Ecology 233 8.1 What Is Social Ecology? • Murray Bookchin 233 8.2 Socialism and Ecology • James O’Connor 241 8.3 Why Primitivism? • John Zerzan 250 8.4 In Catastrophic Times: Resisting the Coming Barbarism • Isabelle Stengers 258 9 | Historical Transformations 266 9.1 Conflict Groups, Group Conflicts, and Social Change • Ralf Dahrendorf 266 9.2 Debt: The First 5,000 Years • David Graeber 269 9.3 When the Future Began • Franco “Bifo” Berardi 277 9.4 Post-Fordist, American Fascism • Angela Mitropoulos 284 10 | New Modalities of Collective Action 293 10.1 From Globalization to Resistance • Staughton Lynd 293 10.2 Platform for a Provisional Opposition • Guy Debord 303 10.3 The Temporary Autonomous Zone • Hakim Bey 308 10.4 The Conscience of a Hacker • The Mentor 312 10.5 Horizontalism and Territory: From Argentina and Occupy to Nuit Debout and Beyond • Marina Sitrin 314 Contributors 325 Index 333 Acknowledgments JOHN ASIMAKOPOULOS I express gratitude to all our contributors for their countless unpaid labor hours in an ungrateful educational industrial complex. I am indebted to my colleagues Ali Zaidi and Elsa Marquez for their assistance and suggestions. Thanks also go to our friend Ramsey Kanaan for providing a number of entries from PM Press books (that I hope you read in support of independent presses). A special acknowledgment is owed to my colleague, friend, and co- editor, Richard. This book would not have been possible without him. RICHard GILMan-OPALSKY Thanks go to all the contributors, whose generosity and support have made this book possible. Thanks especially go to Stevphen Shukaitis of Minor Compositions/Autonomedia for providing material from larger works, each of which should be read in full. Finally, this book depended on the impres- sive editorial powers of my friend and coeditor, John Asimakopoulos. I have learned so much from knowing and working with John and am deeply grate- ful for everything he does to create and proliferate radical scholarship. Against Capital in the Twenty-First Century Introduction Against Capital in the Twenty-First Century Richard Gilman-Opalsky and John Asimakopoulos UNDERCURRENTS In December 1917, the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci wrote a short essay, “The Revolution against Capital,”1 the title of which alludes to the title of Karl Marx’s major work. Gramsci observed that the Bolsheviks had made a revolution that undermined and refuted several of Marx’s defining theoreti- cal insights. The revolution challenged Marx’s critique of ideology and his theory of historical conflict and change. Gramsci observes that the revolution consists more of ideologies than of events. This is the revolution against Karl Marx’s Capital. In Russia, Marx’s Capital was more the book of the bourgeoisie than of the proletariat. It stood as the critical demonstration of how events should follow a predetermined course: how in Russia a bourgeoisie had to develop, and a capitalist era had to open, with the setting-up of a Western-type civilization, before the proletariat could even think in terms of its own revolt, its own class demands, its own revolution.2 However, war-torn Russia was far from the industrial capitalism of the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, and France. The revolution seemed to happen prematurely, before capitalist development made it necessary, be- fore capital could prepare society for the great conflict and change. Gramsci insisted that Marx’s theory of revolution would hold true “in normal times” 2 | INTRODUCTION and “under normal conditions” but that the proliferation of radical ideas and other unexpected instabilities might bring revolution under completely dif- ferent circumstances.3 Gramsci, who remained a Marxist, did not intend to oppose the whole of Marx’s major work. His critique of Marx and Marxism was not a rejection but an effort to make Marx speak to unforeseen conditions. Indeed, the cre- ative development and future relevance of Marx’s radical thinking depended (and still depends) on others to come after and rethink it in new directions. Needless to say, we have less affection for Thomas Piketty than Gramsci had for Marx. But although our disagreements run deeper, and our critical knives are sharper, Against Capital in the Twenty-First Century is not an attack on Piketty’s famous book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century.