Reply to Critiques
and Caricatures: A Response to Undercurrent
While claiming that critique
of J18 is much needed, the author to the reply dismissed ours as a caricature.
We would be the last ones to deny that there has been a lot of caricaturing
going on. But the only reason why our text might give that impression, is that
its object – the information we have about J18 – is itself caricaturing the
world of capital.
Our critique of
J18 consisted of a number of related points: the fixation on finance capital
and evil multinational corporations, the participation in the hype about
“globalisation”, accompanied by a problematic localism, to name but the most
important ones. The response evades these issues and instead repeatedly claims
that the meagre basis on which we wrote our critique led us to distort the
issue. However, we criticised precisely that there is nothing further than this “meagre basis” – that is a few
leaflets – on which the J18 campaign/co-ordination (whatever difference that
makes) is based. It is not our fault that a few small leaflets are so far all the
co-ordination has published – it is the very problem. Fair enough, there have
been e-mail and other discussion groups, but they are private discussions. It
is the publications made publicly available that represent a certain underlying
consensus, and as such are to be taken as expressing the gist of a campaign.
Otherwise, what would their purpose be? That to the present day not a single
pamphlet bringing together “the multiplicity of positions and interests” has
been put out underscores our claim that crucial questions are being neglected
in order to keep up a superficial unity of action.
Instead of engaging with our critique, the writer
explains to us the thorny path of bringing together the various movements
around the globe. This obviously requires not asking for “groups' theoretical
credentials”. Yet while it is apparently too arrogant “to check whether or not
groups are complicit with capital”, this political indifference does not
prevent the writer from claiming that “June 18th...is rooted in a direct
actionist opposition to capitalism”. This contradiction remains a mystery to
us, but our main point was something else: that a mobilisation of this type
avoids a critical theory of capital and consequently reproduces ideology.
Of course, we are not in
any way questioning the necessity of practice and we consider many of the
actions planned for the day worthwhile. However, the reply to our previous
article, as well as J18 generally, considers theory at most a secondary issue.
The main focus is in the ‘action’, and any critical reflection is postponed
indefinitely. Even more flagrantly, the author bets on the idea that “the
outcomes that result from a practice are not always the one intended” and that
“the secondary effects may be wholly unexpected”… In other words, never mind if
we reproduce social-democratic ideology, it might accidentally still end in
social revolution.
Not only do we
find in the response to our article no refutation of the points we make, but
unfortunately they seem more relevant now than before: the latest agit-leaflet
is worth quoting at length to illustrate this. It claims: “Our planet is actually run by the financial markets - a giant video
game in which people buy and sell blips on electronic screens, trading life for
money in their search for higher profits. Yet the consequences of this frenzied
game are very real: human lives, ecosystems, jobs and even entire economies
[!!sic.!!] are at the mercy of this
reckless global system”. In reality the world is, of course, not run by the financial markets.
Capital is a system of relations of production
of which the financial markets are but a (necessary) offspring. To fixate the
attack on them is to turn the world upon its head, resulting in such
absurdities as complaining about the damages made to “jobs” and even “entire economies” which are
apparently just as innocent as “ecosystems and human lives”. Since of course
these “entire economies” are
capitalist, this J18 statement affirms what it pretends to attack[1].
This feels like stating the obvious.
Although no one
can deny the importance of financial markets, this passage simply reasserts a
view of capitalism we tried to refute in the last article. Is this the further
reflection resulting from the “what is capitalism?” conference?
This misconception
of finance capital was one of the points we tried to raise, and not, as the
writer claims, that nothing matters except the factories. We mentioned the
factories in order to attack J18’s fixation on the financial centres; a
fixation that is an obstacle for a critique of
production. Of course, capital forms all of social life and not just
production in the factories, and reclaiming the streets is one adequate
response to this.
The J18
co-ordination is undeniably one between many different groups with radically
opposing views. This on the one hand shows a serious lack of consensus, and a
blurry amalgam of groups that don’t even necessarily have the same basic aims.
On the other hand, and paradoxically, it is also the expression of a consensus:
anything will do, as long as it fits
with the vague anti-globalisation attitude. That, as we noted, this resentment
can also be found on the political Right, e.g. the French Front National, does
not seem to bother the author – instead, he claims that we suggested that J18 would like to include the
Front National in its long list. Obviously, we never did, but the co-ordination
is already, even without any
Fascists, “scarily incoherent”.
Since the author
dismissed our article as a mere caricature and did not engage with the points
we raised, there is nothing new we can say. Except maybe that “Economies versus
Financial Markets” - this latest
caricature of anti-capitalism – is even worse than the stuff we had referred to
in the last undercurrent. It seems
that our critique was not a caricature, but rather an understatement.
[1] For
an analysis of how capital presents itself in such a way as to facilitate the
emergence of an “anti-capitalism” that is a one-sided attack on the abstract
side of capital while affirming the “concreteness” of labour and production,
and how furthermore this “anti-capitalism” relates to anti-Semitism, see Moishe
Postone, 'Anti-Semitism and National Socialism', in Germans and Jews since the Holocaust: the changing situation in West
Germany, ed. Anson Rabinach/Jack Zipes, New York and London 1986. We do not, however, want to suggest that J
18 is anti-Semitic.