marx, anarchism, and rev of the everyday
Marx, Anarchism, and the Revolution of the Everyday – A Theoretical Exploration of Marx’s Relationship to Anarchism – by M. Sanchez (2024) via 35 pg kindle version from anarchist library [https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/m-sanchez-marx-anarchism-and-the-revolution-of-the-everyday]
notes/quotes:
4
1 – STIRNER’S UNIQUE
6
Nevertheless, the truth of his philosophy comes out as ultimately non-reactionary. The conclusion of Stirner’s book ultimately places his understanding of the flourishing of the Unique in the power of self-creation, which is necessarily a creative negativity:
This all-destroying critique of abstract concepts and affirmation of the Unique’s uniqueness interested and troubled the young Marx and Engels. One thing was for sure: Stirner had destroyed the intellectual viability of Feuerbach’s humanism. It seemed ridiculous to say that “Man,” as an incredibly abstract concept, could have any particular “essence” or nature in light of Stirner’s criticisms. Where could one really locate that “essence” in actual, specific individuals? Further, how could one claim capitalist society alienates us from that “essence” if that “essence” cannot even be pinned down beyond historical, social, and individual variability?
Thus, before trying to refute Stirner, Marx and Engels incorporated his insights. One November 19, 1844 letter of Engels to Marx is especially demonstrative of their attempts:
We must not simply cast it aside, but rather use it as the perfect expression of present-day folly and, while inverting it, continue to build on it. This egoism is taken to such a pitch, it is so absurd and at the same time so self-aware, that it cannot maintain itself even for an instant in its one-sidedness, but must immediately change into communism. In the first place it’s a simple matter to prove to Stirner that his egoistic man is bound to become communist out of sheer egoism.
7
The rejection of bourgeois society is thus purely on the grounds of this Egoism — it is a rejection beyond history on the basis of a concept beyond history.
*The transcendence of this dualism, between the individual and general, is through realizing the social character of the individual and the individual as the basis of society. “Humanity” is no abstract essence, but is simply the whole of “the ensemble of the social relations.” The same is true of the “Unique” which is beyond history, as the isolated individual. **The individual itself is a product of a certain arrangement of social relations. Our perspectives, from out of our “I,” are already laden with ways of thinking and attributing meaning which come from the history of society — most obviously in language.
*rather.. thru letting go of realizing ness.. graeber can’t know law et al.. and just letting/trusting the dance dance
**only in sea world
8
These powers do not merely emanate from the consent of individuals, but exist objectively regardless of our subjective consciousness of them. Carrying out an act of will, breaking the identification of our Unique with them, does not actually break their power. Their power does not come merely out of our identification with them, our subjective consent to them, but through all the complex “practical interrelations of the world.”Think about our own world of bureaucracy, law, private property, and money. They are certainly bound up with all kinds of subjective delusions and ridiculous beliefs, but they have a concrete power in our lives.
until now.. now have means to let go of that ‘power’
there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental expo labeling).. to facil a legit global detox leap.. for (blank)’s sake.. and we’re missing it
legit freedom will only happen if it’s all of us.. and in order to be all of us.. has to be sans any form of m\a\p
*Money becomes necessary with a given arrangement of society. It tends to be associated with massive empires, dense social systems, and with the power of the state in exchange. In other words, it is the “universal” in a society that has become complex and ‘split’. At the same time, money is not strictly necessary or the only way to organize a complex society. **Some highly dense societies have existed without money, like Tawantinsuyu in the Andes, so it is not the only way to express a universal. It is historically and socially specific, and has elements of both social necessity and contingency.
*perhaps of sea world society
**but none sans any form of m\a\p.. so .. no ie to date of legit free people
State power similarly is not merely illusory even in its mythic nature. Organized, official, public, civilian police forces are a historically modern phenomenon. Nevertheless, both their physical power and their historically developed moral sanctifications — “To Protect and Serve,” for example — are real limitations. Agency is specific to a specific situation, not the unlimited choice of the Unique. We might act in the world from a specific perspective, but from the beginning of our lives we think and act in an existing network of social relations which we must work through.
until now.. today we have means for ie: hari rat park law et al..
need means (nonjudgmental expo labeling) to undo hierarchical listening as global detox so we can org around legit needs
9
Communism emerges out of the concrete developments of society and its history itself by way of these individuals. The revolutionary action of these individuals is not, however, the ahistorical and asocial agency of the Unique. It is instead situated, *historically specific freedom which is freedom within an already defined situation. That situation is the ground and premise for that freedom, **but that freedom also enables transcendence from beyond that ground. In this sense, Marx incorporates elements of Stirner’s identification of the Unique with the “creative nothing.” What he does to go beyond Stirner is to point out the emptiness of the Unique’s emptiness. The individual is nothing in particular, not even a foundation of emptiness from which freedom emanates. **Freedom is always already social and historical, and thus the flourishing of freedom can only be realized by working through the dialectics of history.
*so.. not legit freedom.. until we get out of sea world (aka: sans any form of m\a\p)
**pretty sure can’t get to legit freedom from part\ial ness.. at least nothing part ial has worked to date
***again.. so not legit freedom.. history ness et al as cancerous distractions
10
2 – PROUDHON’S JUSTICE
pierre-joseph proudhon.. proudhon ruled law
12
Proudhon’s cooperative market system (mutualism), which is supposed to be a truly “free” market, is simply the conscience of capitalism. Value cannot be the basis of a new society, or for revolutionary arguments about equality and social worth. To argue for the equality of human beings based on the equality of their labor’s value is to simply think like a capitalist. It is to be complacent with the homogenization wrought by the domination of valorization. It is to be complacent with the domination of living workers by their dead labor in the form of a commodity and in the form of the capital that they feed.
graeber violence/quantification law et al
The point of communist revolution is to abolish value production, not to give each individual ‘the full value of their labor.’ To try and realize “justice” within bourgeois society is merely to try and realize bourgeois justice. *It means to internalize capitalism into our vision of an alternative to it. This is where Marx’s engagement with Stirner continued to influence his dialectic. Proudhon’s moralism simply meant the domination of working individuals by the abstract and impersonal power of capital.
*oi.. such a cancerous distraction
13
But as Proudhon entangled the whole of these economic relations in the general legal concept of ‘property,’ he could not get beyond the answer which, in a similar work published before 1789, Brissot had already given in the same words: ‘Property is theft.’
Marx considers the legal aspects of property as their codifications in officialdom rather than being their “real form.” Proudhon does not think of property as a social relation, but as a thing. Not only that, he does not think of property as variable — not as “relations of production” embracing “the totality of these property relations.” It should be remembered that in 1844, Marx had already said that alienated labor precedes private property. He had been emphasizing the primacy of social relations to social forms for a long time. Proudhon remains stultified by his overly generalizing concept of property, which he sticks to out of his fixation with “eternal” definitions of a morally good order. Marx goes on to mock the very slogan of “property is theft”:
The upshot is at best that the bourgeois legal conceptions of ‘theft’ apply equally well to the ‘honest’ gains of the bourgeois himself. On the other hand, since ‘theft’ as a forcible violation of property presupposes the existence of property, Proudhon entangled himself in all sorts of fantasies, obscure even to himself, about true bourgeois property.
Here, Marx actually sounds almost exactly like Stirner. Stirner himself had said that the idea of property being theft presupposes a validity of some notion of property or ownership anyways. Like Stirner, Marx saw such a slogan as *purely speaking within the terms of the society one is trying to criticize. However, he again distinguishes himself from Stirner in his critique of Proudhon:
*aka: whalespeak ness
[Proudhon] shares the illusions of speculative philosophy for he does not regard economic categories as the theoretical expression of historical relations of production, corresponding to a particular stage of development in material production, but arbitrarily transforms them into pre-existing eternal ideas, and that in this roundabout way he arrives once more at the standpoint of bourgeois economy
14
3 – BAKUNIN’S NATURAL-BEING
mikhail bakunin.. bakunin legit free law
Bakunin’s major difference from Marx lay ultimately in his concept of a human nature. He argued that there was, in every person, an animalistic-humanistic instinct towards “natural justice,” and that “natural impulses” are already in accordance with “natural law.” *To him, revolution meant the freedom of these “natural impulses” to roam, both without limitation by other individuals and through cooperation with other individuals. In quite Enlightenment-derived terms, Bakunin identified justice with the laws of nature, and argued that:
*if thru coop ness w other.. then not legit free.. not legit dance
Respect for man is the supreme law of Humanity, and that the great, the real object of history, its only legitimate object, is the humanization and emancipation, the real liberty, the prosperity and happiness of each individual living in society.
For Bakunin, humans were both “the highest manifestation of animality,” or of the natural order, and humanized in “the deliberate and gradual negation of the animal element in man.” Though emphasizing this conscious element of human beings, he did not believe that human society was arbitrarily created out of random decisions of individuals. Instead, contrasting natural laws to laws made by human societies and standing above individuals, he said that the laws of human nature “are inherent in us; they constitute our being, our whole being, physically, intellectually, and morally: we live, we breathe, we act, we think, we wish only through these laws. Without them we are nothing, we are not.”
already on each heart ness
These natural laws are identical to our very being. In this way, Bakunin has some relation to Feuerbach’s humanism. Human beings are *free to create themselves, but do so **within the framing of their very species-being. Thus, ***liberty means to act in accordance with human nature, with natural laws, themselves. These natural laws further extend to our being (****“intellectually” and “morally” — meaning that our opinions and moral conscience are expressions of our very being. We must be free to think, believe, feel what we desire, because that is an expression of our very natural-being. A free society, an anarchist society, would mean an association premised on the liberation of our natural-being impulses and drives.
*need to be free to just be.. **sans framing w/in ness et al
***not free
****not free
intellectness as cancerous distraction we can’t seem to let go of.. there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental expo labeling).. to facil a legit global detox leap.. for (blank)’s sake.. and we’re missing it
17
bakunin as anti jew
18
On this rule of the proletariat, which is the first step to negating capitalism, Marx responded to Bakunin that: “As the proletariat still acts, during the *period of struggle for the overthrow of the old society, on the basis of that old society, and hence also still moves within political forms which more or less belong to it, it has not yet, during this period of struggle, attained its final constitution, and employs means for its liberation which after this liberation fall aside.” Establishing working class government means to move “within political forms which more or less belong” to bourgeois society. That is, the working class is still a class within capitalism and generally a class within class society. Its very distinctness as a class is premised on its identity with capitalists in capitalist society. To abolish the capitalists is to work to abolish its own condition of existence as a class, and thus the very character of class rule (governmental power). **Thus, the revolution begins from out of the everyday lives of workers (whether reformist or insurrectionist), reaches a peak in their ascendance to the ruling class of society, and culminates in their abolition of their own class identity as workers.
*any form of m\a\p keeps us from us
**part\ial ness.. incremental ness.. is keeping us from us
today we have the means for a legit global detox leap.. for (blank)’s sake
Here, it is clear that Marx strongly valued the immanence of revolution to the proletariat itself. While Bakunin appealed to ideals embedded in a natural-being, always present behind our specific social situations, Marx appealed to the immanence of revolution in our everyday lives. Marx focused on analyzing capitalism not in order to establish London as the model for the entire world, but to show that *capitalism contains the seeds for its own transcendence. This insight is what he saw lacking in Bakunin. He believed that this led Bakunin to close the gap of Is and Ought with a pure appeal to will, in order for the Ought to break out of the Is.
*nah
revolution of everyday life ness et al.. revolution in reverse
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4 – CAFIERO’S WORKERS
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Of course, this distinction of “work” and “life” is still only a beginning. Feminist critics of Marx, like Tithi Bhattacharya, have pointed out that the distinction between the time “which the worker sells” and “his own” can become entangled back into capitalism. With the remaking of the world in the image of capital, which is another way of saying with the global ascendancy of the capitalist mode of production, capital wields the power to re-organize everyday life around its needs. Even if the individual capitalist doesn’t have legal control of us when we’re clocked out, the general class of capitalists can still have control over our lives off the clock. *In particular, the promotion of the nuclear family and the unpaid domestic labor of women as a means of reproducing the worker’s ability to “work” by replenishing him in the realm of “life” is one way that this happens
huge to nika & silvia on divorce ness
23
Cafiero foresaw this criticism of abstractness, and responded thusly:
This is not the place for a revolutionary program, already elaborated and published long ago elsewhere in other books; I confine myself to conclude, replying with the words taken from the lips of a worker and placed in epigraph to this volume: ‘The worker has made everything; and the worker can destroy everything, because he can rebuild everything.’
and 3/ has to come from worker.. oi.. already perpetuating slavery if still calling it worker ness.. altman eat fear law et al
supposed to’s of school/work et al
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This quoted statement expresses a strong revolutionary sentiment, but fails to reveal that the very fact that “[t]he worker has made everything” is what already holds the seeds of the worker’s self-emancipation. The aim of Marx’s dialectic of capital and revolution is that the ability of the worker to “destroy everything” and “rebuild everything” can be seen within the fact that “the worker has made everything.” Capital is created out of the expropriation and exploitation of workers, their being “free” in a dual sense — to sell their own labor-power as their commodity, and freedom from any other ability to survive. It is this position of the proletariat, as the desolation of capitalist society, in which Marx saw the promise of a class which *could only abolish itself by abolishing class society as a whole.
such twisted whalespeak.. oi.. ie: *cancerous distraction
5 – KROPOTKIN’S COMMUNISM
pëtr kropotkin.. toward more complete kropotkin biblio.. kropotkin dirty jobs law..
Peter Kropotkin, also a Russian anarchist, is arguably the historical figure who is most representative of modern global anarchist thinking. He is also the closest comparison to Marx in terms of major anarchist philosophies. Both called for a revolution of everyday life from out of everyday life, but their divergences give a final clear view at the gap between Marx and anarchism.
anarchism ness
Beginning life as an aristocrat renowned for his natural scientific work, Kropotkin rejected his title and turned to revolutionary activity in the 1870s. Like many of his generation, he was inspired by the glimpse of a new world opened up by the 1871 Paris Commune. From his natural scientific background, he developed a theory of anarchism which especially emphasized connecting natural laws to anarchist principles. His Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902) expressed this idea by critiquing excessive emphasis on “natural selection” or competition in evolution and emphasizing solidarity as an important factor to the survival of species.
mutual aid et al as cancerous distraction
From this innovative perspective, Kropotkin expressed his skepticism of both utopianism and of a “progressive” character in capitalism. He tried to point towards a communism already present in everyday life, especially as something inherent to the nature of humans as a species. To him, it was clear that a natural order of anarcho-communism needed to rupture through the artificial and irrational system of statist and capitalist society. In the early 1890s, he set out to lay out his vision of this anarcho-communist society in The Conquest of Bread (1892). Around the same time, he was writing the essays which would make up a book with much the same themes titled Fields, Factories, and Workshops (1899).
conquest of bread.. fields factories and workshops
Kropotkin appealed against the irrationality of capitalism for the natural rationality of communism, pointing out the communism he already saw in our everyday practices:
The consequences which spring from the original act of monopoly spread through the whole of social life. Under pain of death, human societies are forced to return to first principles: the means of production being the collective work of humanity, the product should be the collective property of the race. Individual appropriation is neither just nor serviceable. All belongs to all. All things are for all men, since all men have need of them, since all men have worked in the measure of their strength to produce them, and since it is not possible to evaluate everyone’s part in the production of the world’s wealth.
not deep enough.. still same song.. oi.. ie:
25
A new, stateless, classless, moneyless society, organized on the basis of mutual aid and collective labor, was possible. Cooperation had created society, and stood as the very basis of human nature. To realize communism meant to realize the natural premises of society itself, which had been obscured by the delusions of class society.
not true.. at least not for legit free people…
just need – ‘in undisturbed ecosystems ..the average individual, species, or population, left to its own devices, behaves in ways that serve and stabilize the whole..’ –Dana Meadows
Kropotkin considered “Collectivism,” a label under which he included Marx, to fall within these delusions. It should be noted that he wrote this long after Marx had died in 1883, but addressed the immediate legacy of Marx in European socialist movements. By putting forward the slogan “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their contributions,” Kropotkin believed that the “Collectivists” operated well within the logic of the capitalist wage system. He particularly took issue with their distinction between skilled (“complex”) and unskilled (“simple”) labor in remuneration:
Well, *to establish this distinction would be to maintain all the inequalities of present society. It would mean fixing a dividing line, from the beginning, between the workers and those who pretend to govern them. It would mean dividing society into two very distinct classes — the aristocracy of knowledge placed above the horny-handed lower orders — the one doomed to serve the other; the one working with its hands to feed and clothe those who, profiting by their leisure, study how to govern their fosterers.
*yeah that.. any form of m\a\p as cancerous distraction
He does, however, throw a bone to Marx, as opposed to his social-democratic followers:
..Ricardo’s theory of value, and upheld that goods are exchanged in proportion to the quantity of work socially necessary for their production.
He quite clearly thinks of Marx as an uncritical follower of David Ricardo, the bourgeois political economist. Like the other Ricardian socialists, Marx is supposed to believe that there is an exactly measurable quantity of “socially necessary (minimum average) labor-time” in each individual commodity. On this basis, Kropotkin ends up believing that Marx thought the solution was for the ‘full value’ of an individual’s labor to go their wages:
The evil of the present system is therefore not that the ‘surplus value’ of production goes to the capitalist, as Rodbertus and Marx said, thus narrowing the socialist conception and the general view of the capitalist system; the surplus value itself is but a consequence of deeper causes. *The evil lies in the possibility of a surplus value existing, instead of a simple surplus not consumed by each generation; for, that a surplus value should exist, **means that men, women and children are compelled by hunger to sell their labour for a small part of what this labour produces, and still more so, of what their labour is capable of producing. But this evil will last as long as the instruments of production belong to the few
*testart storage law et al
**again w altman eat fear law
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Kropotkin argues that surplus-value comes ultimately from the monopoly of capitalists on the means of production, a monopoly akin to all other class societies through which one part of society controls the surplus that the other produces. Naturally, this means the means of production should be controlled by the people who work, and the surplus should be distributed to them according to need. Kropotkin considers this in line with natural rationality, while capitalism is irrational.
deeper problem.. we have no idea what it means to org around legit needs
There can be no exact measure of the value of each product, and the law of equivalence operating in exchange is alien to the basic premises of human sociality. To try and distribute “according to contribution” misses the point, and represses the basic human instincts of unselfish solidarity and mutual aid. The rule of equivalents means dividing society and social labor up in a way that is untrue, when humanity has survived and defined itself as a species purely out of its natural inclination to give without expectation of equivalent exchange.
graeber exchange law et al.. graeber violence/quantification law et al
Each human being contributes to the labor of the other. Society, sociality, mutuality, solidarity— these are the premises of any of our individual actions. We cannot act without acting on the ground laid by the labor of previous generations, we cannot flourish unless people freely exchange their knowledge with us and ensure our ability to flourish (for instance, by producing our needs through their labor). It is therefore a myth, and a harmful one at that, to speak of individual contribution.
beyond the monastic self ness.. but contribution ness as cancerous distraction as well
The irony in this criticism of Marx is that Marx agreed almost entirely with Kropotkin’s criticisms! He also considered the attempt to exactly measure individual contribution to be ultimately arbitrary from the perspective of cooperative labor. This arbitrariness, however, misses the way that “the money form” is what “conceals the social character of private labour and the social relations between the individual workers, by making those relations appear as relations between material objects, instead of revealing them plainly.” He had already criticized Proudhon in 1847 for advocating such a system with ‘full value’ going to the producer. Just like Kropotkin, he said that was more Ricardian than communist, and that Ricardo described value as the logic of bourgeois society.
He would also agree with Kropotkin that state power ensures, or rather coerces, the conditions for the sale of labor-power. Primitive accumulation, typically carried out through governmental means, forces the separation of laborers from the means of production. The capitalist class, through this power of monopoly, owns the means of production. The workers can only purchase their needs in the society of commodities by selling their only commodity (labor-power) in exchange for money. They sell it to the capitalists who monopolize the means of production. The capitalist buys their labor-power in this coerced situation, thus also owning the products of their concrete labor — including their surplus-value.
27
Kropotkin is not wrong about the role of this monopoly relationship in capitalism. At the same time, capital is also an impersonal power, a power beyond the personhood of specific capitalists. Marx quotes two French sayings to illustrate the distinction of this capitalist power — there can be “No land without its lord,” but “Money has no master.” Even capitalists find themselves compelled to “Accumulate, accumulate![…] save, save, i.e. reconvert the greatest possible portion of surplus-value or surplus product into capital!” Production ultimately does not even have them as an end. Production seems to be for its own sake, accumulation of capital as an end in itself.
again.. testart storage law et al
A capitalist’s relation with their capital is not an absolute relation and they have significantly more autonomy choice than their workers. The point is that this draws our attention to a broader concept of the capital relation than what Kropotkin offers us. The capital relation is unique compared to previous forms of monopoly and domination. It isn’t just that we are directly dominated by a boss, a person. We are all dominated by this society itself, the whole social machine has run out from us and now stands above as a power over us.
hari rat park law
The point of focusing on the mechanics of value is to show that the capitalist class does not simply establish this by sheer force alone. Though any class society is defined by relations of distinction and domination, capitalism must be understood as an overall social system, and an impersonal system. Even capitalists are subject to the law of value. Value is “gravity” for all classes in a capitalist society. Like gravity, this doesn’t mean you’re immediately sucked into it and flattened (under normal circumstances). You feel it as a pulling force, a basic direction, which you act in relation to. You feel it more or less intensely according to your characteristics, your situation, your environmental context, etc,but you feel it. Other things appear as contingent and/or illusory compared to value, which appears as the truth of the world.
Value is not anything premised on ‘eternal justice,’ nor is it premised on ‘monopoly’ alone. Value is the way that total social labor-time is distributed on a total social scale in capitalism. Value is the planless plan of capital. Individual capitalists or groups of capitalists can certainly use force to influence distribution, for example through dictatorial policies over society, but they cannot just create value arbitrarily. Value ultimately operates beyond them — it is literally the expression of our total social relations under capitalism. If one tries to abolish it immediately by force, it exerts itself indirectly. Value is not just supply and demand. Value is the system as a whole, the operation of the entire system of production and exchange in the name of feeding capital.
Marx did not disagree that the monopoly power of capitalists affected prices. This is a major subject of discussion in the third volume of Capital. In the first volume, he does not yet distinguish between values and prices because he is starting off with general capital, or capital-in-general. This means two things:
- He sees the divergence of prices and value as expressed in competition between many capitals.
- He sees total social value as equivalent to total prices of production.
on why graeber values law et al.. why not any form of m\a\p et al.. oi
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One part of this product serves as fresh means of production and remains social. But another part is consumed by the members of the association as means of subsistence. This part must therefore be divided amongst them. The way this division is made will vary with the particular kind of social organization of production and the corresponding level of social development attained by the producers.
Distribution of the product is direct, conscious, and planned by the “association of *free men,” unlike the unconscious and only indirectly social distribution of capitalism. In 1875, Marx would add that this distribution would include both deductions to serve as “fresh means of production” and increased “social” parts of the product to go to **“whatever is dedicated to the collective satisfaction of needs, like schools, health services etc.” while “[the general administrative costs] will be very significantly restricted from the outset, and it will diminish proportionately as the new society develops.” This distribution, and the definition of subsistence, would vary socially and historically.
*rather.. ‘free’ whales
**oi
30
Thus, because we are still on bourgeois grounds, we must remember that: “Rights can never be higher than the economic form of society and the cultural development which is conditioned by it.” This is essentially the same as Marx’s contention against Bakunin. *One cannot immediately leap into a totally qualitatively new society by a sheer act of will. Value-production drags us along, it permeates every aspect of our lives. Revolution is not a question of will alone, of divine force blasting value out of existence. The force and arc of revolution must account for the pull of value if we are to leave it behind in the dustbin of history.
until now.. now we have the means for a legit global detox leap
ie: a nother way
*Otherwise, we fall back into the orbit of capital, perhaps no longer seeing price tags and police and so assuming we are in a totally new world. But the power of capital remains, and it continues to influence the distribution of abundance and scarcity alike until, through long and direct struggle against it, we have established labor as a prime want for life, as the very embodiment of our freedom and openness to be what we will. **Revolution both emerges out of everyday life and seeks to transcend it, yet the process of revolution will necessarily retain elements of the existing state of affairs. The literal organization of our working days, of our concept of selves in relation to society, of our labor, is still recognizably “stamped with the birthmarks of the old society.
*that happens with any form of m\a\p
**then not legit revolution
31
Marx’s vision of a communism developed on its own ground, the negation of the initial negation, is much closer to Kropotkin. Here, in communism-as-communism instead of communism-relative-to-capitalism, communism as an independent thing, we see the *unique characteristics of the new society. Now, “the subjection of individuals to the division of labour, and thereby the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has disappeared[…]”. There must be no “aristocracy of knowledge placed above the horny-handed lower orders,” as Kropotkin said. Labor must become a free expression of individuality, “not merely a means to live but the foremost need in life[…]”.
*ie: sans any form of m\a\p.. which we haven’t yet seen/tried..
This will be established “after the multifarious development of individuals has grown along with their productive powers, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly.” *This can only be possible if cooperative labor, social labor, has been developed to a certain point. In a word, labor must be socialized, and society must have a certain density of interconnections. In his criticism of Stirner and Bakunin, Marx had identified this socializing process with modern capitalism. This socializing, which connected millions and now billions of people through a network of market dependencies, does not directly acknowledge itself as such. Society is mediated by sales, purchases, contracts — relationships between things, not people. It is only communism which realizes the truth of society to itself — again, Marx agrees with Kropotkin.
*rather.. has to be sans any form of m\a\p
Out of this ground of capitalist development, where labor has been socialized in the “hidden abode” of production, labor can be socialized directly through social revolution. *Only through this revolutionary process, emerging out of the socialized everyday, “can the limited horizon of bourgeois right be wholly transcended, and society can inscribe on its banner: from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!”
*again.. have to know/org around legit needs first.. so.. need global detox leap first..
This communist society is very similar to that described in The Conquest of Bread. The key difference is that Marx focused primarily on the process, the how, of its development. He did not want to describe a plan for an alternative social system extensively. He wanted to critique within the realm of everyday life, to show how the path to this new world leads out from where we are.
i don’t think so.. need hari rat park law via global detox leap
there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental expo labeling).. to facil a legit global detox leap.. for (blank)’s sake.. and we’re missing it
legit freedom will only happen if it’s all of us.. and in order to be all of us.. has to be sans any form of m\a\p
Kropotkin also sought to point out a communism immanent in everyday life, but believed this new world could already stand on relatively solid ground by the inherent communality of human nature. Communism meant simply recognizing the truth of human nature. To Marx, there could be no guarantees of nature: “Man,” “Ego,” “Justice,” and “Nature” could not serve as foundations. To reach our communist Ought, we had to work through the muck of our capitalist everyday Is.
cancerous distraction
Kropotkin’s criticisms of the “Collectivist” wage system are important and useful to counter the myth of meritocracy, and to point towards the need for communism. He is especially insightful in his arguments showing that communism means putting society on a social basis, recognizing the truth of society to itself. However, after exposing that meritocracy, that the strictly measurable individuality of labor-contribution is a myth, we are left with a question: Why does labor appear as individual anyways? If that’s untrue, then why do things appear that way, and what does that mean for realizing directly social labor on a social scale (communism)? This is what Marx wants us to think through, and what he tries to work through to pick up a path towards communism. Marx’s critique of capitalism has exactly this intent, including his insistence on analyzing the value-form, prices, abstract labor, socially necessary (minimum average) labor-time, surplus-value, etc.
cancerous distraction
32
Marx insisted that we focus on *this historical specificity of our situation in order to guarantee transcendence from out of it, to avoid creating a mirror image of our existing society. **By understanding the system, we can understand how to escape it. We cannot immediately leap into something totally qualitatively new. We have to work through the riddle, we have to answer it before we can take steps into a new world standing on its own foundation.
*focusing on it (history ness et al) perpetuates mirror ness.. same song ness.. need a legit diff way
**perhaps until now.. but not now..
This is not to say that Kropotkin does not understand the need for a revolutionary process, or does not try to trace the immanence of revolution in everyday lives. Rather, his approach does not identify the specificity of capitalism as a social system *that we have to work through. Though Marx’s approach seems to get us caught in the muck of metaphysics, it does so in order to capture the way capitalism works and **to express points of departure within the system itself.
*oi.. whalespeak
**no points of departure.. or guessing we would have departed by now.. increment/part\ial ness is keeping us from being/trying legit free
Modern Marxist critiques that touch exactly on the issue of value-production hold much more water than Kropotkin’s. In particular, social reproduction theorists are right that he neglected the mystified relations behind the reproduction of labor-power at a certain level, especially the labor of housewives. He neglected how these relations, hidden behind the abstract “equal right” of commodity exchange, could enable the (male) worker to make peace with their situation, for both state and the masculine trade union-bureaucrats alike to ensure that the system incorporates them.
huge to nika & silvia on divorce et al
The role of unpaid domestic laborers in reproducing labor-power, which in turn produces new value, is something revealed by engaging with the issue of value itself. While Marx in Capital and elsewhere assumed that capitalism would yield a universalization of the wage-labor relation, what we have seen within his approach itself is that the power of capital distributes total social labor-time (value) according to the demands of accumulation across the social system. This extends to waged and unwaged labor, exchange and non-exchange relations, production and consumption. The trouble with capital is that it permeates life even where we try to be something other than workers and bosses, even in the romanticized abode (really, the site of exploitation) of housewives. The gravity of value pulls us even where there isn’t a price tag in front of us, and it does so even where we think we’re in an oasis of authentic, non-money relationships.
caring labor et al.. interpretive labor et al.. and 10-day-care-center\ness et al
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5 – THE REVOLUTION OF THE EVERYDAY
Marx’s lifelong engagements with anarchists reveal a consistent potential gap of Is and Ought in anarchism. This is not to say that all anarchists are ignorant of this approach — Fredy Perlman, for instance, was a pioneer in recovering Marx’s critique of capitalism. The problem is, rather, where political conclusions do not emerge directly out of this immanent critique of our existing order.
There is a problem of failing to connect the two, either trying to absolutely condemn the Is and absolutely vindicate the Ought (Cafiero) or to become too complacent in the Is (Proudhon). Marx identified the common appeal to will by anarchists, meant to be an alternative to historical determinism, as an expression of this issue. Will is a factor in society, yes, but will is always historical and social. One can only express a will through an existing, concrete situation. That will already has a concrete content which is inseparable from the situation, including its limitations.
perhaps until now
imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness as nonjudgmental expo labeling)
ie: need means (nonjudgmental expo labeling) to undo hierarchical listening as global detox so we can org around legit needs
Rather than neglecting the issue of means and ends, Marx took this issue very seriously. He did not believe that we could or should try to already perfectly embody, in miniature, a new society. We have no foundation to stand on in human nature to assert such a thing, nor in anything else.
perhaps until now
We have to work through the tangled thread of society as we come into it in order to reach something absolutely new. That means the new society is built through the actions of individuals who are completely of the old society. Us and our world are co-creative — we create the world, the world creates us. The two cannot be separated. The only transcendent element of historical actors is their determinate freedom within determinate situations. Our “creative nothing” is a determinate negation.
oi.. whalespeak
This is the substance of Marx’s approach to capitalism. Marx thus rejected both those who projected too much of the capitalist Is into the future Ought and those who tried to separate the Is and Ought entirely, whether reactionary defenders of capitalism or revolutionary critics.
34
Trades Unions work well as centres of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerrilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organised forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class, that is to say, the ultimate abolition of the wages system.
not deep enough.. need a way/means sans any form of m\a\p
Thus, social revolution must erupt throughout the networks of society. It must target the general capital, starting from a confrontation against many capitals.
then not new/diff.. not revolution.. oi
These confrontations throughout society’s nervous system are not only on shop floors. They extend throughout, to everywhere that people attack the domination of value-production. Marx’s dialectic of revolution can offer a guide to us in asking *what strategies will bring us along the thread to a totally new world, and whether **prevailing strategies bring us in this direction or leave us trapped within the system. We can ask: Do they jump too far, trying to leap towards absolute change “like a shot from a pistol[?]” Here we can criticize absolutist approaches to revolution. ***Wanting immediate and total revolution without working through the threads of the situation ultimately means no revolution at all. You might burn a few things or smash a few windows, but you do not fundamentally change the order of things as a whole.
*there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental expo labeling).. to facil a legit global detox leap.. for (blank)’s sake.. and we’re missing it
**legit freedom will only happen if it’s all of us.. and in order to be all of us.. has to be sans any form of m\a\p
***until now.. no rev at all if any form of m\a\p.. and now have means to facil that
On the other hand, we can ask if strategies become too positivist. Do they lead us to becoming complacent with the order of things? Does “working within the system” just make us a harmless part of the system? This is the common issue in reformism. Eventually, reforms can become an end in themselves when the ‘reformers’ become part of the system. This is especially true of elites whose entire career, whose entire livelihood, depends on the ‘reform’ industry. Insofar as they become calcified bureaucrats, their interests come into direct contradiction to the masses of the working class.
sinclair perpetuation law and altman eat fear law et al
As part of a revolutionary approach, we have to ask: Is fighting for this or that reform actually on the path to the working class taking control of society? Or is it just a means for the capitalist state to manage the social totality, to make sure that it’s viable as a cohesive whole? This is the issue Cafiero saw in engaging with the law.
reform ness as cancerous distraction
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We do not need to follow his absolute political indifferentism. *Instead, we can try to straddle between the two (indifferentism or reformism) the way that Marx did on the issue of the workday. The question is the concrete situation itself, not just a list of policies on a balance sheet. **We should not just focus on the content of the reform, but how we are getting there. Is it by voting, or by seizing it from the state? This is an issue of paternalism versus class strength.
*oh my.. cancerous distraction
**oh my oh my oh my.. need to try a legit diff way.. ie: a nother way
Marx focused on the everyday lives and the everyday philosophies of workers as a source of transcendence, but not as sufficient in themselves. They are first negations of the existing order which must go further. Workers are the negativity of capitalist society, but they are still within capital. *Freedom is always defined within a defined situation, but it is also the power for us to remake that situation by unraveling it.
*again.. not legit freedom.. oi.. hari rat park law et al.. now we have a means for that global detox leap
Marx’s dialectic of capital thus aimed to be within and against capital, as well as outside and beyond it. This latter concern is where he overlaps with anarchist and decolonial critiques. *His specificity, however, holds bountiful lessons for us to learn from. There is no deeper, no transcendent foundation which we can rely on in revolting against capital. **Revolution must come out of the immanence of our situation itself. ***Revolution must be revolution of the everyday to transform the everyday.
**perhaps? until now.. but that has always been a wack a mole of same song
***rev of everyday life we need:
imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness as nonjudgmental expo labeling)
________
_______
________
________
_________
_________
_________
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be you. 