[DEBATE] : Re: Peter and politics

[Andrej Grubacic]

Masters tools...That is precisely where we disagree. I think that politics
is an affair of the masterless.  But. First part of my reply is about our
subject: politics. The second one, and you should feel free to ignore it, is
a little something on anarchist tradition. It is a part of that essay I
mentioned to you in 'Florance' restaurant, that I am co-writing with my
alter-ego, D. Graeber. Politics figures prominently in the anarchist
tradition. One militant who immediately comes to mind is the late Murray
Bookchin (see, among other works, Urbanization without Cities) who spent his
life defending the concept from the anarchist perspective. The other is, of
course, C. Castoriadis.

Politics and democracy. The idea of inseparability of politics and democracy
can be found in most unexpected places. Take, for instances, those two
ancient totalitarians, Plato (Protagoras) or Polybius ( Histories); or Locke
( Two Treatises of Government; esp. p 2.107, 110,111).

The underlining idea of cyclical Polybius and nativist Locke is that,
historically, it falls to democracy to have to reinvent the political, not
periodically but continually. Polybius writes that democracy lapses "in the
course of time". Democracy is, I would argue, the political moment, when
political is remembered and recreated. Democracy, of course, is (even) more
then self-government: it is a mode of being, created through the collective
experience of the education (paideia), and it is a reccurent posibility, a
project, and a witness that the political mode of existence is such that it
can be, and is, periodaically lost. Politics of demos, demotic politics. The
meaning of the "people" overlaps with the meaning of "politics". It is
impossible to discuss the latter without including the former. Listen to
Herodotus ("Persian debate" from Histories): "in a democracy polis and
people are the same". What we need to do today, it seems to me, is to expand
and radicalize this exciting moment of democracy that exist everywhere
(because we are everywhere), and to renew the political by contesting the
forms of power of the modern state- we would need to disassociate political
experience from the statist experience, and to unthink and to undo that
modern misrepresentation of democracy, the nation-state organization.


On the anarchist tradition:

As David Wieck put it back in 1971 (long before anyone had thought of the
term 'postmodernism'):

         Anarchism has always been anti-ideological: anarchists have
   always insisted on the priority of life and action to theory and system.
   Subjection to a theory implies in practice subjection to an authority (a
   party) which interprets the theory authoritatively, and this subjection
   would fatally undermine the intention of creating a society without central
   political authority. Thus no anarchist writings are authoritative or
   definitive in the sense that Marx's writings have been regarded by his
   followers (1971: ix)

Anarchism has not been born with a long beard. Just like democracy it has
not been invented. It was, and still is, made in practice. It is not a
simple task to think about a political movement in which the practice comes
first and theory is essentially, secondary. What usually happens is that
historians tended to been viewing the entire anarchist project, essentially,
through the eyes of its rivals. This is why we think it's deceptive to write
the history of anarchism in the same way one would write the history of an
intellectual tradition like Marxism. If one looks at what those supposed
founding figures actually said, one finds most of them did not really see
themselves as creating some great new theory. They were more likely to see
themselves as giving a name and voice to a certain kind of insurgent common
sense, one they assumed to be as old as history. They tended to draw
inspiration from existing modes of practice, notably on the part of
peasants, skilled artisans, or even, to some degree, outlaws, hobos and
vagabonds and others who lived by their wits—in other words, those who were
to some degree in control of their own lives and conditions of work, who
might be considered, at least to some degree, autonomous elements. One might
say, in Marxist terms, that they were people with some experience of
non-alienated production. Such people had experience of life outside of
state or capitalist bureaucracies, salaries and wage labor, they were aware
such relations were not inevitable; quite often, they viewed them as
intrinsically immoral. These were also the sort of people who were most
drawn to anarchism once it began to be put forth as an explicit political
philosophy, and formed its mass base—along with elements of the rural or
industrial proletariat. Even more, that anarchism, essentially, tends to
involve a different relation of theory and practice than what came to be
called 'Marxism'. One is—for all the materialist pretensions—profoundly
idealist. The history of Marxism is a presented to us as a history a great
thinkers—there are Leninists, Maoists, Trotskyites, Gramscians,
Althusserians—even brutal dictators like Stalin or Enver Hoxha had to
pretend to be great philosophers, because the idea was always that one
starts with one man's profound theoretical insight and the political
tendency follows from that. Anarchist tendencies, in contrast, never trace
back to a single theorists' insights—we don't have Proudhonians and
Kropotkinites—but Associationalists, Individualists, Syndicalists, and
Platformists. In just about every case, divisions are based on a difference
of organizational philosophy and revolutionary practice.  One way of getting
out of this confusion is to see anarchism as a vision, as an attitude, or as
a set of practices. Hence anarchism is in no sense a doctrine. It's a
movement, a relationship, a process of purification, inspiration, and
experiment. This is its very substance. All that really changed in the
19thcentury is that some people began to give this process a name.

Looking at it this way does make it much easier to understand some things
that would otherwise be extremely puzzling. If anarchism is not an attempt
to put a certain sort of theoretical vision into practice, but is instead a
constant mutual exchange between inspirational visions, anti-authoritarian
attitudes, and egalitarian practices, then the most important contribution
of anarchist history might be to become something of a model, an incipient
model, of how non-vanguardist revolutionary intellectual practice might
work. Anarchist history, very much like anarchist ethnography, is about
teasing out the hidden practical logics that underly certain types of social
action; the way people's habits and actions makes sense in ways that they
are not themselves completely aware of. One obvious role for an anarchist
historian is precisely that: the first thing we need to do is to look at
those who were creating viable historical alternatives, and try to figure
out what might be the larger implications of what they were doing.

But we are jumping ahead of ourselves. Let us come back to the other reason
why anarchism never entered the family of respectable ideologies.

Anarchists were always deeply uncomfortable with the euro-centric premise of
Marxist and Liberal, not to mention Conservative ideology. As Benedict
Anderson writes, while Enrico Malatesta was organizing in Buenos Aires, Karl
Marx was writing in British Library. Anarchist movement of the 19th century
"early globalization" period, was open to what, in those days, Liberals and
Marxists were not. Hostile to imperialism, it had no theoretical prejudice
against "ahistorical nations", argued passionately against the concept of
"small nations", and was sympathethic to the struggle of anti-colonial
nationalisms. Anarchist movement lived off the trans-oceanic migrations of
the era and formed the center of this vast rizhomal network that spread from
Russia to Cuba. It was a gravitation force between militant anti-colonial
struggles on opposite sides of the planet. "Mayday, writes Anderson,
"celebrates the memory of immigrant anarchists, not Marxists-executed in the
United States in 1886."
 The third reason, about which we have written at length elsewhere, was
anarchist absence from the institutions of knowledge production. It's not
just that anarchism does not lend itself to high theory. It's that it is
primarily an ethics of practice; and it insists, before anything else, that
one's means most be consonant with one's ends; one cannot create freedom
through authoritarian means; that as much as possible, one must embody the
society one wishes to create. This does not square very well with operating
within Universities that still have an essentially Medieval social
structure, presenting papers at conferences in expensive hotels, and doing
intellectual battle in language no one who hasn't spent at least two or
three years in grad school would ever hope to be able to understand. At the
very least, then, it would tend to get one in trouble. As it, actually, and
not incidentally, happened to both of the authors of this essay.


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Peter Waterman" <p.waterman at inter.nl.net>
To: "debate: SA discussion list " < debate at lists.kabissa.org>
Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2006 10:50:16 +0200
Subject: [DEBATE] : Re: Peter and politics
Andrej:

I appreciate both the content and the form of your response.

It is not, however, a project but a question, a puzzle or, at its strongest,
a challenge.

'Politics', does not belong, in my mind, to the same set as 'democracy',
'solidarity' and 'emancipation'.

It denotes, surely, a social practice, a particular arena or expression of
power, a social theory and an academic discipline.

I would have to look again, but when I last looked the dictionaries and
encyclopaedias suggested its origin with classical Greece and the Greek
philosophers - who certainly considered it the central social practice.
These and following leaders have not been averse to politics, however
allergic to such values as democracy, emancipation or solidarity.

The sources I consulted (glanced at really) suggested either technical,
pejorative or banal definitions of the concept. And here is an interesting
fact: the excellent Dictionary of Marxist Thought (Bottomore et al 1983) has

no entry under 'politics'. Woops?!

As to why we have to invent new semantics? Well, emancipatory theorist,
Boaventura de Sousa Santos says, somewhere that every significant new social
movement requires its own theory...or was that ontology (theory of being)?
We - you and me and increasing numbers of others - are engaged with such a
new movement, in both cognitive and 'political' practice. He does not
himself question the concept, but I am doing so.

I cannot agree that the elites are agoraphobic (agora meaning both meeting
and market place). The favour certain ones over others for purposes of
control. Under capitalism, of course, they favour that kind of agora that
combines in the most favourable mix, those public spaces most subordinate to

the market - therefore TV rather than town meetings.

As someone of the anarchist tradition, I would have thought that the
quotation from Valery would have appealed to you. It is a profoundly
anarchistic idea: politics as a way of preventing people from exercising
control over matters of popular concern.

I am, however, sympathetic to the notion of specifying types or aspects of
power-expression and exercise in an effort to distinguish 'ours' from
'theirs'. But what I want to avoid, at all costs, is that traditional
pattern by which general emancipatory movements, with a broad range of
practices (cultural/communicational, productive-consumptive, domestic,
sexual, ecological or whatever) become reduced to or dominated by a power
practice first promoted as 'revolutionary', 'democratic' or (most lately in
our movement) 'new', but which later reproduces practices that the Greek
aristocratic philosophers would recognise.

Do not fear, my main project continues to be the reinvention of the labour
movement in the light of globalisation and the global justice and solidarity
movement. I can work with 'politics'. It is just that I do not think we can
deconstruct the master's house whilst using the master's tools.

Best,

Peter W


On 9/28/06, debate-request at lists.kabissa.org <debate-request at lists.kabissa.org>
wrote:
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> Today's Topics:
>
>    1.  SA Statement @ WIPO General Assembly (Riaz K Tayob)
>    2.  Re: Peter and politics (Andrej  Grubacic)
>    3.  Venezuela's Hugo Chavez slams Bush - Green Left Weekly   #685,
>       September 27, 2006 (glparramatta)
>    4.  Re: Peter and politics (Peter Waterman)
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Riaz K Tayob <riazt at iafrica.com>
> To: Debate List < debate at lists.kabissa.org>, GroupSEATINI <
> seatini at yahoogroups.com>
> Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2006 19:30:07 +0200
> Subject: [DEBATE] : SA Statement @ WIPO General Assembly
>
> http://fromgeneva.blogspot.com/2006/09/south-african-statement-at-wipo.html
>
> ---------------
>
>
>        South African statement at WIPO General Assemblies
>
> Highlights of the general statement by the Republic of South Africa at
> the WIPO General Assemblies
>
> This statement was delivered by Glaudine Mtshali, Ambassador, Permanent
> Representative, Permanent Mission.
>
> Geneva, 25 September to 3 October 2006
>
>
>
>      "This 42nd General Assemblies come at a time when Secretary-General
>      Kofi Annan on 19 September 2006 said that "... the world is divided
>      by an unjust economy, world disorder and widespread contempt for
>      human rights and the rule of law...". The stalled Doha Development
>      Round confirms Secretary-General [Annan's] observation as it bears
>      witness to the pernicious hold that the powerful economies have on
>      global trade and rules. It also reinforces the suspicion with which
>      developing countries view global trade initiatives which do not
>      benefit poor countries despite the politically correct titles
>      attached thereto.
>
>      In the same vein, WIPO is challenged with the task of ensuring that
>      the development agenda is taken seriously, is member-driven, and
>      becomes deeply entrenched in all WIPO's rules, treaties, polices and
>      programs...
>
>      It is our responsibility as Member States of WIPO to ensure that
>      development is central to WIPO's activities, and that intellectual
>      property rules and norms are supportive to the attainment of the
>      Millennium Development Goals...
>
>      With regard to the Development Agenda proposal, South Africa calls
>      for the continuation of the Development Agenda process in2007, with
>      the view to agree on a set of recommendations, which would reflect
>      both substantive and technical assistance issues. South Africa will
>      not support recommendations that are not balanced. South Africa is
>      firmly of the view that the development agenda is about more than
>      just technical assistance. Norm-setting is at the core thereof.
>
>      South Africa reiterates that the Development Agenda must be
>      incorporated in all areas of WIPO's activities, committees and
>      structures. In this regard we reject a "one size fits all" approach
>      and favour different standards of protection depending on the stage
>      of development.
>
>      South Africa therefore welcomes and urges the General Assembly to
>      extend and renew the mandate of the PCDA to continue its work on the
>      development agenda...
>
>      The 15th Session of the Standing Committee on Copyrights and Related
>      Rights agreed on a recommendation to convene a Diplomatic Conference
>      on SCCR's Draft Basic Proposals. The exclusion of simulcasting and
>      web casting from the draft basic proposal as was agreed in the 14th
>      Session of the SCCR, should be maintained as a condition for
>      proceeding to a Diplomatic Conference. We believe that the holding
>      of a diplomatic conference in the absence of consensus on key
>      substantive issues is clearly contentious and premature".
>
>
>
>
> --__--__--
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: "Andrej Grubacic" <balkanozapatista at gmail.com>
> To: debate at lists.kabissa.org
> Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2006 17:10:05 -0400
> Subject: [DEBATE] : Re: Peter and politics
> Dear Peter,
>
> I still do not get the importance you attach to this project of
> un-politicization. If we follow the same logic we should reject democracy,
>
> emancipation, solidarity or other notions that are being used, misused and
> abused by the elite. I think that we should, rather, reclaim these
> notions.
> Politics is an autonomous activity of the people in a self-governed
> polity.
> Politics belongs to the people. Leaders are allergic to politics,as much
> as
> they are to democracy. Jeniffer Roberts wrote this wonderful book, Athens
> on
> Trial, about the anti democratic tradition in the "west" that was
> democratophobic and apolitical at least until Jefferson.  Elites are
> agoraphobic. Why would we indulge their political agoraphobia? Why do we
> have to invent new semantics? I think it would be a strategic mistake. Why
>
> not use something like "statecraft" to denote  the politics from above, or
> rather distortions of politics (anti-politics) that you rightly abhorre,
> and
> reclaim the politics that always was the project of peoples'
> self-organization?
>
> Love,
>
>    Andrej
>
>
>
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > From: "Peter Waterman" <p.waterman at inter.nl.net >
> > To: "debate: SA discussion list " <debate at lists.kabissa.org>
> > Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2006 13:06:42 +0200
> > Subject: [DEBATE] : Is the Political the Person(ality)?
> > Bearing in mind the domination of both ANC and British Labour Party
> > politics
> > by personalities, the question arises in my mind of the extent to which
> > the
> > former is being reduced to the latter...worldwide.
> >
> > I recall the slogan, or button, from the UK two decades ago: 'Take the
> > Politics out of Politics: Vote Liberal Democrat'. It occurs to me,
> > however,
> > that the disempowerment of people and peoples here suggested is not
> simply
> > a
> > recent trend but in the nature of 'politics' as such.
> >
> > I won't repeat the quotation from Paul Valery....
> >
> > Oh, OK then, if you twist my arm:
> >
> > 'Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs
> that
> > properly concern them'.
> >
> > Rather than seeking for 'New Politics', which shortly after become Old
> > Politicking, I think those concerned with global social emancipation
> > should
> > rather talk of 'Power(s)', Disempowerment(s) and Empowerment(s).
> >
> > Can someone theorise this for me please? They would need to start - as I
> > have surely said before - with a Critique of Politics, in the spirit of
> > Marx's Critique of Political Economy, i.e. a critique of both a social
> > practice and a social theory. Unfortunately, I think, Marx promoted
> > politics
> > (Working-Class, Revolutionary, Internationalist) as the highest or most
> > crucial social practice, and as the key to global social emancipation.
> >
> > My inclination is to see global social emancipation as implying at least
> a
> > relativisation of politics (relative, that is to productive,
> > communicative/cultural, playful, sexual, familial practices).
> > Unfortunately,
> > it seems to have been the hegemons who have invented or discovered
> 'media
> > politics' and 'cultural wars'. Yet the terrains of community, culture,
> > ideas
> > and ethics are surely those on which emancipatory forces have tended to
> > first appear and to have been effective - only to later subordinate
> these
> > to
> > politics.
> >
> > Ideas, anyone?
> >
> > Peter W
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------
>
> > I am using the free version of SPAMfighter for private users.
> > It has removed 155 spam emails to date.
> > Paying users do not have this message in their emails.
> > Try SPAMfighter for free now!
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> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > DEBATE at lists.kabissa.org
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> >
> >
> >
>
>
> --
>
> Ciao,
>       Andrej
>
> -----
> Then come the false saviors
> With false heavens and false deities
> With their commissars' sun
> That never shines for us.
> Every master wants power
> To enjoy glory and riches
> For the people they forge new chains
> And to boot with the hoax of relieving their pains.
>
> But we're free anarchists,
> We want no more masters
> To forge our slavery anew.
> It is for freedom we struggle.
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: glparramatta <glparramatta at greenleft.org.au >
> To: AA: debate <debate at lists.kabissa.org>, "AA: Marxism at lists.panix.com" <marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu>,
> "greenl >> greenl >> AAA: GreenLeft_discussion at yahoogroups.com" <GreenLeft_discussion at yahoogroups.com
> >
> Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2006 11:43:03 +1000
> Subject: [DEBATE] : Venezuela's Hugo Chavez slams Bush - Green Left Weekly
> #685, September 27, 2006
> Green Left Weekly < http://www.greenleft.org.au/index.htm>
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> Notice: Green Left Weekly is taking a one-week break. The next issue
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> Green Left Weekly #685, September 27, 2006
>
> Venezuela's Hugo Chavez slams Bush
> <http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p12.htm >
>
> Venezuela's socialist President Hugo Chavez once again sent shock waves
> through the US elite, and the corporate media, by using his speech
> before the United Nations General Assembly on September 20 not for
> diplomatic niceties but to expose the reality of US imperialism's
> domination of the world and to call for a global struggle to end it.
> [Full article] < http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p12.htm>
>
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> * VENEZUELA: Chavez speaks on the revolution's challenges
> <http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p13.htm >
> * Venezuela's William Izarra: 'The biggest challenge is the
> consciousness of the people'
> <http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p14.htm >
> * VENEZUELA: Uniting the revolutionary forces
> <http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p14b.htm>
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> < http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p16b.htm>
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> <http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p16c.htm >
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> * Evo Morales: 'A millennium of people and not of empire'
> <http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p17b.htm>
> * MEXICO: National Democratic Convention aims to move struggle
> forward < http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p12d.htm>
> * MEXICO: Convention elects AMLO as legitimate president
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> < http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p6.htm>
> # Campaigning for queer refugees
> <http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p7.htm>
> # US lawmakers split over brutal new detention law
> <http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p8b.htm>
>
> Cultural Dissent
>
> # "We'll make a pastrami sandwich of them"
> <http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p25.htm>
> # Art for quake victims
> < http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p25b.htm>
> # Reclaiming the public
> <http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p25c.htm>
> # Taking on the uranium maniacs
> <http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p26.htm>
> # Keep It Alive After Katrina
> < http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p26b.htm>
>
> Australian News
>
> # 'Guerilla' campaign takes ABC off the air
> <http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p2b.htm >
> # Native title win sparks right-wing hysteria
> <http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p3.htm>
> # Victory for TCC workers
> < http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p3b.htm>
> # AMWU and CFMEU sign pact
> < http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p5.htm>
> # Gunns admits errors in dioxin emissions
> <http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p4.htm >
> # Labor students' dominance challenged
> <http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p9.htm>
> # G20 protests planned
> < http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p5b.htm>
> # Beyond Nuclear symposium held
> <http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p5c.htm >
> # Countering 'law and order populism'
> <http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p4b.htm>
> # Renewable energy forum
> < http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p4c.htm>
> # Toyota workers strike for delegate's job
> <http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p4d.htm >
> # Protest against James Hardie
> <http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p5e.htm>
> # UWS fine arts next on Howard's chopping block?
> <http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p9b.htm>
> # RMIT 'kiss-off' against homophobia
> < http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p9c.htm>
> # Sydney rally marks UN ceasefire day
> <http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p9d.htm >
> # Cleaners continue wage campaign
> <http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p4e.htm>
> # Patrol workers strike
> < http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p4f.htm>
> # Noise for Darfur <http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p4g.htm>
> # Pine Gap trial < http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p4h.htm>
> # Nuclear power no solution
> < http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/685/685p4i.htm>
>
> Activist Calendar
>
> # Check out the Activist Calendar here
> <http://www.greenleft.org.au/calendar.htm >.
>
> Click here for Green Left Weekly's copyleft details.
> <http://www.greenleft.org.au/copyleft.htm>
> About Green Left Weekly < http://www.greenleft.org.au/what.htm>
> Authorised by K. Miller, 23 Abercrombie St, Chippendale, NSW
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Back issues < http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/back2006.htm>
>
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>
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>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: "Peter Waterman" <p.waterman at inter.nl.net>
> To: "debate: SA discussion list " <debate at lists.kabissa.org >
> Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2006 10:50:16 +0200
> Subject: [DEBATE] : Re: Peter and politics
> Andrej:
>
> I appreciate both the content and the form of your response.
>
> It is not, however, a project but a question, a puzzle or, at its
> strongest,
> a challenge.
>
> 'Politics', does not belong, in my mind, to the same set as 'democracy',
> 'solidarity' and 'emancipation'.
>
> It denotes, surely, a social practice, a particular arena or expression of
> power, a social theory and an academic discipline.
>
> I would have to look again, but when I last looked the dictionaries and
> encyclopaedias suggested its origin with classical Greece and the Greek
> philosophers - who certainly considered it the central social practice.
> These and following leaders have not been averse to politics, however
> allergic to such values as democracy, emancipation or solidarity.
>
> The sources I consulted (glanced at really) suggested either technical,
> pejorative or banal definitions of the concept. And here is an interesting
> fact: the excellent Dictionary of Marxist Thought (Bottomore et al 1983)
> has
> no entry under 'politics'. Woops?!
>
> As to why we have to invent new semantics? Well, emancipatory theorist,
> Boaventura de Sousa Santos says, somewhere that every significant new
> social
> movement requires its own theory...or was that ontology (theory of being)?
> We - you and me and increasing numbers of others - are engaged with such a
>
> new movement, in both cognitive and 'political' practice. He does not
> himself question the concept, but I am doing so.
>
> I cannot agree that the elites are agoraphobic (agora meaning both meeting
> and market place). The favour certain ones over others for purposes of
> control. Under capitalism, of course, they favour that kind of agora that
> combines in the most favourable mix, those public spaces most subordinate
> to
> the market - therefore TV rather than town meetings.
>
> As someone of the anarchist tradition, I would have thought that the
> quotation from Valery would have appealed to you. It is a profoundly
> anarchistic idea: politics as a way of preventing people from exercising
> control over matters of popular concern.
>
> I am, however, sympathetic to the notion of specifying types or aspects of
> power-expression and exercise in an effort to distinguish 'ours' from
> 'theirs'. But what I want to avoid, at all costs, is that traditional
> pattern by which general emancipatory movements, with a broad range of
> practices (cultural/communicational, productive-consumptive, domestic,
> sexual, ecological or whatever) become reduced to or dominated by a power
> practice first promoted as 'revolutionary', 'democratic' or (most lately
> in
> our movement) 'new', but which later reproduces practices that the Greek
> aristocratic philosophers would recognise.
>
> Do not fear, my main project continues to be the reinvention of the labour
>
> movement in the light of globalisation and the global justice and
> solidarity
> movement. I can work with 'politics'. It is just that I do not think we
> can
> deconstruct the master's house whilst using the master's tools.
>
> Best,
>
> Peter W
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Andrej Grubacic" <balkanozapatista at gmail.com>
> To: < debate at lists.kabissa.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, September 27, 2006 11:10 PM
> Subject: [DEBATE] : Re: Peter and politics
>
>
> Dear Peter,
>
> I still do not get the importance you attach to this project of
> un-politicization. If we follow the same logic we should reject democracy,
> emancipation, solidarity or other notions that are being used, misused and
> abused by the elite. I think that we should, rather, reclaim these
> notions.
> Politics is an autonomous activity of the people in a self-governed
> polity.
> Politics belongs to the people. Leaders are allergic to politics,as much
> as
> they are to democracy. Jeniffer Roberts wrote this wonderful book, Athens
> on
> Trial, about the anti democratic tradition in the "west" that was
> democratophobic and apolitical at least until Jefferson.  Elites are
> agoraphobic. Why would we indulge their political agoraphobia? Why do we
> have to invent new semantics? I think it would be a strategic mistake. Why
> not use something like "statecraft" to denote  the politics from above, or
> rather distortions of politics (anti-politics) that you rightly abhorre,
> and
> reclaim the politics that always was the project of peoples'
> self-organization?
>
> Love,
>
>    Andrej
>
>
>
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > From: "Peter Waterman" < p.waterman at inter.nl.net>
> > To: "debate: SA discussion list " <debate at lists.kabissa.org>
> > Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2006 13:06:42 +0200
> > Subject: [DEBATE] : Is the Political the Person(ality)?
> > Bearing in mind the domination of both ANC and British Labour Party
> > politics
> > by personalities, the question arises in my mind of the extent to which
> > the
> > former is being reduced to the latter...worldwide.
> >
> > I recall the slogan, or button, from the UK two decades ago: 'Take the
> > Politics out of Politics: Vote Liberal Democrat'. It occurs to me,
> > however,
> > that the disempowerment of people and peoples here suggested is not
> simply
> > a
> > recent trend but in the nature of 'politics' as such.
> >
> > I won't repeat the quotation from Paul Valery....
> >
> > Oh, OK then, if you twist my arm:
> >
> > 'Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs
> that
> > properly concern them'.
> >
> > Rather than seeking for 'New Politics', which shortly after become Old
> > Politicking, I think those concerned with global social emancipation
> > should
> > rather talk of 'Power(s)', Disempowerment(s) and Empowerment(s).
> >
> > Can someone theorise this for me please? They would need to start - as I
>
> > have surely said before - with a Critique of Politics, in the spirit of
> > Marx's Critique of Political Economy, i.e. a critique of both a social
> > practice and a social theory. Unfortunately, I think, Marx promoted
> > politics
> > (Working-Class, Revolutionary, Internationalist) as the highest or most
> > crucial social practice, and as the key to global social emancipation.
> >
> > My inclination is to see global social emancipation as implying at least
> a
> > relativisation of politics (relative, that is to productive,
> > communicative/cultural, playful, sexual, familial practices).
> > Unfortunately,
> > it seems to have been the hegemons who have invented or discovered
> 'media
> > politics' and 'cultural wars'. Yet the terrains of community, culture,
> > ideas
> > and ethics are surely those on which emancipatory forces have tended to
> > first appear and to have been effective - only to later subordinate
> these
> > to
> > politics.
> >
> > Ideas, anyone?
> >
> > Peter W
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> --------------------
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> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > DEBATE mailing list
> > DEBATE at lists.kabissa.org
> > http://lists.kabissa.org/mailman/listinfo/debate
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> --
>
> Ciao,
>       Andrej
>
> -----
> Then come the false saviors
> With false heavens and false deities
> With their commissars' sun
> That never shines for us.
> Every master wants power
> To enjoy glory and riches
> For the people they forge new chains
> And to boot with the hoax of relieving their pains.
>
> But we're free anarchists,
> We want no more masters
> To forge our slavery anew.
> It is for freedom we struggle.
> _______________________________________________
> DEBATE mailing list
> DEBATE at lists.kabissa.org
> http://lists.kabissa.org/mailman/listinfo/debate
>
>
>
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>


-- 

Ciao,
      Andrej

-----
Then come the false saviors
With false heavens and false deities
With their commissars' sun
That never shines for us.
Every master wants power
To enjoy glory and riches
For the people they forge new chains
And to boot with the hoax of relieving their pains.

But we're free anarchists,
We want no more masters
To forge our slavery anew.
It is for freedom we struggle.