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1. The authors here thank not only fellow members
of Midnight Notes but also other readers of an earlir draft who sent comments
and used the draft to spur further discussion in their organizations and
on several computer network discussion groups. We include, in the text and
in endnotes, excerpts from some of the critiques of the draft in part because
we see this piece as a contribution to a continuing dialogue. Many comments
and ideas could not be addressed in this text but must await future efforts.
Finally, as we complete this article, we are nearing a Second Encuentro,
and early statements designed to shape the discussions are becoming available.
These suggest that major issues raised in this piece are already on the
agenda for wide discussion: our hope is that this piece will help provide
context for and frame the next cycle of thinking and acting.
I. Introduction
2. We think the
best history of Mexican class struggles in English is Cockcroft (1990);
Mexican Labor News and Analysis also has available an annotated bibliography
of works in English and Spanish.
3. Mexican Labor News and Analysis, published twice monthly,
provides in most issues "Social Statistics," derived from many
Mexican sources.
4. Terminology presents a problem: "primitive," "primary"
or "original communism," or "communalism," or "tribalism"
-- are any appropriate or adequate? We are not sure. The EZLN recognizes
the power in the history of struggles of the indigenous people and the continuance
of pre-capitalist forms of society and production; but also that these forms
and histories are now bound up with capitalist exploitation and under/development.
For now, we use "original communism." We ourselves are unsure
of the nature of this "original communism." We discuss this issue
further in section III.
II. Strategies and Deals
5. Already before
World War I, the IWW argued for the possibility of the four-hour work day,
a point noted approvingly by Lenin. See also, P. M. (1985).
6. In response to a draft of this paper, Harald Beyer-Arnesen commented,
"Working class strategies are in most times not and don't claim
to be revolutionary, they are strategies to get the most out of specific
situations." Steve Wright pointed out that these strategies also aimed
to extend the power of some sectors of the working class without questioning,
or having an inadequate conception of, capital itself. Beyer-Arnesen also
argues, "Leninism in power and Leninism in opposition must mean two
completely different situations. When the alleged working class strategy
becomes identical to the strategy of the new party-bourgeoisie, the workers
own strategy must undergo a fundamental change." Wright similarly asks,
"arent's deals different from strategies?" Beyer-Arnesen also
notes the absence from this discussion of many working class struggles under
different constructs, most from before World War II, including the IWW and
council communism, anarchism and syndicalism, "which represented real
alternative strategies at a point in history, and strategies which were
worker controlled." We agree with these points and think they do not
contradict the basic aim of our argument.
7. Hugo Aboites, in a critique of an earlier draft of this article,
commented:
"The hegemony of the working class on a national or planetary basis is something that basically involves wider agreements within the working class - from the local/regional/national/international levels - much the same way in which the capitalist classes rule by a series of agreements - some wider, some relevant to the local level - which have been very successful historically... Obviously working class hegemony points in a quite different direction [than that of capital] .... but the basis is also the creation of these agreements... Agreements that are also historical, that is that move within the present specific conditions (which can be sexist, nationalistic, hierarchical..) as it is recognized in the text, in the part related to the Zapatistas' itinerary [see Parts II and IV]. That is, agreements that involve wide differences and also different directions of development .... and that point in a direction different from uniformity - nor even uniformity in defining obstacles in the same way. Nation is not an obstacle per se .... but a condition that has to be taken into account for the reaching of those agreements..."
Two points: First, the implication here is that
of nation as separate from state, but perhaps an historically, culturally
defined body of people: thus, for example, the indigenous of Mexico can
insist on self-rule (outside the Mexican state) while remaining part of
Mexico. Second, this comment provides one way of thinking about the development
of networks, addressed in Part IV, below.
III. Reflections...
8. Unfortunately, as of May 1997, these
documents are not available in English; we are relying on what we participated
in and heard from other participants; we do hope they will become available.
9. The concept of the popular front was developed by the Comintern
in the mid-1930s. The key initial text, outlining what was a radical shift
in Comintern analysis and strategy, is Dimitroff (1935, 1974); see also
Claudin (1975).
10. Several comments on this draft, notably those of Anne Gray, have
argued that this issue should not be viewed as closed: capital needs stability
at least some of the time, and political-economic space may emerge to structure
a neo-Keynesianism. We have at times thought this might be the case (c.f.,
Neill, 1983, but not in the 1992 partial reprint). However, we find neither
a narrowly economic imperative (e.g., the "need" to have a working
class that can consume mass produced goods) nor the political possibility
(based on what capital learned from the crisis of the 1960s) to conclude
that capital will or can, for at least a long time to come, try to recreate
a variant of social democracy. Some European workers may be able to hang
on to this deal for a time by threatening unacceptable costs, a ruin of
both classes, to capital as now structured in Europe, and thereby, as Gray
suggests, create "a new aristocracy of labour." And we should
heed her understanding that "the possibility/impossibility of a new
'deal' (or a new mode of production) depends on the breadth/narrowness of
the attack against the old order." Or as Les Levidow put it, "We
cannot know in advance what new deals may be possible." We concur the
issue cannot be viewed as completely closed, but we do need to understand
the powerful constraints facing capital (which lead us to conclude no substantial,
on a planetary level, neo-Keynesianism) and the implications for the working
class.
There are political implications for these views: the more capital is itself
trapped in neoliberalism the more the attack on neoliberalism is an attack
on capital in toto; but if capital has the space to negotiate alternatives,
then the attacks on neoliberalism may be more readily confined to yet another
reformism. Two political approaches still current in the world which represent
dangers need comment here. One is a reformist conception aiming towards
some new form, perhaps "green" and ostensibly more local, of social
democracy, that is an anti-neoliberalism that fails to confront capital.
(For more on this, see "Many Names," this volume.) The other is
a reassertion, in the face of neoliberalism and neo-social democracy, of
Leninism. (For an example of both aspects in South Africa today, see Debate,
which brings disparate left strands together in talking about the capitulation
to neoliberalism of the ruling ANC). These approaches are doomed to fail
(at least in terms of overcoming capital), which is actually part of why
we think struggling against neoliberalism is a plausible strategy -- but
these approaches can undermine and confuse struggles against capital.
11. Katerina (1995, p. 19) counterposes to the EZLN revolutionary
law the proclamation of Ricardo Flores Magon: "...the land, the houses,
the machinery of production and the means of transportation shall be for
the common use... Everything produced shall be sent to the community's general
store, from which all will have the right to take what their necessities
require, on the exhibition proof that they are working at such and such
an industry.... work the land and the other industries in common. If the
land is divided up and each family takes a piece there will be the grave
danger of falling anew into the capitalist system." This seems fine
so far as it goes, but it does not address how working in common
and the general store will actually operate, or how to get there from here
in some particular context. Again, this text focuses one-sidedly on differences
outside of context -- which is not also to say that their cautions are worth
keeping in mind.
12. These comments are based on the initial laws, which have since
been revised, but we do not have a copy of the newer laws. It has been suggested
that the new women's laws signal a retreat.
IV. Localism...
13. However,
we are told the use of the term in Australia apparently preceded the popularization
of computer networking, and it may have been a term spread by environmentalists.
V. Class Composition
14. A point emphasized
by Myk in a critique of an earlier draft of this paper.
15. On the cover to Computer State Notes (Midnight Notes,
V. 2, No. 1, 1982) we portrayed such a grid over a nebula.
16. Stratman not only does not define himself as a Marxist, he accepts
some orthodox Leninist conceptions of Marxism as the correct interpretation
of Marx and rejects them for reducing humans to their economic self-interest,
the same as does capitalism, and for conceptualizing the working class as
passive rather than active. We believe he has a point in relation to the
history of Marxist thought and much of its practice; but we find much more
in Marx and most certainly in the struggles the class has often waged under
the banner of Marxism. While there is not space here for a detailed discussion
of this useful book, we also find within it a simplification of the complexity
of the class and a consequent failure to address the ways in which capital
has distorts the humanity of the working class and the class then at times
embodies and acts these distortions out -- that is, the racism, sexism/patriarchism,
and acceptance of hierarchy that we argue are fundamental problems the class
must confront in order to successfully confront capitalism. Indeed, in some
of the work of the group to which Stratman belongs, New Democracy, one can
find a refusal to address patriarchy and women's struggles, a treatment
of struggles against hierarchy within the class as "divisive,"
and thus at least an implicit defense of the relative power of some sectors
of the class over others. In this, they carry on a discredited and destructive
Leninism common in the US in the 1970s, which coexists with a recognition
of the power of the working class against capital.