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Taking Control Conference 12.03.2011

SOAS, University of London

A Dual-power situation? Communization and the Material ity of Anti -power

Christian Garland

Our action is never an attempt to organise others it is always an attempt to [] express [our]own subversive response to the world. Gilles Dauve The Eclipse and Re-emergence of the

Communist Movementi

Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which

reality will have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the

present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in

existence. Marx and Engels, The German Ideologyii

Communization and the Materiality of Anti-power

Communization is the realmovement spoken of by Marx, the materiality of anti-power:

can be seen as the attempt to relate to others differently, a way-of-doing-things differently ineveryday life as much as in (anti) political practice.

What is meant by a materiality of anti-power? Materiality is the manifestation and

appearance of a radically and qualitatively different form of life, in which it is possible to

discern new ways of relating to each other, and connecting this to a broader understanding of

what it means to be winning as we become a defining force. (We are Winning as graffiti

in Seattle in November 1999, put it).

Anti-power, power-to- as John Holloway terms it - or put way another way autonomyis the

substance of the realmovement (Marx) towards communism; a way of living, of doing, andindeed choosing: which as far as possible does not reproduce the social relations of capital in

everyday social relations and in direct and immediate material struggles; thus, it is possible to

see communization as the re-appropriation of doing.

Gilles Dauve is helpful here when he notes, It is important to understand the historical

movement and act accordingly, but also to be something different from the attitudes and

values of the society the revolutionary seeks to destroy. Dauve, ibid.

A power-to: autonomy is very different and indeed the diametric opposite to any power-

over, that is, top-down hierarchical power. By contrast, hierarchical power and instrumentalreason determine the day to day social reality of life as it is not lived under capitalism.

Indeed, an autonomous practice - the very keynote of taking control and communization, is

the inveterate antagonism toward the relations of capital - objectification, thingification of

human beings, and alienation of human doing, no less than the refusal of capitals

imperatives that we can see in its material and immediate manifestations as contestation of

these instrumental, apparently inevitable imperatives.

Visible manifestations of communization, the real movement of re-appropriation


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This different way-of-doing can be seen as the refusal of hierarchical and bureaucratic

systems and structures, as much as the conscious effort toward their elimination.

In this sense, the materialityof doing, is observable in struggles against the imperatives of

capital: the class strugglewhich manifests in multiple instances as opposition and resistancetoward the imposition of the law of value, and indeed the capital-labour relation, whether this

be directly or indirectly mediated through political and institutional structures, e.g. cuts to

university funding, and increased tuition fees.

A different way-of-doing can be seen as offensive action against the logic of capital as it

manifests in any number of immediate and practical material examples: resistance to austerity

measures, cuts, and redundancies being just one of them.

But it is important to understand that there is no pure standpoint: to be sure, such

immediate and practical manifestations of the struggle against capital are not necessarily

revolutionary or even radical, but they become so - potentially at least - by their very fact ofcontestation; contestation of the imperatives of capitalism, e.g. the inevitability of cuts, or

redundancies - some examples might include strike action or occupations.

A Dual-Power situationis takingcontrol

A dual-power situation is observable when the relations of capital and indeed hierarchical

power are undermined, rendered harmless and dissolved - potentially at least - through their

subversion and countering by the spread of communization and what might be called the

materiality of anti-power. To quote Marx again, material force must meet material force.

When this anti-power exists against hierarchical power and instrumental reason, and when

it becomes the determining force in struggles and social relations, we can speak of taking

control.

In relation to communization, there is Marxs observation that communism is not merely a

programme waiting to be put into practice, but is present as a tension and force forever

threatening capital with its own historical becoming: the communist tension is the

contestation of the logic of capital.

Anti-power can be defined not as passive retreat or withdrawal in the hope that the state and

institutions of power will weaken and rather more hopefully wither away as a result, but canbe said to constitute a forceful and dynamic counter-power or anti-poweraimed atsubverting and undermining the power of capital and the state in every form. Defining

characteristics toward taking control could be said to be:

- Self-determinationas a mode of being, a mode of doing;- What might be called an autonomous practice: collective action organised and

coordinatedfrom below.

- This autonomous practice is by its very nature spontaneous, decentralised, anddiffuse. Thus, collective action can be said to be an anti-political, self-valorising


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agency for achieving social change, and winning small victories in the immediate

here and now.

- Recognition of others, as much in everyday social relations as in struggles.When such an anti-power becomes widespread and operates against and in spite of theimperatives of capitalism - which includes of course the imperative of each-against-all and

treating others as a means-to-an-end - there can be seen the first manifestations of an

alternative, different way-of-doing, and qualitatively different form of life; communization

the materiality of anti-power.

iThe Eclipse and Re-emergence of the Communist Movement Preface to the Japanese Edition of No. 1 and No.

2 of Le Mouvement Communistehttp://libcom.org/library/preface-japanese-edition-no1-no-2-le-mouvement-

communiste

iiThe German Ideology (1845) Part I: Feuerbach. Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlook A. Idealismand Materialismhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm
http://libcom.org/library/preface-japanese-edition-no1-no-2-le-mouvement-communistehttp://libcom.org/library/preface-japanese-edition-no1-no-2-le-mouvement-communistehttp://libcom.org/library/preface-japanese-edition-no1-no-2-le-mouvement-communistehttp://libcom.org/library/preface-japanese-edition-no1-no-2-le-mouvement-communistehttp://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htmhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htmhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htmhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htmhttp://libcom.org/library/preface-japanese-edition-no1-no-2-le-mouvement-communistehttp://libcom.org/library/preface-japanese-edition-no1-no-2-le-mouvement-communiste

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