LENIN'S TOMB

Sunday, March 15, 2015

On the guilt of the abused. posted by Richard Seymour

“The sense of guilt is an expression of the conflict due to ambivalence of the eternal struggle between Eros and the instinct of destruction or death”. - Freud, Civilization and its Discontents.

“From an analytic point of view, the only thing of which one can be guilty is of having given ground relative to one's desire”. - Lacan, Seminars, Book VII.

[TW for child abuse].

The reader will be asked to indulge me a little, give me the benefit of the doubt, and take my word for it that even I wasn’t masturbating violently at the age of three.

I had been admitted to hospital, for at least the second time, in 1981. I was bruised and underfed, with lacerations to my penis that required five stitches. I had been in the care of my birth mother and her partner at the time. Family lore recounts that, in order to explain the lacerations, it was claimed that I had pulled the protuberance until it tore. The doctors did not accept this explanation: the lacerations, they said, were such that could only have been caused by a razor sharp implement.

As a result, I was taken into the care of Lancaster County Council, before being transferred to the care of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. (Yes, the Right Honourable Humphrey Atkins had the immense privilege.) I was finally transferred to the care of my father and stepmother in 1984, who parented under the hapless eye of Social Services. And, at their request, Social Services temporarily withdrew their supervision in 1987, probably some time after I had been taken to ‘meet’ my birth mother in a forgettable encounter at a local social services field office.

How much can I trust in the integrity of this narrative? The fragments which I consider ‘memories’ from this period are phantasmagorical. For example, I seem to have a trace ‘memory’ of being held under water in the bath tub, but whether this recollection materialised after hearing of an actual event, or perhaps after a dream, I do not know. Nor, in this memory, is there any sense of distress or danger. How much of my memory necessarily segues into fantasy? I have no memory of having my penis attacked, or of having been thrown down the stairs, and yet at various points I have been informed by trusted sources that these things happened.

Memory is treacherous and, I would say, self-serving - or, less tendentiously, autopoietic. Through it, we construct meanings about ourselves that tell us who we are, and why we do what we do. Meanings which are, as far as possible given the source material, satisfactory in relation to our ego-ideal, what we like to think about ourselves. And then the ambiguity and uncertainty that is constitutive of memory in the first instance is obscured. The relationship of ‘facts’ to truth is never so vexed as when one attempts a rigorous inventory of the infinity of traces which experience leaves on the psyche.

The remainder of what I ‘know’ consists of my memories of second or third hand symbolisations of the experience several years later. There is also a documentary trace, a bureaucratic imprint, evidence accumulated over the years by the social services in Northern Ireland - medical reports, field notes, interviews, day books. This seems to promise something more objective - but then, one might ask, what are documents but yet more second or third hand symbolisations? What do they offer except an incomplete portion of a fragmentary record of guilt and shame and rationalisation and mistranslation and mistranscription and inaccuracy and official ideology?

These sources do not necessarily corroborate one another. The documents do not in every instance affirm what I already ‘knew’. And there are significant gaps in the story told by family and official sources, as there always are. It is in these gaps that fantasy takes its perilous hold. For all I know, none of this could have happened.

It is important for the purposes of this narrative that no motive, much less explanation, for the abuse has ever been offered, as far as I know. A man unloads his misery onto an infant, and you want to know why. At the most abstract level, one could invoke the ‘cinderella effect’ of which evolutionary psychologists speak, wherein jealous step parents are purportedly more likely to abuse. But while the existence of such a statistical effect seems plausible, the explanations offered by this school do not.

Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that it is all fiction. Not because it is, but because I find it useful to start with this position and see what truths emerge. Regardless of what happened, the abuse acquired a symbolic efficacy. It became a founding truth of my life, for others and therefore also for me. Insofar as it exists today, it exists in language, in its symbolisation.

In analysis, over thirty years after the events recorded above, something stirred in my unconscious, like a rat in a cellar. A parapraxis led me to this: I was unconsciously guilty about the abuse. I reeled.

You may assume that I would have known perfectly well the truism that guilt is often associated with abuse. I did not, and we could allow for the possibility that this ‘not knowing’ was itself an artefact of repression. At any rate, the thought produced a surfeit of associations that suddenly couldn’t escape my lips fast enough. How long had I felt hunted, as if I was going to be ‘found out’? How many times had I been told as a child that I just ‘naturally look guilty’ even if I had done ‘nothing wrong’? How many recurring dreams in which the ‘terrible thing’ that I had done was at least concretised - say, as a murder - so that I could be hunted for a reason? The relative truth of these babblings from the couch is not very important: the mere fact of such a plentitude of significations indicates that a motherlode had been struck.

In these circumstances we are tempted to discount guilt, to shoo it away, or smother it in lachrymosity in the manner of Good Will Hunting, rather than asking the question: under what conditions could such guilt be intelligible?

When one reads of how ‘survivors’ - a term with which I, respectfully, will not have anything to do - have experienced guilt, quite often there is a specific incident or supposed failure in mind. ‘If only I hadn’t worn that nightie.’ ‘If only I hadn’t made a mess in the kitchen.’ ‘If only I had done my homework.’ Yet I am talking about something that supposedly happened to me when I was three years of age. The guilt has no anchor in a memorable incident, and it relates to a time when I could not conceivably hold myself responsible for anything that happened to me. That, to me, suggests that guilt has nothing to do with responsibility.

In the popular explanations for ‘survivor’s guilt’ which appear on websites, there is an unfortunate tendency to tangle up guilt, shame and responsibility, which must precisely be distinguished. We are told such things as: ‘people feel guilty about their abuse because they don’t want to accept the frightening conclusion that sometimes they are not in control of what happens to them’. What if the truth is the precise opposite? That we feel guilty because we do not think we have any say at all in what happens to us?

With guilt, there is an anxiety-producing expectation of punishment. Someone else is in charge of one’s life, one lives according to someone else’s rules, someone else’s desire, and that someone else is always on the brink of visiting a terrible punishment.

To deal with guilt, one can try to prove one’s innocence - collate all the evidence in the hope that one day you will take it all the way to the highest court of appeal, whatever that might be, and get the verdict reversed. We should make some space for the possibility that this is what I’m doing here. One can preemptively ‘punish’ oneself, constantly impede one’s own desires, self-sabotage, or injure oneself. One can do things that are certain to get one ‘caught’. “Paradoxical as it may sound,” Freud writes, “I must maintain that the sense of guilt was present before the misdeed, that it did not arise from it, but conversely—the misdeed arose from the sense of guilt.” Or one can ‘confess’ to things in the hope that by attaching the guilt to something, and submitting to punishment or expiation, the guilt will go away. In this sense, attaching guilt to a specific ‘offence’ like wearing the wrong nightie is a way of alleviating the anxiety caused by guilt, at least temporarily. If I know what I’m guilty of, I don’t have to keep expecting punishment.

This is why people are mistaken to think they can avoid guilt by dodging responsibility. When I was an adolescent, a man responsible for my care told me, as if continuing a conversation: “You know, I would never take wee boys to bed unless they asked me to.” The details and context of this almost charmingly hesitant ‘offer’ need not detain us here: suffice it to say, the fellow was disappointed. But I think this guilty little desire of his had bedevilled him for a while, and that in the manner of phrasing his ‘offer’, he was clearly trying to push the responsibility for it onto me. He could not take responsibility for his desire, not only because I was underage and in his care, but also because he was married, and because the desire was obviously homosexual and this was a conservative backwater of Northern Ireland. And yet, even if I could have taken responsibility for him, this would still only have exacerbated his guilt.

But what happens when guilt is repressed? Freud considers that Shakespeare’s version of Richard III is a neurotic. Deformed, unfinished, sent before his time into this breathing world, scarce half made-up. Unloved by his mother, with an absent father, rudely stamp’d and wanting love’s majesty. Like all neurotics, he has a lot to be resentful about. Life has cheated him, and he wants reparation - and, as he constantly tells us, he means to get it by any means necessary. This is what incites the complicity of the audience in his plight: we have all been born prematurely, all cheated by life, and wish we had Richard’s lack of scruple. But while he carries out his entertaining plots without apparent guilt, this can only be because he has repressed guilt. What is repressed according to psychoanalysis, however, is not affect but thoughts - in this case, self-critical thoughts. In Act 5, Scene 3, they finally bubble to the surface:

‘My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,

And every tongue brings in a several tale,

And every tale condemns me for a villain.

Perjury, perjury, in the highest degree;

Murder, stern murder, in the direst degree;

All several sins, all used in each degree,

Throng to the bar, crying all, “Guilty! guilty!”

I shall despair.’

But if, as Freud has already argued, guilt was present before the misdeed, that indeed the misdeed arose from the guilt, of what is Richard III guilty? Of being deformed. Of being rudely stamp’d. Of all the things that he resents the world for. And this has no end. As long as you live, as long as you have a libido, you can fuel this resentment indefinitely. It is inexhaustible: nothing can satisfy it. By precisely the same token, nothing can satisfy the guilt.

According to Freud and Klein, guilt is a coinage of aggression and, at the most fundamental level, of aggressivity. What does that mean? Aggressivity is not just what we understand as aggression - you know, we must eat and, when the pantry is empty, we may as well tuck into our fellow beings. It is aggression toward the self. And when aggression is repressed, it returns as guilt. And what is that, but another, metastasising, shapeshifting attack on the self?

Freud and Klein use the language of ‘instincts’, and the struggle of vital life forces - death instinct versus Eros - to explain this phenomenon. (I am reminded that Freud's actual term was 'Trieb' meaning 'drive'.) But such metaphors, to be workable, obviously need to be detached from the biologism of the imagery. Lacan considered aggressivity to entail a splitting of the subject against the ego. The ego is formed through a series of imaginary identifications, beginning with the ‘mirror stage’ in which the child recognises its image and forms a narcissistic attachment to it. What is most riveting about the image is its cohesion and unity - a stark contrast to the fragmentary experience of pissing, shitting, throwing up, dribbling, crying, uncoordinated movements, giggling, hungering, eating, thirsting and drinking, which is the lot of any human infant. But the image the child falls for is too perfect. To live up to it is impossible. The subject hates it in the same moment as she develops a narcissistic identification with it, and wants to attack it. As we grow up, we form successive and more complex identifications with parental figures, schoolteachers, media personalities, and so on.

In the language of ‘instincts’, one would assume that the ego, by resisting the disintegration of the subject, resists the death drive. What if the truth is the reverse? What if the ego is on the side of death? That is, on the side of the mortification of the subject’s desire. I said that guilt implies that ‘someone else’ is in charge. In a sense, ‘someone else’ is in charge. The ego is modelled on what ‘someone else’ wants. You are born, and even before you can articulate the question, you want to know: why am I here? What did mum and dad want from me? And what attitude shall I take to their desire? The ego is always concerned with what others think, what is normal, what parents will approve of (or what will really wind them up), and so on. And the more energy is spent trying to live up to the often absurd standards of the ego, the stronger the guilt becomes.

Fundamentally, if one is guilty of anything, Lacan said, it is of ceding ground relative to one’s desire. At first, this idea was extremely opaque to me. But the more I spoke, the more I read, the more I asked ‘what am I really guilty of?’, the more acuminous this dictum became. For example, you can imagine my disappointment when I happened upon social worker reports describing me as “submissive”, and as doing what I’m told without thinking about it. In the same fashion, picture how dispirited I was to alight upon observations about my presenting “no disciplinary issues” to the staff of the children’s home in which I was placed at the age of fourteen. Of course, no one is ever “submissive” all the time, and such reports are not the whole truth. Yet, I can’t shake the suspicion that they tell a truth. That, as a boy I was so terrified of physical punishment that I lied about everything, including about what I really wanted. That, I put conformity with what I imagined my parents and others expected of me, ahead of my own wishes. That, I found a way to take satisfaction in not speaking, in not stating my desire, in not articulating. That, I don’t know whether and when I stopped doing this. That, I don’t know whether or when I really worked out what I want. That, the guilt is metastasising within me still.

Yet, guilt is a tremendous, cohesive agent. It holds you together when there seems to be no other logic to your actions. It binds couples, when they no longer have any other raison d’etre. It keeps families together, when they have nothing else in common. It makes the education system ‘work’, inasmuch as it secures a sullen, joyless compliance from students and teachers alike. It even makes work ‘work’, as you’ll know every time you phone in sick. The whole financial system depends on guilt. Zizek argued, for once entirely accurately and to the point, that part of Syriza’s demarche was to break with the guilt of indebted subaltern countries, and precisely to treat the debt as the politicised imposition that it is. And at a more molecular level, I think it would be quite difficult to understand the hold that the bankers have over us if we didn’t understand the guilt we have about our debts.

We need victims, survivors, subalterns, and so on, to be guilty. We have so much invested in it, individually, institutionally and socially. So many satisfactions. It is easy enough for me to ask whether we can live without it. The more politically salient question is whether we actually want to, a question I think it would be mistaken to try to answer too soon.

You will want to know why speak about this, or why speak now? For whom, and what? This is another of those questions to which I ‘don’t know’ the answer.

I can only say that I think there is a poetics of abuse that is associated with the ‘Tragic Lives’ genre which I find lamentable and politically reactionary, and which I wish to undercut. This is the style of self-display that wallows in misery and catharsis, and has little to do with any kind of solution.

That, there is a politics of abuse which too often shades into moral panic, and which leads us away from dealing with genuinely traumatic truths and into the blind alley of sacralising victimhood on the one hand, and arming lynch mobs with the self-righteousness to burn down the houses of ‘paedophiles’ on the other.

That, above all, the silence itself is illusory, and that I must embark on the process initiated here, of speaking. For what is not spoken still speaks.

And that fact is, in a very palpable way, killing me.

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Solidarity is not co-optation posted by Richard Seymour

My excellent comrade Sofia Arias responds to a pernicious debate on the #MuslimLivesMatter issue:

Unfortunately, not everyone has embraced the emergence of #MuslimLivesMatter. Several Muslim anti-racist activists responded on social media by urging people not to use the hashtag, and to use #JusticeForMuslims instead. At least two articles summarized the logic of this argument--one at MuslimGirl.net by a contributor called Sabah, titled "Stop Using #MuslimLivesMatter," and another on the website of the Muslim Anti-Racism Collaborative by Anas White, called "A Black Muslim Response To #MuslimLivesMatter."...

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Stathis Kouvelakis on the Eurogroup deal posted by Richard Seymour

This article by Stathis Kouvelakis is probably the most comprehensive account of Syriza's defeat in these negotiations:

In the spirit of the popular mandate for a break with the memorandum regime and liberation from debt, the Greek side entered negotiations rejecting the extension of the current “program,” agreed to by the Samaras government, along with the €7 billion tranche, with the exception of the €1.9 billion return on Greek bonds to which it was entitled.
Not consenting to any supervisory or assessment procedures, it requested a four-month transitional “bridge program,” without austerity measures, to secure liquidity and implement at least part of its program within balanced budgets. It also asked that lenders recognize the non-viability of the debt and the need for an immediate new round of across-the-board negotiations.
But the final agreement amounts to a point-by-point rejection of all these demands. Furthermore, it entails another set of measures aimed at tying the hands of the government and thwarting any measure that might signify a break with memorandum policies.
In the Eurogroup’s Friday statement, the existing program is referred to as an “arrangement,” but this changes absolutely nothing essential. The “extension” that the Greek side is now requesting (under the “Master Financial Assistance Facility Agreement”) is to be enacted “in the framework of the existing arrangement” and aims at “successful completion of the review on the basis of the conditions in the current arrangement.”
It is also clearly stated that
only approval of the conclusion of the review of the extended arrangement by the institutions … will allow for any disbursement of the outstanding tranche of the current EFSF programme and the transfer of the 2014 SMP profits [these are the 1.9 billion of profits out of Greek bonds to which Greece is entitled]. Both are again subject to approval by the Eurogroup.
So Greece will be receiving the tranche it had initially refused, but on the condition of sticking to the commitments of its predecessors.
What we have then is a reaffirmation of the typical German stance of imposing — as a precondition for any agreement and any future disbursement of funding — completion of the “assessment” procedure by the tripartite mechanism (whether this is called “troika” or “institutions”) for supervision of every past and future agreement.
Moreover, to make it abundantly clear that the use of the term “institutions” instead of the term “troika” is window-dressing, the text specifically reaffirms the tripartite composition of the supervisory mechanism, emphasizing that the “institutions” include the ECB (“against this background we recall the independence of the European Central Bank”) and the International Monetary Fund (“we also agreed that the IMF would continue to play its role”).
As regards the debt, the text mentions that “the Greek authorities reiterate their unequivocal commitment to honour their financial obligations to all their creditors fully and timely.” In other words forget any discussion of “haircuts,” “debt reduction,” let alone “writing off of the greater part of the debt,” as is Syriza’s programmatic commitment.
Any future “debt relief” is possible only on the basis of what was proposed in the November 2012 Eurogroup decision, that is to say a reduction in interest rates and a rescheduling, which as is well-known makes little difference to the burden of servicing debt, affecting only payment of interest that is already very low.
But this is not all, because for repayment of debt the Greek side is now fully accepting the same framework of Eurogroup decisions of November 2012, at the time of the three-party government of Antonis Samaras. It included the following commitments: 4.5% primary surpluses from 2016, accelerated privatizations, and the establishment of a special account for servicing the debt — to which the Greek public sector was to transfer all the income from the privatizations, the primary surpluses, and 30% of any excess surpluses.
It was for this reason too that Friday’s text mentioned not only surpluses but also “financing proceeds.” In any case, the heart of the memorandum heist, namely the accomplishment of outrageous primary surpluses and the selling-off of public property for the exclusive purpose of lining lenders’ pockets, remains intact. The sole hint of relaxation of pressure is a vague assurance that “the institutions will, for the 2015 primary surplus target, take the economic circumstances in 2015 into account.”
But it was not enough that the Europeans should reject all the Greek demands. They had, in every way, to bind the Syriza government hand and foot in order to demonstrate in practice that whatever the electoral result and the political profile of the government that might emerge, no reversal of austerity is feasible within the existing European framework. As European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker stated, “there can be no democratic choice against the European treaties.”
And the provision for this is to take place in two ways. Firstly, as indicated in the text: “The Greek authorities commit to refrain from any rollback of measures and unilateral changes to the policies and structural reforms that would negatively impact fiscal targets, economic recovery or financial stability, as assessed by the institutions.”
So no dismantling of the memorandum regime either (“rollback of measures”), and no “unilateral changes,” and indeed not only as regards measures with a budgetary cost (such as abolition of taxes, raising of the tax-free threshold, increases in pensions, and “humanitarian” assistance) as had been stated initially, but in a much more wide-ranging sense, including anything that could have a “negative impact” on “economic recovery or financial stability,” always in accordance with the decisive judgment of the “institutions.”
Needless to say this is relevant not only to the reintroduction of a minimum wage and the reestablishment of the labor legislation that has been dismantled these last years, but also to changes in the banking system that might strengthen public control (not a word, of course, about “public property” as outlined in Syriza’s founding declaration).
Moreover, the agreement specifies that
the funds so far available in the Hellenic Financial Stability Fund (HFSF) buffer should be held by European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), free of third party rights for the duration of the MFFA extension. The funds continue to be available for the duration of the MFFA extension and can only be used for bank recapitalisation and resolution costs. They will only be released on request by the ECB/SSM.
This clause shows how it has not escaped the attention of the Europeans that Syriza’s Thessaloniki program stated that “seed money for the public sector and an intermediary body and seed money for the establishment of special purpose banks, amounting to a total in the order of €3 billion, will be provided through the HFSF’s so-called ‘cushion’ of around €11 billion for the banks.”
In other words, goodbye to any thought of using HFSF funds for growth-oriented objectives. Whatever illusions still existed regarding the possibility of using European funds for purposes outside of the straitjacket of those for which they had been earmarked — and even more that they should be placed under the Greek government’s jurisdiction — have thus been dispelled.

Read it all.

Sunday, February 22, 2015

Syriza's mauling at the EU negotiations posted by Richard Seymour

Syriza has been defeated in the first round of negotiations.

After a period of enjoyable defiance, during which they won the backing of the overwhelming majority of the Greek people - 80% according to a poll taken before the latest deal, published in today's Avgi - they have come back with small change. Pushed to the point where they were at risk of a collapse of the banking system, and unprepared for a Grexit (and thus unable to use it as a bargaining chip), they accepted the most comprehensive drubbing.

Tsipras has tried to put the best possible gloss on this, but what he said was delusional. He said that the deal shows that Europe stands for mutually beneficial compromise. No such thing. It stands, as Schauble crowed, for Syriza being forced to implement austerity against its own mandate. It stands for the crushing of national democracy.

Tsipras said that the deal creates the framework for Syriza to address the humanitarian crisis. Not with the commitment to a primary surplus and troika oversight, it doesn't. Not with the agreement that Syriza will not 'unilaterally' roll back austerity, it doesn't. We can admit that a 1.5% primary surplus is better than a 4.5% primary surplus. Yet even 1.5% in a depressed economy is harsh, and coupled with troika assessment of reforms for fiscal sustainability (according to neoliberal maxims), this amounts to the repudiation of most of Syriza's reform agenda.

Tsipras said that austerity and the Memorandum had been left behind. That is precisely the opposite of what has happened. The Thessaloniki programme, itself a carefully trimmed agenda shorn of the most radical of Syriza's goals, is what has been left behind.

The problem with Tsipras's speech goes further than this, however. Not only is it deluded. It recalibrates the government's language and goals in order to rationalise not just this thrashing but future routs. Having said that austerity and the Memorandum are now left behind by this deal, the government shifts the goalposts and terms of future negotiations.

And this is part of the reason why those who speak of 'buying time' are wrong. Time is not a simple quantity that only one side gains from. The EU ruling classes have also 'bought time' and they have the resources and are on the offensive, while Syriza has retreated. There are no grounds for thinking that Syriza's bargaining position will be better in four months time than it is now. It has already weakened its stance, while its political position, after four months of continued austerity, will probably be worse.

One can hardly pin most of the blame for this on Syriza. They are in a weak position, and it is doubtful that any government could have obtained better against an EU determined to humiliate Greece. Yet, the line of Tsipras and Varoufakis is simply untenable. Their commitment to trying to resolve this crisis within the terms of the euro must fail. They were simply wrong to think that they would have a single ally or interlocutor in the EU. The southern European governments are even more fanatical than Berlin on this question. Hollande, far from being a friendly face, told Syriza to shove it fairly early on: he made his decision on austerity some time ago.

The question of the currency, then, was not simply a nationalist distraction as some claimed: getting an anti-austerity government elected with the specific goal of confronting the EU and struggling to overturn austerity was always going to come to a head on this very question.

The alternative, what one might call a People's Grexit, is far from straightforward, as Dave Renton points out in the latest of a series of excellent posts on Greece. The economic risks would be considerable. It would require not just economic preparedness, or secret war room gaming, but mass social and political preparedness. It would require the mobilisation of a workers movement that has been relatively quiet since 2012. And it would require a government willing to risk economic and political isolation from trading partners and a fight to the finish with the oligarchs, the Right, and the repressive state apparatuses for the future of Greek society.

Nevertheless, there will now be a huge argument within Syriza over the acceptance of this deal, and the old slogan of 'not one sacrifice for the euro' will make a come back. Manolis Glezos, an iconic figure from the antifascist resistance and prominent within Syriza, is the first to have gone public with his dissent. He is calling for a campaign up and down the party not to accept this deal, and will vote against it. He will not be the last. Next week, there will be a rally in Syntagma Square, with the slogan 'We're not afraid of Grexit'.

We have no right to be surprised by any of this. And not just because we were warned by informed sources that a retreat was taking place. Even if it was not inevitable, we knew very well that the balance of forces favoured precisely this kind of defeat. If we didn't know that a Syriza-led government would be "in perpetual crisis", a "spot-lit enclave, under constant assault from capital and the media", we shouldn't be in this game. If we didn't guess that Berlin would want to "make an example of Greece one way or another", and that any concessions offered would probably "be deliberately insulting", we really weren't paying attention.

We can be disappointed, but not surprised. But throwing in the towel is likewise only possible with a certain degree of detachment - the sort of detachment that allows some leftists to sound even more triumphant about Syriza's rout than even Schauble. This is still a far better and more open situation for Greek workers than had New Democracy been re-elected. Even the modest reforms in favour of immigrants, workers' bargaining rights, and protesters - supposing they are not scotched by the troika - are worth having. And it is only because we have now had the experience of an anti-austerity government go to the wall in an attempt to reverse austerity within the eurozone that we can now contemplate the emergence of a significant anti-euro constituency within Greece. Further, there will be opportunities to build this: every time the troika rejects a needed reform, this can and should be held up as an object lesson in what Europe means.

This is, as was anticipated by anyone with their eyes open, a nodal point and not the end point in the process of Greek workers finding a solution to their dilemma.

Friday, February 13, 2015

Map of the Greek Radical Left II posted by Richard Seymour

This is a follow up to the previous map of the Greek radical left. Thanks to Alastair Abraham Holmes for doing this. Click on the image to enlarge. Click again to enlarge further. Or view the original, high resolution image here, where you can zoom in and out in order to read the text. As before, corrections are welcome.

Thursday, February 12, 2015

Muslim Street posted by Richard Seymour

We learn about belonging and non-belonging, inclusion and exclusion, the we and the other, not through an accumulation of facts, but through stories. Or, to be more precise, fables. In fables, meanings are condensed into a succinct narrative which yields a morality lesson. Social media is especially good for this, acculturating us to a degree of concision far greater than on television. A few lines of text are enough to tell of whole worlds. These representations may, or may not, be true. Or they may, or may not, make contact with pockets of lives experience. To the extent that they do, they will be more persuasive. But it is sometimes sufficient that they merely touch on and reinforce existing representations. Here is a short fable from Cathy Newman of Channel 4 News.

Well I just visited Streatham mosque for #VisitMyMosque day and was surprised to find myself ushered out of the door...
— Cathy Newman (@cathynewman) February 1, 2015

I was respectfully dressed, head covering and no shoes but a man ushered me back onto the street. I said I was there for #VisitMyMosque mf
— Cathy Newman (@cathynewman) February 1, 2015

But it made no difference
— Cathy Newman (@cathynewman) February 1, 2015

This edifying story barely needs unpacking, but I will do it the courtesy of a sketch. Muslims have elected to put on a display of openness and, if you like, integration. By inviting members of the non-Muslim public to peer into their world, they hope to clear away the negative mystique which they argue is created by unfounded demonisation in the media, and to prove their integration into mainstream society. They are as British as the passive-aggressive whining about how unBritish they are: why, 'Dawoud' and 'Maryam', that's just 'Dave' and 'Mary'. Yet here, a white journalist, though perhaps self-evidently not a regular attendee, turned up "respectfully dressed" to visit a mosque advertising this invitation - and was not just refused entry but "ushered" away. This gives the lie to, or raises questions about, the 'openness' that was advertised. It suggests that some Muslims really do either have something to hide, or prefer self-segregation, or perhaps have some sort of prejudice against women. Either way, the moral of the fable is that Muslims remain a problematic other, whose national belonging is in question, who must be interrogated further, surveilled more intensively, kept on a very tight leash. This was rapidly taken up by the national media as a scandal and an affront to one of our top white people. The mosque referred to in these tweets reports that it was subject to threats and abuse as a result. Now, as it transpires, the story is not true. Cathy Newman, as this footage shows, was not 'ushered' by anyone:

She had, in fact, gone to the wrong place, and was politely directed to the correct place. On the evidence of the footage, she seems to have hung around for a while, considering her options, then left under her own steam, unaccompanied. Then she frantically tweeted her "interpretation of events". The mosque singled out for this treatment responded quickly, pointing out that there must have been some sort of error, as they were not participating in the #VisitMyMosque event. They then quickly checked their CCTV for evidence of what happened, and discovered that she was bullshitting. For over a week after the footage emerged, Channel 4 and Cathy Newman observed a studious silence, while the mosque continued to be subject to abuse and threats. Now, Newman has sent the mosque a letter of apology, regretting her "poorly chosen" words. The mosque has rejoined with a gracious acceptance of the apology, while pointing out that:

"We were not offended by her choice of words. We were deeply disappointed that her instinctive reaction to a confusing episode was to assume that she was being mistreated by Muslim men on the account of her gender. It was this assumption, exacerbated by the hyperbole in her tweets that caused the maelstrom of abuse and national controversy our Centre was subjected to. These were not just poorly chosen words - they painted a picture of an incident that never occurred."

In this, the mosque has it absolutely right. In itself, it shouldn't be very important whether or not the incident occurred. Yet, these incidents, these fables, constitute the crucial moments of pedagogy in the national culture. Uncontested, they corroborate one another, until they form a 'common sense' about Britishness and Islam. They also provide strategic moments of intervention for racists, both liberal and reactionary, passive and violent. Had the story not been rebutted, it would probably have made its way into a scrappy Douglas Murray unthink-piece, or a bit of Farageian eristic. Muscular liberals, neoconservatives and UKIPers would have extemporised in unity on this issue. Who knows, perhaps the police might have taken a look at the matter. Cathy Newman's letter of apology states: "Channel 4 News has a particularly strong relationship with the Muslim community..." And thank god for that. We must move beyond this unfortunate incident and fix our eyes on the future. We must gird our loins and wet our palates for the inevitably upcoming series, Muslim Street. Which I hope Newman will be available to present.

Monday, February 09, 2015

Betraying the Enlightenment I: individual freedom. posted by Richard Seymour

We have decided to briefly betray one Enlightenment value each day*. Today's Enlightenment value which we shall be betraying is individual freedom.

The locus of individual freedom in classical liberal philosophy is the soul, be it spirit or matter. The willing soul corresponds to the legal personality who is accorded certain freedoms.

Yet what is the material basis of this soul? Nothing other than the social relations established under the capitalist mode of production which uproots agents from structures of fealty and bondage and isolates them in a matrix of competitive relations.

The corresponding politico-legal iteration of this is the individual. The individual only enters into relations of authority or hierarchy on the basis of contract, freely entered into. It does not matter as such that many of the most important contracts, such as those between family and child, or between citizen and state, are forged before the subject is born, since a responsible adult can make free and willing decisions on the unborn child's behalf. Indeed, they must, because free and willing decision-making is required as a presupposition of the contractual relation.

To see that there is nothing perverse about this, one need only remember that no contract is ever strictly voluntary. All consent is conditioned and all consenting beings are in some way coerced. Hence Marx's apparent paradox: "the wage-labourer . . . is compelled to sell himself of his own free will."

This is not an imperfectly realised individual freedom; it is the essence of individual freedom as the product not of some pristine Enlightened thought, but of coercive and exploitative relations of production.

So there we have it: individual freedom is bullshit. I spit on your individual freedom. All power to the barbarians.

*Do YOU have an Enlightenment value you'd like to see betrayed? Please leave a message below, or call our hotline.

Map of the Greek Radical Left posted by Richard Seymour

This is a map of the Greek radical left with a glossary below. I am grateful to Martin Laurent for creating it, with the help of Stathis Kouvelakis, Nikos Loudos and Panagiotis Sotiris. Follow-up, by Alastair Abraham Holmes, here.

SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left)

Founded as an alliance in 2004, SYRIZA is a regroupment of left organizations around Synaspismos, by far from largest component. Since July 2013, SYRIZA is a unified party with no constituent organizations. Two main currents are active inside SYRIZA: the majority, itself a constellation of various currents, the main being Left Unity, around Alexis Tsipras; and the “Left Platform” led by Panagiotis Lafazanis and Antonis Davanellos (30% at the 2013 Congress). The Left Platform has its origins in the Left Current of Synaspismos, mainly cadres and trade unionists having who left the KKE in 1991. The meteoric rise of SYRIZA started in 2012 (16,8% in May elections, 26,9% in June). In the previous elections Syriza’s scores oscillated between 5.7% in 2007 and 4.6% in 2009.

Synaspismos (originally called Coalition of the Left and Progress and renamed Coalition of the Left and of the Movements) started as an electoral coalition between KKE and EAR for the general elections of 1989. After participating in a coalition government with New Democracy (June 1989) and in one with New Democracy and PASOK (November 1989), the KKE split in 1991 with a significant minority leaving the party and joining Synaspismos. Synaspismos was transformed into a party and EAR dissolved into it.

EAR (Greek Left) was founded in 1987 as the result of the split of the KKE (interior) and regrouped the rightist fraction of the party, on a “right Eurocommunist” line. Led by Leonidas Kyrkos from 87 to 1989, and then until its merger into Synaspismos by Fotis Kouvelis. Most members left Synaspismos in 2010 to create DIMAR led by Kouvelis and his followers.

AKOA (Renewing Communist Ecological Left). One of the ex-constituents of SYRIZA. Its origins are in the left fraction of the KKE (interior). After the 1987 split, it initially called itself the Greek Communist Party of the Interior Renewed Left, and in 1991 was renamed as AKOA. Related to the weekly newspaper Epohi (Era).

KKE (interior) (Communist Party of Greece – interior). Result of a major split in KKE in 1968, during the dictatorship. Established relations with the Italian Communist Party and endorsed Euro-communism. Split in 1987 into EAR and what later became AKOA.

KOE (Communist Organization of Greece). One of the most significant organizations of Maoist origin, product of a split in the KKE (m-l) in 1982. Puts forward a populist line focusing on the “national” or “patriotic” elements of the resistance to austerity, aligned with the majority current in SYRIZA.

DEA (Internationalist Workers’ Left). Originated as a split of SEK in 2001 and is part of Syriza since its foundation. Since 2012 collaborates with the Left Current to constitute the Left Platform. In December 2014 they reunited with Kokkoino (a previous split from DEA). Has observer status in the Fourth International (United Secretariat).

Communist Platform. Greek section of the International Marxist Tendency, led by Alan Woods. Not part of the Left Platform

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KKE (Communist Party of Greece). Founded in 1918, it reached a membership of hundreds of thousands during the Nazi occupation (1941-1944), leading the National Liberation Front (EAM). Went underground after the Civil War and legalized only after the fall of the Colonels´ dictatorship (1974). Followed the official pro-Moscow line until the fall of USSR. Suffered the split of its youth in 1989, because of its coalition (through Synaspismos) with New Democracy. Managed to recover its losses through the ´90s and 2000s, with its active participation in the labor movement, the movement against the war in Yugoslavia, and the student movement. Electorally reached a high of 9,5% in the European Elections of 2004 and 8,5% in May 2012 general elections. Holds a sectarian line of not coordinating in the mass movements.

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DIMAR (Democratic Left). The origins of DIMAR are in the “Renewal Wing” of Synaspismos, associated with cadre coming from EAR. DIMAR after getting a 6,3% in the elections of June 2012 decided to join a coalition government with New Democracy and PASOK. DIMAR broke from the government one year after, at the moment of the closure of the public broadcaster (ERT).

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ANTARSYA (Anticapitalist Left Cooperation for the Overthrow). The main front of the Greek far Left. Was formed out of the merger of two previous smaller coalitions, after the experience of December 2008 revolt. ANTARSYA, has a strong presence in social movements through the fronts in which it participates (13% for the student front EAAK in 2014 elections, very strong presence in public sector unions). Presence in local elections (e.g. 2,2% in the Attica region in XXXX.) It has a number of elected councilors in local governments. It took 1,2% in the May 2012 elections but saw its vote collapse to 0,33% one month after. In the Euroelections of 2014 went back to 0,72%. Its main political position is that there can be no exit from the current economic and social crisis without a halt to debt repayments, exit from the Eurozone and the European Union, nationalization of Banks and strategic enterprises. In the 2015 general election it formed an electoral coalition (ANTARSYA-MARS) with other radical left and anti-EU groups.

NAR (New Left Current). The biggest constituent of ANTARSYA, originating in the youth wing of the KKE, splitting from the party in 1989 due to disagreements over the coalition government with New Democracy. Eclectic in its ideological references, has played a leading role in the regroupment of the revolutionary left in the student movement, and has a network of prominent militant activists in the unions.

SEK (Socialist Workers’ Party). Founded in the early 1970s as the “Organisation Socialist Revolution” is one of the revolutionary left organizations emerging through the collapse of the dictatorship in 1974. Belongs to the International Socialist Tendency. Publishes the weekly newspaper Ergatiki Allileggyi (Workers Solidarity). It is the second biggest constituent of ANTARSYA. Has a prominent role in the anti-fascist, antiracist movement and roots in some unions.

ARAN (Left Recomposition) is the third biggest constituent of ANTARSYA. With theoretical references to Althusser, Poulantzas and Gramsci, it has insisted on the need for political fronts that can be political laboratories and constituent processes for a new radical Left. Strong presence in student unions, but also in unions and local movements.

OKDE-Spartakos (Organization of Communist Internationalists of Greece –Spartakos) Section of the Fourth International (United Secretariat) in Greece, one of the historic organizations of the revolutionary left in Greece.

ARAS (Left Anti-Capitalist Group) and Aristeri Syspeirosi (Left Regroupment). These are smaller groups, within ANTARSYA. They share with ARAN the same origins in the student movement of the 1980s, and the experience of the independent left groups within universities and share theoretical references to Althusserianism.

EKKE (Revolutionary Communist Movement of Greece). A small organization with a long tradition. Of Maoist and Guevarist origins, it was one of the most prominent organization of the revolutionary left in the years after the fall of the dictatorship.

Plan B is a group of militants insisting on the centrality of the break with the European Union as the necessary starting point (the necesssary "Plan B") for any progressive politics. Alekos Alavanos, ex leader of SYRIZA is a leading figure in Plan B.

Xekinima - Socialist Internationalist Organisation - is the Greek affiliate of the Committee for a Workers International. It started out as an oppositional grouping in PASOK in the 1970s, but had been expelled by the late 1980s. It was a component of SYRIZA between 2007 and 2011, on the hard left wing of the (then) coalition. It continues to call for a SYRIZA vote and campaigned for a SYRIZA victory in the 2015 election. It is best known for its work amongst refugees and migrants, but also works in the unions, in community struggles and amongst students.

OKDE (Organization of Communists Internationalists of Greece). Small organization, split with OKDE-Spartakos in the 1980s. Claims to be loyal to orthodox Trotskyism with a workerist orientation.

EEK (Workers’ Revolutionary Party).Trotskyist organization, allied in the 1970s and 80s with Gerry Healy’s Workers’ Revolutionary Party. Participates in the Coordinating Committee for the Refoundation of the Fourth International (CRFI).

M-L KKE (Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Greece). Maoist organization with origins in the Maoist current of the 1970s. Remained relevant through its presence in the school teachers’ movement. They participate in the elections in coalition with KKE (m-l).

KKE (m-l) (Communist Party of Greece (Marxist-Leninist)). One of the organizations that came out of the Maoist current in the 1970s. Active in student and neighborhood movements. Takes part in the elections in coalition with M-L KKE.

OAKKE: the Organisation for the Reconstriuction o the the Greek Communist Party was formed in 1985 out of the Maoist milieux, by former members of EKKE and the ml KKE. It takes its ideological position from Mao's doctrines following the Sino-Soviet split - identifying Moscow as an imperialist force (then and now). A further emphasis on Dengist theorisation of industrialisation in China leads to an essentially "modernising position" in relation to Greece. The older and newer Sino-Marxist positions are united in a theory which holds Moscow, via the rest of the Left and the Orthodox Church, as responsible for Greek backwardness. It could not afford to stand in the elections of 2015. It called on supporters 1) to write OAKKE on their ballot and 2) explicitly not to vote for Syriza or Golden Dawn. Thus bringing it, via a Maoist detour, to the exact political resting place of Antonis Samaras and his theory of the two extremes.

Revolutionary Communist Party (Posadist): a very tiny group, Greek section of the Posadist International. Publishes the newspaper “Kommounistiki Εnotita – Communist Unity”. Oriented towards the KKE in the 80’s. At some stage entered SYRIZA.

Revolutionary Communist Party: founded in 2008 by ex-members of “Xekinima” (CWI), EEK and “Workers’ Power” (now defunct). Publishes the newspaper “Syntrofos – Comrade”. In elections, they vote for Antarsya.

KED (Communist Revolutionary Action) was founded in 2013. The majority of its members left SYRIZA (“Red Orchestra” group) and joined with other individuals. The Leadership is of Morenoite origin. In January 2015 elections voted for SYRIZA. Publishes the e-zine “AvantGarde”.

KTU (Communist Trotskyist Union, ex-KOEE: Communist Organization of Revolutionary Workers): of Morenoite origin. Founded by Yanis Veruchis (1931-2010), a historic figure of Greek Trotskyism. Publishes “Sosialistiki Prooptiki – Socialist Perspective”.