Communism

[Antid Oto]

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http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/2009/03/on-idea-of-communism-birkbeck-13-15.asp

[This is just Day One of the notes so far, I'll put the rest up
tomorrow or whenever I get a chance. Photos are of the crowd moving
about. All errors in note-taking mine, etc.]

There are now various reports on the conference, critical and
reflective in equal measure.
Mark Fisher
Steven Shaviro

On the Idea of Communism, Birkbeck 13-15th March, 2009

Costas Douzinas: Welcome

Hello friends and comrades. George Birkbeck believed that everyone
should study philosophy, theology and Latin. Birkbeck is primary
institution for adult education and for re-establishing the role of
the public intellectual. We did not predict severity of crisis.
Premises of neo-liberalism have become denaturalized. Communism is not
just a regulative idea, but is immanent within our social relations.

Alain Badiou: Opening Remarks

Five very simple remarks. The conference on ‘Communism’ means that we
have a precise goals, to discuss the precise significations of the
word ‘Communisms’ and to see whether this dead word must become the
new positive word in philosophy and politics. Conference is not about
the generality of political thinking or different ways of
revolutionary politics but about the different significations and
possible use of the word communism. All the speakers at the conference
must have the conviction that is really a positive use of the word
communism today. Not repetition of the classical critiques of the
word. Sometimes we agree with these critiques, in fact. Wed don’t say
that communism is not a criminal word. What we need is a renewal of
the word. There is a common point here which is to propose a positive
signification of the word ‘communism’. Is a philosophical conference.
The idea of it started with discussion between AB and SZ. SZ often
criticises AB, but this is a true sign of friendship. Nobody
represents a party at the conference, everyone is representing his or
herself. No party/power. No Kim Jong-Il, no Fidel Castro. There is a
collective search for new use of the word communism after terrible
experiences of the last century. Collection of phil/pol singularities
– we are on the side of novelty, creativity. We are on the side of
communism in its newness.

Slavoj Žižek: Opening Remarks

There is a materialist grace to it being Friday the 13th. That is what
we are. It should be noted that Wang Hui was not allowed to come here
for what we suspect are political reasons. A certain epoch is upon us:
a radical communist movement over the party-state epoch. Our
predicament – there is a new urgency but at the same time has to be
rethought radically. We need the patience of the concept. People will
say: how can we spend time on endless speculation when children are
starving? I say go and talk to Bill Gates! Here is instead a time to
think. The blood, sweat and tears of hardcore theoretical thought!
There is a certain liberation in this – until now, to be a radical
leftist was to suffer stigma – 20 million dead. A special moral
stigma. This stigma is over. The times of apology are over – the
ruling criminals have to apologize. Besides, we can explain the
catastrophe of communism better than conservatives and liberals. Trust
theory! Be Leninists! Be the Lenin of 1915 who went to Switzerland and
read Hegel’s Logic. This conference should in fact be understood as a
two-day seminar on Hegel’s logic!

Michael Hardt: The Common in Communism

Four senses of the common. The common must be foundation of communism
– capitalist production relies on the common as property. Like Badiou
and Zizek we should invent new terms of struggle using old terms.
Everyone hates it when you invent new terms, but it is also difficult
to struggle over old terms. Communism means ‘state control’ in the
media – which is the opposite of what it should mean. ‘Democracy’ is
similarly corrupt, we need to struggle over that too – and this is a
struggle over these two twin concepts. It is also a critique of
political economy and private property. We need to re-pose the
communist hypothesis for our times, we need to move from Lenin to
Marx. Composition of capital and their products have altered. How do
people produce in and out of the workplace? What are the stakes of
race and gender in this new world? We need to analyze relations of
production that are produced – critique of property. Abolition of
private property. Move from critique of political economy to private
property. No longer immobile property but mobile property – bitter
battle between the two forms. Landowner emphasises the role of
agriculture. Moveable property is more flexible - Marx says that
moveable inevitably triumphs over immobile property. Profit triumphs
over rent. Parallel forms today – dominant mode of expropriation.
Reverse movement from profit to rent. Rent – capitalist is relatively
external to production, merely extracts value produced by other means.
Profit is more involved. Keynes – profit has such dignity that he
predicts the end of the rentier. Primitive accumulation as absolute
rent. Industry no longer holds hegemonic place in economy – not to say
fewer people work in factories. Qualitative not quantitative shift –
immaterial or biopolitical production. We must try and grasp this.
Concept of affective labour was developed on basis of
socialist-feminist work (here Hardt mentions the fantasy conference
programme forwarded to the speakers). Most of these forms of
production are immaterial – language is in large part immaterial.
Nurses, flight attendants give us an image of affective labour
Qualities imposed over various sector of the economy. Affects and care
increasingly central in production process. Immediate implications for
gender divisions.

There is a new struggle between two kinds of property. No longer
immobile/moveable, but between material and immaterial property.
Scarcity/reproducible property. Property that is easily shared –
reducible trumps over producible (this is why campaigns such as Free
Our Books are important). Common property as such. Sharing an idea
increases its utility. When privatized their utility is reduced
dramatically. Emerging contradiction – expansion of the common
undermines property/privitisation. Neo-liberalism has been defined by
this battle. The Commons is both the land of the 7th century Commons,
but also refers to results of human capacity – language, creativity,
etc. Natural/artificial distinction has been eroded because
Neo-liberalism has aimed to privatize both kinds of these (see David
Harvey). Patents and copyrights try to privatize the commons with
increasing failure. Copyrights generate rent – not a return to the
past, but rent is mechanism to exert control – exploitation is
expropriation of the common. Accumulation by dispossession.
Contemporary predomination of finance – relative rent. We shouldn’t
think that finance is fictional – see Marazzi. Warns against
dismissing finance as unproductive. Finance expropriates the common.

Productivity becomes increasingly autonomous. Like Marx, this
development is not good in itself, it’s still exploitation yet we can
recognize calls for increased autonomy of the common. In the 1844
Manuscripts, the common explains what Marx means by communism –
positive expression of the abolition of private property. Crude
communism merely generalizes to universal private property, but
communism is abolition of property as such. We are made so stupid that
we think we only have something when we have it – what if we have it
when we don’t own it? Capitalist development contains seeds of the
common. Communism is the positive supersession of private property –
appropriation of essence from and for man. Appropriation of our own
subjectivity, our own humanity. Marx appropriates his essence in an
integral way via the production of subjectivity – not appropriation.
Man produces man, himself and other men. Autonomous process of
subjectivity – a new thinking, loving etc. [it's Feuerbach! - IT]

Capitalist production is aimed at eroding objects and subjects –
Grundrisse – subject for object and vice versa, Marazzi –
anthrop-genetic model. Living being as fixed capital are central part
of the process in which putting to work human faculties is directly
productive of value. Head/heart – what is being produced are forms of
life. Capital is a social relation – not commodities by social
relations. Marx’s definition of communism and contemporary turn to
biopolitics – one more element: Foucault – on Marx – not expression of
humanism. We must produce something that does not yet exist. Producers
and products are both subjects – co8ud destroy capitalism. Through the
increasing centrality of the common, weapons of, capitalism is
creating its own gravediggers. Think of the notion of the common in
Rancière. Common is the terrain of partage. Two primary points: plea
for critique for political economy – such an analysis makes good on
our periodisation – class composition, how production works,
conditions both in and outside the workplace – reveals increased
centrality of the common. We need to extend this critique to an
analysis of property- affirmation of open an autonomous production,
creation of a new humanity. What private property is to capitalism,
what public property is to socialism, communism is to the common.

Bruno Bosteels: Communism in the Age of Terror

Thee epigraphs – Engels in the German Ideology: Communism is not an
ideal, we call communism the real movement which abolishes the current
state of things. Mao: Communism cannot be reached unless there is a
communist movement. Thirdly a graffito: don’t ask what would Jesus do,
ask what would Zizek do!

Did somebody say a left-wing communism? In 1920 Lenin diagnosed the
infantile disorder of left-wing communism, in 1968 Danny the Red and
Cohn-Bendit announced tongue in cheek that leftism was roaming the
streets as remedy for the ‘senile disorder’ of communism. Should we
resort to Lenin’s diagnosis? Or should we expand our voice to paean to
leftism? Can we as a group – everyone – can we come to an agreement to
separate communist hypothesis from the history of leftism? Is there
hope for a new ‘we’ [hopefully not the Zamyatin kind - IT]? The media
will dismiss leftism/extreme gauche as both restricted to academics
and as the equally dubious opposite of the extreme right. Is not the
accusation of ultra-leftism a problem for within communism as well? As
well as of reformism? There are contradictions in the midst of the
people! There is no quick fix in superficial consensus. A work for the
world – united forces. Unlike Marx, Lenin prefers a medical image –
left-wing communism is to be eradicated with the appropriate
medicines, like a childhood disease. Maybe we should catch it when
we’re still young like measles! Perhaps we need more pedagogical
terms. Thus Leftists are communists with ADD. Lenin’s effort involves
principles stance against all bourgeois groups/parliament/trade
unions. Doctrinal repetition of truths of pure communism. Repudiation
of the party principle – in order to overcome leftist trend, Lenin
rolls out masses, classes, parties, why replace all this with some new
rigmarole? M + E struggled with radicalism of Blanqui and communards.

Leftism underwent a reversal of fortunes in the 60s. The Leftist
hypothesis becomes so dominant that it gains new epithets such as
ultra and pseudo-leftisms. Contradiction reduced to unmediated
opposition – masses vs. the state, e.g.. New Philosophers in France –
purification of the Marxist contradiction – state and the police.
Bourgeois Epoch has simplified the opposition – spaltung no longer
opposed bourg/prol, but formless masses vs. excessive form of the
state, modeled on image of the gulag. Creative masses vs. repressive
state – 1968 rhetoric excels in flattening out dialectics – always
creative masses vs. same state power. Mar and Engels already attacked
this when they wrote vs. generic communism. Primacy of politics –
which in Maoism received the name of contradiction. Aesthetic forms of
such a mode – we are under the sway of a melodramatic mode of
presentation – Althusser in For Marx on materialist theatre – a false
dialectic of good/bad conscience. Rancière turns this back against his
former teacher. Simple contradictions are nowhere to be found in
reality – nowhere does power. no-power play itself out. Never any pure
discourse of proletarian power/non-power. Politics vs. the police.
Where is power/non-power tied together in a single knot?

Immanence between power and resistance – vitality of communism within
capitalism – virtually existing communism – this idea has solid
orthodox credentials. Marx and Ruge – conditions for new society are
already present in old one. No mental dividing line between past and
future – mankind is consciously carrying into effect the old world. No
longer break, but a fold or a wrinkle, finding the old warped into the
new. There is an ontological primacy of resistance – overwhelming
power of repression displayed by the state. Not world breaking into
two (Nietzsche), but 2 times 1. Immanent reversibility of
empire/multitude. Two sides of flippable coin. Another world is
possible without a world behind the world.

Current situation and our tasks: where do we stand between left-wing
communism and the ABC of Marxism? All that is left is unlimited energy
of pure communism – that once invoked infamous names, What if
communism is only retained in a Platonic way? Can we still tie the
concept to Marxism? All traditional mediating terms have been taken
out – for a communist invariant? At a distance from the state? Isn’t
this left-wing communism? Crisis as terror – leftism always offers
moral high-ground. Maybe be flip side of turn to right. In speculative
leftism in radical philosophy the most tempting posture is
adventurism. Leftism as beautiful soul of communism yet without his
soul communism is an empty body, if not a corpse. What are the
presuppositions of this impasse? We need to talk about underlying
Maoism of movements today – what about periphery to periphery
association, Japan and Brazil e.g. Some component of Latin America –
we are missing important components of international communism if we
refuse to talk about them. There are new models of the proletariat –
new theories of the revolutionary subject – populist appeal to other
names for as yet unformed masses, Deleuze’s hordes, Hegel’s Pobel.
These are ways of bypassing issues of representation. La potenzia
plebia. unity of intellectual and the people – immanence as potenzia
as difficult to translate as Negri’s potenza – not power, potentiality
or potency. To potentialise, maybe – to actualise that which otherwise
as yet remains potential.

Workers for themselves in face of capitalist determinism for itself –
self-determination. Two tasks in regard to the communist hypothesis –
Badiou’s argument for subtraction – historicizing communist
hypothesis, Axiomatic invariant whenever masses confront poverty,
hierarchy, etc. Our first task amounts to writing history of communist
eternity – not stages, but of sequences of the communist hypothesis in
a strictly immanent determinations. Communism must also be actualized
as a real event - a political subject even if it doesn’t pass through
traditional form of the party. A body for that thought is needed.
Party is finished in 1860 according to Marx after collapse of the
League of Communists. Equality is fundamental – what can be done from
the state in the functioning of the communist horizon? To potentialise
Potentiality. As for those of us with ADD who dream of having no
dealing with the state – abandon all images that would base communism
on bases of human development – this actually confirms tacit
assumption that communism is passing phase within capitalism.

Peter Hallward, Communism of the Intellect, Communism of the Will

Posing question of Communism in terms of its idea. Distinguishes its
idea from practice of anti-capitalism. But danger in equating the two,
concedes too much to capitalism – how long do you have to wait?
Temporality makes it hard to distinguish anti-capitalism from
pro-capitalism. Second, invites free or reckless speculation,
encourages us to detach ourselves from skeptics – ‘how dare you talk
about communism when you don’t have the solution to the historical
problem of communism? An alternative model of distribution?’ etc.
18th/19th century reminiscent of debates about slavery. Abolition
couldn’t eve be raised, question wasn’t posed. We need to anticipate a
solution even when we don’t have a full solution – St Just, John
Brown, Toussaint L’Ouverture, - simply asked what we can do now. Not
writing recipes for the cookbooks for the future – communism as a mode
of production but geared to ideas of producers themselves. Communism
as real movement which abolishes present state of things. Rel to idea
as ideal and as principle of its own realisation. Danger of beautiful
soul, Zizek danger of full identification with realization as such –
imperative to act – acting is form of doing nothing/everything/the
impossible (Stalin’s forced collectivization)/dong something sensible
(Morales, Chavez, Aristide). Is there a common ground between the
ideal and its realization. How far are we preparing ground or digging
the grave?

Question to Hardt – by emphasizing notion of property – and rent from
commons, do we lose some of Marx’s emphasis on equality and the
process of revolt? It is labour is exploited and on that basis we talk
about egalitarian association of free producers. Equality and
exploitation, and what is at stake in actual process of revolt?
Socialized humanity, mastery over nature and own organization. Paris
Commune implemented this project – we could generalize this insistence
on a deliberate process work as necessity to voluntary
self-determination. From work to will – as collective
self-determination. common ground between Badiou and Zizek and Kant
and Hegel.

Jacobins – weren’t communists, but help us to think notion of a
collective will that an help us to work out what we mean by communism.
Dialectical voluntarism – lots of objections. That it is idealism,
folk psychological delusion, vitalism. Problem of the will – even
Badiou and Sartre don’t develop a notion of the will as such,
especially of collective will. Kind of voluntarism PH has in mind is
not conspiratorial putsches – not alchemists of revolution. Not
vanguardist about theory of general will in Rousseau. How can they
impose will on social situation itself?

Collective or Political Will: commentary on Rousseau – 1. political
will is voluntary and involves autonomous action, command, action
through free rational act and deliberation. Robespierre eventually
says: ‘when people will or want to be free they will be’. Will of
people not restricted ala Machiavelli as approval or consent. Kant’s
freely proscribing our own ends. Will is determinate in the first
instance. 2. Political will concerns collective action ad direct
participation. power and practice of inclusive assembly – the will of
the general. inaugural association most voluntary act in the world –
the common master that they have chosen to participate in. Collective
project can be embraced by all the parties involved. A people. 3.
political will is matter of material power before its representation.
Class never separable from its action. Will is a practice that cannot
be representation – we need a critique of political representation.
Taking power not receiving it on the assumption that one already has
it. Living Communism – shack dwellers – the humanity of every human
being. Politics of the places that we hold. Opponents tell them to
wait, to wait forever. 4. political will in grounded in practical
sufficiency of its action. what it does and makes or what it has or
knows. Politics is not aspect of ontology of everyday life. 5. if it
is to persist, popular must be protected or enforced. internal
difference with a group one thing, practical division is another. Must
be one will. The despotism of truth. Make virtue reign. 6. practical
exercise of will only proceeds in the face of resistance. Negative
power to be overcome. Can’t have will without resistance. Terror was
aspect of attempt to continue will of the people. Let us be terrible,
so that the people need not be - Danton. 7. practical exercise of will
is not mere wish or fantasy – will is that which realizes its own
achievement.

Most profound form of disempowerment is a kind of voluntary servitude,
self-subjecting worse than any for of external domination. Fanon,
Aristide, Foucault, Deleuze. We are unable to follow through on our
action, against the war, etc. people are still stubborn in various
parts of the world, whose side are we on?

Question Session

1. What about the capitalist hypothesis! I am a philosopher and I
don’t think that communism is my home. Capitalism is the home of
philosopher – finance is understanding, how value is understanding!
Governments are brought to their knees because they have no
philosophical understanding of the economy. We have highly intelligent
neurons being misdirected!

2. In former Yugoslavia there was idea of social property – private –
state the social property. How does the commons link to social property?
3. Ali Alizadeh – problems with PH – theory of will as
post-revolutionary theory. Conflation of will and action – what stands
between will and action id knowledge or consciousness, will has
primacy in post—revolutionary situation.

MH – We still don’t know what people can do. question of capacities,
for self-rule. Labour not the only way to understand this.

BB – That was a bold act by the first questioner. Which place will
have water in a few hundred years? When the boat is sinking lock
yourself in the first class cabin to write dissertation on Kant’s
Critique of Pure Reason. Ha ha ha ha!

SZ – the only philosopher I know who is at home in capitalism is Ayn
Rand. Philosophy is always about problems! Not an equal debate – where
were we invited there, to capitalist conferences?! On changing human
nature – we can now literally change human nature, Desire – it is
fashionable to say desire – but I am opposed to Freudian-Marxism,
which evokes psychoanalysis to not think about Marxism. Revolution
doesn’t happen instead of questioning presuppositions, Freudianism
makes things easier to accept the failures of political practice. I am
not for this.

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