Apart from literature for my thesis papers, I started reading some interesting political books these months, and slowly but surely finishing them. Planning to write some proper reviews when done, now some initial impressions:

Dealing with Distractions: Confronting Green Capitalism in Copenhagen and Beyond

I was really impressed by the design and layout of the new issue of the Turbulence mag, but the content was a bit of a disappointment. Between the strikingly beautiful and monotone pictures of braking horizons I began to see the point of those people who speak about how reformist Climate Camp

, and also how it shows a new more closely knit configuration of the traditional mix of radical elements and reformist NGO processes. Most articles were critical but at the same time investing "hope" in shallow processes that were before easily dismissed by people who already decided to organise themselves outside legality. For example about Obama, that he is fake but he still brings some positive change in the game. Not that I disagree with these conclusions, but the overall tone of the articles were so "balanced" that I would hardly call the publication "subversive".

On the other hand, Dealing with Distractions was exactly the opposite: while it has little analysis of actual world affairs, especially compared to the other one, it has a fine selection of articles that offer a very clear stand against the new world order of Green Capitalism. There are historical and sociological essays, manifestoes and thesises, all on the very points that are often missed out by simple critics. It provides a platform for reflection and action and defines the new playing field. I am working with others to translate some of the articles into Hungarian and hopefully disseminate and discuss them.

The main argument as far as I gauged for now is that if the green movement merely pushed its arguments through the industry and the state, it will probably mean a stronger state and an industry that is still exploiting people. Biopolitical control based on a more sophisticated and micro-level surveillance and control machine will be necessary to comply with all the miriad propositions that are demanded by the the green platform. Basically it is the red and black argument that mixes with the green one: caring about the planet shouldn't mean forgetting about the people.

I think there was a moment before Copenhagen when people started to play with the idea that the far-green movement would really have an impact without bringing the whole anticapitalist movement with it, and followed that thread of thought to its ultimate conclusion. Even if COP15 turned out to be the empty shell everybody knew it was, these arguments are still orientating in a world where McDonalds in London advertises its local field chickens, which shows that there really is a consumer power and a change of mass mentality which can influence the evil players. That one about the chickens is intriguing: (1) it counters McDo's picture of the ultimate evil urban food source, (2) it caters for the animal rights movement which is one of the strongest in the UK, (3) it has its green (sustainable) undertones, a nod for the other powerful UK movement, (4) and of course it is a nationalist move as well to have English burgers from English chickens.

End Notes 1

The typography of this volume comes close to a Bauhaus elegance and clarity, which combines pleasure and utility of handling. It may be my own snobbish attitude, but I found the careful understated preparation of the outlook a good reflection of the careful argumentations of the text. That is where I really came to appreciate old-school anarchocommunist groups: they have a real continuity of consciousness, unlike most anarchist initiatives. Instead of citing random examples and experiments, they can reflect on whole historical processes of resistance and come up with conclusions that are organically unfolding from past experiences to address present questions of strategy, tactics and theory. It is a real pleasure to see how such a semiunderground tradition can function: to find that small groups still read the writings of similar groups through the decades and maintain a conversation, follow an argument, etc. That kind of historical consciousness is something that I really miss from most of present anarchist efforts.

Moreover, the publication is a good example of the debate between marxist groups that can remain productive and doesn't end up with the parties hating each other more than their enemy. It is the blueprint of an exchange between two groups, Troploin and Theorie Communiste with several authors and throughout some years. The topic is how the concept workers' self management, which was advanced by anarchocommunists and syndicalists and arrived to a new rennaisance in the 70s workerist movement eventually lost its validity. As far as I understand this change happened in the wider context of the crossfade between workerist and autonomist movements. However, as I mentioned above, the authors draw on a wide range of interconnected historical processes, incorporating the experiences of bureacratic capitalism or "existing socialism" in the Soviet block as well as Tito's take on socialism in Yugoslavia, etc.

The debate is as much about method as about conclusions. The arguments I liked the most have a strict pro-proletarian and historical approach. Maybe they are even too idealist, but as many people know, there is a special place in my heart for Hegel. Anyway, the idea is that workers' self-management is not a bad idea per se, because there an idea is only good or bad in a precise historical context. Workers' self-management was a real potential and a progressive horizon in some given historical scenarios, and it became obsolete exactly because the actual struggle went beyond it. (Sadly/obviously that is not the same as realising the concept itself.) The admirable advantage of that argument is that it doesn't create a neutral present from which we judge the struggles of old times, arriving to the conclusion that nobody was as radical as we are, albeit in our ideas only. On the contrary: it enables a relation to past struggles where we can both appreciate our ancestors and not think them stupid or counterrevolutionary, a relation that inspires us to continue the struggle from where they left off.

So what is the problem with workers' self-management? That the self-management of production by the working class is just that: the self-management of the same exploitation. Since a real communist struggles for the abolishing of the working class, not merely its hegemony, the situation when for a moment workers control their own life should not be the situation in which they use their fresh freedom to return to the assembly line. But more on that when I finished the book and I can lay out the whole story in a manner described above.

Autonomia: Post-Political Politics

One of the three key English language sources on the "long '68" in Italy, when autonomist movement emerged from the workerist current. The other two are Radical Thought in Italy: A Potential Politics edited by Hardt and Virno, and the excellent history-of-ideas reconstruction by Steve Wright, Storming Heaven: Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomi. While the latter provides much context and the former gives an impression of the powerful ideas that came out of those historical moments, these texts are really framed as documents in the most direct sense of the word. Radical Thought opens with Hardt's excellent introduction which established the relevance of the texts to the political situation in which the reader was published, and the Wright book is really a retrospective scholarly study of the era. This book begins with excerpts from Sylvére Lotringer's diary of his visit to Italy in 1979. It is a fascinating read, another candidate for translation into Hungarian. It reads like a new wave spy novel, in the style of the early Godard, about the topics of the director's middle maoist period. By now I've covered most of the texts, but it's still too fresh to put into words.

Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropogy

This book will inspire generations of researchers because of the following reasons:

1. It is written in a very accessible language and it is short.
2. It is openly, and specifically anarchist.
3. It is "pregnant with possibilities" in the sense that it contains many research ideas that invite further elaboration, so that it is easy to base future work on it.

On the other hand, it is also inspiring for laymen and would-be anthropologists, since it argues nicely why antrhopology as a field of research is important for anarchists. It has most of the data about actually existing societies that are egalitarian and no states. If you think that's irrelevant, read on.

Unlike the other ones, I actually finished this one! It is a rather rare volume in the sense that it is openly written from a committed anarchist platform yet it also addresses an academic question and an academic (as well as general) audience. It is basically a pamphlet about anthropology and anarchism, as it says, in fragments. These fragments have some structure -- I will presently write up a table of contents because in fact these fragments come together quite nicely:

• Why there are so few anarchists in the academy?
• Graves, Brown, Mauss, Sorel
• The anarchist anthropology that almost already does exist
• Blowing up walls
• Tenets of a non-existing science
• (Anarchy)
• Anthropology (in which the author reluctantly bites the hand that feeds him)

The first chapter examines the contrast between Marxist and anarchist discourse and the former's unparalleled success in the academia. The analysis sets out from the superficial linguistic difference apparent in these discourses that communist theory is based around authors (Maoism, Leninism, Althusserian sociology, etc.), while anarchist discourse is based on practices (Syndicalism, Mutualism, Primitivism, etc.). So while leftist thinking focuses on authoritative father figures, anarchist thinking is tied to concrete movements. It is an interesting notion especially because while communism was a very real force on the historical stage of the last centuries, anarchism had only smaller roles. On the other hand, Graeber refers to Barbara Epstein who argues that by now both social movements and theorists replaced their Marxist inspiration with an anarchist one, even though anarchism is as much (or even more) an undercurrent of these processes as communism has been of the past ones. At this point I would add a notion about the diversity of anarchist thought that further underlines the first linguistic argument and ties it together with the second influence-based argument. Unlike the Marxist/communist discourse, anarchism managed to blend with a great number of other currents, which is shown even in its taxonomy. We speak about anarcho-communism, anarcho-feminism, eco-anarchism, anarcho-primitivism, anarcho-surrealism and ontological anarchism, etc. It seems that anarchism has had an affinity with almost all of the leftist ideas of the past two centuries.

Going deeper into the examination of the nature of these discourses (other than their linguistic taxonomy or their historical influence), the author arrives to a double conclusion:

1. Marxism has tended to be a theoretical and analytical discourse about revolutionary strategy.
2. Anarchism has tended to be an ethical discourse about revolutionary practice.

That echoes my frustration that especially nowadays in the anarchist/activist scene there is such a poverty of strategic ideas, which is all the more sad since there already seem to be a rough consensus about tactics and ultimate goals. What is missing is a kind of narrative that would define how these tactics can be applied effectively in order to achieve those goals. The goals are more or less defined in the last but one chapter of this book, amongst other places, and the tactics are very known to anybody familiar with the European underground: black block, food not bombs, clown army, squatting, blockade and occupation, independent media, etc. The alterglobalisation movement had at least summit hopping as a middle term strategy and the destruction of G8, IMF and World Bank as middle term goals, and these were more or less achieved by now. That's why the movement is experiencing a low tide, because the existing networks that are organised around some important topics don't have a unifying strategy and some concrete demands around which they could build an effective, coordinated struggle. In the long term, however, contemporary anarchist inspired activity needs a widely recognised theory of transition, a strategy for achieving hegemony. But as Graeber writes, there is no necessary reason why anarchists should be against theory, it is not just the main thrust of the discourse, so there is hope.

The second chapter is a kind of historical recapitulation that moves from the general area of academic discourse into the specific territory of anthropology proper, examining the anarchist tendencies in classical anthropology (Mauss et al). The third one deals with more contemporary developments in which Graeber situates his own work. The names which are mentioned are Clastres, whose antietatist anthropological arguments are still the most powerful antiauthoritarian investigations in the field, Hakim Bey whose work on pirates and other subcultures is closely coupled with the analyses of contemporary urban resistance, and the middle period of Antonio Negri whose (not anthropological) books on constituent power undermine the sovereignity-centred statist discourse by proposing an alternative starting point.

Here, in the middle of the small volume, are the most original ideas of Graeber, based on his field work in Madagascar. If for a moment we are really looking at the narrow scientific value of the book, it can be argued that the chapters before are the introduction and the chapters following are the afterword for the idea set out here. As far as I could make out, this is an argument about imaginary counterpower. Setting out from Clastres, Graeber argues that the more egalitarian a given society is, the more haunted it is by repressive and violent myths that mirror the conflicts inherent in keeping cohesion in a horizontal powerstructure. "Every society is in war with itself" is one nice notion, and since these societies are rather peaceful, their conflicts are shifted to the plain of discourse.

The "read on" part mentioned earlier comes next, under the heading "Blowing up walls". It is an quasi-original supporting argument for the previous one about imaginary counterpower in nonstate egalitarian societies. When anthropologist present the data about these experiences one frequent counterargument is that these societies cannot be compared to our postindustrial society because they are more limited and less complex and sophisticated. In one world, our civilisation is superior. Of course it is easy to answer that this is a racist notion, but Graeber lays out the evidence, the literature and the ideas to make that easy argument in a convincing manner. There are many good reasons why other societies are as complex, historically situated and generally developed as our own. However, the arguments that would explain the global hegemony exercised by Western empires are a bit slim.

After that moment the book becomes a bit sketchy, with three chapters on various topics that contain lists with a bit of elaboration for each item. Firstly, there is an excellent and inspiring list of topics that anarchists anthropologists should develop. Since it is so productive, let me recount them here:

Tenets of a non-existing science

1. A theory of the state
2. A theory of political entities that are not states
3. Yet another theory of capitalism
4. Power/ignorance, power/stupidity
5. An ecology of volutary associations
6. A theory of political happiness
7. Hierarchy
8. Suffering and pleasure: on the privatisation of desire
9. One or several theories of alienation

Secondly, there is a kind of appendix (without a title) about the idea of Anarchy. Since the list represents a rough consensus of contemporary activist anarchists I would not dwell on it for long. You can ask your local anarchist and she will tell you similar things. Of course, that is not the weakness but the strenghts of the chapter.

Thirdly and also lastly, there is an autotherapic chapter on anthropologic discourse and research practices per se. Recounting the difficulties inherent in anthropology and field work is important since these are the reasons most anthropologists would prefer to say meaningless or overspecific things instead of supplying the general conclusions about mankind and the possibilities of societies that they could. For example, anthropology has its colonial origins when it was used to "getting to know the enemy". Then, there is the burgouise romanticism that ruled the second phase of anthropological history, when practitioners projected the otherness of their own culture on the "savages", so in describing different societies they often just explored their own subconscious. Both negative currents are still present in contemporary society and scientific discourse, and Graeber shows how. The former example is how every single act is reduced to a market act, like going out is described as nothing but consumption. The latter example is how the vocabulary of poststructuralism replaced the authentic native terms anthropologists were using to describe noncapitalist societies. Finally, there is a rather convincing closing presentation about the perception of Zapatista autonomy, how it aspires to work out another kind of social logic and how it is in defiance of that ambition has been perceived as an "indigineous" movement that is only accepted to assert ideas about "indigineous people", never about our shared reality.

Get the book by any means necessary and don't fear to read it because it is both very short and very accessible. As I wrote it is a cocktail of manifestoes that could possibly start a current of its own. Let me conclude with a quote: "In many ways, anthropology seems to be a discipline terrified of its own potential."