Siah
14-10-04, 22:31
The World
7 Thoughts in May 2003
by Subcomandante Marcos
Rebeldia
Introduction
While the Power's calendars break down, and while the large media corporations vacillate between those absurdities and tragedies being staged and promoted by the world's political class, below, in the great and extensive basement of the tottering modern Tower of Babel, the movements are not ceasing and, even though they are still faltering, they are beginning to regain the word and their ability to act as mirror and lens. While the politics of discord are being decreed above, in the basement of the world, the others are finding each other and the other who, being different, is another below.
As part of this rebuilding of the word as mirror and lens, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation has reengaged in dialogues with social and political movements and organizations in the world. Initially - with brothers and sisters from Mexico, Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland, the Spanish State, Argentina and the American Union - it has been about building a common Agenda for discussion.
It is not an attempt to establish political and programmatic agreements, nor to attempt a new version of the International. Nor does it have to do with unifying theoretical concepts or standardizing conceptions, but with finding, and or building, common points of discussion. Something like constructing theoretical and practical images which are seen and experienced from different places.
As part of this effort at encuentro, the EZLN is now presenting these 7 thoughts. Anchoring them in a space and time horizon means, for us, a recognition of our theoretical, practical and, above all universal, visionary limitations. This is our first contribution to the building of a world Agenda for discussion.
We are grateful to the Mexican magazine Rebeldía for having opened their pages for these thoughts. We are equally grateful to those publications in Italy, France, the Spanish State, the American Union and Latin American which do the same.
I. Theory
The position of theory (and of theoretical analysis) in political and social movements is usually obvious. However, everything obvious usually conceals a problem, in this case: that of the effects of a theory on practice and the theoretical "rebound" of the latter.
I am not equating the idea of "theoretician" or "theoretical analyst" with that of "intellectual." The latter is more broad. The theoretician is an intellectual, but the intellectual is not always a theoretician.
The intellectual (and, therefore, the theoretician) feels that he has the right to express his opinion concerning movements. It is not his right, it is his duty. Some intellectuals go further and become the new "political commissars" of thought and of action, handing out titles of "good" and "bad." Their "judgment" has to do with the position they are in and with the position which they aspire to be in.
We think that a movement should not "return" the judgments which it receives and classify intellectuals as "good" or "bad," according to how those intellectuals characterize the movement. Anti-intellectualism is nothing more than a misunderstood self apologia and, as such, it marks a movement as being "adolescent."
We believe that the word leaves traces, traces mark directions, directions entail definitions and commitments. Those who commit their word for or against a movement have a responsibility not only to talk about it, but also to "hone" it, keeping its objectives in mind. "For what?" and "Against what?" are questions which should accompany the word. Not in order to silence it or to lower its voice, but in order to complete it and to make it effective. In other words, so that what it speaks can be heard by the one who should hear it.
Producing theory from within a social or political movement is not the same as producing it from within academia. And I am not speaking of "academia" in the sense of sterility or (nonexistent) scientific "objectivity," but only in order to note the place of reflection and intellectual production as being "outside" of a movement. And "outside" does not mean that there are no "sympathies" or "antipathies," but that that intellectual production does not take place within the movement, rather above it. And so the academic analyst assesses and judges good and bad points, wise moves and errors, of past and present movements, and, in addition, ventures prophecies concerning directions and fates.
Sometimes it so happens that certain academic analysts aspire to lead a movement, that is, that the movement should follow his directives. And so the academic's basic reproach is that the movement is not "obeying" him. That all of the movement's errors are owing, fundamentally, to the fact that they are not clearly seeing what is obvious to the academic. Lack of memory and dishonesty are generally pervasive (not always, it's true) among these armchair analysts. One day they say one thing, and they predict something, on the other the opposite happens, but the analyst has lost his memory and goes back to theorizing while ignoring what he said previously. In addition to that, he is also being dishonest, because he does not bother to respect his readers or listeners. He will never say "yesterday I said this, and it didn't happen or the opposite happened, I was wrong." Hooked on the "today" of the media, the armchair theoretician seizes the opportunity to "forget." This academic produces the theoretical equivalent of junk food of the intellect. In other words, it does not nourish, it only distracts.
Other times, a movement replaces its spontaneity with the theoretical patronage of academia. The solution is usually more detrimental than the deficiency. If academia is wrong, it "forgets." If the movement is wrong, it fails. Occasionally the leadership of a movement seeks a "theoretical alibi," that is, something which backs it up and lends coherence to its practices. It then goes to academia in order to accumulate it. In these cases, theory is nothing more than an uncritical and somewhat rhetorical apologia.
We believe that a movement should produce its own theoretical reflection (note: not its apologia). There it can incorporate what is impossible in an armchair theory, that is, the transformative practices of that movement. We have preferred to listen and discuss with those who analyze and reflect theoretically in and with movements and organizations, and not outside them or, which is worse, at their expense. We have, nonetheless, made an effort to listen to all voices, paying attention not to who is speaking, but from where they are speaking.
In our theoretical reflections, we talk about what we see as tendencies, not consummated or inevitable acts. Tendencies which have not only not yet become homogeneous and hegemonic (yet), but which can (and should) be reverted to.
Our theoretical reflection as zapatistas is not generally about ourselves, but about the reality in which we move. And its nature is approximate and limited in time, in space, in concepts and in the structure of those concepts. That is why we reject attempts at universality and eternity in what we say and do.
Answers to questions about zapatismo are not in our theoretical reflections and analyses, but in our practice. And practice, in our case, carries a heavy moral, ethical burden. That is, we try to act (not always successfully) in accordance not only with a theoretical analysis, but also, and above all, according to what we consider our duty to be. We try to be consistent, always. Perhaps that is why we are not pragmatic (another way of saying "action without theory and without principles").
Vanguards feel the duty to direct something or someone (and in this sense they demonstrate many similarities with academic theoreticians). Vanguards set out to lead and they work for that. Some of them are even willing to pay the price for errors and deviations in their political work. Academics do not.
We believe that our duty is initiating, following, accompanying, finding and opening spaces for something and someone, including ourselves.
A tour, even if it is merely expository, of the different resistances in a nation or on the planet, is not just an inventory. There one can divine, even more than the present, the future.
Those who are part of that tour, and those who make the inventory, can discover things that those who add and subtract in the armchairs of the social sciences cannot manage to see. To wit, that the traveler and his path matter, yes, but what matters above all is the path, the direction, the tendency. In noting and analyzing, in discussing and arguing, we are doing so not only in order to know what is happening and to understand it, but also, and above all, in order to try and transform it.
II. The Nation State and the Polis
In the dying calendar of the Nation States, the political class was the one which had decision-making Power. A Power which did, in fact, take into consideration economic, ideological and social power, but which maintained a relative autonomy in relation to them. That relative autonomy gave it the ability to "see beyond" and to lead national societies to that future. In that future, economic power not only continued to be power, but it was the most powerful.
In the art of politics, the artist of the polis, the one who governs, was then a specialized conductor, knowledgeable in the sciences and the human arts, including military ones. The wisdom of governing consists in suitably managing the different resources for leading the State. Greater or lesser recourse to one or the other of these resources defines the style of government. Balanced administration, politics and repression, an advanced democracy. Much politics, little administration and hidden repression, a populist regime. Much repression and no politics or administration, a military dictatorship.
At that time, in the international division of labor, statesmen (and stateswomen) belonged to developed capitalism. Those countries with deformed capitalism had governments of thugs. Military dictatorships represented the true face of modernity: a bloodthirsty, animal face. The democracies were not just a mask which concealed that brutal essence. They were also preparing Nations for a new stage, where money would find better conditions for growth. Globalization, that is, making the world world-wide, is not marked by just the digital technological revolution. Money's ever-present internationalist designs found the means and conditions for destroying those obstacles which were preventing it from carrying out its vocation: conquering the entire planet with its logic. One of those obstacles, borders and Nation States, suffered and are suffering a world war (the 4th). Nation States are confronting this war without economic, political, military and ideological resources and also, as recent wars and free trade agreements have demonstrated, without legal defenses.
History did not end with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the defeat of the socialist camp. The New World Order is still an objective in the battle formation of money, but now the Nation State is lying in the field, in its death throes and waiting for help to arrive.
We call the management collective that has displaced the political class in basic decision making the "society of Power." It is a group which does not just hold economic power, and it does not do so in just one nation. More than being organically drawn together (according to the "anonymous society" model), the "society of Power" is trying to fill the vacuum left by the Nation States and their political classes. "The "society of Power" controls financial bodies (and, therefore, entire countries), the media, industrial and commercial corporations, centers of education, armies and public and private police. The "society of Power" desires a World State with a supranational government, but it is not engaged in building it.
Globalization has been a traumatic experience for humanity, yes, but especially for the society of Power. Weighed down by the effort to pass, without any mediation, from the barrios or communities to the Hyper-Polis, from the local to the global, and while the supranational government is being built, the society of Power has taken refuge once again in a fading Nation State. The Nation State of the society of Power only gives an impression of vigor, which is quite schizophrenic. A hologram, that is the Nation State in the metropolis.
Maintained for decades as the reference point for stability, the Nation State is ceasing to exist, but its hologram remains, fed by those dogmas which are fighting to fill the vacuum which has been not only produced by globalization, but also emphasized by it. The making the world world-wide in time and space is, for Power, something which still must be directed. The "others" are no longer somewhere else, but everywhere and all the time. And for the Power, the "other" is a threat. How is that threat to be confronted? Raising the hologram of the nation and denouncing the "other" as aggressor. Wasn't one of Señor Bush's arguments for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that both were threatening the North American "nation"? But, apart from the "reality" created by CNN, the flags which are waving in Kabul and Baghdad are not the stars and stripes, but those of the great multinational corporations.
In the hologram of the Nation State, the fallacy par excellence of modernity, c'est a dire, "individual liberty," has been taken prisoner in a jail which is no less oppressive for the fact that it is global. The individual is so blurred that not even the images of yesterday's heroes can offer the most minimal hope of standing out. The "self made man" no longer exists, and, given that it is impossible to speak of a "self made corporation," social expectations are adrift. What is the hope? Going back to fighting for the street, the barrio? Neither. The fragmentation has been so ruthless and reckless that not even those minimal units of identity have remained stable. The family home? Where and how? If television came in like a queen through the front door, the internet hacked its way in through the crack of cyberspace. Almost every house on the planet was recently invaded by the British and North American troops which occupied Iraq.
7 Thoughts in May 2003
by Subcomandante Marcos
Rebeldia
Introduction
While the Power's calendars break down, and while the large media corporations vacillate between those absurdities and tragedies being staged and promoted by the world's political class, below, in the great and extensive basement of the tottering modern Tower of Babel, the movements are not ceasing and, even though they are still faltering, they are beginning to regain the word and their ability to act as mirror and lens. While the politics of discord are being decreed above, in the basement of the world, the others are finding each other and the other who, being different, is another below.
As part of this rebuilding of the word as mirror and lens, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation has reengaged in dialogues with social and political movements and organizations in the world. Initially - with brothers and sisters from Mexico, Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland, the Spanish State, Argentina and the American Union - it has been about building a common Agenda for discussion.
It is not an attempt to establish political and programmatic agreements, nor to attempt a new version of the International. Nor does it have to do with unifying theoretical concepts or standardizing conceptions, but with finding, and or building, common points of discussion. Something like constructing theoretical and practical images which are seen and experienced from different places.
As part of this effort at encuentro, the EZLN is now presenting these 7 thoughts. Anchoring them in a space and time horizon means, for us, a recognition of our theoretical, practical and, above all universal, visionary limitations. This is our first contribution to the building of a world Agenda for discussion.
We are grateful to the Mexican magazine Rebeldía for having opened their pages for these thoughts. We are equally grateful to those publications in Italy, France, the Spanish State, the American Union and Latin American which do the same.
I. Theory
The position of theory (and of theoretical analysis) in political and social movements is usually obvious. However, everything obvious usually conceals a problem, in this case: that of the effects of a theory on practice and the theoretical "rebound" of the latter.
I am not equating the idea of "theoretician" or "theoretical analyst" with that of "intellectual." The latter is more broad. The theoretician is an intellectual, but the intellectual is not always a theoretician.
The intellectual (and, therefore, the theoretician) feels that he has the right to express his opinion concerning movements. It is not his right, it is his duty. Some intellectuals go further and become the new "political commissars" of thought and of action, handing out titles of "good" and "bad." Their "judgment" has to do with the position they are in and with the position which they aspire to be in.
We think that a movement should not "return" the judgments which it receives and classify intellectuals as "good" or "bad," according to how those intellectuals characterize the movement. Anti-intellectualism is nothing more than a misunderstood self apologia and, as such, it marks a movement as being "adolescent."
We believe that the word leaves traces, traces mark directions, directions entail definitions and commitments. Those who commit their word for or against a movement have a responsibility not only to talk about it, but also to "hone" it, keeping its objectives in mind. "For what?" and "Against what?" are questions which should accompany the word. Not in order to silence it or to lower its voice, but in order to complete it and to make it effective. In other words, so that what it speaks can be heard by the one who should hear it.
Producing theory from within a social or political movement is not the same as producing it from within academia. And I am not speaking of "academia" in the sense of sterility or (nonexistent) scientific "objectivity," but only in order to note the place of reflection and intellectual production as being "outside" of a movement. And "outside" does not mean that there are no "sympathies" or "antipathies," but that that intellectual production does not take place within the movement, rather above it. And so the academic analyst assesses and judges good and bad points, wise moves and errors, of past and present movements, and, in addition, ventures prophecies concerning directions and fates.
Sometimes it so happens that certain academic analysts aspire to lead a movement, that is, that the movement should follow his directives. And so the academic's basic reproach is that the movement is not "obeying" him. That all of the movement's errors are owing, fundamentally, to the fact that they are not clearly seeing what is obvious to the academic. Lack of memory and dishonesty are generally pervasive (not always, it's true) among these armchair analysts. One day they say one thing, and they predict something, on the other the opposite happens, but the analyst has lost his memory and goes back to theorizing while ignoring what he said previously. In addition to that, he is also being dishonest, because he does not bother to respect his readers or listeners. He will never say "yesterday I said this, and it didn't happen or the opposite happened, I was wrong." Hooked on the "today" of the media, the armchair theoretician seizes the opportunity to "forget." This academic produces the theoretical equivalent of junk food of the intellect. In other words, it does not nourish, it only distracts.
Other times, a movement replaces its spontaneity with the theoretical patronage of academia. The solution is usually more detrimental than the deficiency. If academia is wrong, it "forgets." If the movement is wrong, it fails. Occasionally the leadership of a movement seeks a "theoretical alibi," that is, something which backs it up and lends coherence to its practices. It then goes to academia in order to accumulate it. In these cases, theory is nothing more than an uncritical and somewhat rhetorical apologia.
We believe that a movement should produce its own theoretical reflection (note: not its apologia). There it can incorporate what is impossible in an armchair theory, that is, the transformative practices of that movement. We have preferred to listen and discuss with those who analyze and reflect theoretically in and with movements and organizations, and not outside them or, which is worse, at their expense. We have, nonetheless, made an effort to listen to all voices, paying attention not to who is speaking, but from where they are speaking.
In our theoretical reflections, we talk about what we see as tendencies, not consummated or inevitable acts. Tendencies which have not only not yet become homogeneous and hegemonic (yet), but which can (and should) be reverted to.
Our theoretical reflection as zapatistas is not generally about ourselves, but about the reality in which we move. And its nature is approximate and limited in time, in space, in concepts and in the structure of those concepts. That is why we reject attempts at universality and eternity in what we say and do.
Answers to questions about zapatismo are not in our theoretical reflections and analyses, but in our practice. And practice, in our case, carries a heavy moral, ethical burden. That is, we try to act (not always successfully) in accordance not only with a theoretical analysis, but also, and above all, according to what we consider our duty to be. We try to be consistent, always. Perhaps that is why we are not pragmatic (another way of saying "action without theory and without principles").
Vanguards feel the duty to direct something or someone (and in this sense they demonstrate many similarities with academic theoreticians). Vanguards set out to lead and they work for that. Some of them are even willing to pay the price for errors and deviations in their political work. Academics do not.
We believe that our duty is initiating, following, accompanying, finding and opening spaces for something and someone, including ourselves.
A tour, even if it is merely expository, of the different resistances in a nation or on the planet, is not just an inventory. There one can divine, even more than the present, the future.
Those who are part of that tour, and those who make the inventory, can discover things that those who add and subtract in the armchairs of the social sciences cannot manage to see. To wit, that the traveler and his path matter, yes, but what matters above all is the path, the direction, the tendency. In noting and analyzing, in discussing and arguing, we are doing so not only in order to know what is happening and to understand it, but also, and above all, in order to try and transform it.
II. The Nation State and the Polis
In the dying calendar of the Nation States, the political class was the one which had decision-making Power. A Power which did, in fact, take into consideration economic, ideological and social power, but which maintained a relative autonomy in relation to them. That relative autonomy gave it the ability to "see beyond" and to lead national societies to that future. In that future, economic power not only continued to be power, but it was the most powerful.
In the art of politics, the artist of the polis, the one who governs, was then a specialized conductor, knowledgeable in the sciences and the human arts, including military ones. The wisdom of governing consists in suitably managing the different resources for leading the State. Greater or lesser recourse to one or the other of these resources defines the style of government. Balanced administration, politics and repression, an advanced democracy. Much politics, little administration and hidden repression, a populist regime. Much repression and no politics or administration, a military dictatorship.
At that time, in the international division of labor, statesmen (and stateswomen) belonged to developed capitalism. Those countries with deformed capitalism had governments of thugs. Military dictatorships represented the true face of modernity: a bloodthirsty, animal face. The democracies were not just a mask which concealed that brutal essence. They were also preparing Nations for a new stage, where money would find better conditions for growth. Globalization, that is, making the world world-wide, is not marked by just the digital technological revolution. Money's ever-present internationalist designs found the means and conditions for destroying those obstacles which were preventing it from carrying out its vocation: conquering the entire planet with its logic. One of those obstacles, borders and Nation States, suffered and are suffering a world war (the 4th). Nation States are confronting this war without economic, political, military and ideological resources and also, as recent wars and free trade agreements have demonstrated, without legal defenses.
History did not end with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the defeat of the socialist camp. The New World Order is still an objective in the battle formation of money, but now the Nation State is lying in the field, in its death throes and waiting for help to arrive.
We call the management collective that has displaced the political class in basic decision making the "society of Power." It is a group which does not just hold economic power, and it does not do so in just one nation. More than being organically drawn together (according to the "anonymous society" model), the "society of Power" is trying to fill the vacuum left by the Nation States and their political classes. "The "society of Power" controls financial bodies (and, therefore, entire countries), the media, industrial and commercial corporations, centers of education, armies and public and private police. The "society of Power" desires a World State with a supranational government, but it is not engaged in building it.
Globalization has been a traumatic experience for humanity, yes, but especially for the society of Power. Weighed down by the effort to pass, without any mediation, from the barrios or communities to the Hyper-Polis, from the local to the global, and while the supranational government is being built, the society of Power has taken refuge once again in a fading Nation State. The Nation State of the society of Power only gives an impression of vigor, which is quite schizophrenic. A hologram, that is the Nation State in the metropolis.
Maintained for decades as the reference point for stability, the Nation State is ceasing to exist, but its hologram remains, fed by those dogmas which are fighting to fill the vacuum which has been not only produced by globalization, but also emphasized by it. The making the world world-wide in time and space is, for Power, something which still must be directed. The "others" are no longer somewhere else, but everywhere and all the time. And for the Power, the "other" is a threat. How is that threat to be confronted? Raising the hologram of the nation and denouncing the "other" as aggressor. Wasn't one of Señor Bush's arguments for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that both were threatening the North American "nation"? But, apart from the "reality" created by CNN, the flags which are waving in Kabul and Baghdad are not the stars and stripes, but those of the great multinational corporations.
In the hologram of the Nation State, the fallacy par excellence of modernity, c'est a dire, "individual liberty," has been taken prisoner in a jail which is no less oppressive for the fact that it is global. The individual is so blurred that not even the images of yesterday's heroes can offer the most minimal hope of standing out. The "self made man" no longer exists, and, given that it is impossible to speak of a "self made corporation," social expectations are adrift. What is the hope? Going back to fighting for the street, the barrio? Neither. The fragmentation has been so ruthless and reckless that not even those minimal units of identity have remained stable. The family home? Where and how? If television came in like a queen through the front door, the internet hacked its way in through the crack of cyberspace. Almost every house on the planet was recently invaded by the British and North American troops which occupied Iraq.