What the hell is wrong with Solidarity? (or, "we are all of the rabble")

Nate very generously engages one of my earlier posts on solidarity. He raises a number of very interesting objections and reservations.

1. Solidarity  "is primarily defensive, seeking to stop or slow attacks. That’s something tremendously important but severely limited and reactive. What’s needed is to organize further, to go on the offensive (in wob terms, to organize the unorganized)."

2.  In Nate's experience "the organizational form of the party expresses anything but solidarity. I was close to the PLP for a while, and the relationships there were anything but transparent or mutually supportive or positive. They were rather quite instrumental and instrumentalizing."

3. Solidarity sounds like 'democratic centralism" and masks power relations.

4. "What’s needed are less concepts of political relations and more techniques for their practice." And, "practices of solidarity need more investigation as well, though I think there’s as much or more to be done on this in terms of historical research and literature as there is in theory and philosophy."

I'll try to address them in reverse order.

4.  I agree--but I don't think it is helpful to oppose theory and practice, particularly when one is calling for more investigation. How can we know what techniques and practices are valuable and useful if we don't know what we mean by solidarity? Some might say that for really good Party discipline, a secret police is necessary. But, if one is skeptical regarding either the end of discipline or the means of police, then it's back to the drawing board of theory and practice.

3.  Solidarity can mask power relations. Love can mask power relations. Giving a gift can mask power relations. So, what's the point? It strikes me as important to explore what sorts of relations of power within an organization are productive and what sorts are counter productive. I don't think that power relations are natural or given. Nor are they necessarily wrong. Presumably, Nate has in mind important histories of struggle within workers, women's, and anti-racist movements, all of which have witnessed various problems, exclusions, and injuries. It's even the case in the free and open source community, in indy media, among activists in every sector. Does this mean that a goal of solidarity, of commitment among members is pointless? To my mind, that is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

I'll add on this point that my early (1996) book, Solidarity of Strangers, was a response to the fragmentations of identity politics wherein affiliation was tied to various claims to and practices of identity. I offered instead the formal notion of solidarity as "the mutual expectation of a responsible orientation to relationship." I now think this is too abstract and universalistic--primarily because the ideas of responsibility and relationship depended on a grounding in communicative action.

What I now think is that there are times and places where the specificities of feelings and identities don't matter, where one want personally wants--or wants to express--is really quite beside the point. I also think that, among some activists at least, there is a desire to eliminate sexist, racist, and homophobic interactions so as to better enable larger groups to form and work together. When there is a sense of a commitment to a common Truth (an evental Truth) and to the Party as the form for realizing that Truth, then both the irrelevance of individual feeling and attentive to others can ensure that the commitment to the common Truth anchors the group overall.

2.  Yes. Historically it has been the case that Party structures have been instrumentalizing. Families are often abusive and screw up their kids. Crops fail. The question is whether an aspiration to a solidarity amongst the Left as well as to the political responsibility that the Party form demands is a worthwhile aspiration. Hardt and Negri, of course, would likely disagree. Their multitude doesn't need a Party. Yet, it doesn't seem to me that in the face of neoliberal capitalism, on one side, and a crazed US regime refusing forms of interstate cooperation and basically leading the world toward catastrophe, on the other, that a multiplicity of disconnected struggles, interventions, reinterpretations, is effective. It seems to me that the right has been winning through a divide and conquer strategy, a strategy that benefits primarily from networked communications that enable and facilitate fragmentation and individuation.

1.    I fully agree that organizing the unorganized is absolutely vital. But, what exactly does organized mean? What are the unorganized being organized into? What kind of organization? Barnes and Noble wants me to be a 'member' by buying a card for discounts in their store. What sort of notion of membership is this? Not simply a weak one--it's a debasement of the term, membership is another word here for customer. Mainstream political parties seem to expect basically the same thing--membership is also mediated through money, wherein this time to be a member is to be a donor. This is also the problem with Move On--politics is just a matter of pointing and clicking.

If we think about histories of workers struggles, we recall that the key to organized power was the strike; a union, and also the communist parties, were powerful in part because of their ability to shut down production or society, to mobilize masses. The civil rights movement drew upon different strategies, using the courts as well as symbolic politics of sit ins, marches; boycotts were consumer versions of the strikes, focused not on production but consumption. The second wave of the women's movement also used symbolic politics of marches and events, the courts, and then the affective strategy of consciousness raising. Important: in none of these cases was membership in the movement predictated on being a donor or simple consumer. All demanded some sense of sacrifice, some recognition that the struggle would not be easy.

What would a solidary Party look like? I would think that it would first involve a commitment such that our personal preferences, our desires for recognition or power, would fall away in a zeal toward realizing the Truth around which our Party is formed. We would prioritize cooperation in order to achieve results. Working together instead of each doing our own thing (which is what concerns me about the affinity group strategy that seems influential among activitists since Seattle and which often pits groups with similarly constituencies against each other.)

Unlike Nate, I wouldn't emphasize the free development each as the condition for the free development of all; I would go with the old "from each according to her ability, to each according to his need." Yet, at the same time, I think of my argument with Nate as one enabled by solidarity. I admire very much the slogan: "we are all of the rabble."

Comments

[Nate]

hi Jodi,

Thanks for this. I'm pressed for time just now but I really want to respond, so I'm likely to be clumsy here, apologies in advance for any poor wording on my part.. I like your remark that ours is a disagreement enabled by solidarity. That's a nice phrase, and an even better idea. I'll get back to you on the theory/practice bit - I phrased what I said clumsily, I mean something more like 'theoretical reflection applied at the register of techniques rather than foundations of politics' but I need more time to get clearer on that.

On the rest: I didn't mean to say that the party and democratic centralism _can_ instrumentalize and obfuscate their power dynamics. I think it's central to what those organizational forms do, and that the history of them bears this out. I am in a bit of corner here, though, as I'm also committed to the idea that people sometimes do what they shouldn't be able to, overcome the limits of their patterned activities, which means I have to concede that these organizational forms are not reducible to the qualities that motivate my rejections thereof, and that you could probably find examples that bear this out in history. But those negative qualities are still, to my mind, the salient features. I suspect the sticking point between us is the state, which is a longer conversation.

Two more things -
First, I don't mean that solidarity is defensive as such. I meant that the politics I've encountered where the term has come up have been defensive politics, and so this gives me pause when you talk about it. Certainly the term is not reducible to this by any means, I meant more to articulate (in large part to my self, to get clearer in my head) why I was balking when I read your post. Incidentally, this touches on an issue that has come up a few times around people I know in the IWW. That issue is how our organization relates to movements for rank and file democracy in the business unions (Teamster For A Democratic Union, for instance) as well as other projects that tend to be in the millieu that at least some IWW members tend to come out of (progressive business union locals, Worker centers, Jobs With Justice coalitions, Food Not Bombs, Copwatch, Anti-Racist Action, etc). I'm solidly in the camp that while all of those activities are very important they should not be our primary activity. The primary activity should be organizing new collectivities, not defending existing ones. Those defensive fights are important, sometimes unavoidable, but we'll have more power to win them the more organized we are. I suspect we agree on this in some sense.

Second, I meant my remarks on organizing the unorganized to refer to my own activity in the IWW, but that's certainly not the only worthwhile endeavor. (It is one of the best in my view, though, which is why I'm a member.) Membership in the union is not a black and white thing - someone who is active in a shop committee but doesn't pay dues is a member in some sense, but not in others - this something I'll have to relegate to a future reflection as well, as my sense is that there are sort of loose interconnected clouds of memberships that make up the actually existing organization. At a very basic level, by organize the unorganized I meant basically start workplace campaigns. I'm squarely in the 'action in the economic realm instead of the political' camp - the union, not the party. (Also, to be clear, I'm not a reductionist about class, well, not entirely so, but capital and class are my own primary concerns in terms of what politics I get involved in largely because I hate having to have to work.)

Lastly, I'm in complete agreement that the view should be widely put forward that things will not come easily. My friend Chris Carlsson speaks quite eloquently about the need for radical patience alongside our much needed class anger and impatience (these last two are my terms, not his).

And I am all for a certain type of responsibility to the organization, for accountability - for instance, at the very basic level, how should organizational funds be used? What should the standards be for militants who get funds? They should certainly be accountable to the group and should not have carte blanche (sp?) to do as they wish with money given by the organization. But this needs to be a two way flow... I'm not sure how much of that can be solved by formal organization structure, I think regularized organized informal activity is really key (ie, relationships and frequent contacts and conversation) to navigating all of this. Another way to say this is that I think, following Jon, that solidarity is much more a matter of affect than principle/idea (hence, that's the level at which inquiry into solidarity should be addressed - the organization of affect and techniques for that). I hope this makes sense.

take care,
Nate

[AT]

Jodi, great post. No time to respond here -- wish I had done so in my current post -- but suffice it to say I see a convergence in what you say here (e.g., "What I now think is that there are times and places where the specificities of feelings and identities don't matter, where [what?] one [...?] personally wants--or wants to express--is really quite beside the point") and the Levinasian perspective I'm trying to develop. Ultimately I think there are really two levels at issue here which tend to get confused, but which I think are helpful to separate -- the initial, "meta" level that the "solidarity as event" notion tries to speak to, and the subsequent, calculative, "what is the form taken by the organization or relationship that issues from the event?" issue, which you also address here. The virtue of separating them (and prioritizing the initial, "solidarity as event" question, I would add) is that I think it may help diffuse some of the worst tendencies of the subsequent calculation of the organizational form, by injecting an essential note of humility -- no particular organizational form is the one true answer, e.g., every organization has to be vigilant about its own exclusions, prepared for the next "event of solidarity" that will expand its horizons, call its received answers into question, etc. etc. Anyway, more to follow I'm sure --

[Jodi]

Adam, I like your separation very much. It has been confused in my thinking thus far and your clarification is very helpful. In part, my confusion may have to do with a certain reticience toward considering solidarity affectively (Jon's suggestion). I worry that an affective account fails to allow for the kind of 'subjective destitution' brought about by the Event and that needs to carry through in fidelity to the Event. I also learn from you response that I am confusing the Form of the Party (the necessity of some kind of mediation/formalization of the Event from the standpoint of its Truth) with the Party as a specific organizational form.

[AT]

Thanks, Jodi. I think your concern with the affective version of solidarity is well-taken, and it's precisely that concern that both Levinas and Agamben address in different ways -- that is, by specifying their own forms of "subjective destitution" without, however, losing the emphatic, "motivational" oomph (scare-quotes remaining necessary until I think of a better word for this) that the affective model speaks to -- i.e., subjective destitution without the de-natured, bloodless, abstract, rationalistic quality of the Kantian model of solidarity that essentially characterizes our modern politics (or at least our modern thinking about politics). Levinas tries to achieve this through the ontologically constituitive ethical priority of the Other, and Agamben tries to achieve it through the notion of "Being as the (shared) event of beings in language." Ultimately for me Levinas's (interpreted via Derrida, etc.) works and Agamben's doesn't, but I find Agamben's fascinating as a point of departure in part because it seems to me the purest and best attempt to articulate the problem of solidarity (or community, as he calls it) from the side of the ultimate, ideal "organizational form" that we have going today. As such, I think it has an enormous amount to recommend it, and even suspect (without yet trying to articulate this) that it adds something fundamental to the Levinasian approach which comes at the problem from the other side, solidarity as "event" and so on. On one hand, I think the Levinasian model is ultimately truer to our finitude, but then again (this is my doubt about my Levinasian preference and suspicion about Agamben's most unassailable contribution), precisely because we are finite, we all need something solid to hold on to, or hold in front of us, and this is what Agamben, I think -- at an incredibly rarefied level, but substantive nonetheless -- may give us . . . .

[Jodi]

Adam, I look forward to reading more of you on this. I have a hard time at this point working with Agamben's 'shared event of beings in language.' This is likely because my reading of him has been partial and likely influenced by Zizek. Your point about the abstraction of the Kantian version is well-taken--but perhaps mitigated somewhat by attention to the stain (objet a) that makes complete abstraction possible/impossible.

Nate, I think that Adam's version of the different levels can help order our agreements and disagreements somewhat, particularly on the matter of organizational structure. As you say, there are very real issues of resources at stake as well as of organizing, organizing, organizing. To damage or limit these activities through premature theoretical dogmatism is mindless and irresponsible. What I get stuck with is your phrase 'union not party.' This is a real challenge to me to think about. I hate thinking that there should be a choice--but yet, real work and real strategy requires one, or so it would seem. Multiple paths or roads could also work, yet, in some ways this might be counter to the kind of militant, disciplined, solidary movement I have in mind. I need to learn and think more on this point.

[Nate]

hi Jodi,
Me too. Thanks for saying so. Please share your reading lists!
My sense is that we're having a conversation that's connected to some very old debates in the working class movement. I wish I knew more about all of that (if I had the time and energy I'd really like to just read everything from the First International forward). The vast majority of what I know about that stuff is half-remembered bits of an essay by Sergio Bologna, here:
http://www.geocities.com/cordobakaf/bologna.html

Skimming it again now, the stuff in the beginning of section two looks like what I think is somewhere in the back of my brain.

I don't have any time right now but maybe in a bit if you're interested we could read something together related to this stuff? If not, not a big deal. Hope you're well.

take care,
Nate