The Solidarity of Communists: Why We Defend Others « Kasama

Some people will (of course) act because they think they may “be next.”

Some people will extend solidarity from one “identity group” to the next — in a kind of common cause of distinct entities.

But I am urging that those of us who are communists should come (precisely) from the common. We are communists because we believe in doing things in common, viewing things in common.

That is part of why we should not just be “socialists,” or radicals, or revolutionaries, or intersected aggregations of identity. We should be about the common and future and highest interests of humanity — and our morality, motivations and our public image should come from that place.

Our solidarity should not be a mutual defense pact of atomized identities. It should come from a place of looking at the overall, the future of humanity, and the need (deep deep deep!) to represent (publicly and forcefully here in the pit of American selfishness atomization) a human connection and mutual concern. We should radiate that kind of solidarity as a movement, and eschew the “scratch my back, scratch your back” vision of capitalist “solidarity.”

We should defend others because we believe in defending others.And because it is the right thing to do as we serve the people.

via kasamaproject.org

Comments

[C. DiDiodato]

Jodi,

I find that word 'common' interesting.But what does "viewing things in common" really mean? I think Žižek comes pretty close to a working hypothesis.

Žižek, in "First As Tragedy, Then As Farce" refers to the notion 'commons' as the root of an emancipatory politics, saying it's in "reference to the "commons" which justifies the resuscitation of the notion of communism: it enables us to see the progressive "enclosure" of the commons as a process of proletarianization of those who are thereby excluded from their own substance." I like that "enclosures" analogy very much.'Proletarianization' is being used here as a general term that covers a wide area of the 'disenfranchised', 'excluded' in the areas of ecology, biogenetics & digital technology.Enclosures, which originally referred to forced human migrations from country to city, reach to the very smallest and very largest spheres of capitalist control.

It's a point Raymond Williams also makes in "The Country and the City" where he's brilliantly contrasted (as literary categories primarily) the capitalist "modes of detached, separated external perception and action" to communist ones of "accepting and enjoying people and things."

[Alain]

Isn't the concept of communism completely defanged if any notion of a commons is affiliated with it? It would seem many of us who are not communists would defend the notion of a commons that is distinct and not subject to neoliberal market ideology. I am curious if Conrad thinks we cannot think of a commons today without the revised notion of communism? I must admit i never thought things would come to this but maybe they have?

[C. DiDiodato]

Alain,

I suppose I'm hoping a resuscitation of the "commons" idea (at least in Williams' sense as an ideal of "accepting and enjoying") will give communism, in whatever party form, the central role of righting all the capitalist injustices. If neo-liberal capitalism (or "capitalo-parliamentarianism" as Badiou calls it), is the cause of the "enclosure of the commons",we begin by exposing it for the sham it is. Žižek's method of radical critique (as a necessary first step) will lead the way.