List of Acronyms
Chapter 5: Resistance
5.3 Resistance since Gramsci
Obviously, there has been resistance to oppression throughout the period since Gramsci was writing, as there was in his time; and such resistance continues. Resistance has taken and does take multiple forms, and has been and is being carried out in multiple sites. Debate continues about the potential for success of such resistance; and about what is the most effective way to resist. As I will discuss, such debates reveal both hegemonic and counter-hegemonic
tendencies.
5.3.1 Possibility versus defeat
Whilst Gramsci’s work is premised on the possibility (and not just the necessity) of change, as I have argued in Chapter 4, part of current hegemony is precisely a discourse of defeatism, the‘hegemony of resignation’ (Miliband, 1994, cited in Martin, 2000, p.13). Thus many of those who still say they want a different world, a more just and more equal and more fair world, are not convinced that this is possible (Boron, 2005; Giroux, 2005; Holloway, 2010a;
Touraine, 2001). Whilst the historic mission of the left is to formulate, in theory and practice, a humanistic response to the challenge (Amin, 1997, p.7), as Giroux (2001, p.8) comments, many on the left appear utterly cynical and paralysed.
A variety of explanations have been offered to account for this, including the collapse of the Soviet Union, and China’s shift to a capitalist economic system, and the subsequent
triumphalism of the political Right; but also, as I discussed in the previous chapter, precisely the intention of neoliberal hegemony to secure consent by persuading us that there is no alternative. One major critique has thus been the failure of left intellectuals to adequately
progressive scholarship has failed to offer a lucid and incisive critique of contemporary capitalism, or to engage with class exploitation and oppression, and have thus played a role in maintaining the status quo (pp.7-8). Allman and Wallis (1995) agree - they argue that we need to go back to Marx, Gramsci and Freire, to develop a dialectical theory of consciousness and a critical concept of ideology. We need to accept difference and diversity as important, but strongly promote the common needs and goals of humanity and the natural world (p.31).
Holloway (2007, interview by Marina Sitrin, response 9) says that the great problem with the left is that it has let capital set the agenda, and then followed behind protesting. He believes that many of those on the left who do believe that change is possible misread such change - they see the left governments in South and Latin America, for example, as victories, where this is not in fact so.
Since ideology and discourse are precisely a site of struggle (Knight, Smith & Sachs, 1990, p.136), many commentators have emphasised the need to overturn the discourse of defeat.
Citing Keenan (1997, p.2), Giroux (2001) emphasises the need for a willingness to engage in a
“politics of possibility” (p.19). He argues that it is essential to use a language of critique but also of possibility, engagement, hope. He insists that change is possible. Thus neoliberalism has not “dissolved our capacity for political action” (Touraine, 2001, p.2). Lazarus (cited in Neocosmos, 2009a) also argues that ‘possibility’ is key. If this is true, then historicist and scientific thought is overturned (because it is only an investigation of what is, not what might be):
The possible here is totally subordinated to the extant. In people’s thought [on the other hand], the real is identified through the possible. The investigation of what exists is also involved, but is subordinated to the investigation of what could be...We are confronted with two different modes of thought: the first is analytical and descriptive, it asks questions regarding what exists....The second is prescriptive and has as its principal point of entry the question of the possible. (Lazarus, 2001, p.8 quoted in Neocosmos, 2009a, p.293)
This argument is echoed by Bloch, who asserts that “Hope is a political category” (Bloch, 1959/1996, quoted in Dinerstein, 2010, p.14); hope is not about some impossible utopia, but about the ‘not-yet-become’ that lives within reality. Hope is thus about the really possible:
[the] really possible is everything whose conditions in the sphere of the object itself are not yet fully assembled, whether because they are still maturing, or above all because new conditions - though mediated by existing ones - arise from the entry of the real. (Bloch, 1959/1996, pp.196-197, quoted in Dinerstein, 2010, p.14)
Thus what is needed is precisely the kind of consciousness-changing for which Gramsci argued - a change in the consciousness of left intellectuals. There are, of course, many intellectuals who remain hopeful; and I would argue that these are to be found particularly amongst those who are actually actively engaged with real struggles of real people (as was Gramsci). Holloway (2007, interview by Marina Sitrin), for example, says “These are not miserable times. Perhaps that is the most important point” (response 1). The times may be awful, and frightening, but they are full of struggle, and full of hope. The difference is, as was the case with Gramsci, that such intellectuals are themselves politically active, and themselves accord to ordinary people both agency and thought. Thus, in a sense, they collapse the very notion of intellectual into that of Gramsci, that ‘all men are intellectuals’. As Pithouse (2006b) argues, ‘rebellion is only real when it prioritizes the flourishing of the agency and intelligence of the dominated” (his emphasis, p.265); or in Gramscian terms, the invisible become
historical protagonists.
Fortunately, as it turns out, the agency and intelligence of the dominated does not require the left intellectual to ‘discover’ it, since it is ontological. Cabral (1979) says “struggle is a normal condition of all living creatures of the world. All are in struggle, all struggle” (p.31); and the Zapatistas say, “we are perfectly ordinary people, therefore rebels” (quoted in Holloway, 2007, interview by Marina Sitrin, response 11).
Thus, despite the defeatism, despite the hegemony of neoliberalism, liberal democracy and postmodernism, there is resistance, as there has always been and will always be. Harding, as
activism [which] has coalesced around the simple idea that capitalism has gone too far”
(Harding, 2001, para.28, quoted in Giroux, 2005, p.2). This resistance is amorphous, including students, workers, intellectuals, artists. The resistance has grown in impetus with the collapse of ‘neoliberal showcases’ such as Argentina, and the scandals and bankruptcies of major corporations such as Enron (Giroux, 2005, p.3). These events, argues Giroux, are revealing cracks in neoliberal hegemony and domination (p.3). Holloway (2010a, 2010b) has argued that it is from precisely these cracks and fissures in capitalist domination that we must start resisting; and the world is full of them. Indeed, a number of writers have commented on growing levels of resistence, and in particular the rise of social movements, which I will consider in some detail in Chapter 6.
However, as Amin (1997) warns, “The people’s spontaneous responses to the degradation they experience, however, are not necessarily any more helpful” (p.7) (than believing that there is no alternative). Clearly, some kind of organisation of social forces is needed, albeit so small it does not recognise itself as resistence, as Holloway (2010a) argues. “Without building new social forces that express political power, the existing balance of social forces that sustain and reproduce the status quo will remain more or less intact” (Butler & Hallowes, 2004, p.65).
Fanon (1973, cited in Wallerstein, 2009) takes this even further:
For the person who is in the thick of the fight it is an urgent matter to decide on the means and tactics to employ: that is to say, how to conduct and organise the
movement. If this coherence is not present there is only blind voluntarism, with the terrible reactionary risk it entails. (Fanon, 1973, quoted in Wallerstein, 2009, p.122)
Giroux (2005) emphasises the need to form alliances between groups, and to not just struggle against, but also for. If we believe that “Another World is Possible”12, we need to think about what the future might be, and how we will achieve this (p.15). We need to rethink the entire project of politics, and we need to do this democratically (Buck-Morss, 2003, pp.4-5, cited in Giroux, 2005, p.15). This thinking must be based on theory, to help us to imagine a new future. Giroux (2005) argues that we cannot act otherwise unless we think otherwise, and this is why we need a new politics (p.16).
Thus the question arises about what form resistance should take, and what strategies and tactics it should use, in order to be most effective in bringing about real change (although, as Holloway (2007, interview by Marina Sitrin) comments, “The reality is running so far ahead of any theoretical reflections we make” (response 12)).
5.3.2 Resistance to whom?
One of the most polemical current issues in thinking about resistance is the relationship of struggle to the state. Is the point of struggle to pressure the existing state to behave better, or create a new state through existing forms of ‘democracy’, for example by voting into power a socialist party, or a green party? Is it to overthrow the state through revolution? Or is it to create something different altogether, outside of the state?
Helliker (2010) identifies different arguments about struggles for change, which he refers to as
“with, within and without” the state. He categorises the different arguments as follows:
Table 3: A typology of struggle vis-a-vis the state
Relation to state
With Within Without
Form Liberal Radical state-centric, eg. Marxist (this is the historically dominant form)
Radical society-centred, eg. Anarchist;
‘Radical Libertarian’/ ‘Libertarian Communist’; (Marxist) Autonomist
5.3.2.1 ‘With’ the state
This view is presented as resistance to what is, as a call for reform, but in fact is really supportive of the status quo, being primarily about liberal democracy. This view rose to dominance in the 1970s and 1980s, i.e. as neoliberalism became entrenched. Unlike the Hegelian and Marxist understandings of state and civil society (where civil society is seen as the domain of bourgeois capitalism) in the ‘sanitized liberal’ view now dominant, civil society is “‘seen almost in its entirety as a progressive social force” (Helliker, 2010, p.120), as
something separate from the state, which puts pressure on the state to behave itself. So civil
Helliker argues that this view grew out of the anti-statist rhetoric of neoliberalism, and is linked to the new imperialism. Capitalism is seen as the very foundation of a strong and vibrant civil society; no attempt is made to analyse civil society in terms of its class relations, and because civil society, state and the economy are portrayed as separate entities,
“[capitalism’s] totalizing logic is undetected and left un-analyzed” (p.122). Since democracy is lodged in state bodies, civil society organisations have no legitimate existence independent of the state - so, as Neocosmos has argued, politics outside of engaging the state is illegitimate (Helliker, 2010; Neocosmos, 2006, p.59). Struggle within this view is “Ultimately inside a state-civil society consensus about social order that reproduces class domination and undercuts processes of emancipation” (Helliker, 2010, p.118).
A major component of the ‘with’ the state view is the discourse of human rights. As I discussed in Chapter 4, many have seen this as part of the ‘democratizing mission’ (Shivji, 2006) accompanying the current hegemonic notion of democracy, i.e. representative parliamentary liberal democracy; Wa Mutua (2002, p.19, cited in Neocosmos, 2009b, p.9) argues that human rights are “today a civilizing crusade aimed primarily at the Third World”.
Within this understanding of democracy, the role of the state is (ostensibly) to protect to protect individual rights, but to interfere no further (Jarvis, 1993). Allman (1988) argues that the ideology of liberal democracy displaces lived experience with the notion that rights will free us all.
Neocosmos (2006) takes this argument a step further in a somewhat more contentious way. In the human rights discourse, he argues, citizenship is about subjects bearing rights which are conferred by the state (Neocosmos, 2009a). Such rights are presented as formal and universal, and hence ahistorical and decontextualised (Neocosmos, 2006, p.66). The fact that such rights are ‘delivered’ and ‘guaranteed’ by the state has a number of effects. Firstly, it legitimises the state (since it is only the state that can ‘grant’ rights), and makes politics state-focused (Ibid., p.67). Secondly, it conflates ‘freedom’ with rights, and there is thus a “permanent system of political demobilization and disempowerment” (Ibid., p.68). Of course, it also undermines any real notion of the universality of rights.
Chatterjee (2009, cited in Neocosmos, 2006), although agreeing that the human rights discourse is one of the main pillars of imperialism, argues that rather than legitimising the state, its intent is to undermine national sovereignty by creating rights that are beyond the state. Such rights (together with democracy) must be imposed by force, if necessary.
However, as Neocosmos points out, people can only actually access such rights as ‘citizens’
of a state, and it is the state who decides whether or not someone is a citizen (Neocosmos, 2006, p.68). Thus rights, whilst presented as universal, are not.
This is not to suggest that mobilization around rights, such as the right to free HIV treatment, women’s right to safety, disabled people’s right to access, shackdwellers right to housing and services, is illegitimate - simply that such struggles do not ultimately change the power structures (and might in fact reinforce them) - although of course they might make people’s daily lived experience a lot easier.
Thus overall the ‘with’ view is primarily part of the hegemonic project, as we have already seen in the previous chapter, although often presented as an alternative to it. This has
happened most notably by proponents of the so-called “Third Way” (what Bond (2004, p.21) refers to as the post-Washington consensus, or ‘lite’ social democracy). This view is held by a number of UN agencies, by many international NGOs such as Oxfam, by noted intellectuals such as Anthony Giddens and Amartya Sen, and by financial agencies such as the Ford Foundation, Charles Stuart Mott foundation etc.. However, this view is also promoted by proponents of Third World nationalism (Bond, 2004, pp. 23-25).
Not surprisingly then, the real debate about actual change is between intellectuals and activists promoting alternatively the radical state-centred (within) view and the radical society-centred (without) view; and since the 1990s, this debate has become increasingly intense (Helliker, 2010).
5.3.2.2 ‘Within’ the state
This is the view of most Marxist-aligned thinkers and activists. As we have already seen,
capital, and taking a more nuanced view in which the state is fraught with contradictions, conflicts, tensions, ambiguities, which can be tactically exploited by emancipatory forces.
Civil society is deeply connected to the state, but is generally seen as an arena for struggle (a la Gramsci) (Helliker, 2010). The point of struggle is to overthrow the bourgeois state (through the revolutionary ‘war of manoeuvre’, and/or ‘war of position’) and create a
‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ which will ultimately result in the end of the state altogether.
The critical issue then becomes who leads the struggle, and in particular the role of the party (discussed further below). Much of the critique of this view focuses on the changing role of the state over time under imperialism/in an increasingly globalised world. Many theorists supporting this view thus emphasise the necessity to start with the nation state, but not end the struggle there. This has particularly been the focus of postcolonial writers (although, of course, many earlier Marxists argued for an international worker revolution). Fanon, for example, emphasised national struggle, but within a universal understanding, so moving towards the global. He said that the most important thing an intellectual could do was to build his nation: “If this building is true...then the building of a nation is of necessity accompanied by the discovery and encouragement of universalizing values” (Wallerstein, 2009, p.123). Che Guevara (2002) also insisted on the internationalisation of the struggle: “We must definitely keep in mind that imperialism is a world system, the final stage of capitalism, and that it must be beaten in a great worlwide confrontation” (p.58), and Cabral (1979) emphasised the
necessity to think in terms of Africa’s struggle as a whole, not just the national struggle (p.48).
However, as Mamdani (1996) shows, the postcolonial nation state that does not undergo this universalising process can revert to the kind of liberal state discussed above. Mamdani argues that within those decolonised states which have attempted to deracialise civil society, there is generally a counter-struggle by colons and immigrant minorities (in the African state,
typically Indians) to defend their racial privileges. However, because this cannot be couched in the language of racism, it is instead framed within the language of civil rights, individual rights, and institutional autonomy. This may be countered by the language of nationalism and social justice, so that there are two competing discourses - one of rights, and one of justice (p.20).
Other Marxist-aligned writers, whilst continuing to emphasise the importance of the state within a broader global struggle, argue that this should not be the only tactic. Thus Bond (2004), for example, argues that the national state is “the most potentially substantial counterweight to global capital in the world today” (p.229), although global capital must be seen and fought against at a global level as well, and alternatives (such as autonomism) should also be recognised. In other words, build from below, and deconstruct from the top down (p.232).
With the (supposed) attack on the nation state, and its (supposed) eroding under neoliberal capitalism, as discussed in Chapter 4, a number of theorists have also expressed doubts that the nation-state should form the basis of the discussion about change. Allman and Mayo (1997), for example, question Gramsci’s focus on the nation state, in the light of current leverage of international capital over the modern state (p.8). Some writers, however, question whether the state has ever been an appropriate target. So Foucault (1991) argues that the tendency to reduce the state to the development of productive forces and the reproduction of relations of productions ensures that the state is seen as an absolutely essential target for attack:
But the state, no more probably today than at any other time in its history, does not have this unity, this individuality, this rigorous functionality, nor, to speak frankly, this importance. (Foucault, 1991, p.103)
And numerous intellectuals and activists thus argue for struggle ‘outside’ or ‘without’ the state.
5.3.2.3 Outside/ ‘without’ the state
Helliker (2010) identifies radical society-centric forms as proponents of this view - i.e.
anarchist, ‘radical libertarian’/ ‘Libertarian communist’ and (Marxist) autonomist. This view sees the state as inherently oppressive, whatever form it takes: “What social democracy has not given the order to fire when the poor come out of their territory or ghetto?” (Deleuze &
This tradition “speaks not of acquiring state power (either through the electoral system or on an insurrectionary basis) but of developing counter-power (or even anti-power) inside the bowels of civil society despite (or ‘without’) the state” (Helliker, 2010, p.119). So civil society is seen not in terms of counter-hegemony (a la Gramsci), but counter-power - i.e. civil society is an end in itself, not a means (p.7).
Democracy in this context is seen as direct, as something outside of the state and ballot-box, as something which involved “the re-socialization of power as counter-power” (Helliker, 2010, p.125) - a new kind of politics. This is discussed is some depth below.
Autonomism
Autonomism is influenced in part by anarchism (although anarchists would see themselves as distinct from autonomists). Anarchism comes in various forms (some of which emphasise the individual, others the collective), but all rest on the simple assumption of fundamental human decency, and that human beings strive to be free; and that the state is inherently unnecessary and harmful (Chomsky, 2005).
Autonomist Marxism, a distinct current of Marxism, arose in Italy in the 1960s, becoming extremely popular during the 1970s. This school argued for autonomy from the both the state and ‘the party’, and for a broader notion of the working class beyond the point of production (Gibson, 2006, p.30). This created the possibility for political action and revolutionary subjects outside of the factory - i.e. social movements as agents of change. Theorists like Melucci (discussed further in Chapter 6) were heavily influenced by this understanding, as was Negri (co-author of Empire), who moved the debate away from Marxism per se.
There are now a number of writers, activists and movements operating from and within this position. Holloway (2007, interview by Marina Sitrin), a leading proponent of this view, argues that it is very clear that the world cannot be changed through the state, although it is difficult to say that changing the world will have no relation to the state at all. The question, he says, is how to deal with the implications of contact with the state, but not fall into the state as a form of organisation.