Monday, September 06, 2004

Over, Under, Sideways, Down

At its core, capital is formed ( informed, deformed, reformed), and finally torn apart, by the conflict between the means of production organized as private property, and the force of labor organized socially, as a class. In its very need to reproduce this separation, capital cycles itself through expansion and contraction, accumulation and destruction, profit and loss.

When the bourgeoisie construct their ruling ideas, their ideology, it is at a moment when that class of laborers is still incomplete, diffuse; when people obscures class, ruling and laboring; when property represents the possibility of, and limits to, justice and wealth; when fear and greed masquerade as freedom. But when the bourgeoisie consolidate that power, this distortion becomes denial, the compulsory disavowal of the reality of the separation, the reality of class.

Denial always requires substitution. In place of the real separation between social labor and private property, capital creates the distinction between private and public, a distinction that is first and foremost, a marketing vehicle, where the purchase of private "freedom" only exists in the underwriting of social repression. If in the accumulation of capital, there is no more clear manifestation of overproduction than scarcity, and the fear of scarcity, then in the preservation of private property there is more clear manifestation of "free markets" than the no-bid contract; no more clear demonstration of democracy than electoral intimidation; no greater truth than lies, and no greater peace than war without end, AMEN.

All dressed up in red, white, and blue every two, four, six years, is the naked need of the class representing the naked needs of the economy of destruction. The electoral process is initiated, engaged, endured, tolerated as one more manifestation, outlet, for overproduction; as another exercise in the elimination of competitors; another junk-bond financed takeover. The vision of capital is global all right, and that vision is Afghanistan.

The modern electoral process is in fact the product of class struggle delayed; class struggle deferred; class conflict denied. The political party of the workers is not built or strengthened by its slate of candidates in election years, but in how it maintains itself outside that process and against that designated time, just precisely as the political party of the bourgeoisie builds and maintains itself, in reality, outside that process, against that time.

So voting, campaigning Green or Nader or Workers World is worse than useless. It is stupid. What happens outside those campaigns, outside those conventions, outside those candidates is where struggle begins.

What was called the New Left, but what was really the offspring of the civil rights struggles and the black liberation movements, had it almost right. What mattered wasn't the vote, but the struggle; what mattered about the struggle was the organization; what mattered about the organization was direct confrontation with the ruling forces.


S. Artesian
090604

address all comments to sartesian@earthlink.net


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