The march of the zapatistas is the march of dignity. Not was: is. And not
just of the indigenous, but of all. Dignity is a march. "It is and it is to
be made, a path to walk" (Words of the EZLN, 27th February 2001, in
Puebla). It is a ?hard, endangered journey, a suffering, a wandering, a
going astray, a searching for the hidden homeland, full of tragic
interruption, boiling, bursting with leaps, eruptions, lonely promises,
discontinuously laden with the consciousness of light?. (Bloch 1964, Vol.
2, p. 29) Dignity does not march on a straight highway. The path to be
walked is many paths which are made in the process of walking: paths which
resist definition. More than a march, it is a walking, a wandering. A
walking, but not simply a strolling. Dignity is always a walking-against.
Against all that denies dignity. What is it that denies dignity? All that
imposes a mask upon us and imprisons us within the mask. The world without
dignity says to us "you are indigenous, so that is what you can do"; "you
are a woman, that is why you do what you do"; "you are homosexual, that is
why you behave in this manner"; "you are old and we know what old people
are like". The world without dignity encloses us within a definition. It
says to us "your walking comes so far, you cannot go farther". And it says
to us "you must walk on the highway, not just wherever you want". The world
without dignity limits us, defines us, but it does not define us externally
but with a definition that penetrates our very existence. But where does
this imposition of masks come from? Is it racism? Is it sexism? Is it
homophobia? It is all that. But it is more than that. All of us are forced
to wear masks. All of us are trapped in linear, homogeneous time, time that
leads only forward, in a straight line, time that denies our creativity,
our ability to do-otherwise. It is not only the indigenous but all of us
who are forced to see the same film every day: "We want life to be like a
cinema programme from which we can choose a different film every day. Now
we have risen in arms because, for more than five hundred years, they have
obliged us to see the same film each day" (Subcomandante Marcos, La
Jornada, 25 August 1996) But there is a change in the film we are forced to
watch each day: it becomes more and more violent. It becomes clearer each
day that the linear time which takes us forward, the straight highway on
which we are forced to walk, leads directly to the self-destruction of
humanity. What is this force that traps us within linear time, that makes
us walk on the straight road to self-destruction, that entraps doing within
a mask of being? What is it that negates our dignity? It is the breaking of
doing itself. Our dignity is doing, our ability to do and to do
differently. Ants do not have dignity: they do, but they can not project a
different doing for tomorrow. For them time is linear. But "that which
[makes] our step rise above plants and animals, that which [makes] the
stone be beneath our feet" (EZLN, La Palabra, Vol 1, p.122) is that we do
have the ability to do-differently, to create. We can plan to do something
new and then do it. This ability to do is always social, whether or not it
appears to be so. Our doing always presupposes the doing of others, in the
present and in the past. Our doing is always part of a social flow of doing
in which the done of some flows into the doing of others. But in
present-day society, the social flow of doing is broken. The capitalist
takes that which has been done and says "this is mine, mine, mine!" By
seizing the done, he breaks the social flow of doing, since doing always
builds upon that which has been done. By seizing the done, the capitalist
is able to force the doers to sell their ability to do (which is
transformed into labour power) to him, so that he now tells them what they
must do. With that the doers lose their ability to do-differently: now they
must do what they are told. Capital is a process of separation. It
separates the done from the doing, and therefore the doers from the done
and from their own doing. In the same movement, the doers are separated
from the wealth they have created and from their ability to do-differently.
We are made poor and robbed of our subjectivity. Capital is a process of
separating us from the richness of human social creation, from our
humanity, from our dignity, from the possibility of seeing a different film
tomorrow. By separating the doers from the ability to do-differently,
capital subordinates doing to that which is. Capitalism is the reign of
"that's the way things are", "that's the way life is", "you are a woman and
women are so", "you are indigenous and the indigenous are like that".
Behind the racism, the sexism, the homophobia stands a more general
problem: the domination of masks, of labels, of identities. Behind the
particular denial of dignity ("you are an Indian, a woman") lies the more
general denial of dignity ("you are what you are, no more"). Dignity is the
struggle against its own negation: the struggle for dignity starts as a
struggle against a particular denial of dignity (discrimination against
indigenous, against women), and it leads on and on towards the mutual
recognition of dignities, towards the uniting of dignities. The paths
cross, flow together, divide and join, flow in the same direction. All
dignities, if they are honest, turn not just against particular negations
of dignity, but against the general negation of dignity which imposes a
label and subordinates our potential as humans to that label. The march of
dignity leads us not just against the particular insult, but takes us
further, against the general insult. And the general insult is the
labelling of people, the subordination of doing to being. And this
terrible, terrible insult which now threatens to extend the denial of
humanity to the absolute destruction of humanity, this terrible insult
arises quite simply from the way that doing is organised, from the fact
that capital is the separation of the done from the doing, with all that
follows from that. The struggle of dignity for dignity, then, is an
anti-capitalist struggle. But this must not become a new label ("I am a
socialist, you are a liberal", "I am a communist, you are a revisionist").
The struggle against capital is the struggle against the process of
separation that is capital: the separation of done from doing, the
separation of the wealth that we create from us, the separation of our
subjectivity, our dignity from us. The struggle for dignity is the struggle
against separation, the struggle to bring together that which capital
separates, the struggle for a different form of doing, a different way of
relating to one another as active subjects, as doers. The struggle for
dignity is the struggle to emancipate doing from being, the struggle to
make explicit the social flow of doing. The struggle for dignity is the
struggle to create a society based on the recognition of that dignity in
place of one that is based on the negation of dignity. How can we do it? Is
it possible? We can struggle, of course, but is it really possible to
create a society based on dignity, a society that goes beyond capitalism?
Is it possible to construct alternative ways of doing within capitalism, or
do we not have to destroy capitalism first in order to create such a
possibility? Is it possible to create and expand spaces of dignity or are
such spaces not bound to be repressed or absorbed by? Is it possible to
create and expand spaces of dignity to the point where capitalism is
destroyed and a society based on the mutual recognition of dignity is
created? It used to be argued that the only way to build social relations
based on dignity was first to destroy capitalism and then to build the new
society. It was argued that the transition from capitalism to communism is
quite different from the transition from feudalism to capitalism.
Capitalism grew within the interstices of feudalism, within the spaces left
open by feudal domination, but, it was argued, the same could not happen
with communism: the construction of new social relations required the
conscious control of social doing and this could only be introduced at the
level of society as a whole. The change from capitalism to a different type
of society could therefore not be interstitial: it could only come about by
the seizure of power at the centre of society, which would allow the
introduction of a new sociality. The problem with the old argument is that,
apart from everything else, it is quite unrealistic. It assumes that the
world is the sum of different societies, each with its own state, so that
each state can be understood at the centre of its society. But it is now
clear that the capitalist world is not like that and never has been.
Capital is an essentially a-territorial relation, in the sense that the
fact that social relations are mediated through money means that the
capitalist exploiter can quite easily be in London and his workers in South
Africa, or the producer of a product can be in Puebla and the consumer in
Hong Kong. Capitalist society, then, is not the sum of many, territorially
limited societies: it is (and always has been) one global society supported
by a multiplicity of states. To gain control of one state is, therefore,
not to conquer power at the centre of society, but merely to occupy (in the
best of cases) a particular space within capitalist society. In other
words, if we leave aside the possibility of taking power in all or most of
the states at the same time, the only possible way of conceiving
revolutionary change is as interstitial change, as a change that comes
about in the interstices of capitalist society. We cannot think of radical
social change, then, as coming about from above, or as the introduction of
central planning. Revolution can only be a construction from below. But how
can we build dignity in a society which systematically negates dignity, how
can we make it so strong that it negates the society that negates us? It is
a question not of Revolution, but also not just of rebellion: it is a
question of revolution. Revolution (with a capital "R"), understood as the
introduction of change from above, does not work. Rebellion is the struggle
of dignity and will exist as long as dignity is negated. But it is not
enough. We rebel because we rebel, because we are human. But we do not want
just to struggle against the negation of dignity, we want to create a
society based upon the mutual recognition of dignity. Our struggle, then,
is not the struggle of Revolution, not just of rebellion, but of
revolution. Not just rebellion, not Revolution but revolution. But what
does it mean and how do we do it? In this revolutionary struggle, there are
no models, no recipes, just a desperately urgent question. Not an empty
question but a question filled with a thousand answers. Fissures: these are
the thousand answers to the question of revolution. Everywhere there are
fissures. The struggles of dignity tear open the fabric of capitalist
domination. When people stand up against the construction of the airport in
Atenco, when they oppose the construction of the highway in Tepeaca, when
they stand up against the Plan Puebla Panama, when the students of the UNAM
oppose the introduction of fees, when workers go on strike to resist the
introduction of faster rhythms of work, they are saying "NO, here no, here
capital does not rule!" Each No is a flame of dignity, a crack in the rule
of capital. Each No is a running away, a flight from the rule of capital.
No is the starting point of all hope. But it is not enough. We say No to
capital in one area, but it keeps on attacking us, separating us from the
wealth we create, denying our dignity as active subjects. Yet our dignity
is not so easily denied. The No has a momentum that carries us forward. The
struggles that say No often go further than that. In the very act of
struggling against capital, alternative social relations are developed.
Those in struggle realise that they are not struggling simply against a
particular imposition of capital, but that they are struggling for a
different type of social relations. Especially in recent years, many
struggles have laid great emphasis on horizontal structures, on the
participation of all, on the rejection of hierarchical structures which
reproduce the hierarchies of capitalism: thus the mandar obedeciendo of the
zapatistas, the horizontal assemblies of the students of the UNAM, the
asambleas barriales of Buenos Aires, the structures developed by the
'anti-globalisation' movement in the whole world, the comradeship developed
in strikes. All of these are very often explicit and conscious experiments,
all ways of saying "We are not just saying No to capital, we are developing
a different concept of politics, constructing a different set of social
relations, pre-figuring the society we want to build." But that is not
enough. We cannot eat democratic discussions, we cannot drink comradeship.
It is no good if, after the democratic discussion in the asamblea barrial
or frente zapatista in the evening, we have to sell our capacity to do
(labour power) to capital the next day and participate actively in the
process of separation that capital means. Yet here too the energy of the
struggle carries us forward, from talking to doing. The struggles that
struggle not just to say No, but to create other social relations in
practice are driven a step further, to the practical organisation of doing.
The asambleas barriales in Argentina are increasingly moving on from
discussing and protesting against the government to taking their lives in
their own hands and occupying clinics that have been abandoned, houses that
are empty, banks that have fled, in order to provide better health care,
and to provide places for people to live and centres for people to meet and
discuss. When factories close, the workers are not just protesting but
occupying them and using them to produce things that are needed. The
fissure becomes a place not just for refusing, not just for developing
horizontal structures but for building an alternative form of doing. But
that is not enough. The fissures are often small, the alternative doings
isolated. How do we connect these alternative projects? If it is done
through the market, the market comes to dominate them. It cannot be done by
introducing social planning from above, for that presupposes structures
that do not and cannot exist at the moment. It is necessarily a process of
doing it from below, in a piecemeal fashion. In Argentina, the movement of
barter, in its best manifestations, is an attempt to develop other forms of
articulation between producers and between producers and consumers
(prosumidores), but that too is experimental. But still it is not enough.
Revolution cannot be poverty. The movement of revolution is to make
explicit the richness of social doing. But now capital separates us from
that richness, stands as gatekeeper to the social doing, telling us that we
can have access to that richness only if we obey the rules of capital, the
logic of profit. How can we circumvent that gatekeeper, find other ways of
connecting with the richness of the doing of so many millions of people
throughout the world who, they too, are saying No or would like to say No
to the social connections of capital? At every stage the state offers
itself as an answer to our questions. The state says in effect "Come to me,
organise yourselves through me, I am not capital. I can provide the basis
for an alternative organisation of sociality." But it is a lie, a trick.
The state is capital, a form of capital. The state is a specifically
capitalist form of social relations. The state is so tightly bound into the
global web of capitalist social relations that there is no way that an
anti-capitalist sociality can be constructed through the state, no matter
which party occupies the government. The state imposes upon us hierarchical
social relations that we do not want; the state says we must be realistic
and accept capitalist logic and the calculations of power when we are quite
clear that we do not accept that logic and those calculations. The state
says that it will solve our problems, that we are not capable of it, it
reduces us to victims, denies our subjectivity. The state is a form of
reconciling our struggles with capitalist domination. The path of the state
is not the path of dignity. There are certainly many situations in which we
can turn the resources of the state to our own advantage - as when the
piqueteros close the roads in order to force the state to give them funds
which they, the piqueteros, use to develop an alternative form of doing.
There are also situations in which it may make sense to vote for one party
rather than another, in order to defend or create more space for our
movement. But the state does not, can not provide the alternative sociality
that it seems to offer. State-owned industries, for example, do not provide
a different organisation of doing: they transform doing into labour and
subordinate it to the movement of capital in much the same way as any other
industry (the same in the ex-Soviet Union as in Britain, as in Mexico).
Even if there are situations in which we may want to use the state, just as
we use money, it is important to be clear that the state, like money, is
the embodiment of relations which deny our dignity. It is not through the
state that we can create a society based on dignity. Then how? The question
torments us. The old solutions did not work, cannot work. But can any
solution work? Can the struggle against the negation of dignity really lead
us to a society based on dignity, a society in which the social power of
doing is emancipated (a communist society)? Certainty is not on our side.
Certainty cannot be on our side, for certainty exists only where human
dignity is denied, where social relations are totally reified, where people
are completely reduced to masks. The only certainty for us is that human
dignity means fighting against a world that denies that dignity. Flames of
dignity, flashes of lightning, fissures in capitalist domination. Look at
the map of capitalism and see how torn it is, how full of fissures, flames
of revolt. Chiapas, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, Cochabamba, Quito, Caracas and
on and on throughout the world. Our struggle is to extend the fissures as
time-spaces, to fan the flames of dignity. At times the flames light up the
sky so we can see clearly that which gives us hope: the rulers depend on
the ruled, capital depends on us, on being able to transform our doing into
work which it can exploit. It is our doing which creates the world, capital
that runs behind trying to contain it. We are the fire, capital is the fire
fighter. To put it in more traditional terms: the only productive force is
the creative force of human doing, and capitalist relations of production
struggle all the time to contain that force. Capital is afraid of us.
Capital flees from us, just as we flee from it. Flight and the threat of
flight is a central feature of capitalist domination. Feudal lords did not
flee from their serfs: if the serfs did not behave themselves, the lords
stayed and punished them, often physically. But in capitalism it is
different. Capital says all the time to us: "if you do not behave
yourselves, I shall go away". We live in great stress, under the terrible
threat that our rulers will go away and leave us. And often capital does go
away, and then millions are left in unemployment, whole regions or
countries are left without investment, whole generations are left without
the experience of direct exploitation. Under neoliberalism, this threat of
flight and this reality of flight become more and more central: that is
what the expansion of credit and the rise of finance capital means. More
and more clearly, capital says "behave like robots, do everything that I
say or I shall go away". More and more, capital flees from the fact that we
are not robots, capital flees from our dignity. Dignity and capital are
incompatible. The more the march of dignity advances, the more capital
flees. When the indigenous rise up, capital flees. When the workers occupy
the factories, capital flees. When the students rebel against the
restructuring of education, capital flees. When it seems that a left-wing
government might introduce measures which affect profits, capital flees
(and the government changes its mind). That is why the question of how we
respond to the flight of capital is crucial for the struggle of dignity
(even more basic than the question of repression, because repression is
always presented as a response to the flight of capital). What shall we
answer when capital says "behave yourselves or I shall go"? What shall we
say when capital goes? Let it go! Let it flee! That is the great genius of
the Argentinian slogan "ˇQue se vayan todos!" ("Let them all go away!")
Capital dominates by threatening us that it will flee. Well, let it go
away, then. We can manage perfectly well without it. We will survive. Or
can we? That is the big question. Capital is not just a process of closing
fissures. By going and by threatening to go, it also opens up potential
fissures. When capital threatens too much, then workers may be driven to
say, "right, go then, take your money, but we shall stay with the machines
and the buildings". When capital goes away from whole areas, then people
are driven by choice and necessity to find other ways of surviving, other
ways of doing. They are driven to build social relations that point beyond
capitalism. The fissures are opened not just by our own struggles but by
capital's flight from our dignity. But how do we survive without our
exploiters, when they control access to the richness of human doing? That
is the great challenge. How do we strengthen the fissures so that they are
not just isolated pockets of poverty but a real alternative form of doing
that allows us to say to capital "well yes, go away then, if that is what
you are always threatening to do"? The next time that capital makes us
unemployed, how can we say "Fine, now we can do something more meaningful"?
The next time that capital closes a factory, how can we say "Go, then, now
we can use the equipment and the buildings and our knowledge in a different
way"? The next time that capital says "help our banks or the financial
system will collapse", how can we say "let it collapse, we have better ways
of organising our relations"? The next time that capital threatens us "I
shall go", how do we say "yes, go, go for ever and take all your friends
with you. Que se vayan todos."? That is the problem of revolution (with a
small '"r"). What does revolution mean? It is a question, can only be a
question. But it is not a question that stands still. It is not a question
that gets stuck in one place, whether that place be Saint Petersburg or the
Selva Lacandona or Buenos Aires, or in one moment, whether that be 1917 or
the first of January 1994 or 19/20 December 2001. It is not a question that
can be answered with a formula or a recipe. It is a question that can be
answered only in struggle, but theoretical reflection is part of that
struggle. It is a question with an energy and a rage and a longing that
drives it forward. Let us push the question forward all the time, as far as
we can, with every single political action, with every single theoretical
reflection. Preguntando caminamos, asking we walk. Yes, but we walk with
rage, ask with passion. References: Bloch E. (1964), Tübinger Einleitung in
die Philosophie, Bd. 2 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp) Ejército Zapatista de
Liberación Nacional (1994) La Palabra de los Armados de Verdad y Fuego
(Mexico City: Fuenteovejuna) Holloway J. (2002), Change the World without
taking Power, (London: Pluto)
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