[p2p-research] Prospect Magazine: After Capitalism

[Andy Robinson]

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Hi again,
>
> The state mobilisation through social movements, again was typical of
> "high" Stalinism and Nazism, but not so much of the "post-totalitarian"
> regimes; what the latter have (and the former also) is mobilisation through
> incorporated agencies and services, which I think is paralleled in "Third
> Way" uses of ex-welfare-state agencies, private partnerships and quangos
> (e.g. purging teachers and replacing them with Blairite clones).
>
> Corporations and governments have been around for a long time, but until
> quite recently have never been dominant in the SOCIAL space (as distinct
> from claiming such dominance in law), because there are usually dense webs
> of social networks and movements which are more horizontal (c.f. Colin
> Ward's work).
>
> Also Marc's point "The governments that we have today are just a kind of
> business entity that gets to operate above both the domestic and
> international law", seems to me to be saying a little more than just
> "governments and corporations are dominant and dysfunctional" - he's saying
> firstly that governments are now defined on the corporate model, and
> secondly that these corporate governments are (or try to be) above the law,
> indeed, above all laws (I would extend, above all constraints whether legal,
> customary, relational, ideological or material).  It is here that they would
> take on totalitarian or extreme authoritarian attributes.  Neither the
> Keynesian state nor the classical authoritarian (Establishment) state would
> either model itself on a corporation or claim/aspire to be above all laws.
> The classic authoritarian state would be constrained by the rest of the
> Establishment (extra-state, extra-corporate elites) and had to operate
> within limits set by the latter and enshrined in its laws, while the
> Keynesian state was more of an arbitration than a corporate role, and had to
> guarantee its trustworthiness with predictability.
>
> Marc is reminding me a lot of Negri's early (autonomist) stuff where he
> views the boundary between state and capital disappearing entirely, the
> state becoming an unmediated part or agent of capital and the disappearance
> of mediations leading to a replacement of foundation on externality (the law
> of value) with the arbitrariness of command.  Negri also uses the term
> "totalitarian" for this regime, while insisting on its sharp differentiation
> from "fascism" specifically.
>
> Where does competency fit in? - well, I think Ryan and Marc are right that
> creative vitality is only possible in networks, that hierarchies are
> ineffective, almost a kind of social death in terms of vital energies
> (Kropotkin already theorised this when he discussed the rise and fall of
> "civilisations").  This is ultimately what finished off the Soviet Union and
> its satellites - it could implement the technologies of its day, but it
> couldn't achieve anything very effectively, the system was too rigid, and it
> couldn't keep up with the flows elsewhere, let alone compete in releasing
> its own flows.  Capitalism in contrast was able at this point to draw to
> some extent on flows, even while exploiting them.  But the closure of
> certain regimes today, seems to reproduce the problems of the Soviet model.
> Which would suggest that, assuming there isn't a social transformation
> first, there will be a process of long, slow decline ending in collapse.
> Suppose for instance that file sharing and infinite reproducibility of data
> are shut down or held back in these regimes, while flourishing elsewhere
> where controls don't exist or are harder to enforce.  But there's a problem
> that it's a delayed effect - it isn't visible yet, because countries like
> Britain can keep living off past accumulation and remain "richer", more
> popular as targets of migration, etc.  And another problem that the
> up-and-coming regimes seem to be adopting the same model.
>
> bw
> Andy
>
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