Jodi wrote a piece posted at hers and at Long Sunday on Zizek and the concept of solidarity. In it she poses the idea that the paradigmatic “relation between political friends is that of solidarity.”
I like the idea of solidarity as the political relation par excellence, but have some reservations. First off, I just don’t like Zizek and/due to his party talk. I’m also not at all clear on many of the different uses of the term solidarity nor on which use it is that Jodi wants to make paradigmatic of politics/political relations as such. These are my issues, and are no objection to Jodi.
Also, as typically practiced in my experience, solidarity means “doing for others” - showing up at a rally for an issue that impact someone else or sending money to another organization are the two main examples that spring to my mind. There seem to be two things that accompany this type of activity, either one or the other or both. One is moral outrage as the motivation for action. The other is a type of strategic calculus (”this struggle is really important for our class/the movement/the party/etc”). Occasionally there’s a third, which is a certain relationship with the group one seeks to act in solidarity with (”when I visited the recuperated factories, I saw and met …”). None of this is particularly problematic, but I wonder at the first two. They both seem rather abstract, rooted in either a prior affective disposition or in analysis. The political relation of solidarity, then, depends on creating or inculcating the one or the other. That’s also no objection. The main objection I’ve got is that this form of solidarity doesn’t seem to really build much but is primarily defensive, seeking to stop or slow attacks. That’s something tremendously important but severely limited and reactive. What’s needed is to organize further, to go on the offensive (in wob terms, to organize the unorganized).
So, to sum up, first reservation with Jodi’s stuff: either 1. it sounds like (in the sense of “is a homophone for”) a form of politics that I don’t think is particularly useful, such that it needs to differentiate itself so as not to a) have people get a false impression of what the politics of her use of the term would be and b) give accidental support to a relatively unproductive form of politcs; or 2. it is such a politics and is a theoretical argument supporting/leading toward - or simply a theoretical articulation of - such a politics, in which case I have a disagreement. Whether that disagreement is theoretical or political or both isn’t clear, but if there is one I suspect it’s both.
Second reservation: Jodi writes that the relation she means by solidarity typically occurs in the form of the party. I am, of course, rather sectarian about my anti-sectarianism. I think the party form is and was a colossal mistake, connected with the colossally mistaken project of seizing state power. I suspect Jodi disagrees with this, because she has a more statist bent, by her own description. More pragmatically and less pie-in-the-sky (since it will be a while before either Jodi or me or people with views like one or the other of us is in a position where there’s a real question of whether or not seize power that we need to disagree over), my experience with the organizational form of the party expresses anything but solidarity. I was close to the PLP for a while, and the relationships there were anything but transparent or mutually supportive or positive. They were rather quite instrumental and instrumentalizing. This is, in my and several friends’ and comrades’ experiences with other parties as well, the mode of treating people and relations with people that goes on in recruiting.
That said, there is an instrumental component to my own relation to people in organizing campaigns: some people are important to the success or failure of the campaign. But that’s not a relationship of solidarity. After the fact, after the relationship with its instrumental motive for formation can - and really, must, if the campaign is to succeed - move beyond a simple instrumental relation into one of solidarity. I suspect this could be said precisely of the party as well, but I’m more doubtful. I’m also doubtful for my experiences with parties practicing something like the form of solidarity I wrote of earlier - doing things for others - wherein in parties get involved in coalitions, seek leadership positions, and push lines developed outside the coalition, sometimes without admitting that that is what goes on. And, if this can’t succeed, there’s always the scorched earth policy, of trying to sabotage the coalition/campaign and/or to set up a competing one. This is part of why at one point in Chicago there were three separate coalitions against the war.
Third reservation, or perhaps reservation 2a: Jodi writes that the party form of solidarity is “a solidarity toward not each other as individuals nor to a specific message of platform, but to the party as the form of their political friendship, their alliance or affiliation.” That sounds a great deal like democratic centralism, which is simply a bad idea. And, put in terms of other institutions, would be tremendously problematic: “familial love is towards the family as the form of the friendship and love between members of the family” would surely be subject to scrutiny as masking partriarchal power in at least some settings, “scholarlyness is toward the university, not towards colleagues, as the form of their intellectual friendship” would be a mask for the power differentials in universities between administration and faculty, tenured and adjunct faculty, faculty and students, as well as divisions of gender, race, economic background, etc.
And, what does it mean to have a political friendship that is a form of alliance neither a common project of commitment to a platform/vision nor a relationship of commitment to each other? I suspect the aim here is to escape anything resembling a communitarianism, but this sounds to me like a rather empty picture of political friendship, which may make sense as Jodi suggested in her comments on the post about Lenin here that Zizek’s interest in Lenin is a formal one.
Continuing this reservation, Jodi writes, “solidarity with the party demands putting aside one’s specificity, one’s own convictions, one’s identity, one’s individuality.” That definitely sounds like democratic centralism, and like the trait of an organization that will act in undemocratic, nontransparent and destructive ways in relation to other organizations. It also sounds a good deal to me like the attitude of the bad old organizations in response to feminism: “wait till after the revolution”. Feminism inside the New Left (certainly in Italy, which is the case I know best but I suspect across the planet) caused the New Left’s breakdown via precisely the assertion of people’s own specificity, convictions, identity, individuality. Of course, this could be redescribed in terms of universals and so forth, which would be fine with me, but there is something in this quote here that makes me think Zizek would not be on the side of women who said, among other things, ‘why are we always cranking the fucking mimeo machine and making coffee while the men are writing the leaflets and planning the demos?’ I mean, maybe he means something else, but someone invokes Lenin and calls for us to set ourselves aside in order to have a relationship with an organization…? If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then I think I can be forgiven for not going out of my way to leave open the conjecture that maybe it’s not a duck.
Jodi mentions “fetishistic reductions of the other to the one like me, to my neighbor, and to one that I should love”, I think that’s part of her agenda with this stuff. That’s laudable. To my mind, though, it’s a little misguided. What’s needed are less concepts of political relations and more techniques for their practice. We can conceive the other in any way we like, but the real heart of the matter is in practices other than conceptualizing, ethical techniques of (collective) self-making. That strikes me as affective (as Jon noted in a recent post), much more than conceptual. And at the level of practice I think people clearly are capable of overcoming such reductions. The exercise of this capability is of course not guaranteed, but I don’t think different concepts of otherness get us much further in terms of relative successes or failures of practicing different relations with different others. I think thought would be more productively directed toward thinking about techniques for building those relations (I can think of a few that didn’t work from organizing campaigns) and in documenting and spreading stories of the practices of those kinds of relations. And, of course, trying to craft new stories that will need documenting precisely by trying to build those relations. Lastly on this quote, it’s harsh of me to say, but it strikes me that Zizek’s fetishizing Lenin who in turn fetishized the party and the state, which surely has to play out in terms of the types of political and ethical relations we want.
Re: all of this, I find Badiou’s declarations of equality or Ranciere’s axiomatic opinion of equality to be much more compelling points of departure. And those strike me as a reasonably approximation of something like a concept of solidarity (common fidelity to equality, though I’d want to add also to our differences). Practices of solidarity need more investigation as well, though I think there’s as much or more to be done on this in terms of historical research and literature as there is in theory and philosophy. It also strikes me that discussions on militant research in different forms are relevant here, as attempts to understand (for lack of a better term) actually existing solidarity (solidarities) and to create more of it.
This may be an unfair rhetorical power play on my part, but I think I prefer solidarity in terms of communism… defined in terms of slogans, I’d call it the mode of being where an injury to one is an injury to all, or where the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all. No suppression or setting aside of anyone’s individuality in any of that, but rather a “both… and…” relationship. Which is key I think, because we do want to build the new society within the shell of the old. In this sense, I’m probably just more anarchist than Jodi (I clearly am in many ways - also, to be clear, lest this parenthetical following that link give the wrong impression, the IWW is not an anarchist organization), in that I do believe there is (and must be) a strong prefigurative component to our politics and organizing.
a question about images:
what’s the deal with IWW and the black cat?
Comment by Tzuchien — February 9, 2006 @ 9:55 am
Hi Tzuchien,
Well, they’re really cute and you can pet them and cuddle them and play with them and it makes you feel better after a long day of having the boss exploit your labor.
I’ve always taken it to be a symbol for wildcat strikes, which I’ve always taken to mean groups of workers walking off the job together under their own steam, having decided to do so together, without consulting the boss or their existing union if there is one. A bit of googling turned up a more limited definition, here: ”
An unauthorized work stoppage while a labor contract is still in effect.” This would mean, in every contract I’ve ever heard of, violating the contractual no strike clause.
I’m not sure, but in at least some cases this would mean a more limited set of (the already meager and poorly enforced) legal protections that ‘normal’ strike activity falls under. I think that definition’s too narrow. At a minimum, it should also apply to work stoppages by graduate employees, public employees in many US states, domestic employees, and independent contractors, none of whom enjoy a right to strik and none of whom fall under the purview of the National Labor Relations Act.
I looked after you asked and found a wikipedia article that credits wobbly Ralph Chaplin with originating the symbol. The article notes that the name ‘black cat’ has been used for many a project (I’ve thought about getting the black cat tattoo). There’s also a profusion of things called ‘wildcat’, including the very excellent German marxist project http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/eindex.htm">Wildcat, and a UK group of the same name that I’m less keen on but who still have some good things to say in some of the material in this archive. (Incidentally, if memory serves, the Wildcat from Germany has or had some kind of connection with Kolinko, who I think are pretty great as well, very worth checking out.)
I also like another simple resonance of the black cat image, which is “unlucky for bosses”.
I’ve seen t-shirts with menacing looking black cats with the slogan “will strike if provoked”, which is kinda cool. Same shirts also get made with a big cobra on them, which I can’t get fully behind because I watched too many hours of the GI Joe cartoon as a kid. I think on the strike tip, though, we need to be careful not to overly fetishize a certain form of action. The Precarias a la Deriva are quite explicit and good on this. They started during a general strike in 2002 and started from the question “what is your strike?” as a way of starting to investigate forms of action and organizing possible in settings where the traditional mass strike doesn’t work the same way (domestic workers, prostitutes, freelance workers of all sorts, etc, basically precarious workers).
Hmm. That was longwinded and pedantic of me, sorry. Anyway, I hope the symbol’s clearer now.
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — February 9, 2006 @ 4:43 pm
hola compañero,
kinda on a tangent, but have you read foucaults piece on friendship (it was published in hatred of capitalism, a semiotexte compilation) - i dont have a copy to hand now, but i remember being struck by his description of friendship as an open project of joint reinvention/creation brought together in love (i could totally be making up crap here ‘cause my memory es mierda). i prefer this kind of approach to solidarity - as a transformative process of engagement. yr conclusion above reminded me of the piece…
abrazos,
nico
Comment by nico — February 9, 2006 @ 7:09 pm
hey compa,
Como estas? Y donde? Debemos hacer un blog en castellano, probablemente debe ser mas interesante y util que este, mio esfuerzo pobre … Thanks for the reference. I’ll check it out. A bit of googling leads me to believe it’s “Friendship as a Way of Life”, which is also in the collection called “Ethics”.
un abrazo,
Nate
Comment by Nate — February 9, 2006 @ 7:44 pm
hola chico,
estoy bien - pues, mas o menos. estoy en bogotá todavia, pero me voy por el sur pronto. botogá es muy interestante: hay 8 millones personas estan viviendo acá, y es el nuevo frente por los paramilitares (en los barrios maginales), pero, tambien, es muy rico. el mudial primeroy segundo en lo mismo lugar. el futuro talvez…
hay un blog en dos idiomas - no recuerdo el nombre pero es un blog de una chica de inglaterra, y la feed es en indyblogs y anarchoblogs… es interestante porque hay diferences muy subtil entre los dos. y por eso me gusta… bueno, abrazos,
nx
Comment by nico — February 10, 2006 @ 4:19 pm
Ciao Nik,
Si recuerdas el nombre del blog bilingue, por favor dimelo. Tambien estoy mas o menos serio que debemos hacer un blog en castellano, para crecer las connecciones entre las redes castellano hablantes y ingles hablantes. (Las redes de gente que piensan mas o menos como nos.) En ambos direcciones, la fluja de informacion - he escuchado de gente en paises hispano hablante que esta dificil a buscar informacion sobre acciones y organizaciones y movimientos en paises ingles hablantes, especialmente los EEUU. Pues, tengo que ir, necesito dormir. Buen viaje.
No recuerdo, a donde vas en el sur? Si vas a Argentina dime, tengo algun@s amig@s alli con que quizas puedes reunir. Tambien hay varias libros y revistas de la izquierda que quiero!
un abrazo,
Nate
Comment by Nate — February 11, 2006 @ 7:07 am
hola chico,
sí, voy por equador, peru, y boliva para buenos aires (¡que chimba!) - y recuerdo que quieres un libro de situationes - el libro de los zapatistas, ¿cierto?. si yo podria comprarlo, lo compraré para tí (no me gusta sujuntivo). un blog bilingue será bueno - un espacio interesante. ¿tienes contactos por eso?
anarcoabrazos,
n
Comment by nico — February 11, 2006 @ 7:20 pm
hola Nico,
Creo que mi amigo Sebastian Touza ya ha una copia del CS libro sobre el EZLN, necesito preguntar a el. Es sujuntivo es tambien dificil por me - prefiero a siempre hablar en el presente (el presente eternal que es el tiempo mismo de la circulacion del capital). Mi grammatica no esta muy bueno… Sobre el bilingue blog… no se. Tengo varias comp@s hispano hablantes, pero no estoy seguro si ell@s interesa el proyecto y tiene el tiempo… No se, pero sospecho que ya hay blogs interesantes en castellano que no conocemos.
abrazos,
Nate
Comment by Nate — February 11, 2006 @ 9:00 pm
solidarity roundup
In the spirit of Ken’s populism roundup, a list of contributions to what’s emerging as an ongoing blogversation on solidarity and similar. It’s a little more disparate than the discussion on populism, but worth collecting nonetheless:
Trackback by Long Sunday — February 12, 2006 @ 9:40 pm
What the hell is wrong with Solidarity? (or, “we are all of the rabble”)
Nate very generously engages one of my earlier posts on solidarity. He raises a number of very interesting objections and reservations. 1. Solidarity is primarily defensive, seeking to stop or slow attacks. That’s something tremendously important but…
Trackback by I cite — February 12, 2006 @ 10:41 pm
Nate, from what I could see, you didn’t mention the black cat as symbol of sabotage - the ’sabby cat’. And as representing the demand for something much better - one old wob slogan was ‘the cat likes its cream’.
Re friendship following the discussion of solidarity: I have been in collectives that were also primarily friendship circles, and that has frozen others out who want to engage with us - sometimes deliberately, sometimes less consciously. It’s something that I regret, in those cases. But friendship can also be a useful way of thinking about working - either as an individual or as part of a collectivity - with other individual or collectivities. Particularly if you believe, as I do, that a large part of friendship is caring for others because of/despite many of the things you disagree about.
Or maybe it’s late and I should go to bed. It might explain my relative lack of friends these days as well
Comment by Steve — February 14, 2006 @ 11:12 am
I hate the way those emotes are created.
And hi nico …
Comment by Steve — February 14, 2006 @ 11:13 am
hi Steve,
Thanks for those. I haven’t had time to read the Foucault friendship piece, but I think you make a good point here. Organizations shouldn’t be circles of friends. (This in many ways seems to support Jodi’s point, which the more I think about the more I think I disagree less than I thought, though there are still some basic disagreements between us.)
Or, put differently, circles of friends may be a type of informal organization, which is fine, but it’s a relatively closed type of organization and can have negative results when mixed with other types of organization, informal or formal, unless we’re very careful.
It’s good to have relationships of respect and affection with fellow members of an organization, and friends in the organization. But… some old wobbly said once, I think I heard this in Chicago but maybe I heard it second hand, I’m not sure, anyway - we should run every meeting as if there’s 100 people in attendance, so we’ll be prepared for the day when there are. I think the same principle is a good one organizationally. We should treat ourselves seriously like we would if we were a huge organization, but it’s not just seriousness, it’s also that one could not be pals with every single member of a huge organization and wouldn’t need to. Preparing for that time by being careful about group dynamics now can I think be a part of that same idea, “so we’ll be ready”. There’s also something very nice about the term ‘comrade’, which I think implies a common project in a way very different from friends. Friends and comrades are very important and are often the same people, but they shouldn’t have to be and the distinction is I think quite an important on. That might be an interesting follow on from the solidarity threat, one on being a comrade. I’ll have to think about that.
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — February 14, 2006 @ 3:02 pm
heya kids,
i think i might have been in those exact meetings steve
i agree - circles of friends make for good affinity type goods, but isnt a good basis for projects that you want to make accessible to other people outside the circle. i quite like the idea of starting with the idea that there will be lots more people than there currently is: too often projects are sabotaged fro mthe start with this lack of ‘optimism’(?). what i liked aboutt he foucault piece was the idea that friendship was a project of transformation. i figure that solidarity is something similar in that it should be easy nor leave ‘one’ intact - the conflicts etc should be a part of it not towards resolution but towards transformation…
BTW, is there a history(s) to the word comrade? where did it come from? it would be interesting to trace its geneology…
chao!
nicoX
Comment by nico — February 14, 2006 @ 4:29 pm
that should have said shouldnt be easy, not should. and i hate the emotes tampoco,
n
Comment by nico — February 14, 2006 @ 4:31 pm