We are confronted with an expansion of the revolution that reaches the point of becoming something else. Today’s uprisings point toward an anthropological and no longer merely a political revolution, in which Marx’s distinction between political and social revolution begins to dissolve in favor of a new antagonism beyond the coordinates that were established by the workers’ movement at the end of the 19th century, and which remained dominant throughout the 20th century right up to May 68, when the idea of another (state) power was still in force. Such antagonism is no longer dominant. The protesters and those on the streets in the many riots are not out to take power. They have let go of the sovereignist principle; they refuse without affirming an alternative within the system. This opens up another territory beyond the known paradigms of revolt and revolution. This is the perspective of the new cycle of struggle.
From Ill Will (30/05/2024), we share a second essay by Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen that continues his analysis of the “politics” of contemporary protest movements/insurrections [The Movement of Refusal], as a movement or shift from revolution to destitution.
What happened to the notion of revolution? In this companion piece to “The Movement of Refusal,” Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen retraces the rise and fall of revolutionary theory from its earliest systematic expression during the First International to the first proletarian offensive of 1917-1921, and onwards to the crisis at the hands of a bourgeois “anti-fascism” that instrumentalized the specter of fascism as a means to save capitalism, before ditching it, after 1945, in order to integrate the laboring class into the nation state. Although the post-war welfare state was the great achievement of the workers’ movement, the price paid for it was the abandonment of radical transformation and the forgetting of the wretched of the earth. If May 68 signaled the brief retrieval and expansion of the idea of communist revolution, it also effectively announced its end, ushering in a period of crisis and confusion.
Where do we stand today? Among the original insights offered by this long timeline is the link Bolt Rasmussen establishes between the deconstruction of communism in the 1980s and more recent efforts to rethink our image of radical transformation through a destituent key. The reinvention of communism as a lived process demanded that all existing political positions first be put through an “acid bath” allowing the shipwreck of classical politics to present itself in a new light. Henceforth, Bolt-Rasmussen argues, the only certainty left to us is the absence of certainties, combined with the urgency of a radical anti-political refusal here and now.
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The disaster has a name: Capitalism
From the Antimídia collective of Brazil, a short video documentary report-essay on the floods of early May this year, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, and the popular collective responses to the catastrophe, more often than not in opposition to state authorities.
The video is available with Portuguese, Spanish and English language subtitles.
In the first days of May 2024, the territory known as the state of Rio Grande do Sul, in what is called Brazil, was hit by the largest climate catastrophe in its history. More than a week of intense rain caused several rivers to overflow, devastating dozens of cities and destroying everything in their path, before flowing into the Guaíba River, causing the biggest flood ever recorded in the Greater Porto Alegre region and other cities in the state. As of June 1, 171 deaths have been confirmed. Thousands of people lost everything. 614 thousand were left homeless. More than two million were affected. Entire cities were practically erased from the map by the force of the waters.
The State and the capitalist mode of production are directly responsible for the devastation of the planet, producing more and more catastrophes, from cutting down forests to make way for cattle, to monocultures and mining, degrading and making the soil waterproof with urban expansion. Amidst the horror, the complete inability of governments and the rich to care for our lives and our environment becomes evident.
At the center of this tragedy that heralds a new reality of increasingly frequent extreme events, anarchists, indigenous communities, quilombos and social movements have organised solidarity as they try to rebuild their lives and their seriously affected territories, whether asking for and distributing donations, calling for joint efforts to clean and return to affected properties, or to organise new occupations of empty buildings to house people who lost their homes.
Suggested Reading:
“The Disaster Is Already Here: Anarchists in Southern Brazil on the Floods of May 2024”, CrimethInc., 25/06/2024.