PARTISAN!

Fox Luces, Online

“What would it take for the socialist left to recognise that its own disunity is partly to blame for this chaos?” writes Porco reflecting on the ongoing expansions of state violence against the Palestine solidarity movement. This is an understandable question to ask. Equally understandable is the despair and anger that ripples through their letter. But this is the wrong question, and the wrong emotion. Almost everyone with their head in the game knows that a tipping point is coming, and that the left is currently too fractured to meet it properly – recognition of that fact gets us nowhere, and too much frustration over it actually drives us backward. I submit that “What are we going to do about the state” is a much better try at a progressive line of inquiry. Here is my attempt to answer it properly.

What to do about the state? Abolish it of course, for the structures of parliament, the police, the military and the courts are at present irredeemable tools of the ruling class. The real reason for the ‘current chaos’ is simple to understand: the global demand for justice in Palestine represents a direct challenge to the hegemony of western capital, which still belongs to the most centralised and well-armed capitalists in the world. Giving up their client in the middle east remains unacceptable, and even more unacceptable is allowing the working class any victory at all through their own self-organisation (which is what real concessions on Palestine would amount to), because what kind of example would that set? Combine this with what is odiously referred to as the ‘cost of living crisis’, stemming from the long-term gap between wage and productivity growth as well as the increasingly speculative and commodified housing industry, and the challenge becomes a crisis. When capitalism faces multiple insurmountable and interlocking crises, it is up to the left to seize the moment. Otherwise, yes, fascism takes hold – from both inside and outside the state. The old line that “fascism is capitalism in decay” rings true, though we might more accurately put it that fascism is a tool used by capital to maintain its hegemony. Anyone who still thinks it hyperbolic to use the ‘f-word’ following the protests in NSW is burying their head in the sand. As Porco themself points out, live ammunition is the logical next step.

So far this should be revision. The question is what to do about it; but Porco seems almost hostile toward any concrete ideas on this front. If the call for workers’ militias is a “relic”, then a call for organisation is meaningless; we all know organisation is necessary, that is why this magazine exists in the first place. So where to turn for something more concrete? Porco manages two sideways sneers at anarchists in their letter, but in doing so they may be overlooking a community that has been strategising the fight against the state more intensely than any other left tendency for a long time. Here I will endeavour to introduce an elementary concept that consistently emerges from this effort: prefiguration.

Prefigurative politics is the effort to build the future society in the shell of the old; to, as much as possible, act as if we are already free. Obviously, this idea has its limits, but those limits are simply nowhere in sight, and frankly leftists these days are excessively familiar with them. The strategic point of prefiguration is twofold. First, when we build an alternative to the state, we can use this to sustainably power the machine of resistance. This looks like providing food to those that need it, providing healthcare and first aid, protecting the most vulnerable sections of the working class (e.g. immigrants and transgender people), setting up education hubs – providing any services that we can, totally independent of the state. The goal here is to reprogram people’s impulses from leaning on the state to support them to leaning on their fellow workers. This introduces the second benefit of prefiguration, which is the providing of a tangible alternative. How many in the socialist left really believe that an alternative society is possible? Not just logically or academically, but with full commitment? How many feel up to the challenge of meeting every other member of society as an equal, of having no organised system of violence to appeal to with every inconvenience? In my opinion, a lack of commitment to the logical conclusion of our ideas holds us back in times like these. Prefigurative politics builds the experience necessary to change that.

For a historical example on which to draw, look no further than the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. What began essentially as a militia to protect black Americans against racists and the police grew into a hub for counterpower and community organisation. The Panthers ran free breakfast programs, regularly patrolled communities, and provided additional essential services. They formed close connections with similar organisations within the latino [sic] community, and provided direct support to Indigenous Americans in their fight against state oppression. Under the leadership of Fred Hampton, they also reached out to rabidly reactionary working-class white Americans with astonishing success. They grew, in the words of FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, into “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.” Would that we could ever receive a similar compliment from Mike Burgess!

If anyone is reading this wondering how on earth any left group in modern Australia could gain access to the resources needed to put any of this into action, that’s a good question to ask. However, I think we underestimate the manpower and connections the left would have access to if we were able to provide a more concrete proposition to sympathisers than “join our organisation – you can vote in our conference in a few months.” Everybody with organising experience knows how difficult it is to keep people motivated and active, but does it have to be that way? I submit that with a real project building a tangible alternative to the state, we may see gains in places we never thought to look.

Finally, a word on what to do right now: number one, join your local tenant organisation. These have the best chance of growing into something worthy of the name ‘counterpower’ right now. Look into any ‘food not bombs’ style outfits near you. Unionise your workplace. Talk to people about their fear and hatred of the system – ask them what they’re doing about it. Work to find out what the actual needs of your community are, and work with fellow socialists to find ways to meet them. Proudly carry the banner of your organisation as you do so. Prefiguration at its best is not a replacement for a mass party, but a complement to it.

This is not a roadmap to revolution, but it’s a start, and the stakes are too high to wait for a perfect theory of the current moment. It’s time to stop wishing we were more unified or well organised, and to start reaching out.