Somewhere or other Latour makes the remark that we’ll never do better than a politician. Here it’s important to remember that for Latour– as for myself —every entity is a “politician”. Latour isn’t referring solely to those persons that we call “politicians”, but to all entities that exist. And if Latour claims that we’ll never do better than a politician, then this is because every entity must navigate a field of relations to other entities that play a role in what is and is not possible in that field. In the language of my ontology, this would be articulated as the thesis that the local manifestations of which an entity is capable are, in part, a function of the relations the entity entertains to other entities in a regime of attraction. The world about entities perpetually introduces resistances and frictions that play a key role in what comes to be actualized.
It is this aphorism that occurred to me today after a disturbing discussion with a rather militant Marxist on Facebook. I had posted a very disturbing editorial on climate change by the world renowned climate scientist James Hansen. Not only did this person completely misread the editorial, denouncing Hansen for claiming that Canada is entirely responsible for climate change (clearly he had no familiarity with Hansen or his important work), but he derided Hansen for proposing market-based solutions to climate change on the grounds that “the market is the whole source of the problem!” It’s difficult to know how to respond in this situations.
read on!
It is quite true that it is the system of global capitalism or the market that has created our climate problems (though, as Jared Diamond shows in Collapse, other systems of production have also produced devastating climate problems). In its insistence on profit and expansion in each economic quarter, markets as currently structured provide no brakes for environmental destructive actions. The system is itself pathological.
However, pointing this out and deriding market based solutions doesn’t get us very far. In fact, such a response to proposed market-based solutions is downright dangerous and irresponsible. The fact of the matter is that 1) we currently live in a market based world, 2) there is not, in the foreseeable future an alternative system on the horizon, and 3), above all, we need to do something now. We can’t afford to reject interventions simply because they don’t meet our ideal conceptions of how things should be. We have to work with the world that is here, not the one that we would like to be here. And here it’s crucial to note that pointing this out does not entail that we shouldn’t work for producing that other world. It just means that we have to grapple with the world that is actually there before us.
It pains me to write this post because I remember, with great bitterness, the diatribes hardcore Obama supporters leveled against legitimate leftist criticisms on the grounds that these critics were completely unrealistic idealists who, in their demand for “purity”, were asking for “ponies and unicorns”. This rejoinder always seemed to ignore that words have power and that Obama, through his profound power of rhetoric, had, at least the power to shift public debates and frames, opening a path to making new forms of policy and new priorities possible. The tragedy was that he didn’t use that power, though he has gotten better.
I do not wish to denounce others and dismiss their claims on these sorts of grounds. As a Marxist anarchists, I do believe that we should fight for the creation of an alternative hominid ecology or social world. I think that the call to commit and fight, to put alternatives on the table, has been one of the most powerful contributions of thinkers like Zizek and Badiou. If we don’t commit and fight for alternatives those alternatives will never appear in the world. Nonetheless, we still have to grapple with the world we find ourselves in. And it is here, in my encounters with some Militant Marxists, that I sometimes find it difficult to avoid the conclusion that they are unintentionally aiding and abetting the very things they claim to be fighting. In their refusal to become impure, to work with situations or assemblages as we find them, to sully their hands, they end up reproducing the very system they wish to topple and change. Narcissistically they get to sit there, smug in their superiority and purity, while everything continues as it did before because they’ve refused to become politicians or engage in the difficult concrete work of assembling human and nonhuman actors to render another world possible. As a consequence, they occupy the position of Hegel’s beautiful soul that denounces the horrors of the world, celebrate the beauty of their soul, while depending on those horrors of the world to sustain their own position.
To engage in politics is to engage in networks or ecologies of relations between humans and nonhumans. To engage in ecologies is to descend into networks of causal relations and feedback loops that you cannot completely master and that will modify your own commitments and actions. But there’s no other way, there’s no way around this, and we do need to act now.
Larval Subjects . 
May 11, 2012 at 6:01 pm
Amen!
May 11, 2012 at 7:48 pm
I agree that we have to both remain committed to doing what’s possible and changing the terrain of the possible. Your friend’s reaction seems over the top, but I can appreciate the tendency among marxists and other leftists to see market-based ecological interventions as overly apologetic because of the way they seem to come bundled with a commitment to making or seeing that markets “work”.
This may be more apparent in the case of jobs rhetoric. We asked to accept that it’s only possible to distribute/access vital resources and control production through “jobs”, which can only be “created” by employers (private, but technically public too), and so political discourse and the appearance of economic crisis persists as a “jobs problem”.
A possible tactic (the distinction between tactics and strategy seems relevant here too) is one that I took in 2008 when I talked about voting for Barack Obama. I did not pretend to prefer lesser evils than to admit that all this or most elections are is damage control — to ramp up the alienation. The demand was less to accept the electoral process as “the terrain of the possible” than to emphasize how this terrain, whatever possibilities exist on it, is itself a possibility or a contingent situation (and a problematic one at that).
That is to say, the message we make about working within the terrain of the possible should always be one aimed to disenchant that terrain and its seeming necessity.
May 12, 2012 at 3:54 am
I’m all for grappling with what “is”, as long as we’re keeping in mind that what we think of as “isness” is actually something we’re making happen, not an abstract thing by itself. It’s also worth remembering that physical limitations of an ecological kind aren’t really beholden to our political decisions of idealism or pragmatism. Though of course the “market” has to have a place at the table simply because it is so pervasive and inescapable, it’s not “beautiful soul” to say that the market is not a tool for alleviating the problems it creates, it’s just true: it can’t do it. You might as well try to turn a screw with a hammer. It’s also a practical reality that electoral politics is inescapably about voting against the worst guy who could afford to run, and that’s fine: I proudly voted against both McCain and Obama in that election, because in the long run of human survival on Earth I’m convinced that neither of them would have made a noticeable difference, of even a couple of decades or a few thousand lives. This time around I might actually cower and grovel and vote like a liberal, as I find Romney more frightening than McCain by far, but I’m not sure yet. I too have had arguments with other radicals whose political purity was making alliances and work impossible, but I hear the same thing in a different way from liberals, leading me to believe that the ideological convictions themselves are probably the second most damning thing about our efforts to deal with our situation.
May 12, 2012 at 1:28 pm
Nick,
While, like any other entity, we have an impact on other entities, 1) we don’t make them what they are like Atlas holding the world on shoulders, and 2) entities get along quite fine without us, continuing to be what they are. Were what you say true, we could simply choose, collectively, to believe that climate change isn’t taking place, resin icy the world, and it would all go away. I suspect that wouldn’t work.
May 12, 2012 at 1:30 pm
As for your remarks about markets, unfortunately this is what dominates in our current social ecosystem and is our only option. It would be nice to simply be able to wave the world away and act in a smooth world of our own making, but things don’t work that way.
May 13, 2012 at 9:45 am
It’s a point that Karl Polanyi made many, many years ago but the opposition between markets, on the one hand, and centralised planning, on the other, is a false one. Indeed, he goes as far as to say that where markets have succeeded it is because they are well planned. Little wonder that Latour is fond of him!
Both thinkers suggest (if not fully develop) a political pragmatism that attempts to understand and deal with things on a non-fundamentalist basis. They recognise that the near infinite complexity of life is what both makes fundamentalist politics impossible and pragmatist politics necessary. That doesn’t mean adopting a faithless, grey, middle of the road, utilitarian attitude but rather it demands treating hopes, fears, facts, fictions, markets, states and the rest as part of a single heteregeneous problem – the problem of politics. (And politics for Latour isn’t simply representation, it is a particular type of representation that temporarily draws together various objects and forces centering around the kernel of an issue or dispute. This is the meaning of his ‘dingpolitik’.)
Markets are very good at efficiently distributing resources, when their extreme volatility is accounted for and ameliorated. Planning is how this is done and it is very effective at this and other tasks when it neither concentrates too much power in one place or takes on too much complexity.
Believing unconditionally in either one practice or the other is a recipe for disaster and tyranny. Worse, it forecloses any possible creation of new ways of doing things. And worse still it prevents action in the present, like you suggest, Levi.
Dismissing markets altogether certainly begs more questions than it answers.
I can’t help but believe that the neoliberal right succeed because, while unwaveringly fundamentalist in their faith, they are also unapologetically pragmatic in their actions. Anything that advances their cause is fair game, they don’t sit around waiting for an opportunity for uncompromised, untarnished action. They don’t worry that they might be co-opted or drawn into the system of what they oppose. Why? Well, they’re already winning I suppose but also they seem to have the courage of their convictions enough to believe that what they do today won’t determine what they do tomorrow.
We could learn a lot from such realpolitik.
May 24, 2012 at 3:31 am
Your statement that market-based strategy is the only feasible tool in our box is glaringly untrue and reflects a lack of knowledge of the history of political/economic tools and modes. Even if it were true, it would mean we are basically doomed to fail anyway, as the market’s history clearly shows that it is a positive-feedback death spiral that is quite unsuited to the preservation of life and well-being except in a very limited, short-term and uneven fashion.
Atlas is supposed to be a Titan (God-ish), and there’s a fairly wide field between saying we are that and saying we are inconsequential. I’m firmly between the two. We do (clearly!) contribute to making some entities what they are as they help to form us, and though some entities get along fine without us, others don’t and to varying degrees.
What did I say that you’re identifying with the belief that we can wish anything away (or into existence, for that matter)? The effect our modes of activity have on other beings is an effect of form, not imaginary at all. I think you alter reality to fit your philosophy: it really seems to stand in the way of some very basic understanding.
May 24, 2012 at 11:48 am
Nick,
I did not say market based solutions are the *only* solutions. I said that markets, whether we like it or not, are the dominant reality of our time and we have to navigate that reality. I’d love a world free of that but that’s not the world we live in.
May 24, 2012 at 1:16 pm
I’d love a “world” at all: it would make things a lot simpler if there was one. Look, this thing we’re calling a market doesn’t just happen. Nothing just exists by itself with no input, and we don’t live in a world that just exists at all. What we perceive as a continuous phenomenon is really the result of a lot of intentional and very difficult work, and it only seems easy or normal because our brains make sure that it does, so that we can learn how to function day to day. We don’t “be”, we “do”. The influence we have is largely a matter of collective choice, and choice is dependent on imagination. I’m not suggesting we just decide to ignore markets, but rather that our mode of market-related operation at present holds no hope for a future of human and ecological well-being. You drive nails with hammers and you turn screws with screwdrivers. It is our prerogative to recondition, reprogram our collective software to be able to use different tools appropriate to jobs. We can choose not to, but that’s a choice, not a given.
May 24, 2012 at 1:36 pm
Nick,
I don’t disagree with you at all. Markets don’t just happen, but require the assembly of all sorts of people, natural objects, technologies, etc. I do think, however, that it is deeply superficial to suggest that markets are entirely a result of “collective choice” and “human imagination”. All sorts of objects and networks play a significant role as well and people get caught in these networks despite the fact that they might not choose to be caught in these networks and might not wish to be caught in these networks. You’re treating the reality of markets as if it were purely a matter of belief or ideology. Change the belief, your story goes, and we can eradicate the reality. While I would agree that changing beliefs is an important part of changing these realities, I think a far more important part of changing these realities consists in changing material infrastructure. So what’s the issue? Well, on the one hand, I don’t believe capitalistic markets are a good way to organize society, but first this doesn’t change the fact that the vast majority of other people around me do believe this. I have to navigate a world based on what they believe and can’t just wave a magic wand and make that reality disappear. Second, and more fundamentally, because I am a biological being and not just a pure mind, I have to eat, clothe myself, have shelter, raise my child, pay my bills, etc.
I might not believe in the capitalistic system, but I’m nonetheless enmeshed in this system at each in every moment because I have to engage with that system to eat, live, shelter myself, feed my daughter, and so on. As Zizek argues, ideology is not about our beliefs or collective imagination, but our action and how our action is enmeshed in these networks. It’s that material reality that you need to change, not so much beliefs. The material network we live in exerts a gravity on us (https://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2011/09/19/the-gravity-of-things/) despite what our intentions or beliefs might be. You speak as if we can just wave a wand or just make all that disappear. Now I very well understand that changing that system requires, in part, changing beliefs. This entails that you have to accomplish two things: First, you need to address issues of persuasion that will create the critical mass to get enough people on board to change that system. I’ve never seen a workable plan for that. What’s yours? Second, you need to change material infrastructure in such a way that people are able to solve problems like eating, clothing themselves, raising children, sheltering themselves, etc., without being forced to do so within the capitalistic system we have today. What’s your plan for that? What infrastructural changes are you making that will enable people to solve these life problems without having to work within that system?
The point is that climate change is happening now and that the sorts of changes you’re talking about are changes that would take a great deal of time to accomplish, if they can be accomplished at all. Action is required now. This entails that action must be done within the framework of what is possible now. It’s not a happy thought, it’s not a pleasant thought, but as Marx said, we make history but not in conditions of our own choosing. In my view, the person who rejects actions because they happen to involve capitalism is among the greatest enablers of capitalist systems because they leave everything intact exactly as it was before.
June 5, 2012 at 4:09 am
No, I’m not talking about beliefs at all, and imagination is just the starting point. I’m talking about actions. Whether we choose the conditions or not is entirely beside the point, whatever Marx said. Nobody ever does direct political action because it’s easy! They do it–have always done it, throughout history–because they realize that not doing it is much harder morally than any physical hardship.
What is MY plan for infrastructural change? You are woefully unaware of how political change actually works. I don’t want to come up with a plan of my own, and neither should you. What we should do is find out what public opinion is, and go from there. That’s how the civil rights movement happened, as well as the Spanish Revolution, the Populist movement here in the 1890s, Shays’ Rebellion, just to name a handful. There have been thousands of these moments, they ALL changed infrastructure and social structure to some degree (never perfectly, but significantly), and NONE of them operated within the confines of the given political economic system. It’s just a matter of getting people to act in accord with what they already think is the right thing to do; after that, it becomes just as hard to stay within the system as it is to act against it. The Occupy movement is a clear present example. No, they’re not perfect, but they changed the dialog. Now everybody I meet (my boss, the neighbors, people in pubs, the owner of the Korean grocery store down the street) are all talking about economic injustice, the salaries of CEOs, and every Occupy talking point on the list, and these are people who, a year ago, I wouldn’t think had a political bone in their bodies. That kind of change in the popular code is much more significant than the effect of anything that either you or I have written on paper or on screen, and Obama certainly has NOTHING to do with it. In fact, if McCain, had won, this would probably have happened sooner!
If what you’re worried about is running out of time, forget it! We’re OUT of time! We’re at a minimum of 400 ppm upper atmospheric carbon right now. It isn’t how long we’ve got, it’s what we do with the time we have left. I would argue it has always been about that. How can we make enough changes in time to save everything we want to save? Answer: We most likely can’t. That doesn’t stop us from taking what action we can take. Historically, actions within the given political economic system make for the least amount of change within a certain amount of time, while collective actions that strive to create alternative systems apart from the mainstream leave the greatest mark, and also provoke the most significant reaction from the mainstream system (either yielding or antagonistic) because they are actually a significant threat. Action that stays within the given economic system is no threat at all, as it is dependent on the given system for its own functioning.
Your comment about enabling capitalism is senseless (What’s the alternative? Not enabling it by cooperating with it?) and insulting to the numerous movements against rampant capitalism throughout history, of which you are ignorant, that have sacrificed their comforts and lives to create a modicum of “the conditions of their own choosing”, not for themselves, but for the sake of future generations. You are now enjoying the benefits of their actions, whether you know it or not. Take just one example: the cooperatives of the Spanish Revolution were not quelled by “gravity”, or by the fact that their wholehearted option for anarchism “enabled” the capitalism they rejected; they were crushed by a joint effort of American capitalists, Russian communists and western European fascists, ALL of whom were significantly threatened by the anarchists–not threatened militarily at all (it was a bunch of mostly unarmed peasants, after all), but ideologically. The US has always tortured Cuba for the same reason: resistance might spread. This fear turns out to be correct: much of Central and South America is becoming much more Cuba-like in their stance now, rejecting ties to Europe and the US in favor of integration with one another and so on. None of this was accomplished by staying within the lines. If it’s too late to save the world, so what? The point is that SOMETHING has been happening, as opposed to nothing. Something is good. I like something. If it doesn’t lead to an “all lived happily ever after” scenario, at least there was some fun for a lot of good people along the way.
Having nothing change, on the other hand, is only fun for a very small, very privileged number of people who have to spend huge amounts of effort and money (the main function of capitalism and its focus on economic growth) to keep things from changing. As resentment of this builds, these few have to resort to much more drastic means of quelling change, and it eventually becomes harder to do than is worthwhile. Using market-based solutions may seem like a relatively comfortable idea for a while, but it will become less so as evidence against its effectiveness for your stated intentions continues to build. This is inevitable, so why wait? I recommend you do some reading of the history of social movements and social change and get back to me in about a year. You’re literate, so I give you credit for that kind of speed. In the meantime, ponder on this: it is NOT necessary to satisfy your basic human needs through dependence on the given infrastructure–not indefinitely. It IS necessary to depend on human interaction. Many times throughout history, alternative systems have been created to provide for the needs of people attempting to change political and physical reality. These systems were created from the ground up, by ordinary people like you and me…and many not even literate! One good place to start is Lawrence Goodwyn’s “The Populist Moment”.
That’s it for me in this particular discussion. The market has no hope of halting environmental degradation, because that isn’t what it does. For very simple reasons, its structure and function lend themselves to the devaluation of life because it simply does not account for all in life that is valuable, and what it does not account for, it discards as valueless. As for saving the world, nothing will do that. The world ended before either of us were born. As I say, it’s what we do with what we’ve got left.