Moments of Excess

Movements, Protest and Everyday Life

The Free Association The Free Association, The Free Association

• Publisher: PM Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781604861136
• eBook ISBN: 9781604865417
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Advocacy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

It's a physical thing. The hairs on the back on your arms stand up. You get goosebumps. There's a tingling in your spine. Your heart is racing. Your eyes shine and all your senses are heightened: sights, sounds, smells are all more intense. Somebody brushes past you, skin on skin, and you feel sparks. Even the acrid rasp of tear gas at the back of your throat becomes addictive, whilst a sip of water has come from the purest mountain spring. You have an earnest conversation with the total stranger standing next to you and it feels completely normal. (Not something that happens too often in the checkout queue at the supermarket.) Everybody is more attractive. You can't stop grinning. Fuck knows what endorphins your brain's producing, but it feels great. Collectivity is visceral!

The first decade of the twenty-first century was marked by a series of global summits which seemed to assume ever-greater importance—from the WTO ministerial meeting in Seattle at the end of 1999, through the G8 summits at Genoa, Evian and Gleneagles, up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) at Copenhagen in 2009.

But these global summits did not pass uncontested. Alongside and against them, there unfolded a different version of globalization. Moments of Excess is a collection of texts which offer an insider analysis of this cycle of counter-summit mobilisations. It weaves lucid descriptions of the intensity of collective action into a more sober reflection on the developing problematics of the 'movement of movements'. The collection examines essential questions concerning the character of anti-capitalist movements, and the very meaning of movement; the relationship between intensive collective experiences—'moments of excess'—and 'everyday life'; and the tensions between open, all-inclusive, 'constitutive' practices, on the one hand, and the necessity of closure, limits and antagonism, on the other.

Moments of Excess includes a new introduction explaining the origin of the texts and their relation to event-based politics, and a postscript which explores new possibilities for anti-capitalist movements in the midst of crisis.

Notes and acknowledgements

All writing is collaborative, but the texts in this collection are the result of a process that is probably more collaborative than most. We have borrowed ideas from all over the place—some we have been using for so long they feel like our own. We have benefited from innumerable conversations, discussions and other collective experiences. We’re grateful to all those groups and individuals, activists, scholars and ‘ordinary people’, known and unknown, who’ve helped us.

A few however are worth naming. For comments, comradeship and inspiration, we thank, in particular: folk associated with The CommonPlace social centre in Leeds, especially Andre, Gaz, Paul, Tabitha, Tanya and Tommo; our comrades in the Turbulence Collective; John in Puebla, Massimo in London and Monchio, Nate in Minnesota, Paul in Dublin, Silvia and George in New York (and the Midnight Notes Collective more generally), and Werner in York.

Introduction

1 ‘In the signs that bewilder the middle class, the aristocracy and the poor prophets of regression, we do recognise our brave friend, Robin Goodfellow, the old mole that can work in the earth so fast, that worthy pioneer—the Revolution.’ (Marx toasting the proletarians of Europe at a dinner to celebrate the fourth anniversary of the Chartist People’s Paper, London, 14 April 1856; www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1856/04/14.htm

Anti-capitalist movements

Written in the summer of 2001, this piece was originally commissioned for a book on ‘anti-capitalism.’ The book’s editor decided that it was ‘too militant,not academic enough’ (amongst other failings) and chose not to use it; it was published instead on The Commoner website. A revised version—included here—was published in Subverting the Present–Imagining the Future: Insurrection, Movement, Commons, edited by Werner Bonefeld (Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, 2008).

1 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1970). Also at http://www.marxists.org.

2 G. ‘June 18th—If I Can Dance It’s Not My Revolution?’ In Reclaim the Streets (eds), Reflections on J18 (London: RTS, 1999). Also at http://www.afed.org.uk/online/j18/.

3 Andrew X., ‘Give Up Activism’. In Reclaim the Streets (eds), Reflections on J18 (London: RTS, 1999). Reprinted with a new postscript in Earth First! (eds) Do or Die, 9 (2000). Also at http://www.afed.org.uk/online/j18/.

4 John Holloway, ‘From Scream of Refusal to Scream of Power: The Centrality of Work.’ In Werner Bonefeld, Richard Gunn, John Holloway and Kosmas Psychopedis (eds), Open Marxism III: Emancipating Marx (London: Pluto, 1995), p. 163.

5 Mario Tronti, ‘Lenin in England.’ In Red Notes (eds), Working Class Autonomy and the Crisis: Italian Marxist Texts of the Theory and Practice of a Class Movement, 1964–79. London: Red Notes/CSE Books, 1979), p. 1.

6 Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. 1 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976), p. 451; our emphasis.

7 Karl Marx, ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’, in Surveys from Exile (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973), p. 146. The text’s also available, in a slightly different translation, at http://www.marxists.org.

8 E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), p. 8.

9 Mario Tronti, ‘Workers and Capital.’ In Conference of Socialist Economists (eds), The Labour Process and Class Strategies (London: Stage One/CSE Books, 1976), pp. 126–27.

10 Anonymous, Beasts of Burden: Capitalism-Animals-Communism (London: Antagonism, 1999).

11 See John Holloway, ‘Capital Moves’, Capital and Class, 57 (1995), reprinted in Werner Bonefeld (ed.) Revolutionary Writing: Common Sense Essays in Post-Political Politics (Autonomedia, New York, 2003).

12 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, ‘What the Protesters in Genoa Want.’ In Anonymous (eds), On Fire: The Battle of Genoa and the Anti-Capitalist Movement (London: One-Off Press, 2001).

13 See also Alberto R. Bonnet, ‘The Command of Money Capital and the Latin American Crisis’, in Bonefeld, W. and S. Tischler, What is to be Done? (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002).

14 Antonio Negri, ‘Twenty Theses on Marx: Interpretation of the Class Situation Today’, in Saree Makdisi, Cesare Casarin and Rebecca E. Karl (eds), Marxism Beyond Marxism (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 157.

15 Antonio Negri, The Politics of Subversion: A Manifesto for the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge: Polity, 1989), p. 178.

16 Cyril Smith, Marx at the Millennium (London: Pluto, 1996), p. 154.

17 Kenneth Surin, ‘“The Continued Relevance of Marxism” as a Question: Some Propositions’, in Saree Makdisi, Cesare Casarin and Rebecca E. Karl (eds), Marxism Beyond Marxism (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 203.

18 Massimo De Angelis, ‘From Movement to Society’, The Commoner, 2 (2001) at http://www.commoner.org.uk/. Also in Anonymous (eds), On Fire: The Battle of Genoa and the Anti-Capitalist Movement (London: One-Off Press, 2001).

19 Cyril Smith, Marx at the Millennium, p. 165.

20 See also ‘What is a life?’ in this collection.

21 See Schnews, ‘Monopolise Resistance?: How “Globalise Resistance” would Hijack Revolt’ (Brighton: Schnews, 2001) (also at http://www.schnews.org.uk/), Massimo De Angelis, ‘From Movement to Society’ and David Harvie, Keir Milburn, Ben Trott and David Watts (eds) Shut Them Down! The G8, Gleneagles 2005 and the Movement of Movements (Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia and Leeds: Dissent!, 2005).

What is the movement?

In 2002, the magazine Derive Approdi published an ‘Open Letter to the European Movements’—available at http://interactivist.autonomedia.org/ node/1109 —inviting these movements to address a set of 12 questions. This piece was written in response to the Open Letter and was published (in Italian) in Derive Approdi, no. 22, which coincided with the first European Social Forum, held in Florence in November 2002.

1 Andrew X., ‘Give Up Activism.’ In Reclaim the Streets (eds), Reflections on J18 (London: RTS, 1999). Reprinted with a new postscript in Earth First! (eds) Do or Die, 9 (2000). Also at http://www.afed.org.uk/online/j18/.

2 Antonio Negri, The Politics of Subversion: A Manifesto for the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989), p. 178.

3 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1970), p. 56–7.

Moments of excess

This text first appeared as a pamphlet distributed at the autonomous spaces and Life Despite Capitalism forum at the European Social Forum, London, October 2004. We also organised a workshop on the theme, featuring Jamie King, Ana Dinerstein, Dermot from the No M11 Campaign and Alan from P2P Fightsharing.

1 For an account of the anti-poll tax struggle, see Danny Burns, Poll Tax Rebellion (Edinburgh: AK Press and London: Attack International, 1992); Jon Savage’s England’s Dreaming: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock (London: Faber and Faber, 1992) is the best history of punk we’ve come across.

2 Cyril Smith discusses our struggle to define our humanity in Marx at the Millennium (London: Pluto Press, 1996).

3 See Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (London: Athlone Press, 1988).

4 Matthew Fuller, ‘Behind the Blip: Software as Culture (Some Routes into “Software Criticism”, More Ways Out)’, in Behind the Blip: Essays on the Culture of Software (New York: Autonomedia, 2003), p. 25. Also available at http://www.multimedialab.be/doc/citations/matthew_fuller_blip.pdf;

5 For one perspective (ours!) on the group Class War and its demise and dissolution, see Class War no. 73 (intended to be the final issue of the paper), available on-line at http://www.spunk.org/library/pubs/cw/sp001669/ and at http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/last_cw.html.

6 Again see Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus.

Summits and plateaus

In July 2005, the leaders of the Group of Eight (G8) held their annual setpiece summit in Gleneagles, Scotland. This is the text of a leaflet on summit mobilisations produced in November 2004 and distributed in the run-up to the Gleneagles gathering.

Event horizon

This pamphlet was distributed at the various events surrounding the Gleneagles G8 summit (July 2005), including Make Poverty History’s ‘welcome march’ in Edinburgh, various workshop discussions in Edinburgh and the ‘Hori-zone’ convergence campsite in Stirling. A slightly revised version was published in ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization, vol. 5, no. 4 (November 2005), at http://www.ephemeraweb.org.

1 William Burroughs, ‘The coming of the purple better one’, Esquire (November 1968).

2 When it comes to connection we might make an exception for that riot cop rapidly approaching with a big truncheon. But those state strategists expert in the ‘science’ of policing are wise to this effect of human connection. The riot cop’s face-concealing helmet, big boots, shield and armour, aren’t only for physical protection. They’re designed to dehumanise, to scramble any possible human communication.

3 The line’s from Spinoza’s Ethics; we came across it in Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus (London: Athlone Press, 1988).

4 From Like You by the Salvadorean poet Roque Dalton (translated by Jack Hirschman): Like you I | love love, life, the sweet smell | of things, the sky-blue | landscape of January days. | And my blood boils up | and I laugh through eyes | that have known the buds of tears. | I believe the world is beautiful | and that poetry, like bread, is for everyone. | And that my veins don’t end in me | but in the unanimous blood | of those who struggle for life, | love, | little things, | landscape and bread, | the poetry of everyone.

5 This notion was posted on the sadly now-defunct website (Every Morning I Wake Up On) The Wrong Side of Capitalism.

6 The line is from The Smiths’ song ‘A Rush and a Push and the Land is Ours.

7 Look out ahead | I see danger come | I wanna pistol | I wanna gun | I’m scared baby | I wanna run | This world’s crazy | Give me the gun Baby, baby | Ain’t it true | I’m immortal |...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Anti-capitalist movements
• What is the movement?
• Moments of excess
• Summits and plateaus
• Event horizon
• On the road
• What is a life?
• Worlds in motion
• Six impossible things before breakfast
• Speculating on the crisis
• Regeneration
• Notes and acknowledgements
• About the Authors