HYPOTHESIS 891
Beyond the Roadblocks
Colectivo Situaciones & MTD Solano
In 2001 a mass popular uprising overthrew the neoliberal government in Argentina: thousands upon thousands of people, both in organizations and on their own, took to the streets, defying the government’s curfew, shouting “they all must go” until the president was forced to flee by helicopter. The uprising, a response to years of economic and political crisis, cannot be understood without understanding the broader ecology of movements and what Colectivo Situaciones defined as “new social protagonists”: the unemployed blockading highways, neighborhood residents coming together in assemblies, vast segments of the country surviving through alternative currencies and barter networks.
This work, translated into English for the first time, brings together the conversations and theorizations of two key participants in that environment: militant research collective Colectivo Situaciones and the Movement of Unemployed Workers of Solano. The encounter and writing in common constituted a formidable experience for all those who participated, bringing to life a novel form of relation between thinking and doing, subject and object of research and political action.
Colectivo Situaciones is a collective of militant researchers based in Buenos Aires. They have participated in numerous grassroots co-research activities with unemployed workers, peasant movements, neighborhood assemblies, and alternative education experiments.
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Hypothesis 891
Beyond the Roadblocks
Colectivo Situaciones & MTD Solano Minor Compositions
Translated by Dina Khorasanee & Liz Mason-Deese
Hypothesis 891. Beyond the Roadblocks
Colectivo Situaciones & MTD Solano
Translated by Dina Khorasanee & Liz Mason-Deese ISBN 978-1-57027-217-2
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Contents
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Conversations between Colectivo Situaciones
apt Sve VET TD SOA 6) si teal viccuanichi cadet tcadadeia ican tisdaacldtatestepmondaiatbanstiee ans 33 Nallst nes avo) ochicatoghl,(fo)e.c)0(0] sea emernr tr tone nemen CCRT Nerve meet on ant ree ne nETT rete 77 Multiplicity and Counter-power in the Piqueterx Experience... 91 The 19th and 20th and the temporalities of the MoveMENt......sssssees 109 About the 26th of June ..cccccsccsessssssssseesssessesssscssesssessnesssecssecseesssssssssaneeseesssess 116 Twelve Hypotheses about Counter-power icssssssssssssscssesssavssssvossnsscsvesssssensees 122
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Translator’s Introduction
Hypothesis 891 is precisely that —a series of situated hypotheses (the number comes from the street address where those hypotheses were elaborated). It also showcases the process through which those hypotheses were proposed, discussed, tested, challenged, accepted or discarded. In other words, it does not present answers, but a way of asking questions. In this sense it represents a process of “militant research” or “research militancy.” These texts were part ofa series of workshops held with members of the militant research collective Colectivo Situaciones and members of the Movimiento de Trabajadores Desocupados [Unemployed Workers’ Movement, MTD] of Solano. At the time, Colectivo Situaciones consisted of a group of university students who had become frustrated with the dominant forms of leftist activism and academic knowledge. In search of a form of knowledge immanent to struggles, and one that did not separate the object from the subject of knowledge production, they began working with the series of innovative social movements emerging in Argentina to collectively reflect on and theorize the moment, recognizing, in turn, that this knowledge is itself'a productive force that intervenes in the situation at hand. The work presented here brings Colectivo Situaciones into dialogue with one of the most innovative movements of the unemployed at the time: the MTD of Solano. The MTD of Solano was already developing its own conceptions of autonomy, power, neighborhood organizing, alternative economies, the production of subjectivity, the meaning of freedom. The confluence between the two groups thus produced immensely rich dialogue, which extended well beyond the production of this book.
The texts that make up this book include initial hypotheses, written by Colectivo Situaciones, edited transcripts of the conversations in the workshops discussing the hypotheses, and response pieces by both Colectivo Situaciones and the MTD of Solano. The book as a whole is the result of a process of collective thought and elaboration, by each group on its own — Colectivo Situaciones and the MTD of Solano — and together through workshop discussions where the words of members of each collective are woven together to create new understandings and analyses that could not have emerged from either collective alone. The texts thus reflect
Hypothesis 891: Beyond the Roadblocks
tensions, both between and within the collectives, and also elaborations on those tensions as the thinking changes over time.
The workshops that provided the material for this book took place between September 2001 and August 2002, during which time Argentina saw one of the most important processes of resistance to neoliberal capitalism that the world had seen at that time, effectively overthrowing the neoliberal government in December 2001. That uprising was led by many of the movements and organizations discussed in this book — the movements of the unemployed, neighborhood assemblies, and barter networks — but it also exceeded and went far beyond those existing forms of organizing. It drew all sorts of people into the streets, despite the state of emergency and curfew declared by the government. Those people, whether in organizations or not, protested, set up barricades and fought off the police and military, until the president, Fernando de la Rua, abandoned his office. This was followed by a period of intense social experimentation, both in forms of political organization and in forms of researching and thinking, of which this book is a prime example.
“A movement of movements”: The Unemployed Workers’ Organizations
By the late 1990s, Argentina was experiencing a severe economic crisis: years of neoliberal structural adjustment, demanded by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, had failed and poverty and unemployment were reaching record levels. It was in this context that the unemployed began organizing. At first derided and ignored by the major labor union federations and leftist parties alike, the unemployed began organizing autonomously, initially coming together around shared problems of social reproduction — unpayable electricity and gas bills, the rising cost of food, health care, and education — and mass job loss. In smaller cities in the interior of the country, such as Cultral-C6, whole communities came together after mass layoffs at the recently privatized oil company YPF. These uprisings — known as pueblazos for the way the whole community participated — were fundamental in bringing the issue of unemployment into the public agenda and popularizing the tactic of the roadblock (piquete). As the unemployed began organizing around the country, from those smaller cities to the urban peripheries of major metropolises such as Buenos Aires, La Plata, and Rosario, the tactic of the roadblock became the tool of choice for the unemployed. This is what led to the organized unemployed being
Colectivo Situaciones & MTD Solano
known as piqueteros.' Organizations of the unemployed — piqueterxs — thus started organizing roadblocks around the country, blockading major highways, bridges, and other key transit points, sometimes for weeks at a time. Those roadblocks brought the circulation of commodities to a halt and forced different levels of government to start responding to the piqueterxs demands for unemployment insurance, food aid, etc. The roadblocks, at least in some cases, were also a space for what the MTD of Solano refers to as the construction of a “new sociality,’ producing new ways of living together that challenge the dominant capitalist subjectivity.
Despite this shared tactic and common problems, the different organizations of the unemployed that emerged in different territories were extremely diverse, with different compositions, adopting different ideological positions and organizational forms, and making different alliances. As the political power of the unemployed became clear, labor unions and leftist parties also started their own unemployed branches or tried to bring existing unemployed organizations into their fold. And yet, other unemployed organizations remained “autonomous,” unaffiliated with any major unions, parties, or other social organizations. Those autonomous orga- nizations generally took the name of Movimiento de Trabajadores Desocupados [Unemployed Workers’ Movement] of their given territory. The MTD of Solano, a locality in the southern part of Buenos Aires’ urban periphery, was one of these. The organization initially emerged from meetings at a local parish and then, after being evicted from the parish by the bishop, expanded to bring together different neighborhood groups of the unemployed across the territory of Solano, ultimately encompassing hundreds of families. Despite remaining autonomous from political parties and trade unions, they did, at different times, join different political alli- ances and coordinating bodies, most importantly the Coordinadora de Trabajadores Desocupados Anibal Verén (Anibal Verén Unemployed Workers’ Coordination), which brought together many of the different autonomous unemployed workers’ organizations to organize actions together and support one another’s initiatives.
While the workshops focused on the specific experiences of the MTD of Solano, the complex cartography of different organizations of the unemployed is referenced throughout the book. Frequent mentions are made of organizations
such as the Federacién Tierra y Vivienda (Land and Work Federation, FTV, led by
1 Throughout the text, we use the gender-neutral term piqueterxs, taken up widely in recent years thanks to the mass feminist movement. It highlights the important role that women played in the movement as a whole, although it was often not recognized at the time. We opt to maintain the Spanish term rather than simply refer to “the unemployed,’ because, as the MTD of Solano explains later in this book, piqueterx refers to a political identity, an identity based on action and resistance, while “the unemployed” merely refers to a sociological description, and is often depoliticized and cast in the position of a victim.
Hypothesis 891: Beyond the Roadblocks
Luis d’Elia) linked to the Central de Trabajadores Argentinos (Argentine Workers’ Central Union, CTA), the Corriente Clasista'y Combativa (Class-based and Com- bative Current, CCC, affiliated with the Revolutionary Communist Party), the Polo Obrero (Workers’ Pole, affiliated with the Workers’ Party) and the Movimiento Teresa Rodriguez (Teresa Rodriguez Movement, MTR). Each of these organizations have their own histories, compositions, practices, and ideological and theoretical positions. It is in that sense that Colectivo Situaciones refers to the unemployed workers’ organizations as a whole as “a movement of movements.” These different organizations and movements would sometimes come together in specific actions or campaigns. For example, a couple of “National Piquetero Congresses” attempted to bring together organizations of the unemployed across this spectrum, however, without much lasting success. As the MTD of Solano recounts here, there were major differences in terms of how to relate to the state and forms of internal orga- nization. For the MTD of Solano, many of these other groups represent ways of doing politics based on a way of thinking based on “globality,” thinking in terms of predefined concepts and understandings of power, rather than starting from the situation. That way of thinking, starting from the situation and insisting on the autonomy to define one’s own concepts and on the self-affirmation of one’s own project, is what sets the MTD of Solano apart from many of these other organiza- tions of the unemployed.
Another major source of differences and tensions among the organizations of the unemployed was their relationship to “subsidies,” the complex array of welfare benefits packages offered to the poor and the unemployed. These subsidies were one of the primary demands of the movements in the roadblocks and other mobilizations. Eventually, the demands included a wide range of programs offered by different levels of government (from municipalities to the federal government). Originally proposed as individual welfare benefits to the poor and the unemployed, the movements demanded, and won, the right to collectively administer the programs. This meant that organizations would receive the money, distribute it to their members, deciding who was eligible based on their own criteria and, if there where corresponding work requirements, determine what counted as “work” in order to receive benefits. Of course, this had mixed consequences. It led to a swelling of the ranks of the organizations of the unemployed, as people signed up in order to have access to those benefits. It also led to accusations of clientelism, of organizations essentially paying people to show up to their events or otherwise using the programs to the sole benefit of leaders. In other cases, it led to interesting experiments in collectivizing the benefits — pooling benefits to use them for common projects—and redefining what was considered work — valuing care and community labor above all else.
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Colectivo Situaciones & MTD Solano
Of course, the organizations of the unemployed were also part of a broader con- stellation of movements, organizations, and alternative economic practices during the crisis. These include the neighborhood assemblies of largely middle-class urban neighborhoods and the barter clubs which extended across the country, using alter- native currencies and barter to trade for goods and services as the official economy collapsed. As members of the MTD of Solano explain here, the movements of the unemployed had complicated and evolving relations with these other movements and practices, sometimes coming together across class differences and sometimes entering into irresolvable tension. Yet, as a whole, this complex constellation of movements was responsible for a unique moment of experimentation in terms of forms of life, ways of organizing economic and social relations, and of producing knowledge.
Twenty Years of 2001
A lot has changed in the two decades since Hipotesis 891 was originally published. Ultimately, much of the energy of the 2001 revolt was institutionalized, with the election of Nestor Kirchner in 2003 and then of Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in 2007. Their administrations not only increased the subsidies and other benefit packages available to the poor, and specifically to social movements and cooperatives, but also incorporated movement leaders into government positions and created programs directly designed to booster those alternative economic activities that had emerged in the crisis. The conversations with the MTD of Solano included in this book make it clear that there were already intense debates about the issue of institutionalization between different organizations of the unemployed. These tensions only increased Kirchner’s election as many organizations jumped on the opportunity to participate in official policies, while others began defining them- selves precisely in opposition to that institutionalization and organized around explicitly fighting against the Kirchner governments, accusing them of co-opting and pacifying movements.
The position of the MTD of Solano can best be described in Raquel Gutierrez’s terms as non-state-centric. In Gutiérrez’s words, a non-state-centric politics “does not propose confrontation with the state as the central issue, nor is it guided by building strategies for its ‘occupation’ or ‘takeover;’ but rather, it is strengthened by defense of the common, it displaces the state and capital’s capacity for com- mand and imposition, and it pluralizes and amplifies multiple social capabilities for intervention and decision-making over public matters: it disperses power as it enables the reappropriation of collective decision-making and speech over matters
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Hypothesis 891: Beyond the Roadblocks
that belong to everyone because they affect us all.”* In that sense, the MTD of Solano always prioritized its own project: the project of creating new forms of life, new social relations, and new subjectivities in the neighborhoods where they worked. This never meant completely ignoring the realm of the state, and it often meant directly organizing forms of collective self-defense against state repression. Yet, they also continued occasionally receiving subsidies and grants from the state and other institutions, when they determined that doing so would further their organizational needs and not greatly sacrifice their autonomy. Most of members’ energy went into the group’s productive projects, from a bakery to community garden, their neighborhood health clinic, and popular education and pedagogical processes, and to maintaining the alliances and coalitions to support those projects. The MTD of Solano discusses this in terms of not letting their practice be defined by “the political conjuncture.” Instead, the organization’s project and needs, the project of creating new modes of life, were always prioritized over conflicts taking place at the level of state politics, no matter who was in the presidency.
The divisions which became present under Kirchner and Fernandez’s govern- ments, in some sense, only intensified with the election of right-wing neoliberal Mauricio Macri in 2015. Macri represented a return to many of the neoliberal economic policies of the 1990s, but with a friendlier face that sought to incorporate the popular sectors into the neoliberal project. In this sense, he sought to reestablish a neoliberal subjectivity at the base of society, individualizing welfare benefits and encouraging “entrepreneurship” at all levels of society.’ Macri’s administration was also responsible for taking out the largest IMF loan in the institution's history, for cutting subsidies for utilities for the middle class, and undercutting unions in wage negotiations. In this context, many movements became further entrapped by the spatialities and temporalities of state politics, focusing their energy on electoral campaigns and influencing politicians in power, rather than the autonomous grassroots experiments that had characterized much of the 2001 uprising.
It was also a period of new alliances and political strategies. Starting during Fernandez’s government, Colectivo Situaciones and the MTD of Solano focused much of their efforts on constructing new alliances and research initiatives with
2 Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar, Horizonte Comunitario-Popular. Antagonismo y produccién de lo comin en América Latina. (Cochabamba: Sociedad Comunitaria de Estudios Estratégicas y Editorial Autodeterminacién, 2015), 89.
3. For more on these shifts in subjectivity and the spread of a “neoliberalism from below” during both the late Kirchner period and the Macri’s government, see Verdnica Gago’s Neoliberalism from Below: Popular Pragmatics and Baroque Economies (Durham, NC: Duke Press, 2017) and Diego Sztulwark’s La ofensiva sensible: Neoliberalismo, populismo y el reverso de lo politico (Buenos Aires: Caja Negra, 2019).
Colectivo Situaciones & MTD Solano
emerging subjectivities of struggle, particularly migrants, precarious workers, and, later, feminist organizations and collectives. This research also focused on shifts at the level of popular subjectivity - on forms of what some referred to as microfas- cisms — as increased competition, identitarianism, and authoritarian behavior were being enacted on the extremely local level. One of the best examples of this was the case of Parque Indoamericano, in which three thousand families, mostly Bolivian and Paraguayan migrants, occupied the park and set up a temporary encampment, only to be violently attacked by middle class neighborhood residents and state forces. Three migrants were killed in the police’s raid on the park celebrated by many of the white middle- and upper-class sectors of society.* Members of Colectivo Situaciones and the MTD of Solano worked together with collectives of migrants and other urban researchers in the Hacer Ciudad (Making the City) workshop to investigate changes occurring in the city, and the subjectivities of its inhabitants, at multiple scales. This research, and the network of alliances that carried out it, was thus able to diagnose the Macri government in a novel way, emphasizing those shifts in subjectivity that accompanied a generalized precarization of life.
Following years of organizing as the MTD of Solano, the organization eventually disbanded into a set of other smaller organizations working on particular projects, such as a community garden, a housing cooperative, and a health clinic. Those projects all maintain the original spirit of the MTD, an emphasis on struggle as the creation of new forms of life and new ways of living together. They also expanded their alliances, further developing their work with the Campesino Movement of Santiago de Estero (MOCASE), as well as building new collaborations with feminist and Indigenous movements. Similarly, Colectivo Situaciones disbanded as a collective around the same time, although its members continue to engage in other collective militant investigation processes.’ These processes all keep the spirit of 2001 alive, emphasizing politics as creation and becoming, as questioning and uncertainty, of collective rebellion and resistance to institutionalization, as Colectivo Situaciones put it in 2010.°
4 Fora militant research process analyzing the Parque Indoamericano Case, in which Colectivo Situaciones was involved with migrant collectives, see Taller Hacer Ciudad, Vecinocracia: (Re) tomando la ciudad (Buenos Aires: Tinta Limén and Editorial Retazos, 2011).
5 Much of this work can be seen on the blog Lobo Suelto (https://lobosuelto.com), in Verénica Gago’s work with Ni Una Menos and other feminist collectives, in Mario Santucho’s work with the magazine Crisis (https://revistacrisis.com.ar/), and Diego Sztulwark’s work with various collectives, some of which is summarized in his book La ofensiva sensible. Furthermore, many of the collective’s former members continue to be involved in the radical publishing house Tinta Limon.
6 “2001 does not refer to a year, but to an active principle, an interpretive key for understanding
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Hypothesis 891: Beyond the Roadblocks
Living in Freedom: Resonances Today
Twenty years after its original publication, the debates and themes raised in Hipotesis 891 are more relevant than ever. Both the process from which the book emerged — research militancy — and the proposed concepts, such as counter-power, autonomy, horizontality, new forms of militant commitment, and new understand- ings of freedom, offer important insights for movements today. With this translation, we hope to contribute to the further circulation and dispersion of ideas and con- cepts, allowing them to travel to new territories, be transformed in the process, and contribute to the mutual contamination of struggles for our collective liberation.’
The first of these themes, and that which popularized Colectivo in the English-speaking world, is that of militant research or research militancy. The idea moved through different militant translations of Colectivo Situaciones’ work and their participation in movement encounters and events across Europe and North America, entering into dialogue with other concepts ranging from conricerca to participatory-action research. Hipotesis 891 does not offer theories of militant research, but rather demonstrates the process of militant research. As Colectivo Situaciones explain in the prologue, they understand militant research as both a critique of traditional forms of academic research, as well as the politics of most leftist movements and non-governmental organizations that is based on already knowing the answers. Instead, the offer a politics that in itself involves research, questioning, and collectively constructing responses. Colectivo Situa- ciones maintain a commitment to the knowledge produced in struggle and also a commitment to the idea that knowledge can and must be used for struggle. Today, when the term “militant research” is regularly used in academic articles and texts, it is worth returning to the question of the purpose and practice of research militancy. Ultimately, as Hipotesis 891 highlights, research militancy is not primarily about another way of doing research, or least research that assumes academia as its main site of enunciation. Rather, it is about another way of doing politics, that does not follow a predetermined line or presume to know the answers a priori, but that sees research as part of the political process itself.
this decade” read the invitation to a series of events, organized by Colectivo Situaciones and friends to celebrate and interrogate the ten-year anniversary of the events of the 19th and 20th of December, 2001. The invitation continued: “For us, 2001 is almost a method, a way of looking at things seeing them in motion. In this sense the crisis becomes a premise, with its multiple meanings: instability and creation, worry and uncertainty, opening and changing the calendar.”
7 For more on dispersion and the work of the book, as it travels, in the construction of movements and struggles, see Magali Rabasa, The Book in Movement: Autonomous Politics and the Lettered City Underground (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019).
Colectivo Situaciones & MTD Solano
Another key theme, which highlights the uniqueness of the MTD of Solano’s approach to politics and organizing, is their emphasis on the production of sub- jectivity. This emphasis highlights the fact that we are not fully formed subjects at the beginning of a political project and that politics takes place, among other levels, on the level of subjectivity. We see this emerge in two different ways in the MTD of Solano’ analysis here. First, it can be seen in their critique of capitalism as producing particular subjectivities and desires, particularly as they see that manifest in their neighborhoods in terms of cut throat competition and lack of solidarity between neighbors. Rather than condemn those neighbors, they seek to understand how those elements are a fundamental part of capitalism’s reproduc- tion and expansion. The second element, involves asking how can the movement function as a space for the production of different subjectivities. Thus, they ask what pedagogical practices are necessary and what forms of decision-making and internal discussion are helpful for creating subjectivities that are not shaped by the logic of capitalism. Again, there is no predefined path for this, but it involves transforming all of those who participate in the project. As members of the MTD of Solano put it: “we have also proposed to recreate ourselves, to subject ourselves to change as well, as we have thrown all our certainties out the window.’ This also means willing to engage with comrades who make mistakes, recognizing how we all internalize elements of capitalist logic, and that we must be willing to work through the process of transformation together. Thus, instead of searching for the
“right” subject to engage in revolutionary activity, whether determined by some sort of identity or class position, the MTD of Solano always understood their task to be that of producing a revolutionary subject.
Finally, the MTD of Solano always stood out, even in Argentina, for its understanding of power — and counter-power — and autonomy, moving beyond a state-centric politics. Counter-power, as posed by the MTD of Solano, is not in symmetrical opposition to power, the power of the state, the power of domina- tion, power over. Rather, counter-power operates differently, on a different realm. Counter-power is the power of creation, the power to act, the power to affect and be affected by others. This commitment to counter-power lies at the heart of the MTD of Solano’ non-state-centric politics, which is not driven by a logic of con- frontation with the state nor the desire to take state power. Here autonomy arises as a horizon; not a fixed state, but a process through which and toward which the movement works. They attempt to progressively create more autonomy — both in terms of the sustainability of their alternative economic projects that allow them to meet some part of their daily needs while relying increasingly less on state subsidies,
and in terms of the autonomy of thought and language, proposing their own analyses,
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Hypothesis 891: Beyond the Roadblocks
their own concepts, for understanding and creating a world in which they would
want to live in. Counter-power ultimately manifests itself in enacting other ways
of living together, ways of organizing work without bosses and managers, ways of living together beyond the model of heterosexual nuclear family, ways of co-in- habiting spaces without hierarchical control. Or as the MTD proposes, “It is very important to recognize that it is not about transforming the municipal government, or the police force, among other things, but rather that these things exist today as
things that we no longer want, we reject them, we negate them. We don’t want to
substitute any part of that system; we want to build something different. And it is
that new thing that we are envisioning, constructing. That is counter-power.” This
is a project that ultimately proposes “a project of living in freedom,” understood
as freedom from capitalist imperatives of how to live our lives and the collective
creation of new forms of life that allow us to fully live and relate to one another.
Liz Mason-Deese Newport, VA November 2021
10
Initial Words
To those who came before
This book emerged in the form of a dialogue between the Unemployed Workers’ Movement (MTD) of Solano and Colectivo Situaciones. The encounter and the writing in common constitute a unique experience for all those who participated. In the following pages, the reader will not find - we think - an ordinary relation- ship between “activist” or “militants” and “committed intellectuals,” nor any other standardized forms of understanding this experience of thinking in common that, as such, decodes and un-defines the being of each of us who has participated in these encounters.
‘The first part of this book is composed of conversations, in their entirety, that appeared at the beginning of 2001 in the pamphlet Situaciones 4, now preceded by an introduction that outlines the motives and reasons behind the project that we started three years ago. These are followed by two texts, or “working papers,” that transcribe two workshop-meetings in terms of their internal and everyday dynamics.
In the second part, we reproduce three texts (the first was drafted by Colectivo Situaciones for the workshop, and the other two are part of the MTD of Solano’s reflections on the events that took place in December 2001) published in the book 19th and 20th: Notes for a New Social Protagonism.
In the third part, we present the development of conversations that took place between June 26, 2002 (the date of the massacre on the Pueyrredén Bridge) and mid-October, when the first edition was published: the themes, as well as the emphasis, continue to change. The introduction to this final last part — published here for the first time — is a brief reflection about the events that took place on June 26, followed by a set of twelve hypotheses, which were elaborated on during workshops that took place throughout this project. The extensive conversations in this third part, conclud- ing the center of this book, are followed by two texts about the ending: an epilogue written by the MTD of Solano, and an annex about the encounter that took place on the first Sunday in October during John Holloway’s visit to Solano.
Hypothesis 891 is the title of this book. All those who took part in this project chose this title together. The reasons for this are simple: the book tries to bring
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Hypothesis 891: Beyond the Roadblocks
together two essential components of our experience: on the one hand, the unfin- ished — hypothetical — character of radical thought; and on the other, the number that indicates the site where these thoughts were produced, that as such resists all labeling and has functioned as a home, against all the dogmatism, academicism, and definitive “recipes.”
Hypothesis 891 was only possible because neighborhood assemblies organized in the MTD Solano wanted it to happen. As noted somewhere in this book, the comrades from the MTD who participated in the project did so through the will expressed in the neighborhood assemblies. It is essential not to lose sight of how much this book belongs to them. We thank our comrades Chapa and Flor for their ongoing collaboration, Cucho for his time and design, and Raul Zibechi for his
continuous suggestions and dialogue.
On Method
Is a prologue internal or external to the text that it precedes? As we know, the prologue precedes from the end: although it opens the book, it is the last part to be written. It is not, then, a text that is internal to the book, nor is it completely external to it. It is, rather, both at the same time. It is external; yes, it is “post.” It speaks from “after” the book’s closing. It is a “second closure” that opens. But this new beginning - starting afterward — makes the main body of the text exist in another way: as if by being prefaced, it was projected and prolonged.
This extension is not a mere continuation, but rather an operation that reveals a form of work. This book is always already a prolongation: the prolongation of an encounter in a workshop, of one workshop into many others, of those workshops into an initial publication, that of the original dossier (Situaciones 4; Conversations with the MTD of Solano), from the dossier — already re-edited and out of print again —into this book that, in turn, will itself be prolonged in its readers, and becomes available for many other possible prolongations. [We might add that it is again prolonged, temporally, linguistically, geographically, in its translation many years later. ]
The names of its authors—the Movimiento de Trabajaodores Desocupados (MTD) [Unemployed Workers’ Movement] of Solano and Colectivo Situa- ciones — could, somehow, appear excessive. This became clear to us when we wanted to legally register the publication. For the state institutions in charge of regulating and registering everything that has the shape of a book ~ be it anything capable of adopting this form — the author is a fact whose absence cannot be excused. If for any reason this mame were not available, one would have to resort to a pseudonym (which always names the responsible person, either the author or the editor). One way or the other, the auzhor must appear; someone must take responsibility for what is said.
We do not believe that we are incredibly original by reminding the reader that the “author” — authorship, from authority —has died. This book will therefore be
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what other forces, other becomings, are capable of doing with it. The death of the author is not only a fashionable phrase, it also has concrete implications: it means that our intention as “authors” is not what counts here, that authorship is just a resource, an element, an item that is not worth spending time on.
This prologue, therefore, does not intend to promote a certain “appropriate” reading of the text — although, inevitably, it does suggest perspectives — nor does it anticipate conclusions that would be “suitable” to the intentions of those of us who participated in its making. Here prolongation does not mean the restriction of possible readings, but precisely the opposite: an offering, the act of delivering an object — that condenses encounters, thoughts — to the forces of new encounters and thoughts. [Similarly, this translation - one of many, and one that arises from specific encounters between the translators and the authors — does not purport to be the only possible translation but an opening up to many new translations and encounters. |
Therefore, there is no “author,” but there is a work composed of rhythms, passions, forces, inspirations, thoughts, and affects. Those demand prolongations and epilogues. Those believe they can reveal something about themselves in what follows, while at the same time adding some clues about the figure of the research militant — an approximate word game to name the precarious existential equilibrium of a new form of commitment.
Militant research, as we understand it, lacks an object. We are aware of the paradoxical nature of this statement — if one does research, one performs research on something; if there is nothing to research, how can we talk about research? — and, at the same time, we are convinced that it is exactly this nature that gives militant research its potencia.* To investigate without objectifying, implies abandoning the conventional image of the researcher. And that is what the militant researcher aspires to do.
In fact, research can be a road to objectification (again, we are not being original by confirming this old knowledge, and, yet, this effect is one of the most serious
8 In Spanish, there are two words for “power”: “poder” and “potencia,’ which derive from the Latin words “potestas” and “potentia.” Colectivo Situaciones’ understands power based on this distinction they take from Spinoza. While “potencia” has a dynamic, constituent dimension,
“poder” is static, constituted. Potencia defines our power to do, to affect, and be affected, while the mechanism of representation that constitutes “poder” separates “potencia” from the bodies that are being represented. To preserve the emphasis of this distinction, the Spanish word “potencia” is used, where appropriate, throughout this book. - Trans.
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limitations of the usual subjectivity of the researcher). As Nietzsche reminds us, theoretical man (and woman) — which is something more complex than “the man
(and woman) who reads” — is the one who perceives action from an entirely external
point of view (that is to say, their subjectivity is constituted in a way that is com- pletely independent with respect to that action). In this way, the theorist works by
attributing an intention to the subject of the action. Let’s be clear: every attribution
of this kind supposes, in relation to the protagonist of the observed action, an author
and an intention; confers values and goals, and, in the end, produces “knowledge” about the action (and the actor).
Following this path, critical activity remains oblivious in regards to at least two essential moments. On the one hand, concerning the — external - subject who exercises the critique. Researchers do not need to investigate themselves. They can construct consistent knowledge about the situation to the extent — and, precisely, due to the fact- that they remain on the outside, at the prudent distance that, supposedly, guarantees a certain objectivity. And yes, this objectivity is authentic and efficacious to the same extent that it is nothing but the other side of the coin of the objectification — violence — of the situation on which the researcher works. [Meanwhile, the translator translates “neutrally” and “objectively, always from a double outside.|
But there is yet a second aspect in which critical activity remains oblivious: the researcher — in their act of attribution — does nothing but adapt the resources that are available at the situation of their investigation to the unknowns presented by the object. The researcher, in this way, constitutes themselves into a machine that confers meanings, values, interests, kinships, causes, influences, rationalities, intentions, and unconscious motives to their object.
Both blind spots, or perhaps the same blind spot in regards to two issues (con- cerning the subject who attributes and concerning the resources of attribution), come together in the configuration of a single operation: a machine that judges good and evil according to the set of available values.
This modality of knowledge production presents us with a clear dilemma. Traditional academic research - with its object, its method of attribution, and its conclusions — obtains, of course, valuable knowledge — that is mostly descriptive - in regard to the objects it investigates. But this descriptive operation in no way occurs after the object’s formation, because it itself produces that objectification. Thus, academic research is much more effective when it best uses these objectifying powers. Thus, science operates much more as separation — and reification — of the situations in which it participates than as an internal element in the creation of (both practical and theoretical) possible experiences.
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The researcher offers themselves as a subject of the synthesis of the experience. The researcher is the one who explains the rationality of what happens, and is preserved as such: as a necessary blind spot of that synthesis. The researcher, as the subject who gives meaning, remains exempted from any self-examination. That researcher and their resources — their values, their notions, their gaze — constitute themselves into the machine that classifies, gives coherence, inscribes, judges, discards and excommunicates. In the end, it is the intellectual who “does justice” regarding matters of ¢ruth, in terms of the administration — or adequacy — of what exists under the present horizon of rationality.
We have mentioned commitment and militancy. Are we perhaps proposing the superiority of the political militant in opposition to the academic researcher?
We do not believe so. Political activism is also a practice with an object. As such, it has remained tied to a mode of instrumentality: one that connects to other expe- riences from an always already constituted subjectivity, with prior knowledge - the knowledges of strategy -, supplied with universally valid, purely ideological state- ments. It relates to others through utilitarianism: there is never affinity, always
“agreement,” never encounter, always “tactics.” Political activism — especially that of the political party — can hardly constitute itself into an experience of authenticity. From the very beginning it gets stuck in transitivity: what it finds interesting in an experience is always “something other” than the experience itself: From this point of view, political militancy - and militants on the Left are no exception — is as external, judgmental, and objectifying as university research.
Let’s add the fact that the humanitarian activist —let’s say from an NGO - does not escape these manipulative mechanisms. Strictly speaking, the now globalized humanitarian ideology is constituted from an idealized image of an already made, unchangeable world. Faced with that world, the only remaining possibility is to dedicate efforts to those — more or less exceptional — places where misery and irra- tionality still reign.
Not only do the mechanisms unleashed by humanitarian solidarity foreclose any possible creation, but they also naturalize - with the compassionate resources of beneficence and their language about exclusion — the victimizing objectification that separates each person from their subjective and productive possibilities. [While the humanitarian translator makes sure that those poor victims voices are heard, translated into the language of those with power.]
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If we refer to the commitment and the “militant” character of research, we do so in a precise sense, connected to four conditions: a) the motive underpinning research; b) the practical character of research (elaboration of practical situated hypotheses); c) the value of what is being investigated: the result of research can only be evaluated in its totality in situations that share the problematics being investigated, as well as the constellation of conditions and concerns; and d) its effective procedure: its process of development is already a result in and of itself, and its results lead to an immediate intensification of effective procedures.
IV
In fact, every idealization strengthens this mechanism of objectification. This is an authentic problem for the militancy of research. Idealization — even when it falls on an object not consecrated to such effect — always results from a mechanism of attribution (even when it does not happen under the pretext of scientific or political pretensions). Because idealization — like any ideologization — expels everything from the constructed image that could cause it to lose its status as an ideal of coherence and completeness.
What happens, however, is that every ideal—contrary to what the idealist believes — is more on the side of death than on that of life. The ideal cuts reality off from life. The concrete — the living — is partial and irremediably inconceivable, inco- herent, and contradictory. The /iving— to the extent that it persists in its capacities and potencias — does not need to adjust itself to an image that gives it meaning or justifies it. It is the other way around - living is in itself a creative source — not an object or repository — of values of justice. In fact, the entire idea of a pure or complete subject is nothing but the conservation of this deal.
Idealization conceals an operation that is inadvertently conservative: behind the purity and vocation for justice that seem to be its origin, its foundation in dominant values is once again hidden. Thus, the righteous appearance of the ide- alist: they want to do justice, in other words, their desire is to materialize, to make effective, the values that they hold as good. Idealists do nothing but project these values onto the idealized (this is the moment when what was multiple and complex turns into an object, corresponding to an ideal) without asking themselves about their own values; more importantly, without undergoing a subjective experience that transforms themselves.
This mechanism reveals itself as the most serious of obstacles for the militant
researcher. Originating in subtle and almost unperceivable forms, idealization slowly
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produces an almost unbridgable chasm. To the extent that the militant researcher only manages to see their own projections on what appears to them as already complete.
That is why this activity cannot exist unless a very serious work 07 the research collective itself takes place; in other words, it cannot exist without doing serious research on itself, without changing itself, without reconfiguring itself through the experiences in which it takes part, without revising the ideals and values it holds dear, without constantly criticizing its own ideas and understandings, and in the end, without developing practices that expand in all possible directions.
This ethical dimension points to the complexity of militant research: the subjectifying work of deconstructing every inclination towards objectification. In other words: carrying out research without an object.
Like in genealogy, it is all about working at the level of the “criticism of values.” It is about penetrating and destroying “its statues,’ as Nietzsche affirms. But this work that is oriented by — and towards — the creation of values is not done by mere
“contemplation.” It requires a radical critique of the prevailing values. That is why it involves an effort to deconstruct the dominant forms of perception (interpretation, valorization). Therefore, there is no creation of values without the production of a subjectivity capable of submitting itself to a radical critique.
V
One question becomes clear: is such an investigation possible without at the same time setting in motion a process of falling in love? How would the link between two experiences be possible without a strong feeling of love or friendship?
In fact, the experience of militant research resembles that of a person in love, on the condition that by /ove we understand what a certain long — materi- alist — philosophical tradition understands by it: that is, not as something that happens to someone in relation to the other, but a process that takes two or more; a process that transforms the “self” into the “common.” One participates in such a relationship of love. Such a process is not decided intellectually: it takes the existence of two or more. It is not an illusion, but an authentic experience of anti-utilitarianism.
In love, in friendship, contrary to the mechanisms we describe above, there is neither objectivity nor instrumentalism. Nobody is spared from what the bond can do, nobody comes out from it uncontaminated. One does not experience love or friendship in an innocent way: we all leave them reconstituted. These potencias — love and friendship — have the power to constitute, qualify, and remake the subjects
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they catch. [And the translator, how could they not fall in love, how could they not be remade in the process of translating a text such as this? That is what makes translation an act of love.]
This love - or friendship — is constituted as a relationship that renders undefined what until that moment was preserved as individuality, composing an integrated figure made up of more than one individual body. And, at the same time, such a qualification of the individual bodies participating in this relationship causes the failure of all the mechanisms of abstraction — dispositifs that turn bodies into quantifiable, interchangeable objects — as characteristic of the capitalist market as the other mechanisms of objectification we have mentioned.
‘Thus, we consider this Jove a condition of militant research.
In this book we refer several times to these processes of friendship or falling in love, under the — less compromising — name of composition. Different from articulation, composition is not merely intellectual. It is neither based in interests nor in criteria of (political or another type of) convenience. In contrast to (strategic or tactic, partial or total) “agreements” or “alliances” founded on coincidences expressed in a text, composition is more or less inexplicable, and goes beyond everything one can say about it. In fact - at least while it lasts — it is much more intense than any merely political or ideological compromise.
Love and friendship tell us about the value of quality over quantity: the power of the collective body composed of other bodies does not increase according to the mere quantity of its individual components, but in relation to the intensity of the bond that unites them.
Vi
Love and friendship, then: the work of research militancy is not to be identified with the production of a party line. It works — necessarily - on another plane. If we sustain the distinction — as we try to throughout this book — between “politics” (understood as the battle for power) and the experiences in which pro- cesses of the production of sociability or values are at stake, we can distinguish then between the political militant (who founds their discourse on a certain set of certainties) and the militant researcher (who organizes their perspective on the basis of critical questions concerning these certainties). Yet, this distinction is often lost from sight, in the belief that what can be seen in the experience of the MTD of Solano — particularly following the Situaciones 4 pamphlet — is just one more party line.
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In some way, then, some have thought they have seen the birth of a “situationist” line, as an idealized product of language — or even the jargon — of the publication and the image that - apparently— the pamphlet transmits — at least in some read- ings — of the experience.
Detractors and adherents to this new line have created a motive for disputes and conspiracies out of it. In this regard, all we can do is admit that out of all the possible outcomes of this encounter, these reactions are the ones that motivate us the least, both because of the manifest improducitivity that results from such repudiation and adhesion and because of how such idealizations (whether positive or negative) usually replace a more critical vision about those making them. Thus, a too closed position is rapidly adopted out of what is supposed to be an exercise of opening.
We have already admitted that we cannot control interpretations. But perhaps we did not think about a particular implication of this point of view. The death of the author turns the reader into the subject responsible for creating a meaning based on the text. And in this very operation, the reader-author is produced (one who does not preexist and will not endure beyond what they can do with the text). ‘Thus, the supposed original author has lost their right to tell the reader what to do with their reading. What the “author” (as a talking corpse) can indeed do is read the understandings that have been made of their texts; in other words, intervene as reader. It is only in this character that we pronounce ourselves decidedly in open refusal of the purely political interpretation of the present text.
Vil
Let’s take another step in constructing the concept of research without an object. Interiority and immanence are not necessarily identical processes.
Inside and outside, inclusion and exclusion, are categories of the dominant ideology (if we are allowed such an expression): they usually hide more than they reveal. That is, the experience of militant research is not one of being inside, but of working from immanence.
Let’s say that the difference can be presented in the following terms: the inside (and therefore the outside) defines a position organized from a certain boundary that is considered relevant. Inside and outside refer to the location of a body or element in relation to a disjunction or a border. To be inside is also — in this line — to share a common property, which makes us belong to a same set.
This system of references interrogates us about the place where we are situated:
nationality, social class, or even the site where we choose to situate ourselves in
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regards to... the next elections, the military invasion of Colombia or cable tele- vision programming...
In the extreme, both “objective” belonging (that derives from the observation of a common property) and “subjective” belonging (that derives from choice in the face of ) come together to the joy of the social sciences: if we are unemployed workers we can choose to join a piqueterx movement; if we are from the middle class we can choose to be part of a neighborhood assembly. Through determination — collective belonging to the same group, in this case social class — choice (the group of commons with which we will join) becomes possible — and desirable -.
In both cases being inside implies respecting a pre-existing boundary that distributes places and belonging in a more or less involuntary way. It is not about denying the possibilities that derive from the moment of choice - which can be, as in the case of these examples, highly subjectifying, but distinguishing the mere
“being” and its “inside” (or “outside? it does not matter), from the mechanisms of subjective production that arise from disobeying those destinies. At the border, it is not as much about reacting in the face of already codified options as it is about producing the terms of the situation ourselves.
In this sense it is worth presenting the image of i7manence as something other than merely being inside.
Immanence refers to a mode of inhabiting the situation and works from com- position — love or friendship — in order to bring about new possible elements of this situation. Immanence is constituent co-belonging that traverses the representations of “inside” and “outside” transversally or diagonally. Where interiority demands a mode of being that is exhausted in belonging or adhesion, immanence implies inhabiting the experience, opening it to the possible potencias of composition. {Immanent translation expands this composition, in all directions at once, the translator is neither inside nor outside the situation, be actively composing, weaving, it together with new situations. ]
Summing-up: immanence, situation, composition are notions that are internal to the experience of militant research. Useful names for the operations that orga- nize a becoming common and, above all, constituent. If, in other experiences, they turn into the jargon of a new political line or categories of a fashionable philoso- phy - something that does not interest us at all - they will, for sure, obtain a new meaning based on those uses which are not ours.
In other words: the operational difference between the “inside” of representa- tion (foundation of belonging and identity) and the connection of immanence (the constituent becoming) has to do with the greater openness that the latter form grants
us for participating in new experiences.
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Vill
It seems like we have arrived at the production of a difference between love-friendship and the forms of objectification against which the — precarious, we insist — figure of the militant researcher seeks to rebel.
Yet, we have not entered in the —fundamental - matter of the ideologization of confrontation.
Struggle activates capacities, resources, ideals, and solidarities. As such it speaks to us about a vital disposition, about dignity. In it, the risk of death is neither pur- sued nor desired. Thus, the meaning of the dead comrades will never be complete, but rather, painful. This dramatic quality of struggle is, however, made banal when the confrontation is put in ideological terms, to the point that they are postulated as its exclusive meaning.
When this happens there is no room for research. As we know, both — ideology and investigation — have opposite structures: while the first is constituted from a set of certainties, the second only exists on the basis of a grammar of questions.
Yet, struggle — the necessary, noble struggle — does not in itself lead to the exal- tation of confrontation as the dominant meaning of life. There is no doubt that the limit can appear very thin in the case of an organization in permanent struggle, like a piqueterx organization, and yet, to give up on this point would be to prejudge.
Unlike the militant subjectivity that is usually sustained through a meaning given by the extreme polarization of life — the ideologization of confrontation -, the experiences that seek to construct another type of sociability are very active in trying not to fall into the logic of confrontation, according to which the multiplicity of experience is reduced to this dominant signifier.
Confrontation, on its own, does not create values. As such it does not go beyond the distribution of dominant values.
The result of a war shows us who will appropriate what exists. Who will have property rights over goods and existing values?
If struggle does not alter the “structure of meanings and values” we are only in the presence of a change of roles, which guarantees the survival of the structure itself.
Once we have arrived at this point, two completely different images of jus- tice — because in the end that’s what this is about — are sketched out before us. On one side, the struggle is for the ability to use the judging machine. To make justice is to claim for oneself what is considered just. It is to interpret the distribution of existing values in another way. The other image suggests that it is about becoming creators of values, of experiences, of worlds.
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IX
This prologue affirms that the book it opens for us does not speak of a model expe- rience. Moreover, it continues — insistently — to affirm that it is against the existence of such ideals. It will be said- and with reason - that it is one thing to utter this principle and something very different to achieve it in practice. One can also con- clude —and here our doubts start — that in order for this noble purpose to become a reality it would be necessary for us to make “our criticisms” explicit (in this case, Colectivo Situaciones criticisms of the MTD of Solano). If we were to look at this demand closely, we would see how it asks us to save the model — now in a negative way — by comparing the real experience to the ideal model, a mechanism that is used by the social sciences to extract their “critical judgments.”
As we can see, all these reflections on criticism and the production of knowl- edge are not minor issues, and that is because they concern forms of justice (and judgment is nothing but the judicial form of justice). This book can offer nothing that resembles a juridical event, nor does it provide resources to make judgments about other experiences. Rather, the opposite is the case: if we have tried to do something as “authors” — talking corpses that write — it has been to offer an image that is completely opposed to juridical justice, or, in other words, a justice founded on composition. What is it good for? There are no predetermined answers.
C.S., October 17th 2002 [ Translated, LMD, May 2020]
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Motives and Reasons
Colectivo Situaciones
The Movement of Unemployed Workers (MTD) of Solano consists of eight hundred families from different neighborhoods in the locality, some of which include some settlements that have existed for over twenty years.’ In August 1997, they started organizing themselves around the parish of San Martin and since then have multiple projects and experiments: their participation in the piqueterx movement was the best known of these. Our relationship with the MTD-S started a while ago. The first encounter, the first conversations, the first project, the first year of the project, and as a result of the growth of this bond, the first published pamphlet — Situaciones 4: Conversations with the MTD Solano — brings together all of what we collectively worked on throughout 2001. That pamphlet was published the first week of December, days before the actions that took place on 19th and 20th December. We have elaborated the first part of this book based on that original text.
The workshop was carried out between piles of tires and precarious little wooden benches, in a warehouse whose appearance now varies greatly from how it looked during those first meetings, it has been changing, growing.
Those first encounters — that now seem long ago-were frankly very strange.
9 — Solano is a city in the Province of Buenos Aires (divided between the counties of Quilmes and Almirante Brown), in the city’s urban periphery. It has some of the highest population density in the area, as well as highest rates of poverty, labour and housing precarity, police violence, and contamination and associated health risks. It has also long been a site of land takeovers and settlements by the organized poor. — Trans.
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On the one hand, it was clear, at least to us, that we had found an experience with which we immediately felt connected. These feelings quickly grew until they turned into solid bonds. Nonetheless — and this is the other side — it took us a long time to figure out what this relationship consisted of, to be able to — concretely — respond to the question of “what are we doing here” with this uninterrupted and frequent regime of encounters.
This question takes on its full meaning when we observe that the bond that we were establishing was able, from the beginning, to escape from the traditional representations that normally structure the meaning of “socially motivated” encoun- ters. This is what occurs with well-intentioned “solidarity” that is not able to move beyond a crude classism, unable to disassociate itself from the character of “invol- untary excess” with which the powerful refer to the “excluded,” thus producing their — objective, but also subjective — condition as victims.
For the cosmovision that “adores the poor,’ it is vital that such poverty corre- spond, at the same time, to an impoverishing subjective existence: the experience of mere survival. That is where this tone comes from, that tone that is so particular to a certain type of solidarity and does not question the very distribution of places established by the capitalist machine. This type of solidarity represents itself through images of the “winners” (those who have the luxury of solidarity) and “losers” (seen as animals, perceived as incapable of autonomous action and thought).
However, the birth of the — heterogeneous — piqueterx movement made a signif- icant contribution toward altering this perception. That is what awakens political interest in the movement. As much for its impressive capacity to mobilize as for the radical nature of its methods of struggle, the pigueterx movement has been transformed into an authentic object of desire for revolutionary politics.
Nonetheless, this is not the most interesting thing about experiences such as that of the MTD Solano. Or at least, it is not for those of us who have been forewarned about how certain leftist politics construct their icons and are most concerned with identifying the concrete obstacles to experiences of counter-power — and with the thought and practices organized around them - than to fighting to gain adhesions to this or that revolutionary “program.”
But the issue is that the piqueterx movement — with the help of the media and political discourse — presented itself as one homogeneous movement, until the moment when it was politically “divided” into ideologically distinct fractions.
This — sociologizing — view, nonetheless, hides the precariousness of such unity. Although dominant, this perception of one movement - “division” is clearly pred- icated on the existence of the “one” - does not allow for seeing of the singularity (multiplicity) of each of the local movements, in which different histories and
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trajectories develop and do not necessarily coincide - except in common situations that, contrary to what is believed, are very specific.
As such, what unites them is the same situation of social “marginality” — those “without work” — a certain immediate dependency in respect to the state — govern- ment benefits and subsidies — and the method of struggle — the roadblock. This is no small thing. Nonetheless, these “factors” do not touch on the subjective materiality
of what happens within each movement.
In our case, our encounter with the MTD-S tended to make the idea of the existence of a “piqueterx movement” seem more and more abstract. Not because the common “factors” that we just mentioned do not exist, but because these factors are not subjectively organized in the same way for each movement, which makes the term “piqueterx” an overly homogeneous representation for speaking about a very diverse reality.
That is why here we prefer to refer to a single unique experience: that which we have known in Solano over the past few years.
We are not, therefore, simply, faced with a movement fighting for social justice. As if this were a “small” thing - and as if it could be - this part of the struggle does not fully encompass the experience of the MTD Solano. The light that emerges from the MTD Solano is fueled by an excess in respect to the demand for social equality: inquiry into the production of new values, a sociability that surpasses individualism.
A movement that functions asa shining light can very easily be confused with a “model” or a “line” of ideological thought and action. The difference can be so shallow that it is not worth insisting on it. Yet, the opposite is true: this insistence is a particularly important resource because it allows for seeing this difference between inquiry that “keeps open” precisely that which “the model” and “line” undoubtedly
“close off” and “abstract.”
What does this opening, the potencia of the MTD-S’s intervention consist of ? Even if there is no one answer to this question that, as such, depends excessively on the concerns that organize the question, what has drawn our interest is the fact that — and the form in which -the MTD-S has tackled the genuine conditions of social frag- mentation to produce a fabric of solidarity and production from those conditions. These are not abstract observations. By not assuming the position of the vic- tim — an attitude of waiting, passivity, a discourse that is reduced to “necessities,” etc. — the members of the MTD-S produce a new perspective — capacities and knowl-
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edge — whose effectiveness consists of empowering different (economic, political, cultural, artistic) projects among the neighborhood residents and families connected to the movement. Initially these were oriented toward resolving problems such as unemployment, nutrition, and education and training, but, at the same time - and this extra is essential - are able to produce social cohesion and multiply the various dimensions of existence (values and meanings).
This extra demonstrates the universality of the MTD-S’s work, by working as a nucleus, knitting together sociability in a context where there is a radical dispersion of collective bodies. This point of view, clearly, connects the MTD-S’s actions with other such experiences that combat the - material and spiritual - impoverishment of the existence of people and communities and emphasize the struggle against sadness, misery, and impotency starting in the movement itself.
The MTD-S thus intervenes both as a radically singular experience (as a subjective experience produced in conditions of extreme fragmentation) and on a universal plane (as part of a counter-power that establishes a situational sovereignty founded on the struggle against impotency) through a group of (diverse) projects based on strongly valuing autonomy, situated thought, and, as a counterpart, on a relative subtraction in respect to classical political knowledges.
It is these characteristics (horizontal forms of working together and making decisions, new types of connections and exchanges with other experiences) that give new meaning to the roadblocks and their way of associating with the State. At the same time, it is what does not allow for considering these “factors” as holding a pre-established meaning, other than that which is elaborated within the situation.
IV
In our societies, the “excluded” are spoken about; those who are “outside”, those who have been “expelled”. This is not simply referring to the “poor”, which would only designate a quantitative (and perhaps even variable) difference in terms of resources, but a new social figure: one who “no longer belongs” (who no longer shares any habits, their conduct is unpredictable, their miserable norms of consumption and ways of acquiring food are absolutely incomprehensible). “Exclusion” is no longer a quantitative difference of resources, nor is it reversible. It presents itselfas a border with barbarism that one must not cross, because, if you do, you will not return from this “no man’s land,” where neither the law nor language exist.
Nonetheless, despite being so kind as to name “that” which is on the other side of the imaginary barrier — beyond the desert - “exclusion” is a traditionally
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Hypothesis 891: Beyond the Roadblocks
ideological category, in the sense that it hides much more than it reveals. Exclusion is the specific form in which our societies include — represent — the growing part of society that is produced — precisely — as “excluded, and is taken into account as such.
This is the success of this notion of “exclusion”: it names what society itself produces as if it were not responsible for this production. On the one hand, it allows for hiding the hypocrisy with which the “iacluded” regret this duality — washing their hands of all causal relations between one reality and another. On the other, it enables anyone to occupy a place within representations — again of the included and excluded — and thus give meaning to what would otherwise be the presence of an absolutely intolerable reality.
In effect, produced as such, perceived as such, and as a logical result of these operations, treated as such, the “excluded” — the other of inclusion — are “liberated” (in the same perverse and cynical sense in which the proletariat are “free” under capitalism, as a labor force that “voluntarily” agrees to their labor contract) from symbolic and juridical law. In effect, in the desert there is constant struggle.
The potencia of experiences like that of the MTD-S does not consist of — as the discourse of the excluded would state - the heroic deed of having organized the inhabitants of the desert, as made evident by their ability to build practices and declarations that are capable of destroying and moving beyond the binary pair of exclusion/inclusion.
While originally it was about “unemployed workers’, that is, in the beginning they identified themselves based on a deficiency, a lack, which condemned them to the desert, their own development drove them to look for new ways of naming themselves in accordance with their initial subjective experience. The “piqueterxs” is one of these names, but others continue to emerge: “authentic work,’ “autono- mous work,’ etc.
Now it is not a matter of wanting to “return to work,’ of demanding to be reintegrated into a segment of the rotten social structure, that can only — eventu- ally — accept them in conditions that they have learnt to despise.
Neither included, nor excluded, rather beyond these representations: something new is being woven.
V
According to Pablo Picasso, we only look for something precisely when something has been found. In other words, if what one is looking for is entirely unknown, we would never recognize it if we were to “encounter it”. The “encounter” is the first
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Colectivo Situaciones & MTD Solano
step: meeting with the desire to search, to investigate, to believe, to produce.
Nonetheless, the uncertainly of the “new” - that is always a reorganization of the old, to leave room for terms and meanings that emerge from this new reorga- nization — creates fears and objections: What is beyond? Why try to travel along roads on which there are no guarantees?
According to the “certainties” that we can supposedly count on, “political” work consists of confronting fragmentation (social fragmentation produced by neoliberal- ism), through the hegemonic capacity to organize — centralize - such fragmentation, from a coherency provided by those (totalizing) political resources that we rely on: consciousness (ours, and “the other’s” lack of it), organization (the program, the party), and finally, by controlling the state apparatus.
Seen from above, the dispersion of struggles and fragmentation of communities and cultures is a desired effect (for capital and its powers): we are called to accept these processes as if they were “inevitable tendencies,’ destined by a god (it is the economy that actually occupies that place today), faced with which, resignation is the only possibility.
Seen from below, on the other hand, dispersion is experienced as an atmosphere, as a condition: it is confirmed that the social ground is fragmented and thus the question arises of how to produce something in that atmosphere.
Three answers appear in the face of fragmentation: one consists of reacting against it and trying to produce a “central alternative power” that reunifies (rearticulates) the chaos of the fragments. This perspective attempts to build a universal discourse that speaks in terms of “representing everyone”.
A second response can be formulated by emphasizing the part, the fragment. It would try to affirm a particularity in order to then struggle against all the others, to obtain benefits. This politics speaks in the name of the fragment, and is reinforced in fragmented conditions.
The third response would consist in creating — in the mists of dispersion — consis- tent space-times that, in turn, tend — through their own force — to project themselves transversally, This transversal flux can only speak in its ow name, but that name does not function as a private — individual or group — name, but rather as a way of naming expansive potencias composed of physical, affective, and mental organs.
It is a question of attitudes in the face of the fofality: the production of an abstract universality, the production of the fragment that affirms particularity, and the production of a concrete universal that, in turn, is affirmed as a singular situation.
Vi
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Hypothesis 891: Beyond the Roadblocks
Politics, we would say, no longer occurs through politics. Social inflections and the starting points for transformation, for the most part, do no go through (or neces- sarily originate from) the political sphere.
The political - the state, partisan — pertains to our societies more as a machine that records (misappropriating) the echoes of the ongoing transformations rather than as a site that produces these transformations.
The illusion of the political consists precisely in believing in oneself as a producer (able to control and direct) of those — or other — transformations.
Neoliberals and postmodernists believed that they could see the exhaustion of all struggles for justice and freedom in this apparent end of the centrality of politics. With the politician dead, politics dead: the defeat of the “seventies” experience, as they say, means the defeat of all projects of radical transformation.
The end of the centrality of “the political,” nonetheless, can be understood more as the exhaustion of the efficiency of a politicized “metalanguage” of the social, than the end of social interventions and struggles themselves.
In effect, the political lens no longer provides us with operations that are able to perceive (translate, synthesize, reduce) the real multiplicity of existing meanings and practices.
Nonetheless, the political resists: like Jens that almost cannot see, or a meta- language that almost no longer accepts translations, its persistence produces a reductionist effect with respect to social phenomena, which no longer allows for perceiving — nor producing - from that space. One of the effects of such persistence, then, is the blockage of the transversality of a counter-power that requires more acute self-perception in order to insist on its own development.
But, what type of politics would be able to overcome that political blockage? This question immediately takes us to the unknown dimension. As such, our only option for responding to this question is to introduce hypotheses for interpret- ing the social field that would enable an understanding of the transformations taking place.
Vil
Hypothesis, thought, and verification are the names of a different image of politics that no longer looks to exclusive “models” or central organizing cores. It does not try to take meaning away from politics in order to transfer that meaning to other structures, but rather, and more precisely, it tries to “depoliticize politics” in order
to bring it a little closer to the multiplicity of existences.
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Colectivo Situaciones & MTD Solano
Foucault would say that the intellectual has stopped being universal in order to become specific: the intellectual no longer speaks in the name of universal values, but rather in function of their own ability and situation. This transformation — from which we are still learning — gives rise to new modes of working with social inflections: neither historians, nor archaeologists, nor theorists, nor prophets of counter-power. It is a question of trying care for ways of co-constituting nuclei that are able to produce a perspective that comes from within the experiences of a new sociability, strengthening and creating bonds, knowledges, and working hypotheses.
Vill
A series of images were present in each encounter. Assemblies, capacity building, workshops, meetings, marches, interviews, roads, bridge and street blockades, encounters, coordination, neighborhoods, the unemployed, meetings with the authorities in charge, production, guitar sessions, planning, mate circles, press conferences, the chapel, tires, discussions, piquetes, masks, movements, are the words that weave together the experiences of the MTD Solano. Articulated, these fragments, these sketches, compose a freshness that we saw in our frequent visits last year. We would have to add to these reoccurring concepts, an enormous and disturbing “noisy band” of young people, dancing and singing “piqueteros, jfuck yeah!” People coming in and out, with problems and solutions of all kinds, and still the picture is not yet complete. Those who speak throughout this dialogue, members of the movement, are young people, with an amazing vitality, who often arrive to the workshop exhausted, after indescribably adventurous days. We worked hours in these conditions, well into the evening.
Few edits have been made to the extensive conversation we reproduce in what follows. All the, minimal, changes have been suggested by the comrades from the MTD-S. The complete conversation consisted of eight hours of tape, carried out over the course of several days. The themes discussed included: first, the history of the movement, the criteria that they use for organizing and working together, their relationship with other movements of the unemployed throughout the country, their relationship with the media, with groups that come to them with diverse proposals, their way of understanding politics, and, finally, their reflections on counter-power. In this first part, we have also included working papers that pick up on what was discussed in the workshop on June 12 and 16, 2001. To carry out this work, along with the workshop itself, we have participated in the movement's meetings, several
of its activities and commission meetings.
31
Hypothesis 891: Beyond the Roadblocks ‘The participation of the comrades from the MTD-S in this project was approved
by an assembly of the movement and what is accomplished here, be it a lot or a little, is entirely dedicated to that assembly.
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Conversations between Colectivo Situaciones and the MTD Solano
September to October 2001
1. Capitalism in Situation
We are not looking for your opinion about what happens at the general level of politics, what the media organizes as issues that everyone must have an opinion about. Instead, we are interested in your reflections about how the world is experienced; how do you all, specifically, live; the process that you have been developing. How do you define the problems? How do you discuss them?
The idea is to express the richness that we have experienced here.
To start the conversation, then, we want to say that, in order to capture the strength of this experience, we need to move away from the immediate and automatic anti-cap- italist discourse that is very abstract, thinking in terms of slogans like: “we don’t want them to pay the external debt,” “when we take power, it will solve all the problems,” or
“we have to stop the governments structural adjustment policies.” Because, although these are very important, they hide the fact that power functions through very concrete and intimate mechanisms, which are always situated, and it is this form of power that we have to address. Therefore, the first question is, how does capitalism exist here, how is it manifested, and how does it present itself ?
When you all arrived, we were we just finishing a meeting with all the delegates from the different projects. In that meeting we discussed the projects’ budgets,
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Hypothesis 891: Beyond the Roadblocks
their forms of production, and their goals. Although the MTD deploys criteria of collectively building an alternative form of production, when it comes to defining things, capitalism is still very strong. As we know, it is very difficult to collectively build something using a capitalist mentality. Some of the obstacles we face include: individualism, selfishness, prioritizing solutions to personal problems over the interests of other comrades.
For example, it is very difficult to start producing when we have not yet estab- lished the purpose of what we are producing: if it will be to sell, or if it is for the common good, to create a collective economy based on solidarity.
Capitalism has managed to generalize an image or a projection of what consti- tutes happiness. To the extent that many people, even at the worst point of misery, never abandon the fantasy that one day they will be “saved.” It is the idea of a lot- tery, of an individual salvation that is very much oriented towards a certain type of culture: that happiness is achieved by resolving the problem of housing, having a good car or the latest shoes. Capitalism developed this whole imaginary over the course of centuries. That is the hope, or the idea, in popular neighborhoods: that one day, they will be able to access what is being sold as happiness. Therefore, people like Susana Giménez" are hugely popular because they are part of the show business world. The popular sectors voted for Menem: he rode around in a Ferrari, rubbed elbows with the elites, and instead of being hated, he was admired because he was someone who “triumphed” in life.'! This is one of the obstacles: there is an imaginary that is the result of centuries of domination. This idea of happiness is very ingrained.
Here in the neighborhoods, you can clearly see the destruction this has wreaked on individuals, on the community, on its values. Because, I think, capitalism has generated its own values, for example, that of “progress,” of having certain status, of “being someone,’ as we often say. And being someone means having material things. That is how capitalism is experienced.
Even though there is a great deal of poverty here, there are many people in Solano who live based on those values. Even religion affirms that if you are good, if you behave well, you have a chance to get ahead. Many people are convinced that if you are not someone important, it is because you didn’t study, you didn’t try; in other words, this is reproduced in the form of guilt. Many people reach a certain age and feel like their life has been a total failure. All of this is related to
individualism, which is where latent capitalist values are found.
10 A popular Argentine television host, actress, and model known for her right-wing views. 11 Carlos Menem, former president of Argentina (1989-1999), largely responsible for ushering in neoliberal structural adjustment policies.
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Colectivo Situaciones & MTD Solano
We face constant tension in our organization as we try to put forth a project that speaks of the community, of acommon effort, the idea that liberating ourselves is not about making ourselves rich, but rather that wealth and happiness are related to other values. Nonetheless, I think that new values are emerging, or values that, to a certain extent, already existed, but were well hidden and over-powered by the reality people are facing. It is has become very difficult to find places where that attitude of “I will find the solution myself” is overcome.
It is true that there is a strong presence of competition in the popular neigh- borhoods. These relations lead to problems of authority and roles: many comrades, including those in the MTD, think that having a position of responsibility in the movement means being “the authority” figure. That is capitalism’s logic.
If people get together or meet up, it is generally to pass the time, so that time passes, but not with a sense of solidarity or community. It is to fill time because they don’t have anything to do in life.
Sometimes, when someone approaches us about participating in the movement, it is out of an internal interest. We see that the comrade is not showing disinterest, but rather that they have an implicit interest, and that is why they take a step forward.
In moments of crisis, interest arises, but in another form, and labels get attached to things: “I did this and that.” This is something else that needs to be overcome and that has to do with how we are built: with the idea that it is not worth doing anything unless we can receive double in return. Then, one thinks about millions of dollars, not about dignified housing with their basic needs met, but rather mansions.
2. Unemployment
What is it like not having work here in the neighborhood? This seems obvious, because this is a movement of “those without work” and, in general, the whole world “knows” what it means to be unemployed as a sociological category. But, what does it mean to be unemployed in terms of lived experience?
When people approach us, they usually expect us to solve the problem of work. The MTD is not about that: it does not solve the problem of unemployment at all. The MTD is a proposal, a project, that takes this issue of work — in this case of unemployment ~as its central focus, but it is much broader. It is about building something that has to do with dignity, with the struggle for health, for education. We are not looking to replace the category of the proletariat with that of the unem- ployed, for example. It is about another type of construction.
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Hypothesis 891: Beyond the Roadblocks
For many years, prisons have been filled with people from the neighborhood due to delinquency, drugs. Here we are creating an environment to give young people the chance to not have to go out to steal, although many have relapsed. We have comrades who say quite specifically: “I do not earn enough money to handle issues of severe illnesses.” In the movement, they found a space to take back what it means to be responsible for a task, to have an occupation, which gets them away from those groups that can lead to negative consequences, because these kids take one or two pills and go out and do silly things. This is being noticed, although they bring more than a few difficulties to the movement, because they bring their whole life here to the movement. But we decided to respect them, with their life stories, and not marginalize them because they consume drugs and have weapons, and instead develop a relationship of respect with them. At the same time, they are developing a type of respect and esteem among themselves. It builds a positive relationship that they are a part of and recreates common codes that used to exist, even among kids who were involved in theft. One of the consequences of drugs was that the codes broke, but a sort of recovery is created through the feeling that they are not marginalized, but accepted as they are.
This creates a guideline for reconstructing values, codes, and a life in common. There were some neighbors who could not even be in the same room together and now they are participating in the same project, although there is still a lot of work to be done in the neighborhood. We have made a big effort, for example, in the area of cleanliness, in the eradication of junkyards. We have not yet solved the problem of unemployment but we created possibilities for living together. We are not even solving the problem of hunger, there is much to do, but what we are achieving, and this is fundamental to us, is recovering what it means to be human. We always say that one day we will have resources, but the human connection, the relationship between comrades, no one can give you that. And this is what we are trying to achieve. Here unemployment is historic, it has existed for many years, but the saddest thing has been the destruction of values and the ability to live together.
We have been talking about the consequences of this idea- which has become very widespread because of capitalism — of individual salvation and the effect of a very standardized and ideological image of success. But we know that capitalism does not only promise a future salvation, but rather what it primarily shows us is that it is very unlikely that people in these neighborhoods will be able to save themselves. Does this not destroy social bonds? The simple fact that if you are unemployed, you live as someone who is excluded, rejected, do you not resent this? Have young people's expectations, even of saving themselves individually, been destroyed?
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Colectivo Situaciones & MTD Solano
This has to do with what you were saying about the comrades who “give up’: it is not about the traditional figure who believes that, after a lot of hard effort and work, individual success is waiting for them. What happens to those who give up, and espe- cially, their children?
That is how it is, here capitalism has two faces: on the one hand, the idea that success comes from gaining power, moving up; and on the other hand, behavior which is pathological in my opinion: depression, giving up, or not doing anything, or taking out everything produced by unemployment by abusing their wives, children, or
neighbors.
3. Horizontality and struggle
You told us that there are comrades who equate having responsibility in the movement with the right to command other comrades. Since the MTD-S makes a major effort to sustain all its work based on principles of horizontality: How are leadership and its different modes practiced and experienced? What obstacles have you encountered with the forms of protagonism and participation among members of the movement?
What we do is that we constantly revise our agreements. Because we handle every- thing through agreements: when we go out to block a highway, when we create a working group or in any other area of the movement. Many of our agreements emerged from neighborhood meetings discussing the criteria for building together, and we always come back to those definitions. We have also spent a lot of time analyzing the harm caused by individualist positions. One thing that has helped us is that we always fully discuss the criteria before starting a group and these cri- teria are always defined by the entire movement. For example, in our productive enterprises, education and training come first, and then you can produce and go out and sell things, training both in terms of production and the political element. That is how we operate: political education is a fundamental tool that ensures that we are able to build together.
We understand capacity-building and political education in broad terms: this project, for example, is an educational activity for us, but so is a roadblock, because we discuss how to carry it out, what happened, what failed. We engage in capacity-building and education every day, and we do so based on the criteria that we have defined. There are requirements that change according to the situ- ation, and there are others that are more general that are the foundation of the
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Hypothesis 891: Beyond the Roadblocks
movement. For example, we discussed if we wanted a leader or if we would prefer to have a horizontal organization, if we wanted a group to make the decisions or if we wanted to make decisions in an assembly. Direct democracy is one of the unchangeable criteria.
Our movement takes the form of a struggle, and that is what we encourage in order to achieve the things we want. That is another one of our agreements: to participate in the movement, there has to be an agreement that this is a movement of struggle, that we will change things here through fighting for them. But the struggle does not only consist of blockading roads or confronting the police, rather it is an everyday struggle, it is a struggle against our old way of thinking in order to incorporate a new form of thought in which relationships are based on solidarity, the collective, and comrades.
Secondly, each group establishes some of its own criteria that change depend- ing on the specific situation. For example, the question of whether or not we work when it rains. This depends on the group: if it is a group that works outside then generally they don’t work, but instead they can watch a movie, discuss, work on
capacity-building.
In most projects, there is a group of people who handle the majority of the tasks. Whether because they show more responsibility or are more willing to commit, it ends up creating a delegation of information and of powers to a certain group of comrades, which places them in the center of the organization. This tendency can be seen in many experiences. The group that is placed at the center, even if it is against the will of the movement and of the group in question, then finds itself in difficult position: it is increasingly difficult to effectively collectivize their knowledge and responsibilities. What mechanisms have you found for avoiding or reversing this tendency of delegation?
There is always a level of dependency, especially when comrades are new to the movement, because they look for the person in the group who has the most expe- rience, or simply the person who can speak the best or who can carry out the task the best. It creates a dependency that we say is ok, but only during a certain stage, not forever. The way of reversing this situation is to socialize knowledges, and to do so, we work with popular education. We create spaces where all the comrades can develop their talents, their abilities, their contributions, in an infinite number of responsibilities. There are comrades who have trade union experience, others who are more uninhibited, and others who are terrified of taking on responsibility. So, we have to work constantly so that no one is left doing nothing. That is where overcoming the figure of the leader comes in. Additionally, delegation has to be
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Colectivo Situaciones & MTD Solano
rotating; it has to be for a limited time, determined by the comrades, depending on the needs of the situation.
One year ago, there was a great deal of growth in the movement and there is still a great deal of dependency. But we always said that those who have a supporting role, are there to create bonds, to accompany, but never to decide. They provide accompaniment, but never a solution, they are not the ones who decide what must be done. We know that this is going to take time, but there are very encouraging signs, because people who used to be quiet, who avoided participating, not only come to complete their four hours of community work, but they have also started to work on other tasks and activities. This is inspiring, but we can’t speed up the time frames. There are leaderships that are positive because they don’t exclude anyone, because they help others to grow. But there are also leaderships that hoard, that do not create participation, that impose authoritarianism. This requires constant revision in the democracy of the movement, in life as such, to prepare for other challenges. Because life is not pure, we can’t say that we have one hundred percent participation, direct democracy and horizontality, but we know that this is the right path.
Another important thing is making sure that when a comrade used to be a leader and is now stepping out of that position, that their life and commitment doesn’t stop. It is complicated, because these are often mechanisms of compensation and everyone wants to be loved; we all have our egos. So, we try to be in a situation of helping and illuminating, but without burning ourselves. It is one thing to help, to illuminate, to be available, and something else to not allow the other to grow.
The movement is not merely an ideological political organization, that is, a group that is validated by its “proposals” and “opinions” about “this or that” (although of course those proposals and opinions do exist). The MTD-S has a form of intervention that we think is very powerful. It is the capacity to directly target sociability, values, and the ways in which people resolve all of life’s problems. Honestly, we have always thought that concrete counter-power is not a political force, but rather but a potencia for the production of values, ways of existence, that are superior to those that capitalism produces in situation.
Along this line, we would like to ask you to talk about how you work in relation to the deepest cores of sociability and intimacy in the neighborhood. In fact, if the move- ment were not to question prior modes of sociability, it would simply be a structure that would reproduce dominant values.
Is it possible to recreate a society around alternative values without, at the same time working on the level of the roles that are imposed by the family, belief systems,
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Hypothesis 891: Beyond the Roadblocks
education, etc.? Is this community organization, this collective experience, modifying the family structure?
Yes, in the little time that we have been organizing things have been changing. In fact, there was very little participation in the neighborhood assembly at first. It is normal, not only in the MTD, but in other organizations as well, among parents in relation to school and even at church, for there to be less involvement in these neighborhoods. We are happy to see that in our experience this pattern is being broken. We see comrades who not only come to an assembly, but also go to marches or roadblocks, which are things that, until recently, provoked a great deal of fear, a lot of resistance. There are spaces that are being created, and people are starting to feel that they are necessary: to be a part of something bigger than their family. Relationships are generated that continue and show a growth in comrades for whom their families are no longer enough. This is evident when many people stay behind to talk even after the assembly has ended. Some comrades say that they only started to truly live when they came here. It is a very intense experience to find life’s meaning in communal spaces, where relations are created and values are being revived. Some comrades say that they would keep coming even if the benefit packages stopped. What motivates them is the possibility of generating relations of friendship, of camaraderie, of community. For many, the
MTD is their family.
4. Alittle bit of history
Can you tell us about the movement's history? How did the expulsion from the Church happen? Is it connected to the issue of how authority and capitalism work in the neighborhood?
Yes, I think that it has to do with a way of understanding participation, using a conceptualization that is now in crisis. There was an important experience of comunidades eclesiales de base (community-based churches] in this neighborhood, based on community participation and supporting people. The higher-ups put a stop to that process for a reason. In 1987, the Church took on a new orientation in which liberation theology and community-based churches —expressions of lib- eration theology — started being cut off. They were replaced by traditional priests, which created commotion and crisis.
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Colectivo Situaciones & MTD Solano
When we arrived in Solano with the other priest, Antonio, we had an idea of communities as an expression of participation, of connecting to the problems latent in the neighborhood, so we started recuperating what they had tried to shut down. At the same time, an environment was generated that caused a lot of conflict because there were other sectors that had another dynamic, another vision of power. That is, they understood being on a council, being part of the church, as power that only belonged to a few and that others must be subordinated to this authority. We were attempting to democratize, so we tried to focus on the most urgent issue: unemployment. We started to have assemblies of the unemployed inside church buildings. But this dynamic ran counter to decisions that the diocese leadership had already taken, since it put their relationship with the government at risk. Therefore, the bishop asked me to get the unemployed people out of the church, and we responded that it is the people who have to decide. The Bishop said no, that I was the problem: “what community, what assembly? You're responsible for this!” That was the discussion, and he ended up treating us as rebels, agitators, usurpers. The Church plays a very important role in accompanying capitalism, because it produces hierarchical relationships.
There is the figure of the priest who, while being very progressive, ends up favoring social trends that do not exactly go in the direction of popular organizations. None- theless, there are other experiences in which the priest appears as a sort of authority that people appeal to when building community. I am not only taking about Solano, but the hundreds of places in Latin America were the priest is called up for a type of knowledge and authority that is not necessarily an oppressive hierarchy, but can also be a reference point where there is nothing else, where everything has been destroyed.
Yes, the key element is that in this area we managed to demystify, to a large degree, the figure of the priest as the maximum authority and a representative of God on Earth. Here the priest was more a coordinator, someone who facilitated the work of articulation, of conflict resolution. There are more conservative sectors, even in Solano that questioned the rest of the people: “How can it be that an ordinary person has more control than the priest?” they would say. There are people who think that the priest’s word is absolute and the same goes for the bishops.
Definitely there are many places in Latin America where priests have played a role in supporting community experiences. The Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) in Brazil is one example. That is, there are bishops who are coherent, who are progressive not only in their discourse, but also in practice.
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Hypothesis 891: Beyond the Roadblocks
5. Grassroots organization
When we published the Borradores de Investigacién [Research Drafis]'” regarding “the piqueterx struggle” we received a great deal of criticism, especially from people affiliated with the Argentine Central Workers’ Union (CTA). We were basically reproached for having such an acute criticism of Luis D’Elia’s movement and for idealizing the experience of Solano too much. We then were obliged — by our critical friends — to improve the quality of our pamphlet and to go into more depth about the problems that were emerging in regards to representation, the temptation of the political, and all these sorts of problems — that are surely similar to many other movements — and that we pointed to in the Drafts.
We thought that what would be interesting, then, would be to show to what extent the differences between these experiences can be found at the level of how decisions are made when confronting these common problems, rather than hiding the fact that these alternative modes face exactly the same obstacles.
To start then: How is the MTD Solano organized? How do you organize so that the movement is not considered as that which has all the answers and solves all the problems? How do you operate so that the movement does not constitute itself as a power that impedes the circulation of new knowledges and forms of protagonism?
Here in Solano the movement emerged in response to a concrete need in the neigh- borhood, in relation to which we started to come together. I think that there was no recipe to start with, but rather we are making it up as we go along, and, as we continue organizing, new things start coming up.
The assembly is the most important body, it is where proposals are debated, where the main decisions are made: the plans for struggle, the creation of new areas, the election of delegates from each neighborhood.
In the neighborhoods, on the other hand, there are working groups, composed of ten or twenty people that choose two or three delegates; there is no precise number, but always more than one.
In each work area, these elected comrades form a commission, a place for eval- uating and discussing any difficulties that arise. The group is not there to resolve problems because resolutions are made in the assembly. When work arises in new neighborhoods, each group elects two delegates to join a general commission, whose
12 Weare referring to a report that we prepared in August of 2001, after the emergence of the National Piquetero Movement. The report aimed to show that very different forms of thinking and acting were hidden within the social phenomena called the piqueterx. That draft was based on work done with the MTD-S.
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main function is the articulation between neighborhoods.
Lastly, there are areas that have emerged from necessity. The press group, for example, arose when we started having a relationship with the media and because we started making denunciations; the production group that has to do with planning; the economic area, that handles the movement’s budget; capacity-building and popular education; security, which was created for the roadblocks; administration, that is responsible for everything that has to do with the unemployment benefits and jobs plans, the development of projects, and the relationship with the ministry; merchandise, which is not operational right now because we have not received groceries in a long time; the land; and the area of institutional relations, that operates when, as a result of the roadblocks, we have
to go to a meeting with the ministry.
Assemblies are often spaces where people express pre-established positions, as if it were a plebiscite in which people do not actively participate other than choosing between already decided options; of better yet, they legitimate positions that had already been defined. We know that it is not easy to create an assembly that becomes a true space of collective thought.
Participation fundamentally depends on the process of growth in each neighbor- hood. There are places where there is a lot of debate, and usually, there is a lot of agreement on fundamental ideas, because there has been more time for collective work. In the smaller and newer neighborhoods, we use certain questions and exer- cises to encourage participation.
I think that it is very important to continually return to the criteria and prin- ciples that have already been discussed at length, because they constitute the pillars of the movement and often frame the discussions. For example, this is a movement in which it is very clear that there are no ambitions of power, and therefore, the possibility of running for office is eliminated. This does not mean that there are not moments when problems and positions arise that question the organization’s criteria.
That is why I think it has to do with maturity. It is a process and we cannot say that the assemblies are truly democratic. There are often debates that last for hours. There are times when we have to settle things with a vote, but generally we seek consensus. There have been tensions; there have been many crises, in different neighborhoods, and with the delegates. The last action plans left a hole on the road and that had repercussions. But we have not suffered divisions, which shows that there is a collective exercise that allows us to grow and keep moving forward.
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Hypothesis 891: Beyond the Roadblocks
With respect to coordination and the political connections that are established with different groups, perhaps it is more difficult to sustain this dynamic, because you enter into relations with groups that do not have the same practices (beyond what they say about themselves or what, in their heads, they want to happen).
Recently you were telling us how you resolve problems inside the neighborhood, how you make decisions. There is a criterion of responsibility used that sustains the experience. This horizontality of responsibilities creates the conditions for a common, sovereign experience of thinking, and at the same time, of practice. But how can these modes of recreating existential agreements be expanded; how can you recreate these original projects when you are working at the level of coordination between different organizations?
There is a great deal of respect, and also, we handle things based on the agreements that we make. But within the MTD coordinator, there are groups that have another form of construction, other characteristics.
It is more complicated when we go to other spaces, in which there are other movements or organizations besides those of the unemployed.
There is a way of thinking about organization, that is very widespread among popular movements, that prioritizes institutional terms. The question that are made there are: How do we make a diagram that is democratic? How do we create a formula that guarantees internal democracy? Often, these end up being empty spaces where
nothing happens.
It seems to me that this simulation of democracy tends to exist in organizations that see base building as a means to other ends.
Yes, and this could have to do with a form of militant activity that is based on trying to maintain a “model” (a set of knowledges) of how to constitute the movement. This especially includes comrades who, without bad intentions, end up with an ideological “model” that is completely external to the situation in which they work, and they appear, all of a sudden, with criteria that are totally dogmatic about how things should be, placing external criteria above the collective experience. This militant “shortcut” saves times at the beginning of the work: the road of creating, of thinking collectively. Therefore, when you talk about the organizational criteria that you work with, one cannot help but be a little distrusting, due to having heard these criteria in other places where they “acted as if they practiced” those criteria, but in reality, the areas of
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thought were controlled by “political astuteness” and those “militant knowledges.” I think there is something in how you all think about construction that goes beyond what you are telling us about your form of organizing.
In some neighborhoods, we are destroying the image of the delegate, because we had a major crisis due to authoritarian and selfish attitudes. We said that we don’t want to repeat this model any more, that nobody should be able to bring us down, and that we had to work in a more participatory way. What we did was to put everything on rotating bases. We made a timeline for the general commission. Ultimately, we didn’t want any more delegates, so we all participated. What remains to be seen is how to make sure that the function that delegates served, which was communicating with other neighborhoods, articulating tasks, etc. is still guaranteed.
What was destroyed was the role of the delegate, not its function.
Yes, the role of the delegate as an authority. If this role was taken on as a form of power, it needs to be destroyed.
It is interesting to us that when you speak of a comrade who acted badly, who made a mistake, you talk about them as someone who has not received enough training or education. Why is that?
The problem with these comrades is that when a crisis appears, instead of resolving it, they complicate it more with personal issues. Instead of thinking of a more political response, they fall back on the personal.
Then, it is something that has to do with the collective, not that they lack the capacity to think. We are referring to the issue of putting personal interests about the collective. Furthermore, for us, it is not only that individual comrade’s respon- sibility, but rather a collective responsibility, that belongs to all of us as a whole.
You said that it was in this neighborhood where the organization first emerged. How did it emerge in the others?
In all the neighborhoods it emerged from peoples’ requests. Some, such as those of La Florida and Monteverde approached us here. Others — for example IAPI, La Sarita, Avellaneda - emerged from the roadblocks. We were blocking roads in that area, and neighborhoods residents approached us and got hooked on the roadblocks. But they all emerged from a proposal from the neighborhood, we never went out to
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Hypothesis 891: Beyond the Roadblocks
offer anything. Even here in San Martin, the movement emerged from a proposal from comrades who had problems of unemployment. It’s not like we said: “let’s create a Movement of the Unemployed.”
The comrades from other neighborhoods asked us to visit and tell them about what we were doing. Then there would be a conversation about whether they wanted to organize themselves like or us if they wanted to do something different. It was never an imposition. That is how the experience began. There were no problems in other neighborhoods for not wanting to integrate themselves into our requirements. Yes, some things were debated again, along the way, such as the marches, but not in terms of doing away with more important criteria.
6. Roadblocks
I think that the roadblocks made apathy explode, but in a different way. We woke the country up from the sweet dreams that Menem was selling and that whole type of politics, and we were like the eruption of another light. Along with other struggles we made the country wake up from the sweet dreams of postmodernity. Piqueterxs was the name that they gave us, and it was our way of speaking to society as a whole, of telling them that there were other forms of struggle, to show our fire, as well as our dignity.
How did this idea come about? How were the roadblocks organized here?
The roadblocks emerged in the interior, in Cutral Cd, Tartagal, Mosconi, and Santiago del Estero and spread across the whole country, cutting off the circulation of free trade that feeds the metropolis. At that time, people started taking up the roadblocks as a form of struggle here in Buenos Aires, but there was tremendous debate over whether accepting the Trabajar benefits packages was the correct form of action or not. Some said that this was creating a welfarism or clientelism. Instead of getting involved in that debate, what we did was to put it into practice. At that time, we were organized in the parish and the question of struggle started to be raised. Taking over the municipal offices was something that was always discussed, until the first roadblock took place. The first one was more or less improvised and some comrades were arrested. Little by little it became clear that a new form of struggle was emerging.
But the most important thing is that we started to grow; we started creating productive project projects, engaging in capacity-building, popular education, and
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all those things are more important than being out on the street. Because being on the street is what is seen, and it seems like everything is out there, but the struggle is fundamentally everything we were doing before. In reality, if we went out on the streets it is because we were already organized.
But the media insists on talking about the unemployed who go out with their faces covered, totally marginalized beings, worthless beings who have never worked.
It is good to clarify that at the beginning all the left and progressives accused us of asking for charity, being reformists, of begging at the feet of the master, and they did not recognize the organization’s main slogan: work, dignity, and social change. It was obvious that it was not only about the benefits packages, although it did lead to the death of many organizations for whom it was only about getting the benefits and going home.
On the other hand, the roadblocks have changed a great deal. We went to our first roadblock with our faces uncovered, we had some rocks that we had half hidden so that no one would be scared. It was a process, we suffered different types of repression, and we started to cover our faces so that the state couldn’t identify us. We also started to use violence as self-defense: not throwing sticks or stones to attack, but rather to defend ourselves. But also, it’s important to emphasize that the roadblocks and the benefits packages are but one element of the struggle; they are not the fundamental elements.
The benefits programs are the reality that we can organize around. That is, we don’t have the opportunity to take over a factory. What we don’t share at all with other organizations is using neighborhood organizations, and the real work that they do, as an “excuse” for other ends.
There were difficult moments in the first roadblocks. But something changed after Mosconi.’ Following those events, we saw changes in comrades’ consciousnesses. Before they insisted that nothing was going happen, we had to make an effort so that comrades would not be scared, and most of the time we would hide our sticks and slingshots. We had intense debates about whether or not we should cover our faces. Through this process, we started to understand that it was necessary to have a certain level of self-defense: we could not go out on the street as easy targets for the police and the comrades in charge of security could not allow the military to see their faces. In the roadblocks that we did with congress of La Matanza, the CTA insisted that we take off our masks. We took the issue to an assembly and decided that if they were going to take away our masks, we were going to leave. The system
13 This is in reference to the 2001 uprising in General Mosconi, in the province of Salta, in response to layoffs following the privatization of the oil industry. The heavy suppression of the uprising left two people dead.
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considers roadblocks to be a crime, but we believe they are legitimate. This is a fundamental change that we went through as an organization.
We know that the fact that your organization organizes workshops, projects, capac- ity-building, that you have a constant collective life, sets you apart from other orga- nizations of the unemployed. How are these differences manifested when it comes to organizing roadblocks?
I have experience in other roadblocks and I have seen the difference in regards to the organization, the security requirements, the discipline of the comrades. In our roadblocks, it shocks others to see that if a comrade notices someone drinking, they request that the person leave due to security reasons. This is an ongoing process in the neighborhoods, in comrades’ lives, because we are talking about comrades who, only a year ago, would vote for thirty pesos, or would go out to steal so that they could survive.
What sustains and solidifies this transformation is political education. We do not impose a requirement that comrades do not drink, but rather this is discussed in the assemblies. And, fundamentally, it is not the coordinators who say that people should not drink, rather we search for a consensus, we discuss why it is not worth it. This is the big difference, not whether or not we cover our faces, or who
has the bigger stick. When did you all get the first benefit packages that you started to organize for?
In 1997, after our first marches to the municipal offices, we received 50 benefits pack- ages. We did not block the roads; we marched to the Secretary of Employment of the municipality. The first benefit packages we therefore received from the municipality. We won the autonomy to manage the plans after two roadblocks.
Was there a conscious decision to change that relationship with the state at some moment?
Yes, and that is what differentiated us from other organizations; today many organi- zations are proposing this. The problem basically was that the municipality pressured comrades to stop organizing. Of the 120 comrades who started the work, today only five or six remain in the MTD. We realized that it did not make sense to do something that would benefit the system which we were trying to overturn.
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We have spoken several times of the heterogeneity that exists in the piqueterx movement, how would you explain this?
The differences that are being noted with other organizations primarily emerged because many still work in a very traditional way: “we will take power from above and change things from there.” And we say: from below, without proposing to take power, we will engage in our struggle. We are below and we do not want to leave there, we want to stay below; we will always be rebels.
We are below and we do not want to rise. Here there are comrades who stand out, but what you will not find are aspirations to be leaders. Guiding the movement is a constant process that takes place among all of us.
In any case, these differences don’t allow us to lose sight of the fact that it is important to articulate, that it is important to coordinate, that it is necessary to continue to debate and make agreements, struggling together. We do not say that we have the truth and others don’t. We see that there are differences in movement building, but all these differences can be coordinated, as long as issues of social change and dignity are being raised, and not using the people to win elections, for example.
I heard some piqueterx comrades saying that in their daily lives they used to feel like they were ‘shit,’ “the forgotten,’ “left behind,’ and that in the roadblocks they feel different,
that they “have power,’ that “decisions are made there.”
That is true, it is a space of freedom, an autonomous zone, and it is the only place where the military and police do not treat you like trash. In the roadblocks, the military speaks to you like: “excuse me, we came to negotiate.” If those same police saw you alone on the street, they would beat the shit out of you.
It is true that we control an area in the roadblocks, but I think that the comrades feel that they are recuperating this power through the organization, not only in the roadblocks, but it is the organization that creates strength. For example, today the comrades that are doing the work of putting up street signs, they put up signs that say “MTD” and an arrow showing where our building is. These are strong signs of counter-power.
You said that there were comrades who had a more instrumental relationship with
the movement, and that they only come to receive their benefits, how is this reflected in the roadblocks?
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Hypothesis 891: Beyond the Roadblocks
The majority of comrades who have approached the movement recently, more than eighty per cent, came exclusively out of a concrete necessity. They need something to eat, they don’t have food, they don’t have a job, they don’t have anything. But, when there is a process, things change, adrenaline starts flowing and they start
feeling the need to organize themselves.
You said that when you take to the streets, you are saying “no” to the model, “no” to
a system. I think that this can be understood in two ways: on the one hand, that the
model failed and that you all represent the moment in which the victims make them- selves present, in a sort of Christian sense, in which the people never escape this place of victimization that attests to misery: those who ‘are stuck outside,” who beg, shamelessly, so that they are not forgotten. But there is another way of seeing this issue, in which the
model did not fail and exclusion does not exist, because there is no place to be included
and that is what the exploited are: desirable variables of the system. Thus, we feel like
the position of the majority of those participating in the roadblocks is not that of the
victim, but that there is a very clear subjective will to actively think and work.
We don’t want inclusion. I don’t want to be exploited again. I don’t want to have Fortabat or the Macris as my boss again, that’s for sure. I’m not fighting for them to go back to exploiting me. Personally, I feel, and many other comrades do as well, that we are not here for inclusion; that what we are doing is something else. One thing that we are certain about is precisely what we don’t want as an organization. The novelty of each day lies in discovering where it is we want to go and what it is that we are building. This is not something that is closed; it is not finished or predetermined, rather, we are continuously reflecting. The organization is dynamic; it changes and we reflect on this. It is true that you can notice the adrenaline when we go out to block a road, but the novel element of the movement is that this is not separated from our everyday lives. That is the reality of the organization: what is expressed in the roadblock has to be constructed in our everyday lives because it won't work any other way. We don’t find an answer to this in the system, so we have to make another history. When we make demands, they are not about inclusion,
we only request what helps us be able to continue organizing ourselves. How do you decide to carry out a roadblock, who decides how and where?
Each area informs the others about what is happening. Then, according to that information, an action plan is proposed in each neighborhood. There is a discussion about whether to have a march or a roadblock. First, the decision is made in all the
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neighborhood assemblies, later, in the commission, consensus is reached building on what was expressed in the neighborhoods. Based on the proposals, we can see our capacity. For reasons of security, in the assemblies we never say where the roadblock will take place. The method is decided there, but not the details.
The roles and groups are decided in the assemblies. For example, in the assem- bly we decide who will do first aid, kitchen duties, security. In other words, the groups coordinate the activities and there is someone with the role of connecting the different areas, who is also elected on a rotating basis.
It seems as though security and the political criteria of the roadblock are always responses to the organization's internal considerations and not to the needs of the political con- juncture, or to eventual external support.
Yes, but these internal necessities are much more than our “economic needs.” For example, when we blocked a road because of what happened in Mosconi, it had to do with our identity. Because if they harmed someone in Mosconi, it also has to do with us, even though it does not directly affect us in Solano.
Or when we blocked Pueyrredén Bridge because of risks of repression in La Matanza, and we said to the government: “If you are repressing them over there, you will also have to repress us over here.” We saw that they were beating our brothers and sisters (despite D’Elia and Alderete) and we had to go out and fight for them. But, yes, we do not build for the conjuncture. We are not interested in electoral politics, whether we vote tomorrow or not.
Another example is when Patricia Bullrich organized an offensive. We said: “we have to go out and protest because they wanted to break us as an organization.” The problem there was that it was impeding us from continuing with our work. What we never do is go out to protest when one of the powers of the superstructure is calling for it, because they have a predetermined political analysis of why it must be done. Instead, we analyze the situations ourselves.
We don’t dispute the space with anyone, nor do we want to be anyone’s vanguard. We are building and articulating our thoughts with others who are transforming their own situations. We are not interested in going to La Matanza to agitate and win space there. That is not how we conceive of political action. Yes, we think that grassroots organizing must continue, but it is the comrades from La Matanza who have to fight for this. We seek to coordinate with those who are building movements, but we don’t dispute any type of space.
Nor are we blindly committed to the grassroots, as some accuse us. We have a political project and, in fact, we know how to analyze the conjuncture, but we do
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it in the neighborhoods and with the people. Therefore, our analysis is even more complete; they cannot say that we don’t have a strategy and that we need a political structure to direct us. That is a lie. The movement is a political tool in itself, every- one, all the members of the movement, shape that tool and they all carry out that analysis. When they ask us what our political project is, we say: it is politicization from below, but completely. It is a comprehensive formation of the person in every way. Everything counts and is important.
We do not think that we need to form a front that traverses the entire nation in order to achieve something. I don’t think that there will bea single alliance ora front that will take power, there will be many fronts.
7. Autonomy from the state
What is your relationship with the state in regards to the benefits packages?
It changes a lot because, depending on the moment, the state applies some kind or pressure or another. They are always more generous during elections. They use this playbook and so do we. Therefore, we say: “this is all nice because it is convenient for them, so let us take what we can, let’s take advantage of the situation.” That is the permanent relation, changing according to the conjuncture.
Nonetheless, we always keep a distance. Although we think that at certain moments it would be worth getting closer to the provincial government because they are doing some good things. But this does not mean that we are married to them. It depends on our tactics. We are not going to go out and target everyone, because we are the most revolutionary, that is not our politics. But nor are we conciliators or negotiators. We are neither one nor the other. We just know how to calculate the situation, who we need to target and we do so at the appropriate moment.
What is clear is that today we depend on what we take from the state in order to organize ourselves.
Do you feel like the state has the capacity to destroy this form of relationship that you have imposed on it?
I think that they have the capacity to take away all of our subsidies and benefits packages. But what they don’t know is that we have consolidated something that goes beyond the material element. I am sure that, beyond the benefits, many of us would keep participating in the organization. They can take away the subsidies,
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send the repressive apparatus, and everything they want, but what we have here is a different way of thinking, and that is something they will not be able to destroy.
We tighten our waists against the state in order to sustain ourselves and endure what we can. We are not going to risk everything against the state. We are building something different from the repressive state, from below. I always say that the world is round and they are always trying to corner us, but they can’t; they want to put us in a corner, but we always find a way to keep moving.
8. The conjuncture
There is one question that keeps coming back to us, and, of course, to which we dont have answers. Do you feel like you are a movement in the middle of a decisive field of political struggles? Do you feel like you are in a violent struggle for power, consensus, state recognition, and positive media coverage? Do you think this is how the experience is organized for the state? Or rather, do you think that they see you as a group that is occasionally bothersome and that they give you the minimum necessary to pacify you?
It’s complicated. I think that the eviction from the church, at the beginning, was a serious attempt to cut off the roots of the organization that was emerging. At that time, it was very difficult to win any concessions. It was not like you would go out and protest and they would throw a bunch of subsidies at you to keep you calm. Here in Solano, some comrades have suffered harassment and persecutions; they burned down the house of one comrade, and have threatened others. In other words, on the one hand, they give you something, but on the other they pressure you with the punteros."* I think that the government started taking us seriously when we started growing and starting coordinating with other groups. Because our strength lies in unity for the struggle and for legitimacy.
We know that we will have complete autonomy when we are able to sustain all the projects and things that we are doing without needing the state to provide subsidies for any of it. But today the situation is such that we need those resources that allow us to develop the organization. On the other hand, we know that in December they are going to make cuts to those subsidies, they are going to imple- ment major austerity measures. While we, as Solano or as the coordinator, will be able to do it one day, today we cannot stop it alone. But our idea is to make sure
14 Local political brokers, who work as intermediaries between political parties and the poor, often wield their access to resources and financial power and, if that doesn’t work, violence, as a way
to ensure allegiance. — Trans.
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that they do not screw us over; in other words, in this sense it is a defensive struggle.
Yes, we are not interested in continuing confrontation for the sake of confron- tation. I think that they know that. We are interested in having the resources to be able to consolidate ourselves. Because the objective is not that De La Rua falls tomorrow, but rather the issue of autonomy.
We are not motivated by whether this or that government takes power or sabotaging the other. Nor are we fighting so that Ruckauf does not become pres- ident, or something like that, because our problems are not resolved by whether or not he becomes president. And nor do we think that we are the force that can stop Ruckauf from becoming president. Now, if those guys do stupid things and to not fulfill their promises, we will be there. And we will be there no matter who the president is.
Our action plans always emerge from an analysis of our situation, and they are always defensive, until this dependence on the state becomes less necessary.
9. New forms of militant commitment
Tell us about the MTD-Solanos militancy? How is commitment understood in expe- riences that no longer seek to take power?
It is difficult because the movement is constantly being redefined. In any case, we do not respond to any traditional forms of commitment. We have comrades who, up until two years ago, were political punteros, and today are militants of the MTD, and they don’t even know where Che Guevara was born. Or other comrades who don’t have any previous activist experience and they started becoming activists when they joined the MTD, and, in a way, they are the ones who, through their commitment, make it possible for us to move forward.
The issue of not seeking state power is very important when we speak of the type of commitment that is produced here in Solano. Power is built in the answers that we are finding for what we are looking for as free men and women. That is where commitment is defined, in the day to day construction that takes place from below.
But what does it mean to be a militant of the MTD, what are the requirements for someone to be considered an MTD militant?
‘The issue is that we almost never speak of militants; we speak of committed comrades, of comrades who take on responsibilities to different degrees. There are comrades
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who work in the area of capacity-building and education, and nothing else. Perhaps in other organizations, the militant is someone who puts in twenty-four hours a day and leaves behind their own life. We highly value comrades who do capacity-building work, or who are in charge of an area and carry out their duty, or someone who is just starting to commit themselves, and each one is as valid as the others. We do not speak of militants, we speak of committed comrades.
Because, on the other hand, what moral authority do we have to say whether or not someone is a militant or a great organizer? I think that the only way of classifying someone is through their commitment, for being there, wagering on the movement. So, we speak of degrees of commitment.
But it is not that those degrees of commitment are considered in terms of a hierarchy. A comrade can leave behind their whole life, but it will not be to occupy a leadership role. Other organizations work with cadres and we have materials that explain how to organize these traditional organizations. At first I thought that is how we would have to organize, because I thought that it would be the way to get more comrades to commit so that we would not be left with only a few of us sustaining the movement. But I finally realized that comrades take on more responsibility, and real responsibility, when they participate in the work, when they commit themselves to the dynamic of the movement.
We are always insisting on trying to generate spaces, all the spaces necessary, for the comprehensive education and training of all the comrades. It is not about
“training cadres,’ but rather of comrades who want to understand the movement. But it is not that we are all equal and that we do not progress, that we are all round or square. We try to create spaces, like the project that we are doing with you all, or the history projects. And some people participate in these and some do not, or some come every once and a while, and others ask “how did that go?”
Here we don’t think, as society wants us to, of comrades as being part of the market and being valued for their market value, for their economic benefit. Here there is another form of struggle, something different; we are trying to recuperate values of rebelliousness and dignity, of honesty, creativity, and beauty. We organize based on those values and comrades who approach our organization do so for those reasons. Therefore, we fundamentally work with the slogan, “work, dignity, and social change.” In terms of social change, we are interested in rebelliousness. It is through that collective search that comrades become committed.
We have discussed the differences between the MTD, and for example, the movement of the unemployed in Mosconi, which is more spontaneous and less structured.
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Hypothesis 891: Beyond the Roadblocks
It is because the social reality is not the same. Here in Buenos Aires social bonds are very weak: if you are unemployed and you go out to a roadblock, your neigh- bor who has to go to work will run you over with their car. Here people are more fucked, more burnt out, and there is total individualism. Here is where capitalism has destroyed the most, where we suffered a great ideological defeat. This is most apparent is in the large urban centers, in the capital cities, where there is the most consumerism, selfishness, technological advancement, and all the promises of capitalism. It is not like that in Mosconi, where the community is more integrated and share the same fate.
And what are the challenges the MTD faces in regards to these differences?
We face a much greater challenge because we don’t simply have an external enemy, but we also have an internal enemy. That is where the problem lies: the individual who approaches our movement usually does not come with a life project, they come because of a concrete need, and they bring all their vices with them. The level of human putrefaction is much greater here than in Mosconi. Here, for a long time, capitalism managed to cancel out the meaning of words such as solidarity, camaraderie, commitment. On the other hand, in Mosconi, they are only fighting for work, and therefore they use other methods of organizing. Here we are mostly focused on issues of dignity and social change. For example, we are trying to work on the idea of an alternative economy.
You all are elaborating a very large project. From what we see, it is not about calling attention to a set of sporadic demands, but rather something more profound. It gives us the sensation that you all are immersed in a process of practical thought and self-af- firmation, in a becoming that is real. While many other social organizations organize around ‘demands,’ you work based on active thinking and your strength, that is to say, jrom a subjective position that is different from that of someone who only has demands.
We try to create practical projects that are not small and medium-sized businesses, but that have other characteristics, that transform labour relations, where it is not the products that are essential, or exchanging labor power for money, but a more expansive project.
It has to do with different realities. The province of Buenos Aires is not the same as the capital city. There you can go out and collect cans to recycle and earn five or six pesos a day; here you won't find a single can. And it is different in the interior of the country; there is another type of poverty there. But it also has to do
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with the types of political projects. That is also different. Here the issue is that a group of comrades from the MTD started to propose a different way of relating to capitalism, and something different has been generated. We are concerned with how to organize in order to build something else, and guarantee autonomy and encounter.
In reality, the economic poverty is the same. What is more ingrained here is moral and ideological misery.
10. Identity as a search
One could assume that one movement of unemployed workers is not that different from another group of the unemployed because their identity would immediately come from the fact of all being unemployed. That is how, at least some, sociological discourses act, in which an unemployed person is “someone looking for work.” And the unemployed would find their identity in that common property: lack. But if, as you all were saying, it is about “fighting to never go back to being an exploited worker,” “to change labor relations,’ then things change radically. The problem of identity is much more complex. There are many ways of understanding what it means to be unemployed.
What we are doing in the movement is a huge battle against the hegemonic fury of globalization that wants to take over cultural values, and thus take over the world. Faced with this globalization, we ask ourselves: What would be the real values of a different civilization? And, to the contrary, what is it that a globalized society values? We know the answer to this: the market, market value, and the person as a commodity to be bought and sold. We try to recuperate and create other cultural and ethical values, with knowledge and creativity.
I think that is it one thing to ask for work, even genuine work, and another thing entirely to demand work and dignity. I am not saying that it is not dignified; for example, to ask Repsol for work or better wages. But what is undignified is exploitation. And I think it is time to start generating other relations. We do not have a finished idea of the forms of production that we want to create, but what we are certain about is that we don’t want to generate relations of exploitation. And this is a permanent struggle.
One big debate that we have had is whether to sell food to the market or if should be used to meet comrades’ needs. These debates take place within the movement, the debate hasn’t ended. That is where identity is constantly being shaped. What we are very clear about is that we want to abolish exploitation; but exploitation is not canceled by having an idea, but rather through a process, little by little.
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I will never forget what one comrade once said when we were working on the topic of identity in a popular education workshop. She said: “Here I have gone back to being myself with respect to my work. Because now I am a worker, even if I don’t even have a subsidy: Iam a worker and I am not exploited.”
That is why the apparent contradiction of speaking of unemployed workers is false. Because it would seem that someone who is unemployed cannot be a worker precisely because they lack employment: but we speak of work in another way — one that is more profound — and not only of the laborer.
The condition of being a worker does not come from being exploited, but rather it has to do with an attitude towards life. We try to create spaces where the conversation is not about how to generate exploitation, in other words, not about generating profit.
So, the MTD is not only a movement of the unemployed, rather it is for anyone who wants to work here, under these conditions.
Yes, it is for anyone who wants to recuperate those values that we were talking about before. Because first you have to value yourself as a person, and that is how you feel like a worker: like a human being who has recovered part of their identity. They are workers because they are bringing something to the collective, to the community, and not because they generate market value. If you think that a worker is someone who generates profit, then the unemployed is a pariah in life. But here we are motivated by other values, that are different from those given to us by society.
We said before that more than “training” a “militant-type,” what you look for here is commitment. In more specific terms, how do you understand commitment? I ask you because it has caught our attention that other movements of the unemployed quantify militant work going so far as to use a point system, giving comrades points for their participation, and those with most points are the first to receive state benefits. How does it work here?
Here there is no point system. There are collective criteria for organizing: for example, there is an agreement that anything the movement gets is for everyone, for all those who are involved in the struggle. We try not to generate a reliance on state assistance or a paternalistic relation with the state based on welfare; we do not want to form a commission that distributes goods while people stay at home. No, here we want to generate a consciousness of struggle, if you aren’t involved in the struggle, you don’t get anything.
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For example, I see that comrades take on more and more responsibility when they see the need to educate or train themselves, or when they start to participate in capacity-building activities, or when a comrade seriously commits themselves to a productive project, or also when someone brings sandwiches to the roadblock, not only for himself, but for everyone, just because he had some money. There are many different forms of commitment that cannot be measured in words because they are everyday values.
This comrade, for example, joined the movement four months ago, and it was because his wife told him to come to a roadblock. He very quickly started participating in the area of security, and he immediately wanted to take up responsibilities in this area. He did some stupid things, obviously, but the most important thing was that he participated and was committed. All of a sudden, he was spending all his time doing movement things. Now we have to tell him to spend some time at home, because he is here all day. Nobody ever said to him: “You have to be in the organization for a certain amount time, you must meet certain requirements.” No, this is a comrade who is always there when you need something. If the comrade is serious, reliable, then, onward! Mistakes are corrected along the way.
There are other comrades who have been here for four years and they still only participate in the projects, the assembly, the roadblocks. But you never see them in the general meetings, in the in specific areas, in the training activities. Nonetheless, they are still committed comrades, only in another way, but still very reliable. We can't even really speak of degrees, better yet of different types of commitment.
11. Resisting virtualization
Turning to the problem of representation: how do you decide who speaks to the media, for example, when you have a roadblock?
What we do is explain the central themes beforehand, the message that we want to transmit, so that anyone can manage.
We try to make it so that it is not always the same person who is speaking to the media or negotiating with the ministry, so that many comrades learn how to do these things, but also so that nobody stands out or could be identified.
Generally, the people in the media look for Alberto and he tells them that there are other comrades who they can talk to. What often happens though is that they make the report and then they come back and interview him. That is because
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the figure of a priest is very appealing. The problem is that in this way they quickly put labels on people.
What do you mean?
That there is always a leader, that there is always a representative. But neither in the ministry, nor in the media do we have a leader. We are a horizontal and democratic organization and this must also be expressed in those interactions. It is not only expressed in words or on paper, but in concrete practices.
The problem is that pigueterxs have become somewhat of a fad recently. You are turned into a star, they see you masked up, and the media is all over you.
But, what risks are associated with the media?
The tricky questions with double meanings. Questions, for example, which speak of violence: why are you masked, why do you have a stick, or a rock, what are you going to do if law enforcement intervenes.
The other day we were blocking Pueyrredén Bridge and there was a journalist who arrived and asked us for our opinion on what happened with the Twin Towers. These are ridiculous questions. The comrades called me so that I could answer the question and I told him that we are not interested in talking about the Twin Towers because we are here to do a roadblock, and if he wanted, we could talk about that.
Did you see that in the last elections, a group that calls itself the Socialist Group of Piqueteros ran for office?
You're joking!
You didn't know? There presented themselves together with the PO [Workers Party] and the MAS [Movement for Socialism].
I didn’t know that... And? So, can we put a representative in the Senate? (laughter)
What do you all think about the issue of elections? You called for annulling votes, but what if there is a group of progressives or revolutionaries?
We say that we are a radical social movement, we organize from below and are
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changing the world little by little, and we would betray our values if we were to propose an electoral strategy.
We have to be clear on this point. Anyone who wants to vote, can vote; here we are not going to say “you should not vote.” But, as a movement, we do not agree with voting.
There is something in your work that surprises us — you don't have a strategy for appearing in the media, for how to reference the movement.
Because we are not interested in that. In any case it depends on our agenda, not the general conjuncture. If it is beneficial to us appear in the media, or if we want to denounce something specific, we will generate an occasion to appear in the media, otherwise we are not interested.
The most important thing is to disseminate organizational experiences, not the organization's name. We are now recognized in many places, but not because we go in front of the media to mark ourselves politically to generate a following, but because we have responded to certain events and that has been noted. But we do not want to be “the” reference point.
The day that we blocked the bridges, for example, was impressive. We never imagined that something like that would happen. Later it led to a lot of things, but making becoming a reference point like that was not part of our plans, we only wanted to pressure the government so that they would feel the consequences of the repressions in Mosconi.
It was clearly an act aimed at putting pressure on the government; it was not targeted at society as a whole, nor towards the parties and organizations, because we are not interested in being the vanguard, and even less so in being part of the entertainment world.
In Research Drafts, in regards to the roadblocks, we wrote that you all do not think “from” the conjuncture, but rather that you think based on your experiences. There was 4 lot of debate about that, even in this workshop because some comrades raised the issue that would mean isolating yourselves from the conjuncture.
This has to do with the issue of multiplicity. We do not want to be anyone's vanguard; we want to share experiences and be infected by what is organized in other places as well. That is what we are interested in, because it has to do with everyone’s cause. Not because it is politically convenient for Solano, that people organize in other places “in the same way as Solano.”
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For us capitalism is in the very act of thinking globally, in this way the concrete disappears. For example, there are elections on Friday and there are two ways of thinking about them: since there are elections, I have to give an opinion, or, on the other hand, based on what I am building, I will ask whether or not it is worthwhile to me, if it interests me or not. One marks their own time, there is no single place that organizes everyones times. Nonetheless, there are comrades who organize political parties and run for office in order to fight against capitalism, but they don’t have a territorial place where they build social relations that organizes their thought, but rather they think based on the conjuncture. Do you think this is the case?
This is not a finished, closed idea, but I think that, in reality, those parties are noth- ing other than tools of capitalism. I don’t think that it is anticapitalist to organize a political party, rather it reproduces the same system. The other day we had an interesting discussion regarding children’s education. We talked about how capital- ism builds starting from the very core of society, from the parent-child relationship, how the conception of power is in operation in that relationship, in the idea that since I am the parent I am in charge and I have to educate you.
That is why here the children are everyone’s children and we all have to take care of them. Before, for example, if a kid was playing outside, we would say: “hey, so-and-so, look after your kid.” But what if that person has to do something one day and they don’t have anywhere to leave their children? That is when everything started, it was in an assembly where there was a lot of discussion, and it was decided that we all have to take care of the children.
Political parties are not a result of a struggle. When I say that they are not a result, I’m not trying to say that they are dishonest. But every time I meet with a party, they say they have been everywhere: in Mosconi, in Jujuy, in Santiago del Estero. They are involved in everything! Once they tried to sell me something we had done as if they had done it. Therefore, in reality, they aren’t anywhere.
They work in order for their groups to be seen. We, from below and with all the difficulties that this implies, are creating something that is real.
Therefore, I don’t know if the Russian communist phenomenon was actually communist at some point, or only reproducing capitalism. Because in the end, it ended up being as elitist and screwed up as capitalism. Because when someone else thinks for you, it reproduces capitalism. It is just another name for the same thing. It is just changing the name “capitalism,” that’s all.
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12. Organizations in struggle: coordination
How do you deal with the issue of coordination with those outside of the movement?
On the one hand, we coordinate struggle with organizations — ten, twenty, or fifty, but ones that are involved in the struggle.
The issue of hegemony is raised a lot, that no one should be able to come with intentions to assert hegemony over a struggle, to lead. Additionally, we always argue that the coordinating bodies in which we participate are not the spaces that are called upon to be at the forefront of the popular struggle.
On the other hand, each organization maintains its independence, its autonomy. That’s why there was a major disagreement with D’Elia and Alderete when they wanted to assert hegemony over the piqueterx movement, position themselves as the leaders, because this served the system and not us as an organization.
I don’t know if it makes sense to talk about levels of organization, because saying that there are levels reproduces the idea that there is a higher level and a lower level. I would speak of spaces. For example, the Anibal Verén Coordinator is a space that was produced from a process that took years to build. It was a process of struggle, which included activities, proposals, and that eventually brought us to a place where we could say we were in conditions to form a coordinating body. I think that the most important point of agreement in the coordinator is that of respecting each organization’s identity and political independence. For example, we are an organi- zation that practices direct, horizontal democracy and in the Anibal Veron there are comrades who argue that democratic centralism is valid. But the coordinator does not tend to form a single movement, to assert hegemony over anything, nor to form a political party or definitive organization. But it isan ongoing debate. On the other hand, the process will determine if the coordinator should be exclusively composed of organizations of the unemployed. The most important thing is that we will not coordinate with groups who want to assert their hegemony over the struggle, of who come with a dogmatic recipe of action plans, with all the steps already calculated. That doesn’t work for us. We coordinate for what happens today, later time and the process, will tell.
Do you have other forms of relationship with other experiences, besides your participa- tion in these coordinating bodies?
Yes, we have spaces for sharing experiences. That is, not only for coordinating roadblocks, but also for specific issues, questions of work, exchanging materials. For
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example, we have been talking to the cooperative El Progreso of La Plata about the possibility of exchanging products, and we are exchanging information: we explain how we operate and they explain to us how their cooperative functions. They have been at this for a long time. It is a type of mutual cooperation, an exchange of experiences.
Coordination does not only take place for the roadblocks and protests, it is also important for everyday life. There are university groups that can contribute something, not to our struggle, but the struggle that we are all involved in, because it also connected to their struggle. The struggle is not only roadblocks, rather it is also quotidian matters, so there is always something we can coordinate with some other organization.
13. Two forms of thinking
We do not care about who is the most presentable or who has the best discourse. When you care more about the image you present to the outside world it is likely that you already have your plan made up, a little recipe book, because it’s a whole way of building a type of thinking.
There are people who work as if they had certain theoretical positions that are going to lay the foundations for their practices. When they are confronted with a limitation, they usually get stuck, and are unable to move forward.
That is, there are two different forms of thinking even within the resistance movement?
Yes, there are organizations that act as if everything were already decided, and they try to present this plan to comrades who are just starting, trying to indoctrinate them. When someone internalizes this model, they will be the militant who is prepared to guarantee the correct path.
We construct starting from reality itself, we use workshops for capacity-building in which we put forth a number that comrades bring up and we work with those, building a form of thinking that is held in common.
This leads to thinking collectively. Because you have something to offer, I have something to contribute, and together we build something new. This is like atomic conjunction: the atoms start gathering and different things start emerging, and this is a constant process.
Therefore, the assembly is the maximum expression of democratic and collec- tive thought.
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I think that these answers are never predetermined, because there is always the
question; there is always the novelty.
This is very interesting because then novelty no longer has anything to do with fads, but rather is an attempt to prevent certainties from becoming become dogmas, through questioning, through making sure that thought does not get stuck or held back.
Exactly. I think that ideas are constructed through practice, based on a specific situation. Because this reality changes along with the comrades’ process and that thought, which is being constructed, starts taking on a more solid shape as it transforms reality.
That is why coordination seems like a very interesting type of work for us, because it does not look for a single model for everything to follow, rather it speaks of a multiplicity of
experiences, of searches and roots.
It is true that you come to more agreement with some groups, and less with others, but in all of this there is the building of synthesis. I think that all organizations, beyond the differences, the diversity, always have something to transmit, even if it is expressed in very different forms.
Because they aren't closed models.
For us it can never be closed. When we go to a meeting of the coordinating body, we don’t have one comrade who goes and says what they think, but rather, they bring the proposals from the assembly, from discussions in the neighborhood. Thus, there is not a closed form of thinking there.
14. Toward an alternative economy
Have you been able to have any exchanges with the MTD in regards to alternative economies ¢
Truthfully, this idea of an alternative economy is very new to us. We have many more questions than answers, and we are learning along the way. Only recently have we started to discuss and practice a few things. There is the need, we have the opportunity, but we are still figuring out how to do it.
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I think that we all have an idea of alternative economies. We think that it has to do with productive projects and popular education, with political education and capacity-building. This has to do with the existing, marginalizing politics and the need for an alternative, something that we have to shape from below. There are also things that we are reading or have participated in. I was just telling the comrades that I had been reading something from the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, and there were many proposals there that had emerged from below. It was material put together by the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo and it talked about the Tobin Tax and participatory budgeting that they had carried out in a city in Brazil. But the media does not talk about these things, because they emerge from below and are things that we do; but we can’t see them because the information doesn’t reach us. I think that is where the alternative lies, in what is not seen, what we are doing anyways, through our creativity.
But it is important to say that we can’t just make a copy, because each country has its own history. We have our own reality and experiences cannot be mechani- cally transferred. Furthermore, these practices take many years to develop. In Brazil, this did not start yesterday, it has taken twenty years of work, and a very specific situation, in which the Church collaborates and political parties have been able to contribute. Here there is a very slow recuperation, which is still only in its initial stages, but that shows that there are opportunities and hope. Today one cannot say that it is all a desert, because there are new experiences and new problems are arising that get people to organize.
Recently we were talking about the serious demographic problem in Solano. In ten years there will be an explosion, because there is already a saturation of families, and now there is almost no land to take over in the area. Therefore, we know that at some point we will have to leave and move toward an experience of communal life, in which we will not only seek to resolve the issue of housing, but also to develop communal forms of life. We think that this is what the comrades from the MST have done, that it is not only about taking over land in order to live, but also to produce, and anything that is missing, we will have to build. Those are long term plans.
It seems as though you see a very close relationship between the possibilities of an alter- native economy and capacity-building and education.
Because if we were only to do the productive projects and not know why we were doing them, it would be impossible to keep them going. So, education has to go in parallel with the productive projects, to start thinking about the alternative that
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we are shaping: that there is no boss, that we are all owners of the project, why it is communal and collective, and what it means to be a collective, that there is no centralized command here, but rather we are all involved, how the coordinator works and what their role is, what it means to be organized. Thus, the two elements are both very important and occur in parallel, because it is a comprehensive project and it is about everyone having knowledge.
Often, it is not apparent what the productive projects are really about. It’s not about having the money to buy a brand-new car tomorrow, but rather it is collective, communal, that has to do about solidarity among comrades, to keep going and creating other projects. But the first question when the projects are discussed is how much profit they will earn, the market where products will be sold, even who the competitors will be. It makes you ask how can they be raising these questions and not others that are more obvious. But that is what has been ingrained in people’s heads and it is the first thing to appear. And they start imagining what personal issues they will resolve when they sell everything.
These are not difficult discussions, but they can tedious, because they go around in circles about issues that are not worth the time. But the comrades need time, and not just two or three hours, but many meetings.
But many comrades are convinced that salvation is coming: this imaginary has a strong hold. Or they believe that if we work and others don’t, that those others are living off our work: “Why are they going to take what I produce to give it to another project?” But it gets better little by little, and many comrades are starting to understand this. Some comrades are even starting to work voluntarily, with the idea that production is not only something that is fully encompassed in economic remuneration, but that it goes beyond that.
The issue of people needing resources is a huge challenge, especially because there are situations of extreme necessity and it is very difficult to get ahead with criteria that aren't about making the most you can individually, but building a solidarity economy. But, for us, that is precisely where change occurs: when we manage to create relationships of solidarity, then we can speak of having transformed into something different.
Political education is also fundamental because ruptures always generate crisis. When you break from a life plan that has been with you since you were a child and start to experiment other forms of life, it generates a crisis. And that conflict between what we propose and what we really are is a daily conflict. Within that tension, the movement shapes a proposal: a project of living in freedom. We understand socialism as a society of overcoming, in which each individual is a complete person, but not only as an individual, but in the heart of a collective. Education is what allows us
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to do this, because we often encounter setbacks, in which there are conflicts in the dynamic that is recreating us. But rupture always implies conflicts, and we don’t think it is possible any other way. What works as a guarantee is that we don’t want to reproduce capitalism, but rather we want an economy that is embedded in a project that is life. Because it is not about how we are today, but how to develop other relationships among comrades, and that is the constant challenge. There is always tension between the new way that we want to live and the old way that we are inevitably still living.
I think that this affirmation that the challenge is to find economic responses within a comprehensively alternative life project is very important. Because what we have known up until now are two options, that are generally both failures: on the one hand, economic projects that either default or operate as any other capitalist company; and, on the other hand, political projects that justify market economic enterprises based on their stated ideology.
Listening to this, Iam reminded of what Che said: “Economic socialism without revolutionary morality does not interest me. We fight against misery, but also against alienation. If socialism does not take into account consciousness, it can be a model for redistribution but never a revolutionary morality.” The problem is that he was think- ing this at a time when it was assumed that both things would be achieved after the triumph of the revolution. But it would be one thing to think to take office and have progressive policies and something else entirely to conceptualize an economy that is an alternative right from the very beginning.
We discussed precisely this problem in one of the delegates’ meetings. There was a debate, coming from some groups that are already producing, over how the money is going to distributed. It was an intense discussion because the issue was raised that, for us, the issue of money is secondary, that first we must discuss what are the basic needs that all the comrades have. What we are interested in is collectively resolving the basic needs to live, for life; whether the issue is food, health care, or education. It is important to be able to think about the economy like that, and not in terms of the function of money or how much surplus will be left for each comrade. I think that political education is the foundation, that which sustains this new idea of not prioritizing money, because the project that we want to construct is much more important. That is what capacity-building means for us, because the life of a human and community is much broader than issues of money and goods.
Some comrades think that it would be good to take home a little money from what is sold. But I think that we have to start thinking about an alternative
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economy, and not about whether or not I take home a couple of pesos, that in the end does not resolve family finances or our problems as a community. I think we can resolve things through an alternative, but to do that we have to deprioritize the issue of money.
At the same time, we have to figure out how we can develop similar criteria with other organizations, exchanging experiences, workshops, what we are doing here. Furthermore, we know that an intense period is coming, there will be major austerity measures before December, and this could mean that instead of 800 people, as we are now, only 400 or 200 of us will be left. But what we achieve internally, in the neighborhood, enables there to always be a movement and something different. And this will generate support, no matter what situation we find ourselves in. The relationships that are being formed are very strong, despite the fact that there are greater and lesser degrees of commitment. There is only a small group of people that thinks in individual terms, the majority of us think in collective terms.
Obviously, there are contradictions. For example, we always say that we do not want to reproduce the boss-employee relationship, because this is not a factory. But when we are talking about people who don’t show up or who arrive late, we say: “Oh right, but if you were in a factory you wouldn't be able to come fifteen minutes late. If you're late, you get fired.” As much as we say this is not a factory, we still use this comparison.
And the other thing is, when looking for an alternative in order to not be exploited, you end up exploiting yourself. You supposedly become “independent,” but just end up exploiting yourself.
This idea of the economy not operating in function of a life valued by the objects of power
is very interesting. And it is something that is very difficult to achieve. Because it is not
about making reality align with the desires of the militant’s consciousness “by force,” but of truly creating the emergence of other types of values and images of happiness. Therefore, an alternative economy is alternative, precisely when it is able to detach
itself from capitalism's objects of desire. This is what brings about a major change: a
true seed of a non-capitalist subjectivity. Speaking of all this, can you tell us about the
experience of community purchasing?
What we do is group together ten families. Payments for the groceries are deducted from each Trabajar subsidy (which are 160 pesos each). At the moment, we take out 35 pesos since that it what we calculated for guaranteeing the basics, which includes meat, vegetables, and cleaning supplies. This is calculated on the basis of a person’s weekly nutritional needs. Then, if a family, for example, has ten children
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and only has an income of 160 pesos, we are not going to charge them an amount based on how much they put in, but rather on how much their family needs. This is also the case for a person who lives alone and only receives what they need. The other day we were doing the calculations and I think that the person who lives alone gets about 18 pesos worth and contributes 35; while a comrade, a woman who has eleven kids, gets 120 pesos worth and puts in 35.
And there are also families that have — instead of one — four plans. They con- tribute for the four plans, not just for one. That is to say, according to everyone’s abilities and needs.
Once a week we come together to evaluate the experience, the relations, and we rotate what we buy and where we buy it from. Our group has been doing this for three months, but now comrades in other neighborhoods want to do it too.
15. The resonance of Zapatismo and the MST
What does Zapatismo mean to you all?
I think it was a surprise when the whole world was talking about the end of ideol- ogies, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the start of a new era in which there would not be organizations capable of saying that this was not the case. Zapatismo was a great surprise because it helped us understand a very special moment in history with more optimism. I admired their capacity to generate an experience that was different from that which is traditionally known, something truly different. The level of participation from the communities and the capacity to shape this organization in a truly democratic way, from the heart of those communities. That is why we identify with them a lot. Knowing that a lot of work was done there, before, that is not the outcome of four or five crazy guys who came out in military gear to get people’s support, but a lot of work was done previously that speaks of the move- ment’s development and true insertion at the grassroots level and in the community.
Personally, I think we have still not fully recognized all this experience has to offer, but we identify with it because we feel that we are building a movement in the same way. Because what is seen there is the community, not an army that engages in actions that are directed toward the outside, but rather a reality to which they are intimately connected. That is what they mean when they say there is no flip side there, that nothing can be hidden. Therefore, even if we have yet to learn everything we can from those experiences, both Zapatismo and the MST are very important reference points for us.
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For me, Zapatismo emerged in a moment when there was something in the social imaginary that could still not be put into words, something that we all understand but still cannot say. They were like the philosopher who is able to say it in clear and concise terms, with just the right words. That is what I think Zapa- tismo is, the great philosopher who said exactly how things really are, but based on concrete practices. That is what inspires admiration. They themselves say that it is the knowledge of thousands of years that they now bring to earth, a truth that has existed for a long time.
The difference that Zapatismo makes, in the political sphere, has to do with not wanting power, organizing from below, taking your time, the idea of a mandate of the majority, of truly applying democratic thought, of freedom and justice. They have also worked on the issue of dignity a lot. Then they started to show that social proposals were very important, but not the specific social proposals of one organization, alliances of organizations or political parties, leaders or caudillos, but rather that civil society is what is important. They even started to show that rather than fronts, it is an issue of generating a diversity of forms that can keep the struggle going, that they are all useful, it only depends on the level of participation that they generate.
This political difference stands out when they say that the social rebel will always be a rebel, which is a very important issue. Thus, it is a philosophy that starts to change the process of what, up until now, we have known as revolutions. They say that we will be soldiers to stop being soldiers, and I think what they are saying there is that taking power, through arms or any other means, is a very poor and vain idea, and that, if anything, this is a complementary idea, and not an end in itself. Therefore, Zapatismo has been like a symptom for other organizations in recent years and has started having an influence in many places. It was a means that other organizations could use to be able to grow, to take on these new forms of politics, that until that moment were still not well-defined.
Do you think that the subject of Zapatismo is very present in life of the movement? Because the MST is talked about a lot and you can tell it is very present.
In the movement in general, no. It is sort of what happened with Che, that Marcos’s photo is recognized, or a song like that of Ismael Serrano. Here they take some phrases and some stories. For example, in several workshops they are working on the story about the lion and looking-glass. But the influence is not as strong as that of the MST, perhaps because we have had more contact with people from the MST, and we do not know Zapatismo from within. But smaller groups of comrades have gone into their writings in more depth.
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Hypothesis 891: Beyond the Roadblocks What about the MST has interested you the most?
Recently, we were in Cordoba with comrades from the Association of Producers of the Northeast of Cérdoba (APENOC), and they commented that they had held an encounter about the issue of land with people from Mexico, Brazil, and other places. We know that it is possible to articulate all these struggles on many levels.
From the beginning, we have taken a lot from the MST, especially the issue of popular education. Some of us have taken courses. And also taken things from their mysticism (laughter).
For example, from the MST’s seven organizational principles, we take three:
horizontality, direct democracy, and autonomy. And you weren't in agreement with the other four?
They have things about forming cadres in three levels, this is not something we use. Then there is the issue of the leaders’ insertion into the masses and we do not have leaders, here we are all on the same level, so there is no insertion to think about. And then there is the issue of the historical subject, which is a whole other debate.
16. Hypothesis on counter-power
How do you understand and practice what we have come to call counter-power?
We feel like since the beginning of our experience we have raised issues in a way that coincides a lot with what we have shared with you all over the past few months. The decision to stop repeating patterns from the past, without denying their use- fulness, without saying that it was all done in vain, but rather trying to grasp the immensely positive elements of historical experiences. But in this situation where we find ourselves, we would have to be a little crazy to try to create a popular orga- nization, from below, for social change, that is meant to overthrow the political power of capitalism. This is something that leads to a crisis. For example, not all the comrades see it this way, because there are many recipes that have been repeated, which gives them strength.
But today the movement is walking a different path. I think we have had the intuition to say that this is not a matter of four crazy people who got together one day and said let’s build a movement like this, but rather we have also proposed to recreate ourselves, to subject ourselves to change as well, as we have thrown
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all our certainties out the window. Now we are in this situation that is being built. All of this has generated a lot of uncertainty because it is a different way of building a movement from what we are used to. We are usually very structured, so to say that this is being built, with a ton of questions for which we still don’t have answers, generates crisis. But it also gives us the humility of knowing that we don’t have to know all the answers, because history has also shown us that knowledge can be oppressive, that the one with knowledge is often the one who dominates. Counter-power is built through these experiences in which we are no longer oriented by a struggle for political power, regardless of whether or not some comrades in the movement today do not accept that; it is something is still be debated.
We have a plenary session on Friday in which we will present a more detailed document with the organizational forms that we work with. We have held several discussion meetings in the neighborhoods and what comes up is confirmation of the commitment to a movement that not only struggles for economic issues and subsistence, but that we are convinced that it is the seeds of a new society, in which we will overcome all of the bullshit we have in our heads, like selfishness, etc. What emerges with considerable force is the fact that we are not interested in taking power, nor in disputing political power, but rather starting to live as we have often dreamed. And the time is now; we aren’t going to have to wait for a revolution, or for major world transformations, rather we can already start to live like this and apply these values.
For us counter-power has to do with autonomy. And we still don’t have complete autonomy as an organization, but are moving in that direction. We already know that because of the current economic crisis, much of what we have achieved now we won't have next year. This brings challenges, creativity, and lucidness.
It is very important to recognize that it is not about transforming the municipal government, or the police force, among other things, but rather that these things exist today as things that we no longer want, we reject them, we negate them. We don’t want to substitute any part of that system, we want to build something different. And it is that new thing that we are envisioning, constructing, That is counter-power.
Today we were asking ourselves: how do we relate to comrades who used to be in the movement and then left because they were not interested, or because they do not agree with the MTD’s criteria? How can we continue having a relationship with that person? Because they are our neighbors, and perhaps we have the same dreams, even though we have different ways of reaching them. I think that counter-power also has to do with that, with being able to accept difference, and to be able to live together based on that diversity.
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There is something that the Zapatistas say: we do not want to change the world, but rather to create a new one.
I think that it also has to do with a term that we use a lot in the movement: social change. We have started to see that this change will be not be achieved by a political party, by an alliance of organizations, or a proposal that comes from up above; but we are also seeing that there will not be only one method, but rather thousands of social forms. But nor will they be specific social proposals, belonging to a certain sector. For example, we participate in coordinating bodies but these coordinators are not our representatives, but rather spaces in which all our voices, their multiplicity, are expressed.
I think that these are the things that sometimes set the MTD Solano apart, because little by little it is marking a revolutionary path, but different from what we have always called a “revolution.”
This is what is seen in the roadblocks when comrades grab their sticks and cover their faces, they recover that internal flame that is dignity, that has to do with this new path that is being made. That is what happens in the roadblocks, although the media only shows it as flashes, soundbites.
It is clear that the media does show the alternative of counter-power. They are not interested in it. Therefore, every time we give a talk, we start by saying that we are more than what the media portrays us as — masked people on the streets, burning tires, social renegades — we have something more important to show: this whole thing that we are building, this whole social project that lies beneath it.
The other day a comrade asked me how we understand the issue of strategy, and I responded with precisely this about building the base, the problem of regional autonomy, and that we don’t propose a unified central power because that would be exchanging one power for another. And he responded: “That is utopian.” And when we asked him, who says that it is utopian, he said: “History says so.” But we are also history. Perhaps that is what the history that has already happened says, but the history that we are writing right now can say something else. Many, drawing on the manuals, say to us: “How can it be? There is no party or leadership. You are making a mistake.” “You already messed up” they said to us. We are going to build something new, maybe we are making a mistake, but perhaps not. But, what is the point of creativity if we aren't going to use it?
We don’t want to leave anyone behind. We have many comrades who have been destroyed by this society: years of misery. It’s easy to get angry about so many vices, egocentrism, selfishness; but these comrades are victims of the system. We believe that the new generations, the children of the comrades, will be more complete. That is also part of the work; it does not end with us. Here we are making a great effort
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to create counter-power, but we do not have the full plenitude of our freedom; this is our limitation. We are leaving something for those who are coming, and perhaps they will be able to carry forth what we ourselves cannot do.
Once a comrade asked: “And if a popular government comes to power, what would we do?” And an old Paraguayan brought up the case of Salvador Allende in Chile and the problems that he had. The question was would our attitude be in that case; there was a debate over whether we would make them appear like good politicians: if we would support them, collaborate, or what. Reviewing the idea of counter-power, what we said is that we would continue doing what we are already doing: it is not our goal to have comrades occupy political office or take on the government's responsibility, but rather that the organization must continue as alive and vital as it is now. That is, there would be no reason to dismantle the organiza- tion if a popular government comes to power. And many comrades did not agree with this. But we insist that that best role that we could play as an organization is to not dismantle ourselves, because even if the government has good intentions, we should not lower our guard: organizations are the best guarantee for it being a truly popular government.
It would be like in the Brazilian states in which the PT wins, if the MST were to disintegrate and stop taking over land. The issue is what would happen if the PT gains power on a national level, whether it would ask the MST to stop. I think the same thing would happen that happened with Villa and Zapata. It would stop being a popular government; if it was a truly popular government, it would not order popular organizations to stop organizing.
17. Elements for evaluating the project of thought-building with Solano
For us, these months of workshops have meant finding many elements of the work that we are proposing. We think that the fundamental requirement for knowledge today is developing a situational form of thinking, a knowledge that emerges from experiences of creating new forms of life. And if this workshop has been anything, it is precisely a very powerful experience of collective thinking.
I was recently rereading some of your things, especially the booklet on MOCASE, and I realize — personally — that I had dissociated the intellectual from the practi- cal. The issue is that I see many comrades who start to think and write without it having anything to do with what is happening, with what is being built. For me,
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the workshop helped me understand the meaning of thought-building, of ideas, of understanding in this respect, a meaning that empowers practice. It always bothered me that many people belittled the work that we were doing: “the unemployed who block roads,” they would say. But I had not fully recognized the importance of what we were doing either. Through the debate, it became clear that what we are building is something much more important than what I thought. Not thinking that we are going to change everything, but that is where the debate about multiplicity comes up: being able to take on multiplicity as a form of construction. What has happened to me is that I can no longer imagine my life without you all. To me it seems that it is simply about finding ways to continue working together. I have discovered that we are the same, because we are in different places.
We did not have a space to talk about ideas because of the rhythms and demands of daily life.
I think that here we learned something that we had said before, but without having had the experience: the possibility of moving beyond political articulation, of working without plans or programs. Because I think that this is a space that functions without everyone remembering exactly where everyone else is from. That way each group does not only leave with what they already had, but it produces something more, something beyond a sum of the parts. Therefore, these types of encounters generate bonds and rela- tionships between very different experiences, that refute the conception that dispersion
is the only alternative to traditional political articulation.
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Notes from the Workshop
1. Summary of the workshop on June 12, 2001.
Project Intentions
We think that this first encounter went really well and was an excellent starting point for our collective work. We outlined a space based on trust and a community of searching, in which we propose to collectively analyze the problems, obstacles, and characteristics of a new form of militant experience. There are some questions we should keep in mind and clarify, so that we can build this space of production and investigation on solid ground.
First, it is fundamental to be able to think together. We are referring to a form of conversation and encounter around a common fabric, organized around the problems that brought us together. The group’s common project is thinking about our problems, inventing possible solutions, or — at least — ways of posing the questions that open up new perspectives. It is not about coming to agreements between different “positions” or opinions, between different people or groups, but of reaching a state of contemplation that allows us to start seeing things, theorizing problems from a point of view that we could not reach in any other way.
This is very important: it is not a matter of “agreeing” about a “new theory,’ or
“incorporating a new language,’ but rather being able to think about problems in order to give them a new practical perspective.
This work that we are doing together, these workshops, must lead to the pro- duction of materials that can circulate and contribute to political education. For this to happen, we think that is not about insisting on and circulating what we already know, but rather that we must begin to think about things that truly enrich our practices, based on being able to bring up issues that would not have come up
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any other way. This means that we are not motivated by the objective of meeting a predefined goal, but what matters to us is the possibility of a real experience in common, that will create challenges and require certain discipline. Therefore, it is fundamental that we are able to prepare for the workshops, and take the time and make the effort to address the concerns that seem essential to us.
Summary of the conversation
The jumping off point to open the meeting was the proposal to think of the dif- ferences between the figure of the “revolutionary” and that of the “social rebel,” a distinction formulated by Subcomandante Marcos. It attempts to account for the emergence of new type of militant, committed to social change in a concrete way and through the work implied by this objective. Marcos said: “Their fates are different. The revolutionary tends to become a politician and the social rebel never stops being a social rebel. The moment that Marcos or the Zapatistas become a revolutionary project, that is, something that becomes a political actor within the political class, the Zapatistas will have failed in their alternative proposal. A revolu- tionary fundamentally proposes to change things from above, not from below, the opposite of the social rebel. The revolutionary says: we will make a movement, take power, and changes things from above. But not the social rebel. The social rebel organizes the masses and starts transforming things from below without having to posit the question of taking power. Politicians are needed, unfortunately, but what are especially needed are social leaders. I think that Zapatismo should and will opt for being social leaders...”
In the discussion some very powerful ideas were presented based on the expe- riences of the MTD-S:
In the current struggles, we are experiencing a form of understanding emanci- pation according to which, first, it is about having a very clear idea about what we don’t want. We have confirmed — based on concrete experiences — the problems of all the politics that have been tried up until now. In those forms of politics, socialism was a pre-established model that they tried to “apply” to reality and power was the place from which to threads of society were controlled. Thus, power occupied a central role in the revolutionary conceptions of classic socialism.
Now we have to assume that there is no previously laid path to follow. Now, for us, it is about making new paths as we walk and effectively explore these paths that we are opening. This means constantly creating new forms of organization, thought, and life in the midst of the very real experiences that we inhabit.
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Thus, collective work becomes crucial, the concrete construction of a commu- nity, as a truth in practice and a form of decision-making and thinking. Accordingly, an authentic idea of democracy begins to emerge: democracy as a necessary and everyday practice and dynamic, and no longer a way in which state power legiti- mizes itself to the people.
It is a question of “organizing rebellion,’ the rebellion that already exists and constantly grows in the face of the system’s injustices. Rebelliousness is not a char- acteristic of individuals, but rather must be collective.
However, it was also specified that rebelliousness alone is not enough to explain our struggles, but additionally, and fundamentally, it is about affirming another society in the present, and not only negating power.
Here the different visions regarding the experience of the roadblocks, emerges. For some comrades, what is fundamental is accumulation in order to blow up power, for others (us), the work that needs to be done is different.
We constantly find ourselves pressured by the need to have things resolved and then we run the risk of acting like the traditional left, always trying to “express our ideas.” Militants start to have crises, provoked by the uncertainty, by the sense of stagnation that seems to characterize this form of building. On the one hand, we constantly demand “results” and on the other, we live with many types of uncertainties.
Finally, it was proposed that the movement's guarantees are, fundamentally, constant rebelliousness, popular participation, and the construction of basic agree- ments about how to work together. Later, a hypothesis was proposed that was based on research carried out by Colectivo Situaciones in Moreno” and that consists in distinguishing between three forms taken by popular solidarity experiments.
This distinction seeks to differentiate between when a collective experience is merely circumstantial and when the experience produces and affirms a new subjec- tivity or social relations. In reality, this distinction never exists in a pure state, but rather is always expressed in gray areas, in which elements of the three become mixed.
A first level includes experiences in which the groupings occur in function of individual interests, of “momentary” demands that are not satisfied. It is an issue of solidarity with those who are excluded or going through a “difficult time,” but that, strictly speaking, what they desire, what they “hope for” is to escape this situation. There, solidarity lasts as long as the situation of exclusion. Later, since they aspire
15 The investigation took place over a number of months, and was developed along with various alternative groups in Moreno, including the Los Horneros squat and the educational community Creciendo Juntos. Some aspects of issues raised in this investigation, in particular the long and interesting interview with Creciendo Juntos, can be found in the publication Rough Draft of Investigation.
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for inclusion, the solidarity experienced during “difficult times” simply remains a fond memory.
These experiences are very temporary, not because of their duration, but because they are conceived as a resource necessary “as long at the problem lasts,” but not as a place for the insistence on the positive creation a new form of sociability. For these types of experiences, struggles are a means to a concrete end: inclusion or sat- isfying specific demands. It ends up being very easy for governments to manipulate these experiences and they don’t constitute a real threat to dominate social forms. Nonetheless, these experiences sometimes “derive” into higher levels (at least in regards to “new sociability”).
A second level consists of experiences sustained by the convictions and actions of militants. This includes groupings (alternative schools, popular education groups, community kitchens, roadblocks, or anything else) that attempt to sustain their struggle solely based on the will and consciousness of their members. Here ideas of change and forms of organization and struggle appear that attempt to overcome the channels pre-established by the power structures. “New forms” or “alternative forms” always emerge from these experiences with the goal of “constructing new social relations.’ But they are highly dependent on the militants who sustain them. Additionally, a major problem of these experiments, which are almost always very valuable, is that they are sustained by a group’s will to “construct” the new sociability, as if this could be planned based on consciousness and/or theories.
Lastly, we confirmed the emergence of experiences of popular organization that start to show elements of a non-capitalist sociability. It is no longer a matter of “because we are bad off, we are going to get together and fight to be included.” No, these experiments start to affirm different ideas of life, of happiness, of political organizational, of ways of funding them that no longer seek “inclusion.” Therefore, here we speak about a “new sociability.” That is the foundation of counter-power.
Unlike the second level, in which the militants go about “applying themselves,” according to their good will and what is dictated by their conscience (or their pride or political party), this counter-power is not based on what “a group wants,” but rather there are hundreds of experiments that are reaching similar conclusions, beyond what a particular group of militants, intellectuals, or leaders says. The elements of a new sociability are not created by anyone in particular. They emerge: they are created by people in struggle. Counter-power does not have an author (or authors).
It is about the historic appearance of a new subjectivity, new forms of thinking, raising and resolving problems of existence. We think that we are entering a new period, in which the figure of the individual, the foundation of capitalism (and historical determinism and the myth of progress) is in crisis, and a counter-power
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is emerging, a bond between people, among the experiences that create another sociability in practice.
In these experiences, the militants are no longer those who “know” about the “model” of the coming society, nor those who desire power, but rather those comrades who are committed to thinking and working from and for experiences, in strengthening counter-power and making it visible.
This hypothesis becomes even more important if we take into account the dif- ficulties that counter-power faces in the neighborhoods of the Buenos Aires urban periphery, where the destruction of community bonds, lack of trust, disputes over power, and individual solutions predominate. Counter-power thus faces enormous difficulties in affirming itself as a new sociability.
Here we see the difference, for example, with the Zapatista movement. There, in some ways, the Indigenous community (pre)exists, with its forms and customs, and resists the society of individualism and capitalism.
In Buenos Aires, popular organizations and communities have been destroyed, and there is no other subjectivity to grab hold of than that of capitalism. It is the organization, then, that starts to recreate social bonds, at the same time as it carries out a demand-based struggle. Therefore, the levels are often mixed: the demands-based struggle, the importance of the militants in the experience, and the construction of non-capitalist relations of solidarity for the base (the base, for us, is the only thing that exists. We continue using the image, but should clarify that investigating counter-power, there is nothing other than the “base”).
A new sociability and a new subjectivity cannot be created in one day. It is a long process that has already begun, and not a question of the voluntarism of a group of militants, intellectuals, or leaders.
One of the major challenges lies in making sure that the dynamic of the popu- lar organization predominates over the “militant who provides solutions.” In this sense, the MTD-S has managed to establish an interesting dialectic between the objectives given and the real experience of neighborhood residences in their process of struggle and discussion.
Another concern that has appeared has to do with the creation of spaces of encounter. The question of creating spaces in which the collective and solidarity are not a means to another end, but rather the very essence. Or, in the same vein, going from being “neighbors” to being “comrades.”
The roadblocks, as such, are no longer a novelty. Now it is clearer that what is powerful is what is left from and in the roadblocks. What especially stands out is the camaraderie and mutual respect produced by the struggle in the roadblocks, moments in which everyone’s fate is tied together. In those moments, social bonds
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are reinforced that organize and encourage commitment from participants, imposing discipline and a form of operating collectively.
We have managed to collectively approach “core ideas that are more productive politically” that address problems of life as a whole and not only the question of the benefits packages (for example, the fight against leptospirosis).
One challenge the movement faces is that of making “qualitative leaps, in other words, that the comrades who are joining the movement grow as people, which implies that they start taking up the values and meaning of the movement. (Here we can see the extent to which the movement constructs subjectivity, in the same way that it carries out other tasks without which that work could not be done, which seems to be characteristic of counter-power).
The idea is that they be able to perceive that organizing is not only a good way of obtaining benefits packages, but fundamentally a new form of life. It is about expressing one of the movement's principles that indicates there is no hierarchy among comrades, that the spokespeople are not foremen, and that wages are not a cause for submission.
The “qualitative leaps” are absolutely linked to capacity that must be achieved in the encounter between new comrades and spokespeople.
On the other hand, the qualitative growth of the movement is tied to the ability of the work spaces and different levels of the organization to function well.
It is essential that their functioning continue to improve (from organization and security in the roadblocks to the productive workshops, from educational spaces to the pharmacy, from the coordination with other MTDs to the commissions of each neighborhood).
On another note, we do not want to grow “too much” or agitate “excessively,” at least until what is already being organized functions well.
We also talked about the importance of the relationships we have been building with neighborhood residents who are not members of the movement. There has been a consolidation of the movement. There has been a reconciliation of family relationships that had crises because some family members participated in the movement while others rejected it, fundamentally because of the campaigns to disparage the movement by traditional institutions of power in the neighborhood. These attacks have decreased in the face of evidence that participation in the move- ment is growing and increasingly considered legitimate.
“Implicit solidarity” is starting to be deployed (neighbors are no longer denouncing the movement, and even silently collaborating). Perhaps this is not spectacular but it is decisive, especially when it comes to recomposing and building new social and community relations. One comrade told us about a conversation
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he had with a neighbor who “condemned” the movement's activities, in which what he did was “tell the neighbor what it is we do, and not what he, the neighbor, should do.” This example demonstrates the potencia produced by the movement in its everyday activities.
Lastly, we spoke of the implications of the politics of counter-power, of the concepts that that it proposes and the practices and thoughts that it produces. We spoke of the difference between counter-power and the idea “building popular power.” These are very minor differences, in the sense that they are differences between comrades with very similar lines of thinking, and things inevitably get mixed up all the time. The main difference is that popular power puts the issue of state power in the center, and, from there, it proposes popular power to reach it. On the other hand, counter-power starts by removing the state and its administrative apparatus from the center of our problems. The consequences of “removing the state from the center” are quite large.
To mark some of these differences, we can see, for example, that there is a differ- ent idea of the subject and its relation to power. To put it briefly, counter-power is based on the potencia of the specific situation in which it works, in the experiences in which it participates, and only trusts in this work located at the grassroots level. In that situation, the elements for its construction are already given, and there is nothing to wait for: neither taking power, nor building the party, nor anything else.
Thus, the problem of power is displaced from the centrality that it has had historically. Additionally, the idea of power is different: counter-power’s struggle is not only against central power, but also powers as such and how they act in the situations we inhabit. Primarily because domination is not a distant phenomenon, but is reproduced in the most everyday actions, from what is desired to how rela- tionships are understood.
The struggle against power is posited in two ways: against the domination of the state and of the market. Popular power only attacks its global, solid, external existence. But counter-power recognizes that the market and the state start with us, that their foundation and their force is not mythical, but real, with deep anthro- pological bases. Therefore, if we do not produce values that are superior to those produced by capitalism, we will never change social relations nor start to think differently: we will eternally reproduce the same powers.
We can summarize this difference by saying that while building popular power is a just political position, counter-power does not privilege the political over other elements of life. Counter-power implies a path of creation, in which there are many problems that do not “have” pre-existing solutions. Some of these problems, that
remain pending for future discussions, include:
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The type of relationships, bonds, which are necessary in order to build with different experiences of struggle; The relationship with state institutions and subsidies;
The characteristics of our own management areas that we are creating.
Nonetheless, and despite everything that was said, we spoke of how it is not helpful to treat the contributions from different revolutionary movements through- out history as “old, useless, rags” and to “throw the baby out with the bath water.” We also addressed the issue of the identity of unemployed “workers.” The MTD defends this identity and does so by postulating that it emerges from the fact that we are productive subjects (and therefore workers) of life and not as people whose identity is shaped “by” and “for” capitalism. Life, then, is much more expansive and essential than what capitalist production and alienating demands impose on us. We insisted that work involves the people’s productive and creative potencia, and is not a “classification, a label, that defines us more than our actions, impoverishing us.
Another issue that remains for another conversation is thinking about some fundamental lines of thought in regards to the meaning of “the death of historical determinism,’ a central idea of capitalist modernity, that has also influenced expe- riences of emancipation. For example, the very idea of reason and knowledge, of the evolution of history, of totality.
2. Summary of the workshop on June 26, 2001
In the meeting on Tuesday, June 26, we discussed the popular uprising in General Mosconi, in the province of Salta. Comrades who had participated in the uprising were present at the meeting. A few points emerged that we can work on in the following encounters.
We started by reading out loud the document that summarized what was dis- cussed in the previous meeting. There the discussion about the figure of the “social rebel? proposed by Subcomandante Marcos in opposition to the revolutionary, emerged again. It was clarified that it is not a problem of naming, nor of language, that the words can be used interchangeably, as long as we are always clear about what each of them means. The idea is to think about the existence of a new type of militancy, that acts from below to permanently transform the conditions of life and that, in contrast to the traditional militant, no longer prepares for forming a political party nor to reinsert struggles in the logic of “building-taking-winning
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power.” Marcos has — like all of us — a discovery in his hands: change not only comes from below, but also, the way to ensure that change is not only temporary, also lies in grassroots struggles.
Therefore, it is not a question of forming organizations that are only, or mainly, in dialogue with the state, but rather the most important thing becomes the move- ment’s capacity to address other struggles and people working for social change.
Resonances of Salta
Interesting things emerged when discussing the consequences of the struggles in Mosconi: The extent to which that experience did not produce the emergence of a “new political group” became clear, but nor is it simply about a “sectoral struggle.”
A “new political group” tends to represent the movement of struggle and “rep- resent them” to the government, political parties, and the media. Ultimately, all of the energy that was unleashed in the struggle ends up in negotiations with the state (whether the provincial or national government). At best, this leads to more or less concrete gains. At worst, the group benefits at the cost of the community struggle.
A struggle that is simply sectoral leads to a similar result.
The experience of General Mosconi shows us that the struggle is taken up by the entire community. The process has great legitimacy because the whole community joins through a concrete struggle that people highly identify with. Thus, it is an inter- vention that does not take up the traditional forms of what are typically considered
“political” struggles (sectoral demands or party struggles for power). Therefore, it is difficult to “identify it.” This is especially true for governments, political parties, and the media, in other words, for those that tend to put labels on things and construct the images that circulate socially and politically. Later, we discussed the spontaneous self-organized mobilization that took place in Solano in solidarity with the struggle of comrades in General Mosconi. The mobilization came out of identifying that struggle with “our cause,’ that is, confirming and feeling the relationship that existed between the different experiences. This is a case in which “one” mobilizes because of what happens to the “other,” but it is no longer an issue of solidarity between two separate situations, but rather between experiences that participate in the same reality. We are not referring to the existence of direct bonds between the experiences, but rather at the level of resonances, with the way in which struggles that take place thousands of kilometers away are immediately taken up as one’s own.
This in particular enables thinking about the nature of relationships between experiences of counter-power. These relationships are no longer only created by
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