What is crucial: to transcend without transcending.
– Ernst Bloch
In the 20th Century, real socialism failed. In the 21st Century, unreal capitalism.
– Luis Eduardo Aute
In
those heady early days of the Oakland Commune when the little village
of newly-dubbed “Oscar Grant Plaza” was being set up, an old comrade who
had been part of the early organizing of the occupation was walking
through the village and describing it to me on his cell phone. We were
doing relay reporting: I’d been down the day before and reported back to
him, now he was giving me an update. “And just past the media tent and
the library is the supply tent . . . ” A young woman working at the
supply tent jumped into the conversation and began to show him where
things went as my friend explained that he was giving a comrade a
“virtual tour” of sorts.
“Over here you drop off clothes; there is where you drop off food; tents and camping supplies go over there…”
“And money?” my friend asked. He had been carrying a $5 bill in his hand, money someone had given him to pass on to the camp.
“Oh. We don’t do money,” she replied.
“’We
don’t do money!’ ‘We don’t do money!’” my friend repeated incredulously
as he walked away from the supply tent. “That’s the most radical
statement I’ve heard so far!”
Since those glorious first moments
of what could now be called an uprising or a movement, the occupiers
have had to make greater concessions to “reality,” meaning that they now
“do” money, but it’s to their credit that they have done so tentatively
and on their own conditions. Every revolution begins by questioning the
very concept of “reality” as it is socially defined and by pushing
against it until it begins to fray and finally give way to a new
definition.
The root of the word “reality” is intertwined with
“royalty” (“real” in Spanish means both “real” and “royal”) because
there was a time when royalty defined reality. Now, in the Americas at
least, “royalty” no longer exists and “reality” has been transformed in a
redefinition that excludes royalty itself. What seemed utopian before
that moment in that moment suddenly became the very definition of
reality. In the past this process has involved violence, like the
execution of King James in the English Civil War, but that itself was
only a culminating symbolic representation of a long process of
psycho-social transformation through education, culture, ritual etc. in
the construction of a new model of reality that eventually supplanted
the “royal” model. In that sense “utopia” must be the home and destiny
of a revolutionary struggle, and poetry must be its most powerful
weapon, if it is to succeed.
One element in the process of the
construction of new models of reality, or “revolutions” is the meme, the
“viral message,” and it often takes the form of a slogan or chant. The
power of political mantras to transform our understanding or redefine
our understanding of reality is evident when we consider what the slogan
“we are the 99%” has done in the Occupy movement.
Slogans can be
prosaic, functional statements, rational and unambiguous, like a
statement of doctrine for a church service or a political rally (“We are
the 99%” or “The people united will never be defeated” etc.), or they
can operate like a poem, suprarational and ambiguous, forcing us to
reconsider our sense of “reality.” Those aphorisms in this latter
category fit with the “sixth” type of ambiguity as enumerated by William
Empson: “when a statement says nothing and the readers are forced to
invent a statement of their own, most likely in conflict with that of
the author.”
Of this latter group is the Situationist epigraph,
“Be realistic: demand the impossible.” This statement, in fact, does say
something, but it’s akin to “nothing” insofar as it is apparently
contradictory: When could the “impossible” be considered “realistic”?
What could be “realistic” about “demand[ing] the impossible”? In
contrast to the prosaic “marching” slogans repeated at every
demonstration to unite and strengthen group solidarity, this
Situationist epigraph is elusive and subversive by its very nature. And
for that reason it warrants a closer look.
While
we don’t know the actual context that inspired the writer of the
Situationist epigram since the Situationist as a movement spanned the
years 1957 to 1972, it is most likely that the slogan, “Be realistic:
demand the impossible,” first appeared during the uprising of May 1968
in Paris. The slogan, then, probably referred to the clarity the writer
had at that moment that the state would eventually cede to its demands
and thereby destroy the movement for radical social change. This common
ruling class response to the social demands of the oppressed is summed
up in the words of a prince in Luchino Visconti’s classic movie, “The
Leopard,” “If we want things to stay as they are, everything will have
to change.” Making “realistic” demands that could, and would, be met,
therefore, would ensure the end of the struggle, the destruction of the
movement, and guarantee that “things stay the same.”
A few years
later, reflecting on that romantic May of 1968, the French
singer/songwriter, Georges Moustaki in his song, “Le Temps de Vivre”
(“The Time to Live”), reinterpreted that
Situationist slogan:
Nous prendrons le temps de vivre We’ll take the time to live
D’être libres mon amour to be free, my love.
Sans projets et sans habitudes Without projects or habits
Nous pourrons rêver notre vie we’ll dream our life.
Viens, je suis là, je n’attends que toi Come, I’m here, awaiting only you
Tout est possible, Everything is possible.
tout est permis Everything is permitted.
Viens, écoute, les mots qui vibrent Come listen to these words that vibrate
Sur les murs du mois de mai on the walls of the month of May
Ils te disent la certitude They give us certitude
Que tout peut changer un jour that everything can one day change
The
song expresses the same utopian spirit as the slogan; it is also an
affirmation that what is deemed “impossible” can be realistic. Moustaki,
reflecting back on that historical moment from a context in which such a
slogan had become an “impossible demand,” sees the revolutionary
upsurge of 1968 as a hope or a “certitude” of revolutionary change “one
day” in some indeterminate future.
A few years later, when the
reaction against the “Revolution of 1968” was in full bloom and the
likes of Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and other champions of
neoliberal capitalism suggested “There Is No Alternative” (the famous
“TINA” that dominated the late 20th Century), the Situationist slogan
took on a new meaning. It became a statement of resistance against
impossible odds in struggle for a new world that was nowhere to be seen.
It was a statement of defiance of a “reality” decreed by the masters of
the totalitarian lie of the neoliberal capitalist system watching over a
locked-down world. With the collapse of “real” socialism and as the
world slouched off into that netherland of the “end of history” where
the hope of every left alternative, and even the humane possibilities of
capitalism, if such existed, were extinguished with the end of the Cold
War and the supreme victory of neoliberalism, the Situationist slogan
was stored in the dusty attic of history. TINA was the only slogan
allowed in this brave new world of neoliberal rule, the echolalia of a
mantra that darkened the human mind and increasingly reduced it to
catatonia with each repetition.
But almost immediately the
“impossible” reappeared, especially in Berkeley, where I was living at
the time, but also around the world. Little by little, the circle A of
anarchism, no doubt painted by anarcho-punks with a clear grasp of the
need for the “impossible,” was sprayed on walls and billboards. Then
increasingly the circle “A” began to appear more broadly in personal
wear, silk-screened on t-shirts, until it became a fashion statement. In
the context of a Capitalist State that claimed the whole planet, the
demand for the impossible demand reemerged.
With the Zapatista
uprising of 1994 and thereafter, the slogan once again took on an
immediate, positive meaning for people in the movement for a “possible
world in which many worlds fit.” Contesting with the hegemon, the dream
of the possible new world became not merely a demand for “the
impossible” but for a plurality of possibilities, a rainbow of
possibilities. Out of the collapse of the 20th century
utopia-turned-dystopia of “real socialism” and the flatulent promise of
the “Third Way,” both of which having clouded and overshadowed all other
radical alternatives of an earlier time, such as social democracy,
mystical anarchism, secular anarchism, anarcho-syndicalism, utopian
cooperativism, religious socialism and, yes, the multitude of Marxist
socialist alternatives, the World Social Forums (WSF) arose in the heart
of the capitalist world that had prohibited the possibility of dreams.
The “impossible” was transformed by WSF’s belief that “another world is
possible” and as anti-globalization activists confronted the brutal
capitalist state in Seattle and elsewhere.
But the definitive
break with TINA and the neoliberal siege of the world, formed in iron
around the “possible,” came with the changes in Latin America,
particularly in South America, where left governments took power in the
process of emerging from the military dictatorships organized and
supported by the United States. “Demanding the impossible” meant in that
context something very similar to what it meant in 1968: it became a
call to not settle for reforms to capitalism, but to push the agenda
farther, beyond the realm of the “possible” as defined for us by the
capitalist system or even by so-called “socialist” governments
proclaiming the “socialism of the 21st century” but offering only more
handouts and top-heavy, bureaucratic parties in the style of the
Marxist-Leninist parties of 20th century communism.
In the
present, just ten years after the uprisings in Argentina, the victory of
left governments throughout Latin America, and the presidential victory
of the first African American in US history, the slogan has a new, even
more dramatic meaning: if the planet is to survive, we have no choice
but to “demand the impossible.” Many of what were viewed as “impossible”
achievements in 1968 have been won, and they clearly don’t go far
enough. In Latin America the “left” governments continue to follow the
extractivist development model dictated by world capitalism even as they
turn more attention to their poorest citizens. This is particularly
true of Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa, who has repeatedly directed
repressive military and police forces against environmentalists and
indigenous people attempting to defend the earth. But even President Evo
Morales works from a double discourse, proclaiming socialism and
respect for indigenous rights and Pachamama while building roads through
indigenous lands and nature reserves to facilitate the business of
Brazilian capital.
Then, of course, there’s the United States,
where the official political spectrum, by world standards, has been
reduced to that very small space between the far right and the extreme
right, rigidly confined, to this day, by strict neoliberal orthodoxy.
Just a few years ago “demanding the impossible” seemed to consist of
electing an African American liberal to the presidency. That achievement
of anti-racist progressive forces still remains one of the most
inspiring moments in the 21st Century USA despite the disappointment
that followed. At best, President Obama has turned out to be only a
shade different from his predecessor, and in some ways he’s worse: it’s
doubtful that Bush would have managed to pass the free trade agreements
Obama has pushed through, nor would Bush have been able to get away with
murder–literally, in the case of bin Laden, Al-Awlaki and countless
Pakistanis–without an enormous outcry from left liberals.
In this
context, what does it mean to “be realistic” and “demand the
impossible”? What “impossible demand” must we make in our context, a
context in which the continuation of the capitalist system has become
impossible (if Immanuel Wallerstein is correct in his analysis that
we’re now experiencing a “systemic crisis”), and the survival of human
civilization unlikely?
Those currently occupying the cities
across the United States and the world have been criticized for not
“making demands” or “having a program” or “an agenda.” Occupiers have
responded that “our occupation is our demand.” Certainly the right to
peaceably assemble is a first requirement for any movement, but the
occupiers, more than anyone, are quite clear that the demands can’t end
there. Many argue that the occupiers need to come up with a long list of
specific demands, but I would side with those Situationists who would
argue that such a list would be self-defeating: it would invite the
rulers of the world to cede demands and ensure that “things stay the
same.” Yet it’s clear that the “impossible” demand is the only
alternative to this impossibly irrational and unsustainable system that
turns “reason” and all its resources to the exploitation and destruction
of the planet. The occupiers, for the most part, aren’t so
simple-minded as to fall for the “possible.” They know that last thing
they should do is offer a “realistic” set of demands and settle for a
“realistic” program. The time has come to make “impossible” demands on
this impossible system because the future of the world is at stake. And
we can’t settle for anything less.
Note: For more on the Situationists, see Ken Knabb’s excellent article in Counterpunch.
