I ain't mad, I'm just dissapointed - A response to We aren't Anti

There's an essay written in 2005 by a member of a group of French Communizers called Theorie Communiste or Communist Theory, the essay is called "We are not Anti". Its not a massive hit in the mainstream but it has found an audience and it does keep popping up on my personal radar every year or so. I've read it several times over the years and while I don't rate the contents of the text very highly I do find the fact that its gained an audience amongst the modern self described Ultra Left very interesting.

I was surprised to find a translation of the essay on Libcom to be honest, because I don't think it has any value at all beside as a cautionary tale in the dangers of transparent rhetoric.

I have no direct contact with Communist Theory so I don't have any insight into how that group produces its material, but it seems pretty clear to me that "We Are Not Anti" was written up and published not as an attempt to spark a debate but to appeal to an established audience. Its starts off very strongly, it outlines the groups viewpoint

Not being anti does not mean to be a maximalist and proclaim, without rhyme or reason, that one is for total revolution and that, short of that, there is only reformism. Rather, it means that when one opposes capital in a given situation, one doesn’t counterpose to it a good capital. A demand, a refusal poses nothing other than what it is: to struggle against raising the age of retirement is not to promote the better administration of direct or socialized wages. To struggle against restructuration is not to be anti-liberal; it is to oppose these measures here and now, and it is no coincidence that struggles can surpass themselves in this way. We’re neither anti-this nor anti-that. Nor are we “radical.” We pose the necessity of communization in the course of immediate struggles because the non-immediate perspective of communization can serve as the self-critical analytic frame of struggles, as such, for the historical production of the overcoming of capital.

But every paragraph that follows apart from the concluding remarks is essentially repeated. It takes an "Anti" concept, anti-racism, anti-liberalism, anti-zionism etc, but its criticism is fundamentally the same, the only difference is the specific example given to prove TC's main argument.

Fortunately this means that I don't need to respond to every single paragraph, even if I have issues with some of the specific examples given. Unfortunately for the TC the essay has a flaw that cuts right to the core of their argument, and at least one paragraph exposes this core quite noticeably, it is the section on Anti-racism.

Anti-racism, brother of anti-fascism, is now another state ideology which accompanies and absolves the massive and practical state racism that has developed in France since capital’s entrance into open crisis in the 1970s. The anti-worker politics of capitalist restructuring “racialized” a set of workers, first by dividing them into “French” and “immigrants,” then by further “ethnicisation” and so-called “communitarianism” [communautarisme]. This situation puts anti-racism in an untenable position. If it is shown the “little blacks” have displayed racism against the “little whites” (just returns which reap the whirlwind), the anti-racists will have in any case already told us that this wasn’t racism but social resentment! Marvellous imbecility that, which thinks racism is biological. It will always be true that anti-racism holds its own as well as racism without ever putting a stop to it. During the great struggles of 1995 or 2003, [Jean-Marie] Le Pen disappeared from the landscape and we barely even remember his existence. This was not the result of anti-racism.

This paragraph is very helpful in understanding just what TC's view actually is. Sadly for them its an excellent example of what's rotten with their methodology. And I don't mean the very poorly dated reference to Le Pen[1]

Allow me to break down the stages of the argument.

1) State ideologies are not capable of supplanting capitalism and building Communism in its place.
2) Anti projects manifest as tools of the state and are state ideologies.

1: Personally speaking I agree here, and I hope it was this part of the essay that was key to its popularity, though having spent several years rubbing shoulders with that crowd I sadly doubt it.

2: However this is where the serious issues lie. How exactly do we define what is and is not an State ideology? Well for TC its actually very easy and we see it plainly in its attempt to attack Anti-racism. A thing is proven to be a state ideology if a state (any state) at any time in history adopts the idea as a concious policy. The modern French State adopted a form of anti-racist policy, now by TC's own admission the French state has failed miserably in building a post racial society and indeed its policies seem to have entrenched and exacerbated racism within its borders.

But even so, this puts anti-racists everywhere (in absolute terms, with no exceptions or nuance, keep in mind) in an "untenable position". It doesn't matter how many connections anti-racists have with the French state or their own state, or how closely or divergent their aims and activities are to these states, they are all tainted.

But believe it or not, lazy usage of absolutes to try and force lines in sand is the minor issue here, there is actually a much, much more serious issue that this paragraph lays bare.

The burden of proof seen here is consistent throughout the essay, if a State can make an "Anti" position part of its platform then its good enough to write off the whole endeavour. The issue here is that Theory Communist as the name suggests is allegedly a Communist organisation. But ever since 1917 we have had multiple states triumphantly proclaim the building of Communism as their state ideology. Some of those states still exist today. So by TC's own criteria Communism is itself a state ideology, incapable of success and every and all adherent regardless of nuance or circumstance is guilty of "counter posing a good capital".

That's not my idea, its there's, their framework, their burden of proof. This is such an obvious flaw that its genuinely shocking to me that a group like TC would write this up, put their names to it and publish it publicly without realising. But then again while I've seen this essay pop up here and there, it has done so to uniform praise, I've not encountered any serious criticism from its readership.

So the real question here is why?

See we have several potentials here, all of them very poor: Either Communist Theory considers the burden of proof its established sufficient, and genuinely didn't realise that it was proposing its own futility, which doesn't bode well for the groups analysis on, well anything really.

Or worse it did realise you could take its argument and apply it to Communism and get the same result. But didn't care because this was designed as propaganda to be eaten up by an audience that simply isn't interested in engaging in even the most basic of critical relationships with the information they consume.


Again I have no idea what their intent was, but the publication of this terrible essay and its reception have I feel done a lot to expose some very worrying trends amongst the contemporary Ultra left. Even if you already agreed with the conclusions drawn by this essay it still has no real use, its arguments are poor and flawed. Indeed for me its had the effect of tainting its audience by association, I have sincerely lost a lot of intellectual respect for people and groups that I've seen promoting this essay and the "important lessons contained within".

It forces me to conclude that a good chunk of this subculture are either in the habit of merely consuming information that seems to agree with their preconceptions as a reinforcement excercise, in much the same way a lot of the members of the more top down parties and Monks do. Or they're not really communists, just people who have taken on the identity of the stereotypical image of a Communist intellectual.

Just like what happened with Situationism when it got popular.

2. Always use the most obscure language possible. Get lots of big scholarly words from a dictionary and use them often.
Poor: "Things are bad."
Better: "The formative mechanism of culture amounts to a reification of human activities which fixates the living and models the transmission of experience from one generation to another on the transmission of commodities; a reification which strives to ensure the past's domination over the future."
6. Cultivate a conceit and self-importance bordering on megalomania. Take credit for spontaneous uprisings in far-flung corners of the world, sneer at those who oppose or disagree with you.

[2]
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1: I'm not bringing this up to criticise TC for failing to predict the future. I'm making a note of this because it provides evidence that TC isn't as in tune with French politics and society as it presents itself. The Le Pen's did not go away like TC claims, they and their far right nationalist project stuck around and were in the process of making a very visible political resurgence around the time this was published.

2: If you read any of the French Ultra Gauche or those inspired by them you'll have to get use to a specific jargon unique to each group and author, the opening paragraph of this essay is a surpisingly mild example. For instance,

"We’re neither anti-this nor anti-that. Nor are we “radical.” We pose the necessity of communization in the course of immediate struggles because the non-immediate perspective of communization can serve as the self-critical analytic frame of struggles, as such, for the historical production of the overcoming of capital."

This clumsy section is basically saying that when TC gets involved in immediate struggles that many others would consider reformist, or part of an Anti-something project, it isn't because TC only gives its support when it thinks these partial struggles have the potential (somehow) to develop into a proper Communization struggle. Yes it does boil down to `its different when we do it`.