Strategic Multiplicity challenges the prioritization of liberation struggles, emphasizing the equal importance of various forms of oppression and the potential for collective action and decision-making.
Revolutionary struggles in the 1970s showcased the potential for innovation and change in the absence of established structures, allowing for the emergence of revolutionary democracy, popular power, and new forms of organization and struggle.
The 1970s witnessed shifts in revolutionary movements, recognizing multiple forms of labor and exploring strategic multiplicity to connect anti-capitalist, feminist, anti-racist, and queer struggles and create effective common action.
Deep dives
Strategic Multiplicity and Revolutionary Transformation
Strategic Multiplicity is a concept that emerged from feminist and racial movements in the 1970s. It challenges the idea that there should be a priority or hierarchy among different liberation struggles and identities. Instead, it promotes the recognition of the equal importance of various forms of oppression and the need for strategic alliances and articulations among them. This concept emphasizes the potential for collective action and decision-making in a diverse and heterogeneous framework, where no single identity or struggle takes precedence. It recognizes the need for subjective and structural transformations and seeks to move beyond the industrial paradigm of organizing and explore the possibilities of multiplicity in revolutionary movements.
Voids and Innovation in Revolutionary Struggles
Revolutionary struggles in different contexts, such as the anti-colonial movements in Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique, as well as the Nicaraguan and Iranian revolutions, showcase the potential for innovation and change in the absence of established structures. These movements faced voids left by colonial or oppressive regimes and saw opportunities for conceptualizing and developing new social relations and political institutions. The voids allowed for the emergence of revolutionary democracy, popular power, and the invention of new forms of organization and struggle. The ability to move beyond existing frameworks and ideologies allowed these movements to pose real political questions and grapple with organizational complexities. These struggles pose a challenge to conventional narratives that depict the 1970s as a period of decline and fragmentation, highlighting the creative and transformative potential of revolutionary movements.
Articulating Revolutionary Movements and Strategic Transformation
The 1970s witnessed important shifts in revolutionary movements, particularly in Italy and the US, where the position of the industrial working class became less central due to deindustrialization, automation, and outsourcing. This necessitated a reorientation of class struggle and the recognition of multiple figures of labor, including precarious and unwaged workers, reproductive labor, and service work. The autonomy movement in Italy played a significant role in articulating these multiple forms of labor and organizing them in democratic network forms. Meanwhile, in the US, feminist, black feminist, and racial justice movements explored the possibilities of strategic multiplicity, challenging the prioritization of any singular struggle and emphasizing the interconnectedness and equal importance of anti-capitalist, feminist, anti-racist, and queer struggles. These movements recognized the need for subjective transformation and aimed to create effective common action and decision-making within a context of diverse singular elements. Strategic multiplicity allowed for the recognition and empowerment of various identities and struggles, furthering the transformative potential of revolutionary movements.
Different notions of popular power in revolutionary movements
In this podcast episode, the speaker explores the different notions of popular power that emerged in revolutionary movements. They discuss the division between popular power from above, which emphasizes the representation of the people and support from centralized structures, and popular power from below, which focuses on decentralized decision-making and autonomous committees. The example of a cotton factory in Santiago is mentioned, where workers seized and self-managed the factory, challenging the Allende government's agenda of controlled nationalization. This highlights the tension between representations of the people and the participation of the people in decision-making.
The transformative power of encampments in political movements
Another key topic discussed in the podcast episode is the power of encampments in political movements. The speaker describes encampments as not only defensive structures, but also as cauldrons of innovation, creating new alliances, transforming political practices, and generating novel social forms. The examples of the Larsac encampment in France and the San Rizuka encampment in Japan are mentioned, highlighting the mutual transformations that occurred between rural residents and militants from the city. Encampments are seen as sites where new relationships to the land and subjective transformations take place, fostering a sense of togetherness and creating possibilities for political articulation.
This is part 1 of a 2-part conversation on Michael Hardt’s recent book TheSubversive Seventies.
Michael Hardt teaches political theory in the Literature Program at Duke University. He is co-author, with Antonio Negri, of the Empire trilogy and, most recently, Assembly. He is co-director with Sandro Mezzadra of The Social Movements Lab.
A couple of things I need to say up front. This conversation was recorded in September and initially would have been released in October, but obviously our programming took a quick turn to solidarity work on the Palestinian struggle in light of those events. As I mentioned in the intro to our most recent episode we will continue to do that solidarity work primarily though not exclusively through our YouTube page for a while just so that we can get some of these other conversations out on the podcast feed.
Nonetheless, this conversation and the book and the problems it poses I think are as interesting and relevant today as they were in September. I mostly note it's recording date for two reasons, one it will be glaring that we don’t talk at all about events in Palestine in the conversation. The second reason I mention the date is that in the intervening months Michael Hardt’s long-time collaborator Antonio Negri passed away. Negri was of course a very serious and renowned political philosopher, militant organizer, and a political prisoner, coming out of some of the very movements that Michael Hardt discusses in this book. May he rest in peace and our condolences to Michael for the loss of his friend and collaborator.
This discussion is about Michael Hardt’s book TheSubversive Seventies which was one of the more interesting books we read last year on the podcast. And we would definitely recommend it both for its value as a historical text as well as for the theoretical work Hardt is engaged in in the text. As is laid out quite well I think on the publisher’s website, it is a book that attempts to reconstruct the history of revolutionary politics in the 1970’s, to systematically approach political movements of the seventies within a global framework of analysis, and to bring together a wide range of political movements from the decade highlighting the ways movements in different countries resonated with and were inspired by one another.
Part 2 of the conversation will be released this coming week.
I would also be remiss if I didn’t say rest in power to Sekou Odinga who passed away earlier this week. We hope to be able to do more in honor of him and as a tribute to his legacy in the coming weeks and years.
If you appreciate the work we do, our work is only possible through the support of our patrons. You can support our show for as little as $1 a month or $10.80 per year at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism
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