Here’s the closing paragraph from a speech given in 1971 by Gianni Safri and Franco Caprotti. I’m including it because I plan to use this blog–for whatever else comes of it–to generate some writing and thinking about the failure of the grad union at the U of M in 2005, and this quotation helps me articulate some of my critiques. Thanks to Nate for his generosity, which made this post possible.

“Revisionism, for us, is not merely a theoretical program. It does not mean to revise the theories of Marx, which not only can but must be done by any serious Marxist, but instead it means the use of Marxism by a certain part of the bourgeoisie in order achieve counter-revolutionary goals. In fact, we can see this clearly in Italy, where the strongest Communist party in the western world has a social base which is increasingly petit-bourgeois, while it is less and less proletarian. As another example, the PCI is based on enormous communist cooperatives which are no different than a regular corporation, and one a complex of political and economic contacts with the bourgeois state power. For all these reasons, although we do not see the PCI as our principal enemy, we often attack this party and its directors (though we must say there are many revolutionary comrades at its base). Also, we vigorously attack the unions, not because we think they have sold out or because we think they should follow a different political line, but because we believe that unions in a society such as ours function to grant to the bourgeoisie the collaboration of workers with the capitalistic organization of work. We do not want to found a new trade union because we don believe that workers’ struggles in today’s Europe are trade unionist: instead, we believe that they are directly anti-capitalist, and thus, we think that any distinction between economic and political struggle no longer has any reason to exist.”

In a passage written during his imprisonment, Antonio Negri proposes that “communism today means to live as a communist.” Put simply, communism in this usage is found not in some transcendent, always-deferred utopia but in the practice and the power of a life unmistakably grounded in the here and now. Rather than something we work toward, this “living as” renews and expands an actually existing communism.

I have always been very moved by Negri’s statement, so simple and pure. With that said, though, we shouldn’t confuse a certain simplicity with an ease or smoothness in practice: obviously, living today is difficult and agonizing at least as much as it is light and joyous. For me, it’s a reminder—or really, an assertion—that the conditions for communism have a real, positive existence in our loves, our labors, and our lives. Additionally, then, what we have here renders the distinction between ethics and politics untenable, or at the very least indiscernible.

This indiscernibility, this “living as,” has a dramatic effect on what it means for us to “want everything.” Most importantly, it denies the reduction of such a desire to the terms and concepts of lack and powerlessness. We want everything, then, becomes less of a call or demand for what is not and more of a proposal for living: a consitutive, communist project that poses that, in fact, we are already everything. The project then becomes one of agitation and expansion, “as relentless and painful as it is constructive,” as Negri says.

The wholescale privatization of everything–a process to which we are complicitous abettors and not always reliable witnesses. The point, however, is not the guilt of the spectator, but rather the necessity of expanding our critique and joy in practice. With this in mind, what does it mean to take up the slogan of Balestrini’s workers today?