“Wageless
Life – A Manifesto for a Future Beyond Capitalism,” by IRG Shaw and M Waterstone, 2019
This is an
anarcho-communist attempt by two academic geographers to solidarize and learn
from the precariat in the world. This
growing segment of the proletariat is variously known as the precariat, the underclass, the
lumpen-proletariat, the reserve army of the unemployed; the surplus, waste or warehoused population or re Marx, the
‘floating,’ ‘latent’ and ‘stagnant’ parts of the proletariat. This includes
paupers, peddlers, refugees, prisoners, debt-slaves, actual slaves and sole contractors. The authors list
some sociological examples like street vendors, servants and freelance recycling workers
as examples of the kind of people they are concerned with. Oddly, the book ends
up being a plea for a “neo-peasant ontology” of solar peasants while claiming
at the same time not to be romantically yearning for a lost rustic past. The Mexican Zapatistas in Chiapas are their template.
Unlike Guy Standing, who claimed the precariat was NOT part of the proletariat, these authors clearly show that Marx and Engels understood that contingent labor was intimately connected to the life of the proletariat. The authors attack the concept of waged labor as alienated, although some times they attack work in general - having a hard time keeping their concepts separate. They rename unalienated work as
‘alter-work.’ They deny that the
proletariat has grown in the world, ignoring the vast increase in China or the massive historic strikes in India. In some of their points they are short on empirical evidence but long
on words and elegant turns of phrase, even using the royal ‘we’ when describing
all workers, including themselves, as 'virtual paupers.' This method is similar to the literary
writings of Henry Giroux or Chris Hedges.
The book is chock-full of quotes from many familiar names on the left –
Marx, Polyani, Davis, Harvey, Lefebvre, Arendt, the Invisible Committee, Negri,
etc. - and we know that the more quotes used, the more true a manifesto is.
Geographers
center on the politics of space and so the authors focus on the massive
‘enclosure of the commons’ that started in England and spread throughout the
world. Former peasants and farmers were/are
forced into urban areas to become wage slaves, peddlers or paupers through the
privatization of land. Small-bore present
alternatives to privatization like squats, co-op businesses, apartments and farms, community
gardens, city square occupations, (no mention of factory occupations), neighborhoods
run by the left or other ‘free spaces’ and volunteer work rate only a mention
by them. Instead borrowing from
Lefebvre, they claim a ‘right to the world’ where virtually all space is common
property instead of the present status of ‘worldlessness.’ This is another way
of saying to truly socialize the land – socialism being a word they never use. The problem with rights arguments like this,
common to liberal humanists and anti-Marxists like Hannah Arendt, is that
rights are not viable without power.
So the
question of the state comes up. They
quote Christian Parenti as to the need to overturn the state in order to
restore the commons, then accuse him of being a pragmatist(!). Replacing a state apparatus as a condition
for progress is far, far from ‘pragmatism.’ Indeed avoiding the state might be more
pragmatic. Instead they cite the example
of the Mexican Zapatistas who took over large parts of Chiapas
state in southern Mexico
in 1993. 27 years later there is no
equivalent anywhere else in Latin America. The rest of Mexico
trundles along because the weakness of the Mexican state allows Chiapas. In India the Naxalite free zones still
exist, but also have not expanded. Again, these zones exist because of the
weakness of the Indian state. The Philippines is
another example. These are rural, agrarian movements based on peasant farming or
forest living and almost no leftists in the world is against them. But that begs the question – what about the
rest of Mexico? Can regional bits be bitten off until the
whole country is under the rule of different groups of farming
revolutionaries? Just asking the
question in the present context answers it. Knowledge of the Mexican revolution
also says otherwise, as Zapata himself returned to Morelos and Villa to Chihuahua, both
uninterested in consolidating a national revolution. Ultimately any victories in the arena of space
confront the capitalist state, as Occupy quickly found out in the U.S. Nor do they mention any revolutions led or
inspired by Marxism that did succeed in taking geography back from capital or colonialism,
which is a telling omission.
 |
| Street Peddler in Hanoi selling slippers |
The authors
discuss how ‘desire’ – i.e. strong emotions – can be harnessed by the left to
reconquer the commons and counter capitalist realism. All well and good. However in the process they ignore any
material source of the ‘desires’ bred by capital and assume it is all a psychic
mirage. Just to stay with their real
estate example: the small capitalist proprietor proudly running his small shop;
the farmer looking out over his land; the homeowner quietly sitting in the
backyard of her home; the cabin user looking at the lake; even the apartment
dweller in some exciting metropolis – all have a sense of owned ‘space’ even
though the capitalist state or the bank or a landlord may actually control
their land and life. I.E. for some,
spatial ‘desires’ are partially satisfied by capital. They are real. Just as ‘waged work’ provides a sort of a
living for millions. It cannot be willed
away by turns of phrase or omissions.
Oddly, their counter-culture turn to the countryside omits any mention of the need for new organic, agro-ecology farming, which could return millions to the now depopulated farms and small towns as large-scale corporate agriculture is expropriated and cooperative, collective or small farming returns to reinvigorate agricultural land and soil.
In essence, while they avoid putting it like this, the authors' logic is to expand present counter-cultural institutions so
that they become dominant in the economy and society, avoiding confrontation
with the state (military and legal), the corporations, the fascists, the
political system, divisions within the proletariat and the like. They call this ‘alter-politics’ or ‘progressive
localism.’ It is explicitly not based on any working class identity or waged
workers, who are explicitly outside their paradigm. This unlikely scenario
will only begin to be possible when society begins to crumble in the face of
economic crisis, war, environmental devastation or pandemics, and a new world
comes into being through the action of millions. But it will not come alone because capital
has to eventually be confronted head-on and that will also take ‘waged
workers,’ not just the precariat, the ‘paupers.’ After all, workers have more clout through their labor than a peddler if they withdraw it. By itself this book promotes a version of a
social-democratic ‘peaceful transition to socialism.’ We can call it ‘alt-social democracy’
instead!
A short,
interesting book which might introduce you to new concepts as well as old. Its main strength is as a corrective to
isolated consumerism and compulsive work addiction, attempting to turn people
towards a future of collective effort, unalienated labor and shared prosperity
instead. This is a future that many are
beginning to see as necessary, even if they come from different leftist perspectives.
Other prior
and relevant reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left: “Planet of Slums,” (Davis) “The Invisible
Committee,” “The Precariat,” (Standing) “Rebel Cities,” (Harvey) “Riot, Strike,
Riot,” “Hinterland,” “Modern Defacto Slavery,” “Blood and Earth,” “Slave
States,” “The Unseen,” “Capitalist Realism,” 'Children of Men."
And I
bought it at May Day Books!
Red Frog
March 26,
2020
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