Reviews and Comments

A really phenomenal book which does an admirable job of drawing out what is so important about the revolt. Gilman-Opalsky's thesis is not just that the revolt can and must be understood theoretically and philosophically, but that the revolt - each in its complex singularity - expresses a reasonable and rational philosophical and theoretical content. This, I take it, is really the core thesis, though with Gilman-Opalsky's wonderful prose, I never minded the various twists, turns, and - occasionally - indulgences the book takes in order to get there. But he really does a great job of not only emphasising the importance of the revolt, and that it really does express something very important, but provides a crucial reflection on the role of the intellectual in relation to the real movement, arguing that at this juncture more than any other, 'intellectuals' need to be learning from the autonomous social movements, not lecturing them and prescribing their praxis in advance. Gilman-Opalsky seems to operate within the Autonomist-Marxist tradition, and is clearly influenced primarily by Marx, Raya Dunayevskaya, Felix Guattari, Gilles Deleuze, and the work of Situationists Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem. His broadsides against Anarchists are unfortunate, not least because a more measured and sympathetic engagement with Anarchist thinkers and activists might have shed further light on the link between theorists and autonomus social movements.

Nevertheless, a superb book which is likely to change the way you think about the world.

An existential crisis in nine pages. I've read this before, but reading it again, I remember why it stayed with me for so many years. Man asks, at times, "Can entropy be reversed?" We don't know, but mostly we avoid thinking too long or too closely about it. To think too long about the inevitable decay of everything in existence is acknowledge, perhaps, the futility of our lives. We know what follows from it: I will die, everybody I will ever know will die, and eventually there will be nothing left to show that we were ever really here at all.

Or perhaps things aren't quite that. The ending is ambiguous - deliberately so. Entropy is reversed at precisely the moment when mankind goes extinct. Perhaps the VAC provides us with an answer to the 'birth' of our universe, perhaps this is the eternal return Nietzsche spoke of: an unending cycle of birth, growth, decay, death, and rebirth. The name of this 'VAC' isn't really the important part, it's that at a certain degree of perfection, this machine created by man becomes indistinguishable from God. And as the story ends, the machine said: "Let there be light!" And there was light. Perhaps this is one answer to the timeless question: Why is there something rather than nothing? An attempt to address this theological-existential question through the medium of science-fiction.

A new universe created, perhaps. Mankind extinguished in any meaningful sense, torn from corporeality and transformed into the pure virtuality of this VAC singularity-machine. No one left to whom the VAC can give its long-awaited answer, its only option is to demonstrate that it has an answer. But there's no one really left to see it. We certainly won't. At this point in the history of the human race, and of the history of our universe, there really is "insufficient data to provide a meaningful answer." And probably by the time we find an answer, whether we can or can't reverse this process, 'humanity' will be just as unrecognisable as Asimov (probably correctly) suspects. It isn't clear that 'humanity' will mean anything at all, transformed as it is into pure consciousness, a virtual singularity-machine. Plenty here for the transhumanists to mull over.

A good book. It's well-written, though quite dense given its relative conciseness. There are three significant strengths here: first, the way in which Protevi uses research in cognitive science, psychology, anthropology and ethnography to emphasise the importance of prosocial human behaviour in 'primitive' pre-state societies; the engagement with the work of Rousseau in this respect was fascinating. The broader anthropological dimension was also very interesting via his engagement with James C. Scott's work on pre-state societies. The second strength of the book is the usage of a Deleuzo-Guattarian framework which helps provide a very strong theoretical underpinnings for the phenomena describes across the above literature (see the discussion of pre-state prosociality wrt the Urstaat). The final strength is that it also provides a great compendium of sources you can go out and look up to go more in-depth with this material. It provides some great, simple explanation of complex ideas in Deleuze and Guattari's work as well as anthropology from Scott and Clastres as well as debates in the contemporary literature across a range of intersecting disciplines.

My main source of disappointment is simply that I was hoping that the conclusions would be more radical than they really were in this book. Despite having persuasively argued for the important role of prosociality in humans, our relative mental plasticity, the role of (affective-cognitive) ideology in structuring our perceptual patterns, the double-violence of statism (in its abyssal, conquering foundation and then in the ongoing violence which perpertuates it), John Protevi concludes "as a good modern liberal" (p. 72) that the conclusion we should draw is really a kind of moral principle or ethic: "act such that you nurture the capacity to enact repeatable active joyous encounters of positive sympathetic care and fair cooperation for self and others without qualification." (p. 69) Which is nice. Really. But I was really expecting to see more of an anti-statist edge here, especially when he's building the argument largely from an engagement with Deleuze and Guattari, Clastres and James C. Scott - whose common link is that they're all anarchists! The other possibly blind-spot for Protevi is that in focusing on microfascism (vital, to be sure), he thereby restricts the target of critique to Fascism-as-such, rather than investigating the ways in which capitalism and the state structure the social field in such a way as to inevitably produce such affects, investing desire in the ways described. Then again, books in this publishing series are always relatively short and not meant to be comprehensive, so I hope to find discussion of this elsewhere.

That said, it's very well worth reading and I'm glad I took the time to read it. I'm sure I'll read it again in the near future, as it's very dense and I think repeat-readings will help to condense the huge range of arguments and ideas presented here.

A fascinating, powerful, and highly persuasive call for a radical destitution - exit - from capitalism and the state. Drawing on thinkers like Deleuze, Schmitt, Agamben and Lyotard, what we find here is a text of surprising depth given its polemical style. I'm still mulling over and processing much of what this book has to say, but I appreciate the way in which it ties these theorists together and gives them a coherent praxis: pursuing lines of flight, of escape, of building communism here and now between each other, of uniting with others in friendship, as well as against the enemy. Conflict is at the heart of this work: the necessity of it, the inevitability of it, but also its productive potential. Beyond this, there are touching observations about the debasement of language itself, the disrepute of politics, the power of individuals to come together in assemblages which are more than the sum of their parts, the latent violence all around us, our entrapment within the false rhizome of an increasingly monopolised internet, and the vitality of forms of life and affect in producing radical change.

(My only small criticism is their unnecessarily antagonistic relation to Marxists. For example, they briefly criticise Marxists for failing to appreciate Capitalism's capacity to valorize and commodify even the human subject. This is something Marxists have been talking about for many decades already, as have Anarchists of course. It's not really a fair criticism.)

Hard to know where to begin with a book like this. It's been a long while since I last read it, and a significant amount of academic study and development has taken place in the intervening years. It's also hard to know how one even applies something so pithy as a 'rating' to a book whose importance and influence of such a magnittude. There's little I can contribute which has not been said before, many times, and by far greater readers and thinkers than I. For me, there are two major points which we can take from this book:

The first is that this provides a fascinating and concise clarification of Marx and Engels' conception of the development of Capitalism into Communism and the relationship of the revolutionary proletariat to the state. Lenin convincingly shows, with substantial textual evidence from both the public writings and private correspondence of both Marx and Engels, what it is that Marxism has to say about these developments. The necessity to smash the state, to build upon its rubble a new structure which can ensure the dictatorship of the proletariat on something like the model of the Paris Commune, and that insofar as - over time - the ordinary duties of the state are taken up and enacted by individuals, with socialism eliminating the rule of hte bourgeoisie, the state as such will necessarily wither away.

The other point - or 'question' (or 'problematic?') - which I drew from this is about the kind of society illustrated here. And I don't mean the usual liberal cries of how 'authoritarian' it is, while completely glossing over the far more pervasive authoritarianism of the capitalist state. I'm really thinking about ideas and views I've derived from studying thinkers like Foucault (on power and authority), Deleuze (on the development of the state and the nomadic war-machine), Le Comité invisible, and thinkers within the Frankfurt School. It was prompted, at least in part, by the following passage:

"For when all have learned to administer and really independently administer social production, independently keep accounts and exercise control over the idlers, the gentlefolk, the swindlers and other such 'guardians of the traditions of capitalism', then any escape from this popular accounting and control will inevitably become so incredibly difficult, such a rare exception, and will probably be accompanied by so swift and serious a punishment (for the armed workers are practical people and not sentimental little intellectuals, and they will not scarcely allow anyone to mess around with them) that the necessity to observe the uncomplicated basic rules of all human intercourse will very soon become a habit.

And then the door will be opened wide for the transition from the first phase of communist society towards its higher phase, and simultaneously towards the complete withering away of the state."

Such a society could be summarised in a single sentence: A generalised panopticon. Yes, the state will indeed have withered away (if we adopt Lenin's definition, i.e. a specialised force and bureaucracy), because it will have been installed within every single one of our heads. Who needs a centralised state when each of us can simply perform the role ourselves in a decentralised and collective manner? Far more efficient, far less costly, far better for profits.

Who can read the following lines and not feel their revolutionary fervour reaching a tremendous peak?

"The whole of society will have become a single office and a single factory with equality of labour and equality of pay."

As if the problem was the lack of equal labour and equal pay, and not the very fact that the whole of society has already become nothing more than a single office and a single factory floor! Of course, Lenin does go on to clarify that this is only one step of progress towards further necessary progress - but I cannot see how this is progress at all. It seems still so caught up in the workerist spirit of Capitalism itself to prove any kind of stepping stone towards revolutionary and emancipatory change. It is a text entirely dominated by what we could today called workerism that was so prevalent at the time.

Capitalism's developments since Lenin's writings have not been so radical that Lenin cannot speak to us today - in particular, his critique of social democratic 'opportunists' resonates - but on this problematic he appears outmoded. Capitalism has already reduced society to nothing more than a single office and factory - these contemporary developments have been analysed brilliantly both in [b:Anti-Oedipus|17188217|Anti-Oedipus|Gilles Deleuze|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1394369559l/17188217.SY75.jpg|113899] and in [b:Empire|26694|Empire|Michael Hardt|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388196457l/26694.SY75.jpg|27374] - and it is precisely this remorseless workerism and bureaucratisation which is so oppressive today.

I do not want humanity to be free to work, and to be raised to diligently aspire to nothing more. I want humanity to be free from work and from the oppressive force of both the state and capitalism.

I do not mean this as a total repudiation of Lenin. The man was such a towering intellect it would be unforgivably arrogant of me to claim anything of the sort. And he doesn't simply "give us some useful ideas", he provides us with a powerful outline of what it means to be revolutionary. Perhaps we need to ask if the revolutionary task requires even more today, in a condition where we have seen that bureaucratism was in no way diminished - but in fact extended - across the Soviet Union and the rest of the developed western world.

While its brevity deprives it of the room to more fully develop its arguments, I think Culp's intervention here is absolutely pivotal in Deleuze studies and contemporary critical theory. He is fundamentally correct in his basic assertions: That Deleuze has been co-opted by liberals and Silicon Valley-esque nerds, and that we need to develop a new engagement with his work (especially those works with Guattari, in my view) which rejects the naive 'joyfulness' of much New Materialist ontology in favour of a much more negative, critical approach. This is clearly meant as a kind of 'manifesto', a direction of travel, a line of flight to explore and deepen, and in that regard I think it makes that case very well given its impressive command over Deleuze (and Guattari's) extensive literature. I enjoyed the references to Tiqqun and The Invisible Committee, though I think they're tackling things in slightly different ways: Tiqqun, for example, are attempting to reground anarchist praxis and theory in a more theoretically sophisticated set of engagements with thinkers like Foucault, Agamben, and Deleuze; Culp is trying to engage in a slightly more 'academic' affair, but with clear political implications which are slightly underdeveloped.

We've had enough of 'connection' and 'transparency'; these are just so many tools Empire uses to control us, tracking our behaviours, thoughts, moods and inclinations. We've had enough of 'affirmation', of being Nietzsche's ass who only says yes because it doesn't know how to say no, of 'affirming' the multiplicities of garbage and interchangeable commodities as the vector of contemporary freedom. If we are to affirm, we must first destroy those structures of power which suppress the latent virtualities within society. Dark Deleuze is important, we should read it, and we should heed its call. The 'joyful' possibility Deleuze offers can only be possible over the corpse of this world.

A Situationist manifesto for the 21st century: Against capitalism, against the state. Written in a venomous but lyrical prose, appropriately total disdain for western society is communicated in both the text and the aura. Subtextual references are made to certain thinkers (they reappropriate terminology from Deleuze & Guattari frequently, writing in terms of flows and multiplicities against representation), but by and large this should be understood as a series of interconnected analyses of the ills of market democracy. The critical point they reach, and it is a crucial one, is that these crises are inherent in capitalism, they are co-existence with it; you can't have one without the other. Even the climate crisis is being repackaged as yet another means of putting us to work in order to preserve the production of producers and consumers, of sustaining capitalism and the state yet again.

The problem I have with this text, though not one which I take to fatally undermine the arguments of this text, ultimately comes down to one of political praxis, which is of central concern to these anonymous French anarchists in this short book's later chapters. They condemn Marxism for its failure to realise in practice what it advocated for in theory; yet the tactical micro-politics advocated for in this manifesto (a manifesto written, appropriately, in 2007) have evidently likewise failed to properly enact the results they have hoped for. The successes of these micro-political actions - of communes, which [a: Comité invisible|935255|Comité invisible|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] place at the centre of their 'program', of riots, self-organisation, the rejection of all forms of hierarchy and representation - have evidently failed to bring about any serious or fundamental changes in the character of western capitalism. I look forward therefore to reading their more recent thoughts as I hope will be developed in [b:To Our Friends|24783898|To Our Friends|Comité invisible|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1426733812l/24783898.SY75.jpg|44417204] and [b:Now|34551014|Now|Comité invisible|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1490786297l/34551014.SY75.jpg|55691754] which might take stock, take account, of the limitations clearly faced by these tactics in the intervening years.

A powerful, beautifully written, provocative manifesto burning with a hatred for the world and a hope that things could be better.

Beyond this, a few passages stood out to me as particularly noteworthy.

On subjectivity:
"Contrary to what has been repeated to us since childhood, intelligence doesn't mean knowing how to adapt–or if that is a kind of intelligence, it is the intelligence of slaves. Our inadaptability, our fatigue are only problems from the perspective of what aims to subjugate us. They indicate rather a starting point, a meeting point, for new complicities. They reveal a landscape more damaged, but infinitely more sharable than all the fantasy lands this society maintains for its purpose. We are not depressed; we're on strike." p. 34

On the postmodernisation of work:
"Here lies the present paradox: work has totally triumphed over all other ways of existing, at the same time as workers have become superfluous. Cains in productivity, outsourcing, mechanization, automated and digital production have so progressed that they have almost reduced to zero the quantity of living labor necessary in the manufacture of any product. We are living the paradox of a society of workers without work, where entertainment, consumption and leisure only underscore the lack from which they are supposed to distract us. The mine at Carmaux, famous for a cenntury of violent strikes, has now been converted into Cape Discovery. It's an entertainment 'multiplex' for skateboarding and biking, distinguished by a 'Mining Museum' in which methane blasts are simulated for vacationers." p. 46

On 'the environment':
"There is no 'environmental catastrophe'. The catastrophe is the environment itself. The environment is what's left to man after he's lost everything. Those who live in a neighborhood, a street, a valley, a war zone, a workshop–they don't have an 'environment', they move through a world peopled by presences, dangers, friends, enemies, moments of life and death, all kinds of beings. Such a world has its own consistency, which varies according to the intensity and quality of the ties attaching us to all of these beings, to all of these places. It's only we, the children of the final dispossession, exiles of the final hour–who come into the world in concrete cubes, pick our fruits at the supermarket, and watch for an echo of the world on television–only we get to have an environment. And there's no one but us to witness our own annihilation, as if it were just a simple change of scenery, to get indignant about the latest progress of the disaster, to patiently compile its encyclopedia." p. 74

On civilizational collapse:
"The West is a civilization that has survived all the prophecies of its collapse with a singular stratagem. Just as the bourgeoisie had to deny itself as a class in order to permit the bourgeoisification of society as a whole, from the worker to the baron; just as capital had to sacrifice itself as a wage relation in order to impose itself as a social relation–becoming cultural capital and health capital in addition fo finance capital; just as Christianity had to sacrifice itself as a religion in order to survive as an affective structure–as a vague injunction to humility, compassion, and weakness; so the West has sacrificed itself as a particular civilization in order to impose itself as a universal culture. The operation can be summarized like this: an entity in its death throes sacrifices itself as a content in order to survive as a form." p. 91