The autonomists did not grasp that the oppressors took advantage of the limitations of a rebellion that took militant action, but lacked organization, leadership, and ideological coherence. Moreover, they celebrate these features as a sign of the uprising’s novelty (“a festival without programs, nor objectives”). The assemblies emerged when the collapse of government institutions turned neoliberal propaganda against politicians and the “government” into a radicalized mobilization against the entire regime. The assemblies focused popular participation in the key moments of the uprising, but they declined when the ruling class regained the reigns of power. Many autonomists refuse to see this, forgetting that the oppressed cannot liberate themselves if they do not develop their own political project. They do not consider this to be an obstacle because they think that the social movements will construct a new society from the spontaneous act of rebellion.
(...) The autonomists refuse to grasp the fact that the representatives of the ruling classes co-opt many popular movements. They do not recognize the importance of the challenges that confront the Ecuadorian indigenous movement, the landless of Brazil, or the cocaleros of Bolivia in the face of betrayals, neoliberal policies, and right-wing repression from the governments that emerged from their struggles. They promote an idyllic image of the social movements, acting as if these groups advance from strength to strength.
(...) The autonomists trust in the sufficiency of the social struggle and dismiss the necessity of a socialist political project of the oppressed. They think that the accumulated experience in popular action leads to the spontaneous development of anti-capitalist sentiments within the population. But if it were so simple, the MST of Brazil would not be forced to fight the disillusionment created by Lula and the piqueteros would not be fragmented in the face of Kirchner’s machinery of cooptation. Nor would the Zapatistas feel compelled to participate in the crisis unleashed by the attempt to drive López Obrador out of office.
(...) Actions of this type would permit the development of an emancipatory political practice in the face of the alienation of capitalism. Holloway11 correctly emphasizes that the fetishism created by this system not only conceals exploitation, but it also unleashes liberating responses from the oppressed. But he reduces these acts of resistance to spontaneous anti-commercial acts (“the child that forgets to pay”) or to basic expressions of rebellion (“the worker who resists”). He disregards the fact that these acts alone can only lead to experiments with fleeting forms of liberation. In order to do away with capitalist domination, the exploited need to go further than Holloway’s “constant anti-fetishization” to embrace a socialist political program and action.
(...) These characterizations adequately take account of the brutal changes that have been created by the opening of local markets to imports, the corporatization of agriculture, the shuttering of numerous industries, and the recession in the world market. But from the recognition of these transformations it does not follow that there has been a radical change in the protagonists of social struggle. The autonomists do not see that the map of resistance in Latin America is very diverse and differentiated. The weight of rural sectors in the Andean region coexists with the preeminence of urban workers in the Southern Cone and the notable presence of public employees in all countries. The most significant feature of this process is the mixture of traditions between social subjects who share methods of struggle. To emphasize the role of the excluded at the expense of formal workers is to downplay this multiplicity and convergence.
(...) The autonomists magnify the role of the excluded at the expense of traditional workers, because they place more weight on the relations of domination than on the forms of exploitation. They have lost sight of the neurological center of capitalist reproduction located in the extraction of surplus value. For this reason, they tend to take up certain notions of post-industrialism and interpret the retreat of the traditional workers’ movement as a symptom of the structural decline of work. They forget that, whatever the dislocations or changes in the labor process there have been, capitalism would cease to exist without workers’ labor. Understood this way, the arguments of the autonomists lose all meaning.
(...) The operation of the contemporary economy and the complexity of the political choices that confront society today demand that we delegate authority and use legislative tools. The different forms of direct democracy proposed by autonomists could only contribute in a complementary way to the organization of society in the process of constructing a socialist society.
(...) Other critics of the radical Left question the Leninist conception of constructing firm political organizations dedicated to promoting socialist consciousness. They think that this strategy disdains the self-emancipatory capacity of workers and leads to Stalinist totalitarianism. This appraisal distorts Lenin’s advocacy of building of stable organizations in order to transform the social struggle into conscious workers’ political action. The Bolshevik leader also emphasized the role of organization in confronting powerful enemies. In the conditions of clandestine struggle against Tsarism he argued for rigorous organization, but he never claimed this was a universal model of revolutionary action. He always encouraged the adaptation of forms of organization to changing political realities (for example, emphasizing professionalism in some periods and flexibility in others). To present Lenin as a precursor to Stalinist massacres is a liberal caricature. To interpret any political discipline as inexorably leading to terror would mean that we would have to object to all forms of collective structure, including those adopted by social movements that the autonomists support!
(...) “Changing the world without taking power” is the strategic project of many autonomists. But how can one avoid the state? How can the target of every popular demand be ignored? The state can be combated or reformed, but it cannot be ignored. All demands made by social movements are directed towards the state. The Zapatistas demand pro-indigenous legislation from the Mexican congress, the piqueteros demand unemployment benefits from the Argentine Ministry of Labor, and the MST raises the demand of expropriation of land and the legalization of landless peasants’ encampments to the Brazilian parliament. In “developed” countries, “illegal” immigrants demand citizenship rights (France) and public housing residents ask for social legislation. The last of these are particularly “statist” demands.
(...) Holloway counsels against any form of power because he concludes that any exercise of power will reproduce oppression. But he doesn’t take into account the fact that refusing to take over the state leads to the preservation of the status quo and the consolidation of the impoverishment of the dispossessed. If we want to change the world, it is not enough to reject the state. We have to look for strategies to extinguish it progressively until the end of a process of socialist transition. This transformation would necessarily begin with the establishment of a new state administered by the popular majority. The proposal to change the world without taking power disqualifies one road without suggesting another. Thus, it leaves us with a bitter sensation of impotence. It demands insubordination and rebelliousness, but it never suggests how to triumph in the difficult battle against oppression.