richard-day-gramsci-is-dead

204 Gramsci is Deadsocial organization. They are working to reverse the colonizationof everyday life by taking control over—and responsibility for—theconduct of their own affairs. Nothing is more important today thanbuilding, linking and defending autonomous communities of thissort. They offer the only hope of even partially escaping the disastersbeing brought upon all of us by the ongoing intensification of theworst effects of capitalism, the state form, racism, heterosexism andthe domination of nature.In this book I hope to have shown that much of this kind of activityis already going on. What signs are there, though, to indicate that itmight accelerate? Will there continue to be gaps and margins in theneoliberal order, or will the societies of control be able to approximatemore closely their goal of a perfect and total order? Without fallinginto the early twentieth-century marxist trap of relying upon historical‘necessity’ rather than action, it is still possible to argue that the logicof capital itself can be an ally. For example, if we pull our heads outof the mass media for even a moment, it becomes obvious that the‘globalized’ world of friction-free consumption covers only a verysmall portion of the planet, including a few dozen mega-cities and thetransportation networks that connect them. Friction-free production,of course, exists nowhere, but the global division of labour and massmedia self-censorship allow those living out the neoliberal fantasy topretend that it does; we do not have to experience the assassinationof labour leaders, the destruction of young women’s bodies, thepoisoning of entire cities and countries, that allow us to enjoy athrowaway life. But even this vision is too much under the sway ofneoliberal ideology, for there is no large urban centre within any firstworldenclave that does not contain areas of great deprivation. This isto say that the brave new world, just like the old world, is founded onexploitation, and therefore must create and amplify inequalities of allkinds. A capitalist system simply cannot be a totalized system, sincethere would be no one and nothing to exploit, no potential for profit.Globalization is in this sense a huge sham, akin to the signboards onthe way to town and the pictures of gourmet meals in Terry Gilliam’sfilm Brazil. For every island of apparent perfection that neoliberalismcreates, there will arise more gaps, lacks and margins, more places thatare not sufficiently profitable to locate production, too impoverishedto provide markets for consumption, nor sufficiently ‘beautiful’ (i.e.untainted by capitalist exploitation!) to function as sites for thehomes of media stars and the neoliberal elites.