richard-day-gramsci-is-dead

20 Gramsci is Deadof the Soviet Union, they easily morph into new forms appropriateto different times and places, and thus are beginning to display thekind of diversity and differentiation that is required for ‘survival’ inthe hostile environment of neoliberal societies of control.Another important nuance is the linkage of these tactics toanarchism, which ranges from implicitly adopting traditionallyanarchist methods without an awareness of their origin, to explicitdisplay of the circle-A—which, of course, hardly makes thingsclear, since this emblem has been appropriated by everyone fromsuburban consumer rebels to software companies. I will use the term‘anarchistic’ to describe (what I see as) implicitly anarchist elementsin a group or tactic, reserving the term ‘anarchist’ for situations wherethere is an explicit self-identification. 1Finally, I should note that in researching this chapter I, along withothers involved in the Affinity Project, sometimes felt as though wewere working on a report for a counter-intelligence bureau. So, tominimize the chance that our work will compromise the security ofany group or network, we have ensured that all of the informationpresented here or on our website is publicly available, or comes frominterviews where the desire for anonymity has been respected.ZERO-PARTICIPATION: CRUSTY PUNKS AND LIFESTYLE ANARCHISTSThe first current I will address is the zero-work or drop-out tactic,which is associated with surrealism, the Situationist International(SI), and, most recently, anarcho-primitivism. Bob Black’s (1985) essay‘The Abolition of Work’ is a strong influence here. Black criticizesfeminists, liberals, marxists and most brands of anarchism for‘quibbling over the details’ of work without questioning the meaningand effects of work itself. ‘Almost any evil you’d care to name’, hesuggests, ‘comes from working or from living in a world designed forwork. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working.’ Althoughhis argument is highly polemical and more than a little reductive,Black makes interesting links between the ideology of work andcentralization, surveillance and authoritarianism. Classical marxistsand anarchists, of course, were aware of the deadening and dangerouseffects of labour under the capitalist system, but Black refuses theassumption that non-capitalist labour will be any more enjoyable.Rather, following the surrealists and situationists, he generalizes theclassical socialist critique to include work in the home and school aswell as the factory and office. In the background of this primitivist