richard-day-gramsci-is-dead

Doing it Yourself: Direct-action Currents in Contemporary Radical Activism 45the logic of reform/revolution by refusing to work through the state,party, or corporate forms. Instead, they are driven by an orientation tomeeting individual/group/community needs by direct action. Not onlydo they refuse to deploy traditional tactics that seek to alter/replaceexisting nodes of power/signification, their own organizationalstructures are designed so as to avoid situations where one individualor group is placed ‘above’ others in a hierarchical relationship. Manyof these formations are aware of, participate in and support eachother’s activities and struggles—many squats see themselves asTAZs, are allied with IMC and FNB groups, and link up with localstruggles against gentrification, racism and police brutality as wellas helping to mobilize regionally, nationally and internationallyfor anti-globalization education and activism. Many of the samepeople work under different banners at different times, without facingcharges of ‘incorrectness’ or ‘going over to the enemy’. Networks likePeople’s Global Action and Via Campesina, and convergences suchas the World Social Forum are working globally to make the samekinds of links.These organizations, and others like them, will be discussed in greaterdetail in Chapter 6, as prefigurations of the coming communities, ornon-corporate, non-statist federations. In this chapter my goal hasbeen limited to showing that many of the most vibrant elements ofcontemporary radical activism are driven by a common political logicthat escapes the categories of traditional social movement theories.Unlike revolutionary struggles, which seek totalizing effects acrossall aspects of the existing social order by taking state power, andunlike the politics of reform, which seeks global change on selectedaxes by reforming state power, these movements/networks/tacticsdo not seek totalizing effects on any axis at all. 13 Instead, they setout to block, resist and render redundant both corporate and statepower in local, national and transnational contexts. And in so doing,they challenge the notion that the only way to achieve meaningfulsocial change is by way of totalizing effects across an entire ‘national’or ‘international’ society. That is, they are undoing the hegemonyof hegemony that guides (neo)liberal and (post)marxist theory andpractice. Taking this project further in the appropriate theoreticalcontexts is the task of the next chapter, which examines the attemptsof these dominant traditions to ‘understand’—that is, to co-opt anddomesticate—the newest social movements.