CRACK CAPITALISM

11. This was written in an article on Oaxaca just a few weeks before the
repression: Vaneigem (2006). For a contrary argument, see Gelderloos
(2007): How Nonviolence Protects the State.
12. The writer of this book, and possibly many of the readers (if such there
be), receives his income from the state.
13. For an account of what this means in terms of day-to-day difficulties, see
Gonzalez (2009).
14. On this, see MTD de Solano and Colectivo Situaciones (2002); for the
contrast between MTD de Solano and MTD La Matanza in this, see
Habermann (2004). On the debates within the left of the Piquetero
movement, see Navarro Trujillo (2008).
15. A strong argument for seeing the state as the wrong way to do things is
developed by Scott (1998).
16. For a fuller discussion of the state as a peculiarly capitalist form of
organisation, see Holloway 2002/2005.
17. For a political-theoretical analysis centred on the concept of the victim,
see, for example, Dussel (2006).
18. La Jornada, 5 January 2008.
19. For a similar critique of the national-popular struggle, see Tischler (2008b).
20. For a really striking example of this, and of the contradictions involved in
the Venezuelan process, see a speech by Juan Barreto Cipriani, mayor of
Caracas, in 2007: 'Communal power must be capable of being exercised
over the society, dissolving the constituted state institutions. Assuming
itself as self-government. This is the role that we have to play, because the
existing state is the juridical form of the time of exploitation. It is the state
of capital, it is the power of ... a discourse opposed to the real exercise of
the power of the citizens. It is a body of concessions and practices that it is
necessary to dismantle. In the same way as the statist logic of the institutions
is perverse, so is the political logic of the party conceived as an instrumental
apparatus of power. It is not possible to get rid of the state without getting
rid of the party. As long as there exist circles that privatise or confiscate the
decisions that should be collective and appropriate the state apparatuses,
we shall not be able to go very far in the construction of a society that is
not statist and partyist' (Barreto Cipriani 2007: 14). My thanks to Daria
Azzelini for pointing this out to me.
21. See especially the excellent work by Azzelini (2009) on the strength and
difficulties of this process.
22. On this, see Wainwright (2003), Sullo (2002), De Sousa Santos (2003).
23. See Mazzeo (2007), but also Dussel (2006).
24. My view, at the time of writing, is that the Venezuelan process is still an
open one, but that in the case of Cuba the plastering hand outweighs the
hand that opens the crack. However, it would be quite wrong to think of
this as a final closure.
25. Raul Zibechi gives a striking figure to illustrate the enormous integrating
power of the state, especially in the case of 'progressive governments': there
are, he says, 270,000 NGOs contracted by the government and operating
in the cities of Brazil: they are staffed overwhelmingly by ex-militants (talk
given in the Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, Benemerita
Universidad Aut6noma de Puebla, December 2008).
26. For studies of this particular problem, see Sandoval (2007), Figueroa (2008).
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