« Lazy Me | Main | For Shame »
Past, passages?
So, the CPE did not pass!
There is some skepticism regarding the withdrawal of the CPE, with decisions to continue occupations of some universities and schools, as well as blockades of two ports by CGT unionists in the early hours and a couple of train blockades. Although (perhaps not unsurprisingly) the CFDT seems to have declared "the objective acheived" (via libcom).
Tim gets up on the wrong side of ontology. And some initial, though since updated, remarks here. What do others think of the scrapping of the CPE? Is it a zero-sum game of 'victory-defeat' or a significant moment of strategy, of movement and obstacle? Are there other questions to ask? (picture via)
By s0metim3s | April 10, 2006 in France, Protest | Permalink
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/361357/4637926
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Past, passages?:
Comments
http://www.nplusonemag.com/index.html
Posted by: | Apr 10, 2006 2:21:04 PM
The ultra right claims this is the sign of a UMP-CGT arrangement. I don't think we should join them. This was forced down the government's throat, and it nearly split it. It will probably really put on the brakes on this kind of 'reform' for the medium term in France.
Obviously, this is a significant victory. I'm surprised they caved in so much. I think that this has to be put down in part to the unexpected resolve of the unions, the idiocy of the UMP for not compromising more seriously - all of which left the government exposed to the power of the street. The question now for the French is where to go from here. What kind of organization have they managed to build? Is the link between the students and the workers a marriage of convenience, or is there now hope for ongoing struggle? To what extent has attention been drawn beyond the CPE, to issues of casualisation in general and even more fundamental issues of wage slavery?
Basically, I don't think there is much to comment beyond that. As for this being a moment of recuperation - well, if you're sufficiently rad... actually: narcissistic, no victory will fail to be a defeat. Politics will be reclaimed by the apparatus if people let it be reclaimed. My intuition is that cute manifestos will make no difference, however, and the real work is en el calle.
...and let's hope this virus spreads.
Posted by: tco | Apr 10, 2006 6:56:45 PM
"the scrapping of the CPE?"
You mean like, say, Bush's announcement of the end of the war in Iraq three years ago?
Posted by: Padraig | Apr 10, 2006 7:07:28 PM
Something like that Padraig.
Some commentary on the withdrawal of the CPE from the libcom site here and here.
Btw, T, given that the first set of questions you pose (about whether the struggles continue, etc), as well as your hope that the virus spreads, is very much linked to whether declarations of victory amount to a cessation of a politics of the street, I have no idea how the accusations of 'narcissism', etc accumulated their steam.
Posted by: s0metim3s | Apr 10, 2006 10:46:37 PM
The wsws has a nice pamphlet about the situation as it is now, but those guys are hopelessly stuck within exactly the self-defeating narcissistic bubble I am talking about.
You see, they seem unwilling to accept that there could possibly have been a victory. In part, this is embarrassing for them, in their own very narrow parameters (and me also, I fully expected this not to happen), because their raison d'etre is that the unions are beyond hope and would cave in sooner or later. Well, the unions did not cave in. So now we get Mk II of that argument, which is that the unions will only pretend to win on your behalf, and go about implementing evil Gaulist plans. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe this is an opportune time to force things further. Maybe the unions are more desperate than we thought.
The fact of the matter is that this is an incredible victory. To immediately compare the triumphant casseurs with Bush on the deck of th USS Jimminy Cricket or whatever it was, that's a colossal bit of pessimism - but really it goes beyond pessimism, it is the terminal stages of narcissist political self-regard. Ok, granted we have to play this game of saying much greater things are there to be won, but I don't see how this entails playing down accomplishments like the demolition of the CPE.
The problem, as I see it, and here I am talking about the kind of line the wsws takes, where the unions are totally beyond the pale and there is no party with the right line, blah blah blah...to me, it is that it wildly fucks up the analysis of what is at play in the present French situation. The way these people carry on, you'd think that there was a revolution in the offing; in fact, the possibilities are more modest, but also more encouraging, since they are at least real. Despite a nice manifesto here and there, the reality seems to be that this movement had reformist aims, was very much a matter of drawing a line in the sand. And I think it has succeeded. I think this will pour cold water on the wider Equal Opportunity implementation, though you need to fight that all the way. How better to start than with a victory? The offense, taking things from the CPE to the CDI or further - that's harder, and I don't think there was really that much consideration given to that, not at the kind of level of seriousness and mass action that would have yielded a result. I think the seeds are there, but it will take a lot of irrigation and composting to get them to bloom.
How does this fit in with narcissism? Well, the key problem of a struggle like the anti-CPE one - and here I am drawing an analogy to the situation we face presently in Australia (me, not for much longer, I leave this month!) - is to somehow fit these reformist victories into a project of struggle. A loss, in a sense, is easier for an oppositionist conscience to deal with. "You see, the whole world hates still! Reformism IS futile! My self-regard is intact!", whereas a victory poses something harder, really une pettit mort. How to fit that into one's work of struggle? It forces one to draw out what is possible from within oneself, from within the struggles. Maybe there is nothing - that's the horror haunting the properly narcissistic conscience. So long as you loose, the foreign bodies, the impurities, the compromises remain exterior, they remain the work of the other, and one's self remains untainted; but when YOU win, rather than having someone win on your behalf (aha! a fake victory! - you see?), then suddenly you are at stake, and by the same token the impurities, the possibility of failure, the compromises, they're within your ambit, you can't disavow them.
Ok, that made more sense in Portuguese, but do you get my drift? I don't like psychoanalysing people, but with the wsws, perdão pelo meu pecadinho. They are utterly brilliant analysists, but also totally neurotic, in the strictest sense. Have you met them?
Basically, the content of this commentary so far is: don't confuse the battle with the war. What I have said is just that given a certain kind of psychology of oppositionism - in fact, the one which tries to place itself beyond all oppositions is the worst offender - such thinking is completely impossible, because one must lose, or lose one's self, one's precious soul.
Posted by: tco | Apr 11, 2006 12:49:30 AM
Ok, granted we have to play this game of saying much greater things are there to be won
Calling it a game seems rather too, too cynical to me.
And, while I'd agree that the WSW (like many similar outfits) tend toward an analysis which could be read as 'clearing one's throat and pointing to oneself', that doesn't really suggest a pathology of 'oppositionism' to me so much as the routine polemical stance of the party/faction. Pathologising 'opposition', as if this in itself is the problem, lends itself far too easily to the suggestion that a) only reformism/reform is rational; b) that there is nothing at stake beyond libidinal investments in some theatrics of 'victory/defeat'; and/or b) that one's politics are rational because those one disagrees with are crazy.
Besides which, this is the kind of argument that has been levelled against the casseurs - that they are pathologically oppositional. It doesn't make that argument less odious to level it instead against the WSW mob.
Posted by: s0metim3s | Apr 11, 2006 2:55:51 AM
I don't know Angela, if that's not a nasty piece of misreading, I don't know what is. Sometimes, you are epigrammatic. Sometimes, you're just smug.
How you got from my posing a problem of how to relate struggle to reforms, to an assertion of reformism, I have no idea. Prejudice is my first suspicion. I also don't understand how you went from my suggestion that there is something narcissisitc about sectarianism - specially given nothing rides on the taking of these positions - to the idea that I think everyone I disagree with is crazy. As for how you came to think that I am pathologizing opposition, now that really is bonkers. Do you seriously think that I think opposition is pathological? Do you know who I am?
Let me put it another way: do you think that the problem with the WSWS is just that they have the wrong line ? Or is there something else at work? Isn't it interesting that nothing is ever a victory for these people? I am not a believer in psychoanalysis, but the concept of narcisism, the kind of personality that has to constantly purify itself, does describe the kind of thinking involved - and I am certainly not convinced that the WSWS is entirely rational. Selling a line to people - that would be rational, bad, but rational...
My opinion about 'oppositionalism' and pathologies in general is the very simple one: if it works for you, great! Want to toss fire to McDonalds because mummy and daddy didn't give you enough attention? Ok, go on, as long as something comes of it. Fucking burn the thing properly, and take Citibank down while you are at it. What I think is 'pathological' or at any rate problematic, is the kind of self-defeating attitude so obvious in these initial approaches to the CPE 'anti-climax'. If all that comes of this is that people get another reason to feel themselves superior to some french student union, fuck, that's really the pits. (In fact, contrary to the WSWS, the LCR and the student unions have vowed to fight on against other immediate reform targets, like the reast of the Equal Opportunity Law)
I don't think I am interposing my own politics on the situation. My own politics, not that this matters much, would be that it is foolish to have structured the movement around the CPE, they should have gone for the jugular. I wish your position had currency and traction, and that the movement were not, in reality, so timid. What I think we should not however, is understand the situation from the perspective of a great big absence, the absence of such politics as we would desire, or of a huge revolutionary insurgency in Paris, much less fantasize that there really is one. We should understand what potentialities exist in this actual situation we observe. They are considerable, I think, but really there is little we can say about them. There are real dangers, I think we're more or less in the situation I speculated about in your blog - clearly, Sarkozy wants to come out of this salvaging the worker-students by playing off the banlieues - but the extent of the Gaullist backdown is surprising, and if the unions and students arent' total imbecilles, they are in a strong position.
Posted by: tco | Apr 11, 2006 3:59:22 AM
That several universities have already voted to continue the strikes and traffic blockades is encouraging - given that I thought it might even tail off over the holidays without an announcement.
However, what we'll see now is a splitting off, at least some will stop now the CPE is dead, unless they propose something really stupid to replace it. It's unclear how many universities will stay on strike - early minister of education figures suggested around 25-30 - is that enough to keep going and take down the CNE as well? If the CFDT and the student unions withdraw support that may put a damper on things as well.
There's also new immigration legislation going through at the moment which could see a further flare up in the banlieues. It's very difficult to tell.
This needs to be seen in the context of a long game - there were school occupations last year - within the same academic year - about education reforms, same with the banlieue riots. Whether the CNE stays or goes, what'll be interesting is when the next thing gets pushed through - quite possibly pension reform like everywhere else - whether people have generalised enough to see it as the same thing and fight in the same way.
Posted by: catch | Apr 11, 2006 4:32:04 AM
Do you seriously think that I think opposition is pathological? Do you know who I am?...My opinion about 'oppositionalism' and pathologies in general is the very simple one: if it works for you, great! Want to toss fire to McDonalds because mummy and daddy didn't give you enough attention? Ok, go on
Ok, I'll bite. Who are you?
Thank you for the comment, catch. Would you be the runner of things over there? Thanks for keeping us informed, though the site appears to be down, at the moment.
Posted by: Charles | Apr 11, 2006 12:09:35 PM
I will tell you who I am not: I am not Alain Touraine, that's for sure.
Thanks for reconstructing a 'quote' from passages four paragraphs apart, omitting context. Wonderful.
Posted by: tco | Apr 11, 2006 7:59:06 PM
TCO wrote: "To immediately compare the triumphant casseurs with Bush on the deck of th USS Jimminy Cricket or whatever it was, that's a colossal bit of pessimism - but really it goes beyond pessimism, it is the terminal stages of narcissist political self-regard."
Well, not quite [and apologies for the confusions of brevity in my earlier post]: it was the French political cabal who are now "reconsidering the CPE" who were being compared [in that post] to Bush's theatrics. It is precisely because they [the CPE'ers] will now resort to "policy-implementation by other [covert-osmotic] means" that the current welcome victory needs to be recognised as just a beginning and not a plateau ...
Posted by: Padraig | Apr 11, 2006 8:07:57 PM
Apologies, but this comment has absolutely nothing to do with the CPE.
TCO, I began by asking a very simple question about whom your accusations about narcissism and uber-radicalism were directed at. This sounded pretty nasty to me. It seemed reasonable to suppose that they were in response to the above post, but hardly clear to me what you were taking issue with, so I asked.
Then you went on about the WSW, and tiraded about "a certain psychology of opposition" and whatever. I disagree with you because, for one, I think that's the same kind of argument directed at those who burnt cars in the banlieues. But, it might also be obvious, given the linked post over at my blog, that I don't think the answer to 'Is this a zero-sum game of victory/defeat' is 'yes'.
So, I've no idea who or what you continued to argue with about 'defeatism'. Padraig was pretty clear, brevity and all I think, but you accuse him of being "beyond pessimism, [in] the terminal stages of narcissist political self-regard".
All charming stuff from someone who wants to get indignant about smugness, nastiness, missreadings and, not least, the attention-seeking hostility.
I have nothing more to say to you.
Posted by: s0metim3s | Apr 12, 2006 10:17:48 AM
http://fistfulofeuros.net/archives/002492.php
Posted by: | Apr 20, 2006 4:10:52 PM
Post a comment
Please note: comments are published at the discretion of the post's author and will not appear immediately. Do not submit comments more than once.
