Relief

What a relief, the world is over, it is no longer in question, there is nothing to be done, what respite for our consciences. It’s concluded, it’s conclusive, we really biffed it, we did nothing, and we have no one but ourselves to blame.

What a relief, to have finally conclusively failed, to be cleared of the possibility of more responsibility, more guilt. We had nothing to win but blame and recrimination, and now we’ve won all of it. 

What a relief, in 100 years everything will be underwater, canoe tours of Manhattan, snorkel tours of Venice, the massive citadels living glorious deaths beneath two meters of seawater, capital and capitols finally underwater, nothing truly insolvent under the erosion of time. Only the orgiastic joy of the end.

Should we not burn every drop of fuel in one massive fire, should we not organize a worldwide Grande Bouffe, should we not eat until we all die of indigestion or fuck until we all die of starvation, should we not greet the sweet slow lapping of the ocean on the coast line with a sweet lapping all our own, should we not join together finally in the unity of the age, should we not hold parades to death, should we not perform the art of dying all at once to prevent ourselves from dying slowly? 

Did you feel it, there, in between the lines of the New York Times’ somber tone, do you feel that desire, that celebration of death, that sweet fascism of the inevitability of humanity’s failure?

We’ve already murdered all futures. To do nothing is genocidal, yet to do anything is genocidal, genocide is here, we’ve made it real, so why worry?

Because that “we” is the lie shrouded within (and productive of) all this millenarian truth. You believe the NYT’s “we”, you think “we’re” all in this together, that “we” caused this? As long as the political horizon includes this “we” then all “we” can do is survive. Survival applied to a global “we” built by the concealing-through-catastrophe of all division—not only the division-of-labor but also of sexuality, gender, race—and “we” will discover, in “our” long decline, the increased rationalization of an ever-more-direct division-of-suffering. 

Starving, drowning, dying of thirst, becoming the refugees of an ecological disaster or resource war, this is the future of work for the massive surplus-populations of the global proletariat. Being-excess, eking what tiny value can be won from the toxic scrap heaps, living slow and dying young: this is already the labor of much of the toiling classes. As ecology collapses the capitalist becomes more literally vampiric: if clean air is scarce, then only the slow choking of the poor can make him rich. 

Is it not possible to see the shift toward service work as a less obviously murderous step on this path toward the direct extraction of life, of lived-excess, of joy? The smiles and cheery good will, the happiness of the service worker is the ruthlessly extracted product at the front lines of economic innovation. The privilege of the working class in the Global North is to have your quantum of surplus-life extracted more slowly, "how can I help you" by "how can I help you".

Now more than ever we must kill the owners and smash the state, because as scarcity becomes more and more actually material, manufactured-scarcity will become even more terribly desperate. The enclosure of the possibility of joy adds to the historical task of the revolutionary the need to produce a world which, in the face of ecological collapse, can produce a joy that rejects all deathly logics, that rejects the “we” that must survive, that builds an us that can live, truly live. 

No to the prophets of resilience, who tell us every catastrophe can be withstood, as long as we stay exactly where we are, piling sandbags and building seawalls!

No to the surgeons of survival, who believe politics means deciding who and where must be excised from the body-ecologic!

No to the partisans of death, who say since it is all already over, there is only further division, so do something and get dividing!

It will be the creativity of the masses again become historical subject, or else all there will be is the cold unfolding of an increasingly miserable survival cut through with moments of the hot suicidal embrace of mass-death.

How to live through the re-emergent despair of the post-movement: Some suggested withouts

To face the despair without drowning it out in work, in career, in the mistaken impression that years lived for work can be easily shunted aside, maybe so but probably not so much, to not confuse work no matter what work with being alive. 

To face the despair without letting it reconcile us to the state, to elections, to liberalism reformism or socialism because maybe just maybe they’ll help to communicate with the people outside our little bubbles, to, “actually get something done” to spread the good word, they will only silence that word inside you.

To face the despair without thinking “actually getting something done” is a parameter of living, without thinking living has parameters, schemas, plans and blueprints.

To face the despair without turning it into disgust, a disgust with ourselves we turn into a disgust for our comrades for “the left” for every project we might have been a part of in the foolish ecstasy of our living, a disgust that makes us isolationist, alone or in groups filled with the self-righteousness of withdrawal: the transformation of self disgust into disgust with the Other is fascism.

To face our despair without being impatient for not being done facing it, without letting that impatience lead us with dignified resignation to becoming again a citizen, to begin in earnest a life of order and peace.

To face our despair without pretending we have finished facing it, that we are through it, that anything except the resumption of struggle can defeat it.

To face our despair without thinking whatever projects we have now are communism, they cannot be they will not be though they may help us be ready to begin to move towards it.

To face our despair without letting it lead our critique,

To face our despair without merely waiting,

To face our despair without merely acting in order to act.

To face our despair without letting is turn us into our parents, our bosses, our police, our ex-es, our couple formation, the opposites of our past selves, the parodic exaggeration of our past selves, ourselves.

To face our despair and know that it is the despair of without, without trying to replace that without with what is built only to fill it.

Left-Unity Platform Proposal: Potential Positions for a New Party Formation

We will be the leather knot that rests
between the ring and middle
fingers on the grip of the handle of the scourge.
Barefoot through every town.

We will be two dozen
strategically placed hairs
on an uncomfortable shirt.

We will be the fingernails that catch
in the follicles and empty them.
We will be the sharpness of the tearing.

We will be the (unseemly, unglamorous,
but we must all sacrifice)
plaque build-up beneath the gnashing
gnashing gnashing.
We will lead to heart disease.
We will smash open the walls of the aorta,
we will force our way from the chest
past the ribcage, through the skin,
we will spill out under the breast pocket,
as the body collapses it will spit us into the gutter,
we will run together with the rain
we will be one with the people.
The sewer will gape open beneath us.



Victory comrades!