CounterHegemony 8 - Consent and Coercion

CounterHegemony 8 - Consent and Coercion

Download it directly
or subscribe to the podcast by pasting this URL into your podcatcher software (itunes, ipodder, etc.) : http://counterhegemony.libsyn.org/rss

Alright folks, first, let me say something I say in this podcast. This theory stuff is great, and I hope to come back to it often, but I really kind of like that activist methods series. And really, this podcasting thing isn't rocket science. So if you want to be interviewed, know someone who outta be, or would like to go out interview somebody yourself, drop me a quick e-mail with your idea and I'll be in touch so we can sort out the details. Seriously -- the software is cheap and easy (not to be confused with.... never mind!), so if you want to contribute something, just say the word.

About this podcast - consent and coercion. Fun stuff. Pretty straightforward concepts, but quite central to understanding how the dominant power structure polices its boundaries, so to speak. For the macro level, there's a lot of stuff out there, but I recommend having a look at the documentary Life and Debt. It does a really good job at illustrating the connection between those big globalization institutions like WTO, IMF, World Bank, and poverty in "developing" countries like Jamaica.

Also I quote some Gramsci in here. For those geeks out there, you can get the full thing from 'Selection from the Prison Notebooks" on page 259 in the State and Civil Society chapter.

The full quote is:

"Hegel's doctrine of parties and associations as the "private" woof of the State. This derived historically from the political experiences of the French Revolution, and was to serve to give a more concrete character to constitutionalism. Government with the consent of the governed—but with this consent organised, and not generic and vague as it is expressed in the instant of elections. The State does have and request consent, but it also "educates" this consent, by means of the political and syndical associations; these, however, are private organisms, left to the private initiative of the ruling class. Hegel, in a certain sense, thus already transcended pure constitutionalism and theorised the parliamentary State with its party system. But his conception of association could not help still being vague and primitive, halfway between the political and the economic; it was in accordance with the historical experience of the time, which was very limited and offered only one perfected example of organisation—the "corporative" (a politics grafted directly on to the economy). Marx was not able to have historical experiences superior (or at least much superior) to those of Hegel; but, as a result of his journalistic and agitational activities, he had a sense for the masses. Marx's concept of organisation remains entangled amid the following elements: craft organisation; Jacobin clubs; secret conspiracies by small groups; journalistic organisation.

“The French Revolution offered two prevalent types. There were the "clubs"—loose organisations of the "popular assembly" type, centralised around individual political figures. Each had its news­paper, by means of which it kept alive the attention and interest of a particular clientele that had no fixed boundaries. This clientele then upheld the theses of the paper in the club's meetings. Certainly, among those who frequented the clubs, there must have existed tight, select groupings of people who knew each other, who met separately and prepared the climate of the meetings, in order to support one tendency or another—depending on the circumstances and also on the concrete interests in play."

Remember folks, the French Revolution was when the capitalists took it from the aristocrats -- no small feat, but something we're trying to one-up.

Music:
Theme De Yoyo, Cinematic Orchestra
Scene 4 From "Man With A Movie Camera", Alloy Orchestra?
Livin' in America, Black '47