The Unbearable Lightness of Feathers

Love looks not with the mind, but with the eyes; My last post was eighty-five days ago. For me, a lot has changed, within the realm of politics and the realm of everyday life (as if the two were inseperable!). I have changed the title of my blog from 'reading lenin in america' to 'fragments of reason'. This is not without purpose. My political line has shifted far to the left of orthodox Leninism — having more in common with Negri, Bonefeld, & Ponnekoek than Lenin, Trotsky, & Bukharin.

Communism is not a correct line formulated by party intellectuals, to the contrary, it is practical anti-capitalism — a ‘revolutionary project of human emancipation’. This project goes far beyond the traditional ‘class politics’ of Leninism. It rejects the concept of a working class monolith in favour of conceiving the working class a a multitude — ‘a multiplicity of exploited singularities’ — embracing the various gender and ethnic struggles and variations in class struggle for the different members of the working class.

I would not go as far as saying I am an ‘autonomist’ or ‘libertarian communist’. I still support national liberation struggles, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the organisation of the working class. But, I support national liberation struggles in so far as they progressive. This is a position I have always held. I support the dictatorship of the proletariat as a federation of workers’ councils that acts in the interests of the working class. I support the organisation of the working class as a multitude with varying interests and degrees of oppression.

There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels for someone, for someone, pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echos.