pages 14..20

bolo-bolo/bolo-bolo.txt

@@ -250,4 +250,201 @@ deficits ever.  So there's no money, no place to go, and
 old guarantees go down the drain.  Nothing is left
 between you and "pure" capital.
 
+Another big change in the functioning of the A-deal
+consists in the geographical fragmentation of old
+homogenous A-deal areas.  As I already pointed out in
+1983, all three deals are present everywhere.  But there
+used to be blocs or regions, like North America or
+Western Europe, with a certain predominance of the A-
+deal.  This antediluvian attempt -- created by Roosevelt
+and Stalin in Yalta -- to divide the planetary proletariat
+along geographical demarcation lines, has definitely
+been undermined by the crisis of the respective deals on
+both sides.  This doesn't mean that there will be fewer or
+less-pronounced divisions; the end of the divisions
+would be the end of the machine.  But what we see now,
+more and more, is a kind of leopard-skin pattern of all
+the deals.  New York or Los Angeles resemble almost
+Third World cities, whereas the center of Rio looks like
+a cleaner mid-town Manhattan.  The predominant deal
+can differ from one neighborhood to the next.  A-deal
+areas become fortresses in a jungle of various C-deals
+and some B-deal leftovers.  The price the Machine had to
+pay to use the instrument of division called "nation"
+(solidified in turn by "blocs"), a certain minimal homo-
+geneity of incomes, has obviously risen too high.  There
+is no more national economy, just multinational compa-
+nies operating all over the planet, wherever profits can
+be made the easiest.  The "New World Order" is just the
+predator's dream of an unlimited hunting ground.  The
+Gulf War was not a national war, but an operation for
+the world economy as such.  The U.S. Army was just
+hired to do the job:  a new type of planetary Pinkertons.
+Living in an A-deal country guarantees less and less --
+you can be as poor in the U.S. as in Brazil, or as rich in
+India as in Switzerland.
+
+The crisis and dispersion of the deals is transforming
+the planetary functioning of the Machine.  Instead of dif-
+ferent bosses (or blocs) we're now confronted with
+purely anonymous systems of control and sanctions.  Be
+it called "free market," "law" (with the U.S. "cops of the
+world" to enforce it), "democracy" or "productivity,"
+power is exerted over us and by "us" via manifold cir-
+cuits of selection and the self-regulating mechanisms for
+the allocation of goods.  The typical pseudo-boss struc-
+tures of the nineties will be institutions like the IMF, the
+World Bank, and certain UN agencies.  There is nowhere
+to go to protest; nobody seems in charge, and those who
+represent companies or states stand there wringing their
+hands, blaming market forces or the deficits.  Ideologists
+announce the "end of history," and in a certain sense,
+they're right): "their" history is ending, and we never
+needed one.
+
+The new leopard-skin geometry of the deals would
+seem risky, if the Machine couldn't trust the achieved
+social atomization and all the automated barriers of
+qualification, lifestyle, income, race and sex.  Living
+close together in the same cities and minging on a daily
+basis, the single workers behave like little spaceships,
+each on its individual couse.  Not afraid of organization-
+al short-circuits between these atoms, the Machine can
+give them a kind of micro-autonomy, and dissipate deci-
+sion-making all over the pattern.  No "ruling" is needed
+to be in power.  But "things" happen...
+
+While there is no use to weep about the old deals,
+the new menu of deals looks even less appetizing.  There
+is no way back -- we're out in the open and a ferocious
+wind blows.  We must choose now if we want to duck
+and hide in our precarious shelters, or if we use the wind
+for our purposes -- to fly kites or propel our sail boats.
+To the new geometry of the Machine we can answer
+with a new proletarian geometry, taking advantage of
+the new possibilities.  With the collaspe of socialism not
+only ideolgical mystifications have vanished, but new
+contacts with hundreds of millions of ex-B-workers
+have become possible.  The migrations of C-workes to
+the North bring numerous fresh encounters and cultural
+exchanges.
+
+The "end of history" and the fact that we all now face
+the same bosses (or boss-mechanisms) can bring togeth-
+er workers of the most different backgrounds, and can
+help to get rid of all the smoke screen illusions about
+progress and politics.  The next time -- _this_ time -- we
+aren't going to play around with replacing (powerless)
+governments and tinkering with legitimation and repre-
+sentation; we're ging to deal with the _real_ thing.
+Instead of waiting for the next recovery, we can build
+our own circuits of survival.  Why wait for the next job?
+Why not use our creative potentials for ourselves?  Must
+the East really wait for economic help from the West?
+Can't farmers and city-dwellers just organize and create
+self-sufficient country or city communities?
+
+The new migrations greatly facilitate what I called
+"dysco" (solidarity and commuication across deal-bar-
+riers).  On cultural and neighborhood levels, many initia-
+tives have grown in the past years.  It is exactly the issue
+of "land" (housing, social spaces) that has brought
+together workers of different deals.  Land-prices and
+therefore rents have been used all over the planet to
+restructure territories, to push out unproductive people,
+and to create the new cocoon-type housing facilities for
+some A-workers ("gentrification").  But, even for them,
+rents have become unbearable, and so some common
+activity is possible.  Not surprisingly, the Machine is try-
+ing to use all kinds of racist and xenophobic resentments
+to block such dyscos.  It has even unearthed the most
+ridiculous nationalisms -- especially in Eastern Europe
+-- to spoil the newly possible dysco parties.  It tries to
+divert the struggle for land from itself and pit workers
+against workers.
+
+The distribution of different deals in the form of
+smaller pockets makes the mechanism of the Machine
+more flexible, disperses risks of big "accidents," gener-
+ally increases the "heat" and overall productivity.  while
+it tries to get away from many more "natural" limits (via
+genetic engineering, cyborgs, virtual realities, fusion
+and/or solar energy) it is still vulnerable.  The ultimate
+"vision" of a sterile, immune self-reproducing automa-
+ton living on decaying human and natural compost --
+the A-deal Cyborg-Machine reducing the rest of the uni-
+verse to mere C-deal waste -- is not yet real.  But the
+road is open.
+
+There are strategic possibilities for the new proletarian
+geometricians to stop this automatopia from happening.
+for example, the Machine is still dependent on petrole-
+um, and vital sources of this basic energy commodity lie
+exactly in areas where new "fundamentalist" movements
+are virulent:  in the Near and Middle East and the ex-
+U.S.S.R.  Oil and land will be the key words for the con-
+structive forces of refusal ("cnfusal?") of the Machine.  If
+metropolitan _dyscos_ could dirrectly cooperate with the
+"fundamentalist" C-deal refusers in those areas, the
+Machine could be slowly paralyzed, some usable wealth
+could be funnelled to the South via the last petro-dollars,
+and the land left by the retreating Machine be used for the
+production of life and communal sovereignty.  Sure, the
+Gulf War was a kind of preventive blow to such thoughts.
+But there's always another chance.
+
+A common program for all the "confusers" -- a hid-
+den anti-economic agenda -- can be found in the strug-
+gles themselves.  The words "proletarian geometry" sug-
+gest a program:  "proletarian" is derived from Latin _pro-
+les_, meaning "children"; "geometry" contains _gaia_
+("earth") and _meter_ ("measure," "middle"), but also
+"mother" (as in "metropolis").  The "children of mother
+earth" claiming their right to live -- what else could it
+be about?  The reason for the unreasonable behavior of
+workers is (In Machine-language): better reproduction,
+higher "social costs" -- life itself?
+
+In a certain way, our hidden program is therefore
+"matriarchal," and surely anti-patriarchal.  This program
+is very old; it's actually the _original_ program, the history
+of ancient struggles.  New research suggests that the
+beginning of the present patriarchal Machine is not just
+lost in mythological mists, but that it started around
+3000 B.C., as desperate tribes invaded formerly matriar-
+chal civilizations.[2]  Correcting my sloppy remarks about
+the beginning of centralized domination, it becomes
+clear that matriarchy created urban cultures of high
+diversification, and without the tyrannies of the later
+"asiatic mode of production."  The palaces of Chatal
+Hüyük (7000 B.C.) and Knossos (ending 1400 B.C.) are
+vast, but not intimidatingly monumental; they show no
+signs of fortifications, but express urban wealth and joy
+of life.  They prove that non-patriarchal cultures needn't
+be dull, rural or "hapily" stagnant.  They were in full
+technological and social development (on another path
+of progress) when the patriarchal "accident" happened.
+Centralized systems of command were also used in
+matriarchal societies in times of emergency or natural
+catastrophe, as a kind of exceptional criss management.
+As soon as things went back to normal, the center of
+power dissolved, and the regular procedures of "slow"
+and "communal" rule resumed.  Now it seems that
+around 3000 B.C. a drought in Inner asia produced a
+prolonged period of stress and migrations.  For many
+peoples (later known as "Indo-Europeans"), adaptation
+to the new climate wasn't possible, so they started prey-
+ing on agricultural societies in Mesopotamia, India and
+Eurasia.  This, in turn, produced emergency rules in
+those societies and a process of mutual "patriarchaliza-
+tion" that couldn't be reversed -- till now.  So what
+we're dealing with at the moment is nothing else than a
+temporary anomaly within the normal matriarchal
+course of human affairs.  (When Marx talks about "his-
+toric necessity," he's just rationalizing this abnormal
+state of emergency:  8000 years of matriarchy versus
+3000 years of patriarchy.)
+
+
+