endange red phoenix

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to a site hoping to contribute to the abolition of this fundamentally sick, sad, stupid society

why ENDANGERED PHOENIX?

After hundreds of flourishing years the Phoenix burns itself out ....only to arise from its own ashes to soar evermore rejuvenated, invigorated...But shall the lust for life and community that has been at the heart of every major revolt in history arise from the ever-polluting ashes of the old world? One of these mornings will we rise up singing, spread our wings and take to the sky, the streets, the supermarkets, the schools, the workplaces...? or are we an endangered species...?

phoenix ['fi:nIks] n.
1. a fabulous bird, its coloring either purple with a collar of gold or a mixture of red, gold and blue. Said to live for 500 or 600 years in the desert and to immolate itself on a funeral pyre, whence it rose again in renewed youth.
2. a person or thing of extreme rarity or excellence, a paragon.
[L, from Gr. phoinix, phoenix, also purple, Cathaginian]

"...that paradoxical feeling .....of living in a world without any possible escape, in which there was nothing for it but to fight for an impossible escape..."
- Victor Serge

As the ecological time bomb ticks away, whilst real bombs increasingly explode around the world, all happening amidst the worsening collapse of our lives, the repression of our need for community and of mass struggle against a frightening future is the most central question facing each and every one of us...

THERE MUST BE SOME WAY OUTTA HERE.......

   We want this to contribute to challenging our own lives as much as yours. As part of doing that we have collected together here various writings attacking this society - both by ourselves and also by others that we have some sympathy with. We have no pretension to providing 'authoritative' texts - on the contrary, we have tried to avoid formulae that could pin us definitively down, categorise us and limit us, and consequently we sometimes tend to ramble, putting in lots of ifs and buts and on the other hands; rather than being the eternally relevant last word on anything, the thoughts presented here - if they are to have any subversive use - can only be a historical reference and partial jumping-off point for the readers' own explorations in theory and practise. Moreover, the content of this site is partly subject to your input: critical contributions will all be taken into consideration and may be used (though going by past experience, written reader response has declined from minimal to almost non-existent…).

   The present period of defeat we are living through – whose beginning we would date from the end of the miner’s strike in 1985 – is unprecedented. The difference between earlier defeats in working class history and the present period is that whilst certain groups of workers and their communities would suffer defeats, by and large they remained in existence through generations to fight another day. There was a long period of history - probably up to as recently as the early 90s - when proletarians had at least some general vague conception that revolution was possible, even amongst those who thought it undesirable. It was part of the culture. But nowadays if you talk about revolution you are usually made to feel like a member of the Flat Earth Society. Environmental changes (gentrification, urban regeneration), technological (IT, closure of major manufacturing) and social restructuring and ideological colonisation have destroyed this consciousness and largely destroyed the communities at work and at home in which such a consciousness was partly based. The loss of consciousness and memory of the over 200 year old traditions of struggle, solidarity and mutual self-help have been a disaster for all who have suffered it. This is the unspoken secret of recent history that defines the present day. Everywhere, capitalist totalitarianism increasingly seems to prevent the possibility of opposing this totality and of creating very different social relations in the process.

   Wherever there was a community capable of resistance now it seems there’s an empty shell dominated by decay; anti-social behaviour fuelled by psychotic zombie crackheads and gangs of vicious nihilistic youth; instilling fear and paranoia into social life, driving the most vulnerable out of the public spaces where once they could maintain social networks and interaction. Admittedly, overall this is a onesidedly bleak picture, but there are many particular places – from ex-mining villages to inner city estates – where this is not by any means an exaggerated description. And even where things are not this bad, the nagging threat of such invasions and deterioration produces its own narrow suspicion and tension.

   Few believe in even the possibility of qualitative improvement through social change to any mild degree, never mind the task of creating a radically different society. The most that is aspired to is the prospect of slogging your guts out for a lifetime in the hope you’ll have paid off a mortgage leaving you with enough savings to see you through old age. Or the outside chance of the fantasy of a Lottery win coming true. Or just getting into a position of enough status to make you feel a little more secure, superior and/or smug than those beneath you (without ridding you of the deeper insecurity that feeds the need to feel ‘superior’). Or just devoting all one’s energies to crawling over the backs of everyone else in the pursuit of fame and wealth as a celebrity and/or businessperson; it’s either exploit or be exploited, folks…


    Doubtless there are many who will say that what we have written here is a miserably pessimistic vision. Doubtless they are partly right; at least they are right in so far as the present era offers few options for these insights to be tested by practice - the excited buzz of positive connection that comes from making breakthroughs against what crushes you arises from what you consciously do with negative insights, and what you do is up to you – within given circumstances. On the other hand, we have no desire to be identified with those extremely irritating negativists who use their ‘insights’ as an excuse not to do anything, complaining and moaning uselessly: they are as unattractive as the positivists who are endlessly upbeat about everything. The miserablist is just cynical and bitter, and thinks they are rebellious because they are not as naïve as the positivist. Both the positivists and the negativists have the overwhelming weight of this world on their side, its apparently absolute power. But in critiquing and attacking we diminish that power. We suspect that what people really mean when complaining about how negative is what’s written here, is that –

1) we dwell too much on past defeats; but those who fail to understand the past really are condemned to repeat its mistakes.
2) we offer no positive prescriptions. If we don’t say do this it’s not just because this would invite a hierarchical respect that goes against the kind of social relations we want, but also because we too don’t know all the answers. This is not said as an excuse for a fence-sitting wimpy libertarian position of safe indecisiveness; we do have strong opinions but we really are unsure about so much. We can only constantly, uncertainly search for these margins of positivity ourselves, despite this world – and we’re well aware that we are usually no better at that than you.
   We also recognise that our own disappointments in life and desperate need for change will find some expression in our writings here - as a sometimes over-negative or over-positive outlook on things. (Hey, we’re human too, folks – or trying to be…)

   If a new social movement is to have any chance of developing against the insanity that capitalism has made of life it is going to have to renew the attack on the totality of hierarchical social relations - war, politics, economics, work, culture and the separation of men and women, and reflect on the repressed and contradictory history of class struggle that has always expressed this desire for freedom. Writing is a moment in this movement, but certainly can't be fetishised: how great it would be if this paragraph felt like a tongue lightly delicately licking around the inside of a vagina. But, despite pornography’s ostensible attempts at arousal, writing cannot substitute for the act, the practice. What we say here only makes sense in what you and we do with it. Can writing coming from the history of subversion contribute to subverting this senile world? It still remains to be seen. We hope so, but experience has yet to show it, at least in the present era.

Of course we should try to express ourselves as clearly, and with as little obscure language, as possible. But there is a contradiction that has to be dealt with – much of what is known as “common sense” is the medium or currency for the circulation of the taken-for-granted dominant values of this society. To express the subversive through language it is sometimes necessary to use words that have retained a clearer meaning through less use. Everyday language is a terrain largely occupied by the enemy: we tend to speak the language of our masters. (A beautiful example of a counter-tendency to this occurred in the 1992 LA Riot when the rioters coined the phrase “image looters” to describe the media: a neat reversal of perspective.)

In a world where appearances and the truth of things almost never coincide theory is necessary to penetrate the lies. This society encourages a fragmented consciousness that craves only immediacy in its consumption (e.g. tabloidism). But a partially understood text that resists complete immediate understanding may not be just unnecessarily dense and wordy. It may be that it has a depth, subtlety and value that is worth pursuing. And it may grasp and reflect more accurately the real complexities of class society. “I assume of course they will be readers who will be prepared to think while they are reading.” – Marx on ‘Capital’.



   The totalitarian nature of modern capitalism is not the monolithic authoritarian dictatorship as imagined half a century ago in the "Brave New World" and "1984" novels. It's a far more subtle regime ruled by a bewildering diversity of means  penetrating more and more into areas of life previously uncolonised and uncommodified; in the realms of the geographical, sensory, emotional, genetic, etc. It separates people like never before, with nuances that invade you like never before. The technological growth of the capitalist mode of production that fuels these new invasions is an increasing threat to the chances of simple biological survival.
   This threat to the vast majority of the planet is based also on the increasing destruction of individuality, community and rationality. What calls itself ‘rationality’ in this world is generally no more than justifications by specialists and experts for the continuation of a society that has lost all ability for self-reflection; therefore its ‘rationality’ is mainly rationalisation after the event for what market forces have imposed on it, whatever the consequences. What calls itself 'community' in this world is generally no more than the community of different business or political hierarchies vying for their niche in the market. What calls itself 'individuality' in this world is generally no more than various individuals repressing themselves in different unique ways in order to develop the individuality of a rôle enabling them to function better within the constraints of the market and to not recognise themselves in other individuals. Yet if we want to rediscover individuality, community and rationality, if we want to clearly oppose this world, we have to bring these contradictions to the front of our minds, become conscious of them, describe them, analyse them, give them a name. And act on them. It never goes without saying. It never goes without doing.

   The 1960s and 70s and 80s were high points of class struggle in the UK and elsewhere. It was in this epoch that this futureless world was far more seriously challenged than ever since (and possibly before).

   In the 70s, the Social Contract, a negotiated compromise between the classes guaranteeing increased productivity in exchange for higher standards of living, could not indefinitely maintain social peace. As the working class gained confidence through struggle, demands and perspectives grew to imply a more general critique of the boredom and alienation of this society, both in its work and its consumerism. The working class appeared to be becoming uncontrollable, as strike waves (mainly wildcats) escaped the control of bosses, union leaders and politicians alike. Struggles outside production in fields such as housing, race and gender occasionally overlapped with workplace agitations. Thatcherism set itself the explicit task of crushing this movement and was remarkably successful - from being "the sick man of Europe" with some of the lowest productivity and highest strike levels the UK was transformed to such an extent that by the 90s strike levels had hit a record low. A restructuring of economic conditions - the creation of the share holding, stakeholding, property owning, gentrifying society - democratised speculation for the masses and outmaneuvred traditional forms of struggle. The defeat in 1985 of the miners' strike was a turning point - the failure of existing forms of struggle by its most advanced practitioners which signalled the end of the post-war era of labour relations/conflict - and ushered in the bleak social reality of the victorious new economic order.
 
       In the past - the 1980s - people said that a new generation was being brought up which had never known  a normal life. Today we have the opposite. A new generation is being brought up which has only known a normal life. And normality is social disintegration. In the 80s we knew there was "No Future" outside of a social movement. And this Future is it: ecological collapse, capitalist wars, suicidal terrorism, mass depression and real opposition portrayed as a hopeless case and hardly ever talked about. Global recession pushes more and more people into a precarious balancing on the edge of life, which intensified isolation, along with mushrooming increases in illnesses (the physical bodily symptoms of a lack of social resistance) pushes increasing numbers over. This so scares people that they can't bear (or bother) to think about it. Yet it's at the back of everyone's mind. Bringing it to the front of their mind - to remind people of the possibility and necessity of revolution - is like talking about intense sex to someone who's long been celibate. How many want to look at this, at what  is new in this  intensified alienation? A symptom of this alienation is to be indifferent to anything beyond one's own immediate wants and needs, which are increasingly narrowly reduced to only what is immediately approved of by this commodity-defined world - just getting through the day. Questioning this would mean, against virtually all the odds, not just admitting this is hell but finding a way out of it, honestly. Revolt and its theoretical weapons means, as always, beginning again. But with defeat and retreat there are less and less people who try to look at any new developments, both in the ruling show and in the everyday life of those who are forced to endure it and in those visible sparks of opposition to the crap (this lack includes most of those who consider themselves revolutionaries – such as those obsessed with Marxist categories or with the final goal of revolution).
     
   Areas of life previously relatively undominated (or far less so) by market forces have been intensively colonised; childhood is a good example. The expanded proletarianisation of life as economy is accompanied by the emergence of a petit-bourgeois consciousness as a dominant model of relationships and behaviour - entrepeneurialism (cultural and economic - drugs and housing for example), the gang as the dominant youth social/economic unit, intensified functionalising of friends, the anxious "narcissistic personality" hungrily consuming and reproducing therapies and "expert" self-help as a compensation for the increased isolation of the social self, a self which becomes increasingly narrow and touchy, making mountains out of petty molehills, whilst trivialising the essential.......        

   It wasn't always so - this naked vulnerability to the ice cold winds of market "realism". There was a time when revolution was a genuine possibilty, despite the retrospective doubts that this was the case (mainly borne either out of an understandable incomplete knowledge of the atmosphere of the time, a rather intellectually absolutist notion of what revolution means, or, far worse and unforgiveably, out of the superior contempt for the working class of those who sold out for some safe lucrative professional career). But the counter-revolution ultimately won. It is as important to understand this counter-revolution as a result of this defeat as it was to understand fascism and Stalinism as a result of the defeat of the revolutionary uprisings in Germany, Italy and Russia. Since ideas come from practice and are a means towards practice then a comprehension  of the effects of this defeat and of what might be a new movement vaguely feeling its precarious way has to be developed. To vaguely assert some optimism is as pointless as crossing your fingers and hoping to win the lottery. And to accept the insanity can only drive you insane. Whatever doesn't kill the commodity economy makes it stronger. Defeat has meant that fewer and fewer dare try to struggle out of their narrow lives defended by narrow ideas. The collapse of traditional forms has been accompanied by the collapse of the conscious shared memory of that defeated tradition - we need to look at past flames of opposition to unearth tentatives that should have gone further.

    Who remembers  much about the 70s and the '78/'79 Winter of Discontent? Who also remembers much about  the glorious summer of 1981~the riots? What useful reflection has there been on the miners strike (1984-5), the riots of 1985, the Wapping dispute (1986-87), Poll Tax (1990) and various other aspects of class struggle. We are not looking at all this as history  safely in the past but as one of the ways of inciting lived  history in the future. 

          Who remembers the revolutionary critique of art and culture generally now forgotten and abandoned as of no importance? We desperately need to update that critique.
We must also look at  the the defeat of the traditional combative working class. Brutal and painfully sickening that it was and is, it has not, however, meant the end of opposition in the UK - but it has made it marginal. We look at some of this marginal opposition in our critiques of Reclaim The Streets and the fuel protests of Autumn 2000; despite their weaknesses compared to past struggles, it is in these new movements that have appeared periodically that we can also see a tentative searching for innovation in theory and practise.

         As we build this website up we intend to begin again an investigation of the totality of  the new and horrendous conditions of an increasingly unimaginable alienation. The website tentatively  tries analysing the enormity we face. It is a small contribution to the desperate efforts being made to fight this increasingly mad world of commodity fetishism and the ruling show that maintains these dangerously crazy contradictions. To analyse the new forms of totalitarianism requires pioneering effort and in these texts we look through some keyholes at modern attitudes, keyholes which hopefully will open onto a clearer view of, and confrontation with, modern totalitarianism. These keyhole fragments of analysis are always open to criticism and to more precise concrete examples by those not into rivalrous attitudes.

notes on class, struggle and class struggle

   


Essentially this website is not like a book (something fixed in a form inherited from literature) but a process in motion and though we won't change original texts from years ago (though we might add, and maybe subsequently change, various footnotes or introductory notes ), some of our more recent texts we are presently working on and, depending on feedback, our own self-critical reflections and unpredictable developments, will alter in time. For the sake of clarity, we shall highlight the most recent changes in purple.
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   "The phoenix...is a bird roughly the size of an eagle with brillantly colored plumage that varies with origin. Its coloring is either purple with a collar of gold or a mixture of red, gold and blue. The phoenix is the sole one of its kind and lives in Arabia. At the end of an epoch, as it feels death drawing near, it builds a funeral pyre of sweet spices. Sitting upon its pyre it sings the sweetest five-note song we can imagine. The rays of sun ignite the pyre and the bird is reduced to ashes. From the ashes crawls a worm, which matures into an adult phoenix. Its first task is to gather the ashes of its parent from which it emerged and bury its parent in a temple in Heliopolis (the City of the Sun) to return to Arabia."
- Man, Myth & Magic.

   The revolt of dispossessed individuals... is a class struggle with brilliantly colored plumage that varies with origin. It is colored by its purple desire to free itself from even the most beautiful collars. The revolt of the masses of individuals is as unique as its epochs and its initiatives and lives everywhere. At the end of an epoch, as it feels brutal repression drawing near, it explodes the sweetest fury we can imagine until it burns itself out and is extinguished by its failures, reduced to ashes. From the ashes crawls a worm, which maybe will mature into a full blown revolution. But maybe it won't - it will remain a worm and the phoenix of revolution will never fly again. So, if it is to get beyond being a worm, one of its first tasks must be to reflect on the past defeats from which it has emerged, and bury this past in the sunlight of new risks and insights so as to return.


   “...If the designing of the future and the proclamation of ready-made solutions for all time is not our affair, then we realise all the more clearly what we have to acc­omplish in the present - I am speaking of a ruthless critique of everything existing in two senses: criticism must not be afraid of its own conclusions, nor of conflict with the powers that be. I am therefore not in favour of setting up any dogmatic flag. On the contrary, we must try to help the dogmatics to clarify to themselves, the meaning of their own positions.... Then we shall confront the world not as doctrinaires with a new principle: “Here is the truth, bow down before it!” We do not say to the world, “Stop fighting! Your struggle is of no account. We want to shout the true slogan of the struggle at you.” We only show the world what it is fighting for, and consciousness is s omething that the world must acquire, like it or not.... enabling the world to clarify its consciousness which is unclear to itself... Then it will transpire that the world has long been dreaming of something that it can acquire if only it becomes conscious of it. It will transpire that it is not a matter of drawing a great dividing line between past and future, but of carrying out the thoughts of the past. And finally, it will transpire that mankind begins no new task, but consciously accomplishes its old tasks... So we can express the trend of our journal simply: the task of our time to clarify to itself, the meaning of its own struggle and its own desires. This is a task for the world and for us. It can only be the task of joint forces." - Karl Marx, 1843.

(The division of this site into 4 general categories - Daily Life, Culture, Class Struggle Histories, War & Politics - as above - is merely for convenience and does not in any way imply that in reality these categories are separate; it's a question of the angle of reality we emphasise under each category).



We were at one time involved in setting up another site called “Revolt Against an Age of Plenty” but we fell out with them. This accounts for some overlap in content between the two sites. But please note: we have no essential differences with the contents of almost everything on that site. However, the contents of most of the articles which appear on the two sites are at least a bit different on this site.

visits since September 7th 2005

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