contested terrain

“Why I Do Not Attack Banks”

From anarchistnews.org

“Mere hours after the National Socialist Movement marched through downtown Jefferson City, Missouri angry working class people trashed windows and the ATMs of the First National and UMB Banks in Columbia, some 30 miles north. Unlike the Fascists that marched, we understand who the real enemy of working class people is and always has been. The rich bankers are not of any one religious, ethnic, or racial background. Even If one were to make such a generalization, they surely would come to the conclusion that whites that proclaim themselves Christian are in the majority of those exploiting us, not Jews, blacks, or immigrants.”

– communiqué from Missouri, November 2008

The communiqué above agrees that the fascists are right to blame the “bankers” but wrong to call the bankers Jews. This misses the point entirely and reproduces the half-way critique of capital that only focuses on finance, with all its propensity for resentment and personification. Coupling this mystification with anti-racist slogans does not erase this propensity. Instead of merely changing the answer to the question “who controls the world?” we ought to reply by asserting that this is the wrong question.

By personifying the class enemy as the archaic image of the rich banker (or more abstractly, as “international banking interests”), anarchists end up accepting the anti-capitalist thesis of National Socialism: that productive society is dominated by “parasitic” finance capital. Anarchists add only a nominal denouncement of its racist or anti-semitic conclusions.

Given all this, why, exactly, do anarchists focus on banks?

1) The reduction of anti-capitalist critique to the circulation of money, a circulation that is viewed as the fundamental basis for the economy. Banks are the easily visible representation of this circulation, even if individual commercial bank branches are inconsequential to the financial system.

Against this fixation on circulation, I reply that the fundamental basis for the economy is the production of commodities, the extraction of surplus value, the exploitation of human labor. Capitalism is not a conspiracy.

2) Adding momentum to anti-bank populism that is being pushed across the political spectrum in response to the economic crisis. You can turn on a television program or radio show about the crisis and hear commentators blaming the crisis on “greedy bankers”, “wall street speculators” and the like. Gruppe Krisis in Germany compared this dialogue to a modern-day “stab in the back” myth. Why would anarchists want to play into this populist message? On the one hand it just isn’t true: finance is not solely responsible for the current crisis. Crises are inherent to capitalism. Beyond that, this populism that anarchists are giving muscle and militancy to serves interests that are at odds with any project of liberation.

3) Following the herd. For a long time, one of the main images being projected by insurrectionary anarchists was of Greek anarchists “bombing banks” (damaging ATM machines with crude explosives made from camping stoves). This militant image of the anonymous hero in a ski-mask clearly inspired copycat action by other up-and-coming militants, spreading their images on blogs and internet videos in a self-referential game of spectators and action figures that ironically is organized along national lines. There is a blog for every country with an insurrectionist milieu.

The Democratic and Republican Parties, unions, NGO’s, and far right talk show hosts, and leftist groups all proclaim: “Wall Street Is At War With America!” To this we could say, “Capitalism is at War With Humanity!” or any number of things, but we cannot take up their call. To accept the seduction of populism is to renege on every oppositional gesture and idea, however futile, and begin the well-mapped descent into the abyss of renunciation and ugliness.

Negativity, always. Unions, never. No half measures for hollow success or evening news glory.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 23rd, 2009 at 11:51 pm and is filed under Capitalism/anti-Capitalism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.