Objects

Discussion

Toni Prug discusses Objects of Communism

For context, see our entries on Hack the State and State-Form Hacks:

"NOTES on Objects:

objects in the common, of the common, are objects of communism. Object whose properties ensure its commonness and longevity. Some objects of communism cannot be privatized. Take public transport: although it can be estranged, the experience is still one of common. Most important, objects are always the engine of practices which material effects bring us closer to new communisms. Examples can include: organizational forms, electronic books, social movements, ethical rules, laws, economic units, university departments, tenants associations, currencies and credit systems, software, political parties, anarchist collectives, etc. Obviously, having examples listed gives very little of what I mean by objects of communism. Best to say that the question cannot be satisfactory answered at this point. It took Badiou a lifetime to come up with an ontology and couple of chapters on the Object in the Logic of Worlds:

- ‘But what is an object? It could be said that the most complex and most innovative argument of this book is aimed at finding a new definition of the objects, and therefore of the objective status of the truth. [...] I subordinate the logic of appearing, of objects and worlds, to the trans-worldly affirmation of subjects faithful to the truth. The path of the materialist dialectic organizes the contrast between the complexity of materialism (logic of appearing, or theory of the object) and the intensity of the dialectic (the living incorporation into truth-procedures). ’

Perhaps a way to answer is through the fictitious structure of reality. In its firmest, in its most stable appearance, reality is structured like swiss cheese, full of holes. In its most fluid, it’s like fog, hardly any stable structures can be seen, the shadowy world of murky half drawn creatures and shapes rules with vengeance, while we tremble in dusky gloom incapacitated by the never self-confessed, yet always hidden behind the array of marketable faces of confidence, fear. Of course, we live in foggy times. Neo-liberal deregulated financial system is the best example of it. In foggy times, objects are hard to spot. Nothing appears firm, reliable, or resilient. In foggy times, ‘all that is solid melts into air’. It is only in communism that objects can exist. Capitalism, being based on private profit, private wealth, private utilization of socially produced advances, private rule and deliberation over most of planet’s resources, is thus always subjective. The only possible objective state of the World, one objectively existing for all, that can be experience by all, is that of communism. Despite of the neo-liberal claims, the objectivity they offer is always partial, private, subjective, based on exploitation of the commons and labour, wrapped in blood, sweat and tears with radically opposed experiences of the processes that are presented as the objective reality. Hence, it is subjective. In other words, i will try to develop that the objects of communism are the only objects that there are." (http://hackthestate.org/2009/12/11/objects-of-communism-state-form-hacks-v06/)