L’INTOLÉRABLE DU PRÉSENT, L’URGENCE DE LA RÉVOLUTION

by Maurizio Lazzarato

Les luttes syndicales, les luttes de libération nationale, le mutualisme ouvrier, les luttes pour l’émancipation étaient des stratégies qui, pour être efficaces, devaient nécessairement s’articuler avec la révolution. En partant de la défaite historique de la Révolution mondiale au milieu des années soixante-dix, ce livre dresse un bilan, dont l’élaboration fait défaut, par rapport au concept de révolution. Quelles sont les conditions qui pourraient nous amener à parler à nouveau de révolution ?

Dans ce livre, Maurizio Lazzarato essaie d’interroger comme élément fondamental le passage de la lutte de classes (en tant que conflit entre capital et travail) aux luttes de classes plus récentes, qui s’ouvrent à des parcours pluriels : luttes sociales, sexuelles, de genre, de race.

Les théories marxistes, féministes et celles de la pensée anticoloniale et postcoloniale fournissent, en ce sens, des outils critiques nécessaires pour comprendre les relations entre classes et minorités, Nord et Sud globaux, les temps des révolutions et l’irruption de nouvelles subjectivités.

288 pages, Paperback

Published January 20, 2022

About the author

Maurizio Lazzarato is a sociologist and philosopher in Paris. He is the author of Governing by Debt and Signs and Machines: Capitalism and the Production of Subjectivity, both published by Semiotext(e).

Reviews

[Rhys · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lazzarato share a lot of context and tries to examine 'revolution against capital' given the complications of dealing with 'internal enemies' and 'external enemies'. He criticizes Foucault and Butler for falling short of revolutionary thought, but seems to adopt many of the same paradigms of subjectivity - only adding class war to the mix. Unlike many of his other books, this one seems to need more gestation. Certainly the present is intolerable, and revolutionary praxis is urgent, but then what?

"The anti-capitalist “revolution” is necessary because the force of this machine resides in its ability to have heterogeneous power relations function together but attacking capitalism does not exhaust all the modes of exploitation and domination. There is therefore a need to maintain and develop autonomous forms of organization that both converge with and diverge from the “revolution against capital" (p.360).

[Sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Without revolution, workers are simply a component of capitalism.”

“While they first gathered to fight racism and sexism, they then attacked “heterosexism and economic oppression under capitalism,” without ever separating one oppression from another, one struggle from another, because of capitalism functions by integrating them, revolution must do the same.”