Re: <nettime> Debtors' of The World Unite! The Initiative to form an International Debtors' Party.

[Michael Rogers <m--@gmx.com>]

On 23/09/11 15:37, Dmytri Kleiner wrote:

> You don't need to convince people they are debtors', they know
> that already. We need to convince them instead that non-capitalist
> provision of housing, education and medicine is the solution to
> the problems they have, and this is possible because the solution
> is implied by their felt conditions, and does not require being
> convinced of any complex theoretic or ideological positions to
> support.

You don't need to convince people that they're workers, either - but
convincing them that they're members of a working class, with class
interests, is a different matter.

Nevertheless it's possible, even without "acquiring significant
theory", to imagine how workers *as workers* could sustain an
imaginary future society, if their productive power could be
unshackled from capitalism. It's not easy to see how debtors *as
debtors* could do the same. What would a society of unshackled debtors
look like? Debt is a negative concept, and its absence is... what?

So a debtors' party seems to have even more obstacles in its path than
a workers' party. First it must convince people that they're members
of a debtor class. Then it must convince them that the debtor class
has the collective power to change the social order. *Then*, unlike
workers' parties, it must convince them that after the social order is
changed, they can become something else. But what? Workers?

Cheers,
Michael





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