WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY News Journal Update - (en) Italy, FDCA, Il Cantiere n. 17 - On Zapatista Autonomy: What Are the Characteristic Elements of a Stateless Politics? ---- Jérôme Baschet * (second part) (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 We will now try to identify some characteristics of Zapatista autonomy, suitable

for outlining the contours of a non-state policy. ---- Horizontal/role of the
authorities ---- A non-state policy is not necessarily destined to be enclosed in
a narrow "localism", nor in the ideal of a pure horizontalism. While claiming its
territorial character and its inscription in the concrete spaces of collective
life, Zapatista autonomy bears witness to the articulation of three distinct
spatial scales. And nothing prevents us from thinking that the experiment can
continue, through the invention of new forms of coordination on a larger scale,
without questioning the primacy of the concrete places of life.
Above all, it seems necessary to reject a purely "horizontalist" reading of
Zapatista autonomy, which would postulate an absolute primacy of the assemblies
and equal participation of all in the decision-making process. Of course, the
mandar obedeciendo is radically removed from the power relationship that
characterizes the logic of the state apparatus, as a mechanism for disposing of
collective power and concentrating it for the benefit of the bureaucratic
apparatus and political "experts". And even if the government/people relationship
is expressed here in terms of command/obedience, the paradoxical conjunction of
the two inverse relationships radically subverts its meaning: the government can
lead only insofar as it obeys the will expressed by the communities. However,

Above all, the authorities have a particular role: duty of vigilance, initiative
and impetus. For Master Jacobo "authority goes ahead, directs and guides; but it
neither decides nor imposes; it is the people who decide»[27]. If municipal
councils and councils of good governance can only implement what has been
discussed and approved by the assemblies, one cannot ignore or underestimate the
special role of the authorities in the elaboration of these decisions.And it is
reasonable to assume that this role does not only concern the initial moment in
which an initiative is proposed, but that a certain asymmetry is maintained,
throughout the process, between those who are working to carry forward the
project for which they are responsible and those who, while having the capacity
to discuss and reject it, they don't necessarily have the same grip. We should
therefore be able to think of the specific role of those to whom the collective
temporarily entrusts the task of "being authority", an authority without
authoritarianism which, without imposition, nonetheless implies a role of impulse
and pivot which makes it possible to intensify the collective power of Act.
Therefore, it is not a question of a real power over which a part of the
collective would be able to monopolize and exercise over the others, nor of a
perfect horizontality, which risks dissolving due to lack of initiatives or the
ability to implement them. Thus, the observation of the Zapatista experience, as
it has developed up to now, invites us to recognize the articulation of two
principles: on the one hand, the capacity to decide resides essentially in the
assemblies, in their different levels; on the other hand, we recognize a special
role of initiative and impulse to those who assume an office, in a revolving and
revocable way, as mediation between the community and its capacity for
self-government, which fails without opening the double risk of a deficiency or
an excess in the exercise of this role.

A non-dissociative way of delegating

Rather than sticking to the opposition between representative democracy and
direct democracy, the analysis of Zapatista autonomy invites us to identify an
articulation between the role of the authorities, that of the assemblies of
delegates (at the municipal and zone level) and that of the community assemblies
. A fundamental question concerns the modalities assumed by the delegation, both
for the authorities and for the members of the supra-community assemblies. In
this regard, we will propose to establish a decisive demarcation line between
structurally dissociative forms of delegation and others that can be considered
non-dissociative (or, at least, as weakly dissociative as possible). Linked to
other characteristics of the social structure, the former are destined to produce
a separation-capture to the advantage of the rulers-dominants. Thus the classical
forms of representation are the methodical - and today increasingly evident -
organization of the actual absence of the represented. Conversely, the latter
tend to reduce the dissociation between rulers and governed as much as possible.
It is still necessary to be able to indicate what concretely differentiates one
from the other. The Zapatista experience allows us to insist on the following
points: short mandates, non-renewable and revocable at any time; lack of
personalization and collegial exercise of offices; control by other authorities;
limited concentration of decision-making capacity, largely shared with the
assemblies; collective ethics and the art of listening. But above all it is
necessary to insist on the effective despecialisation of political tasks which,
instead of being monopolized by a specific group (political class, caste based on
money, personalities endowed with a particular prestige, etc.), they must
circulate as widely as possible: "we must all, in turn, be government"[29]. As
has been said, this presupposes the renunciation of linking the choice of
delegates to any individual "competence": assuming that the elected do not know
any more than the others is the condition - oh how difficult to accept! - a
complete despecialization of politics. Finally, another condition, no less
decisive, is that of preventing the way of life of those who temporarily hold the
office from becoming dissociated from that of all the others. For this reason,
despite being elected for two or three years, the members of the good governance
councils (located in the regional centres, the caracoles, from which the villages
can be very distant) carry out their task in rotation, alternating for periods of
10 to 15 days, which allows them not to interrupt their usual activities for too
long and to continue taking care of their family and of their land. It is a
condition considered essential to guarantee the non-specialization of political
tasks and to prevent the reappearance of a separation between the common universe
and the way of life of those who, even for a short time and in a very
circumscribed way, assume a role particular role in the organization of
collective life. which allows them not to interrupt their usual activities for
too long and to continue taking care of their family and their land. It is a
condition considered essential to guarantee the non-specialization of political
tasks and to prevent the reappearance of a separation between the common universe
and the way of life of those who, even for a short time and in a very
circumscribed way, assume a role particular role in the organization of
collective life. which allows them not to interrupt their usual activities for
too long and to continue taking care of their family and their land. It is a
condition considered essential to guarantee the non-specialization of political
tasks and to prevent the reappearance of a separation between the common universe
and the way of life of those who, even for a short time and in a very
circumscribed way, assume a role particular role in the organization of
collective life.

Of course, the risk that the dissociation between the governing and the governed
comes to re-establish itself is never absent, so that a policy of autonomy is
valid only through the practical mechanisms that it constantly invents to counter
this danger and to amplify the dynamics of dispersion of the functions of
authority . It is quite clear that the delimitation between dissociative and
non-dissociative forms of delegation is never entirely certain, but this does not
prevent us from believing that it is a decisive distinction. It will even be
argued that it is at the heart of the differentiation between a state policy -
based on the methodical organization of a dispossession of collective power and
on the condensation of authority into power over power - and a non-state policy,

Processuality and multiplicity

As one of Escuelita's teachers pointed out, the construction of autonomy "has no
end". Despite advances in autonomy, this statement testifies to a healthy
awareness of the incompleteness of current experience. But it also indicates that
the construction of autonomy can never be considered perfect and complete. What
such a gesture discards is the claim to create an ideal society that can one day
claim to have achieved its purpose and to have found its fully realized form. In
all likelihood, such a proclamation would spell the very death of autonomy, which
is why realizing that it has no end is literally vital.

Affirming the impossibility of a full realization of autonomy is what protects us
from the risk of a normative utopia that would demand the perfect realization of
previously and abstractly defined principles. On the contrary, it is essential to
admit that there can be no ideal collective reality entirely protected from the
risks of conflict. Open contradictions between the future of the various
municipalities cannot be excluded, even in a system of autonomy extended on a
global scale, not to mention the risks of misunderstanding between culturally
very different collectives, interacting within a world made up of multiple
worlds. Furthermore, the Zapatista experience suggests the need to constantly
rework the very forms of autonomy, to fight against any possible abuse, against
the always latent danger of separation between rulers and governed or against the
risk of petrification of all established reality. The fight against what could
violate autonomy can therefore not end.

If there is something striking about the Zapatista experience, it is the ability
to maintain the fluidity of the forms of collective organization. Both in the
different fields of activity (education, health, manufacturing, etc.) and as
regards the functioning of the autonomous governing bodies, practices are
constantly changing to respond to the difficulties encountered along the way[30].
No fixed shape; no institution fetish. A permanent concern prevails, made up of
dissatisfaction, vigilance in the face of errors and the ability to correct them.
Autonomy is a policy of process that constantly builds and transforms the forms
of collective organization, at the same time it is a permanent struggle against
anything that might call it into question.

Autonomy is also a politics of multiplicity. Rejecting any a priori resolution,
abstract and general, he starts from concrete situations and their
particularities. Therefore, there is no single form of Zapatista autonomous
government. Not only are its terms constantly changing, but they differ from one
municipality to another, from one caracol to another.

Above all, the construction of autonomy is not the application of pre-established
recipes[31]. It is rather about finding ways to provide specific and concrete
solutions to problems as they arise: "everything we do is a step; we have to see
if it works and, if not, we have to change it»[32]. Essential in the Zapatista
experience , this way of doing is expressed by the idea of "caminar preguntando"
("advancing asking questions"). The path is not traced, but is made on foot. One
goes forward without pre-established certainties; questions and doubts arise at
every step; and it is by accepting them as such that we can discover how to move
forward.Of course, those who advance do not reinvent the world at every step:
they are armed with ethical choices, with accumulated experiences, and the desire
for what is not yet sets them in motion.

It is therefore a matter of rejecting the object of a preliminary theoretical
approach, to make room for a way of solving the difficulties that makes its way
into the very activity of doing. It is a matter of admitting that there is never
ONE solution to a general problem, but rather a multiplicity of options that are
always in the making, inscribed in the diversity of the concrete situations that
the autonomies have to face[33]; and all the difficulty lies in ensuring that
these multiple options are capable, rather than judging and condemning each other
a priori, to allow time for mutual listening and respect, to learn from each
other. By rejecting a logic of generalization and abstraction, autonomy inscribes
the political in the singularity of experiences and in the very processuality of
doing.

Popular self-government vs. state separation

"They are afraid that we will discover that we know how to govern ourselves":
formulated during the Escuelita by Maestra Eloisa[34], this lesson condenses the
experience and the very meaning of autonomy. He affirms the essential principle:
we ordinary people are capable of governing ourselves. It follows, for all
self-styled political experts, the unfortunate revelation of their uselessness.
More profoundly, Maestra Eloisa does nothing but ruin the theoretical foundations
of the modern state. In the title page of Hobbes' Leviathan, cities and
countryside are emptied of their inhabitants, while the crowd of subjects appears
enclosed in the gigantic body of the sovereign who dominates the territory: a way
of indicating that the people exist only when they renounce their sovereign power
to advantage of the person who embodies the State[35]. As analyzed by G.

In the successive forms of the modern state, the absence of the people takes on
partially different, but no less powerful, modalities. Thus, for Hegel, it is
characteristic of the people not to be in a position to govern themselves: being
"the part that does not know what it wants", it must, due to its ignorance,
entrust itself to "high officials", the only ones capable of act in the general
interest.[36]Today, despite the established principles of representative
democracy, it is clear that the power of the experts has only increased. Whether
they are more adept at state planning or more inclined to celebrate market
freedoms, they are the agents of the world of economy, territorial planning and
population management that it requires.In this context,

We shall conclude that adémia[absence of people]is consubstantial with the state
(even if democratic, in the eminently restricted sense of designation by election
of rulers and representatives)[37]. And we can then characterize the state as an
apparatus for the capture of collective power - which is called "sovereignty" and
is found in principle in the people only to better ensure that the latter is
practically dispossessed of it. The State is therefore this machine for
consolidating the separation between the rulers and the governed, for producing
the absence of the people, for increasing their submission to heteronomous living
standards, which are, today, those of the economic world.

As we can see, autonomy is the exact opposite of state-centric politics. It is
based on everyone's ability to govern themselves; it starts from the art of
"doing for yourself" and from a shared dignity that challenges any suspicion of
incompetence or ignorance, used to justify dispossession and exclusion. It is the
deployment of collective power to self-organize according to forms of life lived
as one's own. It is a permanent struggle to prevent those temporarily in
government positions from dissociating themselves from the shared universe of
life. It is in this sense that autonomy is a non-state policy; and that is why
the Good Government Councils of the Zapatista Autonomous Territories can be
characterized as non-state forms of government.

It is still necessary to specify that we would not have made any progress if
"governing ourselves" consisted in doing the same thing that up until then others
were doing for us. Implemented in the commodity world, this principle could very
well be just a way of self-imposing the norms of the economy. Just as
self-management can be synonymous with self-exploitation, self-government can
only be self-submission to heteronomous rules. It cannot therefore be a matter of
deploying methods of self-government to manage the state of things or attempting
to overcome the difficulties of a planetary system that its compulsive
productivism is plunging into ever more generalized devastation. The "Government"
it can have an emancipatory meaning only if collective power can deploy forms of
life free from the capitalist logic, but also from any other mode of oppression
and domination. Then, the tasks of what we may (or may not) call self-government
find themselves reduced to infinitely smaller scales and reveal themselves to be
of a completely different nature from what they are in the world of the State and
the Economy.

In fact, what is called "government" in the Zapatista autonomy consists of a set
of tasks of extreme simplicity and completely extraneous to the mysteries of
administrative structures, as well as to the mechanisms of governance and
management of populations[38]. An astute observer can describe the activity of
the councils of good government thus: "the whole farce of state mysteries and
state pretensions was eliminated by the councils, formed essentially of simple
peasants ... who were allowed to carry out their duties publicly, humbly , in the
light of day, without claiming infallibility, without hiding behind ministerial
pomp, without being ashamed to confess their mistakes and correct them.They have
transformed public functions into real community functions,

The autonomy implemented in Chiapas is rooted in the history of the Amerindian
peoples and in a lifestyle centered on the community. Beyond its localized
character, it maintains a certain relationship with others - marked by the need
to contribute to the reproduction of the collective conditions of individual life
- and a certain relationship with the world, marked by a strong bond with the
inhabited territory. belonging to an enveloping entity called Mother Earth.
However, the Zapatista experience, the result of a hybridization between a
tradition of Indian resistance and a tradition of emancipation of Western origin,
through Latin American reformulations of Marxism, does not intend to be confined
to a strictly ethnic framework. on the contrary, it claims planetary horizons.

both urban and rural.

The other politics that the Zapatistas defend and implement under the name of
autonomy starts from the concrete places of life and, as such, participates in a
movement of relocation of politics. Autonomy is a situated policy, inscribed in
the particularity of territories and ways of inhabiting them; and that is why it
is also a politics of multiplicity. It is necessarily localized, since it starts
from the singular reality of communities and municipalities, and always returns
to it. But it is not only local, because its principle can extend everywhere, in
specific forms each time. Above all, communities and municipalities can
coordinate or federate (as the Zapatistas do with councils of good governance, or
otherwise), to balance their resources, enrich themselves from their exchanges,
make decisions on shared interests, perform some common tasks or even in the face
of possible disputes, which cannot disappear as if by magic (especially since the
multiplicity of life forms, which it must be admitted can be really very
different, opens up difficult tasks of intercultural translation). The experience
of the Zapatista rebels shows that it is possible to escape the false alternative
of localist asphyxiation and abstract universalism. Invoking "a world where there
is room for many worlds", they designate a horizon of encounters whose planetary
dimension makes sense only if conceived starting from the specificity of the
places and the multiplicity of experiences. If the delocalization of politics is
essential, the question is not just a question of scale. It consists above all in
making the distinction between state and non-state forms of politics; between
those who, through dissociative modes of delegation, consolidate the
expropriation of collective power and its condensation into power over and those
who strive, in particular through non-dissociative modes of delegation, to
preserve and increase this collective power, preventing its capture for the
benefit of a separate entity. In this sense, autonomy is not only a policy
without the state, but a policy against the state, not only because it is the
opposite, but also because it involves effective mechanisms aimed at avoiding
state dissociation. Finally, it is a question of giving up a conception of
politics based on abstract and unifying entities, in favor of approaches rooted
in the concrete multiplicity of forms of life.

If autonomy implies another politics, it cannot be defined in purely political
terms. As the Zapatista experience suggests, it inextricably presupposes the
implementation of instances of self-government and the deployment of adequate
demonstrated ways of life. This is how the notion of autonomy can take on its
broadest meaning. The need for a non-state politics can therefore be associated
with an emancipatory dynamic that allows us to get out of the destructive spiral
of capitalist productivism and, therefore, to save the possibility of a dignified
life for all, without relationships of social domination and in respect of the
constitutive interdependencies of life[41].

The first part of the article was published in "IL Cantiere" in April.

Note

[25]We thus escape the "scalar paralogism" that Frédéric Lordon attributes to
"libertarian thought" and which would consist in thinking that political problems
present themselves in the same way on all scales; see Lordon Frederic, Imperium.
Structures and effects of political bodies, Paris, La Fabrique, 2015, p. 74, and
his review in Baschet Jérôme, "Frédéric Lordon au Chiapas. A reading of the
Imperium through the lens of Zapatista autonomy", Revue Ballast, May 2016. URL:
http://www.revue-ballast.fr /fredericlordon-au-chiapas/.

[26]Master Fidel, CIDECI, aout 2013.

[27]Ibid.

[28]For the distinction between power over and power to do (that is, between
power and might), see HOLLOWAY John, Changer le monde sans prendre le pouvoir. Le
sens de la révolution aujourd'hui, Paris-Montréal, Syllepses-Lux, 2007.

[29]Master Jacobo, CIDECI,

op. cit.

[30]To limit ourselves to a few minor points, at the good governance council of
La Realidad, the representatives of each municipality alternate in two "rounds"
of 15 days each; in Oventik, in three "rounds" of a week (Gobierno autónomo I,
op. cit.). In La Realidad, the members of the council numbered first 8, then 12,
then 24. In a first phase, the members of the good governance councils were also
members of the council of their municipality; then, as the combination of these
two charges proved too heavy, they were separated. The way of associating the
various areas of autonomy (education, health, agroecology, etc.) with good
governance councils has also changed.

[31]Autonomous Government I, op. cit. "We don't have a guide, we don't know how
to be independent... We don't have a book to follow".

[32]Ibid.

[33]One example among many concerns the loan system (at very low interest rates)
and the situations in which the borrower cannot meet his repayment commitments:
the way of taking into account the particularity of each case (up to the
cancellation debt, when repayment, seen as a way of respecting the community, is
manifestly impossible) is the exact opposite of the rigid application of rigid
rules and regulations (Gobierno autónomo II, op cit.).

[34]Explications orientales (CIDECI, aout 2013).

[35]AGAMBEN Giorgio, The civil war. Pour une théorie critique de la stasis,
Paris, Seuil, 2015, p. 49-55 (et 56 for the following citation).

[36]

For Hegel, «knowing what one wants (...) is the result of profound knowledge and
intelligence, which are precisely not what characterizes the people (...) senior
officials necessarily possess a greater deeper and broader intelligence than the
nature of the institutions and needs of the state and moreover a greater skill
and habit of these affairs.», Philosophie du Droit, 301, cité par WEIL Éric,
Hegel et l'État, Paris, Vrin, 2002, p. 65.

[37]On the incompatibility between state and democracy, see also ABENSOUR Miguel,
La démocratie contre l'État. Marx et le moment machiavélien, Paris, Le Félin,
2004 et Pour une philosophie politique critique,

Paris, Sens & Tonka, 2009

[38]See FOUCAULT Michel, Sécurité, territoire, population. Cours au Collège de
France (1977-1978), Paris, Seuil-Gallimard, 2004.

[39]The text comes from the drafts of Civil war in France, cités dans SHANIN
Teodor, El Marx tardío y la vía rusa. Marx and the periphery of capitalism,
Madrid, Revolución, 1990, p. 118-119. URL:
http://comunizar.com.ar/libro-marx-tardiola-vida-rusa/

[40]Cf. Clastres Pierre, La société contre l'État, Paris, Minuit, 1974, which
indicates a specifically Amerindian tradition of political philosophy. Even if
the journey from the Amazonian world to the Mayan world is long, it may be useful
to recall the paradoxical figure of the "leader without power", to which the
concept of "offices" and the no less paradoxical "mandar obedeciendo" "are not
without an echo.[41]The acceptance of such interdependencies with the human and
non-human environment might seem contradictory with the affirmation of autonomy
as self-determination of forms of life.For a proposal that articulates autonomy
(as a rejection of a heteronomy that implies submission to others) and
heterotrophy (that for which we feed on the bonds with others, up to recognizing
the non-self as constitutive of the self), cf. Jérôme, "Relational conception of
the person, community and political autonomy", in Rafanell i Orra Josep (coord.),
Itinérances, Paris, Divergences, 2018, p. 24-41.

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