Posted on 07/25/2014 6:22:54 AM PDT by Chickensoup
What Exiting Is and Isn't Virno believes a radical disobedience is needed to challenge the state's ability to command. This cannot be expressed through resistance to a specific law on the grounds, for example, that it contradicts a constitution.
Such resistance is actually a vote of confidence in the state qua state; that is, such activists fight to enable a purer vision of state authority rather than against the idea of a state itself. A wholesale rejection is required. And, yet, revolutionaries who violently confront the state usually suffer one of two fates: they are slaughtered or otherwise broken or they assume power and become a worse version of what they originally challenged.
Why does this happen? Virno concludes it is because the revolutionaries presuppose and accept the "relationships of domination as an immovable horizon." They buy into the framework of conflict created by the state. The activists do not stand their ground but fight instead on ground that is defined by the state. The framework itself needs changing. Virno is far from the first political strategist to redefine the context of dissent. The non-violent resistance championed by Gandhi and developed by students such as Gene Sharp is a prime example. One of the key concepts expressed by non-violent resistance is called "moral jiu jitsu." By staying peaceful and calm in the face of violence, protesters gain the moral high ground while the attackers lose it. In short, protesters use the state's force against itself and in order to discredit the state in the eyes of third parties. But the process requires a confrontation. Virno suggests something different – a practical and intense political act that avoids confrontation. In his influential essay "Virtuosity and Revolution: The Political Theory of Exodus" (1996), Virno sketches a path that he calls exit or exodus.
What Virno calls the exodus is nothing as literal as what happened in the Bible when the Jews left slavery behind in Egypt. It does not require physically leaving one area for another but can be achieved by remaining in one place. Exodus is a strategy of personal defection from the state and a quiet refusal to obey it rather than engage in confrontation. The state-opponent does not seize political power but withdraws from it and refuses to acknowledge its legitimacy. In practical terms, exiting means actively establishing alternative institutions and social relations that will make the state redundant and irrelevant. For example, home schooling eliminates the need for any public version. Private enterprise replaces 'services' currently provided by the state. Credit unions replace traditional banks. Bitcoins oust fiat currencies. Smaller communities can be created within the broader existing one. - See more at:
http://www.thedailybell.com/editorials/35502/Wendy-McElroy-Flee-Rather-Than-Stand-Your-Ground/
What Exiting Is and Isn't Virno believes a radical disobedience is needed to challenge the state's ability to command. This cannot be expressed through resistance to a specific law on the grounds, for example, that it contradicts a constitution.
Such resistance is actually a vote of confidence in the state qua state; that is, such activists fight to enable a purer vision of state authority rather than against the idea of a state itself. A wholesale rejection is required. And, yet, revolutionaries who violently confront the state usually suffer one of two fates: they are slaughtered or otherwise broken or they assume power and become a worse version of what they originally challenged.
Why does this happen? Virno concludes it is because the revolutionaries presuppose and accept the "relationships of domination as an immovable horizon." They buy into the framework of conflict created by the state. The activists do not stand their ground but fight instead on ground that is defined by the state. The framework itself needs changing. Virno is far from the first political strategist to redefine the context of dissent. The non-violent resistance championed by Gandhi and developed by students such as Gene Sharp is a prime example. One of the key concepts expressed by non-violent resistance is called "moral jiu jitsu." By staying peaceful and calm in the face of violence, protesters gain the moral high ground while the attackers lose it. In short, protesters use the state's force against itself and in order to discredit the state in the eyes of third parties. But the process requires a confrontation. Virno suggests something different – a practical and intense political act that avoids confrontation. In his influential essay "Virtuosity and Revolution: The Political Theory of Exodus" (1996), Virno sketches a path that he calls exit or exodus.
What Virno calls the exodus is nothing as literal as what happened in the Bible when the Jews left slavery behind in Egypt. It does not require physically leaving one area for another but can be achieved by remaining in one place. Exodus is a strategy of personal defection from the state and a quiet refusal to obey it rather than engage in confrontation. The state-opponent does not seize political power but withdraws from it and refuses to acknowledge its legitimacy. In practical terms, exiting means actively establishing alternative institutions and social relations that will make the state redundant and irrelevant. For example, home schooling eliminates the need for any public version. Private enterprise replaces 'services' currently provided by the state. Credit unions replace traditional banks. Bitcoins oust fiat currencies. Smaller communities can be created within the broader existing one. - See more at:
http://www.thedailybell.com/editorials/35502/Wendy-McElroy-Flee-Rather-Than-Stand-Your-Ground/
Going Galt.
In short, going Galt.
This is sort of a shelter-in-place theory.
I believe this is dependent on the brutality of the regime you’re dealing with. If they don’t mind killing millions, or, if that may even be their goal then this is the probably the type of resistance they’re hoping for. Once they have you checkmated they don’t care about public perception. I would think for this to work it has to be employed early on, before the regime can establish a hard control grid.
Solzhenitsyn saw this firsthand and advocated a more aggressive stance against groups like the Bolsheviks.
bereanway to Chickensoup
I believe this is dependent on the brutality of the regime you’re dealing with. If they don’t mind killing millions, or, if that may even be their goal then this is the probably the type of resistance they’re hoping for. Once they have you checkmated they don’t care about public perception. I would think for this to work it has to be employed early on, before the regime can establish a hard control grid.
Solzhenitsyn saw this firsthand and advocated a more aggressive stance against groups like the Bolsheviks.
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I tend to agree with you . I posted this because I think the idea here is controversial. I am not sure that it would be effective with a killing state.
Yes lets not forget the strategy of firing two and going home. Simple and effective on many levels.
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