Après Le Déluge

Political power is exercised through social networks. Yes individuals make history, and yes under specific conditions, but never alone. History, inasmuch as it is made by humans, is always made by humans organized -- networked -- with others.

The contest over the re-building of New Orleans is underway. As always the question is, in whose interests? Not whose individual interests, but whose class interests? And the contending forces will be represented or expressed by networks of individuals, sharing common values and goals. In most cases the contest will play out within a broader arena of class interests -- the contestants share a common interest in the supremacy of private property, the extraction of maximum profit, the maintenance of basic existing class relations -- but the how being up for grabs.

How a real class contest might be fought is a much more interesting question. The hurricane and flood are providing a real opportunity. The shock at the stark display of absolute disregard of the country's ruling class for the poor; and the profound disillusionment with the government -- its tax-breaks for the rich, its oil war, its abandonment of responsibility to provide for the general welfare -- creates an opportunity for a new politic. But without the networks in place, networks with a coherence around goals and vision, the opportunity will recede as suredly as the flood waters.

It is not unfair, or exaggerated, to call the ruling class a "ruling class". They are networked (perhaps better to say there are many networks, at different layers, regions, sectors, etc, inter-networked), and generally are conscious of their goals and vision. A telling article in the September 8, 2005 Wall Street Journal (see the Common Dreams repost), titled "Old-Line Families Escape Worst of Flood And Plot the Future", describes a representative of one such network.

Despite the disaster that has overwhelmed New Orleans, the city's monied, mostly white elite is hanging on and maneuvering to play a role in the recovery when the floodwaters of Katrina are gone. "New Orleans is ready to be rebuilt. Let's start right here," says Mr. O'Dwyer, standing in his expansive kitchen, next to a counter covered with a jumble of weaponry and electric wires.

The owners and regional managers of the New Orleans economy live in the same neighborhoods, vacation at the same resorts, and interact in the same social circles. They run the city. And this network is moving to implement its vision of New Orleans after the flood. "[Anton O'Dwyer] says he has been in contact with about 40 other New Orleans business leaders since the storm. Tomorrow, he says, he and some of those leaders plan to be in Dallas, meeting with Mr. Nagin [the Mayor of New Orleans] to begin mapping out a future for the city."

One of the sub-texts in the talk of the future is if it is possible to re-make the city without its poor. "The new city must be something very different, Mr. Reiss [a wealthy local businessman] says, with better services and fewer poor people. 'Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically,' he says. 'I'm not just speaking for myself here. The way we've been living is not going to happen again, or we're out.'"

There are other forces competing to steer the future of the region. An article in today's (9/15/05) WSJ reports "with as much as $200 billion beginning to gush out of Washington for the Hurricane Katrina disaster zone, the fight already has begun over who will control the spending and make critical decisions about the future of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast." The future funds may be controlled by a federal body a la the Tennessee Valley Authority, usurping the state and local governments. This of course does not mean that the local networks are necessarily out of the picture -- their means of exerting control over the situation may more easily be accomplished via a Republican Party-controlled federal agency than a Democratic Party-controlled state or local authority. Which of course doesn't mean that the Democrats would re-build the city with democracy in mind, only that they are answering to a different network of capital.

It appears, as has been the case historically, that the poor are a political pawn in the maneuvering, with no clear organization or network articulating their class interests. Class cuts across race, albeit not evenly, and there is no reason to expect that the black owning class will represent the class interests of the poor, whether black or white, except in as much as they can rely on the votes of the un-propertied to maintain their political position. For example, from today's article:

On Monday night, nearly 30 black business leaders from New Orleans and Baton Rouge met at a church in the capital city to discuss ways to make sure that all New Orleans citizens are included in conversations about how to rebuild the city.
"What makes this city so great is the gumbo mix of people," says Alden J. McDonald Jr., chief executive of Liberty Bank & Trust Co., one of the nation's largest black-controlled banks, and chairman of the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce. "Everyone has to be at the table."

The rhetoric of inclusion implies that all classes need to be represented, but this is unlikely, no? Simply because the poor, by-and-large, while loosely "networked" through churches, gangs (who stepped up to provide some semblance order at the Convention Center), neighborhood social circles, etc., are not organized for political power, and so the political leadership can so easily be usurped. This is not because of any inherent failings among the property-less, but because the ruling class deliberately works to undermine independent expressions of class power that emerge in spite of the poverty of resources, education, etc.

This raises an interesting dimension of networks. What about the space between the nodes and links, the negative space or anti-matter of networks? In this case, these would be the dis-connected. The people-without-value (in the Marxist sense of the term that is -- no use-value as worker, and no opportunity to realize the exchange value of their labor power). Of course un-connected in one sense, but connected in other dimensions -- economically as consumer without real choice or politically as voter without real choice. Or culturally as spring of innovation and desires. Or historically, as agent of mayhem, rebellion or revolution.

jd