Re: [-empyre-] Free Cooperation

["tobias c. van Veen" <tobias@techno.ca>]

> And if our "haggling" does not work out, we withdraw our effort or eventually
> withdraw from the collaboration.  Collaborations need to have incentives, not
> just risks.

Just thinking about this ..

Yet I am wondering at what point it becomes necessary to sacrifice?

For example, one is part of an organising committee for an anti-XYZ protest.
Haggling with various groups--some pro-violence, others strictly
non-violent, some union, others anarchist--has resulted in long & drawn out
sessions where the very meeting has often disintegrated around trying to
establish a process for the very running of the cooperation.

At a certain point it is often tempting to say 'fine! I have haggled, the
rules will not bend, nothing is changing, thus I leave' -- was it not
Bakunin who did this -- but then the protest's goal is lost: that of
effectuating change against _another_ entity, one where there is no
cooperation, in fact no relation save that of power and so forth, the
relationship to the "military-industrial complex," the "State" and etc.

There is definitely a joint intention or goal, but it seems to me the aspect
of sacrifice is inevitable and even structural. "Free" cooperation would
seem to imply a level of sacrifice which is mutually distributed, or evenly
thinned among the members of the co-op to the point of its invisibility, a
distribution that would require a kind of pre-agreement sans discussion
about the very rules that must nevertheless remain in constant negotiation.
For cooperation to work, it seems to me that one's relation is only 'free'
insofar as one makes the choice to 'cooperate' in a fashion that may be less
than free. At a certain point one realises one _should_ leave, but if you
want something to happen, you just 'grin & bear it'.

But perhaps this is a way around this.  If so I'd dig to see it
elaborated... Or hear experiences as to how it has been avoided.
Trebor?

best,

    tobias


tobias c. van Veen -----------
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http://www.thisistheonlyart.com
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