Erik Olin Wright, Envisioning Real Utopias New York: Verso, 2010.
Chapter 10: Interstitial Transformation
WHAT IS AN INTERSTITIAL STRATEGY?
The adjective “interstitial” is used in social theory to describe various kinds of processes that occur in the spaces and cracks within some dominant social structure of power. One can speak of the interstices of an organization, the interstices of a society, or even the interstices of global capitalism. The underlying assumption is that the social unit in question can be understood as a system within which there is some kind of dominant power structure or dominant logic which organizes the system, but that the system is not so coherent and integrated that those dominant power relations govern all of the activities that occur within it. Even in so-called “totalitarian” systems in which centralized power penetrates quite deeply into all spheres of social life there are still spaces within which individuals act in relatively autonomous ways, not following the dictates of the logic of the system. This need not imply that such interstitial practices are subversive or that they necessarily corrode the dominant logic of the system, but simply that they are not directly governed or controlled by the dominant power relations and dominant principles of social organization.
Interstitial processes often play a central role in large-scale patterns of social change. For example, capitalism is often described as having developed in the interstices of feudal society. Feudal societies were characterized by a dominant structure of class and power relations consisting of nobles of various ranks who controlled much of the land and the principle means of military violence and peasants with different kinds of rights who engaged in agricultural production and produced a surplus which was appropriated by the feudal dominant class through a variety of largely coercive mechanisms. Market relations developed in the cities, which were less fully integrated into feudal relations, and over time this created the context within which proto-capitalist relations and practices could emerge and eventually flourish. Whether one believes that the pivotal source of ultimate transformation of feudalism came from the dynamics of war-making and state-building, from contradictions in process of feudal surplus extraction, from the corrosive effects of markets, from the eventual challenge of emerging capitalists, or some combination of these processes, the interstitial development of capitalism within feudal societies is an important part of the story.
While interstitial processes and activities clearly play a significant role in social change, it is less obvious that there are compelling interstitial strategies for social transformation. The urban artisans and merchants in feudal society whose interstitial activities fostered new kinds of relations did not have a project of destroying feudal class relations and forging a new kind of society. They were simply engaged in profit-seeking activities, adapting to the opportunities and possibilities of the society in which they lived. The broader ramifications for long-term social change were basically unintended by-products of their interstitial activities, not a strategy as such. An interstitial strategy, in contrast, involves the deliberate development of interstitial activities for the purpose of fundamental transformation of the system as a whole.
There are certainly many interstitial activities in contemporary capitalist societies which are candidates for elements of an interstitial strategy of social emancipation: producer and consumer coops, battered women’s shelters, workers factory councils, intentional communities and communes, community-based social economy services, civic environmental councils, community-controlled land trusts, cross-border equal-exchange trade organizations, and many other things. All of these are consciously constructed forms of social organization that differ from the dominant structures of power and inequality. Some are part of grand visions for the reconstruction of society as a whole; others have more modest objectives of transforming specific domains of social life. Some are linked to systematic theories of social transformation; others are pragmatic responses to the exigencies of social problem-solving. What they have in common is the idea of building alternative institutions and deliberately fostering new forms of social relations that embody emancipatory ideals and that are created primarily through direct action of one sort or another rather than through the state. (page 230)
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Many socialists, especially those enmeshed in the Marxist tradition, are quite skeptical of such projects. The argument goes something like this: While many of these efforts at building alternative institutions may embody desirable values and perhaps even prefigure emancipatory forms of social relations, they pose no serious challenge to existing relations of power and domination. Precisely because these are “interstitial” they can only occupy spaces that are “allowed” by capitalism. They may even strengthen capitalism by siphoning off discontent and creating the illusion that if people are unhappy with the dominant institutions they should just go off and live their lives in alternative settings. Ultimately, therefore, interstitial projects constitute retreats from political struggle for social transformation, not a viable strategy for achieving radical social transformation. At best they may make life a little better for some people in the world as it is; at worst they deflect energies from real political challenge to change the world to something better. There are certainly instances in which this negative diagnosis seems plausible. The hippy communes of the 1960s may have been inspired by utopian longings and a belief that they were part of the “dawning of the Age of Aquarius,” but in practice they functioned more as escapes from the realities of capitalist society than as nodes of radical transformation. Other examples, like organic grocery cooperatives, while not escapes from capitalist society, neverthelessseem constrained to occupy small niches often catering to relatively affluent people who can afford to “indulge” their preferences for a particular kind of “life style”. Organic grocery cooperatives may embody some progressive ideals, but they do not pose a threat to the system.
As a general indictment of interstitial strategies of transformation, these negative judgments are too harsh. They assume both that there is an alternative strategy which does pose a serious “threat to the system” and also that this alternative strategy is undermined by the existence of interstitial efforts at social transformation. The fact is that in present historical conditions no strategy credibly poses a direct threat to the system in the sense that there are good grounds for believing that adopting the strategy today will generate effects in the near future that would really threaten capitalism. (page 231) This is what it means to live in a hegemonic capitalist system: capitalism is sufficiently secure and flexible in its basic structures that there is no strategy possible that immediately threatens it. The strategic problem is to imagine things we can do now which have reasonable chances of opening up possibilities under contingent conditions in the future. Interstitial strategies, of course, may ultimately be dead-ends and be permanently contained within narrow limits, but it is also possible that under certain circumstances they can play a positive role in a long-term trajectory of emancipatory social transformation.
The question, then, is this: what is the underlying model of social transformation in which interstitial activities can be viewed as part of an overall strategy for emancipatory social empowerment? What is the implicit theory of the ways in which such activities can cumulatively transform the society as a whole? Writers in the anarchist tradition devote remarkably little attention to this problem. While anarchist writing criticizes existing structures of capitalist and statist power and defends a vision of a federated cooperative alternative without the coercive domination of the state, there is very little systematic elaboration of how to actually “build the new society within the shell of the old” and how this can lead to a systemic transformation.