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Faceless Resistance

swedishzine — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 22:08:07 +0000

This article is forthcoming for Ideas & Action, the theoretical magazine of the Irish anarchist group the Workers’ Solidarity Movement. It is fundamentally a review of some of the essays produced by Kämpa Tillsammans, and a quick look at some of the concepts behind it. This is placed within the context of the recent history of the Swedish movement. It also discusses a bit about workplace blogging, and closes with a criticism of WSM’s position on trade union organising.

Faceless Resistance

Although Faceless Resistance as a concept has been discussed among radical circles in Sweden for several years, it has only recently begun to be noticed in the English speaking world, primarily due to delays in texts being translated. In this article I will look primarily at the work of Kämpa Tillsammans, who developed the core ideas of Faceless Resistance, but I will also situate these ideas in their historical and social context and introduce other tendencies that have been influenced by and adapted some of the theory.

Genesis – Sweden after the anti-globalisation movement

As with many other countries around the turn of the century, the radical movement in Sweden was massively re-invigorated by the anti-globalisation movement. The highpoint of this movement in Sweden was the protests during the EU summit in Gothenburg in 2001, which culminated in several protesters being shot and a convergence centre being brutally raided. Similar to developments in Ireland, America and England, the momentum and energy aroused by the anti-globalisation movement turned to a period of self questioning and internal discussion as activists began to look for the next step. In Sweden, thanks perhaps to an already existing tradition of syndicalism going back almost a hundred years, this next step took the form of a focus on workplace-based confrontation with capitalism.

At this stage, study groups based in cities around Sweden had already begun to engage with the alternative Marxist tradition, from Italian operaismo trends of the 60s and 70s, to the autonomist Marxism of Harry Cleaver, and back to intensive reading of Marx’s original works. These study groups sometimes formed the nuclei of future movement initiatives; in Stockholm for example, fare-dodging initiative Planka.nu, the Women’s Political Forum, the Roh-nin publishing house, strike support group ‘Stockholm United Commuters’ and web-magazine ‘The Daily Conflict’ all developed out of a study group called Stockholm Autonomist Marxists. At the same time a tendency within SAC (the syndicalist union) called Folkmakt (People’s Power) was engaging with different theoretical tendencies and developing a critique of the bureaucracy within SAC as well as the activism of the anti-globalisation movement.

Kämpa Tillsammans and the other worker’s movement

One group that developed in this fertile environment was a collective with members from Malmö and Gothenburg that became known as ‘Kämpa Tillsammans!’ (Struggle Together!). They started from the position that while the left wing typically sees class struggle on a formal level, consisting of union conflicts, strikes, pickets and negotiations, they ignore the daily experience of work and the struggle against it.

This position was informed both by theoretical perspectives and practical experience in the workplace. After beginning their first permanent jobs in a factory, members joined the union and tried to work within it to improve conditions. However they found the union organisers completely uninterested in their grievances and unwilling to take the conflicts further. The organisers were in fact surprised that these youngsters working temporary contracts were even members at all! Gradually, the young workers decided that the real action was not happening within union structures, but within the informal organisation of workers.

The group’s practical frustration with union-based organisation developed their engagement with Marxist tradition, particularly that which stressed the importance of our daily experience of work for theory.The Italian operaist traditionargues that the composition of the working class is in flux and thus developed the practice of ‘workers’ inquiries’ to constantly renew the vitality and relevance of revolutionary theory. The orientation of such inquiries resonated with Kämpa Tillsammans’ own experiences and they concluded that the most fertile space for investigation, and intervention, lay in what the Indian group Kamunist Kranti called “constant innumerable, insidious, unpredictable activities by small groups of workers” . Such ‘unpredictable activities’ defied acceptance of a passive role in either the production process or in pursuing grievances, and so was constantly hampered by the workers’ own representatives as well as their bosses.

Class composition

“No methods of struggle or organizational models can correspond to the class composition forever. Regardless, a large part of the left is not able to renew politics when society changes. They stick to their old truths and try desperately to represent an out-of-date understanding of the working class. The class struggle has inevitably left the institutionalized left behind and made old political truths obsolete. This is an important explanation to why communist parties, unions, and other leftist organizations that used to have considerable political relevance in the past, are totally out of touch today.”
Kämpa Tillsammans! No peace in the Class War!

Central to the practice of Kampa Tillsammans is the understanding that radical theory must be closely tied to the actual reality of class composition. As the organisation of the production process changes, in response to diverse factors, from market conditions and new technologies to the development of class conflict, the working class also changes, and this will be embodied in its forms of organisation and methods of struggle.

For example, the early workers’ movement in Central and Western Europe was based upon an organisation of work in which production was carried out primarily by skilled workers, concentrated in factories. These workers organised in craft unions and demanded control of production. Operaist academics argued that both this form of struggle and its goal were related to the specific conditions of work, and not to any objective theoretical ‘correctness’. They pointed out that the resulting struggles forced capitalism to alter this organisation of work, and with the implementation of both new technologies and management techniques (conveyor belt-assembly and Taylorism, respectively), re-arranged the production process, de-skilling work and thus the basis of workers’ power. This in turn undermined the previously dominant organisational form, the craft union; from this re-organisation older forms of struggle became irrelevant, and new forms were forced to develop in order to suit the changed context.

This analysis has a direct consequence for revolutionaries; since class consciousness and methods of struggle are constantly shifting, revolutionaries cannot simply accept the theories of past generations. We have a duty to investigate this changing composition in order to circulate the lessons from it, and derive theory to match the reality. Thus the centrality of the workers’ inquiry; in this process, militants constantly engage with the experiences of class struggle to challenge their own preconceptions and create a constantly evolving revolutionary theory.

Workers Inquiries or Workplace stories?

While traditional workers’ inquiries tend to be quite formal, often involving questionnaires and formal interviews, the members of Kämpa Tillsammans chose instead to document their own (often humorous) work experiences, draw lessons from them and publish them on the internet. They deliberately chose the medium of story-telling because they wanted workers to engage with the stories in a way that is not possible with formal surveys. Kim Muller of Kämpa Tillsammans explains that they wanted to change the popular idea of what it was to be a worker; workers do not communicate with each other via “written pamphlets or leaflets but by talking and storytelling”, thus stories provide a far better way to develop a new workers discourse than dry analysis and documentation.

This practice has since become popular in the Swedish workers movement, with many militants reporting on their workplaces online on sites such as forenadevardare.se (for health workers) or Arbetsförnedringen (for job seekers). The practice of workplace blogging can easily spread work experiences, showing the political dimensions in daily conflicts as well as giving clues about the changing composition of the working class.

One such blog, ‘Postverket’ is written by Postal Service workers. They see it as a way of developing the discussions that start in the canteen or on the shopfloor and circulating them among other workers in different sections and in other parts of the country. In turn, the discussions on the blog can serve as the basis for further discussion and action within the workplace. The writers have found that, once introduced to the blog, their co-workers start to read it and discuss it with other workmates, helping to develop their ideas and sharpen their criticism of the bosses and the work.

Thus for the Swedish movement, workplace blogging has a number of different functions. On the one hand, by publishing online, workers can transcend their individual workplace to connect their experiences and ideas with those of other workers on the other side of the country. It allows for the deepening of political arguments and critique. On the other hand, workplace blogs can create a new discourse of work, and help to form the basis of a new working class identity. For many people, the mention of ‘working class’ summons up a dozen grey clichés, none of which are relevant to their experiences. Stories and experiences from modern workplaces can help to popularise a more relevant conception of work and class, that can in turn help to propel working class mobilisations.

Struggle Together!

“These struggles, or practices, that struck management directly and made our lives immediately easier we came to call “faceless resistance” for lack of a better name. This was during a time when the left, our political environment, to a large degree saw that it was “calm” or “peace” at the workplaces, in stark contrast to our understanding of our situations at the workplaces. I still argue that an everyday class war is occurring and no peace is possible as long as capitalism exists.”

Kämpa Tillsammans! Self-activity, strategy, and class power

What Kämpa Tillsammans found in their investigations led them to develop the term Faceless Resistance. This referred to all of the small acts of workplace resistance that go unnoticed by the traditional left, but are vital to their understanding of class struggle. This list is nearly endless, but can include things things such as taking extra toilet breaks, stealing cash or other things from the workplace, clocking out early or calling the boss an asshole behind his back. While these examples may seemtrivial, they are important since they represent the struggle between our aspirations for a decent human life, and the constant pressure to reduce our lives to simply another input into the production process. What’s more, struggling in this way can supply their reward immediately, as, for instance, as instead of going through a protracted union negotiation for less work hours, by skipping out early one achieves this goal directly and becomes conscious of one’s own power in so doing.

In the workplace we often naturally develop a sense of solidarity, as we co-operate to solve problems and pass the time. However, there are nearly always barriers between workers that limit the development of collective action such as hierarchies based on race, sex, work roles and seniority. Management frequently exploit these divisions, assigning different jobs to men than to women, or giving foreigners the worst jobs for example. It is necessary to break down these hierarchies in order to develop the solidarity between workers, and open the door to collective action.

The affinity between workers can be developed by playing around and having fun, inside or outside the workplace. While many companies try to use evenings out and ‘fun events’ for building team spirit and good relations between management and employees,Kämpa Tillsammans argue that having fun together away from the bosses is vital for building a strong workers’ collective. Of course, the point of that these actions is not to be best friends with all your co-workers; t his is a ‘politics of small steps’, by starting with these small actions one can build the solidarity and trust between workers that will allow progressively bigger struggles to be taken on.

Struggle in, with or against the unions?

One of the unusual features of the Swedish labour market is its high level of union organisation (80% of workers in 2005) in comparison to England or Ireland. This of course raises the question of howthe ideas of Faceless Resistance relate to union organisation ; do they oppose it, complement it or ignore it? The presence in Sweden of the SAC, a large syndicalist union, throws this question into sharper relief. Kämpa Tillsammans tend to remain ambiguous on the question of union organisation, stating that they are neither for or against union organisation; unions are a fact of life for workers in capital, and so long as people have to sell their labour, unions will be there to handle the deal.

For Kämpa Tillsammans focusing on the question of union organisation is a mistake, the real power in a conflict comes from workplace militancy, regardless of whether this is expressed through a union or not, arguing that”regardless of the view on the role of the trade unions, every successful struggle at workplaces came from the solidarity between workmates; a strong workers’ collective.” Thus the role of revolutionaries should be to build the workers’ collective, rather than building the union organisation. The union framework for disputes can be used by the workers when it is appropriate and discarded when it is not, but the foundation for struggle must always be the solidarity and organisation of the workers.

Despite this ambivalent attitude towards union struggle, the ideas of Faceless Resistance have proven adaptable to a union context both within SAC and the LO (the main union confederation). Kämpa Tillsammans’ ideas helped to influence the recent re-organisation of SAC, which shifted the union’s orientation away from a service model of unionism, based on the management of disputes, and towards a more combatative position, giving workers more power over their own conflicts and increasing the role of the local sections. This went hand in hand with an opposition to ‘organisational chauvinism’ , i.e. a recognition that helping to win conflicts rather than members should be the primary activity of the union.

Meanwhile a network of workplace militants organised within the LO called Folkrörelselinje have incorporated ideas of Faceless Resistance into their own trade union practice, which works within the union to build strong workplace collectives. For them, Faceless Resistance can be another tool in the organisers handbook, that can be pulled out to suit certain contexts where other tools might not be appropriate.

Conclusion:

The concept of Faceless Resistance is a very useful one for revolutionaries today. The financial crisis and the cut-backs and redundancies it has entailed has opened up again the possibility of a widespread workplace militancy that had for so long seemed dead, and many young militants now have the opportunity to engage in meaningful organising in their workplaces. Kämpa Tillsammans’ lessons about building workplace collectives as the basis for struggle seem especially relevant when the failure of the union organised fightback has exposed the weakness of their workplace organisation. A workplace strategy that focuses on organising within the union is notobviously useful in situations where there is no union in a workplace, or where the union exists in name only. This is not to say that revolutionaries should refuse to work within unions, but that this decision should always be a pragmatic one, made on the basis of the specific conditions within the workplace and the tactics most likely to develop militancy among the workers.

The practice of workplace stories and blogging is also very relevant. In a society where discussions based around a traditional class identity have come to seem passé and out of date, the formulation of a new discourse of class is vital. This cannot be predicated on the old bases of class identity, but instead on the daily experiences of work and the often invisible struggles against it. Workplace stories can provide a way for revolutionaries to communicate directly with workers, to construct a new class identity, and help build the movement that will abolish class society.

Genesis – Sweden after the anti-globalisation movement

Kämpa Tillsammans and the other worker’s movement

The group’s practical frustration with union-based organisation developed their engagement with Marxist tradition, particularly that which stressed the importance of our daily experience of work for theory. The Italian operaist traditionargues that the composition of the working class is in flux and thus developed the practice of ‘workers’ inquiries’ to constantly renew the vitality and relevance of revolutionary theory. The orientation of such inquiries resonated with Kämpa Tillsammans’ own experiences and they concluded that the most fertile space for investigation, and intervention, lay in what the Indian group Kamunist Kranti called “constant innumerable, insidious, unpredictable activities by small groups of workers” . Such ‘unpredictable activities’ defied acceptance of a passive role in either the production process or in pursuing grievances, and so was constantly hampered by the workers’ own representatives as well as their bosses.

Class composition

“No methods of struggle or organizational models can correspond to the class composition forever. Regardless, a large part of the left is not able to renew politics when society changes. They stick to their old truths and try desperately to represent an out-of-date understanding of the working class. The class struggle has inevitably left the institutionalized left behind and made old political truths obsolete. This is an important explanation to why communist parties, unions, and other leftist organizations that used to have considerable political relevance in the past, are totally out of touch today.”
Kämpa Tillsammans! No peace in the Class War!

For example, the early workers’ movement in Central and Western Europe was based upon an organisation of work in which production was carried out primarily by skilled workers, concentrated in factories. These workers organised in craft unions and demanded control of production. Operaist academics argued that both this form of struggle and its goal were related to the specific conditions of work, and not to any objective theoretical ‘correctness’. They pointed out that the resulting struggles forced capitalism to alter this organisation of work, and with the implementation of both new technologies and management techniques (conveyor belt-assembly and Taylorism, respectively), re-arranged the production process, de-skilling work, lessening the skill basis of workers’ power, and thus undermining the hitherto dominant organisational form, the craft union. From this re-organisation older forms of struggle became irrelevant, and new forms developed to suit the changed context.

Workers Inquiries or Workplace stories?

The writers have found that, once introduced to the blog, their co-workers start to read it and discuss it with other workmates, helping to develop their ideas and sharpen their criticism of the bosses and the work.

Struggle Together!

These struggles, or practices, that struck management directly and made our lives immediately easier we came to call “faceless resistance” for lack of a better name. This was during a time when the left, our political environment, to a large degree saw that it was “calm” or “peace” at the workplaces, in stark contrast to our understanding of our situations at the workplaces. I still argue that an everyday class war is occurring and no peace is possible as long as capitalism exists.

Kämpa Tillsammans! Self-activity, strategy, and class power

What Kämpa Tillsammans found in their investigations led them to develop the term Faceless Resistance. This referred to all of the small acts of workplace resistance that go unnoticed by the traditional left, but are vital to their understanding of class struggle. This list is nearly endless, but can include things things such as taking extra toilet breaks, stealing cash or other things from the workplace, clocking out early or calling the boss an asshole behind his back. While these examples may seem trivial, they are important since they represent the struggle between our aspirations for a decent human life, and the constant pressure to reduce our lives to simply another input into the production process. What’s more, struggling in this way can supply their reward immediately, as, for instance, as instead of going through a protracted union negotiation for less work hours, by skipping out early one achieves this goal directly and becomes conscious of one’s own power in so doing.

Of course, this is not to imply that class struggle does, or should, consist solely in these small isolated acts of defiance; but that these small practices build collectivity between workers that can then be the basis of larger struggles. This ‘worker’s collective’ has much in common with the ‘affinity group’ style of organising that members of Kämpa Tillsammans had learnt from the anti-globalisation movement. They suggest that the collective can be built up in 3 stages: 1) work together, 2) have fun together, 3) struggle together!In the workplace we often naturally develop a sense of solidarity, as we co-operate to solve problems and pass the time. However, there are nearly always barriers between workers that limit the development of collective action such as hierarchies based on race, sex, work roles and seniority. Management frequently exploit these divisions, assigning different jobs to men than to women, or giving foreigners the worst jobs for example. It is necessary to break down these hierarchies in order to develop the solidarity between workers, and open the door to collective action.

The affinity between workers can be developed by playing around and having fun, inside or outside the workplace. While many companies try to use evenings out and ‘fun events’ for building team spirit and good relations between management and employees, Kämpa Tillsammans argue that having fun together away from the bosses is vital for building a strong workers’ collective. Of course, the point of that these actions is not to be best friends with all your co-workers; this is a ‘politics of small steps’, by starting with these small actions one can build the solidarity and trust between workers that will allow progressively bigger struggles to be taken on.

Struggle in, with or against the unions?

One of the unusual features of the Swedish labour market is its high level of union organisation (80% of workers in 2005) in comparison to England or Ireland. This of course raises the question of how the ideas of Faceless Resistance relate to union organisation; do they oppose it, complement it or ignore it? The presence in Sweden of the SAC, a large syndicalist union, throws this question into sharper relief. Kämpa Tillsammans tend to remain ambiguous on the question of union organisation, stating that they are neither for or against union organisation; unions are a fact of life for workers in capital, and so long as people have to sell their labour, unions will be there to handle the deal.

Conclusion:

The concept of Faceless Resistance is a very useful one for revolutionaries today. The financial crisis and the cut-backs and redundancies it has entailed has opened up again the possibility of a widespread workplace militancy that had for so long seemed dead, and many young militants now have the opportunity to engage in meaningful organising in their workplaces. Kämpa Tillsammans’ lessons about building workplace collectives as the basis for struggle seem especially relevant when the failure of the union organised fightback has exposed the weakness of their workplace organisation. A workplace strategy that focuses on organising within the union is not obviously useful in situations where there is no union in a workplace, or where the union exists in name only. This is not to say that revolutionaries should refuse to work within unions, but that this decision should always be a pragmatic one, made on the basis of the specific conditions within the workplace and the tactics most likely to develop militancy among the workers.

First English translation of Folkrörelselinje!

swedishzine — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 23:44:17 +0000

A good friend has agreed to translate a short text for me from Swedish, one of the basic texts by Folkrörelselinje. I’m interested in Folkrörelselinje because they apparently apply many of the ideas of Faceless Resistance within a trade union setting. This is pretty interesting since Kämpa Tillsammans in general promote union indifference, i.e. organising the workers collective is the prime political goal, relating this to the union is typically a pragmatic decision.

The text is only half done (hopefully finished tomorrow) and needs a stern editing, since it still retains some rather bizarre direct translations from Swedish. We’ll work on this over the next few days. And how the hell should we translate ‘Folkrörelselinje’ anyway? People’s-Movement-Union Line sounds like something from a Japanese infomercial!

En folkrörelselinje i facket

Working conditions are getting worse and attacks on workers similar to what we on Bagarn (the Baker) had to go through in 1995 is nothing unique, on the contrary. And surely there are others fighting against it.
But what is heard most of all is that nothing can be done – that such are the times. That kind of spirit creates such times!

How come we took the struggle and won the way we did?

I think the answer lays in the unionline that our club uses. Maybe we would have reacted and risen up against the harsh attacks, even without that line. But would we have been able to resist the threats for such a long time? Would we who negotiated trust the members to keep going? Would the members have confidence in us struggling on? I honestly don’t think so. We needed all the experience and all the methods we had gotten during several years.

The most important experience we have is that you have to dare to trust in the members.

We at Bagarn are just as fuzzy and slow and bickering and impossible as all workers are – and together we have the same enormous strength that all other workers have.
When we who lead the unionclub have had confidence in that strength, we have succeeded. When we have missed out on it, forgotten or not had courage to address the members, we’ve fucked up. We had enough experiences of both success and failures to handle a stretched-out struggle.

We gained those experiences during the years we have tried to develop a struggling, independent unionline ruled by the members.

Our method and our goal is that people should be active – in movement – that is a peoples movement unionline! The people should take the decisions and the people should act. The ideas vi develop should come out of this movement.

The organisation should be set in movement, going from experience to experience, from worker to worker, from members to the elected representatives and back again.

Inform the members about everything – speak clearly

We do this, amongst other channels of communication, through our info-paper Livstecken (Life-sign). It’s a simple A4-paper handed out to all members where we try to inform everyone about what’s going on.

Ask, don’t guess, what the members think that the club should be doing.

We use members-referendums, surveys and meetings where we discuss a single issue. When we develop our demands and suggestions, we often run them through a cycle of meeting, survey, meeting and referendum. If the company makes a move or comes with a suggestion, then we have to reach our members in the same extent, and ask them what they think about the company’s latest move and how the club should act. Each time we have thought that we could skip this step, we have overlooked something important – and let our members down.

Not another referendum! Our colleagues sigh sometimes. But it’s better that they complain about us nagging on them, than us not asking them. We would rather ask to often than to seldom. And it is right to put demand on the members, to show them that everything depends on them. That it is a strength for the club to have a members-decision to back it up, and to vote about the deals with the company, probably doesn’t need to be explained.

We don’t just ask what demands and suggestions our members have, but also how important the different demands are. If you ask – what do you want?, you easily get a bunch of tough suggestions. But you also have to ask – are you prepared to fight for it? What does this mean for the company, what will their countermove be? And then what, how far are we willing to go?

Questions like that can make the members soften up their demands – but we make people aware of the fact that we aren’t getting anything else than what we are prepared to fight for!

Don’t underestimate the members!

…More to come over the next few days

Original text is here

"Possibilities are found in the struggle outside the unions"

kimmuller — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 11:04:09 +0000

Interview with Swedish communist group Kämpa tillsammans about “faceless resistance” and workplace organisation.

M: What is Kämpa tillsammans?
KT: We call ourselves a writing collective, where we have discussions together and a collective signature. What we are occupied with is class struggle theory.

M: What made you start the group?
Initially it was because we put together a pamphlet with texts from the autonomist movement in Western Europe. We called the pamphlet Kämpa tillsammans, but as a group we did not have a name. We weren’t really a group, more like an editorial board. We were interviewed by the danish magazine Autonomi and they referred to us as Kämpa tillsammans. When we some time later felt the need to write something by and express ourselves, we used that name.

M: What questions and discussions where you interested in when you started writing as a group?
The first reason was to try to explain the crisis that occurred in Sweden in the beginning of the 90s. To understand it and then understand our place in the world, where there were possibilities and where there were no possibilities. When we wrote the pamphlet “Samma fiender, samma kamp” (Same enemies, same struggle) we suspected that struggles outside of the unions would increase, and it was in these struggles that we saw a future for radical worker struggle. However, we did not have sufficient experience of working life to conduct a deeper analysis. That came later.

M: Why was it that you focused on the struggle outside the unions?
It was connected more or less with where we were in life, that we were at the workplace. After being involved with struggles outside our immediate interests, like in single issue campaigns and such, I think that when we started jobs at workplaces where there where existing struggles we thought, “this is where it’s happening”. It was from there that the need for a lot of things came from.

It was this struggle that we recognized would be of use at our workplace from day to day. That we focused on the struggle outside of the unions rested on the fact that we saw very few opportunities with working with the unions, even if we viewed them quite pragmatically. But it was the non-union struggle that functioned today. Some of us even tried to work from within the unions, because of our leftist activist background, but realized quite quickly that the possibilities for struggle there were quite poor, it was not productive.

M: In one of your earlier texts you introduced the term “faceless resistance” to denote non-union struggle. Why did you choose this term and what do you mean by it?
We wanted an expression or a term that tied together the various informal and immediate class struggle practices that existed: go-slow, sabotage, work-to-rule and theft. We wanted a term that tied together these cases and then we started using “faceless resistance”, because the struggle is to a large extent invisible, it is not out in the open. Later on, people have developed it to include masked protests, we had that in mind ourselves, but never sad anything about it. We saw that there were parallels with militant street struggles in the workplace, that there were points of connection.

M: In the text where you introduced faceless resistance you also started a form of workers investigation, where you describe daily life on your workplace and the informal struggles occurring. What was workers investigation all about?
The point with workers investigation is partly to show to others that the struggles are there and existing, and show how they occur. But also to go beyond your own situation and put these struggles in a larger perspective. The analysis, which we actually conducted in “Same enemies, same struggle”, is that what is happening in the workplaces is class struggle. Struggle is the natural condition, and not, like it is so often described in Sweden, the exception.

The investigation is conducted while you are working, it is not something you just write about afterwards, to see possibilities and obstacles, see paths in the concrete struggle. A large part of the rational for the investigations is the break room discussions with our workmates.

M: What were the reactions to the articles about faceless resistance and how were the workers investigations received?
In the beginning it was very frustrating, something I’ve spotted when I look back at our contributions from that time, a whole lot of people did not understand what we meant. At the same time it was received relatively well by people that were also involved with an independent and direct workplace struggles, e.g.union militants inside both LO and SAC (the social democratic and anarcho-syndicalist unions), who directly saw the main arguments. Then it took awhile.

There was a small boom here in Malmö locally when a lot of activists wrote their own workplace report and interviewed each other. Job-talk was something you sat and chatted to each other about at the pub. Gradually the term faceless resistance, which could have had another name, it is perhaps not the best name, and investigations have gained more of a foothold. Partly through what we have written, talked and lectured about, but also a lot by itself.

We have heard that people have recognized themselves in the texts and had an “aha moment”. It is quite similar, when we progressed in our internal discussions, to the aha moment we had about what class struggle entails and how it appears in the day to day struggle.

M: There were two types of critique leveled against the term faceless resistance. The first type was directed at the description of what was seemingly an individual struggle, that this is just something you do as an individual and that the collective dimension was missing.
That critique has by and large disappeared afterwards, as we have stressed that faceless resistance often is collective. And partly, it is the case that it is individual, and of course it can be just that. Extra visits to the toilet is perhaps a bit hard to be a collective action. But we have always stressed that you work slowly collectively. This has started to get through to people.

M: The other type of critique is that this is all just a struggle on a micro level, the small, rather than on a macro level, the larger level. Instead of discussing large open conflicts, strikes and wage negotiations, you have looked at the small struggles around the coffee breaks and to slow down the pace of work.
It is partly about, which perhaps was not made clear from the beginning, that this is a form of the politics of small steps. That workers together in the worker collective also create the worker collective. It is through the small struggles that you are certain to win that you get a shared experience of struggle in order to take on larger struggles. It is not just the experience gained, that collective struggles are formed out of nothing, without this has to be linked to that there already is a strong collective.

The Indian group Kammunist Kranti did have a few interesting lines of thought, which inspired us. They wrote and told about how it developed when they were taking part in very big struggles, with tens of thousands involved, without recourse to the large and open conflict such as going on strike, that one instead stayed at work and did a go-slow. Their example shows that it works when even a lot of people are involved. They were also a refutation of the critique that faceless resistance is only possible to do among privileged workers, which is completely mad, because privileged workers have other tactics/means to use.

M: In some of your later texts you have talked about how informal workplace collectives form and develop. But you have also looked at the other side, on the bosses discussions on various management theories. What can be learnt from such?
Our latest texts have gone into further detail on how faceless resistance is organized and formed at the work places. But also how it is countered. We felt that it was not sufficient anymore to just describe how workplace resistance looked like and happened, that was just repeating ourselves.

Workplace reports became after a while rather similar, the same thing was described over and over. So instead we tried to describe how it was that a worker collective was established and started. About the connection between that you are pushed together at work and just work together, it is the only reason you are together, and that it is there you learn to know each other, build trust and can take on larger struggles. It becomes very clear that it is a collective struggle. But it is not a spontaneous struggle, it is not about spontaneity. Faceless resistance is often very organized, and not at all especially spontaneous, I think.

M: In your texts focus has been on workplace struggles. Have you discussed the struggles taking place outside of the workplaces. What collectives, needs and desires they express?
No, we have a strong focus on the workplaces. We have ourselves been involved in other struggles in other ways. However, we have been hesitant to make conclusions and write about thing that we don´t feel we get a very good grip on.

M: You were involved in starting the Vår Makt (Our Power) conferences in Malmo. What is the rationale for them?
They are class struggle conferences where there have been quite diverse sometimes, class struggle and above and beyond else, workplace struggles. At the conferences everything from the implications of oil in the Middle East and urban architecture, to very concrete tracks and workshops with people working within the same trade/sector. I hope that the Vår Makt-meetings have set the mood and helped towards build what I see is the sensible focus now existing within parts of the left on workplace struggle.

M: What kind of changes have happened, from the 90s single issue oriented activist-movement to today’s movement? What is it that is different with today’s discussions?
Today it is more focused on people’s needs, both in stuff like file sharing, fare-dodging and workplace related things like how get more leisure time, how you can get more out of work and how you can handle demands from the unemployment center better. The politics of today is more focused on our own needs. And it about you setting the agenda yourself, without just being upset over what happens all around the world.

M: What was worth bringing with you from the activist-movement to the class struggle in our day to day life?
The conflict perspective. When you come to a workplace, e.g., you assume from the beginning that the boss, management and the business is the enemy. Partly that and partly the anonymity. That you’re not interested in any fair fight, you can draw parallels to people confronting nazis who never just fight one and one, without entering those fights that you can win and do the best to win them. Also a form of affinity group organizing, where you organize with your work mates. Where you see the need in a workplace to stick together fucking tight, solve problems internally and back each other up when conflicts arise to begin with. If the conflicts where chosen wisely can be discussed internally later.

M: Self-investigations have now spread, faceless resistance has become an accepted concept within the non-union and extra-parliamentary left, and Vår Makt-conferences have started to spread to other places. What is the next step, in your opinion, to progress with these concepts and practices?
I think making a few investigations now will show where the road ahead lies. Then there are a few problems with the building of a strong worker collective that we need to overcome.

The first is how they at all should be founded, since a lot of people have jobs where there are very few people or you are even all on your own, such as truckers, au pairs or the unemployed. With the internet or other spaces to meet you can build strong workers’ collectives even though the employed do not meet, where the first step is not taken in the organization of work, that you have to be brought together at the workplace. How is it possible under conditions like this to build strong workplace struggles?

Secondly, when we have a workers’ collective, how can we lead an offensive worker struggles even when we are not threatened (with closure for example). When there are militant struggles that a lot of people participate in, it is often workplaces are threatened in some way, threatened with closure or re-organization. And then it is often too late. That is one problem I see that we are facing.

I also think that another problem is to have a worker collective that can be differentiated sometimes, you don’t have to have one demand and one struggle, without having diversity, that you can support other peoples’ activities. Such a worker collective needs be inclusive, and not succumb to those divisions that society enforce on us.

The interview originally appeared on Motkraft.net, August 2006.

Translation by Khawaga