Exodus

= constructive political concept used by the new participatory and p2p-based social movements, and distinct from "revolution" as a goal

Concept, and the title of an upcoming book by Kevin Carson. For the book, see our entry on: General Idea of the Revolution in the XXI Century

The Concept

Description

David Graeber, in: Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology:

"“The theory of exodus proposes that the most effective way of opposing capitalism and the liberal state is not through direct confrontation but by means of what Paolo Virno has called ‘engaged withdrawal,’ mass defection by those wishing to create new forms of community.

One need only glance at the historical record to confirm that most successful forms of popular resistance have taken precisely this form. They have not involved challenging power head on (this usually leads to being slaughtered, or if not, turning into some—often even uglier—variant of the very thing one first challenged) but from one or another strategy of slipping away from its grasp, from flight, desertion, the founding of new communities.” (60-61)

Discussion

Paolo Virno, an excerpt from this great interview:

HP: For you, what is the meaning of the word revolution today?

"PV: Perhaps we could do without the word revolution because this model was that of taking power and constructing a new State. It may be better to speak of exodus. I think that the model of exodus is a rich one. Exodus means, more than taking power or subduing it, exiting. Exiting means constituting a distinct context, new experiences of non-representative democracy, new modes of production. It offers a third possibility, and I am not speaking – please! – of the "Third way" but rather of a politics of the extinction of the State being positively constructive, opposing the word republic to the word State. This means constructing a nonstatal republic with a movement that emerges more from exodus and positive experiments than from revolutions in the classical sense. The latter were an intelligent activity for many generations, but lead to the idea of constructing a new State. The point is no longer a monopoly over decision, which is to say Multitude: many, plurality."

(http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpvirno8.htm)

Examples

Justin Murphy, associated with the Urbit community:

"It’s widely believed that the Left is “winning” because they’re overrepresented at the top of many prestigious institutions.

But the Left is not winning.

They are climbing to the top of a sinking ship faster than right-wingers, but that's hardly "winning."

Let them have the utterly corrupted and technologically obsolesced institutions! Let them have everything in the city of man, from the universities down to the last halloween candy bowl!

They will end up with nothing at all, for a race to the bottom can only end in Hell—though at any time, every person is completely welcome to rejoin the straight and narrow, where there will always be bearers of civilization.

That's where I try to live, that's where I spend time with people, that's where I read, and write, and talk, and build my business, and build my family, and collaborate with others building their own business and families. I really don’t see any Right or Left in my own daily life.

American institutions are already being replaced by private, imperceptible networks of incredible people building and enforcing their own freedoms, seeking truth, oriented toward virtue. That's all America ever was!

Visible America is already being fixed by a subterranean America, as I write this—it's just illegible to the current media culture. There is a ton of capital, a ton of talent, and a ton of spiritual discipline building tremendous value in autonomous and private networks of capital, technology, and intellect. People just don't know about it yet.

In 100 years, America will still be the richest and most powerful country in the world, where good people will enjoy lives of great wealth, knowledge, security, and peace. The rule of law and sound money will be perfected and self-enforcing via matured blockchain technology. Privacy and security will be perfected via mature zero-knowledge technologies. Most reigning falsehoods and suppressed truths will be rectified by the continuing acceleration of intelligence and the increasing speed and power advantages of those who wield more truth than others. Truthful, virtuous, intelligent, productive people will be wealthy and secure beyond your wildest imagination, while the people who cling to lies and stupidity and bad behavior will rapidly exit the gene pool (fertility is a problem, I admit, but survival will be a much bigger problem for dependents of collapsed institutions). I don't say this with any pleasure.

It means nothing that our technologically obsolesced institutions are controlled by silly or evil people. All capital, all technology, even weapons power, everything will escape the control of these institutions. It's obviously already happening, if you can detach from the society of the spectacle for even a moment.

They will increasingly find themselves drowning and climbing into the thousands of lifeboats currently being constructed, and the ones already floating. Trying to take over a sinking ship is the most absurd goal I can possibly imagine and it boggles my mind that this is the focal point of the "dissident" right, which I expected to be a little sharper than this.

The future is so bright that it’s blinding.

Don’t worry about winning some grand macro-social game. Exit the institutions and build something wild from scratch. That’s how you win the macro-social game. That’s how America did it the first time, and that’s how we’ll do it the second time."

(email newsletter, November 2023)

The Chinese Bamboo Grove Communities in the Warring States Period

Hiram Crespo:

"Yang Chu lived during the Warring States period of Chinese history. The parallels with the Hellenistic Era and the struggles for power among states are many.

Master Yang used the wei-wo (for oneself) argument to resist the practice of warlords of recruiting young men into their army, often to fight petty wars for expansion of territory. Many young Chinese men died needlessly in these conflicts, which had nothing to do with them in most cases.

In order to avoid these recruitment drives, people began to move away from urban spaces and into rural spaces, away from the cities and states that were in conflict. This led to the period of the “seven sages of the bamboo grove”. These were antinomian philosophers, artists, musicians (some of their compositions are still on record and are among the oldest known Chinese classics) who were heavily influenced by Taoist philosophy in general, and by Yang Chu in particular, and who ran away to the Bamboo Grove (a type of Daoist “Epicurean” Garden) in order to evade military recruitment."

(https://hiramcrespo.substack.com/p/yang-chu-on-non-violence-we-are-bodies)

The Book

• Exodus. By Kevin Carson. See: General Idea of the Revolution in the XXI Century