Abstract

Stasis amidst crisis defines the present conjuncture, while the left seems trapped in a fractured sequence between short-lived and fundamentally constrained uprisings and electoral bids. This essay attempts to define the terrain of contemporary struggles in reference to their impasses, especially as these relate to transformations in capitalist nation-states. Tracing the limits of opposed strategic poles – a strong ‘protective’ state and ‘prolonged’ forms of dual power – it situates their common turn to social reproduction struggles and criticises their common presupposition: that states have abandoned core aspects of social reproduction, opening new paths for resistance. Instead we have ‘organised abandonment’: the developing, if still contradictory, integration of state capacities and international capital, extending into new modalities of social reproduction. State capacities have come to be structured in ways that impose impasses on traditional aims of working-class autonomy. In this light, the key strategic question is how we can conceive of an ascending sequence of struggles.