Suchergebnisse

Substance of essay delivered before Cooper union, New York, Feb. 10, 1946.

Dual power as a strategic concept plays a central role in the conceptualization of the revolutionary situation in Russia during 1917, both in the sense of the characterization of a particular conjuncture as revolutionary, but also as strategic direction, acquiring after October 1917 canonical status. Although associated with a 'classical' insurrectionary sequence, later discussions of dual power placed more emphasis on the more complex, uneven and lasting character of any potentially revolutionary strategy, from Gramsci's distinction between war of movement and war of position to the debates on strategy in the 1970s. Recently, discussions of dual power have resurfaced in the context of the debates on the contradictions of contemporary attempts towards some form of 'left governance', but also in interventions by theorists such as Fredric Jameson. The aim of this presentation is to return to crucial moments of these debates in order to suggest it is necessary to move beyond thinking about dual power of either a typology of insurrectionary sequences or the simple articulation of parliamentary majority and movements from below. In this sense, instead of limiting it to the particular conjuncture of a revolutionary situation, it is better to think of a permanent dual power as an integral aspect of any potentially revolutionary strategy, or as a permanent trait of any politics of emancipation.