50 NEWREFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION OF OUR TIME Bat if we are faced with elements that, considered in isolation, ate indif- ferent to the various structural ensembles with which they can be articu- lated, where is the unevenness? The solution is suggested by Trotsky’s ‘own examples. As we saw, he proclaims, speaking of the backward coun- tries, hae ‘under the whip of extemal necessity, their backward culture is compelled to make leaps’ (our emphasis). This reference to compulsion and externality is fundamental, because ic clearly implies that the tunevennness results from the disruption of a structure by forces operating ‘ouside it This is exactly what we have called dislocation. The unevenness of development is the result of the dislocation of an articulated structure, not the combination of elements which essentially belong to different ‘stages’ ‘Thirdly, the structural dislocation particular to unevenness and the ‘external navure of that dislocation mean that the structure does not have in itself the conditions for its possible future re-articulation. And the very fact chat the dislocated elements are not endowed with any kind of essential unity outside their contingent forms of articulation means that a dislocated structure is an open structure in which the crisis can be resolved in the most varied of directions. Iis strict posibility in che sense wwe defined earlier. As a result, the structural rearticulation wall be an ‘eminently politcal rearticulation. The field of unevenness is, in che strict sense of the term, the field of politics. Moreover, the more points of dislocation a structure has, the greater che expansion of the field of poli- tics will be. Fourthly, the subjects constructing hegemonic articulations on the bats of dislocation ate not internal but external ro the dislocated struc~ ture, As we stated above, they are condemned to be subjects by the very face of dislocation. In this sense, however, efforts to rearticulate and reconstruct the structure also entail the constitution of the agents’ identity and subjectiviey. Iris this poine which clearly shows the limits of ‘Trotsky’s ‘permanentist’ approach. For Trotsky, the identity of social agents — classes — remains unaltered throughout the whole process. It is +0 make chat resule possible thac stagism, while shaken, bad to be main tained. But if the constitutive nature of unevenness makes any fixing of identities impossible in eeems of stages, means that the elements articu- lated by social agents come to form part of the latter's identity. Ie is nota question of whether the same subject — the working class — can take on democratic tasks of not, but of whether, having assumed them, a new subject is constituted on the basis of articulating working class identity and democratic identity. And this articulation changes the meaning of NEW REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION OF OUR TIME 51 both identities. As we have argued elsewhere, this decisive step is not ‘taken by Trotsky or by the Leninist tradition considered as a whole. Ie is only with che Gramscian notion of ‘collective will’ that the barrier of class essentialism begins to dissolve. Fifehly, the greater the dislocation of a structure is, the more indeter- ‘inate the political construction emerging from it will be. In this sense, Leninism represented an advance from the orthodox Marxism of the Second International, in spite of its limitations. No wonder the Interna- tional’s most representative leaders hurled accusations of ‘voluntarism’ and ‘adventurism’ against Leninist political practice. To base political intervention on the opportunities opened up by the indetermination of a historical juncture went right against a vision of politics which saw the latter as lacking all auconomy, since it was merely the result of an entirely determined process. Once again, itis only by radicalizing this dimension of indetermination that the field of politics can be extended, and this requires a deepening of the dialectic implicit in the dislocation—possil iliey relationship. 21. Lets examine this relationship in a case which has been tradition ally puc forward as an example of capitalism's growing conttol of social relations: the phenomenon of commodification. In its most frequent description, capitalism has an inherent tendency to dissolve previous social relations and to transform all objects of private life previously outside its control into commodities. The human beings produced by this growing expansion of the market would be completely dominated by capitalism. Their very needs would be created by the market and fh che manipulation of public opinion by the mass media controlled by capital. We would thus be moving in the direction of increasingly regimented societies dominated by the major centres of economic power. Given that the working class would be increasingly incorporated into the system at the same time, no radically anci-capitalise sector would exist and fucure prospects would appear more and more bleake Hence the deep pessimism of an Adorno. But this picture does not at all correspond with realty. Ic is without doube true that the pheno- menon of commodification is at the heart of the multiple dislocations of traditional social relations. But this does not mean that che only prospect throwm up by such dislocations is the growing passive conformity of all aspects of life to che laws of the market. "The response to the negative effects of the commodification process can bea whole variety of struggles which artempe to subject the activities