By John O’Reilly and Nate Hawthorne
We in the IWW, like many others, have long tried to link two types of struggle - struggles for short-term improvements under capitalism, and the struggle to replace capitalism with a better society. For years now the IWW has used two ideas to think about the connections between these types of struggles. These ideas are Industrial Unionism and the One Big Union. These ideas have meant many different things but they have always been related to the IWW's revolutionary vision. These ideas relate to our vision of a future revolution that ends capitalism and to our vision of our organization under capitalism before such a revolution.
In this piece, we discuss some of the ideas in the early IWW about the IWW, One Big Unionism, and Industrial Unionism. The IWW's preamble famously states that "by organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old." For the early IWW, the idea of building the new within the shell of the old had two facets. Both were all about revolution. One was a matter of organizational design and the other was a matter of preparing the working class. In its organizational design, the IWW's structures were supposed to be set up to form the basis for running a future society democratically. The idea was for the working class to be able to run the economy as quickly as possible after a revolutionary change, to get the post-capitalist economy going again after the tremendous disruption caused by the revolution. In terms of preparing the class, the IWW was intended to radicalize workers by making them want revolution and make them more capable in acting on their urge to end capitalism.
We can see the notion of structure in some documents from just before the IWW's founding. A letter that helped bring about the IWW's founding convention described the need for a new type of union. The letter called for "a labor organization builded as the structure of Socialist society, embracing within itself the working class in approximately the same groups and departments and industries that the workers would assume in the working class administration of the Co-Operative Commonwealth.” In the words of another letter, this union should “represent class conscious revolutionary principles." A manifesto issued in January 1905 described the goal as an organization which would “build up within itself the structure of an Industrial Democracy - a Workers’ Co-Operative Republic - which must finally burst the shell of capitalist government, and be the agency by which the working people will operate the industries, and appropriate the products to themselves.” In the words of the people who created the IWW initially, that's what the IWW was supposed to be.
An article called “How the IWW is Organized” published in an IWW magazine later tried to sum up the IWW’s aims in three points. “(1) To organize the workers in such a way that they can successfully fight their battles and advance their interests in their every-day struggles with capitalists. (2) To overthrow capitalism and establish in its place a system of Industrial Democracy. (3) To carry on production after capitalism has been overthrown.”
In addition to structure, the IWW's activity was supposed to prepare workers for revolution. One issue of the Industrial Worker newspaper said that conflict under capitalism helped get the working class ready to end capitalism. This conflict was "training" of a sort "most necessary to prepare the masses for the final ‘catastrophe,’ the
general strike, which will complete the expropriation of the employers.” The Industrial Union Bulletin wrote that "the very fights themselves, like the drill of an army, prepare the worker for ever greater tasks and victories.” An early IWW leader named Daniel DeLeon wrote that one function of the union is “to drill the membership of the working class in the habit of self-imposed discipline” - or, to train the class to use its capacities for self-organization. The idea was that workers would learn how to run society through running their own organization -- specifically, the class conscious and revolutionary industrial union, in struggle against the capitalist class.
An Industrial Union Bulletin article called “Industrial Unionism" stated that the IWW “teaches its members that each dispute in which they are involved is merely an incident in the great struggle between capital and labor - a struggle which can only be brought to an end by the overthrow of capital” and “this supreme end must be ever kept in view.” As a result “every incident in the life of the union, every skirmish with the employers is made the text for proletarian education.”
Sophie Cohen was a child during a major strike in 1913 in Paterson, New Jersey, in which the IWW played an important role. Cohen said that “the IWW left people with a taste for organization. Every time workers win a strike, it helps straighten out their backs a little bit more and lifts their heads a bit higher. Even though the big strike was lost in Paterson, there was a feeling of togetherness among the workers. (…) From then on, there were a series of strikes and every shop had to be reorganized. Every shop refought the eight hour day all down the line.”
The education of individual members occurred through direct action, defined by James Kennedy as “use of their economic power by the workers themselves." Jack Terrill, the secretary of a Montana IWW branch put it this way: “If something should happen tomorrow so that the workers would have to run industry when they go to work tomorrow, there would be chaos. They are not educated up to that point, but the IWW is trying to organize them into one big union and educate them so that they can run industry when the time comes.” This education could not happen without the day to day and month to month struggles against bosses.
“[T]he revolutionary character of the working class is best developed while the workers are engaged in actual struggle against the masters,” stated an article from the IWW magazine the Industrial Pioneer. The article said that a “well conducted strike will do more towards developing class-consciousness and radical sentiment than ten tons of
revolutionary propaganda of a general nature.” The idea here is straightforward: struggle changes people. Being involved in struggle, instead of delegating one’s power to another, makes that struggle more meaningful to the worker
Readers may have noticed that we have spent more time on one facet than the other. We agree strongly with the idea of struggles preparing the working class for revolution. While we respect the idea of early IWW members that the organizational design of the IWW should be the structure for a post-capitalist society, we don’t find it very compelling. Particularly in today’s economy, so many workers labor on products or services that are irrelevant or unnecessary for our society if we free ourselves from the bosses’ rule. For many people in the early IWW, however, these facets were not separable.
The article "Industrial Unionism" argued that the IWW's organizational structure was linked to both functions. Under capitalism, the structure was meant to coordinate effective struggle and to maximize the preparatory role -- to make the IWW radicalize as many workers as possible as effectively as possible. After capitalism ended, the same
structure would take on a new role. The article stated: “Under capitalism, the functions of the union are militant and aggressive; under the Socialist Republic they will be administrative only. This change of function will involve no internal transformation of the union, as it is precisely those powers whereby it can inflict injury upon the capitalist that will enable it to take up the work of production. It is precisely its control over production (…) that give[s] its power for militant action.” The idea was that after militant action ended capitalism, the IWW and the working class would immediately deploy its power for cooperative production.
We can see the idea of the One Big Union as having three different roles: a vision of a future society, an idea of revolutionary change, and a structure for coordinating struggles under capitalism. As a vision of a future society, the One Big Union meant a democratic society where workers cooperated freely. As an idea of revolutionary change, the idea was that workers would form one big union and then that union would end capitalism. This could mean a few things concretely. It could mean that the IWW literally became an organization that included the entire working class. Or it could mean the IWW had enough workers in it that it kicked off some major social upheaval. In those two scenarios, the IWW would be the One Big Union. The idea could also be more metaphorical - the working class united together, but without any single organization. In that case, the IWW would be one organization among many who makes a contribution.
The One Big Union was also the name for an organizational form for workers to coordinate activities against specific bosses and the capitalist class before the revolution. In that sense, the One Big meant a structure to work under capitalism. The One Big Union was made up of Industrial Unions, which were meant to be the fighting divisions of the IWW. The Industrial Unions were supposed to concentrate workers in particular industries in order to maximize the power they could exert. The IWW's One Big Unionist administrative structure was supposed to join struggles across Industrial Unions in order to make them more effective. The organization as a whole was also intended to spread the idea of One Big Union as a revolutionary vision. This was supposed to help keep the Industrial Unions from focusing simply and entirely on the day-to-day and month-to-month struggles.
In 1913 Paul Brissenden described the IWW's doctrine as Revolutionary Industrial Unionism. He noted that the IWW didn't invent the idea of industrial unionism or of revolution. “The Industrial Workers of the World is not the first organization of workingmen built upon the industrial form. Even its revolutionary character can be traced back through other organizations." He named other organizations that had helped influence the IWW and that held one or both of these ideas: the Knights of Labor, the Western Federation of Miners, the American Labor Union, the United Metal Workers International Union, the Brewery Workers, and the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance. Still, Brissenden argued that the IWW was part of "the most modern phase of the
revolutionary movement." For the early IWW, the One Big Union served to keep the organization aimed at revolution while Industrial Unionism helped make this revolutionary vision practical instead of just wishful thinking.
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Monday, May 9, 2011
Luxemburg and Organizational Centralism
I read this tonight and it's really gotten me thinking and I'm trying to respond to it here because it's an issue that I often talk about in the context of the IWW.
"Centralism in the socialist sense is not an absolute thing applicable to any phase whatsoever of the labor movement. It is a tendency, which becomes real in proportion to the development and political training acquired by the working masses in the course of their struggle." -Rosa Luxemburg, "Organizational Questions of Russian Social Democracy," 1904
Luxemburg here is responding to Lenin and the Iskra group's ideas about centralism as a way of dealing with the ineffectiveness and lack of organization of the Russian Marxist movement of the time. Lenin proposes a kind of centralism which makes all the parts of the party subservient to a Central Committee in all the decisions that it makes. As history shows, he ended up achieving his aim and the bloody story of Stalinism is part of that legacy. But this isn't just an "I told you so" prediction by Luxemburg that later-day radicals can cheer about, as we so often do about Bakunin's similarly prescient statements about Marx and his party-form organization. Luxemburg is responding to a real concern and she's doing so in a way that I think is really smart.
As I understand it, the revolutionary movement in Russia at the time was very divided and tiny, much of it underground and completely autonomous from other branches within the same party. Since the failure of substitutionist terror campaigns of the Narodniks in the 1870s, the political wing of the revolutionary movement was weak, while economic actions by workers and peasants were on the upswing. Likely, though I can't prove it, the Social Democrats in a certain city or region had more contact with other revolutionaries in other groups within their area than with the party across the country. I think this is likely due to the underground nature of their organizations due to the repressive atmosphere of the Tsarist regime at the time. I'd also guess that part of that isolation came with a lack of an idea of how a national party could act, which is what Lenin was trying to answer with his proposal of ultra-centralism.
In this way, though the analogy is a bit clunky, the situation resembles our own a bit. Since the substitutionism of the New Left failed in the 1970s, we have been divided and tiny, mostly speaking with people in our own cities, often across different radical movements, with limited national or international coordination. Repression is not our primary issue for English-speaking North America at this time (though we shouldn't pretend it doesn't happen to us and our comrades) but we also lack a sense of how a national or international organization could work. Like the Russian Social Democrats, we have a formal organization that connects us, the IWW, but only in limited ways do we actually use that organization. Or said better, the IWW sometimes has weak organizational ties across branches, leading us to pursue localism instead of internationalism.
What Luxemburg proposes as centralism is very different from Lenin's proposal and I think it's really interesting to see centralism as a tendency instead of a policy. Tendencies expand and contract, they provide a pole to think around and about, made up of different individuals at different times for different reasons. Favorably comparing her German party to the Russians later in the article, she comments upon how the German organization can be "supple, yet firm." A centralist tendency, not used like a capitalized Tendency in a party, but in the sense of "I tend to like waking up early on weekends but not on week days" is a movement, in the sense of walking, towards a kind of decision-making within an organization. I've long joked that I'm an anarcho-centralist in the IWW, without really knowing what that means, but I'm pleased to hear that one hundred years earlier, Luxemburg was seriously proposing centralism as something like it.
I also like that she says that it becomes real in proportion to the nature of struggle and the participants in struggle. For Luxemburg here centralism, which is itself a complicated word with lots of bad connotations there days, becomes useful when the participants in class struggle find it useful, not when it is decided by leadership that it is useful. Here again, the "development and political training" that makes centralism useful to the working class movement does not come from intellectuals in the party, but from lived experience of struggle.
I've been thinking and talking a lot recently with my fellow workers about ways to improve our local branch's administration and organizational culture. We may not agree on many details of that yet, but I definitely think that we are moving towards a shared idea of what Luxemburg might call centralism, though I doubt calling it that in our union would be a popular move. Still, what I think she does well and what I hope to incorporate into my thinking is explaining a level upon which centralism, and more broadly the question of organization itself, depends on the kinds of experiences of struggle that workers have and the kinds of organs they create based on those struggles. Rather than looking to ideology to pick an organizational form that suits us, we should look to our experiences and draw from them conclusions about the ways that we can move forward and build up our organizations.
"Centralism in the socialist sense is not an absolute thing applicable to any phase whatsoever of the labor movement. It is a tendency, which becomes real in proportion to the development and political training acquired by the working masses in the course of their struggle." -Rosa Luxemburg, "Organizational Questions of Russian Social Democracy," 1904
Luxemburg here is responding to Lenin and the Iskra group's ideas about centralism as a way of dealing with the ineffectiveness and lack of organization of the Russian Marxist movement of the time. Lenin proposes a kind of centralism which makes all the parts of the party subservient to a Central Committee in all the decisions that it makes. As history shows, he ended up achieving his aim and the bloody story of Stalinism is part of that legacy. But this isn't just an "I told you so" prediction by Luxemburg that later-day radicals can cheer about, as we so often do about Bakunin's similarly prescient statements about Marx and his party-form organization. Luxemburg is responding to a real concern and she's doing so in a way that I think is really smart.
As I understand it, the revolutionary movement in Russia at the time was very divided and tiny, much of it underground and completely autonomous from other branches within the same party. Since the failure of substitutionist terror campaigns of the Narodniks in the 1870s, the political wing of the revolutionary movement was weak, while economic actions by workers and peasants were on the upswing. Likely, though I can't prove it, the Social Democrats in a certain city or region had more contact with other revolutionaries in other groups within their area than with the party across the country. I think this is likely due to the underground nature of their organizations due to the repressive atmosphere of the Tsarist regime at the time. I'd also guess that part of that isolation came with a lack of an idea of how a national party could act, which is what Lenin was trying to answer with his proposal of ultra-centralism.
In this way, though the analogy is a bit clunky, the situation resembles our own a bit. Since the substitutionism of the New Left failed in the 1970s, we have been divided and tiny, mostly speaking with people in our own cities, often across different radical movements, with limited national or international coordination. Repression is not our primary issue for English-speaking North America at this time (though we shouldn't pretend it doesn't happen to us and our comrades) but we also lack a sense of how a national or international organization could work. Like the Russian Social Democrats, we have a formal organization that connects us, the IWW, but only in limited ways do we actually use that organization. Or said better, the IWW sometimes has weak organizational ties across branches, leading us to pursue localism instead of internationalism.
What Luxemburg proposes as centralism is very different from Lenin's proposal and I think it's really interesting to see centralism as a tendency instead of a policy. Tendencies expand and contract, they provide a pole to think around and about, made up of different individuals at different times for different reasons. Favorably comparing her German party to the Russians later in the article, she comments upon how the German organization can be "supple, yet firm." A centralist tendency, not used like a capitalized Tendency in a party, but in the sense of "I tend to like waking up early on weekends but not on week days" is a movement, in the sense of walking, towards a kind of decision-making within an organization. I've long joked that I'm an anarcho-centralist in the IWW, without really knowing what that means, but I'm pleased to hear that one hundred years earlier, Luxemburg was seriously proposing centralism as something like it.
I also like that she says that it becomes real in proportion to the nature of struggle and the participants in struggle. For Luxemburg here centralism, which is itself a complicated word with lots of bad connotations there days, becomes useful when the participants in class struggle find it useful, not when it is decided by leadership that it is useful. Here again, the "development and political training" that makes centralism useful to the working class movement does not come from intellectuals in the party, but from lived experience of struggle.
I've been thinking and talking a lot recently with my fellow workers about ways to improve our local branch's administration and organizational culture. We may not agree on many details of that yet, but I definitely think that we are moving towards a shared idea of what Luxemburg might call centralism, though I doubt calling it that in our union would be a popular move. Still, what I think she does well and what I hope to incorporate into my thinking is explaining a level upon which centralism, and more broadly the question of organization itself, depends on the kinds of experiences of struggle that workers have and the kinds of organs they create based on those struggles. Rather than looking to ideology to pick an organizational form that suits us, we should look to our experiences and draw from them conclusions about the ways that we can move forward and build up our organizations.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
The O Word
A Wordle of the last draft of my senior capstone. I'll repost it when I submit my final version next week. (This idea was stolen from ED who did the same with his dissertation.) Details will be posted about the talk I'm going to give based on my research as soon as I set it up.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Class War is No Joke
So I've just been turned on to the various "Tea Party" protests that are going on around the United States. Clearly these are examples of so-called Astroturfing, using various front groups to appear to be a popular movement. But I don't doubt that there are genuine middle and upper class people who have joined these marches, likely because of the enormous amount of press that they're receiving on Fox News and other television news channels.
It's easy for anarchists to dismiss these protests as irrelevant and yet another example of right-wing advocacy groups. After all, we all know that the Center for Union Facts is way more well-funded than we are and that a few days in real struggle will wake even the most reactionary worker up to the contradictions in the workplace. Well, probably.
But there's a huge difference between advocacy by conservative sectors of the bourgeoisie in the political arena and street protests by that same group. Advocacy, while probably more important in terms of actually enforcing policy decisions, occurs secretly and behind closed doors. The whole purpose of advocacy is blown when a group becomes publicly well-known for what it does. Hence the continued promotion of the nature of the Center for Union Facts by the AFL-CIO and other labor groups. Protest operates by the opposite mechanism, a public theatrical spectacle which invites controversy. Which is of course why leftists are so used to using it.
But as any student of history should know, when the Right does turn to protest and street-level actions, it is always incredibly dangerous for leftists, particularly though counter-intuitively radicals. On one hand, on a purely political level, right-wing protest and direct action is dangerous to what we believe in and to ourselves. Obviously various fascist groups and parties come to mind to illustrate this point. Right-wing opposition to abortion took its most powerful and dangerous form in the Operation Rescue movement of the 80s, which used civil rights era tactics to disrupt women's clinics.
The danger exists for radicals specifically beyond these concrete results and on the level discourse. When the right-wing places itself as the "protagonist" of a social struggle against a marginally left or centrist government, it squeezes our voices off the table entirely. Consider Chavez's Venezuela. In similar media-powered protest spectacles, the organized right-wing parties have thrown giant protests, funded powerful opposition, and even thrown a coup. This opposition has made it to criticize Chavez in Venezuela is immediately equated with being a reactionary. There is little room for nuance and internal disagreement when faced with deadly right-wing force, and it is those things that radicals need to expand. The fact that North American anarchists swear by El Libertario as the "authentic voice of freedom" in Venezuela continues to make me laugh, after being assured by numerous revolutionaries familiar with the country that literally no one reads the group's publications in-country because of their virulently anti-Chavez stance. That's not to say that Chavez isn't a power-hungry would-be dictator. He is. But "speaking truth to power" when "power" is the only thing giving you bread and protecting you from fascist groups is understandably a difficult position.
In the United States, these protests seem small right now and will hopefully stay that way, simply a passing political fad. But radicals should not let them grow and do anything in our power to combat them. Simply letting them off the hook because we agree that taxes are bad is a view that completely ignores the political complexities of the situation. Barack Obama may not be our leader, but if we allow him to become the "bad guy" in the media, we lose more than he does. This doesn't mean we should support Obama, but that we should attack the right-wing with our tools and ideas before they grow too large. Anti-fascist activism in Britian and the continent is a reasonable comparison.
There are chilling examples of what happens when right-wingers organize large public presences against left-leaning or moderate governments and radicals sit back. Though they couldn't be considered as "sitting back," the uncritical support of the Chilean Left of Allende and, outside of the Movimiento Izquierda Revolucionario's occasional scuffle with participants, lack of willingness to engage publicly and clearly with the right-wing middle class "March of the Empty Pots" movement when it began directly paved the way for Pinochet's coup to happen. Certainly it was a different time and revolutionaries then had different perspectives on change, so we can't fault them entirely. But the fact remains that allowing right-wingers a free hand at organizing is a game we play with no possibility of winning.
It's easy for anarchists to dismiss these protests as irrelevant and yet another example of right-wing advocacy groups. After all, we all know that the Center for Union Facts is way more well-funded than we are and that a few days in real struggle will wake even the most reactionary worker up to the contradictions in the workplace. Well, probably.
But there's a huge difference between advocacy by conservative sectors of the bourgeoisie in the political arena and street protests by that same group. Advocacy, while probably more important in terms of actually enforcing policy decisions, occurs secretly and behind closed doors. The whole purpose of advocacy is blown when a group becomes publicly well-known for what it does. Hence the continued promotion of the nature of the Center for Union Facts by the AFL-CIO and other labor groups. Protest operates by the opposite mechanism, a public theatrical spectacle which invites controversy. Which is of course why leftists are so used to using it.
But as any student of history should know, when the Right does turn to protest and street-level actions, it is always incredibly dangerous for leftists, particularly though counter-intuitively radicals. On one hand, on a purely political level, right-wing protest and direct action is dangerous to what we believe in and to ourselves. Obviously various fascist groups and parties come to mind to illustrate this point. Right-wing opposition to abortion took its most powerful and dangerous form in the Operation Rescue movement of the 80s, which used civil rights era tactics to disrupt women's clinics.
The danger exists for radicals specifically beyond these concrete results and on the level discourse. When the right-wing places itself as the "protagonist" of a social struggle against a marginally left or centrist government, it squeezes our voices off the table entirely. Consider Chavez's Venezuela. In similar media-powered protest spectacles, the organized right-wing parties have thrown giant protests, funded powerful opposition, and even thrown a coup. This opposition has made it to criticize Chavez in Venezuela is immediately equated with being a reactionary. There is little room for nuance and internal disagreement when faced with deadly right-wing force, and it is those things that radicals need to expand. The fact that North American anarchists swear by El Libertario as the "authentic voice of freedom" in Venezuela continues to make me laugh, after being assured by numerous revolutionaries familiar with the country that literally no one reads the group's publications in-country because of their virulently anti-Chavez stance. That's not to say that Chavez isn't a power-hungry would-be dictator. He is. But "speaking truth to power" when "power" is the only thing giving you bread and protecting you from fascist groups is understandably a difficult position.
In the United States, these protests seem small right now and will hopefully stay that way, simply a passing political fad. But radicals should not let them grow and do anything in our power to combat them. Simply letting them off the hook because we agree that taxes are bad is a view that completely ignores the political complexities of the situation. Barack Obama may not be our leader, but if we allow him to become the "bad guy" in the media, we lose more than he does. This doesn't mean we should support Obama, but that we should attack the right-wing with our tools and ideas before they grow too large. Anti-fascist activism in Britian and the continent is a reasonable comparison.
There are chilling examples of what happens when right-wingers organize large public presences against left-leaning or moderate governments and radicals sit back. Though they couldn't be considered as "sitting back," the uncritical support of the Chilean Left of Allende and, outside of the Movimiento Izquierda Revolucionario's occasional scuffle with participants, lack of willingness to engage publicly and clearly with the right-wing middle class "March of the Empty Pots" movement when it began directly paved the way for Pinochet's coup to happen. Certainly it was a different time and revolutionaries then had different perspectives on change, so we can't fault them entirely. But the fact remains that allowing right-wingers a free hand at organizing is a game we play with no possibility of winning.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Historical Evolution and Resistances
Crossposted from RevLeft, where I have grudgingly taken up residence again. I'm not saying anything particularly novel here, I just figured I'd put it up because it's an error that I often see committed, particularly by orthodox Marxists. The long quote at the beginning is from one such person.
"What you said above is true to a certain extent but doesn't take into account the fact that, other than in the most 'primitive' societies, exploitation of man by man tends always to exist, and often, if not almost always, exists on a grand scale. Capitalism produces the conditions for the evolution of a society without exploitation and the rule of minorities. In this sense it is 'progressive'. But American Capitalism didn't require the extermination of it's Native population anymore than Japanese Capitalism did. By which I mean, for Capitalism to become the mode of production in America, it didn't neccesarily require the vast genocides of Indigenous peoples, and so there can be no defense for that, even allowing for Capitalism being progressive."
I think you're accidentally committing a kind of idealist error here. Capitalism is not an ideal Platonic Form, which exists out there in the ether as an idea unconnected from reality, and then we humans have gone about and created versions of it that, regrettably, involve massive violence and oppression. Capitalism is a system, complex and contradictory, that presents itself in a variety of different forms in different times and locations. All but the most orthodox leftists would consider China to be functionally capitalist today, but its form of capitalism differs tremendously from that of, say, the United States.
So first, let's take apart the idea the capitalism naturally "progresses" from the past and that it could do without things like genocide.
Some really important works that have emerged from the Marxist milieu in the last 50 years have been precisely the texts which challenge the idea that capitalism is natural and progressive. Silvia Federici's Caliban and the Witch points out the way that primitive accumulation not only brought about the conditions that allowed modern capitalism to come into being, but that these conditions need to be continually replicated. Primitive accumulation, she argues, isn't an event which happened back in England a couple centuries ago, it's something that is constantly occurring. Primitive accumulation, like that of the land theft and destruction of Native peoples in the Americas, is both the antecendent and the perpetual feature of capitalism. As Marx and basically everyone else has argued, capitalism must expand to stay alive. Primitive accumulation, as a concept, must continually occur for capitalism to create more value. As many in the school of Marxist thought that Federici is usually grouped with, the autonomists, have argued, this primitive accumulation has been expanded to include concepts that we wouldn't normally consider able to be "accumulated," like time and history.
So I would argue that capitalism is indeed impossible, or at least considerably more difficult, in North America had the genocide of Native peoples not occurred.
Second, the idea that capitalism creates the "conditions for the evolution of a society without exploitation and the rule of minorities" is another oft-quoted Marxist truism, but one that is increasingly coming under attack from evidence that resistance to the imposition of capitalism was not simply reactionary, but in some sectors, genuinely progressive. Again, Federici points out that those who organized against the imposition of wage labor were not just artisans or nobles, but those who would become part of the nascent proletariat and/or urban working class. Linebaugh and Rediker's The Many-Headed Hydra talks in depth about the struggles of sailors, soldiers and slaves to globalization in the maritime age. These resistances against capitalist work ethic and conditions were not simply a desire to return to a guild-run economy, but were expressed in utopian and millenarian demands for an end to the capitalist economy (centuries before Marx put pen to paper, no less.) A favorite topic in recent years is of course the Diggers, who were certainly anti-capitalist but not pro-feudal.
So I think it's dangerous to say that capitalism is progressive. Yes, under capitalism certain technologies have been developed that can/have made life easier and production more efficient. But it's fallicious to say that these technologies had to occur or only occurred under capitalism and could not occur any other way because there are no other models of society to judge them against (some could argue that socialism does exist or did exist on a widespread level in the 20th century, and I will politely but firmly disagree. Even so, if socialism did exist in the USSR, it only helps my argument.) Did Einstein need to live in a capitalist society to develop his theory of special relativity? Did any other scientist or inventor need to live under the murderous capitalist system to develop what they did? Sure, those who devoted their life's work to destructive technologies like guns and bombs. But I think we can all agree that those aren't the kind of technologies that a communist society would be interested in developing anyway.
What it gets down to is the problem of the error of evolutionist models of history. Positing that the stage of civilization that we're at is the "highest" one or more progressive one currently available is interesting but untestable. Furthermore, it tries to simplify the actual details of human history into small boxes that fit into a model that always points towards the future, thus discarding the complexities of history that don't fit into that box. Like Linebaugh and Rediker's rebellious sailors or Federici's witches. Drawing history as a straight line, or even a not-straight-but-always-ending-in-the-same-place series of lines, is an error because it judges human history as a teleology instead of a series of complex events that led us to where we are today, but could have lead us elsewhere if things had gone differently.
"What you said above is true to a certain extent but doesn't take into account the fact that, other than in the most 'primitive' societies, exploitation of man by man tends always to exist, and often, if not almost always, exists on a grand scale. Capitalism produces the conditions for the evolution of a society without exploitation and the rule of minorities. In this sense it is 'progressive'. But American Capitalism didn't require the extermination of it's Native population anymore than Japanese Capitalism did. By which I mean, for Capitalism to become the mode of production in America, it didn't neccesarily require the vast genocides of Indigenous peoples, and so there can be no defense for that, even allowing for Capitalism being progressive."
I think you're accidentally committing a kind of idealist error here. Capitalism is not an ideal Platonic Form, which exists out there in the ether as an idea unconnected from reality, and then we humans have gone about and created versions of it that, regrettably, involve massive violence and oppression. Capitalism is a system, complex and contradictory, that presents itself in a variety of different forms in different times and locations. All but the most orthodox leftists would consider China to be functionally capitalist today, but its form of capitalism differs tremendously from that of, say, the United States.
So first, let's take apart the idea the capitalism naturally "progresses" from the past and that it could do without things like genocide.
Some really important works that have emerged from the Marxist milieu in the last 50 years have been precisely the texts which challenge the idea that capitalism is natural and progressive. Silvia Federici's Caliban and the Witch points out the way that primitive accumulation not only brought about the conditions that allowed modern capitalism to come into being, but that these conditions need to be continually replicated. Primitive accumulation, she argues, isn't an event which happened back in England a couple centuries ago, it's something that is constantly occurring. Primitive accumulation, like that of the land theft and destruction of Native peoples in the Americas, is both the antecendent and the perpetual feature of capitalism. As Marx and basically everyone else has argued, capitalism must expand to stay alive. Primitive accumulation, as a concept, must continually occur for capitalism to create more value. As many in the school of Marxist thought that Federici is usually grouped with, the autonomists, have argued, this primitive accumulation has been expanded to include concepts that we wouldn't normally consider able to be "accumulated," like time and history.
So I would argue that capitalism is indeed impossible, or at least considerably more difficult, in North America had the genocide of Native peoples not occurred.
Second, the idea that capitalism creates the "conditions for the evolution of a society without exploitation and the rule of minorities" is another oft-quoted Marxist truism, but one that is increasingly coming under attack from evidence that resistance to the imposition of capitalism was not simply reactionary, but in some sectors, genuinely progressive. Again, Federici points out that those who organized against the imposition of wage labor were not just artisans or nobles, but those who would become part of the nascent proletariat and/or urban working class. Linebaugh and Rediker's The Many-Headed Hydra talks in depth about the struggles of sailors, soldiers and slaves to globalization in the maritime age. These resistances against capitalist work ethic and conditions were not simply a desire to return to a guild-run economy, but were expressed in utopian and millenarian demands for an end to the capitalist economy (centuries before Marx put pen to paper, no less.) A favorite topic in recent years is of course the Diggers, who were certainly anti-capitalist but not pro-feudal.
So I think it's dangerous to say that capitalism is progressive. Yes, under capitalism certain technologies have been developed that can/have made life easier and production more efficient. But it's fallicious to say that these technologies had to occur or only occurred under capitalism and could not occur any other way because there are no other models of society to judge them against (some could argue that socialism does exist or did exist on a widespread level in the 20th century, and I will politely but firmly disagree. Even so, if socialism did exist in the USSR, it only helps my argument.) Did Einstein need to live in a capitalist society to develop his theory of special relativity? Did any other scientist or inventor need to live under the murderous capitalist system to develop what they did? Sure, those who devoted their life's work to destructive technologies like guns and bombs. But I think we can all agree that those aren't the kind of technologies that a communist society would be interested in developing anyway.
What it gets down to is the problem of the error of evolutionist models of history. Positing that the stage of civilization that we're at is the "highest" one or more progressive one currently available is interesting but untestable. Furthermore, it tries to simplify the actual details of human history into small boxes that fit into a model that always points towards the future, thus discarding the complexities of history that don't fit into that box. Like Linebaugh and Rediker's rebellious sailors or Federici's witches. Drawing history as a straight line, or even a not-straight-but-always-ending-in-the-same-place series of lines, is an error because it judges human history as a teleology instead of a series of complex events that led us to where we are today, but could have lead us elsewhere if things had gone differently.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Winning the Battle to Lose the War
It seems sometimes (sometimes?) that the Left has everything upside-down. I've been thinking recently specifically of abortion rights, but these thoughts could apply to a variety of other issues.
Since Roe v. Wade was first passed down, the Left has been single-minded in its quest to save it. Note the difference between saving Roe v. Wade and pursuing abortion rights. Saving Roe v. Wade is a matter of electing presidents who will appoint Supreme Court justices who will continue to uphold abortion rights and putting pressure on right-wing presidents not to appoint anti-choice justices. Pursuing an abortion rights agenda is a far wider platform, embracing legal tactics as well as building structures to support abortion rights and consciousness building.
Everyone left of Dick Cheney believes, or pretends to believe, that power flows from "the people," or "the workers," or some variation of that old leftist cliche. So why is it that the Left, in fighting one of the most important battles in defense of women's rights in the latter half of the 20th century and beyond, has chosen to fight that battle on the terrain of 9 people? If power truly flows from below, why not spend all that money that they're lobbying and campaigning on encouraging pro-choice consciousness.?
Now, I can already hear the criticisms: "Brendan, this is ultraleftist and impossible." But is it? I think the example of the Civil Rights Movement which immediately preceded it is a powerful counterexample to the so-called Pro-Choice Movement. Black Americans used a variety of tactics, from, yes, lobbying the president, to direct action and armed self-defense to protect themselves from violence and to demand equal rights. Thousands probably died, but what was produced was a powerful black consciousness that threatened, and at times still does, to actually stand up to the racist power structure of our country. Every white leftist and his cousin fell all over themselves to fight that battle in the streets, yet after 1972, they simply forgot what they'd been doing in '68.
I'm not sure exactly why this happened, but I can think of a couple of reasons. One good one is plain old sexism. Sure, white straight men (TM) were willing to think that the descendants of slaves could constitute a force that could be radical and stand up to the system, but women? Good Lord, they should stay in the kitchen. (See the subsequent white leftist valorization of black men in the Civil Rights Movement and ignorance of women, except the cleaned-up, sanitized "tired, old" Rosa Parks)
Another is the fact that abortion rights aren't included in the Constitution and everybody knows it. Roe v. Wade is the most preposterous legal fiction that the Supreme Court has ever ruled on (okay, maybe not, there are some doozies) and it just happens to be the only one that's been ruled in favor of the Left. So all this energy has to be spent on convincing us that this ridiculous ruling is legitimate, instead of convincing us that abortion rights are essential regardless of what some fucking piece of paper says. The problem facing the Left after the end of the 60's was one that I've written on before, that we'd basically achieved the welfare state, (more or less, although Prop 8 stands as a pretty solid challenge) but we realized it wasn't good enough. Suddenly, every Harvard liberal and Popular Front commie realized, without saying it of course, that we dirty anarchists were right all along and that the problem wasn't that the state and capital weren't good enough, it was that they weren't good at all. Of course, we all know what happened next: the eventual decline of the Left into the intellectual abyss of postmodernism and the rise of neoliberalism and subsequent neoconservatism.
So why haven't we picked up on this? Is it because it's too hard to convince "stupid working class people" that a women's body is her own? I think underlying the rationale of the Left's abandonment of the issues of abortion rights on a mass scale is an indication of a strong elitist perspective that's also a tragic remnant of the New Left.
The fact is, we're going to lose Roe v. Wade one day. It's inevitable. In some places, it's already de facto happened. When that happens, we'll have to rebuild the abortion rights movement from below, with a populace largely hostile to it, because of what they see as government intervention. We don't have much time to refashion the debate about abortion rights, but I fear it's already too late.
Since Roe v. Wade was first passed down, the Left has been single-minded in its quest to save it. Note the difference between saving Roe v. Wade and pursuing abortion rights. Saving Roe v. Wade is a matter of electing presidents who will appoint Supreme Court justices who will continue to uphold abortion rights and putting pressure on right-wing presidents not to appoint anti-choice justices. Pursuing an abortion rights agenda is a far wider platform, embracing legal tactics as well as building structures to support abortion rights and consciousness building.
Everyone left of Dick Cheney believes, or pretends to believe, that power flows from "the people," or "the workers," or some variation of that old leftist cliche. So why is it that the Left, in fighting one of the most important battles in defense of women's rights in the latter half of the 20th century and beyond, has chosen to fight that battle on the terrain of 9 people? If power truly flows from below, why not spend all that money that they're lobbying and campaigning on encouraging pro-choice consciousness.?
Now, I can already hear the criticisms: "Brendan, this is ultraleftist and impossible." But is it? I think the example of the Civil Rights Movement which immediately preceded it is a powerful counterexample to the so-called Pro-Choice Movement. Black Americans used a variety of tactics, from, yes, lobbying the president, to direct action and armed self-defense to protect themselves from violence and to demand equal rights. Thousands probably died, but what was produced was a powerful black consciousness that threatened, and at times still does, to actually stand up to the racist power structure of our country. Every white leftist and his cousin fell all over themselves to fight that battle in the streets, yet after 1972, they simply forgot what they'd been doing in '68.
I'm not sure exactly why this happened, but I can think of a couple of reasons. One good one is plain old sexism. Sure, white straight men (TM) were willing to think that the descendants of slaves could constitute a force that could be radical and stand up to the system, but women? Good Lord, they should stay in the kitchen. (See the subsequent white leftist valorization of black men in the Civil Rights Movement and ignorance of women, except the cleaned-up, sanitized "tired, old" Rosa Parks)
Another is the fact that abortion rights aren't included in the Constitution and everybody knows it. Roe v. Wade is the most preposterous legal fiction that the Supreme Court has ever ruled on (okay, maybe not, there are some doozies) and it just happens to be the only one that's been ruled in favor of the Left. So all this energy has to be spent on convincing us that this ridiculous ruling is legitimate, instead of convincing us that abortion rights are essential regardless of what some fucking piece of paper says. The problem facing the Left after the end of the 60's was one that I've written on before, that we'd basically achieved the welfare state, (more or less, although Prop 8 stands as a pretty solid challenge) but we realized it wasn't good enough. Suddenly, every Harvard liberal and Popular Front commie realized, without saying it of course, that we dirty anarchists were right all along and that the problem wasn't that the state and capital weren't good enough, it was that they weren't good at all. Of course, we all know what happened next: the eventual decline of the Left into the intellectual abyss of postmodernism and the rise of neoliberalism and subsequent neoconservatism.
So why haven't we picked up on this? Is it because it's too hard to convince "stupid working class people" that a women's body is her own? I think underlying the rationale of the Left's abandonment of the issues of abortion rights on a mass scale is an indication of a strong elitist perspective that's also a tragic remnant of the New Left.
The fact is, we're going to lose Roe v. Wade one day. It's inevitable. In some places, it's already de facto happened. When that happens, we'll have to rebuild the abortion rights movement from below, with a populace largely hostile to it, because of what they see as government intervention. We don't have much time to refashion the debate about abortion rights, but I fear it's already too late.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Following Up
So remember when I had beautiful ideas of writing a lot more in here? Well, suddenly this thing called the Ar-En-Cee showed up, and all of a sudden all I was doing was working to make it a success. But I've found a few moments (at work, typically) to write something.
Last night, around 2 am (I couldn't get to sleep, thanks to a combination of the dark liquid of the imperialist lords [Coca-Cola] and too many naps during the day) I heard a man in the street yelling profanities for about an hour. He was disturbed, or under the influence of drugs, or something, but he was definitely in need of assistance and didn't feel good.
The problem with anarchist theory is that its far too often separated from anarchist reality. I couldn't decide what to do to help this man. The logic of the state encouraged me to call the police, who could potentially give him the help he needed. But we all know the track record of the cops with mentally ill/confused people is pretty dismal and all-too-often ends with shots fired and a note on page B5.
The platitudes about "community" that we hear (and say) often in the anarchist movement would encourage me to go out and talk to the man, as part of the community. But my neighbors were clearly not doing anything and I'm a pretty small guy. Hearing stories from my father, who has worked with the mentally ill for many years, makes me pretty reluctant to simply venture out onto a dark street and jump into a potentially dangerous situation.
So what's an anarchist to do?
I've been trying to figure out what kind of social mechanisms would be most effective to deal with these kind of situations. After all, for most of the world, it is these bread-and-butter issues that matter most. Ostensibly, the practicality and common sense of anarchism is supposed to be most effective at solving these problems, in a way that Marxism or liberalism are ineffective and too conceptual to do.
My last post discussed the Provos and their penchant for the absurd. They also had a penchant for the absolutely practical. Their "White Plans" could serve as real models of utopian plans that could really work. The White Bicycle plan, which has been co-opted in a few cities and functions less effectively than if under popular direction, was for the center of Amsterdam to be closed to cars and for 20,000 white bicycles to be given out for public use.
One White Plan, the White Chicken plan, has been obsessing me in the last few weeks, as I imagine how it would work. After their happenings and gatherings began to create a police backlash with tremendous brutality, Provo suggested that the role of the police would be redesigned ("chicken" is the Dutch equivalent of our epithet "pig," with the cops being popularly known as "blue chickens") to fit the needs of an egalitarian society. The cops would be disarmed, given chocolate bars, chicken drumsticks, and condoms, and have friendly white uniforms. The police would be elected.
Obviously, the idea of suddenly switching our cops, addicted to power and violence as most of them are, to become anarcho-social workers is silly. But the model of the White Chicken is ultimately one I find quite compelling. What if, rather than tossing and turning with guilt for not assisting my fellow man, I could call up the White Chickens (or whatever we'd call them) who could come and actually help him? Rather than the liberal reaction of trusting the armed and dangerous cops to "help" people who they're trained to control, what if a society could actually help people?
All this gets me thinking, and actually returns me to James Herod's Getting Free and the idea of creating anarchist projects that transform our communities and make them democratic, anarchist communities. Where Provo failed was its inability to transcend its subculture (avant-garde hipsters and the odd angry youth) and become effective in implementing its programs. It also didn't help that they decided to run for city council in order to put their plans in motion. Anarchists certainly do a lot of programs that offer direct mutual aid to people (Food Not Bombs, etc). But maybe it's time for us to think about new programs we could implement to build anarchist communities. I feel like our ideological commitment to those projects may be blinding us to the fact that free food is not the end-all of mutual aid. Let's imagine what our ideal community would look like and start building ways to make it happen.
Last night, around 2 am (I couldn't get to sleep, thanks to a combination of the dark liquid of the imperialist lords [Coca-Cola] and too many naps during the day) I heard a man in the street yelling profanities for about an hour. He was disturbed, or under the influence of drugs, or something, but he was definitely in need of assistance and didn't feel good.
The problem with anarchist theory is that its far too often separated from anarchist reality. I couldn't decide what to do to help this man. The logic of the state encouraged me to call the police, who could potentially give him the help he needed. But we all know the track record of the cops with mentally ill/confused people is pretty dismal and all-too-often ends with shots fired and a note on page B5.
The platitudes about "community" that we hear (and say) often in the anarchist movement would encourage me to go out and talk to the man, as part of the community. But my neighbors were clearly not doing anything and I'm a pretty small guy. Hearing stories from my father, who has worked with the mentally ill for many years, makes me pretty reluctant to simply venture out onto a dark street and jump into a potentially dangerous situation.
So what's an anarchist to do?
I've been trying to figure out what kind of social mechanisms would be most effective to deal with these kind of situations. After all, for most of the world, it is these bread-and-butter issues that matter most. Ostensibly, the practicality and common sense of anarchism is supposed to be most effective at solving these problems, in a way that Marxism or liberalism are ineffective and too conceptual to do.
My last post discussed the Provos and their penchant for the absurd. They also had a penchant for the absolutely practical. Their "White Plans" could serve as real models of utopian plans that could really work. The White Bicycle plan, which has been co-opted in a few cities and functions less effectively than if under popular direction, was for the center of Amsterdam to be closed to cars and for 20,000 white bicycles to be given out for public use.
One White Plan, the White Chicken plan, has been obsessing me in the last few weeks, as I imagine how it would work. After their happenings and gatherings began to create a police backlash with tremendous brutality, Provo suggested that the role of the police would be redesigned ("chicken" is the Dutch equivalent of our epithet "pig," with the cops being popularly known as "blue chickens") to fit the needs of an egalitarian society. The cops would be disarmed, given chocolate bars, chicken drumsticks, and condoms, and have friendly white uniforms. The police would be elected.
Obviously, the idea of suddenly switching our cops, addicted to power and violence as most of them are, to become anarcho-social workers is silly. But the model of the White Chicken is ultimately one I find quite compelling. What if, rather than tossing and turning with guilt for not assisting my fellow man, I could call up the White Chickens (or whatever we'd call them) who could come and actually help him? Rather than the liberal reaction of trusting the armed and dangerous cops to "help" people who they're trained to control, what if a society could actually help people?
All this gets me thinking, and actually returns me to James Herod's Getting Free and the idea of creating anarchist projects that transform our communities and make them democratic, anarchist communities. Where Provo failed was its inability to transcend its subculture (avant-garde hipsters and the odd angry youth) and become effective in implementing its programs. It also didn't help that they decided to run for city council in order to put their plans in motion. Anarchists certainly do a lot of programs that offer direct mutual aid to people (Food Not Bombs, etc). But maybe it's time for us to think about new programs we could implement to build anarchist communities. I feel like our ideological commitment to those projects may be blinding us to the fact that free food is not the end-all of mutual aid. Let's imagine what our ideal community would look like and start building ways to make it happen.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Current Events, Ya'll
I've been pondering again the project that Will suggested a couple of months ago, the idea of some sort of collective blog run by anarchists that analyzes geopolitics. Sorta like the Center for Strategic Anarchy, only more analytical. I think this is a really good idea. If you'd wanna participate, get in touch with me, maybe between you, fair reader, Will, and I, we could actually start this.
Of course, this is prompted by the current Kosovo situation, and by what I see as the lack of a coherent analysis of it by the ultra-left. I see Leninists jumping up and down (on both sides, actually) but anarchists don't seem to be paying much attention.
Just before the act of independence, Andrej Grubacic, Balkan-born anarchist historian wrote this, which is at least something to ponder:
...My answer, the only one I can give, to the question if there is going to be another war, between NATO and Serbia, and between Kosovo Albanians and Kosovo minorities, is yes. There will be another war. If the "international community", with its army and its colonial apparatus, does not leave Albanians, Serbs and Roma to decide their future for themselves, the war, or, in the least, "localized" violence (and internationally supervised) and another wave of ethnic cleansing of Serbs and Roma, will be inevitable. The only chance for peace in the Balkans is the end of the occupation of the Balkans. In Kosovo as well as in Bosnia. European and American gentlemen, iternational "humanitarian" NGO's, dear concerned members of the international community, please leave. And don't forget to take the BBC journalists with you.
Worth considering. But I wish we had more serious, in depth analysis of these kind of events. Ultimately, an anarchist analysis is not only important to, ya know, anarchists, but also can highlight issues that other analyses of world events don't pay attention to (like power relations, class struggle, state structure, ideology.)
With that in mind, I wanna point fair readers to my new favorite pamphlet, Treason's Class Struggle in Iraq 1987-1991. Very much digging it.
Of course, this is prompted by the current Kosovo situation, and by what I see as the lack of a coherent analysis of it by the ultra-left. I see Leninists jumping up and down (on both sides, actually) but anarchists don't seem to be paying much attention.
Just before the act of independence, Andrej Grubacic, Balkan-born anarchist historian wrote this, which is at least something to ponder:
...My answer, the only one I can give, to the question if there is going to be another war, between NATO and Serbia, and between Kosovo Albanians and Kosovo minorities, is yes. There will be another war. If the "international community", with its army and its colonial apparatus, does not leave Albanians, Serbs and Roma to decide their future for themselves, the war, or, in the least, "localized" violence (and internationally supervised) and another wave of ethnic cleansing of Serbs and Roma, will be inevitable. The only chance for peace in the Balkans is the end of the occupation of the Balkans. In Kosovo as well as in Bosnia. European and American gentlemen, iternational "humanitarian" NGO's, dear concerned members of the international community, please leave. And don't forget to take the BBC journalists with you.
Worth considering. But I wish we had more serious, in depth analysis of these kind of events. Ultimately, an anarchist analysis is not only important to, ya know, anarchists, but also can highlight issues that other analyses of world events don't pay attention to (like power relations, class struggle, state structure, ideology.)
With that in mind, I wanna point fair readers to my new favorite pamphlet, Treason's Class Struggle in Iraq 1987-1991. Very much digging it.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
The Root of All Evil
I recently ran across a piece of CrimethInc propaganda which discussed patriarchy. It placed the blame of things like "domestic violence, oppressive gender roles, low self esteem" and other effects of patriarchy on "an object that doesn't even exist," namely, the pursuit of female body perfection.
This isn't the first time I've run into this argument (otherwise I wouldn't bother discussing another inane CrimethInc propaganda poster.) Lots of feminist-minded people have told me the same thing.
For me, this account of patriarchy confuses the ends with the means. I'm pretty sure that preferred body images change quite frequently, if viewed from within a historical perspective. The "large chest, skinny waist" woman that this poster apparently refers to has only been an object of cultural adoration very recently, and only then due to the fact that the mass culture industry was developed first in the United States. Does that mean that patriarchal violence doesn't predate 1900? I don't think so.
The obsession with the perfect female body and all its attendant evils comes from a patriarchal system that institutionalizes differences in all social and personal situations between men and women, not the other way around. Putting the blame of all sexist violence narrowly on culture is a profoundly non-materialist misunderstanding of power and systems.
This isn't the first time I've run into this argument (otherwise I wouldn't bother discussing another inane CrimethInc propaganda poster.) Lots of feminist-minded people have told me the same thing.
For me, this account of patriarchy confuses the ends with the means. I'm pretty sure that preferred body images change quite frequently, if viewed from within a historical perspective. The "large chest, skinny waist" woman that this poster apparently refers to has only been an object of cultural adoration very recently, and only then due to the fact that the mass culture industry was developed first in the United States. Does that mean that patriarchal violence doesn't predate 1900? I don't think so.
The obsession with the perfect female body and all its attendant evils comes from a patriarchal system that institutionalizes differences in all social and personal situations between men and women, not the other way around. Putting the blame of all sexist violence narrowly on culture is a profoundly non-materialist misunderstanding of power and systems.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Rememberance
Today is the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943. Why is this important? Because it provides an example of oppressed people taking their lives into their own hands and resisting with violence.
I am sick and tired with the played out Gandhisms on the Left, particularly where nonviolence is concerned. Let's not forget that Gandhi suggested that the Jews commit mass suicide to protest the Nazi occupation. This kind of mystical thinking is exactly the type which pervades the fundamentalist pacifists today.
And while I'm trashing people, it is exactly the type of mystical thinking which pervades their tactical opposites, the fundamentalist black bloc-ers, who believe that any and every action taken against the State must be manifested in the maximum amount of violence possible. Both sides miss the nuances of the Warsaw Ghetto.
I am sick and tired with the played out Gandhisms on the Left, particularly where nonviolence is concerned. Let's not forget that Gandhi suggested that the Jews commit mass suicide to protest the Nazi occupation. This kind of mystical thinking is exactly the type which pervades the fundamentalist pacifists today.
And while I'm trashing people, it is exactly the type of mystical thinking which pervades their tactical opposites, the fundamentalist black bloc-ers, who believe that any and every action taken against the State must be manifested in the maximum amount of violence possible. Both sides miss the nuances of the Warsaw Ghetto.
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