So, on a personal note, I should say that I am now in Mexico City, where I will be situated for the next four months, studying at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. With that in mind, I figured I'd drop a note about something that I've been considering since I arrived last week.
As revolutionaries, we're often pegged as defining ourselves negatively, against the forces that currently control social life. We're anti-capitalist, anti-sexist, anti-racist, etc etc. Some PR-savvy radicals attempt to turn that language backwards and use phrases like pro-feminist (or pro-woman, in a particularly post-feminist articulation) or queer-positive. Despite the twisting of the language, these phrases still boil down to the same idea, that being that we're against a specific kind of social oppression, and that we're pro-whoever is being oppressed and ending that oppression against them. And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with being focused on negation. After all, there's a lot to fight. Obviously we also have to articulate alternatives and other models, which is something that we do quite well but doesn't make the 5 o'clock news as well as "Anarchists make total destroy" does. We do both, to a greater or lesser degree, and I could make critiques about the levels that we're engaging with, but that's not what I want to write about here.
What has been making me think a lot this week has been about how the situation wherein one is placed has a lot to do with how this negative articulation gets expressed. In the United States, we often define ourselves, in an anti-statist context, as being against police brutality and was, but also against cooptation by the government utilizing more "soft power." The actions of radicals in movements for welfare rights and ACORN are examples of fighting this soft power that exerts itself through social services and government bureaucracy.
But the state doesn't use the same play book in every situation. Obviously, there are a lot of shared tricks, but the varying levels, balances, and relationships of soft and hard power vary not only horizontally from nation-state to nation-state (here in Mexico the government will kill you a lot faster than it will in the U.S.) but also vertically, from nation-state (or even higher, if one brings in international governmental organizations) to microstates at the smallest levels. Some parents keep their kids in line through hitting them, some through psychological control, and some through a combination of the two. Each different division of power brings in varieties of different tactics to keep us under control.
We can expand this beyond simply the lens of the state to consider a variety of different styles of oppression and domination. The way that people of color are oppressed in the U.S. is different from that of Europe, but also within the U.S.'s various divisions, conditions vary. Workplaces can have friendly bosses who pay next to nothing but have their workers love getting screwed or have tyrannical Carnegies who use fear to make the employees toe the line.
Obviously, I'm not making a particularly novel claim here. Actually, it's an observation basically stemming from Machiavelli, and to an extent, Sun Tsu. But thinking about this has led me to reexamine the values and importance not only of the old strategy/tactics model, but also what internationalism means. Internationalism is an old buzzword, but many of us still hold on to it as an ideal. In order to produce more effective movement(s), perhaps we should analyze more the context under which power, hard and soft, exists across boundaries, but in a vertical way.
That is to say, we should consider not only the well-worn common sense about the struggles in various states (ex: the State in Western Europe will buy off natives with welfare to pit them against immigrants but rarely uses physical violence, the State in Latin America will use patronage and corruption to keep the working class in line, but will repress anyone who steps out of the box) but also the articulation of power up and down the various levels of state and non-state power. This could lead to a more profound understanding of struggles, both at home and abroad, and how to be usefully in solidarity with them. A ton of examples jump to mind, particularly in states that bring up strong controversies on the left. How, on a micro level, does the state in Cuba express itself? How do the improved racial conditions after of the Revolution affect local power? How does the regional conditions of industry affect the local centralization of power by elites? Does the state deploy soft power at the nation-state level and soft power and the local level? Is race soft or hard? Is gender soft or hard? At what levels? In what ways does power-from-above have a vacuum, which is to ask, in what locations, physical or social, is struggle being won? This list could go on and on. Venezuela, Palestine, etc.
Ultimately, I think that an investigation of international struggles from a vertical perspectives as well as a horizontal one can be expressed as looking at struggles through the lens of anthropological investigation as well as a political one. Context, an important tool that often gets left out of political science, is a key part of the radical investigative toolbox. If we do engage in negatively defined struggles, we must be sure to understand what the balance of forces in the enemy camp is.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Pondering
So I think that it's probably the biggest waste of time for me to criticize an action by an anonymous underground cell of a radical organization, because 1. who cares what I have to say and 2. what they're doing is pretty radical and I should try to support it.
But I'm going to do it anyway, because I think that it's important to constantly be critical of ourselves and our comrades, otherwise we develop a kind of groupthink that only leads to our own ineffectiveness.
I saw this reportback from an underground cell of Bash Back! who trashed a Mormon church the other day. I've been really excited by BB!, they're the only long-standing network that has emerged out of the RNC/DNC organizing. For those like me who thought that was part of the reason for organizing against the conventions, the fact that BB! is a post-convention network is really important. I like their sexy actions and their aggressive rhetoric. They target oppressive institutions who don't expect to be targeted and then they fuck with them in a very media-friendly way. They also just straight up confront evil, homophobic jerk-offs, which is also great.
But I'm still not sure how I feel about this recent action. On one hand, the Mormon church is a really fucked-up organization that lots of queer people are feeling a lot of rage against since the passage of Prop 8. On the other, I don't know how I feel about anarchists attacking mainstream churches.
This is a paradoxical situation, because I am a Bakuninist atheist and believe that religion is inherently and at its core oppressive. However, I have no problem working with religious folk or even religious organizations if they are fighting for liberation. I tend to see the God contradiction as considerably less pressing than the class contradiction or the state contradiction. So I do think that fighting religious orthodoxy is great. But I'm not sure if trashing a church is exactly doing that. I think it's revenge. Revenge which is perfectly justifiable after the passage of Prop 8.
But confusing revenge and politics is a recipe for disaster.
Needless to say, I'm still not convinced about this action. And obviously, one action doesn't mean much in the larger scheme of things, but I guess what I'm pondering about more generally is the tactic of anarchists/radicals attacking churches. Is this a good idea, because it strikes against oppression and might possibly (though I highly doubt it) open up the flock's minds? Or does it accomplish nearly nothing and simultaneously make us look like absolute jackasses? Thoughts?
But I'm going to do it anyway, because I think that it's important to constantly be critical of ourselves and our comrades, otherwise we develop a kind of groupthink that only leads to our own ineffectiveness.
I saw this reportback from an underground cell of Bash Back! who trashed a Mormon church the other day. I've been really excited by BB!, they're the only long-standing network that has emerged out of the RNC/DNC organizing. For those like me who thought that was part of the reason for organizing against the conventions, the fact that BB! is a post-convention network is really important. I like their sexy actions and their aggressive rhetoric. They target oppressive institutions who don't expect to be targeted and then they fuck with them in a very media-friendly way. They also just straight up confront evil, homophobic jerk-offs, which is also great.
But I'm still not sure how I feel about this recent action. On one hand, the Mormon church is a really fucked-up organization that lots of queer people are feeling a lot of rage against since the passage of Prop 8. On the other, I don't know how I feel about anarchists attacking mainstream churches.
This is a paradoxical situation, because I am a Bakuninist atheist and believe that religion is inherently and at its core oppressive. However, I have no problem working with religious folk or even religious organizations if they are fighting for liberation. I tend to see the God contradiction as considerably less pressing than the class contradiction or the state contradiction. So I do think that fighting religious orthodoxy is great. But I'm not sure if trashing a church is exactly doing that. I think it's revenge. Revenge which is perfectly justifiable after the passage of Prop 8.
But confusing revenge and politics is a recipe for disaster.
Needless to say, I'm still not convinced about this action. And obviously, one action doesn't mean much in the larger scheme of things, but I guess what I'm pondering about more generally is the tactic of anarchists/radicals attacking churches. Is this a good idea, because it strikes against oppression and might possibly (though I highly doubt it) open up the flock's minds? Or does it accomplish nearly nothing and simultaneously make us look like absolute jackasses? Thoughts?
Monday, December 15, 2008
Meta Shit
I'm always intrigued by what people are paying attention to, thinking about, and writing about. This last week has been great because there have been two parallel events with really important consequences. What has been fascinating is how, for the most part, constituencies seem to only be paying attention to one, totally ignoring the other. It's difficult to discern exactly why folks are ignoring the other, since they're obviously not saying anything about, but I'll do my best to conjecture based on previous experience.
U.S. leftists that I know have been incredibly interested in the Republic factory occupation in Chicago. Obviously, this is an event with far-reaching consequences. Workers from a rank-and-file union occupied a factory and demanded that not just their company, but the entire financial system give them their legally-obligated wages. What's more, it got front-page press in the mainstream media, with pretty positive vibes.
Anarchists have largely ignored this event, focusing on the week-long rioting in Greece, prompted by the murder of a youth by cops. These riots, incited primarily but not exclusively anarchists, have spread throughout the working class, particularly youth, and the "movement," such that it is, is beginning to take on characteristics of decision-making and strategic planning. The cops have been basically beaten back, the Stalinist party has predictably turned against the movement, and the government is in incredibly shaky straits. All good stuff.
But there's been a great deal of exclusivity to the conversations and interest about these things in the U.S. Very few leftists I know are as excited as anarchists about Greece, and anarchists are pretty passive in their interest about Republic.
So what's going on? I think that the silence I'm hearing indicates some important things about ideology and goals.
On one hand, for many post-left anarchos, rioting forms the majority of their praxis. (If I hear one more goddamn thing out of Milwaukee about "social war" I'm gonna puke.) Since politicized rioting does not happen a whole lot in the U.S., and when it does happen its mostly in PoC neighborhoods, which let's face it, have little cross-over with insurrectionist anarchist circles, this kind of thing is great to focus attention on. Lots of the things that we're hearing from Greece are playing directly into the kind of things that their theory plays up. There is little to no organization of the movement, it's violently anti-cop, and based in the lumpenproletariat. This whole thing makes leftists really bored because they don't see it in their framework of class struggle.
On the other hand, a success by a left union in the mainstream is what the U.S. workerist left has been searching for for some time now. UE is inspiring to a lot of folks, and not least of which Wobblies, to which UE looks like a bigger but more bureaucratic version of us. The union movement has been in decline (as everyone keeps going on about) for decades, and this kind of return to 30's-era tactics has all the good feelings of a working class fighting for itself attached to it that we've lost in the last couple of decades. Many anarchists, convinced that unions are firmly a tool of cooption, choose to ignore the Republic victory because they don't want to see workers conciously embracing unions as their tool to fight capitalism. Also, anarchists have yet to offer firm strategies to fight the economic crisis and the left has now appeared on the front page of the New York Times doing just that.
But not so fast. Both of these events are incredibly important but simultaneously overplayed in the respective milleu in which they are celebrated.
First, Greece is not a social revolution. At least not yet. And it appears that exactly the reason it is not is because the movement lacks (*shudder*) organization. It appears that without some kind of mechanism to change the course of the struggle from primarily negative (destroying the old world) into primary productive (building the new) the riots are just serving as a tool of the official capital-L Left to manuever for power. I can't figure out exactly what is going on on the ground (it's sad but true that this whole thing would be taken much more seriously by Americans if it had happened in an English/French/Spanish-speaking country. Nobody fucking speaks Greek.) What I am piecing together though is that despite all the awesome assemblies and burning barricades that are going down, there's still a serious lack of coordination and cohesion. With no way to organize a conscious and public series of proposals, the rioters are in serious danger of becoming just another point on a political scoreboard for the liberal parties.
Second, Republic was a victory, but it does not go as far as its supporters claim it does. Republic was a defensive action that did not nearly go far enough and the reason it didn't is because UE is not a revolutionary union. It's time for leftists to start being critical, even of our limited successes. The workers occupied the plant, they put their hands on the means of production and claimed them for themselves and then...decided to give them back in return for a measly 70 days pay. What we saw in Chicago last weekend was a failure of the imagination. It is exactly the imagination that workerists have not been inspiring, buried with our noses in the day to day of "the struggle," without engaging the utopian desire to actually "demand the impossible." Without a doubt, the return of the factory occupation is a fantastic move and will hopefully inspire others. But it is not the revolution; it is a tactic workers use when the going gets tougher. Unless it takes on a revolutionary aspect, capital is perfectly able to co-opt it and, with Barack Obama publicly supporting the workers, it already has.
So the situation is that both of these consticuencies are right about the other one, even though they are in bad faith. For my money, this means returning to one of my old themes: the cross-pollination of struggles and of ideas. The post-leftists who write beautiful poetry about molotov cocktails and vegan kitchens need to get into the factories and organize. The leftists need to support and aid the rebellious lumpens, even if they may not always see eye-to-eye. It's like, solidarity and stuff, ya know?
U.S. leftists that I know have been incredibly interested in the Republic factory occupation in Chicago. Obviously, this is an event with far-reaching consequences. Workers from a rank-and-file union occupied a factory and demanded that not just their company, but the entire financial system give them their legally-obligated wages. What's more, it got front-page press in the mainstream media, with pretty positive vibes.
Anarchists have largely ignored this event, focusing on the week-long rioting in Greece, prompted by the murder of a youth by cops. These riots, incited primarily but not exclusively anarchists, have spread throughout the working class, particularly youth, and the "movement," such that it is, is beginning to take on characteristics of decision-making and strategic planning. The cops have been basically beaten back, the Stalinist party has predictably turned against the movement, and the government is in incredibly shaky straits. All good stuff.
But there's been a great deal of exclusivity to the conversations and interest about these things in the U.S. Very few leftists I know are as excited as anarchists about Greece, and anarchists are pretty passive in their interest about Republic.
So what's going on? I think that the silence I'm hearing indicates some important things about ideology and goals.
On one hand, for many post-left anarchos, rioting forms the majority of their praxis. (If I hear one more goddamn thing out of Milwaukee about "social war" I'm gonna puke.) Since politicized rioting does not happen a whole lot in the U.S., and when it does happen its mostly in PoC neighborhoods, which let's face it, have little cross-over with insurrectionist anarchist circles, this kind of thing is great to focus attention on. Lots of the things that we're hearing from Greece are playing directly into the kind of things that their theory plays up. There is little to no organization of the movement, it's violently anti-cop, and based in the lumpenproletariat. This whole thing makes leftists really bored because they don't see it in their framework of class struggle.
On the other hand, a success by a left union in the mainstream is what the U.S. workerist left has been searching for for some time now. UE is inspiring to a lot of folks, and not least of which Wobblies, to which UE looks like a bigger but more bureaucratic version of us. The union movement has been in decline (as everyone keeps going on about) for decades, and this kind of return to 30's-era tactics has all the good feelings of a working class fighting for itself attached to it that we've lost in the last couple of decades. Many anarchists, convinced that unions are firmly a tool of cooption, choose to ignore the Republic victory because they don't want to see workers conciously embracing unions as their tool to fight capitalism. Also, anarchists have yet to offer firm strategies to fight the economic crisis and the left has now appeared on the front page of the New York Times doing just that.
But not so fast. Both of these events are incredibly important but simultaneously overplayed in the respective milleu in which they are celebrated.
First, Greece is not a social revolution. At least not yet. And it appears that exactly the reason it is not is because the movement lacks (*shudder*) organization. It appears that without some kind of mechanism to change the course of the struggle from primarily negative (destroying the old world) into primary productive (building the new) the riots are just serving as a tool of the official capital-L Left to manuever for power. I can't figure out exactly what is going on on the ground (it's sad but true that this whole thing would be taken much more seriously by Americans if it had happened in an English/French/Spanish-speaking country. Nobody fucking speaks Greek.) What I am piecing together though is that despite all the awesome assemblies and burning barricades that are going down, there's still a serious lack of coordination and cohesion. With no way to organize a conscious and public series of proposals, the rioters are in serious danger of becoming just another point on a political scoreboard for the liberal parties.
Second, Republic was a victory, but it does not go as far as its supporters claim it does. Republic was a defensive action that did not nearly go far enough and the reason it didn't is because UE is not a revolutionary union. It's time for leftists to start being critical, even of our limited successes. The workers occupied the plant, they put their hands on the means of production and claimed them for themselves and then...decided to give them back in return for a measly 70 days pay. What we saw in Chicago last weekend was a failure of the imagination. It is exactly the imagination that workerists have not been inspiring, buried with our noses in the day to day of "the struggle," without engaging the utopian desire to actually "demand the impossible." Without a doubt, the return of the factory occupation is a fantastic move and will hopefully inspire others. But it is not the revolution; it is a tactic workers use when the going gets tougher. Unless it takes on a revolutionary aspect, capital is perfectly able to co-opt it and, with Barack Obama publicly supporting the workers, it already has.
So the situation is that both of these consticuencies are right about the other one, even though they are in bad faith. For my money, this means returning to one of my old themes: the cross-pollination of struggles and of ideas. The post-leftists who write beautiful poetry about molotov cocktails and vegan kitchens need to get into the factories and organize. The leftists need to support and aid the rebellious lumpens, even if they may not always see eye-to-eye. It's like, solidarity and stuff, ya know?
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.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Drifting through Industry
Considering recently the image of the hobo in the early IWW. The hobo sticks out in my mind from this period as possible the most important figure in the struggles of early 20th century American workers. The figure of the hobo, as a type of working class archetype, offers a lot of important lessons for contemporary Wobblies, I think. A couple reasons:
1. Networks. The Wobbly hobo became one of the key organizers. Taking out a red card and riding the rails from job to job, he (and I use the gender pronoun intentionally) was the perfect type of organizer for workers in industries that depended on changing conditions and temporary work. Timber workers in particular seem associated in the histories with hobo organizers. Jumping from job to job as needed, hobo organizers represented organic working class militants, who followed the conditions of industry and kept up with the pace of technological and economic transition. He knew his fellow workers, mostly because he shared their condition and perhaps their relatives from a previous job. The image of the boxcar orator may be quaint, but it represents one type of important power: while illegally traveling through the circuits of capital, the hobo organizer spoke with his fellow workers and created resistance to workplace exploitation outside/before jobs as well as on them.
What we can learn: These jobs were, like the post-Fordist ones we work today, short-term and without longer commitments. Also like today, they tended to involve the same groups of people over and over again. If you were a lumberjack, you were one in Ontario, Minnesota, and Oregon. Today, if you're a service workers, you're one at Starbucks, McDonalds, and a call center. In our economy, the conditions and style of labor change from job to job, but the basic character remains the same. We must build upon the already existing networks that exist within the class to mobilize resistance. As we circulate through capital, we can reach out to the myriad contacts that our labor necessarily creates and turn them into revolutionaries struggling around the clock.
2. Mobility. The travels of the hobo were many and he would pop up in different places depending on both fancy and the requirements of industry. He could weave in and out of bourgeois society as necessary, if always at the margins. This marginality, along with the aforementioned seasonal and temporary style of work, necessitated constant motion and the creation of a working class counter-culture. Yet the hobo organizer took this mobility as a strength. If he was needed to fill the jails at a free speech fight, he would jump on the rails with his friends and end up in a different state. He joined together in mutual aid in the hobo jungles with his comrades.
What we can learn: Struggles on the job move beyond the job when we connect them to the larger conditions of industry and the relationships of workers to bosses. What is less important is this specific strike or that specific action, but rather the constant strategic growth of working class power in the way most appropriate to the situation. So sometimes mobility means not fighting a battle when you cannot win, but rather looking for a different terrain upon which to engage. Additionally, mobility could mean the ability to follow the currents to where the action is. The wretched SWP is actively encouraging its cadres to work in the meat-packing industry. Not a bad idea, just done for foolish reasons. In fact, the struggle of migrant laborers today has some of the most obvious parallels with the historical work of the IWW.
Two important considerations:
1. The hobo is male. That is to say, he is unattached to anything or anyone and need only look after himself. Throwing ourselves over to replicating this is definitely anti-feminist. But we should also keep in mind that culture and society have changed a great deal since the days when the nuclear family was the only model. With the rise of the women's movement, more women are self-sufficient, in the workplace and outside of the home. So capital has created conditions where women too can be this type of organizers. Further, the hobo is not the figure to organize all of industry, as this point brings up. There are industries and social locations that he cannot break into, and people whose identification he rejects, so he cannot be the model for all of our organizing.
2. Networks and mobility bring to mind the vision of the modern city. I think that hearkening back to the Situationist legacy of psychogeography is important for us. How does the city relate to itself and to its denizens? How is industry organized geographically and psychogeographically? How can modern hobos tread through the paths, both clear and hidden, while constantly transforming those paths and being simultaneously transformed by them?
1. Networks. The Wobbly hobo became one of the key organizers. Taking out a red card and riding the rails from job to job, he (and I use the gender pronoun intentionally) was the perfect type of organizer for workers in industries that depended on changing conditions and temporary work. Timber workers in particular seem associated in the histories with hobo organizers. Jumping from job to job as needed, hobo organizers represented organic working class militants, who followed the conditions of industry and kept up with the pace of technological and economic transition. He knew his fellow workers, mostly because he shared their condition and perhaps their relatives from a previous job. The image of the boxcar orator may be quaint, but it represents one type of important power: while illegally traveling through the circuits of capital, the hobo organizer spoke with his fellow workers and created resistance to workplace exploitation outside/before jobs as well as on them.
What we can learn: These jobs were, like the post-Fordist ones we work today, short-term and without longer commitments. Also like today, they tended to involve the same groups of people over and over again. If you were a lumberjack, you were one in Ontario, Minnesota, and Oregon. Today, if you're a service workers, you're one at Starbucks, McDonalds, and a call center. In our economy, the conditions and style of labor change from job to job, but the basic character remains the same. We must build upon the already existing networks that exist within the class to mobilize resistance. As we circulate through capital, we can reach out to the myriad contacts that our labor necessarily creates and turn them into revolutionaries struggling around the clock.
2. Mobility. The travels of the hobo were many and he would pop up in different places depending on both fancy and the requirements of industry. He could weave in and out of bourgeois society as necessary, if always at the margins. This marginality, along with the aforementioned seasonal and temporary style of work, necessitated constant motion and the creation of a working class counter-culture. Yet the hobo organizer took this mobility as a strength. If he was needed to fill the jails at a free speech fight, he would jump on the rails with his friends and end up in a different state. He joined together in mutual aid in the hobo jungles with his comrades.
What we can learn: Struggles on the job move beyond the job when we connect them to the larger conditions of industry and the relationships of workers to bosses. What is less important is this specific strike or that specific action, but rather the constant strategic growth of working class power in the way most appropriate to the situation. So sometimes mobility means not fighting a battle when you cannot win, but rather looking for a different terrain upon which to engage. Additionally, mobility could mean the ability to follow the currents to where the action is. The wretched SWP is actively encouraging its cadres to work in the meat-packing industry. Not a bad idea, just done for foolish reasons. In fact, the struggle of migrant laborers today has some of the most obvious parallels with the historical work of the IWW.
Two important considerations:
1. The hobo is male. That is to say, he is unattached to anything or anyone and need only look after himself. Throwing ourselves over to replicating this is definitely anti-feminist. But we should also keep in mind that culture and society have changed a great deal since the days when the nuclear family was the only model. With the rise of the women's movement, more women are self-sufficient, in the workplace and outside of the home. So capital has created conditions where women too can be this type of organizers. Further, the hobo is not the figure to organize all of industry, as this point brings up. There are industries and social locations that he cannot break into, and people whose identification he rejects, so he cannot be the model for all of our organizing.
2. Networks and mobility bring to mind the vision of the modern city. I think that hearkening back to the Situationist legacy of psychogeography is important for us. How does the city relate to itself and to its denizens? How is industry organized geographically and psychogeographically? How can modern hobos tread through the paths, both clear and hidden, while constantly transforming those paths and being simultaneously transformed by them?
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Sites of Struggle?
Been considering the location of the university in society. I've heard lots of different arguments about its centrality in conflict, class or otherwise, and I'm interested to hear what others think about it.
Here are two perspectives that I've heard:
Higher education is not a central location for struggle, it just seems that way because so many academics write about it and desperately want it to be a site, so that they can participate. I think this is a pretty valid criticism of a lot of things. (I contend that the popularity of post-modernism is similar.) There's kind of a feedback loop where academics want the university to be an important strategic location, so they find evidence that says it is, everyone sees these papers about the importance of the university and then everyone in the university begins to struggle because they have told themselves it's important.
The University is centrally important because it involves so many other sectors of the economy, while also producing a kind of value that doesn't appear in other settings. This seems pretty popular with the kind of post-workerist set, Negri and such. I think its got some solid ideas. Students often live in basically ghettos, contending with the same kind of landlords as in poor neighborhoods. There's an immense number of people on campuses who do work, from all different sorts of trades. It takes an enormous amount of energy, physical and environmental, to make a university function. Plus, there's something to be said about the value produced by the university itself. This perspective made most sense to me after I helped with the U of M strike last year. I realized exactly how many pressure points and connections existed in the university and beyond it. I remember hearing that the U is one of the largest employers in the state.
So maybe these represent the two extreme arguments, but they're both worth considering. As I do my best to get the hell out of academia as soon as possible, I keep hearing arguments that suck me back in and keep me hooked in with groups like SDS. So what is the role of the university in terms of struggle? Is it central, secondary, merely peripheral? And once we answer that question, we can only begin to ask the next one, which is "So how do we organize it?" I'll leave that one for another day.
Here are two perspectives that I've heard:
Higher education is not a central location for struggle, it just seems that way because so many academics write about it and desperately want it to be a site, so that they can participate. I think this is a pretty valid criticism of a lot of things. (I contend that the popularity of post-modernism is similar.) There's kind of a feedback loop where academics want the university to be an important strategic location, so they find evidence that says it is, everyone sees these papers about the importance of the university and then everyone in the university begins to struggle because they have told themselves it's important.
The University is centrally important because it involves so many other sectors of the economy, while also producing a kind of value that doesn't appear in other settings. This seems pretty popular with the kind of post-workerist set, Negri and such. I think its got some solid ideas. Students often live in basically ghettos, contending with the same kind of landlords as in poor neighborhoods. There's an immense number of people on campuses who do work, from all different sorts of trades. It takes an enormous amount of energy, physical and environmental, to make a university function. Plus, there's something to be said about the value produced by the university itself. This perspective made most sense to me after I helped with the U of M strike last year. I realized exactly how many pressure points and connections existed in the university and beyond it. I remember hearing that the U is one of the largest employers in the state.
So maybe these represent the two extreme arguments, but they're both worth considering. As I do my best to get the hell out of academia as soon as possible, I keep hearing arguments that suck me back in and keep me hooked in with groups like SDS. So what is the role of the university in terms of struggle? Is it central, secondary, merely peripheral? And once we answer that question, we can only begin to ask the next one, which is "So how do we organize it?" I'll leave that one for another day.
Friday, October 17, 2008
On Mass Movements
SDS members have spoken a great deal over the last few years about how we want a "mass movement" or a "student movement." I'd like to take a few moments to reflect on these ideas and perhaps offer some analysis and suggestion of where we're going and what we're doing wrong.
First, a mass student movement means something very different from what we have now. Right now, we have a several-thousand person organizing body. My impression, based on attending two national conventions and speaking with dozens of SDSers, is that we are overwhelmingly an organizer-based organization. My copy of Rubin and Rubin's Community Organizing and Development (4th ed.) defines an organizer as "the salaried staff of social action organizations" and contrasts it with an activist, who is someone who voluntarily contributes a great deal of time, energy, and money to a task. All SDSers currently fall under the definition of "activist" then. If we compare this to a different kind of axis, which posits activism as advocacy through protest and public confrontation and organizing as advocacy through community work and alternative institution-building, SDSers often fall in a comfortable middle position that is able to use both styles of advocacy.
Regardless of what we call SDSers, we are an organizer-based insofar as we follow usually follow the model of planned events in support of an issue. Often, these fall into the less strategic model of event-rebuilding-unrelated event, where SDSers jump at whatever issue makes us excited and do not build upon our successes and failures. Increasingly, SDSers are considering the model of strategic campaign building as a method to go forward. This model, event-rebuilding-related event, makes the rebuilding section the most important, where the other makes it the least important. In my "perfect SDS," we would figure out what rebuilding means, and we would use it as a moment to grow and expand our organizing basis and our logistical capability.
Ultimately, what I'm trying to figure out and identify is the tension that exists, certainly in my chapter, and in others that I've observed between being an organizer model vs. mass model. Organizer-based model organizations include(d) SNCC, UFW, and some of the Change to Win unions. Mass-based model organizations include most political parties, and rank-and-file unions like the IWW. Both models can be used for good or ill. The question that must inform our decision to adopt one of these models is "what do we want?"
This becomes kind of a logical loop with no answer, because many SDSers say "we want a mass movement!" to that question. But when we look for specific things we want, beyond our broad slogans, we turn to things like student/worker/faculty control of the university, worker-control of society (and thus the end of capitalism), an end to all social oppressions, a system that doesn't destroy our Earth.
How do we accomplish these things? Personally, I don't think we do it through organizer-based models. Why? Here's a preface:
Recently, Tom Hayden of the old SDS spoke at my college. He was incredibly disappointing, basically a cheerleaders for Obama (like so many ostensible leftists become at this time of the year). One of the things that I started to understand was that he, and the earliest parts of the old SDS, were operating under an incredibly different understanding of social struggle in their day than we encounter today. Back then, the fight was to expand the welfare state to include those it should. The organizations that represent this ideological perspective still exist and are still powerful (and needed!) Mainstream unions, the left-wing of the Democratic Party, the Greens, NAACP, NOW, etc. These organizations try to extend the promises of a society where all are included. So the old SDS, it its earliest days, operated. They were a mostly white student group that worked in solidarity with these other social struggles.
We are not in the same social moment. With the notable exceptions of queers and undocumented immigrants, the promises of social democracy have been extended to all. Certainly, they aren't distributed equally nor fairly. Racism and sexism represent some of the most important pillars that keep our society functioning the way it does. Social democracy hasn't lived up to all of its promises, but the difference from 1964 and 2008 is that we see now that it could if it wanted to. If all the skilled organizers of the world got together and organized a movement of the people, we could make social democracy come true. Whereas 50 years ago, that seemed like a distant dream, we can see today that social democracy is a possibility, in fact, a probability. (None of this is to diminish the work of those who brought us here, or who continue to be excluded from this social promise. Their struggles are very real and very immediate.)
As social democracy approaches us, we start to see it better. And there are those in the working class who realize that we don't want it. Social democracy is the left-wing of capitalism, where our desires and beliefs are still packaged up, sold, and consumed. It is a soulless system with a kind face, where one day one is riding high and the next one is (as the last few weeks have shown us) out in the cold. Of course, as radicals see today something that we didn't fully understand before, capitalism is still capitalism. It is still part of the same system that necessitates ups and downs, changes and struggle. Even if we're a multicultural society (still a few decades off) without a glass ceiling, there are still workers and still bosses.
So we return to the question at hand: How can SDS achieve its goals?
This new movement, this nebulous idea of a 21st century working class in revolt, must understand that, as our struggles are diverse, so are our beliefs. One of the triumphs of anarchist organization has been its appreciation for multiplicity and different voices. Our struggles are multiple and interconnected, but also distinct and localized. This understanding is key to the development of a revolutionary organization. What's right for you isn't necessarily right for me, but we must work together where we agree and respect each other where we disagree. This freely associative model challenges traditional notions of organizing. Organizer-models reflect a kind of vanguardist thinking, where we plan events and campaigns, and you come to them. Mass-models often show a more explicit version of this, where directives come from the top and must be obeyed by the rank-and-file.
As I see it, SDS, in order to become a revolutionary movement, must take the wisdom of anarchism and apply it to the mass-based model of organization. We must force ourselves away from the top-down thinking of the old SDS and the similarly insidious logic of the organizer model. We are no vanguard. But we won't be led by a self-proclaimed one either. Rather, we must imagine an organization where people who've never attended an SDS organizer meeting consider themselves SDSers. Where SDSers can be regular students, who have never huddled over a press release for hours, trying to get one word right before day breaks and time comes to send it out. SDS must, in short, "go to the people." We must make SDS an activity as well as an organization.
Alright Brendan, that sounds real groovy, but what the fuck does it mean and how do we get theret? Not simple, I'll admit, but here's some suggestions.
First, a mass student movement means something very different from what we have now. Right now, we have a several-thousand person organizing body. My impression, based on attending two national conventions and speaking with dozens of SDSers, is that we are overwhelmingly an organizer-based organization. My copy of Rubin and Rubin's Community Organizing and Development (4th ed.) defines an organizer as "the salaried staff of social action organizations" and contrasts it with an activist, who is someone who voluntarily contributes a great deal of time, energy, and money to a task. All SDSers currently fall under the definition of "activist" then. If we compare this to a different kind of axis, which posits activism as advocacy through protest and public confrontation and organizing as advocacy through community work and alternative institution-building, SDSers often fall in a comfortable middle position that is able to use both styles of advocacy.
Regardless of what we call SDSers, we are an organizer-based insofar as we follow usually follow the model of planned events in support of an issue. Often, these fall into the less strategic model of event-rebuilding-unrelated event, where SDSers jump at whatever issue makes us excited and do not build upon our successes and failures. Increasingly, SDSers are considering the model of strategic campaign building as a method to go forward. This model, event-rebuilding-related event, makes the rebuilding section the most important, where the other makes it the least important. In my "perfect SDS," we would figure out what rebuilding means, and we would use it as a moment to grow and expand our organizing basis and our logistical capability.
Ultimately, what I'm trying to figure out and identify is the tension that exists, certainly in my chapter, and in others that I've observed between being an organizer model vs. mass model. Organizer-based model organizations include(d) SNCC, UFW, and some of the Change to Win unions. Mass-based model organizations include most political parties, and rank-and-file unions like the IWW. Both models can be used for good or ill. The question that must inform our decision to adopt one of these models is "what do we want?"
This becomes kind of a logical loop with no answer, because many SDSers say "we want a mass movement!" to that question. But when we look for specific things we want, beyond our broad slogans, we turn to things like student/worker/faculty control of the university, worker-control of society (and thus the end of capitalism), an end to all social oppressions, a system that doesn't destroy our Earth.
How do we accomplish these things? Personally, I don't think we do it through organizer-based models. Why? Here's a preface:
Recently, Tom Hayden of the old SDS spoke at my college. He was incredibly disappointing, basically a cheerleaders for Obama (like so many ostensible leftists become at this time of the year). One of the things that I started to understand was that he, and the earliest parts of the old SDS, were operating under an incredibly different understanding of social struggle in their day than we encounter today. Back then, the fight was to expand the welfare state to include those it should. The organizations that represent this ideological perspective still exist and are still powerful (and needed!) Mainstream unions, the left-wing of the Democratic Party, the Greens, NAACP, NOW, etc. These organizations try to extend the promises of a society where all are included. So the old SDS, it its earliest days, operated. They were a mostly white student group that worked in solidarity with these other social struggles.
We are not in the same social moment. With the notable exceptions of queers and undocumented immigrants, the promises of social democracy have been extended to all. Certainly, they aren't distributed equally nor fairly. Racism and sexism represent some of the most important pillars that keep our society functioning the way it does. Social democracy hasn't lived up to all of its promises, but the difference from 1964 and 2008 is that we see now that it could if it wanted to. If all the skilled organizers of the world got together and organized a movement of the people, we could make social democracy come true. Whereas 50 years ago, that seemed like a distant dream, we can see today that social democracy is a possibility, in fact, a probability. (None of this is to diminish the work of those who brought us here, or who continue to be excluded from this social promise. Their struggles are very real and very immediate.)
As social democracy approaches us, we start to see it better. And there are those in the working class who realize that we don't want it. Social democracy is the left-wing of capitalism, where our desires and beliefs are still packaged up, sold, and consumed. It is a soulless system with a kind face, where one day one is riding high and the next one is (as the last few weeks have shown us) out in the cold. Of course, as radicals see today something that we didn't fully understand before, capitalism is still capitalism. It is still part of the same system that necessitates ups and downs, changes and struggle. Even if we're a multicultural society (still a few decades off) without a glass ceiling, there are still workers and still bosses.
So we return to the question at hand: How can SDS achieve its goals?
This new movement, this nebulous idea of a 21st century working class in revolt, must understand that, as our struggles are diverse, so are our beliefs. One of the triumphs of anarchist organization has been its appreciation for multiplicity and different voices. Our struggles are multiple and interconnected, but also distinct and localized. This understanding is key to the development of a revolutionary organization. What's right for you isn't necessarily right for me, but we must work together where we agree and respect each other where we disagree. This freely associative model challenges traditional notions of organizing. Organizer-models reflect a kind of vanguardist thinking, where we plan events and campaigns, and you come to them. Mass-models often show a more explicit version of this, where directives come from the top and must be obeyed by the rank-and-file.
As I see it, SDS, in order to become a revolutionary movement, must take the wisdom of anarchism and apply it to the mass-based model of organization. We must force ourselves away from the top-down thinking of the old SDS and the similarly insidious logic of the organizer model. We are no vanguard. But we won't be led by a self-proclaimed one either. Rather, we must imagine an organization where people who've never attended an SDS organizer meeting consider themselves SDSers. Where SDSers can be regular students, who have never huddled over a press release for hours, trying to get one word right before day breaks and time comes to send it out. SDS must, in short, "go to the people." We must make SDS an activity as well as an organization.
Alright Brendan, that sounds real groovy, but what the fuck does it mean and how do we get theret? Not simple, I'll admit, but here's some suggestions.
- Syndicalism. Popular in the old days, this is an important idea. But we must build upon previous notions of student syndicalism and fight for total worker/student/faculty control, administered through mass councils and department-level control. In short, we must target the administration, while building allies in faculty and worker constituencies, in order to completely change what it means to be a university. This may become easier as the economy deteriorates and students find it harder to pay, faculty and workers find less to earn. But if we do not move quickly, we will lose the advantage and universities will return to their pre-WWII role as incubators of the bourgeoisie.
- Community work. The old Russian Nihilists invented "going to the people" and failed spectacularly. They were, like us, students, and went to the peasants to "help" them. Hopefully, we've learned from these mistakes. We must go to the people and use our social position to highlight their struggles. The most elitist thing that SDS can do is refuse to work with communities because we are too privileged to understand or our involvement would reflect us putting our agendas on others. This is elitist on two accounts. The first is that it assumes that working people somehow lack the ability to struggle for their own reasons and that our "big college brains" will somehow overpower them. Bullshit. If SDSers can simply shut their mouths when they need to and stop thinking that working people are idiots or myths, we can work with them. Second, it denies the precious knowledge and logistics that we've gained, often off the backs of these communities. We must go to communities and help in their struggles. Whether this means physically moving (while remaining conscious of impulses towards gentrification) or simply attending meetings, we must work to assist and also extend the lines of struggle.
- Fight the reactionaries where they appear. Many SDSers have already begun this struggle, and its commendable. As the economy worsens, fascist ideologies become more popular. In its latest incarnation, this means anti-immigrant attacks on the street level and increasing militarization of society at the metalevel. SDSers must join communities in this struggle. But we must also use our unique position in society and our logistical capability to go futher than communities are able. We must fight the Minutemen, we must draw attention to their activities, we must resist the police in our neighborhoods and the military in our schools. We must outflank these dangers before we are outflanked. Even if the economy improves, revolutionaries often forget that when state power breaks down, as it would in a revolutionary situation, cultural "outsiders" are the first ones to be targeted. We must be prepared to build institutions that can protect us and our allies from fascism.
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