Filed under: Analysis | Tags: Alienation, Lenin, Organizing, Revolution, Social Factory, Technology, the State, Unions, Work
I have four jobs- two in the fast food industry, one in a large multinational clothing retailer, and another as a substitute teacher. On my way to work today, I was thinking about the different flavors of alienation I have to look forward to. First, I will have to “manage” classrooms of children for eight hours. I have to follow a lesson plan set out by another teacher and approved by the state. But despite the drawbacks, teaching will be the easiestand best-paying job I will do all week. I will get several breaks, including a full paid hour for lunch. I can use the computer while at work. In fact, I’m writing this while on the clock right now.
After my day of substitute teaching, I’ll head to a fast food restaurant for a second full shift. At the restaurant, I’ll work on an assembly line, closely monitored and supervised by management, unable to answer my phone and confined to a ten-sq. foot area for eight hours. I will be physically and emotionally exhausted by the time I get home at the end of the day.
It seems to me that each of these types of work will give rise to different kinds of demands stemming from the particular nature of the alienation workers in each industry confront. Fast food workers are alienated at an intellectual level and a physical level. We have to produce emotion and feeling on the demand for customers. In addition, our bodies are put to work, our motions Taylorized down to the last twitch.
Teachers face a much more subtle alienation. Teachers are forced to “teach to tests” and stick to state-sanctioned curriculum. They are alienated from the students they teach, who confront them as alien objects that must be controlled and somehow brought to reproduce state-sanctioned knowledge. The alienation of teachers is primarily at an intellectual level.
Lenin claimed that socialist consciousness would have to come to the working class from outside because workers would only be able to advance to “trade union” consciousness, making “economistic” demands on their own. However, I think there is a tendency for the demands of workers to become more inherently “political” and less “economistic” as capitalism advances. How can a teacher make a demand without calling into question the legitimacy of the state’s plan?
I believe all workers should organize. However, I think it is worth noting that as workers refuse to perform the most alienating types of labor or as technology makes these jobs obsolete, most workers will face circumstances that are alienating on a more intellectual than physical level. As capitalism advances, every demand will be a demand for workers power, since every demand will be a refusal of capital’s right to manage the social factory. Similarly, as capitalism seeks to manage its crisis, the power of the state has become increasingly interwoven with the power of the bosses on the shop floor. The economic has become political, the political has become economic. Lenin is obsolete.
Filed under: Random Shit | Tags: Capitalism, Communism, Marx, Mass Work, Organizing
A friend of mine recently told me that he has realized that the radical left doesn’t really do anything. Sure, there are journals and blogs, ink and pixels spilled over theoretical questions, punctuated by the odd mass mobilization. But what the fuck does the radical left actually do in society?
Not a whole fucking lot for people who claim to be revolutionaries.
As someone who spends almost every waking minute talking to workers or fighting my own boss, I find this very frustrating.
I think it’s time to clean house. There is no longer any room for anyone above the struggle. The world has been interpreted enough. The point is to change it.
The “movement” is not made up of those who necessarily self-identify as revolutionaries, anarchists, marxist, or what have you. It is made up of those who struggle against their own masters from their own class position. As Marx wrote, “communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established , an ideal to which reality will have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.”
For this reason, the starting point of our politics must be concrete and direct involvement in the struggle of our class. In a truly revolutionary movement, there is no room for staff organizers, professional intellectuals, and everyone who makes a career or hobby out of someone else’s struggle. We’re all in this together.
What is the deal with peoples’ fear of mass work? You are scared of talking to strangers? And you want to smash the state? Let’s have first things first, shall we?
I’d like less talk and more action.
Filed under: Analysis | Tags: Mass Organization, Oppression, Racism, Sexism, Workers
I organize unions. It’s what I do. It’s simple and unglamorous. It usually goes something like this: I talk to a coworker, or a worker who works in another workplace. I find out they have problems at work or problems that are caused by work. We discuss these problems and think about ways to bring their coworkers together to put pressure on management to fix these problems. I try to do this in a way that builds class unity and hatred of the boss.
Some of my activist friends think that what I do does not address oppressions based on race, gender, or other forms of identity. They think that what I do is basically a way of “escaping” from my own white male identity, as if I’m somehow “slumming,” just pretending to be a regular workaday guy for a littiel while until I go to grad school. This is pretty insulting, but there is a real theoretical question buried in the uncomprehending activist bullshit.
What is the relationship between mass organizing and anti-oppression organizing?
There is a gap in the theory here. Marty Glaberman writes about “Black Cats, White Cats, Wildcats,” telling us that in the struggle against the boss, racism often evaporates. But there’s more to it than that. What about the struggle against racism itself? Can we only fight racism when struggle against the boss erupts? Is it possible to fight the boss as the boss, and fight racism (and sexism, and homophobia, and so many other oppressions) as its own system of oppression? Is this what we need to do?
In my own experience, I have found that building mass organization is a powerful way of building solidarity across all kinds of lines of difference in the working class. But the question remains: what is the relationship between mass work and anti-oppression work?
This theoretical gap is not likely to be filled by corporate liberal “anti-oppression” trainings. Let’s get thinking. We need to find our own solutions.
Filed under: Books | Tags: Books, Iraq, IVAW, Military, Organizations, Organizing, Revolution, Soldiers, Union, Vietnam, War
When the Industrial Workers of the World was founded in 1905, there was almost no public sector. These were the days before Keynesianism. Lenin hadn’t written about imperialism yet. There were no Bolsheviks, the authoritarian left was but a vicious glimmer in an intellectual’s eye. The Second International had not yet collapsed. In this political climate, the workers movement swelled, launching continual offensives against the bosses.
This is supposed to be a review of a book about GI resistance during the Vietnam War, right?
Dammit, I’m getting there, OK? Many people on the left believe that while the Wobblies and maybe the CIO were well and good in their day, these days revolutionary opposition must come from outside the system. They look to indigenous peoples, to “deep ecology” and nature. They look to the Third World proletariat. When they look at those in the emloy of the state, the public sector and the repressive apparatus, they see a monolith. When they look at capitalism, they see corporate logos.
Where they merely see “the enemy,” we see people and a site of struggle. We see an opportunity for subversion at the system’s most critical points.
David Cortright’s “Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War” demonstrates once and for all that society is not a monolith, that there are contradictions within the system that can lead to the development of revolutionary consciousness in the system’s very core. There are cracks in the edifice. In a careful study, Cortright traces the evolution of GI resistance to the Vietnam War from early, “vote with your feet” tactics like desertion, to the development of politically sophisticated GI organizations and soldiers unions. Often under the influence of radicals who entered the armed forces to organize, the US military was rocked by rebellions, combat refusals, and mutinies. This organized resistance was underscored by widespread unorganized resistance and massive drug abuse and disaffection in the ranks.
The breadth and depth of GI resistance led to a breakdown of the armed forces in Vietnam, leading to the defeat of the US invasion. The US defeat wouldn’t have happened without the courageous sacrifices of the NLF and Viet Cong in their defensive war, but without the refusal of troops to serve in Vietnam, it’s likely that the US would have continued to bomb the country until there was literally nothing left. The unreliability of US armed forces was critical to the defeat of US imperialism in Vietnam.
Cortright also explains how this defeat led to the development of a more high-tech, less personnel-heavy force, and the development of the US military strategy of proxy warfare and bombing lasting from the end of the Vietnam War to present. Already in 1970, the Pentagon was developing plans for unmanned aerial drones.
Finally, Cortright closes the book by examining the re-emergence of GI resistance during the Iraq War. While most of the anti-war movement has focused on intensive protest mobilizations targeting politicians, few organizers (save http://ivaw.org) have considered the potential of organizing within the military. Even fewer (perhaps none) have considered joining the military in order to organize. History tells us that by ignoring this arena of struggle we miss a great historical opportunity. The state is not a monolith. Let’s plant seeds in the cracks in the edifice, and bring the whole fucking thing down.
Filed under: Random Shit | Tags: Organizing, Student Unions, Students, syndicalism, Unions
I wasted 3 1/2 years of my life in pointless pseudo-radical campus organizing projects. Here’s what I think I should have been doing:
1. Actively supporting labor struggles through organizing, community education, and direct action
2. Learning the skills of community and workplace organizing through training and experience
3. Learning the history of labor struggles and various theories of organization
4. Organizing a union of students to fight for our interests.
This is pretty much what I’d like to see a student union movement do in the US. The group could move through these tasks more-or-less sequentially. First, organize in solidarity with unions and workers. Second, get training and experience in organizing. Third, during this process, learn the histor and theory of radical labor. Fourth, organize a militant student union to fight against tuition increases, student debt, and unfair treatment.
Filed under: Books | Tags: Anarchism, Books, Che, History, Industrial Concentration, Lenin, Mao, Organizations, Revolution, the left, Vanguardism
I’ve been living in the same rental house for about a year now. It was built around 1900. It’s pretty run down, and kind of quirky. There are always little surprises– the toilet overflows, the stove stops working, you find something wierd behind radiator, or you finally get keys to the attic… there’s always some reminder that you’re not the first to live in the house, and that you really don’t know the place that well.
Reading Max Elbaum’s “Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Tunr to Lenin, Mao, and Che” was kind of like finding a room in your rental house that you didn’t know about. People lived here before, in some of the same ways we do, but in different ways too.
Elbaum’s book is about the rise of the “New Communist Movement.” As the 1960s drew to a close, young radicals took inspiration from the uprisings of 1968 and the surge of anti-imperialist organizing in the Third World, deciding to create a new Marxist-Leninist vanguard organization from the ashes of Students for a Democratic Society. SDS collapsed in 1969, splitting into one faction, which later became the Weather Underground organization, and a second faction called “Revolutionary Youth Movement II.” Elbaum’s work focuses on the fate of RYM II.
Many of the new vanguardist organizations engaged in “industrial concentration.” Their cadre entered workplaces to organize wildcat strikes and build a proletarian base. They had to confront many of the questions we grapple with today. What is the role of the revolutionary organization? How do we deal with racism? Is the working class revolutionary? Are trade unions a possible vehicle for social transformation? The would-be vanguardists of the time answered these questions with (mis)quotations from Mao, Che, and Lenin. They built dozens of would-be vanguard parties, each announcing that it had the “correct” political line to lead the masses to the glorious revolution that never came…
By the end of the 1970s, most of the party-building efforts lay in ruins. The refugees of the movement mostly burned out. Some entered the middle class, others sought careers in education or as trade union bureaucrats or non-profit workers. Others went insane, which accounts for the old guy in camo gear sitting next to you on the bus muttering about revolution. In the 1980s, a few of the remaining grouplets united, forming Solidarity, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, the League of Revolutionaries for a New America, the Revolutionary Communist Party, and a couple other authoritarian wolves in sheep’s clothing.
For those of us on the libertarian left, Elbaum’s story can be a cautionary tale. We’re not the first to live in the creaky old house of the radical left. Let’s take some time to look around and get to know the place, find the skeletons in the closet, and make some repairs. There were others here before us. It didn’t work out for them. But this is our house now.
Filed under: Random Shit | Tags: strikes, Student Unions, Students, Universities
I think that students should build unions. They could fight for free education, better treatment, and more of a voice on campuses and in society. In most countries, there are student unions of some sort. Like ASSÉ in Quebec. They call massive strikes , usually involving aggressive direct actions, to fight off tuition increases. Often, student unions take action in solidarity with labor struggles.
We should have student unions in the United States. Maybe then workers wouldn’t end up with thousands and thousands of dollars of student debt, effectively tethering them to the workplace for the rest of their lives.
With the number of students in the organized anarchist movement, this seems like it could be a great initial project.
Filed under: News, Random Shit | Tags: Anarchism, G20, Organizing, Protests, Summits
http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20090610193012591
The G20 is coming to Pittsburgh. Maybe I’ll go. I’ve honestly got better things to do, but I need a break. Work sucks. Organizing is hard. Time for a tear gas holiday?
Anarchists have been effectively corralled into regularly-scheduled spectacular protest. Everyone’s got a part to play. We do our thing. The cops do their thing. Everyone says- see you at the trial! and heads home for a few months.
The next protest comes, it starts all over again.
We need to go outside the experience of the enemy. Change the terrain and the actors. Capital is an enormous beast. Let’s find the weak spot and attack it there. I mean this metaphorically. I mean that we should organize rather than protest.
Filed under: Analysis | Tags: Media, Unions, Organizing, Strategy, Corporate Campaigns, NLRB, Proletariat, Coalitions
There is a gap between what we are and what we say we are. This is the gap between reality and representation. The reality: we are a collective of workers seeking to undermine the very foundations of the capitalist system. The representation: we are the oppressed, seeking gradual reform within the system, making use of the provisions of liberal democracy to better our lot in life.
We seek tactical allies. Priests, politicians, cops, lawyers, liberals, and bureaucrats come to our aid. We do not turn them away. We polarize society against one boss after another, dividing and conquering the ruling class. This is the air war, the corporate campaign, the liberal cause.
We build our strategic base. Workers unite on the job and in the community. We build our power. We reach a tipping point. The proletariat comes into its own. We take off the training wheels and ride. We turn the world upside down. This is the ground war, the revolution itself. The reality destroys the representation. We lose our allies and win the war.
There are dangers to this strategy. We can mistake the representation for reality. We can become dependent on our allies, the means altering the ends. We can lose our best people to our tactical allies. Nevertheless, as we rebuild our power, we must use every weapon available against the bourgeoisie, including their own.
—
There is more to be said about this. Particularly about the subjective effect on workers of winning struggles largely through corporate campaigning or NLRB process. I wanted to get a few thoughts out there to help me sort through this stuff. I’m also not so sure that building community coalitions with liberal groups or bureaucratic organizations is the right way to go, although it’s hard to imagine organizing these days without doing so.
Filed under: Analysis
Where there’s smoke….
Anarchism after the RNC
I.
We’ve got the numbers, they’ve got the guns..
Our chants reverberated under the St. Paul skyway. The 2008 RNC protests were underway, the culmination of two years of anarchist/anti-authoritarian organizing materializing before our eyes. For once, we were many, and they were few… or maybe not. With 3500 cops and an uncounted number of National Guardsmen and Secret Service agents on the streets, this time they had both the guns and the numbers.
Overwhelming force was only one element of the state’s repression strategy. The main hub of direct action coordination– the RNC Welcoming Committee– had been infiltrated by at least one undercover cop and two paid informants almost a year prior. On Friday night, the hammer came down with a raid on the St. Paul Convergence Center. Cops busted in the doors with guns drawn, forcing about 100 people to the ground, zip-tying them, and then photographing everyone and taking IDs. What a start to the weekend…
The next morning, I got a call from a friend alerting me that the cops were raiding anarchist houses across south Minneapolis. Eventually, four houses had been raided, and eight members of the Welcoming Committee jailed.
Over the next week, over 800 people would be arrested in conjunction with the protests. Many would be injured by rubber bullets, concussion grenades, tear gas, pepper spray, and other weaponry. The state imposed a high cost on expressing dissent.
II.
The Strategy of Tension
Such a brutal reaction might lead us to believe that ‘we must be doing something right.’ After all, where there’s smoke, there’s fire, right? We must really pose a threat. Why else would the FBI and lord knows what other agencies put so many resources into crushing our protest?
No doubt, the prospect of a major political convention being delayed or cancelled due to protest activity would be extremely embarrassing for the ruling elites. However, we must also be aware of the way that the capitalist class uses threats to the existing order to legitimize the violence with which it maintains its hold on the planet. The experiences of the Italian left in the 1970s provide valuable historical lessons for today’s radical movements.
In the 1970s, the Italian state, backed by the United States government, faced a massive social insurgency that threatened the stability of capitalism. In response to the rise of autonomous movements of workers, women, students, youth, and pretty much everyone else, the state launched a campaign of terror. In 1969, the Piazza Fontana was bombed in a ‘false flag’ attack, killing 17 people and injuring 88. The attack was attributed to anarchists, although it had in fact been planned by neofascists with the support of US covert operatives. Their goal was to delegitimize the left, stem the tide of social insurgency, and push the government to declare a state of emergency in which the left could be crushed.
In the wake of the bombing, the state arrested 4000 people, many of them anarchists. This was the first in a series of over 140 bombings, kidnappings, assassinations, beatings, and other assaults perpetrated by the state and neofascist right in order to demonize the left. This was dubbed the "Strategy of Tension." The objective is to render the cultural environment impervious to social movement organizing by discrediting, and then eliminating the interventionist left. To borrow a phrase from counterinsurgency strategy, the Strategy of Tension ‘drains the swamp,’ raising the stakes for participation in social struggles, leaving only the most hard core activists alone on the field of battle where they can be easily targeted and destroyed. The ensuing defense work serves to distract activists from actual struggles, forcing them to devote time, energy, and money to bailing comrades out of jail.
III.
Comrade p.38
In spite of the machinations of reactionary forces, the social antagonism in Italy expanded into an unbridgeable chasm. The 1970s witnessed an outbreak of downright social war. Beginning with the “Hot Autumn” of worker unrest in 1969, the Italian movement crescendoed through the “Years of Lead” of the 70s, reaching an earsplitting climax in 1977 as overlapping waves of factory and university occupations and urban insurrections pushed the state to the brink of collapse. However, the strategy of tension was not without impact within the movements. A split developed in the pro-revolutionary milieu around the question of violence.
On one side were the proponents of mass organization and mass violence, the friends of "Comrade P 38," as we can call them. They favored self-defense of the movement on the broadest possible basis. The leading theorist of this wing of the movement were the intellectuals clustered around Antonio Negri and the other ‘Autonomists.’ The movement coelesced into a gallaxy of collectives, workplace committees, small political parties, campaigns, free radio stations, and other autonomous direct action initiatives that was termed the "Area of Autonomy" or Autonomía. Participants in Autonomía were by and large ready to defend themselves in battles with police that occurred at every major demonstration. It was not uncommon for one or two people to be left dead in the street after a protest or strike. In self-defense, some autonomists carried the P 38 revolver, which was cheaply available on the black market. When the pigs fired on the people, the people answered in kind. However, violence was never the focus of this side of the movement. The emphasis remained on building building mass organizations to expand human freedom.
On the other side of the split were the Red Brigades and other hierarchical, closed armed formations. For them, the armed struggle was more than defense, it was a revolutionary strategy in itself. Their organization was the mirror of the state. Through their violence, the state no longer needed provocateurs or false flag attacks. The actions of the Brigades alienated much of the working class base of the movements and provided plenty of rationale for the inevitable crackdown.
The Brigades strategy of armed struggled fit neatly within the state’s own strategy of tension. In 1979, the Italian state arrested all the leading figures of the Autonomist project, including Negri and the proponents of the mass, participatory movement. Negri and others were then framed as the intellectual authors, or even as the leaders, of the Red Brigades.
Caught between the forces of the state on one side, and the advance of an armed, hierarchical left on the other, the autonomous movements of 1970s Italy lost popular support and were crushed by a wave of mass arrests. It took over a decade for the left to recover.
IV.
from smoke…
There are lessons to be learned from the experience of Italy. Specifically, we need to be more deliberate in placing tactics within a strategy to reach a goal. The two wings of the Italian movement shared the same goal: the abolition of capitalism and the state. However, they chose different tactics to realize that goal.
In the case of the Red Brigades, their tactics ended up playing into the hands of the state, touching off a wave of repression that the left was unprepared for, pushing the possibility of revolution even farther into the future. The state was able to place the Red Brigades’ strategy within its own, making the actions of the Brigades into the motor of their own destruction.
We need to turn the strategy of tension upside down. We must develop a form of antipolitical judo, making the actions of the state into a motor for the growth of our movements. Currently, when we go on the offensive as a small minority, the state cracks down with the approval of the public. The state frames their actions as defense against a small number of terrorists or ‘criminal anarchists’ who endanger the public welfare. Only when non-anarchists are caught up the crossfire do we hear anything about the state "going too far."
We cannot depend on the police making mistakes in order to make our point or to delegitimize the state. We must build a broad base of solidarity so that an injury to one is truly an injury to all. The state must know that when they strike one, they strike one million. We must defend victims of state repression, such as the RNC 8. However, the only real deterrent to repression is the support and solidarity of autonomous mass organizations. More importantly, this kind of revolutionary base is the only force that will have the actual power to abolish the capitalist system while ending the racism, sexism, homophobia, and national chauvinism that plague the world.
V.
…to Fire
Today’s anarchist movement is teetering dangerously between irrelevancy and insanity. We must reject the choice between suicidal adventurism and standing on the sidelines of history. Finance capitalism is collapsing before our eyes. Social tensions thought long-resolved are again tightening. The atmosphere cracks with crisis. Let us not miss this opportunity to radicalize millions.
How can we participate in this historical moment to nudge the world toward revolution? In the United States, we are ill-prepared to answer this question. Most anarchists have played little meaningful role in any major movement in almost a decade. Most anarchists practically stood by watching during the largest anti-war protests in history in 2003. In 2006, most anarchists had virtually nothing to contribute to the largest workers movement in decades, as millions of immigrant workers stepped out of the shadows and into the streets.
For our own benefit, and for the future of this planet, we must begin engaging with our coworkers, neighbors, classmates, and acquaintances to build the kind of power we will need to overthrow the state, seize the means of production, and handle the repression that comes down as we do so. We have as much to learn as we have to teach, but either way, we have a role to play.
We need to begin the work of building a revolutionary social bloc, a coalition of grassroots, autonomous mass organizations based in neighborhoods, homes, schools, and workplaces, fighting for self-determination. In some places this means joining existing organizations, in other places it means building new ones.
Many anarchists would love to participate in a revolutionary movement of the broad masses, but lack the vision, hope, or skills to get from point A to point B. We need to look for lessons from other times, places, and movements for how to participate radically in mass movements.
We don’t have to look far into the past for examples. In Europe, Africa, and even the United States, organizations like the Spanish CNT, the Italian FdCA, the Irish WSM, the North American WSA, and others continue a rich tradition of engaged revolutionary anarchism the winds its way through many of the major struggles of the last century. But we may be able to draw the greatest inspiration from South America. Many are familiar with the powerful autonomous movements that have rocked South America over the last decades: the Piqueteros and reclaimed factories in Argentina, Landless Peasants Movement in Brazil, the fight against water privatization and for indigenous rights in Bolivia, to name a few. The role of Anarchists in these movements is less widely known.
In Latin America, Anarchists have developed a praxis of involvement in social movements that they call "Especifismo." The mainstay of Especifismo is the belief that anarchists must form a "specifically" Anarchist organization to formulate and enact a common strategy of engagement with society. This engagement is called "social insertion," which means that the Anarchist organization joins non-Anarchists in mass struggle or mass organizations around common interests. These struggles can include strikes, rent strikes, struggles for control of the land, struggles against the police and gentrification, struggles against sexism, for the right to abortion, against bus fare increases, or any other issue that angers working people and moves them to act.
In the struggles, Anarchists put forward viable proposals and ideas based on an anti-authoritarian, anti-statist approach to organizing.
As struggles are won, regular people gain more power against the bosses and the state. Those who are oppressed within the working class build their own autonomous organizations, fighting for the specific demands of women, queers, people of color, immigrants, indigenous, students, youth, the disabled, and other groups. Contradictions emerge, conflicts occur, the movement grows stronger.
This is not nearly as sexy as shutting things down and getting branded as a terrorist, but over the long-term, this patient, conscientious approach is the only way to lay the basis for revolution in the United States itself.
VI.
Forward
We should not have any regrets as a movement. Over the last decades, North American Anarchists have kept the flame of libertarian revolution alive amidst widespread liberalism and complacency. But it is no longer enough to keep the flame going. It’s time for a regroupment. The time has come to build new organizations based on a commitment to participation in mass social struggles as Anarchists. Only within popular movements do we have the power to build a new world. As the social conflagration in Greece, rioting in China, and other recent events demonstrate, there is a new opportunity to build a mass movement against capital and the state. The contradictions are sharpening. Capitalism is becoming a tinderbox. Anarchists must now live up to our ideals. It’s time to set the world on fire.
… …
Background Reading
On the RNC:
http://nornc.org
http://rnc8.org
http://twincities.indymedia.org
http://rnc08report.org
On the Italian Movements
“Italy, Autonomía: Post-Political Politics” published by Semiotext(e)
“Storming Heaven: Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism” by Steve Wright
A Few Anarchist Organizations
http://workersolidarity.org
http://fdca.it
http://wsm.ie
http://nefac.net
http://solidarityanddefense.blogspot.com
http://www.vermelhoenegro.org/
http://www.nodo50.org/fau/
