Kasama

[Brief note: No one in this discussion is calling on specific people to carry out specific acts. ]

“Two themes I would like to raise:

• A movement with no combativeness or militancy will never make a revolution — it will leave humanity as slaves under the heel of our oppressors and their armed agents, it will leave them unable to cross over to higher forms of struggle.
• A movement that goes over to an actual “war footing” prematurely within an imperialist country, in the absence of a conjunctural revolutionary situation, will face defeat.

“This presents a real and sharp contradictions — that can only be approached strategically and not mainly with tactical prescriptions.”

“This is a matter of political and ideological line — and of strategic goals. It is a matter of basic stand and orientation. What road are we on? Respectability or revolution? Do we want in or out? Do we want ‘influence’ or liberation?”

* * * * * * *

by Mike Ely

It is very helpful that Lorenzo Komboa Ervin took the time to answer our post on militancy. And (I have to say) there is a great deal cleared up by his words. I would like to respond point by point.

Lorenzo writes:

“I spent 15 years of a life sentence for hijacking a plane to Cuba in 1969, so obviously, I am not denouncing all street fighting, and obviously not in the 1960’s when I myself was active. I *do denounce silly minuscule tendencies on the Left who fight ideologically each other more than they ever fight the cops or government…. I was not making any “conservative” comments. I generally don’t condemn revolutionary violence or even street violence against the cops and the government as part of mass protest campaigns. All of this is if the people are down with it.”

This clarifies a misunderstanding. I am grateful for the agreement this reveals.

The point I understand Lorenzo to be making is about the combination of revolutionary violence with sections of the people — in opposition to severing of one from the other.

As he puts it

“All of this is if the people are down with it.”

Let’s drill down a bit more, in hopes of gaining more clarity and unity.

Debate over Militancy &Violence by People

Lorenzo writes:

“Someone had put forward some nonsense about the CUNY protests, claiming that ISO was being attacked by Anarchists, or putting forth yet more ideological one-ups-man-ship, demanding that we should all be sympathetic. It was a blanket attack on all Anarchists. I was responding to that, not making a blanket statement condemning revolutionary violence.”

I understand that Lorenzo is making distinctions here: taking his distance from particular kinds of small group militancy that can be infantile and counterproductive — in order to make a larger critique of forces who abhor militancy and seek to suppress it.

In an important historical point, Lorenzo writes:

” Certainly the Black Panther Party did engage in armed self-defense, and the Black liberation Army caused these issues to be raised inside the party to an even higher level during the 1970’s, when it had an ideological split, which ultimately fractured the group.”

Raising the question of the Black Panther Party helps sharpen this question — but also complicates it.

Because while the BPP did practice armed self defense (in ways that were often quite legal) — they were particularly leery of precisely the mass street fighting that was engaged in Black rebellions and in other uprisings of the people (Peoples Park, New Haven for Bobby Seale and so on) — even when (precisely!) “the people are down with it.”

In the debates within the BPP, there eventually developed a polar confrontation between those (around Huey) who wanted to step away from armed self defense, and those (around Eldridge and the NYC Panthers) who wanted to go over to a war-footing “in ones and twos.”

But neither one of these poles strategically grasped the question of combining revolutionary violence with the masses of people — or how that can be integrated into the process of revolutionary work.

In fact, in a number of cities, the BPP sought to “chill out” mass rebellions that happened (including in the early days, including in Oakland their main base).

In New Haven 1970, on a very complex terrain (that i won’t try to describe here), the BPP stepped back from participating (or mobilizing for) a mass May Day rally organized to free their chairman Bobby Seale. The powerful action happened anyway — and any thousands of radicals sharply engaged the police around Yale University and the streets of the city.

At the time (and I was there) it was very bewildering to hear that the Panthers’ Doug Miranda (who like all the Panthers was undoubtedly brave and highly militant) had become so reluctant to be associated with this truly historic event.

In some ways, the BPP did believe (as an organization) that mass confrontation with the power structure was “Custeristic” (as Fred Hampton put it in regard to Weatherman’s Days of Rage), and that in such events, the Black people in the streets faced real dangers of being murdered en masse (while white participants might well be treated more leniently) –and the Panthers often felt such dangers were real even when Black people were gathering in large non-violent rallies.

These are complex historical and political matters, and I’m not trying to sum them up here.

But my point is that while the Panthers did engage in violence (in self-defense) and while a faction of them sought to form an underground guerrilla army (the BLA and others) — as a movement they did not have a clear (or correct) synthesis on an approach to the Black urban rebellions, or other forms of mass resistance to the authorities.

And I believe this was a major problem and error in the BPP approach — even while they “ideologized the gun back onto the political agenda” in a way that electrified the country and the left, even while they were a deep and heroic rejection of the whole slavish framework that “non-violence” had become. This was a strategic and theoretical weakness within a very positive development. And it connected precisely with their inability to imagine a strategic approach to actually making revolution in the mother country. And it is one example of the importance of theoretical DEPTH when revolutionaries undertake reconception and regroupment (as the Panthers truly did).

We can, perhaps, discuss this in more detail.

The Right to Rebel & the Need to Prepare

Lorenzo writes:

The original assertion was that the Black Bloc was a vanguardist tendency, which physically attacked ISO, and broke windows, which brought on police repression. Even other Anarchists disagree with some Black Bloc tactics, which I believe are infantile sometimes. Further, if an underground movement takes such action, with no mass base, then yes it can be politically provocative. Yet it does not mean the movement itself is equivalent to police provocateurs, as some pacifists and competing Left/Progressive tendencies assert, or that it is a new form of “propaganda of the deed”, as occurred during the 19th century. I believe Black Bloc tactics are a deliberate attack on capitalist property, and although I consider it too small scale to mean anything, I do not denounce it out of hand.

There is much to agree with here:

• the question of mass base is important.
• it is wrong to equate violent tactics with police activity (as some forces have historically done in dishonest and irresponsible ways).

Tactics (forms of struggle) have to be approached the context of strategy (alignments of forces for seizing power). How do actions now prepare for actions later?

Two themes I would like to raise:

• A movement with no combativeness or militancy will never make a  revolution — it will leave humanity as slaves under the heel of our oppressors and their armed agents, it will leave them unable to cross over to higher forms of struggle.
• A movement that goes over to an actual “war footing” prematurely within an imperialist country, in the absence of a conjunctural revolutionary situation, will face defeat.

This presents a real and sharp contradictions — that can only be approached strategically and not mainly with tactical prescriptions.

The issue is preparation for conjuncture — not self-expression, or rigid principles. And the preparation that is needed is not only theoretical or “patient” modest small work of organizing. There are moments when we need to light the sky. There are moments when the people need to send their enemies packing — or else abdicate hopes of higher victories.

I believe Lorenzo is precisely talking about this when he writes:

“These issues of political violence at demonstrations are not issues which are easily answered, but we cannot be dogmatic and denounce all violence at a demo. It depends on place, time, circumstance, and other factors, and esp. mass support. Even during the civil rights period you had the Deacons for Defense and Justice in Mississippi and Louisiana, and the anti-Klan militia in Monroe, N.C. They did have mass support, as they protected demos, and took on the Klan and hostile racist forces.”

Mao Zedong wrote:

“Without a peoples army the people have nothing.”

This is not rhetoric. It is a deep observation of human affairs. And in a country where it is not possible to have a peoples army for the forseeable future — it raises an acute strategic problem.

And the resolution of that contradiction is to prepare — politically – it means  “hasten and await” changes in conditions. This is a strategic and conjunctural approach that does not treat Mao’s insight as some half-forgotten cliches.

The World from the Bottom

Lorenzo writes:

“But poor people are already living with daily repression, it is a subject of debate if revolutionary/street violence brings on more repression anyway. Maybe it brings it onto middle class white radicals, who can afford to engage in pacifism, but it exists everyday in the ghetto. Can’t get away from it. Black people are beaten, arrested and even killed everyday for any act of resistance. As for the 1960’s, I was one of those fighting in the streets, was in the Black Panther Party and a number of militant tendencies during that period, and know that, yes, street fighting and armed resistance itself was a mass tendency in 1968.”

Yes, the situation of oppressed people are different for the middle classes. They have less political freedom, their lives are seen as less valuable. The enemy has more tactical freedom to be murderous and vengeful. And all of this needs to be understood deeply. (And it was part of the important Black Panther debate mentioned above).

it is also true that there is a real spirit of “nothing to lose, no future to give up” among the ghetto and barrio youth. Youth who kill and die over a street corner, over a disrespectful look, are also in a position to seek quite militant means of expressing their political dreams.

And that too is a contradiction for revolutionaries — because our brothers and sisters at the grassroots are often not that interested in our written work, our drawn out study — and often want to know how to move, how to live and how to die.

“But the issue was if groups like WUO then or Black Bloc now had any accountability to the masses engaging in “peaceful” demonstrations. I do not know that they did then or do now, but I was not/am not part of those tendencies. Should they use those demonstrations as a backdrop, or engage in their own “days of rage.”, taking on the cops first-hand? It is a political question that must be honestly and seriously debated among the contending forces, if that is possible, before bringing it to the wider Left/Anarchist movements. Otherwise, it is just mindless recriminations and ideological oneupmanship, on a fast place to nowhere.”

Often the question of tactics is seen as a question within the left. If xxx throws a bottle during a protest, how does this “reflect” or alienate the others there… and so on.

Without dismissing these questions, I am trying to argue that tactical questions are mainly a matter of serving strategy (of preparations for seizing power) — not mainly a questions of this or that accommodation within this or that political coalition.

And lets state a matter of basic orientation: we should not trample the exuberance and anger of youth. We should never take the stance of tired old men who “know better” — and wave veteran “creds” while  pissing on the flames of discontent, or whining that the oppressed have “gone too far” in seeking justice.

The stance we need is  the founding ideas of Mao at his very best.

I see clearly now, that Lorenzo is not making such an argument — and that is great!

And one reason it is so great is that certainly there are plenty (plenty!) of tired old men (and those who have that vibe while still young!)

This is a matter of political and ideological line — and of strategic goals. It is a matter of basic stand and orientation. What road are we on? Respectability or revolution? Do we want in, or out? Do we want “influence” or liberation?

The Righteousness

Lorenzo writes in an interesting window into our movement’s common history:

“I was active during the late 60’s when Black Power changed the politics inside SNCC, and activists picked up guns for self-defense against the KKK. (And of course, self-defense and revolutionary violence became a singular issue in founding of the BPP).

“Much later, I was one of the contemporary leaders who organized an anti-Klan movement in Tennessee during the 1980-90’s, which used a variety of tactics, including armed self-defense to back back violent fascist tendencies. Our coalition included Anarchist, Marxist-Leninists, civil rights militants, Black nationalists, and others. Some so-called Leftists denounced us as “provocateurs” or anti-white, said we should debate those sympathetics to the Klan, in the name of “class unity,” which was nonsense. We do not debate fascists, we attack and beat them down, if strategically possible.”

Then he writes:

“”I obviously agree about the righteousness of class violence, or mass insurrection, but never said that I thought this was a bad thing in the first place, and I obviously supported the Watts, Detroit, Cincinnati and other rebellions against the state. I did not say that every protest that did not engage in violence was “pacifist”, and i know the theoretical differences about pacifism and tactical non-violence. I said that pacifism is still the main tendency in progressive movements, and I understand the tactical questions of “non-confrontation”. Many use Dr. M.L. King as the example for their activism, and dogmatically adopt his pacifism, as opposed to the tactical use of non-violence in a specific situation. That was the early debate between SNCC and Dr. Kings’s SCLC.

“My personal belief is it unwise for an unpopular tendency to engage in violence with no base of support at all, even among those of its own class/activists. They should engage those who disagree with their tactics in debate to try to win them over, but on the other hand no one should denounce them to the cops. That is indefensible.”

I think those words are a fine place to end this particular exchange. And they are a fine basis for opening new doors.