Occupy critiques: How did I get here? By know-it-all subtraction?
Posted by kasama on October 4, 2011
by Mike Ely
“And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house,
with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself,
Well…How did I get here?!”
>> Warning: This is a rant out of love. <<
There is a method swirling around: Where people look at this new moment, this new development… and they scan it like a static structure, and they compare it to their own previous beliefs and practices. Eureka! I know what’s wrong! Suddenly they express alarm, or dismay, or deep worry, that things are not being done right, by the rules (which have accumulated in the old leftist closet for decades).
By a simple process of subtraction, they come up with a subset of “what is missing” from this new movement. And they quickly assign themselves to be the critics or patronizing instructors of “what is missing.”
In short: it has been a very short leap (in conservative leftist thinking) from “This movement is bullshit and will go nowhere” to “This movement is ok, but I know what it needs.” In fact, you knew it all along, right?
I see that in the encampment of Occupy Chicago, i read it in a dozen discussion. And you see it too.
How should we appreciate and approach novelty?
First of all: things are not what they seem. You have to examine something in its dynamic motion… not by linear subtraction.
Second, things are not repeats of the past. Things may look similar to something you saw or experienced, but a decade later (or five minutes later) it may not have the same meaning. And so your previous summations, verdicts and correctives may be utterly out of space and time.
Third, there is a need for a bit of humility — and an easing of that “know it all” assumption (that we are conscious, they are objective, we know, they need to listen, and so on.) Let’s face it, most leftist groups over decades have not done that well — isn’t it a bit naive to think that the solution is to foist your special preconceptions on the next mass movement?
Isn’t some dynamic study, appreciation, learning and even transformation required?
This movement (any movement) has weaknesses — and may have fatal flaws. We need to help identify and transform those things. SKS posed (in an interesting and well-researched discussion) the fact that if you don’t have leaders and structures, then the “white shirts” of the oppressor are quite willing to be your leaders…. and you will have trouble developing direction.
All true. But then, if we identify a problem (say we spotted from a million miles away) how do we address it? What is the process (unity-struggle-transformation) look like in the real world?
The old eyes of even young activists — a matter of bad training
One of the problem with fixed conceptions is that people tend to see the new through the eyes of the old.
But even things that seem similar to what a previous generation experienced (the ever-heavy shadow of the 60s), it may not ACTUALLY have that meaning in a new time.
Understanding requires fresh, flexible and ongoing investigation and summation. Real work. And dogmatism is lazy. In addition, frankly, it requires a kind of scientific humility that the previous left rarely considered (theoretically, ideologically or practically).
A NEW situation isn’t just a replay of old situations. Life is not on recycle and rinse. You can’t just show up and run old tapes — even if you have been trained on old tapes. It takes a process of communist work to even understand the dynamics and lay of the land.
We (here on Kasama) have talked for a long time about expecting ruptures, about understanding how to prepare ourselves to be flexible in the event, how to look for “our Mississippi,” how to expect fracture lines to produce eruptions and stir people (as opposed to thinking that social movements are mainly generated by the grind of “slow patient work” by activists).
All of this is now in play.
And it is a good time to revisit the corrective that: the people (in their large numbers and movement) are the real heroes, while we ourselves are often childish and ignorant. Without this understanding, it is impossible to acquire even the most rudimentary knowledge.
These words (part of our communist legacy) are not a prescription for tailing or romanticizing or accepting serious flaws in the real.
These words (and this approach) are a precondition for actually learning — just as learning is a precondition for actually influencing and leading. Better to be students (of reality and others) first — especially in a novel situation — than “swing into action” with knee-jerk and exhausted assumptions.
I saw one comment (a sincere, interesting and thought-provoking comment!) on Kasama about how the occupations need the theory of “transitional demands” — the one Trotsky stressed in the mid 1930s. It is seventy or eighty years later… how has it been working for you? Is that really a starting-point/brainstorm today?
OMG, this violates our rules!
A dear friend of mine wrote (musing on facebook) an honest question:
“Can you recall another movement in the past that was essentially demand-less like this one? That’s not a diss either, I just find the whole thing fascinating.”
Fair question. And I apologize here, publicly, for the harshness of my reply at the time.
But let’s ask: What does it mean that this gets posed? (And not just once, or by one person!)
It kinda had me blinking and sputtering.
- I saw a hundred rebellions in the U.S. without demands. The LA rebellion… what was its demand?
- The Peasant Uprising in Hunan 1927?
- May 1968 Paris?
- The May 14th Movement in China?
- What was the demand of the underground railroad before the Civil War?
- What demand did John Brown make? (In Kansas I think it was “Uh, die muthafucker.”)
- What was the demand of the Sanctuary Movement during the El salvador war?
- What was the demand of the resistance to the Nazis in France, or Italy, or occupied Soviet Union?
We will need demands at key times (and need slogans at others)…. I’m not against this movement having demands. But still…. What is the content of the approach taken by many?
Lots of moments HAVE and NEED demands (“Stop the war,” or “Free Mumia” etc.) Sometimes we are demanding concessions and retreats by the ruling class (“Free all political prisoners!”) And we are not wanting to make unwinnable demands (!) in such cases, but we intend to win them! (And sometimes do win them.)
But what does it say that often some of our active folks can only conceive of our movements in relation to demands on the ruling class (which is a posture that ultimately assumes their power and even on some level concedes some legitimacy). Mesmerized by the permanence of power, much?
It is worth thinking about why THE PIG MEDIA keeps demanding demands — what are they wanting (or, ironically, demanding!)? What will they do with all of this if they get specific demands? How are they influencing thinking by constantly complaining about the lack of demands? (I saw a report on the PBS News Hour that said they expected demands soon from Occupy — including higher taxes — Talk about trying to force us onto THEIR terrain!)
This emerging movement avoided some tidy list of demands — and has channeled a deeper mood of discontent that has not yet found itself a program. Is that wrong? Perhaps we could learn something here that the routinized and creaking left has forgotten.
I think this movement needs a set of critical voices (internally) — and it obviously has them. And i think we need to forge an attractive pole that speaks to (and helps creatively articulate for) the most radical anti-system currents within the movement, and (within that and alongside that) we need our own communist voice (shocking, open, searing, far-sighted).
The need to ORIENT ourselves
So I am (again) not arguing for tailing and romanticizing.
But I do think (with all respect and love) the “criticisms” of most of the left are uninformed and conservative. And subtractive in a know-it-all way. And further, that there is a naive sense that “we” somehow “know” what is needed. Without work? Without real investigation? Without being in the tissue of this generation and its active debates?
Let’s give ourselves a reality check (and I include myself): Why is the novel treated as “strange” by so many leftists? What is the mind set?
People are really almost surprised that new things emerge…. when that is what we should be poised to expect and learn from. People seem unable to “swing into action” to orient ourselves in a new situation.
That is what we need to do: Orient ourselves, through investigation and study and practice — in order to apply a mass line, and actually contribute. In the absense of such work and orientation, we will speak without helping. We will lecture without knowing (while, of course, thinking we know what they need).
Let me give a self-critical example:
The moment I had the OWS broadsheet in my hands, I read the Declaration of Occupation — a list of grievances. And I (scanning it as a fixed thing) quickly noticed what was on their list and what (in the laundry list of my mind) was missing. (“Nothing on immigrants, check. Nothing much on war and empire, check.”) So, BANG, insta-criticism! What more do we need to know? There are GAPS (!) in their texts (produced under difficult conditions by friggin consensus rules!) And “we” know what needs to fill them.
What is wrong with that method? What would it lead to?
I am not saying that an tinge of American nationalism is not something to note. I’m obviously not saying that questions of war and empire are not important. I’m not saying that excluding the undocumented from this movement would not be a problem. I’m not saying we don’t have a role in moving things on such matters.
But I am raising what is our method, and how does our role emerge, and how do we imagine participating in the maturing and deepening of a process. (And of course within a day or so, the Occupy Boston had published something discussing immigrants… and so the discussion rolls.)
Really people should be a bit more humble, open-minded, dialectical, patient, generous, and aware of the novelty of things. Not give up critical faculties and tail this… but geez. It is one long crab fest by the veterans of the left’s previous epic fail. Mao mocks those who think they can “pull on a sprout to make it grow.” Yes it has weaknesses, yes it needs to mature and transform, yes we know somethings that can contribute. But what is our method?
I want to call out in passing two things I have heard:
One is the idea of taking over organizationally. Someone (not from Kasama) discussed getting key people into key positions, etc. It is important to pay attention to who controls key positions in an organized movement… sure. But as a method we need to lead by line (by having an articulate and open political pole) and not mainly by organizational methods.
The other is being “the best fighter in the day to day” — the assumption that we arrive and become the best footsoldier of whatever is — with the assumption that the respect gained by dilligence will translate (someday) into political influence. This method does not work.
I want to propose two things are taken to heart: One is the mass line (which we have discussed on Kasama here and here. The other is the concept of “leading through line.”
And I will leave it there.
cigar guy said
This is an excellent post. I’ve gained much clarity on how to approach this issue locally. Thanks, Mike.
Practicing the mass line sounds simple enough, but when done with pre-conditioned ‘knowledge’, or old ways of doing things, it can’t really be done.
I am going to Occupy Providence to observe, listen, and learn, and try my best not to think like the expert (that I’m not).
Mike E said
We have a lot of rich discussion on Kasama (going back years) that is worth spending some evenings on. We should perhaps make a pamphlet to have it available.
Looking over it today, I went “hmmmmm.”
Jay Rothermel said
I too have a tendency to sum things up at the end of the third paragraph of any event, so OWS is providing me with an opportunity to be a little more scientific, taking a step back from the welter of “I-must-be-the-first-to-judge”-itis that is too often characteristic of communists.
A friend on the scene in NYC was having a bit of fun with me yesterday re the fact that my old party, the U.S. Socialist Workers Party, had not mentioned OWS in their paper or come down to the site of the occupation. [My answer, such as it was, can be read here:
http://marxistupdate.blogspot.com/2011/10/ows-and-acs.html ].
A striking if secondary thing about OWS is the Rorschach it gives everyone else on the left in the United States. So many see in the welter of contradictions and shortcomings an abortion rather than a new and fascinating phenomenon reflecting the actually existing state of political consciousness in the US.
OWS is not encased in a bell jar, and before long I think we will be amazed, or perhaps dismayed, at the turn Events. But the fact that thousands are inspiring more thousands, and that they all decided not to wait for the next election, but just do it themselves with whatever level of consciousness they had, is a real pledge for the future.
I don’t think we need 10 Communist Commandments at the entrance to every new event, or read them off to people building events so they know how poorly their blood and sweat measures up. For myself re OWS: Patience, circumspection, and a willingness to go through experiences.
Keith said
I agree with Mike here.
I would extrapolate a bit and connect the “demand for demands” to protest mode more generally. the demand for demands is an attempt to direct the occupation into protest mode. Once it is in protest mode than it is just part of the loyal opposition. The problem with protest mode is that the question of revolution (which is the question of power) is gone. The occupation idea, whatever its shortcomings, is raising, however vaguely, the question of power. One 20 year old occupier told a mainstream reporter that he was staying until Wall St falls. That is a revolutionary sentiment.
I think that Malcolm X’s 1963 speech “Message to the Grassroots” is worth looking at here because he explains, in his critique of the March on Washington, how a revolutionary movement gets converted into protest-mode.
http://www.famous-speeches-and-speech-topics.info/famous-speeches/malcolm-x-speech-message-to-the-grass
The Voice Collective said
I would like to strongly echo what Keith said above. The issue of power is key here. And when it is raised in a big way by a movement, we go beyond the usual politics of reformist demands (or even political personnel reshuffling) and onto a new terrain.
I agree with what Mike said, i.e. that demands do become highly significant at particular moments, but are not necessary at every moment. And there is movement here. Sometimes demands – even in the form of a list of basic greviences over the worst excesses of an existing set-up – can help set in motion a process whereby the question of power comes to the fore, and struggle erupts to a higher level. Sometimes demands can emerge as a subordinate moment of an open struggle for power.
People’s perceptions about demands are highly important. I was talking with a close friend yesterday about Occupy New Orleans, and he described to me how one of his closest friends dismissed the movement as though it were childish, asking “What are they trying to accomplish? Do they have any concrete demands?”
My response to that is that we do need movements with (dynamic) programs. We do need big ideas and big goals, with lucid strategy and tactics. We do need MASS collective coherencies (shared understandings) of a revolutionary nature which do do not currently have. However, those things to not come out of nowhere. And we have to reject the naive vanguardist idea that all the formulas are ready-made, written in a book or in some grouplet’s documents, waiting to be seized by the masses and put into action.
The process whereby the things which we need can emerge are likely to me messy and protracted. We should be prepared for waves of upsurges which will be characterized by various levels of coherency and organization.
I have been saying to those around me that this moment is important regardless of what it lacks and that we should support it. On the most basic and abstract level, it is helping to give legitimacy to the idea that it is right to rebel, even without prescribing exactly how, why, when, where – so on and so forth. To raise this idea at this moment is worthwhile as such.
Sometimes upsurges occur because there are certain demands made within the parameters of the existing order. Sometimes there are upsurges characterized by a developed struggle for power. Some upsurges – like this one so far – are more amorphous and indicate a more general, perhaps, crisis of legitimacy. Masses of people think think that SOMETHING in wrong and that we can’t go on in the same way as before. That is important. That sets the stage for later developments.
We should expect this process to have its own “truth procedure” and for people to come to new consciousness in the struggle. That goes for us communists as well.
The Voice Collective said
To be clear, though, I am not at all saying that we should be satisfied at all with the deficiences of this and other movements, out of some total commitment to spontaneity and unpredictability. We should be trying to shape it, of course. But we should problematize what “shaping” something means. And that means discarding some old dogmas, and being very attentive to particularities of current contradictions, to use the Maoist language. And it means an ability to fuse (mutual transformation) with movements and upsurges, which is not possible with peanut gallery forms of criticism or naive vanguardism. We do need to form cores which can play a directive role within emerging movements, which does not mean trying to dictate how the process unfolds. We need a new collective will, which is precisely not a monolithic movement (that’s not possible or desirable) but a new historic bloc of forces that can overthrow the existing order. That such a bloc would have levels of coherency and heterogeneity which we cannot determine in advance, though we can work to shape the unfolding.
Ghan Buri Ghan said
A certain segment of the old left disavowed and disowned the new left due to conservative cultural prejudices. Now a certain segment of the new left is coming on too strong to try to prove to the “new new left” that the old new left is “down”. It’s like an old guy at a party dressing young to try to look cool.
Personally, as someone from the “new new left”, my criticism of the “Occupy Wall St.” movement is not based on stubborn refusal to participate, to get my hands dirty, or a purist to engage with people who have dissimilar political perspectives. It’s not based on some procrustian fantasy that there should be ideologically pure mass-demonstrations that ban or alienate everyone who isn’t a hardcore communist. And it’s certainly not the flaccid criticism of the liberal petit-bourgeois that whines that these are just “punk kids” who don’t have a laundry list of meaningless demands, or who aren’t wearing suits and ties in a contrived attempt to look respectable for the bourgeois press.
My criticism, and I this sort of goes back to what sks and I have both written in our respective articles, is that if the leadership of this movement doesn’t represent the political interests of the proletariat, then it will be hijacked by the political interests of the bourgeoisie. And if this movement has no leadership, the hijacking is all the easier.
Now obviously I’m not suggesting that a bunch of NCM retirees take command. No one is asking that, at least no one with any common sense. The “leadership” of certain unmentioned social-capitalist bureaucracies. This is a youth movement, so if a revolutionary proletarian leadership emerges from within this movement, it will be a leadership comprised of the youth. But if the revolutionary proletarian leadership doesn’t emerge, it will fade away without a trace like the anti-war and anti-globalization movements of the 90s. There really aren’t any other options.
By proletarian leadership, I mean a leadership that recognizes the historical task of the working-class: Overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the eventual establishment of a global communist society. You may say that history does not repeat itself, and that this is something new and novel that we have never seen before. I disagree with philosophy. There are clearly only a limited number of positions you can take in relationship to existing society, and they’ve all been well-explored in the annals of history. This may be dogmatic, but the fact of the matter is no number of general assemblies is going to stumble upon some entirely unheard of and unthought of solution to our problems like so many monkeys trying to type Shakespeare. However, that doesn’t mean that those of us who think we have all the answers aren’t wrong; undoubtedly we are, or that we shouldn’t listen and consider the ideas of others. The leadership of the proletariat has been and will always be forged from within the immediate and practical struggles of the proletariat. However, the older communists who analyze this movement, at least those who choose to be overly-optimistic and triumphalist about the new generation’s form of protest, seem to have this notion that anyone who criticizes the movement from a more extreme-left perspective is “on the outside looking in”. I know for a fact that in NYC and elsewhere, our young brothers and sisters have been there, struggling away endlessly from within to try to promote a revolutionary perspective.
The quasi-nationlism, (“take our country back!”) the protectionism, the reductionist populism, (“We are the 99%!”) the reactionary critique of corporatism and finance capital, the pacifist refusal of any militant or illegal praxis and naive trust of law enforcement; these are not just weird notions that grow spontaneously out of nowhere like mildew growing on a sock in the corner of a closet. They are ideologies that are manufactured and distributed by the bourgeoisie, for precisely that reason they serve the interest of the bourgeoisie. They are a pacification that kills the movement before it begins. The task of communists is to smash these illusions without mercy or sentiment. Now the best way to do that is not to scream “ha ha, you’re an idiot!” But, on the other hand, it is not the task of communists to conceal our aims. We admit quite openly and freely that our ambition is to organize the proletariat around its political and historical interests. Our participation in collective projects such as these sort of assemblies, is to quite opportunistically direct the mass-movement in the direction of communism. Again, that sounds dogmatic, but I don’t want to see my generation once again lead into futility by gangs of NGOs, regime unions, pseudo-left sects, and activist-celebrity agents of the bourgeois. That’s what happened to the anti-war movement.
Ghan Buri Ghan said
*or a purist refusal
Ghan Buri Ghan said
*The “leadership” of certain unmentioned social-capitalist bureaucracies is not wanted.
Apologies for the gaps in my writing.
balzac said
This is very much appreciated, Mike.
I made a post on the earlier thread about demands which seemed to get overlooked by the know-it-all subtraction, as you call it, going on, so I will re-post it here and perhaps it can start some discussion – maybe even as to what it means to be a communist in the present. (Something I think Ghan and I would vastly disagree on.)
The notion of a ‘demand’ is in many ways the only way liberal democracies understand social change. To issue a demand or set of demands is fundamentally to comply (with the terms reserved for this being to lobby or to protest).
The reason why there is a great degree of befuddlement at and derision directed towards these occupations is that they do not conform to the basic liberal democratic model and do not produce concrete demands [and this can be applied to the old left as well - which is oftentimes very 'organizational' and takes as its model the nation-state, or 'taking the state', something which is very different from what is going on at present; while there is not the space for it here, it is worth pointing out that the take the state model is effectively dead due to the processes of globalization and the vastly weakened capacity of states, which no longer possess the Weberian 'monopoly on violence'].
It is not so much that the making of demands is exclusionary (though they certainly can be), which would then ascribe the power of this movement to being ‘inclusionary’, but that the power comes from the lack of demands itself in that this forces a new way thinking and a new set of possibilities for social change. It essentially kicks open the confined space of the allowably political and reveals new sets of possibility. In this sense it is ‘offensive’, in that it creates the terms and models for the political-discursive battlefield, rather than ‘defensive’, which adheres (and thereby surrenders) to the terms of political possibility offered by liberal democracy [or again: the old terms offered by 19th and early 20th century Marxism, which themselves were formulated as a response to liberal democracy].
If there is a ‘demand’ being made it is one that is not directed at the state or Wall Street or any bureaucratic or corporate apparatus, but really at everyone else – the 99%.
The demand is that we all BECOME the 99%, and to do this by actively participating in rethinking and remaking of democracy. Even if one is poor as dirt, get shits on constantly, etc., that does not ‘make’ them automatically part of the 99% – just as the Black Panthers said, it is not about being black, but about becoming black (or to go back even earlier, not about being working class, but achieving class-consciousness) – what is required is that one joins in this process of democratic creativity.
It is worth noting as well that the demand to become the 99% is not something voluntaristic, but is actually a compulsion, it something that must be done. We must become active participants in the radical experiment to create democracy.
zerohour said
May 1968 did have one demand: “the impossible!”
Harry Sims said
Great post. It definitely gave me a lot to think about. Also, I echo what zerohour said above :)
Ghan Buri Ghan said
balzac -
I disagree that “To issue a demand [...] is fundamentally to comply”.
It is true that we live in a very extreme historical juncture in which capitalism has few cards left in its hands. The New Deal was an appeasement made by the ruling-class of the U.S. to defuse the revolutionary movement of the proletariat. I think it was the Invisible Committee that observed that at this political juncture it is impossible for the U.S. to offer another New Deal. In my mind this has as much to do with objective material conditions of capitalism as the subjectivity of the working-class. Similarly, the anti-colonialist and feminist movements of the 20th century were originally revolutionary proletarian movements, and the ruling classes of the world made appeasements to defuse them. And there are no more appeasements in this direction remaining for the ruling class to give. Contrary to what the communists originally claimed in the 1840s, it is impossible for the capitalists to level all gender and ethnic barriers; they can only integrate small segments of women and colonized people into the bourgeoisie, and that has process likely gone as far as it can go.
So yes, making absurd demands with no practical relationship to material reality is fundamentally to comply. In this respect, you are correct that the liberals who whine about the kids’ “lack of concrete demands” are expressing their bourgeois anxiety directed at the impending spectre haunting the 21st century.
However, to say that issue ANY sort of demand is a form of compliance shows a lack of practical reality. Even the Red Brigades, who were the arguably most extreme and uncompromising faction of the revolutionary left in Italy at the time, demanded the release of prisoners in exchange for the guaranteed safety of Aldo Moro. (Admittedly those demands were not met and Moro was killed, but his safe release in exchange for the release of the prisoners in question would have been an equally dramatic blow, it wouldn’t have made the BR’s actions any more “compliant”, and it would have rewarded them with the resource of having their comrades out of jail.)
Yes you can say the Situationists made no demands in ’68, but what did they actually accomplish?
—–
Moving on, you accuse the “Old Left” of “befuddlement at and derision” towards the occupations, allegedly because the Old Left is “‘organizational’ and takes as its model the nation-state, or ‘taking the state’, something which is very different from what is going on at present”.
Firstly, you are not being clear as to what you mean by the “Old Left”. Are you referring to the so-called “New Left”, who are now in the fifties and sixties?
Secondly a criticism of “organizational” thinking is very idealistic and impractical, in other words not very helpful. All revolutionary political projects require organization, the question is, which form of organization is the most effective? I don’t have the answer, because I am young and uninformed by life experience, but deliberate lack of organization is, in my opinion, certainly not the answer. Let me ask you, what political revolution was carried out without organization?
Lack of organization is an impossibility, lack of organization on our part means that mass-movements such as these will be organized around the political interests of the bourgeoisie. (Even if you are an anarchist, you have to acquiesces that the most successful anarchist groups such as the Makhnovshchina and the Friends of Durutti were very well organized)
——
“it is worth pointing out that the take the state model is effectively dead due to the processes of globalization and the vastly weakened capacity of states, which no longer possess the Weberian ‘monopoly on violence’”
This is, in my humble opinion, a very severe over-estimation. It has always been taken for granted by that the state stays afloat because it is subsidized by the capitalists, and that one of the primary crises of capitalism is the ever-increasing demands of the bourgeoisie to support a state that grows rapidly more strenuous to support. But the capitalists are not stupid, they would not waste their resources supporting a state that serves no purpose. If the state no longer possesses a “monopoly on violence”, (and it’s not the state that has a “monopoly on violence” but the bourgeoisie, the state is simply the instrument they use wield it) Who do the bourgeoisie turn to when they need their property protected during a riot? Mall cops? No, they turn to the military and the police.
This notion that we no longer need to confront or eventually take control of the state because it no longer has a monopoly of violence doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. I would guess it’s a way to rationalize this movement’s lack of vigor in confronting the state.
—————
“new way thinking and a new set of possibilities for social change.”
I have already spoken of my opinions on this subject. At the risk of divulging into ad hominem attack (as I do not know your age) I think you are romanticizing my generation. What “new way of thinking” has my generation pioneered? The theory that the world is controlled by reptilianoids? The theory that morgellons are caused by chemtrails? I need to apologize in advance; I’m being snarky and lowering the level of discourse, but it’s to make a point. The “new ways of thinking” that are being generated by the youths participating in this movement are not new. Many of these young protesters are social democrats, many of them are right-wing populists, many of them are anarchists or Marxists. Most of them have contradictory ideologies that have components of all of the above. It’s certainly fertile ground for a new revolutionary movement. But some magical “new way of thinking” about society is not going to pop out of nowhere just because yet another generation has grown old enough to engage in mass-demonstrations against exploitative conditions.
I’m not denying that new contributions are made to revolutionary science, but this just seems to be romanticizing a problematic lack of political education amongst my generation.
———————–
You decry “old terms offered by 19th and early 20th century Marxism, which themselves were formulated as a response to liberal democracy”. Is this a useful criticism of Marxism? All concepts are formulated as a response to previously existing social conditions. New ideas need to be tested on their own merits, they need to hold up to old, established ideas. Breakthroughs in genetic research have held up to or have been proven to surpass Darwin’s theory of dissent of species. Breakthroughs in quantum physics have held up to or have proven to surpass Einstein’s theory of relativity. Marx’s economic theories held up to or were proven to surpass the theories of the bourgeois economists he criticized. Have all such attempts to “modernize” and “revise” classical Marxist thought held up? For example, did Bernstein pioneer an improvement over Marx by watering his premises down with Lassallian nonsense? Of course not. And it would be erroneous to assume he did just because his ideas were “newer”, without any intellectual scrutiny. Similarly, plenty of modern day theoretical modernizers, from Michael Albert to Subcomandate Marcos, have come up with “novel ideas” about the world that are simply more examples of watering down Marxism with ideas Marx successfully repudiated.
—————–
Finally, you say:
“The demand is that we all BECOME the 99%, and to do this by actively participating in rethinking and remaking of democracy. Even if one is poor as dirt, get shits on constantly, etc., that does not ‘make’ them automatically part of the 99% – just as the Black Panthers said, it is not about being black, but about becoming black (or to go back even earlier, not about being working class, but achieving class-consciousness) – what is required is that one joins in this process of democratic creativity.”
Firstly, what does democracy got to do with it? “Rethinking and remaking democracy”…what does this actually entail? How are you defining “democracy”? “Rethinking and remaking democracy”…to me this sounds incredibly vague, it doesn’t say much, so again it’s another example of romanticizing my generation’s ideological incoherence. Democracy is already the dominant form of capitalist political rule, and much has been thought and made of it already. Why and how should it be “rethought” or “remade”?
I admit that I am not an expert on Black Panther theory, am I correct in assuming that “becoming black” refers to becoming aware of the political experiences of the black nation in the US, and acting on that awareness? It is one thing to hope for the prospect of large segments of the white working class acting as allies of the black working class. This is a somewhat reasonable hope. And I agree that it’s “not about being working class but achieving class-consciousness”, and there is a burgeoning class consciousness going on in the Wall St. Occupation. But it is burgeoning; most of these kids have not developed a strictly anti-capitalist position. They blame “the corporations” and “the bankers” for “breaking the system”. Can their political subjectivity change? Of course. Will it change? Probably. Should we ignore the fact that it needs to change? Obviously not.
Do you honestly think “We are the 99%!” is an adequate class-analysis? Do you honestly think that legions of bail-bonders, landlords, corrections officials, debt collectors and real estate agents are going to “become the 99%”? This is the opposite of scientific class analysis, and this is what many of these young protesters actually think and mean when they say “we are the 99%”. A lack of realistic class analysis is not the same thing as a profound new insight into class consciousness.
There you go, sorry to be a debbie downer. You said we probably had vast differences, and I wanted to let them off my chest. I hope you excuse my slight snarkiness and take what I am saying in good faith, it’s been a long night of debate for me.
SKS said
I think this document is the mirror image of what it criticizes:
1) The “old left” is not an entirely ineffective, unimaginative, uncritical, and prescriptive: It is also dedicated, day in and day out, in the good times and the bad times, struggling against incredible odds, suffering jail, physical annihilation, economic privation, alienation from family, often oppressive political cults with a single minded belief that a better world is possible. I think that deserve some consideration, and some listening, and not an off-hand dismissal of their views as “conservative”.
2) While claiming not to be tailist, it is exactly that: while the critical positions of many of the left have been terribly conservative, many have not, many in fact are attempts to intervene politically in a movement characterized by its openness – to intervene and provoke though. I strikes me as disingenuous and sectarian to claim the left is wrong in its critique – bordering on the red baiting. Communists and socialists of all lines MUST intervene, and intervene in ways that are provocative and irritating to establish a line struggle. Calling on the left to shut up and accept this movement as is or to make only some forms of criticism and engagement acceptable but not other is disingenuous.
3) What is the problem with saying, for example, that the issues of women, of people of color, of imperialism, are not being addressed? That issues of right-libertarian anti-finance capital conspiracy theories of antisemitic tones should be excluded? That a security culture capable of protecting the movement and denying the enemies opportunities for exploitation is needed? I think that a mass movement acquires it political strenght via frank, open, provocative, and positive confrontation of opposing ideas. Celebrating diversity is not the same as holding a neutral position. So far, the people most vehemently critical of the “left” have shown an unwillingness to actually address the issues of substance being raised, retreating into what amounts to a an ad hominem attack on the left.
4) I do not lose sleep over the lack of the demands precisely because this is a germinal movement incapable – as is – of achieving any demand. It is basically an activating pole to which a number of grievances are being attracted. It is the task of the left to turn this into a lighthouse in the storm, and not into so many moths burning up in a lamp. The only way this will be achievable is by developing this germinal movement into one capable of fighting for demands. In the words of the great Black Revolutionary Frederick Douglass:
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
Building a mass movement, and if possible a mass party, consciously directed towards resisting in “either words or blows, or both” the “injustice and wrong” that Power imposes upon us, and what is more, capable of effectively doing so, is the sole task of communist in this moment. Nothing more, and nothing less. While how to achieve it is something that only the concrete struggle, its study, its navigation, can tell us, certainly I know that the way to do is not by not engaging in principled struggle for a correct line, and a correct line forward, and certainly not by criticizing, somewhat opportunistically, the actually existing left and its relationship to the emerging mass movement as “conservative”. If it is conservative, it is with reason: what ever little we have constructed shouldn’t be pushed aside so easily, because it was built of blood and sweat and pain.
As Mao said:
“Thoroughgoing materialists are fearless; we hope that all our fellow fighters will courageously shoulder their responsibilities and overcome all difficulties, fearing no setbacks or gibes, nor hesitating to criticize us Communists and give us their suggestions. “He who is not afraid of death by a thousand cuts dares to unhorse the emperor” – this is the indomitable spirit needed in our struggle to build socialism and communism.”
We must not fear being rejected or irritating: it is our task, our battle station, and our shinning trench of combat.
balzac said
Ghan, it is obvious that we come from different perspectives in that you seem to come from a Marxist-Hegelian tendency whereas what I am saying is more along the lines of ‘ultraleftism’. This is fine and by mentioning, as I did, in the bit above my repost that we likely were very far apart on these matters, I did not intend it as either a challenge or a provocation. I hope you realize this.
To respond to what you said, while this may seem pedantic, that though the BR were certainly the most ‘extreme’ faction of the Italian left in terms of their willingness to use violence (understanding it as THE means for revolutionary change), they were by no means the most radical or even successful of the Italian left and were actually quite detrimental to the work of the far more revolutionary Autonomist movement. (Of which Negri, who wrote the article “No New Deal is Possible”, was one of the main figures.) The autonomists saw the discipline of factory and family as not only the means for capitalist reproduction through capitalism, but also as the means for the subjective production of workers; in order to achieve communism, workers had to take control of ‘subjective production’ (what might be called – as an oversimplification – everyday life) themselves. This altered the terrain of struggle in that the anticapitalist struggle was massified (no longer confined to a labor aristocracy of industrial wage-labor) and while it included perhaps one of the most passionate struggles for workers control of the workplace, struggle was no longer limited to the factories. Hence their opposition to labor unions and the Italian communist party. The autonomists, of course, emerged out of Mai68 and were able to create a Mai68 which lasted over a decade in Italy (only being quashed at the violent repression which occurred in the wake of Moro’s killing). It is also worth pointing out that the Situationists, though ultimately unsuccessful, provided the biggest victory ever awarded to the French working-class in the reforms put in place after Mai68 by starting off the movement with a demand for the impossible.
I bring this up because the desires to ‘create democracy’ and ‘become the 99%’ which I mentioned are, just like this movement, or at least its most radical edge, deeply indebted to the thought and work of the Italian autonomists. The goal is not to ‘end the wars’ or ‘tax the rich’ but things which are currently inarticulable in terms of political discourse – things which are outside the models of legislative liberal democracy and the nation-state. The ‘offensive’ character of this movement comes from this need to open up and transform what is understood as the grounds for the political, and perhaps most importantly, in so doing achieve a ‘consciousness’ (similar to class consciousness, but also different given the change of time and circumstances) and organizational model which is built from the bottom and is capable of challenging the top. In this sense the actual process (such as the General Assemblies) are key: it is this process of creation (of subjective production) which will give the movement its power and capacity to grow. Thus the need for demands, coming from the right or the left, completely misapprehends the means by which the occupations have gotten their energy, strength, etc., as those desires can only come to the surface through this process which is now only just beginning. Patience is needed in this regard, as is – most importantly – our participation.
In regards to the question of organization, I think too often what we are given is a false dichotomy between the disciplined and organized (usually vanguardist, but not always) and the voluntarist and spontaneous model of organization (usually anarchist). Organization must instead be thought through the model of the pack or multiplicity, rather than the split of one or many. If you interested in learning about this, I would suggest picking a copy of A Thousand Plateaus. It is a philosophical problem with very real consequences for the way we organize and see ourselves organizing, and I recommend it.
I know the desire for democracy gets shat on a lot as being petty-bourgeois and of course this is generally correct when applied to those who advocate for liberal, representative democracy. There is another form of democracy, one which is both compatible with and essential to communism, and the occupation movement is at least attempting it. To quote Badiou:
“But, as a coda, we can go right back to the literal meaning of democracy if we like: the power of peoples over their own existence. Politics immanent in the people and the withering away, in open process, of the State. From that perspective, we will only ever be true democrats, integral to the historic life of peoples, when we become communists again. Roads to that future are gradually becoming visible even now.”
bn_to said
good post.
This is timely for us here in Toronto, since something similar is being planned next week. While I agree wholeheartedly with the criticism of arrogance and dismissal that some of us ML’ers or other approach nascent or spontaneous actions like these, I think there are also some other important considerations.
Within my organization we have debated participation in this, and rather than a value judgement of this action itself we mostly debated the value of participating in this versus our previous commitments and subjective conditions/ circumstances locally – ie. our limited resources + the urgency of local issues and our commitments to local organizing.
We have often discussed and warned against the tendency of folks/ org’s to shift their focus towards the sexy new issue and felt that it would not be feasible or responsible for us to shift from our commitments made to other work.
This does not mean that one can’t support the intent of the actions and the consciousness raised by actions of those individuals, but I think there should also be thought and discussion of how mass organizations factor into these actions. While I suppose it is possible for mass line to be carried through these more amorphous groupings, generally this is done through mass organizations. In pretty much all the circumstances/ events mentioned in Mike Ely’s article, there was a present of such organizations (albeit diverse in their character) which certainly contributed or facilitated to those movements and actions.
In summary, power to those who are participating in these actions but I don’t feel that all organizers and organizations should be compelled to drop their work to join it.
Miles Ahead said
Thank you Mike for your “rant.”
Haven’t even finished reading the entire post, when the following jumped out at me immediately:
In fact, I spent some time yesterday, going through all the initial posts and comments (starting with the original call from Adbusters) since I was thinking the exact same thing as what you said…
The actor (and activist) Mark Ruffalo was interviewed last night by Keith Olbermann. Ruffalo has been in the thick of things from the get…and he answered with such great passion some of those questions lingering in the minds of all the naysayers and stodgy conservative (and will add passionless) leftists.
OK…read on McDuff…
Jay Rothermel said
I follow the Speed of Dreams Blog and noticed this:
http://bermudaradical.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/watching-the-petty-bourgeoisie-in-motion/
Mike E said
[moderator note: This comment has been moved to its own post.]
Tell No Lies said
What Yeshitela says there is, IMHO, basically correct. The question is what you you conclude from that. Is that the end of the analysis or the beginning? On its own the radicalized petty bourgeoisie (or racially privileged sections of the working class) is not a revolutionary force in the sense that they can not lead a successful social revolutionary process to a revolutionary conclusion. But that doesn’t mean they can’t play a role in a revolutionary process, even a very important one. One of the consequences of the petty bourgeoisie’s privileges is that they often believe the promises this system makes in terms of their right to speak out and protest and this causes them to act in ways that open political space that other forces can seize on. A classic example of this is the role that Black college students played in the early 1960s opening up space for more clearly proletarian revolts. Or the influence of the broader student movement on resistance in the military or the labor upsurge of the early 70s. Also, while the petty bourgeoisie may be a ”dying force” it is by no means a dead one and in fact brings critical resources, skills and organization to any alliances it enters with other classes. The use of the term “petty bourgeois” to dismiss the importance of the Occupy Wall Street actions is the worst sort of vulgar Marxism and completely misunderstands what our posture as revolutionary communists needs to be towards the actual petty bourgeoisie.
PatrickSMcNally said
“I follow the Speed of Dreams Blog and noticed this:
quote:
To see a petty bourgeois force in motion demanding revolution is not necessarily the same thing as seeing a revolutionary force in motion.
unquote”
That much should be uncontroversial within Marxist circles. But what is equally true is that a society which is able to sustain a stable petite bourgeoisie (as the USA was able to do for the 2nd half of the 20th century) is not a society which is going to see any revolution anywhere. The stability of the petite bourgeoisie is a strong measuring stick for the stability of capitalism as a whole. This does not merely hold true among white people. The tendency for people like Spike Lee and Louis Farrakhan to advocate “black businesses” and the influence of this advocacy has always been linked with the lure of joining a stable middle-class, when such exists. These OWS events are significant precisely because they correspond to the breakdown of that middle-class stability.
Tell No Lies said
Exactly. When the children of the petty bourgeoisie find themselves being forced into the proletariat, petty bourgeois illusions of upward mobility can not help but lose their grip on the proletariat. This revolt represent a very serious crisis of legitimacy for this system, not just in the eyes of the petty bourgeoisie but in the eyes of the vast swathes of the working class who have long accepted a petty bourgeois world view.
land said
Occupy Philly starts Oct. 6th at City Hall. Come on down.
Miles Ahead said
Suddenly today a new poll came out, that is all over the news…that one in three (active) U.S. soldiers are stating (and pretty emphatically so) that the wars (and occupations) of Afghanistan and Iraq “have not been worth it,” and “are wrong.” The timing of this is not purely coincidental, but IMO related to the groundswell and rapidly growing OWS movement (including spreading to various campuses nationwide).
And on many of the more liberal news-stations, OWS is now being touted as the “ ‘American’ Autumn,” – which of course has its problems, but there have been tons of references to the “Arab Spring” (in part as inspiration) throughout and for many a growing sense of a people to people alliance and unity with those who have rebelled and risen up in the Middle East. Compare that growing sentiment to the Islamophobia, et al., of just six months ago.
Red Fly said
TNL, I’m confused by your use of the term “petty bourgeois.”
Should I take this to mean that the the white working class is inherently petty bourgeois? Or just that they’re more likely than the black working class or chicano working class or native working class or asian working class to adopt a petty bourgeois outlook?
SKS said
The only social revolution in living memory that removed white supremacy (although not capitalism) was in South Africa. Courageous whites, often not from the working-class were instrumental and central to this victory, and are considered as heroes of Black revolution by South Africans.
Race is a social relation, and as such, it is the relation, not the genetics, that matter – and those who confront the basis of this social relation can, have, and will contribute to revolutionary change.
This is a distinction that National Bolshevik blogs like Speed of Dreams fail to make – caught up in a politics of racial determinism and racial purity where White supremacy is opposed not because it is a supremacy but because it is White. They are not communist, but reactionaries at the level of other brown reactionaries like Al-Qaeda or Hutu Power ideologies. The enemy of my enemy is not always my friend.