Occupy: Should socialists form a common bloc? Toward what ends?
Posted by Mike E on December 27, 2011
Kasama is post discussions from different viewpoints and hopes to raise, as a special focus, what role the Occupations can play in building new, united, impactful movements for a radically different society. The views presented in this series are not summations by Kasama itself. They are presented here to encourage discussions from which verdicts are emerging.
This piece appeared in Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal.
This piece ends with an argument for a Red Bloc (or a Socialist Caucus) as a way of influencing the direction of the Occupations. Would this be positive, or a disaster? An assumption behind that proposal is that “socialists” somehow have common politics (that exist, for example in opposition to anarchist politics)? that could be expressed better in common within such a movement. Is that true? And if so what are those “common politics”? Or do revolutionary communists have more in common with new-born radical forces and revolutionary anarchists than they do with the various strains of organized socialists? Who are the advanced who we should be seeking to consolidate and put forward? Do they included the organized socialist currents? And if so which parts of them?
From the conclusion of this essay the author puts forward one view:
“The most basic and fundamental task facing socialists is to merge with Occupy and lead it from within. Socialist groups that insist on “intervening” in the uprising will be viewed as outsiders with little to contribute in practice to solving Occupy’s actual problems because they will be focused on winning arguments and ideological points rather than actively listening to, joining hands with and fighting alongside the vanguard of the 99% in overcoming common practical and political.
“One difficulty the socialist left faces in accomplishing this basic and fundamental task is the divisions in our ranks that serve in practice to weaken the overall socialist influence within Occupy, thereby strengthening that of the anarchists. They have their Black Bloc, but where is our Red Bloc? Where are the socialist slogans to shape and guide the uprising’s political development?”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
By Pham Binh
December 14, 2011 — Occupy is a once in a lifetime opportunity to re-merge the socialist and working-class movements and create a viable broad-based party of radicals, two prospects that have not been on the cards in the United States since the late 1960s and early 1970s. The socialist left has not begun to think through these “big picture” implications of Occupy, nor has it fully adjusted to the new tasks that Occupy’s outbreak has created for socialists. In practice, the socialist left follows Occupy’s lead rather than Occupy follow the socialist left’s lead. As a result, we struggle to keep pace with Occupy’s rapid evolution.
Occupy Wall Street (OWS) mobilised more workers and oppressed people in four weeks than the entire socialist left combined has in four decades. We would benefit by coming to grips with how and why other forces (namely anarchists) accomplished this historic feat.
The following is an attempt to understand Occupy, review the socialist response, and draw some practical conclusions aimed at helping the socialist left become central rather than remain marginal to Occupy’s overall direction.
Occupy’s class character and leadership
Occupy is more than a movement and less than a revolution. It is an uprising, an elemental and unpredictable outpouring of both rage and hope from the depths of the 99%.
Occupy is radically different from the mass movements that rocked US politics in the last decade or so: the immigrants’ rights movement that culminated on May 1, 2006, in the first national political strike since
1886, the Iraq anti-war movement of 2002-2003 and the global justice movement that began with the Battle of Seattle in 1999 and ended on 9/11. All three were led by liberal non-governmental organisations (NGOs). They sponsored the marches, obtained the permits and selected who could and could not speak from the front of the rallies. Militant, illegal direct action tended to be the purview of adventurist Black Bloc elements or handfuls of very committed activists.
Compared to these three movements, the following differences stand out: Occupy is broader in terms of active participants and public support and, most importantly, is far more militant and defiant. Tens of thousands of people are willing to brave arrest and police brutality. The uprising was deliberately designed by its anarchist initiators to be an open-ended and all-inclusive process, thereby avoiding the pitfalls of the failed conventional single-issue protest model. The “people’s mic”, invented to circumvent the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) ban on amplified sound, means that anyone can be heard by large numbers of people at any time.
One of the most important elements that makes Occupy an uprising and not merely a mass movement is its alleged leaderlessness. Of course as Marxists we know that every struggle requires leadership in some form, and Occupy is no exception. The leaders of Occupy are those who put their bodies on the line at the encampments and get deeply involved in the complex, Byzantine decision-making process Occupy uses known as “modified consensus”. Occupy’s leaders are those who make the proposals at planning meetings, working group, and general assemblies (GAs) that attract enough support to determine the uprising’s course of action.
The people leading the uprising are those who are willing to make the biggest sacrifices for it.
Since Occupy is self-organising and self-led by its most dedicated participants, attempts to make its decision-making process more accessible to those who are not willing or able to dedicate themselves to Occupy 24 hours a day, seven days a week will fall flat. “All day, all week, occupy Wall Street!” is not just a chant, it is a way of life for Occupy’s de facto leadership.
This reality has affected the class character of encampment participants, who tend to be either what Karl Marx called lumpenproletariat (long-term homeless, hustlers, drug addicts and others who have fallen through the cracks of the capitalist edifice) or highly educated (white) students, ex-students and graduate students. The former joined the encampments not just to eat and sleep in a relatively safe place but also because they hope the uprising will win real, meaningful change. The latter tend to dominate Occupy’s convoluted decision-making process and what motivates them is identical to what motivates the lumpenproletarian elements: hope that Occupy will win real, meaningful change. Many of these people are saddled with tremendous amounts of personal debt, have worked two or three part-time jobs simultaneously, or were unable to find work in their field despite their expensive, extensive educations. They were destined to be secure petty bourgeois or well-paid white-collar workers before the ongoing fallout from the 2008 economic crisis claimed their futures and put their backs against the wall. This is the material reality underpinning the determination of Occupy participants to keep coming back despite repeated arrests, beatings, and setbacks. Their determination is the stuff revolutions are made of.
The advantage of Occupy’s structure and form is that the Democratic Party, liberal NGOs and union leaders have been unable to co-opt the uprising before it exploded into over 1000 US towns and cities and targeted President Obama. The disadvantage is that it limits Occupy geographically to places where authorities will tolerate encampments and sociologically to the least and most privileged sections of the population, to those who have no where else to go besides the encampments and to those who can afford to camp out for weeks at a time.
The undocumented immigrant who works 60 hours a week and the wage slave who works 40 hours a week will find it very difficult to shape Occupy’s decision-making process. Attempts to scrap Occupy’s existing structures and forms to make them more accessible to those other than full-time occupiers carry two inherent risks: 1) opening it up to forces that would love nothing more than to turn the uprising’s fighters into foot soldiers for Obama’s 2012 campaign and 2) diminishing the power wielded by Occupy’s most dedicated participants. In places where Occupy does not take the form of a permanent encampment its decision-making process can be even more diffuse and difficult to participate in.
OWS’s birth and the socialist response
The US socialist left did not cover OWS in its daily publications until after NYPD deputy inspector Anthony Bologna pepper sprayed cornered women on a sidewalk near Union Square on September 24. The Socialist Equality Party’s coverage on its World Socialist Web Site began on September 26, the Party for Socialism and Liberation’s (PSL) coverage in Liberation News began on September 27, the International Socialist Organization’s (ISO) first article appeared in Socialist Worker on September 8 and Solidarity’s initial discussion began on October 3.
This tardiness reflected the socialist left’s deep-seated scepticism at a protest without demands, a rally without a permit, OWS’s talk of prefiguring a future non-capitalist society in an outdoor camp in the middle of Manhattan’s financial district and a “leaderless” “horizontal” process. The preponderance of these anarchist elements, combined with the socialist left’s theoretical sophistication and political preconceptions, led to a “wait and see” approach that consigned us to the role of rearguard, not vanguard.
The uprising succeeded not only in spite of its alleged weaknesses but because of them. Repression from above and determination from below combined to win Occupy mass support in the weeks after September 24. The socialist left made OWS a priority and moved beyond sending its members to OWS organising meetings in early October as the trade unions, MoveOn.org and other left-liberal groups mobilised for the October 5 march of over 20,000 to protest the NYPD’s bait-and-arrest operation on the Brooklyn Bridge the previous Saturday.
Socialists on anarchist terrain
Occupy is undoubtedly related to the “occupy everything, demand nothing” trend that appeared in student mobilisations against budget cuts to higher education in 2009-2010. David Graeber, the anarchist OWS organiser who coined “we are the 99%”, pointed out how anarchism informs Occupy’s refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of state and corporate authorities and its insistence on direct action, direct democracy, non-hierarchical organising, consensus and prefigurative politics.
The task for the socialist left with respect to these issues is to understand:
1) how and why these methods dominate the uprising and
2) what to do about it.
Anarchist practices have become widespread because success breeds imitation. Just as the 1917 Russian Revolution a century ago spawned communist workers’ parties with tens of thousands of members hoping to imitate the Bolshevik example in their own countries, so today the thousands of people inspired to imitate OWS in their own towns and cities copied what proved in practice to be an effective means of bringing tens of thousands of workers and oppressed people into motion, the socialist left’s criticisms notwithstanding. In the weeks following September 17 OWS’s facilitation working group, which is tasked with running the New York City GA , trained organisers all over the country in the modified consensus process with dozens of video sessions broadcast over livestream.com in addition to face-to-face sessions with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of OWS participants. Many of these trainees then traveled to other cities or returned to their home cities to launch new occupations.
Occupy is the vanguard of the 99% and OWS is the “vanguard of the vanguard“, to borrow an expression of Leon Trotsky’s. OWS’s vanguard role explains why its methods prevail over those preferred by more traditional organizations such as unions, liberal NGOs and socialist groups.
The socialist left must learn to navigate Occupy’s anarchist terrain if we hope to shape and lead the uprising instead of being shaped and led by it. Trying to overturn existing practices in favour of Roberts Rules of Order, majority voting and formally electing leaders by making proposals along these lines at GAs will fail because Occupy participants have not been shown by example that these methods are superior.
In short, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and if it is broke, show and prove what a better model looks like.
The reality of OWS is that the “horizontal” modified consensus method, the GA and the spokescouncil are all highly dysfunctional but not fatally so (at least at this stage). Prior to the eviction, many OWS working groups began secretly hoarding street donations they received from the GA’s official finance working group (FWG) because they put lots of money into the general fund but faced serious hurdles in getting any money out of it for badly needed items due to OWS’s protracted, bureaucratic decision-making process. Also, because FWG administers over $500,000 in internet donations, many working groups saw no need to contribute to a fund flush with cash and resented what amounted to a one-way cashflow.
The money hoarding was part of a divide that emerged between full-time occupiers who felt disenfranchised and eventually boycotted the GA on the one hand and movement types (many of whom did not sleep in Liberty Park) who believed that the modified consensus process was the single most important element of the uprising on the other. This divide manifested itself geographically with the emergence of a “ghetto” and a “gentrified” area that was captured in a Daily Show segment.
The spokescouncil structure approved by the New York City GA, aimed at alleviating its frustrating and undemocratic logjams, simply transferred those problems to the spokescouncil while not significantly improving the GA’s process. All of these problems worsened after NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg evicted OWS from Liberty Park and OWS did not contest the eviction by returning there, a blow the uprising is still struggling to recover from (an improved encampment is planned for a new location).
Although the socialist left might see these problems as a vindication of its dim view of modified consensus and Occupy’s decision-making process generally, the task of socialists is not be vindicated but to aid the uprising in overcoming its stumbling blocks with practical solutions arising from the experiences of Occupy participants that utilise the uprising’s existing framework, infrastructure and terminology.
Instead of proposing at a GA or a working group to scrap modified consensus from the outset, a more fruitful approach would be to raise process reform proposals only after building close relationships with fellow activists through joint work. If (or when) they become frustrated with the shortcomings of modified consensus, a suggestion to modify the 90% approval margin necessary to overcome a block to a two-thirds margin or 50% plus one might then become appealing.
The difficult, painful and protracted process of trial and error cannot be skipped. We may be right about the shortcomings of modified consensus, but only peoples’ direct experience will prove it conclusively.
Socialists and Occupy working groups
Every local Occupy has working groups organised around a wide variety of tasks, a reflection of Arun Gupta’s observation that “all occupations are local”. The challenges facing OWS are not the same as Occupy Philadelphia, Portland, Mobile or Nashville. OWS has over 40 working groups, some of which were forced to transform after the eviction (sanitation became focused on housing, for example) due to new circumstances. Local Occupys have adapted OWS’s model to their local needs and created a dozen or so working groups such as labour, demands, direct action, security, medical, food/kitchen, comfort, internet, media and facilitation.
The socialist left has generally limited its participation in Occupy to a handful of working groups, usually those engaged in what Ross Wolfe of Platypus correctly described as mental labour — demands, labour outreach, direct action — and shied away from the physical labour or “grunt work” done by security, comfort, medical and food/kitchen. This is problematic because it cedes the majority of working groups to the influence of other political forces (anarchists and liberals), inadvertently creating “Red ghettos”.
Prioritising groups devoted to mental as opposed to manual labour is predicated on the false notion that running a kitchen or securing tents to sustain occupiers is less political or less important than talking about demands or ideological issues. When Genora Dollinger led the Flint sit-down strike in 1936, feeding strikers hot food was just as crucial to beating General Motors as picket lines were. Without one the other was impossible. The example of post-eviction OWS bears this out as well. At this stage of the uprising’s development, mass mobilisations and political discussions have no launching point or organising centre without a physical occupation, and the physical occupation of a space requires a lot of “grunt work”.
The socialist left must be involved with all of Occupy’s aspects and develop a reputation for being the most committed, most serious, most effective fighters. Only on that basis will we be able to effectively influence people and steer the uprising’s course.
Anarchists and the Black Bloc
One stark difference between Occupy and its great dress rehearsal, the global justice movement, is the role played by Black Bloc (BB) and the broader anarchist reaction to BB. BB (not an organised group but a tactic) came to the fore of Occupy for the first time during the November 2 Oakland general strike called in response to the police department’s crackdown that left Iraq veteran Scott Olsen in the hospital with a serious brain injury (he was hit in the face with a tear gas canister).
The first notable BB incident was the vandalism at Whole Foods and major banks during the November 2 day-time marches. The second incident occurred when BB led a failed attempt to seize the Traveler’s Aid Society (TAS) later that evening after the general strike succeeded in shutting down Oakland’s port with a 10,000-strong throng. Although related, these two incidents should be examined separately because they involve different issues and had different dynamics.
The vandalism at Whole Foods seemed like a replay of BB’s infamous Starbucks window-smashings in 1999 that came to (unfairly) symbolise the global justice movement. Things turned out differently this time when BB’s actions touched off physical fights among demonstrators, with people shouting and eventually throwing objects at BB when they refused to stop damaging the property of Whole Foods and other corporate behemoths along the march route. BB acted with impunity in the global justice movement because the mantra of “diversity of tactics” prevailed, which, in practice, meant no one had the right to tell anyone else what they could or could not do even if their actions damaged the movement as a whole. This childish attitude has given way to a much more serious approach by Occupy participants who feel a strong sense of ownership over the uprising and will not allow adventurists to wreck it.
The Whole Foods incident led to thoughtful criticisms of BB’s actions in the context of Occupy from fellow anarchists. This marks a significant turning point in the maturation of US anarchism. The socialist left needs to incorporate this reality into its Occupy strategy.
Later that evening, 150 people led by BB occupied TAS, an empty building that became vacant as a result of recent budget cuts. After dropping a banner in celebration of the easy seizure of TAS, the crowd of occupiers swelled to
700 or so. They erected barricades at the two nearest intersections and set them on fire when hundreds of Oakland riot police appeared (the cops kept a low profile throughout the day). The fires and small barricades blocking the street did nothing to stop police from marching on TAS and arresting those who stayed to defend it (many BB fled to avoid arrest).
The reaction within the anarchist camp to the TAS debacle was even more visceral than to the Whole Foods incident. A local street medic blasted the BB members for fleeing the scene they helped create and a post on San Francisco Indymedia’s website, presumably from those who led the seizure, defending the action drew intensely critical comments slamming their political and tactical failures during the short-lived occupation. Kim Lehmkuhl even went so far as to describe the fire starters as faux-anarchists, provocateurs, and used other profanity-laced pejoratives unfit for a political publication to describe their actions.
By contrast, the socialist left’s criticism of the TAS occupation focused on process rather than substance. Todd Chretien wrote in Socialist Worker that the action’s organisers failed to participate in much less win the approval of Oakland’s GA, that they underestimated the police, and “sought to replace the power of mass unity with the supposed heroism of an elite”.
These mistakes are irrelevant to why the TAS occupation failed. This line of argument is one of many indications that the socialist left may not fully understand how Occupy works.
The overwhelming majority of actions, especially direct actions, that Occupy engages in are not approved by GAs. Autonomous groups (sometimes working groups officially recognised by local GAs, sometimes not) call actions, and occupiers choose to get on board or not. If every group with an idea for an action had to get GA approval, said action would simply never happen because of the bureaucratic nature of the modified consensus process when used by large groups. Expecting anarchists, especially BB, to come to a GA for approval before taking action is not realistic, nor is it a viable strategy for dealing with the very real problem of adventurist trends within Occupy. Furthermore, the TAS occupation was not an attempt to hijack or disrupt an explicitly non-violent march by an ultra-left minority as the Whole Foods incident was.
OWS itself began with the “heroism of an elite”, the 100-200 people who risked arrest by sleeping in Liberty Park starting on September 17 to make their point. Without their heroic action, the “mass unity” of the Occupy uprising would never have been born.
The TAS occupation failed because:
1) The occupiers didn’t sneak into the building and begin quietly building fortifications inside to hold it. Instead they celebrated the seizure by blaring dance music, unfurling a large banner on the side of the building and dropping hundreds of leaflets from above. This attracted the attention of the local media and alerted the Oakland police to the situation, which gave them time to muster their forces for an attack at the time of their choosing.
2) After celebrating their victory publicly, TAS occupiers set up ineffective, tiny barricades (not more than a two or three feet tall) strewn across the two nearest intersections. Neither of these barricades were staffed with enough occupiers to hold those positions.
3) The mini-barricades were set on fire but not physically defended from the slow, methodical police advance.
Hundreds of people outside BB got involved in an exciting action that was ill conceived, poorly executed and an avoidable failure due more to the organisers’ inexperience (no doubt this was their first time trying to seize a building with hundreds of people) than any horribly elitist ultra-left politics. Setting up barricades was a necessity, but their placement on the outside of the building half a block away with a few dozen defenders (who set them ablaze) did nothing in terms of accomplishing the goal of holding TAS. If 150-700 people unobtrusively barricaded themselves inside of the building and held it until the next day, TAS could have been a big victory and opened a new chapter in the uprising which, thus far, has depended on seizing and holding outdoor locations for mass assemblies.
Our tasks with respect to the anarchists are twofold:
1) to work with them in neutralising adventurists and ultra-lefts when their activities threaten Occupy as a whole, and
2) to out-compete them in daring, audacity, creativity, improvisation, and revolutionary elan in the most friendly, collaborative, and comradely manner possible.
Only when we do both will we truly be contending for leadership of the Occupy uprising and fulfilling our duties as socialists.
Reds and blue
One of the socialist left’s most consistent criticisms of Occupy has concerned the issue of the police. PSL’s Liberation News ran an article entitled, “Are the police forces part of the 99% or tools of the 1%?” The Internationalist Group attributed the predominance of whites at OWS to its “line” on the police: “A main reason why there are relatively few black and Latino participants in Occupy Wall Street is this positive attitude toward the police, who day-in and day-out persecute the oppressed.” Socialist Worker correspondent Danny Lucia concluded an article entitled “Officer not-at-all-friendly” this way:
I’ll ask the same question now to all those chanting and blogging about the police being part of the 99 percent. When you chant and blog support for the cops, when you publicly speculate that maybe deep down the cops really like you, how does that make you appear to your darker-skinned comrades in the movement who have no doubts about how the police feel about them?
The New York City ISO even held a public meeting on the topic: “Our Enemies in Blue: Why the Police Are Not Part of the 99%.”
Socialists are duty-bound to object to politics, strategy, tactics and slogans we believe harm or impede movements of the oppressed and exploited. On this point there can be no debate.
However, the socialist left’s objections on this issue are not rooted in the needs of the uprising but in our desire to “teach” Occupy Marxist orthodoxy. According to the socialist left, OWS was and is too friendly to the police, when, in reality, OWS had the opposite problem: hostility to the NYPD was so strong that incidents of groping, sexual assaults and rapes that began almost from day one of the occupation went unreported for weeks. This practice changed as the incidents escalated and occupiers realised it could not be handled “internally”,
(When such reports were filed, the NYPD blamed the victims, creating an opportunity for OWS to link up with SlutWalk.)
None of the socialist publications acknowledged or seemed to be aware of this development within Occupy, nor did they offer any practical guidance on what to do about the sexual assaults that plagued occupations across the country.
The socialist left objects to the inclusion of the rank and file of the police force in what Occupy calls “the 99%” by which the uprising means everyone outside the wealthiest 1% who destroyed the economy, paid themselves and rigged the political system. These objections have been framed in a problematic way; the issues have been mixed up and, as a result, Occupy’s “friendliness” towards the police in the face of repression appears to be stupidity, insanity, or both. For example, Lucia wrote in the article quoted previously:
Maybe the horrifying [police] attack on Iraq vet Scott Olsen and the rest of Occupy Oakland will finally settle the debate inside the movement about whether or not the police are on our side. Up until now, some protesters have been determined to maintain sympathy for the cops despite the near-constant harassment of many encampments.
No act of police violence will “finally settle the debate” about whether the police are part of the 99% because there is no debate, at least within Occupy. The police rank and file are part of the 99%. They are the part of the 99% that keep the rest of the 99% in line at the behest of the 1%. The police rank and file are professional class traitors. Shouting “you are the 99%!” at them drives that point home far better than calling them “pigs” or “our enemies in blue”. PSL’s juxtaposition, “are the police forces part of the 99% or tools of the 1%?” is false because they are both. It is not a case of either-or.
To argue that the police are “not part of the 99%” means to argue that they are somehow part of the 1%, a radically and demonstrably false notion. This explains why the socialist left’s argument on this issue has gained zero ground within Occupy despite all the beatings, arrests, abuse and brutality.
Where the police rank and file fit into the 99%-1% dichotomy is separate from questions like whether Occupy should march in defence of police pensions or if shouting “you are the 99%!” or “join us” at the police is something Occupy should do. These are the live issues facing Occupy that the socialist left should be discussing and providing a political lead on instead of criticising who occupiers maintain “sympathy” for.
Occupy is absolutely correct in its openness to including rank-and-file cops in a struggle against the 1%. This correctness has been proven in practice many times over. Police in Albany resisted pressure from Democratic Party Governor Anthony Cuomo to clear and arrest occupiers. Retired Philadelphia police captain Ray Lewis joined OWS and was arrested in full uniform during the November 17 day of action; he carried a sign that read, “NYPD: Don’t Be Wall Street Mercenaries”.
It is precisely because the uprising says, “you too, officer, are part of the 99%” that Christopher Rorey, a black officer with the DeKalb County Police Department, emailed Occupy Atlanta for help fighting the unjust foreclosure of his family’s home. Occupy Atlanta sent a dozen occupiers, delaying the foreclosure temporarily. Now the bank (government-owned Fannie Mae) is taking legal action to force Rorey to turn over all email correspondence between his family and Occupy Atlanta, as if evicting them was not enough.
If the socialist left’s “line” on the police prevailed in Occupy and the uprising treated rank-and-file cops as “the enemy”, none of these things would have happened. If officer Rorey is not part of the 99%, then Occupy Atlanta is guilty of betraying our cause and siding with “our enemies in blue”.
No single socialist publication has mentioned Rorey’s case in any of its articles on Occupy and the police because doing so would force them to answer the most basic of political questions: which side are you on?
Occupy Atlanta was not afraid to pick officer Rorey’s side and we should not be afraid to either.
As socialists we should be going out of our way to organise actions that might split the police along class lines or cause them disciplinary problems. Cases like Rorey’s are a golden opportunity. It offers us the exceedingly rare possibility of fanning the flames of discontent within the police force, between the rank-and-file cops and their bosses, between the police force and the 1% they work for.
The tension between the police and their political bosses became evident after the Oakland police union issued a scathing rebuke to Oakland’s Democratic Party Mayor Jean Quan, who ordered them to clear Occupy Oakland and then tried to distance herself from the crackdown after they nearly killed Iraq veteran Scott Olsen and provoked a general strike. Imagine the difficulty that would have emerged within the Atlanta police department if they had been ordered to clear the house of a fellow officer, his family, and “pro cop” occupiers.
It is for these strategic reasons that Occupy the Hood founder Malik Rhaasan spoke positively about the prospect of marching on NYPD headquarters in defence of their pensions. Such an action would put the NYPD in the awkward position of possibly pepper spraying and arresting a “pro cop” march. Rhaasan’s position should also serve as a warning to disproportionately white socialist groups not to use the suffering of oppressed peoples at the hands of the police to make bogus arguments about Occupy and the police.
The task of socialists is not to “teach” Occupy that the police are “our enemies in blue”. Our task is to overcome the police as a repressive force, to neutralise them, as US Marine and Iraq veteran Shamar Thomas did when he stopped 30 cops from arresting peaceful Occupy protesters at a massive Times Square OWS demonstration. Thomas shamed them, implied they were cowards, and told them there was “no honour” in brutalising the very people they are supposed to protect. He utilised the contradiction between the stated purpose of the police and their actual purpose to impede police repression on behalf of our real enemies, the ruling class.
The danger of the Democratic Party
After the socialist left recognised the importance of Occupy and got on board, it began warning of the danger of being co-opted by the Democratic Party. A typical example was Dan La Botz’s article “Occupy the Democratic Party? No Way!” which used current and historical events to make a very strong case against the Democrats but did not offer any practical guidance on how to avoid being taken over (aside from just saying “no” to the drug known as the Democratic Party).
This type of negative “don’t do the following” or “it would be a mistake if” advice to Occupy is common for socialist publications. Danny Lucia’s “Co-opt-upy Wall Street?” in Socialist Worker had a detailed account of how the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) broke promises made in joint meetings with OWS organisers when it took over the November 17 march to ensure there would be no traffic disruption on the Brooklyn Bridge or grassroots people’s mic speakouts at the closing rally. (Given the SEIU’s union-busting in the health-care industry on the West Coast, this betrayal should come as no surprise.) Lucia argues SEIU’s actions were part and parcel of its strategy to maximise the vote for the Democrats and minimise Occupy’s militancy.
However, the practical conclusion Lucia draws about how OWS should deal with this is to “not to turn away from organized labor, whose participation in OWS in New York City has been one of the movement’s biggest strengths”. He continued:
OWS has breathed new life into a labor movement that has been in retreat for decades. At the rank-and-file level, the Occupy movement was a lightning rod for many people who have been looking for a way to take action. … Continuing that engagement with labor will be important for the future of the Occupy movement. And within unions, it will serve as a counter-weight against officials who want labor to go back to mobilizing only for the polls—rather than for the protests that have galvanized people around the country in a long overdue struggle against the One Percent.
These arguments are correct so far as they go, but they do not go far enough. These are not concrete, practical conclusions. Of course Occupy should not abandon its work with unions (no one in OWS is in favour of doing so), but refusing to shun unions in general does nothing specific to prevent SEIU from hijacking future marches. Should OWS organise any future actions in conjunction with SEIU since it has proven it cannot be trusted, especially as the 2012 elections approach? Should SEIU representatives be allowed to attend OWS logistics meetings? If the SEIU tries to hijack another action, what should OWS do? March somewhere else? Hold an ad-hoc GA to discuss a potential course of action?
The article says not a word on these burning questions.
The task of the socialist left is not simply to warn and advise Occupy about the danger of being co-opted by the Democratic Party (a danger that is keenly felt by a large number of participants, including liberals) but to propose, organise and lead Occupy actions against individual Democratic Party politicians and the party as a whole, thereby creating facts on the ground that will make co-optation difficult or impossible.
For example, after Congressman Charles Rangel visited OWS to “show support”, OWS marched on his office because he voted in favour of a free-trade agreement with South Korea. In New Hampshire (a blue state), Obama was “mic checked” for his silence on the police brutality directed at Occupy and his refusal to do anything about the banksters’ ongoing destruction of the US economy. Jesse La Greca, who famously destroyed a Fox News reporter in an unaired interview that went viral, called for occupying the offices of “worthless Blue Dog” Democrats like Senators Ben Nelson and Max Baucus. OWS has also gone after an Obama fundraiser and the 2012 Democratic National Convention will also be a likely Occupy target (the host city has already tried to ban Occupy actions).
These actions are a reflection of the fact that Occupy is a rebellion against policies the Democratic and Republican parties have implemented for four decades, that most of the mayors who ordered crackdowns on encampments are Democrats, and that the uprising exploded under a Democratic Party president that millions of Occupy participants voted for in the hope that he would govern differently than his predecessors had. For these reasons the uprising does not see sharp distinctions between the two parties, unlike the 2002-2003 anti-war movement.
This is not to suggest that the danger of co-optation is non-existent but to point out that Occupy’s self-led self-organised nature does not lend itself to Wisconsin-style derailment (where the socialist left did not create popular bodies like GAs that could have served as authoritative counterweights to the union leaders and provided the basis for an Oakland-style general strike). Just as Occupy created new and unexpected forms, so too will the Democratic Party’s intervention into Occupy come in a form that is new and unexpected.
We must do everything possible to hinder that eventuality. Deeds not words, agitation not propaganda are decisive now.
Given Occupy’s fluidity, the socialist left should be careful about ruling any course of action out. An attempt to “Occupy the Democratic Party” is not necessarily a road for activists out of militant struggle and into the voting both. For example, Occupy activists might decide to copy the example of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party which held an integrated primary and then tried to claim the official segregated delegation’s seat at the party’s 1964 convention. This was an effort to bring the fight for civil rights into the Democratic Party, not an attempt to trap the civil rights fight in a dead end. We may see Occupy efforts to hold “99% primaries” that ban contributions by corporations and lobbyists and select delegates to the 2012 convention that challenge the legitimacy of the party’s official delegates. Such an action would probably be a road out of the Democratic Party since it would prove to thousands of people in practice that the party is owned lock, stock and barrel by the 1%.
This is hypothetical but Occupy thus far has pulled off many creative and original actions that the socialist left did not foresee but then wholeheartedly supported once they emerged. Failure to be open minded is what caused us to lag behind Occupy’s rise in the first place.
Some conclusions
The most basic and fundamental task facing socialists is to merge with Occupy and lead it from within. Socialist groups that insist on “intervening” in the uprising will be viewed as outsiders with little to contribute in practice to solving Occupy’s actual problems because they will be focused on winning arguments and ideological points rather than actively listening to, joining hands with and fighting alongside the vanguard of the 99% in overcoming common practical and political.
One difficulty the socialist left faces in accomplishing this basic and fundamental task is the divisions in our ranks that serve in practice to weaken the overall socialist influence within Occupy, thereby strengthening that of the anarchists. They have their Black Bloc, but where is our Red Bloc? Where are the socialist slogans to shape and guide the uprising’s political development?
Out of clouds of pepper spray and phalanxes of riot cops a new generation of revolutionaries is being forged, and it would be a shame if the Peter Camejos, Max Elbaums, Angela Davises, Dave Clines and Huey Newtons of this generation end up in separate “competing” socialist groups as they did in the 1960s. Now is the time to begin seriously discussing the prospect of regroupment, of liquidating outdated boundaries we have inherited, of finding ways to work closely together for our common ends.
Above all else, now is the time to take practical steps towards creating a broad-based radical party that in today’s context could easily have thousands of active members and even more supporters. Initiatives like Socialist Viewpoint’s call for a joint revolutionary socialist organising committee in the Bay Area is a step in the right direction. We need to take more of those steps, sooner rather than later. The opportunity we have now to make the socialist movement a force to be reckoned with again in this country depends on it.
Anyone who agrees with this conclusion, whether they are in a socialist group or not, and wants to take these steps should email me so we can find ways to work together.
[Pham Binh’s articles have been published by Occupied Wall Street Journal, The Indypendent, Asia Times Online, Znet, Green Left Weekly and Counterpunch. His other writings can be found at www.planetanarchy.net.]
Carl Davidson said
I could see one taking shape among those socialist groups taking part in elections as a way of focusing their work on organization-building, both socialist and mass democratic, and working toward some critical mass. But I’m skeptical about such an effort in OWS.
Terry Townsend said
Some more discussion of this at http://links.org.au/node/2657#comment-116672 and at http://links.org.au/taxonomy/term/613
trotskyite said
If the anarchist black bloc tactics are maturing, is there anything particularly wrong with simply joining in with them? Granted there are some conflicts in the tenets of Socialists and Anarchists, but surely working in unison would go a long way in repairing an old rift.
Gerald Rubin said
There is so much complexity here. I think it is necessary to separate the politics within the Occupy uprising to the system that is adopted if the goals of defeating the Plutocrisy are met. Occupy is an uprising that is largely anarchist in its own internal structure, but that does not need mean that the final objective is a system of anarchy in America. Socialism has much to offer but anarchy in my mind represents human interaction at its highest potential where essentially all individuals in a society have reached their true potentials of creativity, fulfillment and decency. I feel that the highest potential form of society would be a mixture of socialism and anarchism, the more healthy the overall psychological function, the safer it would be to move toward a pure anarchy ideal. I am talking about an ideal situation in which compassion prevails and predatory interactions are minimal. We are a long way from such an ideal state, however I believe that the whole area of the potential evolution of human psychology sorely needs attention. From a historical perspective, for every well intentioned socialist or anarchist movement that has some degree of success, the new society will eventually degrade, usually sooner than later, into a predatory narcissistic system. Often these problems are already present right from the beginning. This cycle seems to be pretty much the story of human existence. There needs to be something different so that the ideals of a newly won revolution can be successfully implement and prevented from degrading over time.
feudeprairie said
“A mixture of socialism and anarchy”: isn’t it called “communist society”? We all agree on the final goal I think, but we’re divided on the question of organization.
Taking part in elections is a terrible lost of time and credibility.
Carl Davidson said
@Trotsky It’s rather difficult to simply join the ‘Black Bloc,’ since they claim it doesn’t exist except as a tactic. Perhaps that’s hype. In any case, running a new society takes a little more than fighting cops, breaking windows and setting trashcans afire.
@Gerald and @Feudeprairie
The communists are always in the minority, even under socialism and communism, That’s why we need parties, governments, democracies, mass organizations, civil society and united fronts–because history is made by the masses, many of whom won’t be communists. State and markets can and will ‘wither away’, but that’s a ways down the pike. The conditions for it need to be constructed first. The masses do make history, but not just as they choose.
Carl Davidson said
@Feudeprairie
Elections are indeed time consuming and credibilty straining. But so are winning and losing strikes, boycotts, mass mobilizations, civil disobedience campaigns of various sorts, study groups, conferences, and so on, up to and including civil wars. But we do them all at various times and in various mixtures anyway. Revolutionary work is often tedious. Just wanting to do the fun and exciting part is usually called dilettantism.
investigacionesmilitantes said
a communism of movement that walks towards a communist horizon – that is, a world beyond class and the tyranny of necessity – is one that necessarily must engage in some way with organized forces struggling against capital, including socialists and anarchists. the latter share our ultimate goals and commitment to radical rupture with existing power relations, while “socialism” (the seizure and use of state power by a revolutionary, class-based, worker-led bloc for the dispossession of the ruling classes) is still a crucial (by no means exclusive or homogenous) strategic lever in the arsenal of revolution. does engagement necessarily involve forming coalitions with any particular set of forces, and explicitly *against* others, within any particular “broad” movement? in my view, it makes more sense to speak of “revolutionary blocs” with all those committed to pushing the movement to its ultimate consequences – as long as these blocs emerge from common revolutionary practice, not bureaucratic deals among leaderships – than blocs painted any particular color.
RW Harvey said
Quite a solid and thought-provoking assessment; so much to learn from and ponder in this essay, especially the complex relations with the police in different cities, the importance of OWS (at this point) not choosing one bourgeois party over the other, and the way in which the essay parses out OWS’ relationship with organized labor. Potent, indeed.
But why a “Red bloc”? Where is out patience? The way I read one of the author’s conclusions is that we need to realize the possibility that “merging with” actually means meeting the e-merging, organic developments with creativity and revolutionary leadership and teaching.
Haven’t we seen it in the past where organized revolutionaries, with their apriori agendas, maps, plans, slogans, etc., end up alienating the masses of people already inspired and in motion? Especially when blocs start competing over the correct line! Haven’t we seen these blocs become blocks, so that when the leaders finally look up from their preconceived notions of how it should all go, it has all gone?
This nascent movement does not need blocs of leaders at this point — this is highly premature and it will be tantamount to the “intervening” the author warns about. The time is still ripe and appropriate for continued swimming amongst the OWS’ers, learning from them (novel, huh?), finding teachable moments, growing as leaders from the actual soil of struggle and not self-proclaimed because we can quote more (pick your fav) verses than the next person.
If there is a real gem in this essay, it is those points noted by the author of where the “socialized left” was way off in their dogmato ways of relating to the struggle.
mlw said
“The conditions for it need to be constructed first. The masses do make history, but not just as they choose.”
cognitive dissonance anyone
Carl Davidson said
Not at all, MLW. Straight from the Old Mole himself. Think of it this way. If you want to drive a car through the woods, it helps to hack out a road first. You can drive it along as you go, but you’ll still have to pause a bit for some construction along the way.
Pete M said
This was an excellent analysis of the Occupy Movement but there was a strong hint of paternalism in the proposition that Socialists can fix the so called weaknesses in it’s structure.
It is also a little chilling when the author advocates infiltrating the movement to take control by being the most radical of the radical. Joining and learning is one thing but joining to co-opt is not in the best interests of anyone including Socialists.
There is a good reason for the Occupy Movements rejection of the Socialist brand while advocating many Socialist ideas. The Socialist leaders of Europe have not set a good example for anyone who advocates Socialism.
The Occupy Movement is the only hope for global change and Socialists have an important role to play but that role may not be as the leaders but members of the movement.
Red Fly said
The “socialist” leaders of Europe are not socialists at all (not even in the Bernsteinian sense). They’re neoliberal capitalists. Most of them dropped any pretense of fighting for the abolition of capitalism decades ago.
And yes, I think we should strive for leadership, but that’s something that has to be earned, not declared. This article does a good job of bringing to the fore some of the difficulties we face in earning it. But I think there’s too much emphasis on the struggle between socialists and anarchists at this point. I find myself much more sympathetic to revolutionary anarchists than, for example, socialists who promote the idea of throwing ourselves into working for the Democratic Party oppressors and their contemptible leader, Barack Obama.
Pete M said
I agree that the so called Socialists leaders of Europe are minions of capitalism but they and their parties are the face of Socialism that the Global Occupy Movement has rejected.
Striving for leadership is a dead end since this movement has rejected the cult of the leader with good reason and trying to reimpose this on the movement will fail.
Earning a place in the movement is open to anyone but leading is a regressive goal that could doom it to the failures of current Socialist and other Leftist groups. The consensus decision making adopted by OWS is probably the most important and revolutionary idea so far. It may be difficult and cumbersome but it offers the best way to involve the majority in decision making without the resentment of the losers.
Ghan Buri Ghan said
I guess I’m in the minority who think this article is genuinely terrible.
I mean, seriously, how can you write sentences like “neutralising adventurists and ultra-lefts when their activities threaten Occupy as a whole” and “Occupy is absolutely correct in its openness to including rank-and-file cops in a struggle against the 1%” seriously?
Apparently the task of “neutralising adventurists and ultra-lefts” is more pressing issue than a “Byzantine” and “protracted, bureaucratic decision-making process” that has lead “disenfranchised full-time occupiers” (ie the working-class element) to “boycott the GA”, or embezzlement of funds by finance groups that has lead to “emergence of a ‘ghetto’ and a ‘gentrified’ area”. Let’s be not mince words here: We’re talking about the subordination of the working-class (who make up the majority of the occupations) to a petit-bourgeois leadership. We’re talking about facilitators who no one elects or recalls, and who tend to be drawn from the ranks of Occupy’s middle-class supporters rather than the working-class core of the movement. We’re talking about suburban white kids embezzling money intended for food and blankets for homeless folks who have been living at these parks since before the “Occupy” fad took off.
The article implies that Reds need to take a more proactive goal in Security Working Groups. Is this so we can more easily “neutralise adventurists and ultra-lefts”, presumably with the help of the “rank-and-file cops” who have been “included in a struggle against the 1%”? (Am I the only one who is reminded a little bit of the KKE here?) No mention is the very observable phenomenon of Security Work Groups for occupations across the country (and I’m painting an admittedly broad brush) being dominated by cliques of athletic and macho declassed white males (the actual US lumpenproletariat) who in most cases are unabashed police collaborators. I’m not some anarcho-autonomist who thinks that Occupy is “prefiguring a future non-capitalist society” but roving gangs of white males calling the cops on working-class people of color as a solution to every conflict is not “prefiguring” anything other than the existing white supremacist power-structure of US capitalism.
This article is also riddled with blatant factual errors that I can identify even as someone who is mostly peripherally involved in the Occupy movement;
1) That the Whole Foods vandalism in Oakland was an unprovoked “adventurist” attack. (In reality the conflict began because Whole Foods was engaging in union-busting tactics)
2) That sexual abuses and other genuine crimes committed within Occupy encampments have been caused by the leadership’s ambivalence towards police. (In reality they have been caused by lack of concrete accountability for patriarchal violence created by a chaotic, byzantine, and unaccountable leadership structure and a political atmosphere lacking a proactively feminist orientation)
3) That Albany police “resisted pressure” to evict Occupy out of some sort of sympathy for or allegiance to the 99%. (In reality the higher-ups of the Albany Police Department declined to evict the encampment as a tactical maneuver to diffuse the situation and avoid escalating the conflict and galvanizing the public).
4) That the Oakland police union “issued a scathing rebuke” of Mayor Quan out of some sort of sympathy for or allegiance to Occupy Oakland. (The reality is that the “scathing rebuke” in question explicitly attacked Occupy Oakland as criminal and anti-cop, and attacked Quan for being soft on the occupation, and that the political rivalry between Quan and the OPD has been going on since her election in 2010, mostly due to her stated support for cutting policies salaries and persions to fund social programs and public works)
Even the tactics suggested at the end of the article make no sense. Entryism into the GA! Woopee! Yet the article itself admits that “protracted, bureaucratic decision-making process[es]” and embezzlement of funds by leadership has lead the working-class “ghetto” elements to boycott the GA. Yet revolutionary socialists are still supposed to “merge” with the GA and “lead it from within”, even while the GAs and their subsidiary bureaucratic work-groups are leading the Occupy movement from behind.
Similarly, the notion that Occupy invented the notion of trying to recruit rank-and-file police is equally absurd. Tell that to the CPI (Maoist) who it’s safe to say have advanced beyond the “throwing plastic bottles and yelling ‘pigs’ at cops” stage of organized resistance to the capitalist state, and yet still manage through propaganda efforts to win over whole squads of defected Indian police. And notice I say “defected”, because that’s what it means for rank-and-file police to join the revolution. They defect. The local police officers who joined the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 were all immediately fired, and subsequently attacked by Mounties alongside all the other strikers. Could it happen today in the US? Possibly, but budget cuts to police departments and protest movements that are hostile towards uniformed cops create the necessary objective material conditions for mutiny and desertion of the police rank-and-file to happen.
PatrickSMcNally said
“The most basic and fundamental task facing socialists is to merge with Occupy and lead it from within.”
I don’t really see the point of this. In the days of the early trade union movement it used to be axiomatic among socialists that revolutionaries must win the leadership of the unions so that when class battles erupted they would be ready to guide the struggle. This was driven by the belief that trade unions were likely to be the main frontline in the class war. Expropriation of the bourgeoisie would depend upon workers organizing within the factories to take control of the means of production and thereby carry out the central task of the revolution. For this, trade unions were a logical preliminary step of laying the groundwork for that expected seizure of the factories by workers. In that sense it made logical sense for socialists to not only seek a presence in trade unions, but to even attempt to contest for the leadership of such.
Since Reagan took office we’ve more or less seen the major unions reduced to an extended branch of corporate management. That itself was only made possible by the prolonged quarter-century of prosperity which followed WWII in which time it seemed ridiculous to go into a union and start mouthing about proletarian revolution. The functions of unions were sharply altered, if not completely turned upside-down, by the second of the last century.
So in the present climate it seems hard to identify any precise social locale which can be forecast as the center of the revolution. That doesn’t mean that it is specifically wrong to attempt Leftist work within trade unions. Just that the old sense that one was working inside of the womb of the future revolution is now longer there.
But are these Occupy protests about to play that role? I don’t see how. These protests have been good for what they are, but it doesn’t help to dress them up as something more than that. Given the basically limited character of what Occupy is, it seems like it would be a mistake for socialists to start treating it as if a struggle for leadership was very pertinent. Sure, socialists should try to add their own contribution to it for what it is worth. But the tone here seems to imply that these are the reincarnation of soviets.
Carl Davidson said
Our task is to organize among the progressive-minded and purposive workers and their allies wherever they happen to come together.
Most come together daily in their workplaces, but it’s often tedious and painstaking to organize there, certainly so if you’re not working in the same place yourself, but it’s still necessary, union or no union. Having a union makes it a bit easier, but also presents another set of problems–problems, frankly, that I would love to have more of. Workplaces are also strategic for either tactical occupations, such as Republic Windows, or strategic seizures in insurrectionary periods
Many workers also come together weekly or monthly in their churches, many of which have social action programs like food pantries or peace groups. These are also a good place to organize, but it helps if you’re a member or helping with their projects.
Some neighborhoods have community organizations or tenant groups. If you live in the area, join these. There are also often local independent political clubs, usually with some connection to the Democrats, but who bring together the working-class people we need to be talking to. This is also why elections matter–not so much to elect any given candidate, but because they bring you together with workers who are gathered socially and acting politically. So what if they don’t agree with you at first–that’s a challenge, not an iron gate.
Then there are the schools–almost all the students at community colleges are from the working class, the these student come together around a variety of interests. In K-12, there’s also parent groups and local school councils.
Now if each of these organizing venues had a self-organized council, and designated delegates to send to a city-wide OWS GA, then talk about ‘reincarnation of ‘soviets’ would be in the ball park, because that’s what soviets largely were way back then.
My guess is that while all these are important starting points, not to be dismissed, we will still see new things spring up in many different ways. But if you’re not engaged in a base community in the first place, you’ll be late in hearing about their emergence.
Red Fly said
Ghan Buri Ghan makes some important points.
It’s naive and dangerous to think that we’re going to be able to win over significant numbers of cops to this movement. And the idea that we should focus our efforts in this direction is totally wrong.
Having said that, I do think there’s some value in using slogans like “join us” and “you are the 99%,” but only if Occupy participants are given political education about the purpose of these slogans beforehand. In other words, shout the slogans but don’t for a moment believe them.
The author points to a couple of ambiguous examples that he believes are indicative of potential large-scale police sympathy towards the movement. But even under the most optimistic interpretation of these examples there is no indication of anything here other than very isolated cases of a couple of individuals. And history shows that, even under much more advanced conditions, the police on the whole tend to support the status quo until the end.
The issue of what to do about the often liberal, petty bourgeois defacto leadership is more difficult. There’s a danger in entryism, certainly, but I don’t really see much of an alternative at this point. I suppose we could spend our time denouncing them from the outside, but at this early stage I think it’s more prudent to struggle from within and work to build the trust and sympathy of the movement as a whole.
I also think that we shouldn’t be completely dismissive of these folks, as if where they’re at now in terms of political consciousness is where they’ll always be. Is not the Occupy movement itself proof of the fact that a dramatic shift in consciousness is underway amongst left liberals? I think we have a much better chance of winning them over to a revolutionary view than we have of winning over cops. But if we just go around denouncing them all immediately I think alienate ourselves from a potentially much larger base of support, especially given the very fluid state of things right now where many people are jumping into things for the first time.
RW Harvey said
Somewhere between OWS not being the new soviets (limited instead) and OWS not being a democratic centralist organization (byzantine instead), there lies a dynamic that gets missed by these snapshots of what OWS is, isn’t, or should be.
Again, OWS is what, 4 months old? In that time a fundamental nerve (read: contradiction) has been struck, piercing sharply a cornerstone of American bourgeois ideology. Framed in the image of the 99% vs. the 1%, beliefs such as capitalism being fair, a meritocracy, rewards to playing by the rules, etc., have been dramatically shaken. This movement and the 99% perspective have crystallized a depth of discontent that had hitherto been unarticulated, except by basic frustrations, anger and despair. Now there is energy, attempting to get focused in the aftermath of police attacks, problems on the ground in the encampments, and the struggle to redefine an alternative to heirarchal leadership models.
Frankly, it is too early to pronounce such castigating judgments. It is also too early (if ever) for imagining wangling leadership of OWS — to do what exactly?
The fear of unpredictability, of things being in play and in flux, the lack of imagination and willingness to await what emerges and, simultaneously, step into those teachable moments when preparing minds and organizing forces becomes appropriate.
What saddens me most about so many of the posts is that there is hardly an iota of sentiment that there is something we can learn from the entire (ongoing) experience of OWS. Our assessments are only helpful if they remain guides to further relationship and action; once they become prescriptions (or worse, rigid templates we get to impose on the “byzantine” process to magically morph them into real “soviets”), we will do as much to stifle and choke OWS as any of the forces tyring to control, co-opt, or dissipate it.
Ghan Buri Ghan said
Just to clarify, I was not chastising the Occupy movement. There is nothing to chastise. As I’ve said before, the core of the Occupy movement are working-class revolutionaries. I am not even chastising the declassed petit-bourgeois element of the Occupy movement because they too have genuine revolutionary potential. (The issue is not the declassed petit-bourgeois element itself but the existing leadership structure that gives that element political power in the movement, something that is an obvious obstacle for the proletarian revolutionary in transforming Occupy into the next stage of revolutionary development)
What I’m chastising is the editorial line of this specific article, not out of pettiness or spite mind you, but because I think the line is wrong and if implemented would have disastrous consequences for revolutionary socialists in the US.
Firstly, it uses the term “lumpenproletariat” in a way that is irresponsible, unscientific, and insulting. Marx wrote about the “lumpenproletariat” or “rogue proletariat” in specific historical reference to a segment of the French proletariat (namely rogue mercenaries) that supported Louis Bonaparte during the 1851 coup. Marx was referring to a specific segment of “swindlers, confidence tricksters, brothel-keepers, rag-and-bone merchants”, i.e. those professionally involved in organized criminal enterprise. It is not scientific to take an observation Marx was making about the economic causes of a specific historical political phenomenon and apply it crassly and haphazardly to any historical situation like a broiler-plate template. The “lumpenproletariat” is not just anyone who is unemployed or underemployed, or is a veteran, or is homeless, or commits crimes, or is an addict, it refers to a specific historical class. If we applied this general and unscientific definition of “lumpenproletariat” consistently, we would find that the good bulk of the US proletariat is in fact lumpenproletariat in the US is a very real and objectively parasitic social-class – the organized criminal pimps and drug-pushers whose patriarchal mercenary gangs are second only to the police in patrolling and brutalizing the workers.
In the words of Mao Tsetung, on an unrelated subject, “some say Marx said it. If he did let’s not make propaganda out of it.” Just because Marx off-handedly spoke of a reactionary “lumpenproletariat” in journalistic writing does not make it gospel. The modern notion of the lumpenproletariat comes not from Marx but from Bukharin, who wrote in “The ABCs of Communism” that “those who are out of work for years, gradually take to drink, become loafers, tramps, beggars, etc. [...] Here, we no longer find the proletariat, but a new stratum, consisting of those who have forgotten how to work.” But in the same text Bukharin also writes “women and children offer less resistance than male workers to capitalist oppression. They are more submissive, more easily intimidated; they are more ready to believe the priest and to accept everything they are told by persons in authority”. Are we to take Bukharin’s gospel word on the subject just because “The ABCs of Communism” is an otherwise eloquent and insightful text? Does scientific observation confirm the fact that the reserve workforce constitutes an entirely separate “loafer” class distinct from the proletariat?
In “Wretched of the Earth”, Fanon writes “For the lumpenproletariat, that horde of starving men, uprooted from their tribe and from their clan, constitutes one of the most spontaneous and the most radically revolutionary forces of a colonized people”. Huey Newton, writing about a changing US working-class, (and thus of specific relevance to class-analysis of the Occupy movement) noted that “as the ruling circle continue to build their technocracy, more and more of the proletariat will become unemployable, become lumpen, until they have become the popular class, the revolutionary class”. In their polemics against Maoism, the ICC also denounces the Red Army as “lumpen”. The irony is that the class-element the author gives as the characteristic of the Occupy leadership (lumpen and declassed petit-bourgeoisie) are the same class-elements Trotsky describes in “Fascism: What it is and how to Fight it” as comprising the economic base of Italian fascism. If the author is sincerely convinced that the Occupy is mostly a movement of the lumpen and declassed petit-bourgeoisie, why is he also so pre-occupied with co-opting and controlling it? In truth however, Occupy is not a movement of the lumpen but of the working-class.
Ghan Buri Ghan said
*we would find that the good bulk of the US proletariat is in fact lumpenproletariat rather than very real and objectively parasitic social-class
Ghan Buri Ghan said
I also think the author’s paranoia about anarchists has shades of Bukharin. I suspect the author, like myself, shares Bukharin’s skepticism regarding anarchism as an organizational model, hence why we both criticize the leadership structure of the Occupy movement. For Bukharin, however, anarchism was not merely a flawed strategic outlook but the dangerous political expression of the “lumpen” or “loafer” class. (an amorphous class encompassing everyone from Bartolomeo Vanzetti the factory-worker to Peter Kropotkin the prince) Thus the political influence of the so-called lumpen is a dangerous thing indeed. If we operate under the assumption that anyone laid off from their job and living in a tent is too “lumpen” for a pure proletarian movement, not only will fail at engaging the proletarian element of the Occupy movement but we will be consigned to the dustbin of historical irrelevance and red-fascist baggage.
Binh said
Thank you Mike Ely for publishing my work.
It’s unfortunate that most of the responses here do not match the quality of what appears regularly on this site.
Mike E said
RW Harvey writes:
Amen.
We spend time studying politics and history so we know how to act and speak when real life opens up opportunities. We study philosophy, dialectics and change so we are flexible enough to learn from the new.
Some people that we have ideas (and a mental life) so we can grade reality and the people (as if we are cranky fourth grade teachers and the people are misbehaving students).
I find it fairly worthless to try to understand unfolding dynamic developments by putting people, ideas and events into “bags” inherited from the past. (This event goes into that bag, that person goes into the petty bourgeois bag and so on). Categories and labels have value of course — but it is a limited value. In particular when this becomes a method of analysis it crosses over into worthless — precisely because whatever is genuinely new has to be understood in its context and development. (You can’t understand new things through endless analogy and comparison to old things.)
Binh writes:
You are welcome! And we appreciate the work you put into this.
My own experience suggests that even disappointing commentary can be transformed into something valuable whenever someone responds with a substantive and insightful reply.
Let me just add that it has been hard to generate thoughtful summation and debate over occupy. Mainly we are stuck in square-one-land — debating with cranky dogma and complaints…. where people occasionally see some real (and frankly obvious) problems, but have little sense of creative process or engagement. And part of the reason is that those most deeply engaged (including those closes to Kasama) have had little time to write and synthesize.
I’m hoping that will come with this new year.
We have a few months now until spring. Let’s kick the discussion higher. Submissions?
* * * * * * * * *
My own thoughts on this include the following:
* First, I don’t assume the forms of mass democracy are somehow inherently anarchist. And I am not nearly as hostile to consensus methods-as-tactics as some. New-borne mass movements with no established and trusted leading cores have little choice but to use consensus (which prevents some immature and premature majority from imposing decisions that shatter everything).
* I often find myself in closer creative unity/alliance with forces emerging from revolutionary anarchism than with those trapped in various siloes of routinized and reformist socialism (of the “jobs not wars” varieties). This is not to dismiss the softer leftists entirely, or even dismiss their various organizations entirely. I think we need a healthy ecosystem of struggle and ideas — and inevitably there will be a spectrum of approaches that include a significant “right” within the left (i.e. a wing that occupies a middle ground between bourgeois and revolutionary politics, and seeks to mobilize the people’s struggle as a semi-permanent pressure caucus on whatever is.) I think we should find ways to conduct politics at a distance from the controversies of the existing state of politics — in ways that often seem “irresponsible” or “impossible” for those using the calculus of empire and its official politics. I don’t assume (at all!) this need necessarily marginalize us (and we need to criticize the deep pessimism of those who are far to comfortable and satisfied with a marginalized and cranky niche.)
* Part of this is that I think many old dividing lines are exhausted. In the 1800 there were sharp struggles be between utopian socialists, anarchists and communist socialists. I believe the divisions and debates we need today should understand those controversies, but not be too bound by the outcomes or verdicts of those first old conflicts. Speaking as an old school communist, I think we need to bring a fresh and strong flavor of utopian experimentation into our politics, and we need to address (deeply and seriously) the real concerns that people (both other radicals and the oppressed themselves) have about previous forms of “party-state.”
* I like to speak about having a “communist pole” operating creatively within a larger “sea” of struggle and radical ideas (including a new and invevitably diverse revolutionary movement). And I say that because I suspect there is some contrast between that and this idea of a “red bloc.” A pole is more interactive than a bloc, it is insinuating and open to discussion. It is not about setting up fiefdoms or imposing “a is not b” in a premature and thoughtless way. It seeks to represent communism as a radical direction — as a dream with hopes of becoming real — and it seeks to represent that future in the present, and that whole within each part. In other words, communism is not just a idea severed from what we do day-to-day, but should be present in every discussion…. and used to illuminate every decision. (“What road will this take us on? What pull will we be imposing on ourselves and others? What alternative radical road could we choose, and what contradictions will that unleash?”)
Mike E said
Been thinking about this all day….
There has been a tendency for radicals to imagine a kind of “unite the socialist left” that seeks broad and vague unity without really sketching much vision. Anti-capitalist unity. Or Socialist bloc.
But we need a politics that actually inspires and clarifies without excluding.
Why can’t we unite on things like this:
We want power to the people!
We want a liberated world — not carved up by barbed wire, trenches and militarized borders.
We want worldwide solidarity, equality and cooperation to replace empire.
We want the fruits of our labor to be shared and directed collectively — in the interests of the people of the world (not the corporations and oppressors)
We want to end the domination of men over women, white over black, north over south — through struggle to reach for a new era of mutual flourishing.
We want a radically egalitarian society of community and mutual solidarity — where the very idea of “rich and poor” or “owning” social production will seem as painful and unforgivable as slavery.
why can we say things like that?
Carl Davidson said
@MikeE
Those are basically the assertion of core values. We can readily unite around them, but it wouldn’t mean much more than saying we all can carry the Red Flag on May Day.
The tougher questions ranges from uniting around common projects, such as aiding the UAW’s organizing effort in the South, or expanding and improving PDA and electing its candidates. Or forming a Left Front to field our own slate of candidates. Or even joint educational work–organizing a conference, or even my Online University of the Left project. http://ouleft.org
The devil is always in the details. If you don’t have details, you can avoid the devil, but you don’t risk as much, either to gain or to lose.
RW Harvey said
Some days, Carl, you leave me absolutely flabbergasted with your ability to positively suck the life out of any kind of visionary expression of the possibility of new relations between people and between people and the planet. I am awestruck at your apparent lack of understanding how consciousness shape-shifts, how human become radicalized, how their beliefs and paradigms can suddenly take leaps to new levels of awareness.
To simply scoop up Mike’s suggested points of unity and (OMG) claim that people can readily unite around them is to make a complete mockery about what revolutionary consciousness is and how it can be achieved. And then to sweep these aside and offer up instead your devilish details of union organizing and electing candidates — hell, no wonder revolutionary consciousness is so paltry in America.
You’ve flipped things upside yet again. After a hundred years of labor organizing and 200 years of participating in elections, show me where revolutionary consciousness is in 2012? OWS is the first seed of radically critiquing this system and so many would have it back a candidate, or list demands, or pick a party to push into the White House. Appalling.
Envisioning “what if,” “what would it be like to,” and “why must it be this way?” are the first sprouts of looking at this system and beginning to penetrate, critically, the cloak of invisibility — bourgeois democratic liberal ideology. Why does OWS speak to so many? Why does it galvanize and energize? Because it envisions, in all its freshness, a different way to be in the world, a different way to relate and to lead, and a different way to apportion wealth. The human soul longs for fairness, for justice, and for the commual forms that can bring this into being, nurture it, and expand it.
Can we say f**k the PDA, the election, the union organizing? Can we say that together? Can we mean it? Can we finally be cutting edge revolutionary? Can I get a vision here? Can we expand on what Mike has iterated above? Because if we can’t, we will not be able to lead, or worse, lead only into reformist dead-ends that back the system over and over again.
Carl Davidson said
@RWH
Mike’s seven ‘We wants…’ are neither new nor objectionable to anyone left of liberalism who thinks there must be something better than capitalism. I support all of them.
And these core values, along with a variety of others, emerged in the elemental OWS upsurge, all of which is fine. But if you simply kow-tow to this spontaneity, we get nowhere. The tide will crest, and then ebb, in wave-like fashion. Where are we then? If you want to take it farther, beyond a militant minority of youth in the streets, you have to take on the tougher questions, and you have to deal with actual conditions, and the consciousness and outlook of the emerging progressive majority, which works with its unions, NAACP chapters and groups like PDA. And OWS itself is coming up against them, in its internal debate and development
I’ve studied the conflicted consciousness of Americans for 50 years–how I became radicalized and many other generations and sectors as well. I believe in flashes of insight and sudden breakthroughs, as well as steady persistence–but I’m highly dubious of ‘leaps’, especially those leaving most folks far behind.
But that’s no revelation here. We’ll just have to talk, discuss, explore and debate it through, testing our ideas in social realities and practice.
harrypollitt said
rwharvey, cd doesn’t need any defense. but without history or theory on your side you attempt to trash him. read the history of workers and communists in the us. it is rich. mistakes a million. but the idea that OWS is the first radical critique of capitalism in the US is a travesty. History and theory are our guide not emotion and spontaneity. WE need to immerse ourselves in today but we are not reinventing the wheel.
Mike E said
[moderators note: please avoid personalizing the discussion.]
Mike E said
Carl writes:
I don’t think this is true.
Or to put it another way: If the sketch I made could really be acceptable to “anyone left of liberalism” then perhaps I wrote it wrong. Not because i want to offend the previous left in some mean-spirited way, but because I don’t believe that future radical politics will emerge from terms that they could generally embrace.
But really I don’t think it is true that the kinds of things I’m arguing for will generally be embraced by most socialists as the forefront of political presentation. Many socialists do not have a radical vision of power or egalitarianism or internationalism. And this is no secret, right?
* * * * * * *
Let me give you an example: Governor Perry stood in the Republican debate and announced he would abolish three departments of the government. When he couldn’t remember one of them, the other candidates threw out the departments they wanted to abolish (EPA? Education? IRS? Federal reserve? and so on).
How many on the left openly and forcefully put forward abolishing huge chunks of this government and corporate order? How many argue forcefully for abolishing the CIA, and FBI, corporations, the Marines, and nuclear forces?
The mainstage Republican presidential candidates (who are generally not far from being fascists and theocrats in my opinion) have become very radical and militant in their tone and program — and seem to keep getting more so over time. There are lots of things they unapologetically want to overturn and abolish and destroy about the current order. (Gingrich even proposed resolving the Roe v. Wade or school prayer controversies by simply having future Presidents refuse to carry out Supreme Court decisions!)
And meanwhile most of the left (and I include even the socialist left) doesn’t have anything close to that radicalism of tone and sweep. Leftists are by comparison very passive, muted, compromising and generally lacking in a spirited or radical vision (imho). Much of the previous left has greatly lowered sights — leading to a vision of post-capitalism that is little more than a welfare state (within the current system of states) — leftists are even sucked into the babble about being pro-tax, and pro-government, and so on.
It should be shockingly unacceptable to concede the very idea of radical change to ugly rightwing trolls like Ron Paul. We should stop this.
* * * * * * * *
There are some people (I assume) who will verbally say they “agree” with the kinds of points i put out — but in reality the things we are talking about (a heartfelt egalitarianism, internationalism, a radical sustainability, a repudiation of consumer society values, abolition of corporations etc.) often don’t appear in their politics in any meaningful way.
I am suggesting this kind of language (or something like it, I threw together the points rather quickly) precisely because it is not the framework for some gray, vague, blurry, mumbling socialist block of the existing left — but something that implies a distance from both welfare state or police state visions of socialism.
(I would also add something on sustainability, critical thinking and other matters if really getting down to details).
I imagine there are people within the silos of the previous left who would be interested in a newly re-radicalized presentation of socialist and communist ideas. I certainly hope they raise their voices. But let’s not pretend that this won’t require a lot of rupture from what has become the norms on the left.
As for whether these ideas are new or not — well, they is not new to me, but they would be new to many if we found ways to put it forward… and hopefully excitingly fresh. That’s part of the point.
Lots of people (millions!) don’t currently connect communism (or leftism, really) with liberation, freedom, popular agency, critical thinking, practical politics or creative change. We could make the idea of a radically very different society fresh, attractive and ragingly practical if we present it right — and I think we should gather those who want to integrate that into their political work.
* * * * * * *
The 19th century saw a scientific socialism (in the form of Marxism) separate itself from a non-political utopianism and from a naively anti-statist conspiratorial forms of anarchism. Fine and necessary.
Leninism of a later generation broke with social democratic orthodoxy and parliamentarism — and seized power on an extremely radical basis (by creating a disciplined and even militarized proto-state within a new kind of political party then seizing the overall in extreme crisis).
Now we are here.
Our politics can’t be just a redux of those divisions and innovations. And now, I think, a modern communism could benefit from some renewed whiffs of utopianism, and from some healthy and undisguised distrust of an overbearing state, and from a determined distance from compromised politics-as-usual.
i don’t think we should assume that our opportunities and methods are all worked out. On the contrary… I think we should expect that the things we have worked out are an imperfect fit to current tasks.
I think in preparation for possible times of rupture and radical delegitimization, we should learn to speak a language of politics that appears (to the jaded and compromised) to be impossible, irresponsible and even dangerous — but which appears to the unjaded and uncompromised as exciting, serious and visionary.
I don’t want to merge back into the dulled politics of a previous left. This should not be a secret: No one likes the previous left — not in its protest-as-routine activism, or its self-righteous countercultures, or academia’s often meanspirited and divisive identity politics, or the sterile cultish sect advocacy, or the circular bathtub drain that sucks lefties into the Democratic Party and disorientation.
That previous left (in its various mutually-hostile currents and counterpoles) involved serious attempts and sincere people (and I was among them) — but really, we don’t want to proceed on any of those routes.
And, I hope and expect that there is audience for something like this.
Terry Townsend said
A related article that Kasama readers might find interesting: Road maps, dead ends and the search for fresh ground — How can we build the socialist movement in the 21st century? http://links.org.au/node/2686
Pete M said
I’m glad you have come back and revived this post Mike because this is. the interesting times, we have waited for. The Left has been relegated to the margins for so long i thought i would die before people in the US and the world truly confronted the Beast but it is happening. There was an Occupy protest in Nigeria today that was met with gas and bullets with many injuries.
I hope that Kasama and other like minded groups can play a constructive role in the Movement without letting personal or group dogmas interfere with the growth of a truly revolutionary movement.
To advance Socialist ideas we need to be able to show where Socialism is working for people in their everyday lives and that is happening in South America. I would like to see some analysis of the progress and challenges they are experiencing.
Ghan Buri Ghan said
“It’s unfortunate that most of the responses here do not match the quality of what appears regularly on this site.”
Comrade Binh, since I suspect this was mostly directed at me and my scathing and rambling criticism of your article, I must point out that my criticism was offered out of revolutionary love. Rather than wish my criticism away, I humbly suggest you respond to it.
RW Harvey said
In writing “the idea that OWS is the first radical critique of capitalism in the US is a travesty,” Harry not only conjures this statement out of thin air but revealingly demonstrates the problem with many of the self-certified left: there is nothing new here, it has all happened before and we only need to find the right quote/slogan/historical analogy to box it in, tame it, make it comprehensible, control it. This is the real travesty — that so many of us wait/pray for a movement, for struggle to erupt so we can jump in/on and make it The Movement (read: Our Movement).
Sorry Harry, there is not even a hint in your perspective and your defense of CD (which I read as a defense of tepidness, defending history and theory AGAINST emotion and spontaneity for some reason). My god, how bland we have become. First, history is always a narrative after the fact, that explains it all and most of the time rather linearly and usually from the perspective of the victors in any given struggle. The impulse to make history, on the contrary, most often begins as an emotional outburst, protest, often spontaneous and fueled by refusing to go along and live in the same old ways. From there it sparks something larger, loses its strength to repression or mistakes, or simply wrong timing, but always goes back into the collective conscious (as history or History). Get it straight Harry — OWS is an eruption that has history-making potential, so please don’t drown it with your reliance on looking backward in a way that says “I’ve seen it all before; nothing new under the sun.” Why would you even want to use history and theory in ways that can only flatline the emerging struggle of OWS (or any other eruption that tries to pull away the veils keeping so many in thrall to American imperialism?).
Carl, your answer wasn’t unanticipated; I just have to vent periodically. But what in what I wrote, or Mike wrote, do you see as the leaps that will leave people behind? And why do you fear this so desperately that you’ve chosen as your antidote the reassuring approach of patient work, of imprinting the presidential elections, of worrying about the NAACP? Is this your chosen path because really, we don’t know how to up-end the American system so the best we can do is wage a battle here (a good fiight), or add a reform there? Is this really the legacy you strive for? Really?
sophielux said
Hi all.
I’m new to Kasama and you all sound like you know each other, (and each other’s views?) so well. Forgive me, but could you help bring me up to speed by defining several of the terms frequently used on this site? Perhaps several of you might do this if you feel inclined.
Mile E uses many of the terms in his introductory comments regarding the feasibility of a Red Bloc. My background is in philosophy and it would help if I knew at least something about the definitions most frequently assumed:
1) socialism
2) anarchism
4) communism
3)revolutionary
4) revolutionary anarchism
5) anarcho-syndicalism
6) revolutionary communism
7)social democracy
8) democracy
9) capitalism
10) occupation (for good mesaure)
I think the question Mike E asks about understanding the “new-born radical forces” we see in the occupation movement as revolutionary anarchism, or socialism is interesting but he seems to conflate the terms socialism and communism and so I’m a little confused.
It might also be helpful if you could list 2-3 of your most favorite works and thinkers in each category you define. I would like to know how close regular Kasama bloggers are to each other-philosohically. For instance, how should Plato, Rousseau, Proudhon, Luxemburg, Marx, Chomsky even Zizek be placed on the emerging political landscape?
For me, starting with at least a rough sketch of what these terms/thinkers mean at least to the main bloggers on this site may help me join the dialectic.
Who knows, but a more regular process of defining one’s terms may also help build consensous more generally if not shed light on Mike E’s introductory questions.
Carl Davidson said
@rwh
Why am I dubious about ‘leaps’? I’ve seen them before, at least twice in groups I cared about. The one everyone knows about is the ‘leap’ encouraged by the Weather Underground–which left the wreckage of organizations, and the bodies of a few comrades behind who died unnecessarily at their own hand from their own delusions.
@mike
You have a lot in your own mind behind your seven points that is unstated. That’s why I characterized them as core values almost all leftism could support, but the problem begins when you start to elaborate. Most self-identified Marxist, for instant, hold to internationalism. They will oppose unjust wars and militarism more generally. they will call for slashing the Pentagon budgets, and in making a new order, even its abolition if favor of popular and democratic armed forces. But most would also agree that even socialist countries need and armed force and an intelligence service, though operating on radically different principles. Or take ‘power to the people!’ All would rally to it as a slogan, but in their minds it could mean anything from electing Harold Washington in Chicago, to electing the Lowndes County Freedom Organization’s Black Panther sheriff, to the ‘d of the p’.
As I explained, the devil is in the details.
Some time back, I put out a piece, ’11 Talking Points on 21st Century Socialism’ wherein I tried to raise what i saw as a Red Flag aimed at both liberalism and dogmatism on the matter. If you want to revisit it, go to http://www.ccds-discussion.org/?p=91
But there’s one notion i hold to that I don’t know whether it’s shared here. I think we have two tasks–uniting the militant minority and uniting an emerging progressive majority. The platform or ‘points of unity’ will overlap some, but they are rather different. It’s important not to mix them up. One tries to unite people around a vision and line of march to socialism and beyond. The other tries to unite many more people in a popular front vs finance capital as an immediate action orientation. It has a vision too, an America of popular democracy vs an America of Empire. It can serve as a bridge to socialism if the more revolutionary elements of the working class can become hegemonic, but then again it may not, at least in any near term. That’s a matter to be decided in struggle, not by a priori assertions.
Mike E said
Heartfelt welcome Sophielux.
Some of that is true, some of that is illusion. Most of our connections are new, and there is much room for you to jump in.
In general, it would be helpful to focus directly on the definition of terms (or more precisely on the problem posed by terms.) Part of our task is creating a common language and we are far away from that.
I would like to take the term “socialism”as one example:
One of my problem with the assumptions of “we are all socialists” is that quite diverse forces mean quite different things by this.
And part of my argument for a consciously-descriptive consciously-jargon-free discussion of goals (visions) is precisely to circumvent that problem (and I have tried in a number of places, including the seven or eight points above, to give a sense of what that kind of public presentation could start from.)
For me, socialism is a transitional road. It is a passage, marked by post-capitalist revolutionary struggles and transformation. It is a historical period in which humanity (hopefully with increasing self consciousness and experience) severs its own processes from the dictates of capital and class (and the bloody accompanying intrusion of armies and police). The break with capitalism which initiates socialism (marked by a decisive shift of power to a radically new social constellation of political forces) brings with it both disruption and immediate changes — and so in many ways, the initial revolutionary victory itself starts to bring liberation. But overall, a seizure of power (in liberated zones, or even countrywide victory) is merely the start of the revolution not its culmination. And the key problem of that transition is enabling the increased insight, vigilance and self-consciousness of sections of the people in their own emancipation (and the larger emancipation of humanity worldwide). Socialism in this view is not mainly defined by a specific well-known set of specific (juridical) ownership forms and policies (i.e. state ownership + welfare policies + political disenfranchisement of the rich + central planning ….), but is a direction of ongoing change (which may use well-known socialist forms for the transition, or invent new ones).
(So for example, Lenin announced “we will now proceed to construct a socialist order” in Nov. 1917, and the new society was called Soviet Socialist Republics — even though social planning was barely starting, and even through the vast countryside was in private hands, and even though…. In other words, they were on a socialist road, preparing to initiate our movements first experiments with real-life socialist transitions (with all the good and ill that these experiments uncovered).
For others (speaking with a broad brush) socialism is essentially an end goal, and it is seen mainly in terms of solving specific (often economic) problems of this society. Socialism is essentially a form of welfare state, somewhat paternalistic at best (and somewhat police-heavy at worst) — where people finally receive. It is a vision where economic wealth and distribution are at the center of things while the political problems of female oppression, or empire, or social movements of critical thinking, or intimate experiments with liberatory forms, or radical leaps to environmental sustainability are considered but effectively marginalized. And the term “revolutionary socialism” is often used to designate reaching such a socialism by militant means… and (whether explicitly or not) is quite different from the project of seeking to communism by socialist means.
To put it crudely: I think some views of socialism are barely modified versions of capitalism — and are not very attractive, and will not solve the problems of humanity.
Obviously there are not just these two ways of discussing socialism. And many people reading this will not see themselves fairly represented in either paragraph. For example some currents of Trotskyism still insist on the late 19th century conflation of “socialism” and “communism” — arguing that they simply mean the same thing. This is a obvious semantical difference, disguised as a terminological clarification, that advances a host of underlying political differences.
But I sketch those two (in answer to Sophielux) to make the point that the issue here is not merely sharing (with her) common definitions — the issue is that we have different definitions of common terms.
I feel this way about almost all our terms, with very few exceptions. If we list the well-known terms of communist discourse, they very consistently present themselves as urgent questions, not as settled answers.
For example the venerated “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Well, on one hand, yes. Of course. Carl thinks that virtually everyone can endorse classless international society, and so similarly virtually anyone can say they are “for” the dictatorship of the proletariat (depending on how it is defined, OF COURSE!).
But, that famous term has (now, a century after its rise) no common definition at all.
If we all nod, we are not nodding to the same idea.
TNL said (in a way I have never forgotten): We all have a sense of what “dictatorship” can mean (meaning the forceful and unapologetic removing of some groups of people from access to power over others), but really what is “of the proletariat”? Indeed.
A century after the first socialist state, what does it mean (in reality and in our vision) to speak about the oppressed exercising rule — given what we now know about the problems of mediation and of successors and of drawing in ordinary people to engage affairs of state, and of excess, and of the very difficult choices of real-world socialist transition?
So for me, each of the terms we use is mainly a question and a discussion, not a verdict and agreed concept. That can be frustrating, but it is where we are. And so I tend not to use them casually, and tend to make descripting expression of what I’m thinking that don’t rely on familiar phrases.
I could go through the list…. but will limit myself to two other terms:
revolutionary communism: When I came of age politically a third of the world claimed to be socialist, and a third of the world’s governments claimed to be “communist parties.” And it was obvious (then) and should be obvious (now), that many of these places were oppressive hellholes run by scoundrels and oppressors. So the words “socialist” and “communist” were not defining enough (since we had nominally communist jailers railroading righteous rebels into nominally socialist jails, and nominally “red armies” standing guard over people to prevent them from uttering a peep). And so we (meaning parts of my generation) adopted revolutionary communist as a differentiators. There were forces who were squatting on the beloved term “communist” — possessing it and soiling it. And so we chose to find a way to clean the red flag, re-radicalize it, reconnect with its liberatory meaning. Revolutionary communism was a movement and worldview utterly distinct from the counterrevolutionary forces that had usurped the name communism — even while revolutionary communism was (in conception and fact) a continuation of what was best from the sweep of historic communism.
That was then. Flash-forward forty years, and today the world is quite different.
The rulers of those former “socialist” blocs and markets have (since then) gone through the “enfranchisement of the nomenklatura” — and state capitalists of the old Communist Parties have gone through a makeover as private millionaire (and billionaire) capitalists (meet the generals of the Chinese PLA as world-class exploiters in production, or the former KGB chieftain Putin as the modern Tsar Putin). (The old Marxist phrase was that they “switched their rifles from one shoulder to the other” — in other words, same oppressors, same places, same bloody brutality, different forms of self-advertisement.
The very word “communist” is no longer as connected to a world network of state capitalists and mainly lingers now as the paper thin facade of the Chinese Confucian ruling party of china, and so on. Mainly it is now possessed by little known rebel groups in the third world (Nepal, India, Philippines, Turkey, etc.) and a few serious dreamers in the West.
So we now face a choice similar to the 1960s under new conditions: If we want to launch an extreme, liberatory and very radical movement, what do we call it? Socialism is today squatted upon by layers of hacks, and adopting it as our name essentially blurs the distinction between us and them. Communism has had a rough ride (as a term), but old anti-communisms have faded from lack of use, and we may have a chance for a second reappearance (giving communism a new association with rebellion and visionary utopian hopes).
Sometimes I hear people flirt with the idea of just inventing a new term for ourselves (“Communards”) and “let the dead bury the dead.” My own inclination is to brush off communism, rebrand its meaning, stick to our guns, and give it a new presence.
* * * * * * * *
Sophielux lists a whole array of other terms, and demands (slyly presented as a naive request!) that their meanings be explained (!) to her…. and yes, I agree with Sophielux that these terms are used loosely….. and more: they are used differently by people for whom different terms serve different politics.
Unraveling each of these is unraveling a controversy (not merely a definition). And need I say that “democracy” and “capitalism” are two of those most rarely defined and most important to unravel (from a communist perspective).
And who can miss that the problem with the term “anti-capitalism” is that people have very radically different views of what capitalism is and of what negating it looks like. (Just look at our debates here on today’s DPRK or historical debates on Eastern Europe!)
* * * * **
We have done some of that — and it is there in our archives in layers and layers.
but really: I think we should avoid politics-by-label and ideas-by-pedigree. That would define and confine us by “which tradition” our ideas emerged from. And what is the point of that?
Why not actually discuss our times, our ideas, our goals, and our controversies — and for new unities, and identify new dividing lines? We can reference previous works (for formulation, for differentiation), but I think we should break with the whole legacy of “tradition” and “continuity of program” — which assumes (obviously) more continuity than rupture, more affirmation than development in our theory and politics.
I think the divisions of marxist and anarchist, stalinist and trotskyist, Maoist and revisionist — all had deep value in their times, and lessons for our times. But I don’t imagine (for a second) that each of those dividing lines extends into today, and are universally applicable, or that our political project should emerge by refining, distilling and “upholding” the specific verdicts of the specific fraction that we historically trace ourselves to. Right?
I agree — the use of terms without defining them is a way of blurring what needs to be clarified. And the use of “socialism” or “anti-capitalism” in many places as supposedly unifying concepts are vivid current examples.
RW Harvey said
@Carl — you seem to confuse “leaps” with dissociation, so I understand how fearful you’ve become and your desire to make struggle comform to something predictable (your phrase “line of march” provides an accurate image of the dangerous and stultifying template your imagination has morphed into.
@ Sophie — In a very short time of reading and posting on Kasama you will see many definitions as we all struggle to reconceive a revolutionary consciousness and determine stands and actions that might emerge from this consciousness. I tend to be on focused on psychology and how the unconscious/conscious interact, can be changed, can be misled, etc. Perhaps I am a psycho-revolutionary, or a psycho-Communard (I tend to lean in the direction of bracketing the term communism for a period of time).
That said, I appreciated your post about the power of attachment. I appreciate deeply the work of Bowlby and AInsworth and the power that family/group attachment plays in our psychic equanimity. Recent books tracing the innate role of empathy (in humans and primates) are also of interest. If you haven’t read “In Search of Human Nature” by Mary E. Clark, or writings by Ellen Dissanayake, I think you would find them compelling. Finally, it has become clear to me that Freud still has much to offer all revolutionaries in understanding human behavior (but that is another can of worms).
So, welcome.
Carl Davidson said
@mike
In your list, you didn’t say anything about ‘classless society,’ only ‘radically egalitarian’, which is quite different. Only a few could rally to the former, but many could to the latter. Likewise with the ‘d of the p’–I can get a majority of my own organization to agree with the substance of it, but not the words themselves. Much more difficult elsewhere.
But many of these are what we call in philosophy, ‘essentially contested concepts,’ like ‘Good Christian.’ You have to define them in order to use and talk about about them.
@RWH
‘Line of March’ isn’t original with me. It’s from the Manifesto:
Of course, that’s no reason to have to agree with it, or find a better way to express the idea. But I think if you want to get somewhere, it helps to have a goal and a route in mind, with the provisio that we can certainly decide to change things along the way, ‘building the road as we travel.’
Mike E said
[moderator note: RWH, surely you can express your views without personalizing this? "the dangerous and stultifying template your imagination has morphed into" <<< that isn't really necessary, right?]
J.M. said
One important point being missed in Pham Binh’s provocative essay is that Marxism in fact *does* have some traction in the Occupy Movement. Yes, there are all kinds of anarchists — some ideological like David Graeber and others for whom it’s more of a sensibility or life-style choice. But autonomous Marxism — think Hardt and Negri and their trilogy “Empire,” “Multitude,” “Commons” — also has some influence. I think they would suggest that what we are seeing is a vindication of the “multitude” concept in place of the old-style Marxist concept of the proletariat as the revolutionary vanguard.
Ghan Buri Ghan said
Even Negri and Hardt are forced to admit, ”
More importantly, Negri and Hardt’s premise is simply wrong. As Joseph Choonara correctly points out:
—In other words, “the new multitude” is just the boring old proletariat, wrapped up in pretentious and obfuscatory post-modernist rhetoric to sell books.
If anything, the best thing about the Occupy movement is that it’s a sign that folks are abandoning the ideological garbage of the anti-globalization movement in favor of traditional class analysis. (Since everyone knows “1%” and “99%” are just shorthand for bourgeoisie and proletariat, it’s barely even a secret!) One telling sign of this development is that John Zerzan of all people, abandoned his typical cynical and nihilistic rhetoric to jump on board the Arab Spring/Occupy high in order to promote his now-floundering petit-bourgeois eco-fascist and anti-communist misanthropy and anti-modernism that used to be common currency among the “feral” green anarchist fringe of the anti-globalization movement. [Cite: http://anarchistnews.org/node/21308
On a final note, I maintain that the ICG's review of "Empire" is an under-appreciated classic of the lunatic fringe press: [http://gci-icg.org/english/communism14.htm#empire]
RW Harvey said
Agreed. My apologies to you CD.
My point is that the image of “line of march” is, well, linear. Further, your response to my critique where you say “it helps to have a goal and a route in mind, with the provisio that we can certainly decide to change things along the way, ‘building the road as we travel,’” this too smacks of an apriori approach to struggle — even with the tacked-on point about building the road as we go. In fact, if it isn’t building the road as we go, then we mistake the historical experiences and theoretical insights for the actual terrain rather than maps (with built-in limitations of various kinds since reality shifts, emerges, surprises. Our ability to stay with the surprises rather than succumbing to our fearful need for control and predictability, will determine so much about creating a revolutionary society and world.
Finally, why you find it necessary to quote chapter and verse from the Manifesto indicates to me the very problem of plucking quotes and using them as authorative ways to beat back criticism. this particular quote also demonstrates the way that dogmatism can take hold — frankly, no matter our theory it does not in any sense give us knowledge in advance. The idea that we have a leg up on everyone who is not a communist is one of the ways that we shut down learning, shut down listening, and tenaciously hold fast to beleifs when the struggle and the masses have moved to another level.
sophielux said
@ @ Thank you Mike and RW for making me feel welcome…
Among the reasons I asked for bloggers’ definition of terms and foundational references is that I am struggling with political concepts and allegiances. Points I feel inclined to support?
The basic anarchist argument: a) human history indicates the pervasive, persistent desire for freedom, (the latter defined in terms of uncoerced thought/action). Therefore, b) some significant burden of proof or justification lays with those seeking limits on said freedom.
Social contract theorists and western states seem assume otherwise, ie, that consent surrendering certain amounts of personal autonomy can be assumed a priori, e.g., that all rational beings want the gains of co-operation produced by giving up certain freedoms. In contrast, I like the anarchist intution (Chomsky is a favorite here) that consent needs to be gained not assumed.
On the other hand, Chomsky’s capital “R” rationalism seems a little too optimistic. For instance, he suggest democratic preferences (such as those expressed to Pollsters) are typically reliable indications of what people desire. Of course, left wing rationalist anarchists like Chomsky also assume that people desire a) what they say they desire b) what they tend to pursue and c) what is good for them.
I agree with RW that Attachment theory (if not Freud) indicates just some of the deep problems with this view. Child psycho-biological-social developement seems to involve radical influence on our dispositions and/or prefrences. Chomsky and the like don’t seem to address the problem of the foreign or unknown source of many of our prefrences. Identifying/creating the conditions under which the source of human desire e.g., childhood, can be said to be autonomous seems a VERY pressing political problem. Without understanding this issue, how can standard conceptions of democracy, anarchism and the like be embraced?
.
Zizek poses one solution. His Lacanian bent is still very obscure to me. I’m trying to read The Four Fundemental Concepts of Psyco-Analysis but can’t quite grok the Lacanian-Marxist thing-can anyone here?.
But among the ideas worth noting, at least for me, is the idea that although the nature of desire, (including political choices, votes, poll results, placard slogans, ideological and party allegiances and so on ) involve un-free or dubious genesis’ (neurosis, childhood deprivation, hormonal imbalances, propaganda), we ought to take the nature of all expressed desire at face value and honor all equally.
Zizek seems to suggest that while on the one hand, people are highly subject to subtle forms of propaganda and powerfull unconscious psychological forces far more than they think, we should take expressed preferences at face value and, given the opportunity, satisfy people whenever asked, ie, whether we respect/like the desires or not.
Zizek gives a thought provoking example from fiction of two young men he calls moral exemplars: the story unfolds with two brothers bringing food to people hiding in the woods, The stow aways express hunger and ask the boys for food. The next morning, the boys awake to find a priest has snuck into bed with them while they slept. The brothers willingly disrobe for the priest who expressed a voyeuristic preference by asking the boys to show him their naked bodies. (The story implies the brothers are not homo-sexual or otherwise interested in the titilation of the old pedophile).
I don’t pretend to know the solution to the problem of the source or worthiness of our desires, including political desires. Zizek cellebrates the willingness of the boys whom, without judgement, fulfill any and all expressed desires they can fulfill. I like the fact that, unlike Chomsky, at least Zizek seems to understand the problematic nature or irrational source of at least some human desires. But how he goes from this psyco-developemental quagmire to feeling good about saying yes to everyone for all things at all times???
I just don’t get it: How would Zizek justify saying “no” to the Nazi’s request for gold teeth and lamp shades??
Again, I agree with RW that politics should flesh out latent assumptions about human development and incorporate some sort of conscious analysis into any program or proposal.
Related to my interest in political psychology and desire (e.g under what conditions do we elect candidates, express preferences and satisfy preferences freely, fairly, autonomously) I wonder about the related question about the nature of human needs.
Marxists and other compassionate beings seem to want to distribute goods first and foremost according to need. But what theory of human needs does this involve? I don’t think Marx understood Attachment or Freud. Again, pedophiles may say they need naked bodies of children. Addicts say they need heroine. I say I need Starbucks coffee, (I’m ashamed of myself, but I can’t break the habit!).
I think Attachment theory has much to teach us here too. (Did anyone watch the Gabor Mate video I posted on Attachment?? Well worth the hour-more contemporary and accessible than Bowlby et all. Perhaps a Kasama discussion on Attachment or the role of childhood/children in political theory/practice ??)
In any case, perhaps we should develop “political consciousness” in terms of understanding a hierarchy of human needs (as opposed to dubiously implanted/developed wants??). But what then of the democratic process?? A theory of basic needs as a constitutional constraint, founding document, charter-limit on desire??
If Attachment theory (among others) is correct, the most important political conditions (human needs) are those involving child rearing. Developing a political program that centers on the child, (if not future generations) seems far more intuitive to me than obscure metaphysics and classical political ideology-in spite of my proneness to pedantry(!)
On the other hand, old dead white guys can come in handy. John Stuart Mill utilitarianism states right political action is that which increases the happiness of the greatest number. Bentham thought the preferences of animals ought to count too.
How about right political action is that which increases child-environmental wellness of the greatest number or the least well off??. Surely most children (and the environment) are more likely to develop in optimal ways if their global/community controls the conditions of economic production?? Maybe children should have two votes for each adult. It might be beneficial at least to start with ideas about optimal child rearing conditions.
But again, this involves appeal to a theory of basic human needs-including developmental needs-if not the source of desires/preferences….So, my interest lingers… (!)
In addition to Lacan and Zizek I started Engel’s The Origin of the Family….Is there any consensus here or insight into alternatives to nuclear families?? PLato advocated communal child rearing before Marx. How does this work in socialist countries??
In any case, must go for now. Thanks again RW and Mike E for making me feel welcome and for addressing my question regarding definitions and terms. (My Dad’s sick in the hospital-he wants ice-crème. He’s 80. I have no trouble giving him anything he wants. Thank Good Canada has some version of socialized medicine!)
.
harrypollitt said
history and theory: http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/78392
harrypollitt said
mike, would this article from samir amin be something you would post?http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/78392
Miles Ahead said
When RW Harvey originally raised
I was definitely nodding my head in agreement. I do think that there have been a number of attempts to illustrate lessons learned with developing or ongoing experience—e.g. Portland, Seattle, Oakland, Boston, NYC to name a few:hopefully those posts will continue to shed some light.
But those lessons, coming from the variety of people involved who speak for many more people who have either not taken a more activist role, or have backed off somewhat more recently, are IMO the lessons we need to hear about and discuss. Not just say we need to listen and learn, but what have we actually been learning, and humbly so.
In tandem, what are the lessons being learned within a broader spectrum than just those who consider themselves revolutionaries, or are involved with say Kasama as the “go to place” for discussion.
Am trying to avoid being too loquacious—am sure many people have a lot to say—but there is so much going on it is hard not to sound like a babbling idiot.
But from Mike’s thoughtful comments, two things stand out that are IMO pretty basic:
Thing is, the Occupy movement has gone out of its way to be more inclusive rather than exclusionary.
And his point about the difference between planting a “communist pole” vs. a red bloc seems very pertinent. While some people may have been thinking along those lines for quite some time, in my experience this is a departure on how to look at mass struggle and the role of rev. communists.
Something I have witnessed again and again in the Occupy Movement (which is not over by a long shot, although it feels like some people think it is after the initial fervor. I actually think that this is a crucial juncture in the movement, and there are tons of people trying to creatively deal with that.)–
First of all…while there have been a lot of pushes and pulls, what has remained consistent is—this is a very broad movement, with yes, very broad (as well as specific) demands, some more sweeping that continue to target the very system, that encompass not just what is heir apparent in someone’s own backyard.
Tremendous strides have been made to take up and act on “issues” and struggles that affect large sections of the people or outside “business as usual.”. And as a result many of those same people who might not have been involved, have stepped forward—and are seriously learning from one another. What I also see in Oakland are new forces emerging, especially among oppressed nationalities, picking up the mantle.
And it is hard to ignore that Occupy has radically changed the political discourse – that there is even a discourse is positive. There are a few in the media that hammer this point home on a daily basis (like Keith Olbermann and Amy Goodman), and of course there are others who try to continue to discredit the movement, and talk about it like it is/was a fleeting moment.
Another constant is the internationalist bent to all this. E.g., only one example, Tahrir Square inspiring people in the U.S. and vice versa. How many decades has this kind of international solidarity been not just dormant, but comatose?
What I do see happening lately is the freneticism of electoral politics’ (Democrats) jag/arena/machine, trying to usurp a movement they have had trouble getting a handle on, most especially in this election year. The “lesser of two evils” has become a theme to be reckoned with, even among a lot of the “advanced.” (I might have a different view of who constitutes the “advanced” or “intermediate” than others.)
This might sound a little conspiratorial but– Is it an accident that the Christian fundamentalist maniacs have been given so much play of late and reemerged—like the Tea party before them? Could it be, that some (on the “Left”) are trying to steer the movement more decidedly back to the elections, Obama and the Dems. and take some wind out of the sails of Occupy to go the route of “lesser of evils”? With even some of the activists I know, while they continue to be stalwart around Occupy they, with some seeming “setbacks” have also been thinking along the lines that maybe the main purpose of Occupy is to pressure “progressive” Dem. politicians.
Personally I have been working on two fronts. One of those fronts is in the normally staid burbs. MoveOn has tried to “MoveIn” on that grouping—which is a real hodgepodge politically. MO is pushing Van Jones and the “American dream,” but interestingly enuf, there is an independent core group of about 50-100 who continue to rally and demonstrate every single Wednesday (and have been for over 2 months)—and continue to receive vocal support from the larger community. And these same suburbanite Occupiers have been steadfast in their support of Occupy Oakland.
I keep harkening back to a rousing speech given by Danny Glover in October wherein he said that what is really necessary is for the people to be transformed and transform themselves, and IMO that transformation includes all of us.
But what I think people will find as a steady and also growing point of unity, amongst and across many political lines and persuasions, is, it sure as hell is hard to look at the world in the same old way. The seeds for being politically pro-active rather than simply reactive (or lethargic) have been sincerely planted and have become more the “norm,”
Also it seems to me that a large part of the struggle for a “red bloc” formation, rather than planting a “communist pole”, (as well as being able to unite with a wider spectrum), is that what a lot of people see and read from the “existing” red bloc (and usual fare) is some pretty hackneyed politics. So far, IMO, there hasn’t been a whole lot of hackney-ness coming from this movement, most especially the youth, who have breathed new life into the political scene and consciousness. To this day am still a bit awestruck, and remain overwhelmingly inspired.
sophielux said
For what it’s worth, I didn’t see many parents with kids at Occupy Vancouver-nor seniors for that matter. Tribal sorts of communalisims would never think of excluding children, caregivers or the elderly. Great to hear ethnic minorities are showing up. But how can we make poltics safe for children, familes and our elders?
Carl DAvidson said
@RWH
Lighten up a bit. First, I just used a phase from the Manifesto, no citing of chapter and verse. Second, there’s nothing that says a line of march is linear in any straight line sense–in fact, it’s full of zig-zags and spirals.
At another point raised above, the 99% the 1% can be read many ways, not just workers vs capialist. I read it as a multiclass alliance, a popular front vs finance capital, with the OWS largely a critical force of youth fanning the flames, while others from labor and other classes lend support
Mike E said
Carl writes:
this is correct. And I think we should strain to creatively express (in popular ways) more of what we envision by “classless society” (which in general is a bit hard for people to wrap their heads around).
to engage a bit in a non-popular way:
Class itself has three key elements:
* Relations OF production (i.e. ownership and wage slavery, which are not merely juridical ownership in private capitalism but also defacto ownership — via state capitalist forms and more.) In essence, this is about how the wealth and surplus of society is used (for private or public good), and so is about how society is developed and in whose interests.
* Relations IN production (the class relations throughout the production process — including supervision, decision making, rules of life, pace of work, matters of creativity and collectivity, and more).
* Relations of distribution — who gets what (beyond the matters of direction and surplus), i.e. rich and poor, security of life (in youth and old age), wage levels and wage differentials.
In addition there are whole layers of social relations and culture that are resting on the existence of class.
That is why communists (of the radical kind) focus on the “abolition of the four alls” as our framework for envisioning communism:
The Four Alls are:
1) the abolition of class distinctions generally,
2) the abolition of all the relations of production on which they rest,
3) the abolition of all the social relations that correspond to these relations of production, and
4) the revolutionising of all the ideas that result from these social relations.
Clearly the phrase “radical egalitarianism” doesn’t magically encompass all that. But it does do a several things:
a) It give a sense of “relations of distribution” — which are important to people, and (in some ways) are the easiest part of class relations to grasp (and speak to problems of poverty, want, marginalization, and disrespect).
b) It gives a sense of communism (not just of socialism). I think we should talk about egalitarianism not just social nets and security — and this is one of the controversies between welfare-state socialists and communists. We will go through period where there will necessarily remain some wage differences and class differences, but we should (from the beginning) gather those who, as communists, want to pass beyond that. And we should express an impatience to the remnants of capitalism and class society, and our determination to be (after the revolution!) a militant force for moving further in a continuous revolution.
c) It speaks to the real and justified desire for equality (in ways that some communists have declined to do).
We need ways to express the OTHER aspects of “classless society.”
For example: Our goal is not some huge state that owns everything — and we are not under the illusion that the nationalization of all productive property solves the problem of exploitation (and the alienation of labor). On the contrary: who can look at the history of the last century and think this.
So our discussion of “relations of production” have to include radical elements of popular agency, decentralism, diffused decision making, and real accountability of those who lead the process (so they have less ease at establishing themselves as a defacto a new ruling and exploiting class).
(For example: The RCP’s draft program always included a plank for immediately nationalizing all farm land — which I thought was a mechanical idea and a complete tin ear. Not only would that vision of socialism drive farmers into the hands of the worst reactionaries, it does not even speak to the real horror and injustice of family farms being eaten by capitalism’s banks and agribusiness. And it doesn’t understand how socialist relations of production might emerge within U.S. agriculture — involving farmworker takeover of large agribusiness farms as cooperatives.)
We need a way to speak about abolishing capitalist ownership without seeming to posit the alternative of a single all-powerful and remote state-ownership. And we need to speak about the need for revolutionary social planning of production without seeming to posit the idea of an economy run like some giant “board of education” with every decision passing through layers of indifferent and self -interested bureaucrats.
Part of that is bringing out new thoughts of “relations IN production” (in ways that rarely come up spontaneously in U.S. working class politics… but that DID come up in exciting ways in the Occupation “General Assembly” concepts.) We should think about the relationship of local control and in-plant worker control to the larger (countrywide and worldwide) process of decision-making. (Mao’s Ten Major Relationships is a pathbreaking consideration of this — though obviously for a different society and a different time.)
RW Harvey said
@ Miles: Thanks for the perspective of how dynamic OWS is and describing the living reality of what takes place in OWS, as a result of OWS, and amongst those trying to relate to OWS.
@ CD: Lightening up… to a point.
@ Sophie: You raised a lot about attachment theory and it would be good to engage the dance between the roots of human development and how — depending on whether those roots are nurtured, ingored, or derascinated — this can play a vital psycho-social role in communists’ visions for a radically different society. Psychology is controversial amongst many communist activists (petty bourgeois navel-gazing), as politics is controversial to psychologists (a distraction from the goal of healing the self). It has seemed to me for a long time now that the full flowering of each requires their stepping up to a common altar.
For example, in Mike’s post about the elements of class, I see the heart of the matter as relationships — their character, their quality, whether they are filled with caring and love and mutual respect. Frankly, the relationships revolving around and through production and distribution will be only as strong and dynamic as the relationship on the ground, so to speak. Just reorganizing economic relationships will not in and of themselves diminish fear of the other, nor foster acceptance amongst different peoples. The soil of society needs to be tilled and seeded simultaneously, as formal structures are being re-made, with a very different ethos — one fashioned, perhaps, from studying attachment theory and what contitutes/inhibits the creation of a caring society.
sophielux said
Thanks again RW.
I hope your friends will continue to be gracious about the (not new) idea of merging private and public realms (if not subject and object?!) -before the revolution. Political programs that learn from the past, including the women’s and post-colonial movements, ( if not physics?!) might be very fruitful.
One of the great things about meeting the needs of caregivers and children is the practice of setting boundaries. Sometimes caregivers have to say a firm and confident “no” . If children persist, doing something that risks harm-whether to self or others, caregivers may be justified in exerting a measured amount of physical force,
Anyone familiar with child rearing knows imposing “quiet times”, grabbing an arm before a little one runs into the street, picking a child up before a light socket is sabotaged, taking a toy away that belongs to another -sometimes good caregiving requires constraining children by force.
Do we use force with love and understanding? Yes. (Hating capitalists doesn’t seem to do anyone any good does it?).
What might using force with love and understanding mean? Minimally, physical constraints are imposed for the interests of children and the care giving community-no more no less, But mature caregivers (like mature revolutionaries) need to understand themselves, their own needs (basic and unmet developmental) so that force may be used prudentially and justly.
Caregivers need to build global networks of care in which needs may be met-including their own unmet developemental needs for attunement and attachment say. Building authentic solidarity, if you will. But, it is advised such networks evolve self-consciously. Assertively? Yes, But without inadvertantly imposing said unmet needs upon those more childlike than ourselves. .
I see the 1% as (at least typically), even more child like then the rest of us. Problem is they have acquired (through unjust institutions of inheritances) very big and dangerous toys.
Raised by exploited and resentful wet nurses and nannies, taken from their homes as young children, beaten and abused in often violent hierarchal residential boarding schools-all, really bad for one’s development. A sense of empathy,(for self and others) confidence and connection to the world is all but impossible for the super rich.
Constraining these big babies, by physical force if need be, seems long over do. No?
The 1% are harming themselves and us-and future generations. We need to re-appropriate the commons and establish good strong boundraies of nurture and protection-by use of force where necesary.
There is no reason, as RW says, this process cannot be done with love and compassion-love and compassion for ourselves and, (heaven forbid?!) the 1%.
Remembering good care giving, attunement, strong attachment relationships is not about masochistic mothering, e.g., allowing children to run loose reeking havoc in our global home.
It is about the attuned setting of boundaries for self-and others if need be-healthy boundaries. It is about knowing oneself and children, assertiveness, gentleness, -even physical force.
Creating empowered egalitarian environments in which meeting basic, and unmet developmental needs is the main principle of justice is not “.petty bourgeois navel-gazing”. As far as I can see, it is socialism.
sophielux said
PS: RW’s post above is really bitter sweet:
“Psychology is controversial amongst many communist activists (petty bourgeois navel-gazing), as politics is controversial to psychologists (a distraction from the goal of healing the self).”
Along these lines, if Kasama members perceive political psychology as “psyco-bable” I respect their focus in other, e.g., more traditional Marxist directions. At the same time, I have no desire to waste my energy here if there is no real interest in, to use
RW’s words again;
“…the dance between the roots of human development and how — depending on whether those roots are nurtured, ignored, or deracinated — this can play a vital psycho-social role in communists’ visions for a radically different society.”
Perhaps Kasama members who are interested in this line, (for instance, those whose revolutionary activities include looking within as well as without?), should start another group.
I believe it was Marx who did his PhD dissertation on Epicures-no?? The latter built a (relatively) egalitarian community in which care for the self and others involved looking within- as well as without. There was, in other words, no distinction between the personal and the political- for Epicures’ ancient Hellenism, As I said, care giving is not masochistic. Given my own needs for true solidarity and authentic attachment, I don’t mind forming another group/ joining more like minded revolutionaries elsewhere.
Whatever the case, I look forward to reading the high quality Kasama posts from time to time. A big thank you to all for your social compassion, activism and deeply intelligent insights.
Nat W said
On the contrary Sophie I think that Kasama folk will welcome your insights very much, in the spirit of looking at all avenues of human thought and how they might contribute to putting on us a path toward our mutual liberation. Pyschology expounded on by a comrade coming from a radical orientation is much cherished. And we should even start from the orientation that psychology critiqued from a reactionary position may teach as something as well.
Again, welcome to the discussion.
Binh said
Mike Ely:
I agree 100%. I have been reaching out to people you call “revolutionary anarchists” (I prefer “class struggle anarchists” but I think we mean the same people) in the wake of my article as well. I am working on a project that will (hopefully) facilitate collaboration among the people who decided to take the first step by reaching out to email me.
My point with the Red Bloc was to try to jolt the existing socialist left into thinking a little bit more creatively and broadly beyond the boundaries of whatever group people happen to be in, not that the “reds must unite to smash the anarchists.” As my article made clear there are a multitude of trends within anarchism (just as there are within socialism), and we must forge working relationships with some of those trends if we are going to have a chance at winning against the 1%.
Ghan Buri Ghan Comrade: “Binh, since I suspect this was mostly directed at me and my scathing and rambling criticism of your article, I must point out that my criticism was offered out of revolutionary love. Rather than wish my criticism away, I humbly suggest you respond to it.”
I don’t mind criticism but I do mind strawmen.
To sophielux: Terminology is important but varies depending on who you’re talking to and context. I personally try to just focus on content, context, and the practical side of things. I have more in common with someone shouting “you are the 99% too!!” at a cop at a protest than I do with a “Marxist” who writes 5,000-word essays on why Occupy isn’t Marxist enough.
sophielux said
Nat:Thanks for the reasurances. (I am feeling more welcome.) I hope I can be helpfull.
Binh: Regarding your comment that people adopt different meanings for the terms they use. I agree. This is a good description of how things are. You are right.
But, some people think Marxisim means Insanity or totalitarianism or a fan club for three funny brothers.
It doesn’t mean they are right (or that we agree with them!).
After all, there is a distinction bewteen what “is” and what “ought” to be the case-isn’t there??
.
The “ought” question? What conception of Marxisim, (if any) do the folks on this site think is correct or most helpfull (in the contemporary “context” if you will)??
What is an understanding we can share? An overlapping consensous we recomend and/or defend? Articulating the conditions we want to embrace and endorse is as important as describbing any given state of affairs-like how, as a matter of empirical fact, different people use different words. This is what Marx did.
He proposed both scientific/descriptive (what “is”) and a normative/prescriptive (what “ought” to be) projects, (The is/ought distinction). We might want to do the same thing with the main terms used on this site-and then go from there.
.
Carl DAvidson said
@MikeE
The ‘abolition’ of classes is problematic. It’s rarely or only partially done by decree, ie, seizures and ‘nationalization.’ More important is making social and cooperative ownership universal, step by step, and then reducing the working day toward zero with decrease of variable capital toward zero, ie, full automation and cybernation. That brings the abolition, or better, the withering away of the working class itself, as well as of the other remaining classes. Productive forces matter here.