Democrats For Change - the short version (Brian) by Winston

Tomorrow (June 2, 2009), empowered citizens of New Brunswick, under the name Democrats for Change, will seek to bypass and in fact directly challenge machine gatekepers by gaining seats within the Democratic power structure of Middlesex County, New Jersey. At first glance, it is easy for many on the "left" to ask, "How is this revolutionary? Seeking to be part of the system? Let alone through being part of a major party?" In reality, this campaign is a living, breathing example of revolutionary democracy's goals in the simplest sense - (do what is necessary, including infiltrating constituted, entrenched, "system" power to) increase democracy, build dual power (not to mention the campaign itself has been organized and conducted in the most democratic of ways, and includes a clearly people-power preliminary "platform").

I commend these citizen candidates and wish them success on this important day. I look forward to longer, more reflective analyses of the campaign on this blog from those who fortune has made more than the mere cheerleader I am.

"An angry army to give the government back to those who have always been the champions of special privilege" (Brian) by Winston

The contemporary recruitment of which could have been started at the "tea parties"??

J'Accuse! (Aug. 19, 1939) Sen. Claude Pepper (who himself later became a Cold Warrior), from The Progressive:

More From the Credit Card Front (Brian) by Winston

I know - it seems like I'm obsessed with their chicanery, tomfoolery, and shenanigans...well, at least the tomfoolery - so I'll make this a quickie (I'm doing lesson planning on the Lowell mills anyway)

This piece describes what represents a new low...figuratively and perhaps literally...

Basically, you could wake up tomorrow with your credit limit very close to or below your actual current balance... yikes!

Banks to Card Debtors: Pay up now!!...Please??? (Brian) by Winston

The credit card biz used to love people with "a taste for credit" -- folks who kept high balances and more often than not paid barely above the minimum. But alas, the party is over. As the economy circles the toilet, credit card banks are reversing course -- offering incentives to pay off balances quickly so your debt balance is off their books like so many other "toxic assets." It's an interesting reversal of a long-standing policy that your balance was a good thing (I wrote about that policy a bit more indirectly here on this blog).

So why do we care? Well, they're in a panic. The banks don't know which way is up. A few weeks ago, the message was, "Buy stuff!!" Now it's, "OK - How can we make you go away?" It is times like these that a re-orientation of our relationship to debt and banks, like a debtors' union or a "bank strike," becomes more viable. The "cultural space" for (the popularization of) resistance is growing, if you will.

PS - By the way, as you might have figured out, "You are not your credit score!" rings truer because you can't even trust the accuracy of that score to begin with.

Thanks, capitalism - enjoy retirement.

They're Here to Help (Brian) by Winston

Really. Just ask. They're here for you.

On that possible "reproducibility of hip hop" (Brian) by Winston

Yes. Michael Steele is keepin' it real. Well, trying to get real? Ugh...

More here.

"Busted" Approach? (Brian) by Winston

So I used to read a lot of Adbusters back in the day. It got kind of stale and repetetive. It still has some very informative and interesting pieces (and I learned the word "meme" from them before pundits now used it), but I mentally associate it more with an anarchist/black block kind of vibe or a subversive-art vibe (I don't have an artisitic bone in my body, so there's only so much accessibility there, ya know??). I still get email updates from their "culture jammer" communiques.

Issue #82 is out - Endgame Strategies. In the email highlighting the issue's features, I noticed this:

Revolutionary Potential: Editor-in-Chief, Kalle Lasn, probes the latent potential for a replay of 60s-style insurrection in the streets of North America. Will Generation O rise to the challenge of the times?

They just don't get it, do they? Why do we need to look backwards? (I don't want to start a thread of comments about the 60s - I think this blog and the movement have done a good job parsing out what to take from the 60s and what to leave behind or make anew) Why do we need some "insurrection"? I mean, my rage mojo is trigger-happy these days - some days I wanna take to the streets and throw Molotov cocktails all over...but does that create one more shred of democracy?? And I love a good march, but they need to be productive, not just polemical. Not to mention, street actions and many other 60s products were made for photojournalism and, to a greater degree, television. We now live in, for lack of a less-hackneyed phrase, the "digital age." No offense to Mr. Lasn, whom I respect, but I think "rising to the challenge" encompasses a lot more useful activities than getting turned back at the Pentagon or bustin' up some more Starbucks...

However, in the one piece released online thus far, David Graeber takes a less Adbusters-as-usual approach. It's a decent read. He plays with some terms more loosely than some pirates here might, and the stroke is broad -- but I'd like to hear what you guys think about his column. The intro paragraph, to whet your appetities:

We have reached an impasse. Capitalism as we know it is coming apart at the seams. But as financial institutions stagger and crumble, there is no obvious alternative. Organized resistance is scattered and incoherent. The global justice movement is a shadow of its former self. For the simple reason that it’s impossible to maintain perpetual growth on a finite planet, it’s possible that in a generation or so capitalism will no longer exist. Faced with this prospect, people’s knee-jerk reaction is often fear. They cling to capitalism because they can’t imagine a better alternative.

the banks are made of marble/with a guard at every door...(Brian) by Winston

...and their vaults are stuffed with silver/that the [teachers] sweated for...

upon Keith's suggestion, and in the spirit of collecting these stories as we build toward more analysis and the debtors' union, below is the text of an email I sent some fellow-travelling victims of profit motive:

So I needed to open up a "summer savings" account. Watchung did it for me at a bank that had no minimum balance (I guess they had a deal w/the bank). Montclair is so big, ya gotta do it yourself - they can't run accounts for all the employees who'd want one. Problem is, I need an account w/a low mandatory minimum balance - I clear the sucker out pretty much by late August and can't do penalties. So me and Jones go to Chase today - they were open on Presidents' Day and are in walking distance, so they got our buisness. Basically, all we wanted was a "tuck my money away so I don't spend it" account for when the summer comes. As we discussed not being able to handle the $300 minimum balance - honestly, I can't see that happening by late August - and having no need for another checking account (they like to "package" accounts), you could smell the poverty, and the conversation had this awkward, talk-in-circles, stunted kind of vibe....I thought we'd leave in search of a better po' folks' bank...

So the guy says in passing that if I had an existing relationship with Chase, he might have other things I could do. I have a credit card with Chase - I could go on for hours about cards and debt, but suffice it to say I did some dumb things in my desperate youth and I rarely use the thing now and make payments barely above the minimum - just what they love - the business calls it "a taste for credit" - they call people who pay balances "deadbeats"... Well, this guy takes one look at my roughly $17,000 card balance and says, in unison with his partner , "That changes everything." Yeah, you're telling me - it's been changing things for me for a long time....So basically, I can bundle accounts together that have an average total daily balance of $5000 (we held off on the $15,000 in case I get some windfall and pay off two grand of debt)...that's right - for those of us with little cash flow, we can keep basically nothing in both the checking and savings account, as long as we keep the card balance above $5000 - it's a disincentive to get out of debt. I wasn't shocked, but I have to admit there are few days that debt can ever be spun into something positive. Incidentally, the checking-savings connection is good to have because the feds have electronic transaction limits on savings accounts - a deterrant to using savings like a checking account - i.e. an incentive to keep your damn money in the banks and open up more accounts.

And one more - picture this: Chase Bank, the only bank in town open on a holiday, with a sign out front giving away $100 if you open a checking account w/$100 (that goes untouched for 30 days) today only...how long until these guys are working Sundays with carnival barkers outside???

I feel good - I did my part to help save capitalism today... B

PS - not to seem overly simplistic in one's analysis, but it seems to me the ____s that caused this mess need to be giving us the keys to the place, not some $100 bait...

PPS - from a race/gender/class perspective: as I watched the execs get ummm... "grilled" (ha!) by Congress, I thought to myself I'm lucky (i.e. I have the privilege) no one judges the conduct of all white males based on these guys' actions...could you imagine if a small group of say, black women, were responsible for this crisis??

PPPS - I have a relative in financial - he says these guys are DESPERATE and at least partial nationalization is pretty much a done deal before the end of 2009 (he also says he'd get his own branch from Chase if they used HIS card balance as the guide, but that's another story...)

"Obama and the Left" - what "progressives" are saying... (Brian) by Winston

I still subscribe to The Progressive. It has some good nuggets once in awhile (good toilet reading), and I appreciate its century-old roots...

This month, Ruth Coniff and John Nichols each have an interesting piece on how to "push" Obama "from the left." While they represent largely the advocacy model, it is worth a look, as these are the types of analyses many Obama supporters are using when determining how to engage his administration (in an environment in which these "progressives" are ostensibly "in power" and no longer working with "strategies of the opposition").

A nugget from the Coniff piece:

"We're not so much in protest mode and more in expectations and if-we-build-it-it-will-happen mode," she [Medea Benjamin] says. "Who knows how long we can stay in this mode?"

and from Nichols:

"Obama was nominated and elected in 2008 by progressives, both younger tech-savvy activists who made his candidacy an early favorite of the blogosphere and old-school liberal precinct walkers who saw in his candidacy an extension of the frustrating work of opposing all that was Bush and Cheney. The Senator won the Democratic nomination because he was the only first-tier contender who could say that he had opposed authorizing Bush to take the country to war with Iraq....

These activists formed a base within the campaign and the Democratic Party, centered on but not limited to the Obama team's quasi-open website and blog, www.MyBarackObama.com, which did not always cheerlead for the candidate. In June, when Obama broke with Feingold and other Senate progressives to support Bush's rewrite of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Senator felt enough heat from his own and independent netroots sites that he was compelled to explain himself, making what Obama described as a "firm pledge" that he would revisit the issue as President to shore up privacy protections....

activists cannot wait for Obama to define the playing field. They must assume that he knows what they know. And this requires a radically different approach than the left took to Southern centrist Democratic Presidents such as Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. The way to influence Obama and his Administration is to speak not so much to him as to America. Get out ahead of the new President, and of his spin-drive communications team.... Don't expect Obama or his aides to do the left thing. Indeed, take a lesson from rightwing pressure groups...."

"Franklin Roosevelt's example is useful here. After his election in 1932, FDR met with Sidney Hillman and other labor leaders, many of them active Socialists with whom he had worked over the past decade or more. Hillman and his allies arrived with plans they wanted the new President to implement. Roosevelt told them: 'I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it.'

It is reasonable for progressives to assume that Barack Obama agrees with them on many fundamental issues. He has said as much.

It is equally reasonable for progressives to assume that Barack Obama wants to do the right thing. But it is necessary for progressives to understand that, as with Roosevelt, they will have to make Obama do it."

So...how do these ideas compare or contrast with recent discussions (on this blog and elsewhere) using a revolutionary democratic lens to examine the question, "What now?" What can we take, and what can we leave on the table? What are the real life implications, now that Obama is in office, of finding allies among these circles with whom we can build dual power? And what are some of the possible unfortuante exigencies or possible obsatcles?

Revolutionary Democracy and Dual Power (Brian) by Keith

What is “dual power”? Dual power, most generally, is the phenomenon of the existence of two distinct powers in the social relations within the institutions of a capitalist society (the system and the people, the state and the resistance, capital and labor, etc.) – the existence of an entrenched, constituted power AND a transformative, constituent power. Revolutionary Democracy’s definitions and uses of dual power differ from previous ones.

Leninist-derived groups express dual power only vis-à-vis the state. The “second power” within this dual power relation exists only as resistance to (and for seizure of) that state power. They really only use the term “dual power,” then, to describe an event – the sufficient empowerment of the transformative, constituent power on the precipice of revolution.

Many anarchist groups also operate mostly within a state-bound formulation of “dual power,” but instead build toward a second power that exists totally outside of the state. Other anarchist groups do organize otherwise isolated examples of resistance to the state (and thus don’t completely forego engaging state power), but that dual power is still state-based, and has its ultimate goal as the unequivocal abolition of that state.

Revolutionary Democracy sees dual power differently – temporally, corporeally, and strategically.

In Revolutionary Democracy, dual power exists all the time and everywhere – at work, in your home, in the broader society, even within the movement itself. This conception of dual power is more in tune with people’s everyday experience of being forced into a labor process that creates surplus for someone else, and our many daily forms of resistance to it – from slacking at work to organizing and empowering others. And this clearly is not just an economic/labor phenomenon. Just about everyone, everywhere can measure their power against capital’s power – or against other entrenched, constituted power – and know, at a gut-level, “the system sucks.”

This recognition of dual power as an ever-present phenomenon is in no small way linked to Revolutionary Democracy’s recognition of capital (in its broadest definitions) as a social relation, not as a static “thing” – that is, once something is intended to be used as capital (or has become capital), it is inherently imbued with an exploitative social process. Transforming capital into a tool of the people – bending the machine to our will instead of raging against it – is one way that Revolutionary Democracy succeeds in making dual power (cognizant of capital as a social relation) a “living theory” (linked to practice) – a theory in action, a theory in motion.


Therefore, Revolutionary Democracy will sometimes use the term “dual power” to also mean the building or establishing of the “second power.” One might say the city machine was entrenched power, but the growth of EON (dual power as an action) created a state of more clearly discernible dual power (dual power as a phenomenon or fact). Creating consciousness-raising empowerment – direct experiences of agency and self-determination – therefore renders the phrase “dual power” an ongoing strategic process (one that both leads to radicalization as people simply “live the revolution,” and one that furthers cause of achieving specific goals – an example is the widening outreach of “Empower Our Neighborhoods” at present).

Dual Power, Strategy, and Tactics

Dual power meant as the cultivation of the “second power” then, is perhaps the very essence of Revolutionary Democratic strategy. When we strategize, we identify enemies and allies and gain a general plan of how we attack the problem. If the phenomenon/existence of dual power (two powers present in an institution/social relation) is, according to Revolutionary Democracy, omnipresent, then the ongoing fundamental answer to the question “How do we win?” is simple: “Build dual power (cultivate, strengthen the second power). Build it everywhere.” It is here that we see Revolutionary Democracy willing to utilize and infiltrate existing, constituted powers while simultaneously strengthening transformative, constituent power outside those structures. This means we do not dismiss actions such as running for elected office as revolutionaries (an example might be the People’s Campaign of 2000), or, say, building dual power even in institutions like the military or police (unlike anarchists bent on statelessness per se).The degree to which any institution, social relation, etc. is allied with the cause of the people determines how that “dual use” (of the system, and of forces outside it) will take shape. All tactics – more specific, immediate, concrete answers to that question, “How do we win?” – flow from the strategic Revolutionary Democratic theory AND practice of “dual power.”