Sean Penn "You Commie Homo Lovin' Sons of Guns" (Keith) by Keith

Sean Penn took the fight for equal rights to the Oscars last night. The highlight of the evening. "Those who voted for the ban on gay marriage should reflect on their great shame..."

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.

Hip Hop is Dead, Long Live Hip Hop (Keith) by Keith

Humor can be a excellent source of critical power. The Saturday Night Live/ T-Pain sketch "I'm on a Boat" reveals a number of developments. A certain form of hip hop has been completely exhausted so that it is now just an easily reproduced shell that can carry any content... that is why the SNL video is so funny, it takes what was once a very advanced and difficult to reproduce cultural form and uses it to deliver absurd content. The video also reveals new developments in US racial constructs-- the video intensely mocks standard mainstream hip hop tropes without being racist. 

The shell of the hip hop form exploited in the snl/t-pain sketch also reveals something about how the capitalist production process develops in general and around the arts and culture in particular. Marx explains that the capitalist production process has two major phases of development. The first he calls the "formal subsumption of labor to capital" and the second he calls "the real subsumption of labor to capital." 

Take the example of shoe making. Shoe making begins as an artisan craft. Individuals make shoes-- there is no division of labor: a shoe maker produces the whole shoe by themselves.  Under the formal subsumption the capitalist gathers all the shoe makers together and puts them under one roof. The shoe makers continue working as before, each worker makes the shoe from beginning to end, only now the capitalist takes the completed shoes and sells them. Sometimes this is called "commodification."  Commosification is not really the problem in terms of art. The real problem is the real subsumption of labor to capital.

The real subsumption of labor comes next, in this phase the capitalist takes control of the production process itself.  The capitalist watches how the shoes are made and then institutes a division of labor. The division of labor de-skills the workers, so that each one is only responsible for a limited aspect of the overall process. The division of labor is the first step in mechanization and this allows the capitalist to start to replace workers with machines.

The same thing happens with cultural production. Most cultural production begins with individual artists creating their work. Capital may then commodify the product and sell it. Take an extreme example. Bob Dylan developed his craft for years playing coffee houses and practicing. Capital only sells his music but they do not control the way it is produced. Sometime this is called "artistic control." But take someone like Tiffany or Britney Spears, they are not individually talented they are not even artists they are just a cog in the machine. They labor under the real subsumption of labor to capital and the capitalist controls the production process. Their music is not artistic production it is capitalist production. 

You can usually tell when an artist has been really subsumed because their music sucks and odd things happen like orchestras appearing on country records.  Duke Elington famously commmented that there are only two kinds of music: good and bad. The difference is often in how that music is created and produced.

The SNL sketch shows that mainstream hip hop has been subsumed by capital. The song "I'm on a boat" just takes a song template for the capitalist production process and exposes it by inserting absurd lyrics. SNL has done serious artists a favor by striking a blow against the legitimacy of that template and they have opened a door for serious hip-hop artists to enter.

The Black Arts Repertory Theater/School (Keith) by X.

The Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School (BART/S) was founded in Harlem by Amiri Baraka to take music, poetry, art and performance out of the academy and into the street. As Baraka put it in a poem “we want poems that wrestle cops into alleyways and take their guns away.” BARTS is a great example of an alternative revolutionary institution that builds dual power and provides a material foundation for revolutionary ideas and culture.

LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) leads the Black Arts parade down 125th Street toward the Black Arts Theater Repertory/School on 130th Street, New York City. (Source: Liberator 5.6 [June 1965], 27)

In 1965 Baraka, with Charles and William Patterson, Askia Toure, Clarence Reed, Johnny Moore and others to open the school. The school received funds from the a Johnson-era anti-poverty program. The funding source did nothing to change the revolutionary character of the school. The mission of BARTS was to build "a repertory theatre in Harlem, as well as a school. As a school it will set up and continue to provide instruction, both practical and theoretical, in all new aspects of the dramatic arts." The school held classes on creative writing, acting and other arts, philosophy, reading, math, and so forth.

While the BARTS itself didn’t last because of financial problems and internal political problems, it launched the Black Arts Movement which became the cultural wing of the Black Power Movement, and it remains one of the most important literary movements in US cultural history.

Alternative institutions and revolutionary culture (Keith, X., Tommy D) by X.

The role of the movement is not merely to compete with the system in the area of “politics” but to build an alternative infrastructure for the production and reproduction of all aspects of cultural and social life. This infrastructure must provide means and opportunities for musicians’ unions, artists’ collectives, writers’ circles, theater troupes, film-making coops, dance groups, fire spinning crews, etc. as well as sports clubs, yoga classes, health and nutrition coops, online support networks, community-based counseling, etc. that provide people with the means of expression needed to live a fulfilling creative life and the social and cultural foundation required to participate actively and meaningfully in the movement for the long term.

For the system to function, people must not only be capable of working under undemocratic and exploitative conditions when they arrive at work or at school, they must also be willing. The powers-that-be cannot rule by force alone; they must rely on a whole system of cultural production (universities, publishing houses, movie studios, churches, TV networks, art foundations, etc.) to make their rule appear good, just or at least inevitable. For the movement to develop we must have alternative institutions which can promote an alternative vision, alternative ideas, and a place to critique and deprogram ourselves from the system.

Too often, the traditional US Left relegates art and culture to the role of temporary interlude in the all important business of politics. Revolutionary Democracy does not draw such a line between culture and politics. Both are essential to the transformation of society. Culture is key to revolution and democracy. When practiced effectively, it encourages the unleashing of individual and collective potential that are suppressed or under-developed in the anti-democratic atmosphere of most of society’s existing institutions and organizations. The revolutionary democratic movement must organize progressive artists, cultural workers and people everywhere to build democratically-run institutions and organizations dedicated to the creative production of art and culture rooted in the experience of the movement, of people’s lives and of the transformative experience that comes with changing the world. The movement must build its own cultural events, theaters, studios, underground clubs, websites, etc. to challenge the backward culture spoon-fed to everyone by the corporate media but more importantly, to spur on, inspire and enlighten all people as they struggle with the concrete challenge of waging revolution in a new way.

A revolutionary party (X, Keith) by X.

In 1997, the city of New Brunswick passed a repressive ordinance that required all parties to be approved and registered by the police in advance (at $20 per permit) if any gifts or money was to be exchanged. This law was obviously targeting the very successful fundraising events of local grassroots groups that the city machine didn’t like (especially the New Brunswick Coalition Against Police Brutality).

Local progressives and revolutionaries decided on a creative revolutionary democratic approach to overturn the law: On one hand, sympathetic attorneys filed a lawsuit on the grounds that the law unconstitutionally violating freedom of speech and assembly. On the other, they immediately organized a "Party Without A Permit." The best local bands were recruited to play (they opposed the law because it threatened their ability to throw their own parties) for a 12 hour festival at Brower Commons - a traditional rallying space at Rutgers University. At the party, organizers symbolically collected pennies to break the law. This event put the music in the forefront and kept political speeches only in between acts and sets (which is unusual for the Left). The crowd was not bored by the speeches (also unusual!) because they took the form of TV commercials in between the main events. The city police did not fine anyone nor try to stop the huge party that drew over a thousand and shut down Main Street.

The movement lawyers were then able to argue that the police were selectively enforcing the law since they took no action at the "Party without a Permit." The city was forced to come up with the silly excuse that the ordinance did not apply on university grounds. Following the same approach, the organizers then planned a "Picnic Without A Permit" in a local park in the heart of the city, inviting families to bring their children to play games and BBQ. Pennies were collected again to break the law, while children played and parents engaged in discussions about police brutality. Once again the police found themselves unable to enforce the law.

The movement lawyers took this back to the court and the city was again forced to make the absurd argument that the law didn’t apply to the parks. As the organizers now prepared to challenge the law at a private party, the exasperated judge in the case overturned the law on constitutional grounds. And the city had to pay for the legal fees!

US Leftists often talk about organizing legal challenges on two fronts, in the courts and in the streets. However, this usually means asking people (in the street) to come to court or hold a protest in front of it. Instead, we organized a mass cultural event that made it possible to gather enough revolutionary democratic social power to challenge the illegitimate law openly. With hundreds of participants at the permit-less events, the police could not enforce the law. If we understand that most laws are designed to protect the system and that the strength of the movement lies in finding ways to organize masses of people to resist the system in creative ways, we can restrict the state’s ability to enforce these laws and even make these laws depend on our strength or weakness. Our lawyers couldn't have won the case before we had proved in the street that the law was unenforceable.

The Party Without A Permit victory also highlighted the lack of public space for free expression in New Brunswick and inspired further efforts to not only challenge oppressive laws but to create performance spaces. The struggle against the permit law provided organizers with experience that they later used to create "Art House" –a monthly cultural event that featured, poetry, hip-hop, bands, and art exhibits. This tradition lives at Tent State University with open, free nightly music events.