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.

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.

"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.

SOLIDARITY OR BUST (Dave) by Zanturaeon

I wrote this essay a couple of years ago and found it going through some of my old work that's rotting in the musty corners of the Internet. While I don't agree with every single sentence, I still agree with the vast majority of it. I think that the main point of my essay - that it's important to focus on building and maintaining unity within our growing revolutionary movement, and that part of unity means respecting diversity of tactics and strategy - is more relevant than ever to us today as organizers, and it is in this light that I post this essay here.

A look at what's been done, and what we can do differently

In the past century alone, there have been dozens of socialist revolutions, hundreds of socialist (both anarchist and communist) uprisings - many of them on-going - and tens of thousands, if not millions, of confrontations between groups and individuals struggling for a socialist society against the powers that be. We, the movement as a whole, have seen many successes and many more failures, set-backs, and even full reverses of our successes. We have fought the fascists, the police, the military, each other, in the streets. We have hid from them, from each other, from ourselves in secret compartments, under false names, in foreign nations. But the majority, the glorious majority of our work has not been seen in their court rooms, our Party's, or our collectives; but in the gains as well as the losses that we've incited in the greater humanity. The 8-hour work day, universal suffrage, racial integration, and many other concrete advances that were and are to the direct benefit of the huge mass of oppressed people struggling to survive.

And yet today, the vast burgeoning mass of humanity still lives oppressed, mired in social struggles with the state, with the bosses, with the bigots, with the hateful and willfully ignorant. Indeed, many of our own ranks have (perhaps unwittingly) found themselves among these enemies of the oppressed, even as they themselves struggle for justice. The racism, patriarchy, and heterosexism so readily identified in the greater society is also mirrored in our own movements. And so it is with the great mass of humanity in most of the world. Chicago, Caracas, Melbourne, London, Beijing, Pretoria, Rome, Moscow: all of these cities, and all the rest of them, and indeed most of the world still stumbles under the back-breaking weight of hatred, exploitation, ignorance and abuse.

All that is to say this: that, quite obviously, the struggle has not ended. For every victory, there have been ten defeats. For every freed heart and mind, there have been ten that have given up, that have been arrested, that have been murdered. Many of us in our respective movements were filled with unrelenting, reinvigorating joy when we heard the news of this revolution or that uprising - or took part in them ourselves, with our ideas held firm in the grip of our barricades, weapons, monkey wrenches. And yet, after over a century of struggle (in which it seemed at many points, as Fighting For Our Lives puts it, "we could almost taste the new world coming through the tear gas"), we have failed to create a single, lasting revolution that was not crushed or did not degenerate.

Why? With our endless debates, analyses, propaganda, marches, sit-ins, strikes, demands and armed confrontations and so on, why is it that the revolution has not occurred: that point-of-no-return, that first, invincible domino? Why, with our endless barrage of books, speeches, papers, posters, fliers does not everyone now know of socialism, of communism, of anarchism - of a better life without the state or class?

Of course, there are many reasons that have been presented. The capitalists' monopoly on mass media, the recuperation of unions into capitalism - indeed many of our legislative victories can be said to have drained the movements of their vitality. The so oft-discussed Spanish Civil War, the parallel anarchist revolution, these were crushed by Fascism, perhaps by Stalinism, but absolutely in-fighting, by lack of organization, by lack of preparation - not by a lack of understanding, but by a lack of implementation of understanding: a lacking of strategy that accounted for these real threats. For how serious can "scientific socialism" really be if its' own strategies do not account for its' own threats? And this is not to say that our movements haven't done this, that our movements haven't learned from the past - from our comrades' as well as our own mistakes - but that this has not been comprehensive and inclusive.

Take anarchist syndicalism as one example. This is interesting because there is a large emphasis on tactics and thus it implies a greater, over-all strategy. The workers will form unions (or, rather, a union) and this union will become powerful and develop its' efficiency through direct struggle with the capitalists and one day the union will call a general strike and that will be the revolution - that unstoppable, irreversible first step toward socialism, toward communism, toward anarchy. But what about the consumers? What about the petty bourgeoisie? The peasantry? Government workers? The police, even? Syndicalism speaks little or nothing on this issue (though not to its' discredit), and so for this we must turn to anarchist communism, for regional federations of locals of the union. For the exact way in which resources will be distributed, we must turn to parecon. For the exact form of the union locals, we must turn to council communism. For the defense of the revolution against the defenders of capital - hermetically sealed imperialist war machines - we must turn to Spain's militias or Trotsky's Red Army. For the struggle against the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie in the third world we must turn to Che, Makhno, Mao.

And of course many of my readers will disagree with many or all of my assertions here, and this is just as well, but I hope my point is demonstrated: that a coherent strategy, a coherent set of tactics, and a coherent analysis do not exist anywhere in any of our movements. Nor, I suspect, will one ever, as ideas compete and evolve. But the trend has always been to do this, although usually not consciously, but perhaps merely evolutionarily through defense or assault of this or that meme in this or that ideology. Strangely, although dogmatism and the emphasis on respect for different tactics (as with "anarchy without adjectives") appear to be on opposite ends of our movements, they each exist for different though compatible reasons: the former, with the purpose of unity; the latter, with the purpose of recognizing different tactics as effective to different degrees and in different ways. But these are different sides of the same coin: effectiveness. Our differences, after all, are primarily on how to struggle, rarely why: we all have the same or extremely similar goals, we only differ in how we feel we can implement them.

So, though there has been a wide variety of tactics, and much dogmatism and sectarianism, there has been lacking one thing: an over-riding spirit of cooperation. And this does not mean a passive acceptance of those you disagree with, nor cooperation with those you feel dilute or sabotage the movements, but the opposite: a virulent, passionate constructive criticism of those you disagree with, grounded in our common goals; a serious, dedicated criticism and refusal to compromise goals with those who detract from our goals as revolutionaries. This doesn't mean "agreeing to disagree", but making a continued and earnest attempt at empathy and empowerment.

So, for example, you are very heavy in union organizing, wading through lists of actions and planned meetings and jail cell numbers, and some comrades in a nearby area are struggling with something you just can't concern yourself with right now, say saving a piece of ancient forested land from a column of fellerbunchers. What good can come from saying, forget the land, the workers are hungry! What good can come from saying, forget the workers, they cannot eat without the land! Nothing but competition for activists, funds, signatures - whatever your group, your movement suffers from a lack of. But we all know that competition is the bane of society and what has brought us here in the first place. Instead, if you cannot offer a hand, offer a word! Declare solidarity, practice solidarity. This does not mean surrendering one person or group or movement to the will of another, but coordinating them together.

But what exactly do I mean by constructive criticism, and what exactly does cooperation and solidarity entail, if the former does not mean sectarianism and dogma and the latter does not mean co-optation and subjugation? Let me show you just exactly what I mean.

Constructive criticism: serious, informed analysis made with the intent to - as much as is possible - develop and empower others that share your goals but not you specific ideas about tactics.

Solidarity: the concrete attempt to defend, reinforce, and advance the movements of those with goals similar or identical to your own, while continuing on in the specific struggle you are involved in at the time.

These two things, when implemented seriously, are exactly what lead to things like the First International, and their opposites - destructive criticism and sectarianism - are what lead to the above examples' demise. I chose the First International specifically because I feel that this is perhaps the most fantastic and prevalent example in our movements: the disagreement over the usefulness of the state. What could have been a boon to the movement, an embrace of both direct and indirect tactics in a cooperative strategy, became a source of mutual disrespect and hatred. This is absurd. If there are apples near the top of a tree, and a group of people is divided into different ways about how to get the apples, do they ridicule, insult, and sabotage each other, draining energy from their own efforts as well as others and thus doubly reducing the effectiveness of the group as a whole? Or do they each try the way they feel is best, borrow ideas and techniques from each other, and help each other in their pursuits? Obviously the latter is the more rational and effective way to go about getting apples, but the question is obscured when the context is changed from obtaining apples to revolutionary socialism.

For example, I personally see an electoral approach as a very ineffective way to achieve revolutionary socialism. This does not mean that I sabotage the efforts of my comrades, but that I try both to more fully understand their position and better explain and understand my own. While this discussion is ongoing and indefinite, it does not make sense to try to stop the action of one group or another, since no group can possibly know for sure who is the most correct. It only follows then that the action of each group should be encouraged by each other group, but only on the condition that each group listen and seriously try to apply criticisms in a way that will make their approach more effective. So, obviously, a socialist party obviously cannot and will not apply an anarchist criticism that undermines their whole approach by labeling it as useless and counter-productive; but it obviously can and must apply an anarchist criticism that highlights, for example, patriarchy or sexism in the party.

Likewise, the anarchist must support the socialist politicians (if they are honest, of course) in their struggles for socialist legislation; and the socialist politicians must support the anarchists in their struggles for immediate material gain - even as the anarchists break laws, even as the socialists make them! For as movements, as a movement, with the same, shared ultimate goal, we do not do what we do because we believe in laws or their absence, but because we believe in human rights - because we believe in a society where all can be free to live as they wish and share in the bounty that is withheld from us.

So, comrades, will we continue to spite each other, to sabotage all our dreams in the petty struggle over who is more or less right about this or that tactic? Or will we unite (like we so often have, beneath the turbulent surface of history, in pool halls and chat rooms; behind barricades and prison bars) and offer mutual reinforcement of each of our movements, the coordination of our tactics, the defense of our collective integrity and the push to develop a flexible, comprehensive strategy to achieve socialism, communism, anarchy - a free and equal society?

It's solidarity or bust.

See you at the picket, the barricade, the poll, the sit-in, the march...