One of the ironies of the mobilizations to stop the war in Vietnam was that as the majority of people in the country came to oppose the war they simultaneously increased their opposition to the formal anti-war movement. There are parallels with the present moment as the majority of the country now opposes the war, at least according to major news outlet opinion polls. The movement in the 60’s became increasingly alienated from the general population and as the movement came to understand the limitations of protesting (protest mode), they drew certain conclusions that had devastating consequences in the long run. The conclusion that was widely drawn from the critique of protest mode in the late 60’s was that protesting was not enough—“resistance” was necessary. The war would be stopped through sabotage, disruptions, blowing up ROTC buildings and so forth. The movement stopped organizing people and attempted to become a social force itself—a force that would make it impossible for the U.S. to continue the war.
The U.S. war against Vietnam ended for many reasons: the people of Vietnam’s commitment to independence and their military struggle, the resistance of U.S. soldiers who became increasingly mutinous, and the anti-war movement in the US are a few of the main reasons. So it isn’t that moving from protests to resistance failed to end the war, it played a significant role in ending the war, but it also played a
significant role in ending the movement itself. The corporations and capitalists seized upon the opportunity. With the election of Reagan in the 1980 capitalists began a major offensive against working people and small business so that real wages in the United States have continued to decline since the late 1970’s for the first time in the history of the country. The gains of the New Deal, the social safety net, welfare provisions as well as the gains of the civil rights movement have been continually eroded. A massive transfer of wealth has occurred over the last thirty years from lower to upper classes. To put it bluntly we have been getting our asses kicked in for the last thirty years. It is for this reason that the slogan “from prost to resistance” was a failure. That is to say, while it may have worked to help end the war it failed as a long term strategy to build a movement.
Unfortunately, the movement, such as it is, as a whole has yet to get beyond it. We have talked on the blog before about some of the differences between the advocacy or lobby left and the protest left. The “resistance left” is another version of the protest left, however they style themselves in even more militant postures, but they don’t consider how to actually organize a revolutionary movement, only how they can momentarily disrupt order. The resistance left is working under the same logic that led some in the late 60’s to embrace terrorism as a tactic. Terrorism is actually the hysterical response of intellectuals, often students or recent graduates, to their own inability to organize working people. They get increasingly desperate and begin to despair, and either act in the name of people, act to stir up people (propaganda of the deed), or begin to perceive the “backward masses” as the enemy. We must get beyond “resistance” to revolution. But revolution is not about militant postures it is about the long and often slow process of organizing people along revolutionary democratic lines to take control over the production and reproduction of their lives.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Isms Aren't the Problem, Dogma Is the Problem (Keith) by X.
Some notes on science, theory, ideology, and practice: Towards a critique of scientific reason
Revolutionary democracy, as we are attempting to develop it practically and theoretically emerges out of a critical dialogue with the Marxist tradition. The term “science” is bandied about within Marxist circles and the confusion over this term and what it means leads to a number of practical and theoretical shortcomings which have to be overcome if the movement is to develop. Specifically, we must be able to distinguish what science can do, from what it can not do.
Since Marx emerges in the 19th century we need to start with the 19th century conception of science. Science in the 19th century was linked to the word “critique.” The German philosopher Immanuel Kant proposed a “critical philosophy,” and he wrote a number of texts which he called “Critiques” e.g.: “The Critique of Pure Reason;” “The Critique of Practical Reason;” and “The Critique of Judgment.” Marx, almost one hundred years later, published his magnum opus “Das Kapital: A critique of political economy.” Marx sees his own project as “a critique” in much the same way that Kant understood it. Critical philosophy, for Kant, is the opposite of dogmatic philosophy. Dogma, in this conception, means simply, “assertions without proof.” Critical philosophy refers to the idea that the assertions of critical philosophy can be proved by evidence and/or reason. It is,therefore “scientific.”
As Marx’s thinking moves out of the confines of it European context and begins to be utilized by revolutionaries around the world (Russia and Asia especially, but also Africa and Latin America) it is enriched in innumerable ways, but as the power of Marx’s ideas became recognized because of their effectiveness in practice (Revolutions in some of the world’s largest countries, and leading the decolonization of the world) a sort of cult of science emerged and the concept of science became so distorted that it has, in many Marxist circles, become its opposite: dogma. The cult of science generates analysis and truths which are always already known, and then they slap on a tired slogan. They use Marxism like priests, plugging new coordinates into the old formula and out pops an analysis.
Oddly, Marx argues for a distinct and limited conception of science in one of his most often celebrated and criticized pieces: the “Preface” to “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.” This piece is most often cited because in a very brief space Marx puts forward a theory of social revolution (property relations come into revolutionary conflict with the further development of a society’s productive forces), however, Marx also makes this under-reported comment:
“In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic – in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.”
Marx, as a careful reading testifies, makes a distinction between an understanding of “the material conditions of production” which lend themselves to a scientific conception as precise as “natural science,” and the political or “ideological” forms in which people become aware of these issues and in which they fight it out. I read this to suggest, in opposition to the way that most Marxist-Leninist (-Trotkyist, -Maoist, -etceterists) read Marx, that there is no “science of revolution” or even a “science of politics” emerging from Marx’s thought. Instead, we can understand the development of capitalism in a precise or scientific way, but our political practice is much more akin to an art then a science. This, of course, does not mean we must proceed with practice without any theoretical guidance. Indeed, we may be able to approach revolutionary political practice with a version of the scientific method and certainly our practice will not develop beyond reforming the system without being highly informed by the scientific analysis of capitalism and its development. But in order to proceed we must make a careful distinction between the scientific analysis of capitalism and the art of revolutionary politics. Once this distinction is grasped then we can learn from the mistakes and successes of the past revolutions and revolutionary movements without succumbing to the cult of science.
If we can mark the distinction between the analysis of capitalism, which, according to Marx, can proceed with the precision of natural science, and the “ideological forms” which political thinking and practice occurs, how then, to conceive of revolutionary political theory? The blog is largely dedicated to the elaboration of a revolutionary political theory. I would propose that Marx’s method can guide us here. A theory is a series of inter-related concepts that emerge out of people thinking about and studying their own political activity and that of others. These concepts can be mobilized in practice and further developed in practice, becoming more defined, more refined, and more expansive. The concepts, then, become increasingly clear if they are useful in practice. The theory of revolutionary democracy as we are developing it here and in practice consists of a series of concepts like: “self-determination;” “alternate infrastructure and superstructure;” “cultural revolution;” “protest mode;” “there is no spoon;” “dual power” etc. On the blog we attempt to link these concepts with anecdotes from practice in order to make the concepts clearer, to concretize them, so that they can be useful to others but the examples we suggest do not exhaust the potential of the concept, even the concept of revolutionary democracy will be transformed with increasing practice and thinking --once a theory ceases to develop it can only become dogma.
Revolutionary democracy, as we are attempting to develop it practically and theoretically emerges out of a critical dialogue with the Marxist tradition. The term “science” is bandied about within Marxist circles and the confusion over this term and what it means leads to a number of practical and theoretical shortcomings which have to be overcome if the movement is to develop. Specifically, we must be able to distinguish what science can do, from what it can not do.
Since Marx emerges in the 19th century we need to start with the 19th century conception of science. Science in the 19th century was linked to the word “critique.” The German philosopher Immanuel Kant proposed a “critical philosophy,” and he wrote a number of texts which he called “Critiques” e.g.: “The Critique of Pure Reason;” “The Critique of Practical Reason;” and “The Critique of Judgment.” Marx, almost one hundred years later, published his magnum opus “Das Kapital: A critique of political economy.” Marx sees his own project as “a critique” in much the same way that Kant understood it. Critical philosophy, for Kant, is the opposite of dogmatic philosophy. Dogma, in this conception, means simply, “assertions without proof.” Critical philosophy refers to the idea that the assertions of critical philosophy can be proved by evidence and/or reason. It is,therefore “scientific.”
As Marx’s thinking moves out of the confines of it European context and begins to be utilized by revolutionaries around the world (Russia and Asia especially, but also Africa and Latin America) it is enriched in innumerable ways, but as the power of Marx’s ideas became recognized because of their effectiveness in practice (Revolutions in some of the world’s largest countries, and leading the decolonization of the world) a sort of cult of science emerged and the concept of science became so distorted that it has, in many Marxist circles, become its opposite: dogma. The cult of science generates analysis and truths which are always already known, and then they slap on a tired slogan. They use Marxism like priests, plugging new coordinates into the old formula and out pops an analysis.
Oddly, Marx argues for a distinct and limited conception of science in one of his most often celebrated and criticized pieces: the “Preface” to “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.” This piece is most often cited because in a very brief space Marx puts forward a theory of social revolution (property relations come into revolutionary conflict with the further development of a society’s productive forces), however, Marx also makes this under-reported comment:
“In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic – in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.”
Marx, as a careful reading testifies, makes a distinction between an understanding of “the material conditions of production” which lend themselves to a scientific conception as precise as “natural science,” and the political or “ideological” forms in which people become aware of these issues and in which they fight it out. I read this to suggest, in opposition to the way that most Marxist-Leninist (-Trotkyist, -Maoist, -etceterists) read Marx, that there is no “science of revolution” or even a “science of politics” emerging from Marx’s thought. Instead, we can understand the development of capitalism in a precise or scientific way, but our political practice is much more akin to an art then a science. This, of course, does not mean we must proceed with practice without any theoretical guidance. Indeed, we may be able to approach revolutionary political practice with a version of the scientific method and certainly our practice will not develop beyond reforming the system without being highly informed by the scientific analysis of capitalism and its development. But in order to proceed we must make a careful distinction between the scientific analysis of capitalism and the art of revolutionary politics. Once this distinction is grasped then we can learn from the mistakes and successes of the past revolutions and revolutionary movements without succumbing to the cult of science.
If we can mark the distinction between the analysis of capitalism, which, according to Marx, can proceed with the precision of natural science, and the “ideological forms” which political thinking and practice occurs, how then, to conceive of revolutionary political theory? The blog is largely dedicated to the elaboration of a revolutionary political theory. I would propose that Marx’s method can guide us here. A theory is a series of inter-related concepts that emerge out of people thinking about and studying their own political activity and that of others. These concepts can be mobilized in practice and further developed in practice, becoming more defined, more refined, and more expansive. The concepts, then, become increasingly clear if they are useful in practice. The theory of revolutionary democracy as we are developing it here and in practice consists of a series of concepts like: “self-determination;” “alternate infrastructure and superstructure;” “cultural revolution;” “protest mode;” “there is no spoon;” “dual power” etc. On the blog we attempt to link these concepts with anecdotes from practice in order to make the concepts clearer, to concretize them, so that they can be useful to others but the examples we suggest do not exhaust the potential of the concept, even the concept of revolutionary democracy will be transformed with increasing practice and thinking --once a theory ceases to develop it can only become dogma.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
“THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE!” – Part II (X.) by X.
The most striking examples of budding revolutionary democracy in action can be found in interviews of the diverse activists that participated in the three days of WTO protests in Seattle in 1999 (these interviews are available at the online WTO History Project hosted by the University of Washington). In the weeks that led up to the protests, a multitude of labor unions, issue groups, student groups, revolutionary groups, etc. cooperated in one form or another to plan for the demonstrations (amidst a host of disagreements over the purpose and the tactics of the protest). A careful reading of the activists’ interviews shows how rapidly the movement coalesced at the grassroots level in the last few days and especially during the “downtime” in between protests once the WTO ministerial conference had begun.
This so-called “downtime” was in fact the “organizing time” during which thousands of activists of every shade of the Left political spectrum resided in close proximity to one another in de facto “liberated zones” in and around Seattle. The geographic closeness and the magnitude of the logistical challenges led these activists to exchange ideas, share resources and make plans together. They became movement organizers as they began to work and decide together, as they began to practice democracy like they never had before. This process of budding revolutionary democracy is credited in many interviews for the decision by a number of “older” protesters to break away from the relatively non-confrontational, pre-approved march routes to join “younger” activists in direct actions in the “no protest” zone declared by the city police.
Richard Feldman, Director, Worker Center, King County Labor Council, AFL-CIO:
… And then there was other coalition activity, as it got closer, there was a regular meeting, kind of a coordinating meeting that I attended, that was hosted by the Citizen's Trade Campaign folks that brought together some of the prime organizers and organizations, including DAN [Direct Action Network] and a very diverse kind of group of organizations that met and just kind of more or less kept each other somewhat up to date on what people were planning.
(…)
Well, it was a coalition in terms of everyone coming together dealing with the events of the week, for example from the students' perspective, obviously having been hit the hardest, and the students that had been doing civil disobedience and not doing civil disobedience, just been sitting around and getting whacked by the cops, they brought anger and disbelief. Then us just seeing what had happened and the wrongness of how protests had been met. And it was because we were in coalition and had the energy and ability that enabled us to quickly put together a march with 5,000 people. We wanted to go into the no-protest zone on Friday to show we could have protests and that we could have our voices heard. So things happened pretty quickly.
(…)
Things came together incredibly quickly. A wide variety of things happened very quickly, just remarkable how quickly. I guess in terms of true coalition activities, people took ownership, came together and achieved, in a very short time, something that normally takes months to plan and figure out. And that was because everyone had been working together. And this was also something that was also more locally driven. It wasn't people from D.C.
Han Shan, Ruckus Society:
“That’s actually a bigger conversation and a really important thing. That’s something that’s new and something that we saw develop in Seattle to a large degree. There are a lot of groups working in very different ways with different constituencies, and maybe different ultimate goals who nonetheless are recognizing that as the right has come together with various goals, but recognizing they have similar adversaries, at least, we’ve recognized that we need to come together. In Seattle, there were a lot of folks who maybe didn’t work super closely with each other in their discrete strategies, in their tactics that they took to the streets, but tried to at least talk and keep the lines of communication open. I talked to a lot of Labor. I talked to folks who were visibly nervous about who Ruckus was and what we might have planned, who nonetheless showed goodwill and recognized that we were allies in this battle. I think that kind of coming together is a rare thing and it was certainly gratifying.”
Robin Denburg, Asia Pacific Environmental Exchange:
“The coalition, I think, while there were ups and downs, it was very effective in allowing a level of coordination so that the environmental community knew what the labor community was doing and then the labor community would then go back and work out the details, but at least there was some level of coordination and that was exhibited during the week of the WTO when you had one day which was focused on labor, one day which was focused on the environment, one day which was focused on agriculture. If you hadn’t had that, the dialogue and the trust established beforehand, you could have had a hodgepodge of seminars and teach-ins and rallies going on at the same time. So I think it was really effective in that respect. I think it was also effective in terms of creating good relationships between communities that hadn’t normally worked together. In particular for me, working with the faith-based and labor communities was, especially the faith-based community, was a new thing for me, so I think that was effective as well.”
To be continued...
This so-called “downtime” was in fact the “organizing time” during which thousands of activists of every shade of the Left political spectrum resided in close proximity to one another in de facto “liberated zones” in and around Seattle. The geographic closeness and the magnitude of the logistical challenges led these activists to exchange ideas, share resources and make plans together. They became movement organizers as they began to work and decide together, as they began to practice democracy like they never had before. This process of budding revolutionary democracy is credited in many interviews for the decision by a number of “older” protesters to break away from the relatively non-confrontational, pre-approved march routes to join “younger” activists in direct actions in the “no protest” zone declared by the city police.
Richard Feldman, Director, Worker Center, King County Labor Council, AFL-CIO:
… And then there was other coalition activity, as it got closer, there was a regular meeting, kind of a coordinating meeting that I attended, that was hosted by the Citizen's Trade Campaign folks that brought together some of the prime organizers and organizations, including DAN [Direct Action Network] and a very diverse kind of group of organizations that met and just kind of more or less kept each other somewhat up to date on what people were planning.
(…)
Well, it was a coalition in terms of everyone coming together dealing with the events of the week, for example from the students' perspective, obviously having been hit the hardest, and the students that had been doing civil disobedience and not doing civil disobedience, just been sitting around and getting whacked by the cops, they brought anger and disbelief. Then us just seeing what had happened and the wrongness of how protests had been met. And it was because we were in coalition and had the energy and ability that enabled us to quickly put together a march with 5,000 people. We wanted to go into the no-protest zone on Friday to show we could have protests and that we could have our voices heard. So things happened pretty quickly.
(…)
Things came together incredibly quickly. A wide variety of things happened very quickly, just remarkable how quickly. I guess in terms of true coalition activities, people took ownership, came together and achieved, in a very short time, something that normally takes months to plan and figure out. And that was because everyone had been working together. And this was also something that was also more locally driven. It wasn't people from D.C.
Han Shan, Ruckus Society:
“That’s actually a bigger conversation and a really important thing. That’s something that’s new and something that we saw develop in Seattle to a large degree. There are a lot of groups working in very different ways with different constituencies, and maybe different ultimate goals who nonetheless are recognizing that as the right has come together with various goals, but recognizing they have similar adversaries, at least, we’ve recognized that we need to come together. In Seattle, there were a lot of folks who maybe didn’t work super closely with each other in their discrete strategies, in their tactics that they took to the streets, but tried to at least talk and keep the lines of communication open. I talked to a lot of Labor. I talked to folks who were visibly nervous about who Ruckus was and what we might have planned, who nonetheless showed goodwill and recognized that we were allies in this battle. I think that kind of coming together is a rare thing and it was certainly gratifying.”
Robin Denburg, Asia Pacific Environmental Exchange:
“The coalition, I think, while there were ups and downs, it was very effective in allowing a level of coordination so that the environmental community knew what the labor community was doing and then the labor community would then go back and work out the details, but at least there was some level of coordination and that was exhibited during the week of the WTO when you had one day which was focused on labor, one day which was focused on the environment, one day which was focused on agriculture. If you hadn’t had that, the dialogue and the trust established beforehand, you could have had a hodgepodge of seminars and teach-ins and rallies going on at the same time. So I think it was really effective in that respect. I think it was also effective in terms of creating good relationships between communities that hadn’t normally worked together. In particular for me, working with the faith-based and labor communities was, especially the faith-based community, was a new thing for me, so I think that was effective as well.”
To be continued...
WHAT IS AN ORGANIZER? Part II (X.) by X.
Here are four quick takes on the differences between organizers and activists:
-Activists want the world to change. Organizers want people to change the world.
-Activists hope more people will become as righteous as they are. Organizers hope more people will make the movement more righteous.
-Activists want to become indispensable. Organizers want to become obsolete.*
-Activists think that being in the minority means they are doing good work. Organizers think that being in the minority means there is more work to do.
To be continued...
* To give credit where credit is due: I can’t find the citation right now, but I recall that Lenin wrote something to the effect that “the role of the intellectual revolutionaries is to make themselves obsolete.”
-Activists want the world to change. Organizers want people to change the world.
-Activists hope more people will become as righteous as they are. Organizers hope more people will make the movement more righteous.
-Activists want to become indispensable. Organizers want to become obsolete.*
-Activists think that being in the minority means they are doing good work. Organizers think that being in the minority means there is more work to do.
To be continued...
* To give credit where credit is due: I can’t find the citation right now, but I recall that Lenin wrote something to the effect that “the role of the intellectual revolutionaries is to make themselves obsolete.”
Monday, February 19, 2007
"THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE!" Part I (X.) by X.
The slogan “This is what democracy looks like!” hit the big time in 1999 during the street protests opposing the World Trade Organization at their meeting in
A large and relatively diverse array of groups had gathered in
The most revolutionary democratic activities did not take place during those street battles, however. Quite to the contrary, democracy was mainly built before and after each protest. The key factor that set the WTO protests aside from most prior protests is that they lasted for several days during which a vast but fragmented network of progressive activists had to contend with tremendous logistical challenges in close proximity to one another. The planning of daily marching routes, resistance to police repression, first aid assistance, room and board, jail solidarity, teach-ins, liberation of resources, etc required a multitude of activists of every shade of the Left political spectrum to cooperate in some way. Numerous decentralized, grassroots initiatives brought together groups that previously had never worked together, building coalitional trust and fostering unity of action to overcome ideological differences. In other words, the movement had to try and practice democracy in order to exist.
To be continued...Monday, February 5, 2007
Baraka was the Messenger and the Revolutionary Movement was his Message (Keith) by X.
In April of 1994 on the eve of college graduation I attended a speech given by Amiri Baraka at the Douglass College Student Center. I lived on Easton Avenue over a sub shop called “SubKing” at the time with my old lady -- Louise. I doubt the shop is there anymore. I was reading Marx, some strange European Anarchists, I took Bronner’s course “Theories of the Labor Movement” we read Marx, Lenin, Luxemburg, Kautsky, etc. I took a course called Marxism with a grad student who I think is still in academia, Manfred Steager, an Engels specialist. These courses taught me a lot but Bronner and Steager are both, finally, reformers. They acknowledge that working people get a bad deal or worse, but they don’t believe that the workers could actually run the society; that the society can be transformed in a radically democratic way. They ultimately preach capitalism with a human face.
I was, in a word, dissatisfied with these subtle pleas for limits on human possibility. Society under capitalism had nothing and still has nothing to offer me or the majority of the world’s people. Even life for the best off, although they may not agree or know it, is a pathetic excuse for human potential, all they can really do is buy stuff and consume, comfort and mild pleasure are their only aspirations, of course they are willing to pursue these aspirations with a frightful viciousness, as Marx says, the history of capitalism is written in letters of blood and fire. Louise and I walked into the auditorium with few expectations and not much hope, beyond an interesting lecture.
Baraka, however, is a real revolutionary and he blew open my mind; it was a secular religious experience. Baraka spoke for two and a half hours, the time passed in an instant, by the end his words made us high, I felt like I was levitating. The speech was captured on film and circulated among organizers, I dubbed the speech off of the VHS tape onto a two audio cassettes and listened about 50 times on my walkman while working as a house painter.
Baraka is a word sorcerer. He forces the language to conform to his thought, language becomes, in his hands, a sword of creation rather than thought’s cage. He is an avant-garde thinker and artist, but he defines the avant-garde as the expression of what is happening now. Most thought and nearly everything in academia and in the corporate media expresses something old, dead and crusty. Yet, Baraka is a popular thinker and artists, not popular in the sense that he sells a lot of books or whatever, but popular in the sense that he can communicate with everyone, he doesn’t dumb it down, he makes it plain without making it simple and false. I think that he achieves this in two ways. First, by grounding his thinking firmly in the knitty gritty of social reality, people’s real lives, and revolutionary struggle, and secondly, he is able to speak to multiple levels of understanding simultaneously, that is to say, he speaks to those with the most experience and newcomers in the same breath, although they may each get something different from his words. This is why I could listen to the speech over and over; I got something new out of it each time.
So what did he say? I still have the VHS tape, but don’t have a VHS player anymore, I plan to get it transformed to DVD soon. Anyway, he started with “we are here to tell you that there is still a revolutionary movement in the United States.” Louise and I were thinking about what to do with ourselves after graduation, we had vague notions of going out to California where the buds are greener. It seemed nothing was happening in New Brunswick, Baraka’s opening remarks knocked the shit off my shoes. He then explained how corporations not only commodify art, that is, make it into an object for sale, they transform they way art is produced, they transform the artist, and what is produced. He talked about the need to create an alternative and “alternative superstructure” as a beginning and basis for struggle. He used a few examples, to explain the transformation of art and artists. He pointed out how the avant-garde of Jazz music –“free jazz” or as he prefers to call it “the new Black music,” was transformed into fusion and “Weather Report,” how socially revolutionary music like the Reggae of a Peter Tosh and a Bob Marley was transformed by corporate domination into Yellowman and Shaba Ranks, or hip-hop from Africa Bambaata, Grandmaster Flash and Public Enemy into Gangster Rap. And although he didn’t use these examples, I would add this process also happened in country music where the outlaw movement of Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, and Waylon Jennings was transformed into Toby Keith and Garth Brooks.
This process of transformation from, “gold to shit, proving dialectics Muhammad Ali style,” as Baraka put it in a poem, is capitalism’s tried and true method. Not only does capitalism transform art in these obvious and appreciable ways, it also transforms the life of every working person whether an artist or not. The capitalist production process seizes our working lives, tells us what to make, when to make it, how to make it, and takes it away after we make it, to sell for profit.We, glorious human beings with potential unimagined, are transformed, just like the art, turned from gold to shit. Another Baraka poem: “We were slaves! Slaves! Slaves! Slaves! They threw our lives away.”
I began to see the gravity of the situation. Capitalism makes the world hell, or as Baraka put it, “they made the world into a stinking cave.” The world would be corny at best, and a horror at worst -- and our lives would reflect that world, we would be of that world -- if we don’t act. Leaving New Brunswick disappeared as an option, New Brunswick wasn’t the problem. Capitalism was the problem -- its shadow would darken our lives anywhere we went. We had to act, and here we had contact with something happening. I knew well before I arrived at the lecture that capitalism had to be resisted and overthrown but I didn’t know how to begin. I started to see that there isn’t a way out of capitalism, you can’t run off to California or Vermont, or to a good job and family life as a college educated person and escape. These are easily identifiable as dead ends, neither peace, nor freedom, not even glory exist on any of those paths only banal and bloody comfort at best. Submission or resistance is the only real choice.
My thoughts ran along these lines at the speech because I was also vitally concerned with my existential situation, with a search for some deeper significance, and meaning to this life. I was concerned with the questions that the system tries to convince you are only the concerns of teenagers. Adults and serious people, this system says, accommodate themselves, they consume or try to and they do it with joy, they have refined their expectations, their greatest hopes are a new car and a plasma TV, they live within what Freud called the reality principle --the psychological explanation of what happens when the freedom-seeking, meaning part of yourself is killed by your own hand at the systems’ command.
Fred Engels said that freedom is the recognition of necessity. Baraka forced us to see reality, to recognize the necessity of resistance. When the speech ended and we came down from its high our path was well lit. Throwing ourselves into the struggle gave life purpose, meaning, and intimations of immortality.
In future posts I will talk more about some of the specific concepts that Baraka explained like: an alternative superstructure; Cultural Revolution; and self-determination. These concepts guided much of our work in the People’s Campaign of 2000 and are best explained in relationship to that practice. (Keith)
Clips from Baraka's 1994 Douglass College speech will soon be available at the Pirate Caucus blog (via YouTube). (X)
I was, in a word, dissatisfied with these subtle pleas for limits on human possibility. Society under capitalism had nothing and still has nothing to offer me or the majority of the world’s people. Even life for the best off, although they may not agree or know it, is a pathetic excuse for human potential, all they can really do is buy stuff and consume, comfort and mild pleasure are their only aspirations, of course they are willing to pursue these aspirations with a frightful viciousness, as Marx says, the history of capitalism is written in letters of blood and fire. Louise and I walked into the auditorium with few expectations and not much hope, beyond an interesting lecture.
Baraka, however, is a real revolutionary and he blew open my mind; it was a secular religious experience. Baraka spoke for two and a half hours, the time passed in an instant, by the end his words made us high, I felt like I was levitating. The speech was captured on film and circulated among organizers, I dubbed the speech off of the VHS tape onto a two audio cassettes and listened about 50 times on my walkman while working as a house painter.
Baraka is a word sorcerer. He forces the language to conform to his thought, language becomes, in his hands, a sword of creation rather than thought’s cage. He is an avant-garde thinker and artist, but he defines the avant-garde as the expression of what is happening now. Most thought and nearly everything in academia and in the corporate media expresses something old, dead and crusty. Yet, Baraka is a popular thinker and artists, not popular in the sense that he sells a lot of books or whatever, but popular in the sense that he can communicate with everyone, he doesn’t dumb it down, he makes it plain without making it simple and false. I think that he achieves this in two ways. First, by grounding his thinking firmly in the knitty gritty of social reality, people’s real lives, and revolutionary struggle, and secondly, he is able to speak to multiple levels of understanding simultaneously, that is to say, he speaks to those with the most experience and newcomers in the same breath, although they may each get something different from his words. This is why I could listen to the speech over and over; I got something new out of it each time.
So what did he say? I still have the VHS tape, but don’t have a VHS player anymore, I plan to get it transformed to DVD soon. Anyway, he started with “we are here to tell you that there is still a revolutionary movement in the United States.” Louise and I were thinking about what to do with ourselves after graduation, we had vague notions of going out to California where the buds are greener. It seemed nothing was happening in New Brunswick, Baraka’s opening remarks knocked the shit off my shoes. He then explained how corporations not only commodify art, that is, make it into an object for sale, they transform they way art is produced, they transform the artist, and what is produced. He talked about the need to create an alternative and “alternative superstructure” as a beginning and basis for struggle. He used a few examples, to explain the transformation of art and artists. He pointed out how the avant-garde of Jazz music –“free jazz” or as he prefers to call it “the new Black music,” was transformed into fusion and “Weather Report,” how socially revolutionary music like the Reggae of a Peter Tosh and a Bob Marley was transformed by corporate domination into Yellowman and Shaba Ranks, or hip-hop from Africa Bambaata, Grandmaster Flash and Public Enemy into Gangster Rap. And although he didn’t use these examples, I would add this process also happened in country music where the outlaw movement of Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, and Waylon Jennings was transformed into Toby Keith and Garth Brooks.
This process of transformation from, “gold to shit, proving dialectics Muhammad Ali style,” as Baraka put it in a poem, is capitalism’s tried and true method. Not only does capitalism transform art in these obvious and appreciable ways, it also transforms the life of every working person whether an artist or not. The capitalist production process seizes our working lives, tells us what to make, when to make it, how to make it, and takes it away after we make it, to sell for profit.We, glorious human beings with potential unimagined, are transformed, just like the art, turned from gold to shit. Another Baraka poem: “We were slaves! Slaves! Slaves! Slaves! They threw our lives away.”
I began to see the gravity of the situation. Capitalism makes the world hell, or as Baraka put it, “they made the world into a stinking cave.” The world would be corny at best, and a horror at worst -- and our lives would reflect that world, we would be of that world -- if we don’t act. Leaving New Brunswick disappeared as an option, New Brunswick wasn’t the problem. Capitalism was the problem -- its shadow would darken our lives anywhere we went. We had to act, and here we had contact with something happening. I knew well before I arrived at the lecture that capitalism had to be resisted and overthrown but I didn’t know how to begin. I started to see that there isn’t a way out of capitalism, you can’t run off to California or Vermont, or to a good job and family life as a college educated person and escape. These are easily identifiable as dead ends, neither peace, nor freedom, not even glory exist on any of those paths only banal and bloody comfort at best. Submission or resistance is the only real choice.
My thoughts ran along these lines at the speech because I was also vitally concerned with my existential situation, with a search for some deeper significance, and meaning to this life. I was concerned with the questions that the system tries to convince you are only the concerns of teenagers. Adults and serious people, this system says, accommodate themselves, they consume or try to and they do it with joy, they have refined their expectations, their greatest hopes are a new car and a plasma TV, they live within what Freud called the reality principle --the psychological explanation of what happens when the freedom-seeking, meaning part of yourself is killed by your own hand at the systems’ command.
Fred Engels said that freedom is the recognition of necessity. Baraka forced us to see reality, to recognize the necessity of resistance. When the speech ended and we came down from its high our path was well lit. Throwing ourselves into the struggle gave life purpose, meaning, and intimations of immortality.
In future posts I will talk more about some of the specific concepts that Baraka explained like: an alternative superstructure; Cultural Revolution; and self-determination. These concepts guided much of our work in the People’s Campaign of 2000 and are best explained in relationship to that practice. (Keith)
Clips from Baraka's 1994 Douglass College speech will soon be available at the Pirate Caucus blog (via YouTube). (X)
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
The Big Other Doesn't Exist (Keith) by X.
“The question of revolution is a question of seizing power”
-Mao
“We must organize to take power where we can literally put our hands on it”
-Amiri Baraka
To see the immediate relevance of these seemingly radical comments we must use imagination. Power is available now. It is not a question for a revolution in some distant future. During the “People’s Campaign of 2000”* we learned power can be something as simple as a roomful of angry parents.
The New Brunswick Board of Education (appointed by the mayor) decided to use a series of trailers as classrooms for elementary school children while new schools were being built. An outrageous plan, it drew the ire of the teachers union and parents. Over a hundred people gathered at the board of ed meeting where the plan was to be discussed. The board, as is its custom, appeared on a platform, saluted the flag, pledged allegiance and then adjourned to a “closed door session” for about a half hour before returning to the platform to address the assembly. The custom is an outrage and a scandal against democracy, but also our opportunity.
After the board left the room, a hundred odd people had nothing to do but sit and wait for their return. A number of campaign organizers attended this meeting including two of our city council candidates. We decided to use the opportunity to hold an alternative meeting and while the board conspired behind closed doors, we would hold an open democratic meeting. The board had left microphones (they intended them to be used under their direction.). Our candidates turned the microphones on, power was seized. We spoke to the audience about our campaign and the question of education and invited parents and teachers to take the microphone themselves. It was a bold but simple move. Nothing stopped us but our own fears. We are socialized, in school, in families, in churches etc. to sit quietly, to give our consent to idiotic un-democratic authority. Although the system is not afraid to resort to the gun, they don’t have enough of them. They must rely on our consent, our fear of acting without authorization, our fear of acting without credentials--our instinctual submission to authority or anything that sounds like an authority. Although I am not religious, what makes Jesus so radical is the comment he makes over and over before he teaches: “You have read such and such in the scriptures but I say this and that.” Who authorized him to say “this and that”? No one. As X has been saying “there is no spoon.” This is something that we have to learn as a movement and as individuals.
Indeed, realizing “there is no spoon” is only a beginning, and on this occasion it was as far as we got. We might have been able to make more of it if we were better prepared. We could have organized the parents and teachers into a more forceful opposition, placing the question of democracy before them in its most radical fashion —self-determination, democracy means, in part, you do it yourself— nor did we succeed in moving the crowd out of protest mode, but we learned an important lesson. When the board returned they were surprised to see the people getting along quite well without them, and although they immediately restored their version of order and the meeting proceeded according to their agenda they were not able to carry forward the trailer plan, and I like to think that in the moment they returned from backstage and saw people taking the matter into their own hands they got a glimpse of their future irrelevance.
* The People's Campaign was a progressive, grassroots, independent and democratically-run campaign that ran three candidates for City Council in New Brunswick in the 2000 elections against the long-entrenched city machine. The progressive platform of the campaign was developed by surveying over 1,000 homes throughout the community and it was approved -along with the three community candidates- at an open convention of New Brunswick residents and allies. The People's Campaign won 28% of the vote in this first attempt at applying a revolutionary democratic organizing approach to an electoral campaign in New Brunswick. More discussion of the People's Campaign and its impact will soon appear on the Pirate Caucus blog. (X)
Keith, who contributed this article, was one of the three People's Campaign candidates for the New Brunswick City Council in 2000. (X)
-Mao
“We must organize to take power where we can literally put our hands on it”
-Amiri Baraka
To see the immediate relevance of these seemingly radical comments we must use imagination. Power is available now. It is not a question for a revolution in some distant future. During the “People’s Campaign of 2000”* we learned power can be something as simple as a roomful of angry parents.
The New Brunswick Board of Education (appointed by the mayor) decided to use a series of trailers as classrooms for elementary school children while new schools were being built. An outrageous plan, it drew the ire of the teachers union and parents. Over a hundred people gathered at the board of ed meeting where the plan was to be discussed. The board, as is its custom, appeared on a platform, saluted the flag, pledged allegiance and then adjourned to a “closed door session” for about a half hour before returning to the platform to address the assembly. The custom is an outrage and a scandal against democracy, but also our opportunity.
After the board left the room, a hundred odd people had nothing to do but sit and wait for their return. A number of campaign organizers attended this meeting including two of our city council candidates. We decided to use the opportunity to hold an alternative meeting and while the board conspired behind closed doors, we would hold an open democratic meeting. The board had left microphones (they intended them to be used under their direction.). Our candidates turned the microphones on, power was seized. We spoke to the audience about our campaign and the question of education and invited parents and teachers to take the microphone themselves. It was a bold but simple move. Nothing stopped us but our own fears. We are socialized, in school, in families, in churches etc. to sit quietly, to give our consent to idiotic un-democratic authority. Although the system is not afraid to resort to the gun, they don’t have enough of them. They must rely on our consent, our fear of acting without authorization, our fear of acting without credentials--our instinctual submission to authority or anything that sounds like an authority. Although I am not religious, what makes Jesus so radical is the comment he makes over and over before he teaches: “You have read such and such in the scriptures but I say this and that.” Who authorized him to say “this and that”? No one. As X has been saying “there is no spoon.” This is something that we have to learn as a movement and as individuals.
Indeed, realizing “there is no spoon” is only a beginning, and on this occasion it was as far as we got. We might have been able to make more of it if we were better prepared. We could have organized the parents and teachers into a more forceful opposition, placing the question of democracy before them in its most radical fashion —self-determination, democracy means, in part, you do it yourself— nor did we succeed in moving the crowd out of protest mode, but we learned an important lesson. When the board returned they were surprised to see the people getting along quite well without them, and although they immediately restored their version of order and the meeting proceeded according to their agenda they were not able to carry forward the trailer plan, and I like to think that in the moment they returned from backstage and saw people taking the matter into their own hands they got a glimpse of their future irrelevance.
* The People's Campaign was a progressive, grassroots, independent and democratically-run campaign that ran three candidates for City Council in New Brunswick in the 2000 elections against the long-entrenched city machine. The progressive platform of the campaign was developed by surveying over 1,000 homes throughout the community and it was approved -along with the three community candidates- at an open convention of New Brunswick residents and allies. The People's Campaign won 28% of the vote in this first attempt at applying a revolutionary democratic organizing approach to an electoral campaign in New Brunswick. More discussion of the People's Campaign and its impact will soon appear on the Pirate Caucus blog. (X)
Keith, who contributed this article, was one of the three People's Campaign candidates for the New Brunswick City Council in 2000. (X)
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
“THERE IS NO SPOON.” Part II (X.) by X.
It is an unfortunate (although predictable) weakness of the Matrix script that it promotes a pointless individualistic outlook: Once Neo can deconstruct the Matrix and “see the code”, he is reborn as a super-hero who can bend the rules of the Matrix all by himself. Not surprisingly, the tantalizing threat/promise that Neo makes at the end of the first movie (to wake up everyone and see what happens) never comes to pass in the sequels. The original script idea is betrayed, and by the third episode the plot degenerates into the deflating martyrdom of Neo the savior. We never get to see the episodes that should have been, where more and more people awaken to revolutionary consciousness and learn how to bend the rules of the Matrix.
It may be a good thing however, that the Matrix sequels failed to deliver on Neo’s promise to awaken the majority and “see what happens.” Because rather than watching the story, we get to live the history if only we allow ourselves to recognize that it is by working and deciding together, by practicing collaborative decision-making, by practicing democracy that people begin to recognize that “there is no spoon” and to see the astounding potential of their social power to change the system radically.
Tuesday, January 2, 2007
“THERE IS NO SPOON.” Part I (X.) by X.
Since its viral opening in 1999, The Matrix has become a very useful frame of reference (I’m talking here about the first episode in the trilogy). It is useful because it uses incisive metaphors in its bold critique of the system and because most young progressives have seen it at least once. The Matrix makes it possible to discuss key revolutionary concepts in a striking and accessible way. I’ll focus for now on two of these important metaphors and their significance to the nascent movement for revolutionary democracy in the
Neo: Free from what?
Morpheus: From the Matrix. Do you want to know what it is, Neo? It's that feeling you have had all your life. That feeling that something was wrong with the world. You don't know what it is but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad, driving you to me. But what is it? The Matrix is everywhere, it's all around us, here even in this room. You can see it out your window, or on your television. You feel it when you go to work, or go to church or pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. That you, like everyone else, was born into bondage... ... kept inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind. Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.
Neo: How?
Morpheus: Hold out your hands.
In Neo's right hand, Morpheus drops a red pill.
Morpheus: This is your last chance. After this, there is no going back.
In his left, a blue pill.
Morpheus: You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes. Remember that all I am offering is the truth. Nothing more.
Neo opens his mouth and swallows the red pill.
This bluntly symbolic scene has an uncanny impact on progressive students whose daily practice of accessing new information challenges the absolute dominance of the “official” version of events (even if most of the “biased interpretations” -read revolutionary analyses- have been filtered out of the textbooks). It exacerbates their feeling that “something is wrong with the world” and confronts them inescapably with the newfound revolutionary’s first dilemma: To know or not to know (soon followed by its twin: To act or not to act).
Spoon boy: Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Spoon boy: There is no spoon.
Neo: There is no spoon?
Spoon boy: Then you'll see that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.
Monday, December 11, 2006
THE LOYAL OPPOSITION (X.) by X.
Today’s progressive US Left is mostly known for two types of activities. On the one hand is advocacy for reform with lobbying of the two-party system, the occasional local referenda and long-shot electoral candidacies. On the other hand are the protests such as rare strikes and even rarer large demonstrations, smaller rallies and direct actions at the local level, and isolated acts of vandalism. The partisans of the “protest” and “advocacy” trends often criticize one another bitterly, and yet they fail to recognize that their political approaches –although different in form– are quite similar:
1) Both “protest” and “advocacy” partisans are fragmented into a myriad narrow, issue-based groups and/or isolated sectarian organizations. Neither camp offers concrete or convincing proposals to build a broad-based, nationwide progressive movement that could radically change the system. Both thereby acknowledge an unwillingness and/or inability to organize the great majority of people. In fact, the very nature of their main activities is exclusive of the majority since few people can frequently participate in a meaningful way in protests or advocacy campaigns.
2) Both “protest” and “advocacy” partisans elevate their tactics to the level of a strategy. Their chosen activities become the only means to be considered by the movement to effect change; they are presented as the essence of progressive action under the present system, because they are more “militant” or more “realistic”.
3) Whatever their intent is, both “protest” and “advocacy” partisans implicitly or explicitly recognize and legitimize the system’s authority. Whether they are advocating for the powers-that-be to listen to their recommendations or protesting the decisions of the powers-that-be, it is clear that all decision-making power rests in the hands of the powers-that-be.
The partisans of the advocacy mode and the partisans of the protest mode represent two wings of what Amiri Baraka (riffing off of Lenin) called the Loyal Opposition in discussions with revolutionary democratic organizers going back to the mid-90's. Whether knowingly or unknowingly, both trends end up legitimizing the powers-that-be by recognizing their right and ability to rule. Just as "Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition" in England, the loyal opposition that dominates the US Left does not fundamentally challenge the system (i.e. capitalism): The advocacy mode because it merely reforms the system, the protest mode because -no matter how militantly- it merely criticizes the system. What must differentiate the new revolutionary democratic movement from the Loyal Opposition is that it will not only challenge the legitimacy of the system, but that it will engage people all over the country to practice democracy as a direct challenge to the ability of the powers-that-be to enforce their illegitimate control of society.
1) Both “protest” and “advocacy” partisans are fragmented into a myriad narrow, issue-based groups and/or isolated sectarian organizations. Neither camp offers concrete or convincing proposals to build a broad-based, nationwide progressive movement that could radically change the system. Both thereby acknowledge an unwillingness and/or inability to organize the great majority of people. In fact, the very nature of their main activities is exclusive of the majority since few people can frequently participate in a meaningful way in protests or advocacy campaigns.
2) Both “protest” and “advocacy” partisans elevate their tactics to the level of a strategy. Their chosen activities become the only means to be considered by the movement to effect change; they are presented as the essence of progressive action under the present system, because they are more “militant” or more “realistic”.
3) Whatever their intent is, both “protest” and “advocacy” partisans implicitly or explicitly recognize and legitimize the system’s authority. Whether they are advocating for the powers-that-be to listen to their recommendations or protesting the decisions of the powers-that-be, it is clear that all decision-making power rests in the hands of the powers-that-be.
The partisans of the advocacy mode and the partisans of the protest mode represent two wings of what Amiri Baraka (riffing off of Lenin) called the Loyal Opposition in discussions with revolutionary democratic organizers going back to the mid-90's. Whether knowingly or unknowingly, both trends end up legitimizing the powers-that-be by recognizing their right and ability to rule. Just as "Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition" in England, the loyal opposition that dominates the US Left does not fundamentally challenge the system (i.e. capitalism): The advocacy mode because it merely reforms the system, the protest mode because -no matter how militantly- it merely criticizes the system. What must differentiate the new revolutionary democratic movement from the Loyal Opposition is that it will not only challenge the legitimacy of the system, but that it will engage people all over the country to practice democracy as a direct challenge to the ability of the powers-that-be to enforce their illegitimate control of society.
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