There is no spoon (X.) by X.

In the original Matrix movie (1999) a group of underground revolutionaries try and try again to overthrow an oppressive system that has lulled everyone into complacency. They keep banging their heads against this apparently invincible enemy. Even those who learned how to bend the rules a little –like veteran mentor Morpheus– believe that the system cannot be defeated without the intervention of a messiah. In the classic scene of the bended spoon, this “messiah” (Neo) begins to grasp that the rules of the system can be bent so far that what you thought was impossible becomes possible. Neo is talking to a monastic-looking child of the underground who seemingly bends a spoon with his mind:

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.

This classic dialogue hits the fundamental problem that Revolutionary Democracy wants to overcome: The traditional US Left still believes that the capitalist system is so powerful today that people cannot change it. The only options available to the activists are to beg or demand that the powers-that-be concede minor reforms. We are then supposed to wait for a great crisis in the distant future when the system collapses on its own and the revolution “happens”. Most of the activity of the US Left these days consists of trying to “bend spoons”: The radicals protest militantly, the moderates advocate congenially and the “revolutionaries” recruit small exclusive “vanguards” or “affinity groups” and prepare for the day of the insurrection (just as the Christian fundamentalists wait for the day of the Rapture). Meanwhile, the system grows more controlling and oppressive every day, the movement keeps shrinking and weakening and the great majority of people feel more and more alienated from the very concept of revolution. The activists then conclude that people in the US are apathetic and that they reject change, which reinforces the belief that our society cannot be transformed. This cycle of self-defeat goes on and on…

We learn otherwise in the practice of revolutionary democracy: Once we understand how the system works, we can bend its laws so far that we can change and subvert it step by step until it is eventually overcome. We can do this sometimes with little steps and sometimes with big steps, so long as we recognize that the system is not invincible and that it can only be transformed by the social power of masses of organized people. Unlike the Matrix script, we can’t follow a predictable superhero plot. It is only as more and more people get awakened in their daily lives to the reality that “there is no spoon” that they can organize themselves and democratically revolutionize the world. This was the tantalizing promise that Neo made at the end of Matrix 1: To wake up everyone and see what happens (Matrix 2 and 3 betrayed that promise and sucked).

The premise of Revolutionary Democracy is:

• The capitalist system is not some unmovable, unstoppable machine that we can only rage against. It is built upon rules that can be bent, twisted and reshaped until society itself is completely transformed.

• The only force that can transform society is the social power of lots and lots of organized people. The most creative, powerful and long-lasting form of social organization is the one in which people practice democracy in a revolutionary way: Working together and deciding together in all things.

• Progressives and revolutionaries can work with all kinds of people right where they are to help them build and use revolutionary democratic social power.

• As people build and consolidate revolutionary democratic social power, they create a dual power situation that increasingly bends the system until it overcomes it. The transformation begins right away -even if in small ways- just as mass bends space in the universe. The more mass, the more bending.

That’s the strategy. The movement can choose any number of tactics to make it happen depending on the time, place and conditions. We can mobilize for rallies and direct actions, just as we can organize people to pass their own laws or take political power in elections, just as we can build independent progressive institutions like street universities or job cooperatives. No need to repeat the same tactic over and over. No need to reject any tactic off hand. (1) What determines the usefulness of a tactic at any given time is whether or not it empowers as many people as possible to organize themselves and to expand democratic control over society.

Sounds simplistic? It isn’t. The system structures everyone’s lives with the most undemocratic routines at work, school, church, in the home and of course on TV. Everywhere we are told what we can and cannot do as individuals. The very idea of working together to change the rules is banished (voting is only allowed on TV to select idols or eliminate survivors). The usual approaches of the traditional US Left will not succeed: We can’t just proclaim how great the world will be if people just join us; we can’t browbeat people into abandoning their way of life for the vague promise of a better future. And we can’t unite anyone by trying to frighten them with tales of imminent worldwide chaos and destruction. It’s been tried. It doesn’t work.

We must create the necessary conditions for everyone to learn that what they think is impossible (transforming society) is in fact possible. That is the challenge: To organize events, actions and programs where people can experiment with democracy in a revolutionary way; where they can experience the transformative power of working together and deciding together; where they can change their understanding of the world and of their place in it as they begin to build a new world amidst the old.
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(1) We do reject terror as a tactic (the indiscriminate use of violence against people) because it is completely antidemocratic. Violent tactics in general should be avoided in most situations (except in self-defense) because they undermine the ability of large groups of people to practice democracy. It’s not easy to work together and decide together when dodging bullets!

What is Revolutionary Democracy? (X., Keith) by X.

Revolutionary Democracy is a strategy for revolution. It works by expanding democracy to every corner of society. Starting today. No need to follow a great leader or join this or that organization or make a donation. No need to wait for some distant revolutionary event in the far future. We can all practice revolution as a social process here and now: Organize with all kinds of people right where they are to take control of society step by step; liberate and consolidate resources to build the movement both outside the system and inside of it; build a dual power of the people that grows and contends with the power of the system (capitalism, imperialism, whatever you want to call it).

Revolutionary Democracy is simple enough: The people that do the work should make the decisions about how that work is done, how it is organized, and how the products of that work are shared. In the revolutionary democratic movement, we work together and we decide together. Everywhere. We can learn how to practice democracy in a revolutionary way in the street, at work, at home, at church, at school, even in the army. We can use protest, advocacy, direct action, elections, service programs and any number of tactics to build revolutionary democracy. We can challenge the system in the process of overcoming it. We can take the system apart piece by piece and build the new world in the midst of the old.

Revolutionary Democracy is both a means and an end. All progressive and revolutionary trends are welcome. We can unite for practical action without a uniform theory. We just ask one simple question before we make a move: Will this empower as many people as possible to expand democratic control over the world?

In the following pages, you will find ideas and experiences developed by the emerging revolutionary democratic movement in and around Rutgers University and the city of New Brunswick, NJ over the past 15 years. Most of the key concepts in the article draw from a number of rich revolutionary traditions[1] but truly came into their own with the rise of the Tent State University movement (tentstate.com) that started at Rutgers in 2003 and has so far spread to campuses across the US, the UK and Australia.

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[1] Although the collection of articles titled 'The Revolution Starts Today' does not claim to represent his views, we want to acknowledge the essential contributions of Amiri Baraka who first introduced us to the theoretical concepts of dual power, protest mode, loyal opposition, etc. and who provided incisive insights into the dysfunction of the traditional US Left.

How the War on Terror Makes Us Slaves (Keith) by X.

It is widely acknowledged now that Bush rules through fear but what is not usually acknowledged is that fear, like all ideology, needs institutional grounding. Ideologies don’t just seep up out of the ground they need to be organized and disseminated. The institutional basis for fear is organized around the “War on Terror.” There are a number of apparatuses devoted to the production of fear in the U.S. like the department of homeland security and the Patriot Act. In New York City, for example, fear is produced and cultivated when we hear, while riding the subway, that “the police have the right to inspect all packages” or “if you see something suspicious call the police” or when we see in soldiers in Penn Station or police carrying automatic weapons. No amount of police can make us “safe” but their presence is not intended to make you safe, but to make you afraid. The anti-war movement, such as it is, must become a movement against the war on terror. As the majority of the country now opposes the war in Iraq we must make it clear that Iraq is but one symptom of the problem which is the war on terror itself.

The War on Terror dovetails with previously existing discourse to create a fascistic common sense of which Rudy Giuliani stands out as supreme spokesman. The fascistic common sense solidified through fear works in the following way: pose any social problem and the obvious solution is fascistic. For instance, the solution to crime is more police and more prisons, the solution to a terroristic attack or even supposed threat is the suspension of civil rights and police are allowed to search people on mass transportation at random. The correct response to these violations according to the ideology of fear is played back for us regularly by the media through the “man on the street interview”: “its worth it if it stops terror,” “its worth it if it saves one child,” “if you have nothing to hide you won’t mind being searched.” The “man on the street” in these examples (not chosen for prime time by accident!) is not only consumed by fear he is speaking like a happy slave. The War on Terror has consolidated a long turn from the “home of the brave” to the “home of the coward” from the “land of the free” to the “land of the slave.”

Long ago Benjamin Franklin made a remark that is often repeated of late: “Those who would exchange liberty for security deserve neither.” The meaning of his comment, however, is not as clear as it first appears in the present context. Franklin like the other so-called “founders” believed in Natural Rights and the social contract. The idea is expressed in the preamble to the declaration of independence which states: “all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights…” “Inalienable” means that they cannot be taken or given away they are sourced in nature or god, NOT the state or government. You cannot trade liberty for security because you cannot allow the government to take away your rights-- they are inalienable. The idea that the government gives you rights that it can take away was the definition of tyranny for the founders. According to social contract theory we join a government (the contract) to collectively protect our natural rights. If you think the government gave you the rights and you “allow” the government to take away your rights you do not deserve freedom or liberty because you accept your slavery.

Revolutionary Democracy, as we are developing it on the blog, needs a very different conception than the classical liberal theory of natural rights. Natural rights are based on “god” or “nature.” But, this is where Natural Right theory fails; “god” does not really exist, and god is certainly not going to intervene in the world to help us get the promised rights. We cannot appeal to god or nature to get back the freedom which the war on terror and the ideology of fear have taken. While fighting in the courts or appealing to the ACLU and the like is well and good, only the revolutionary democratically organized power of people can secure these rights. The rights are but codifications of social freedoms won by people “in the streets” or in the parlance of political science in “civil society.”

Interestingly towards the ends of his life Malcolm X began to argue that we needed to move beyond the struggle for “civil rights” and begin to struggle for “human rights.” He said we cannot fight within the United States for civil rights because what we are in effect doing is asking the people who take away our rights to give us our rights. Instead he argued we need to fight for human rights and take the struggle to the United Nations where other nations (especially the so-called third world nations) could support us. Malcolm is addressing the fundamental problem in natural rights theory: on the one hand the rights come from god or nature but on the other you need some sort of institutional power (the government or the United Nations) to get them. Malcolm recognized the problem and although a religious man he didn’t expect Allah to deliver the rights but he made a crucial error by appealing to the United Nations for rights. Moving beyond Natural Rights theory means we need both a new explanation (or theory) of where our rights come from (not god or nature, but organized people) an we need new institutions (what we call dual power) to establish and secure them.

In the 70’s when the movement was not yet utterly defeated there was a massive expansion of our rights and social freedoms. The Civil Rights Movement that Malcolm wanted to move beyond won rights not from god or nature or from the state, they won the rights in the struggle and the rights became codified in the state, e.g., desegregation, affirmative action, Roe V. Wade, birth control, sex ed, lowering the voting age, etc. Even the suburbs were affected. As a kid growing up in a NJ suburb I remember the public high school had an “open campus,” students were allowed to come and go as they pleased (the campus was “closed” with the Reagan onslaught). Now the schools are mini concentration camps with guards and metal detectors. The drinking age in the 70’s was 18 etc, etc.

The point is that rights do not come from the government as in fascistic theories of which we currently live under as common sense, nor do they come from god or nature as the “founders” believed, they come from organized people and the most powerful form of organization is revolutionary democracy because it wastes no one’s energy but utilizes and unites our collective social power. As we mentioned before the idea that “power comes form the barrel of a gun” is wrong (which, by the way, is why “the greatest military the world has ever known” can’t beat a country without much of a military to speak of). Power (and our “rights”) comes from organized people.

Why Revolution? Because of Wednesday. (Keith) by X.

There are many reasons that make revolution necessary: Ending exploitation, ending oppression, ending imperialist wars, and the list could go on. All of these reasons are valid and worth fighting for, but Wednesday is the reason revolution is absolutely necessary. What is Wednesday? Wednesday -sometimes known as hump-day- is the third day in the work week,. Once you get through Wednesday, only two more days to go until the weekend. What is the weekend? The weekend is real life, the work week is its interruption. Work is what we do when we are not alive, when we stick our necks into the machine and the vampires suck our life for profit. On Wednesday mornings I wake up and think “What day is it? It's Wednesday. Oh, I’m halfway there.” Halfway to where? To the weekend, yes, but halfway to celebrating the waste of my life, the waste of five beautiful days that cannot be gotten back so I can say on Friday with a foolish grin “TGIF.”

I first noticed the horror of work under capitalism when I finished celebrating the end of high school. On the last day of high school I thought like some kind of an idiot, “I will never have to get up this early again.” The memory of the alarm clock, my mother screeching my name as I ignored the alarm clock -it still makes me shudder- weighed on me, and I thought it was really over. Little did I know it had only just begun. I painted houses after high school and worked my way through college and kept painting houses for a few years after I graduated college. I remember the feeling of sacrilege, of wasting something beautiful, holy, and irreplaceable as I sweated outside on a step ladder to earn a day's pay ($60 a day at the beginning, when I finally quit painting I was making $140): I am trading a perfect day, in the perfectly healthy body of a twenty year old for $60. I will never have this day again and I will never be able to buy it for $60. It is priceless and I sell it for $60. What kind of fool am I?

I still sell my days. The horror of it isn’t so biting. That is really how we are desensitized: Not through violence on TV but by our willingness to sell our days, our weeks, our months and our years-- our lives for a mess of porridge or a color TV. Individual resistance is futile, revolution is necessary. The slow long process of overturning this system and the horror of wasting lives for the profit of a few.

My daughter is only four years old -- already she is in training. Every weekday morning she wakes up and gets ready for school and my wife or I drop her off on our way to work. She asked me the other day, “How long do I have to do this for?” (get up every morning and go to school). I answered her, “Honestly, it never ends. After school you have to go to work. They let you retire just after your body starts falling apart, just before you are about to die.” I tell her the truth so she will understand why revolution is necessary.

So revolution is necessary because work under capitalism is a life-sapping process that also infiltrates our lives outside of work. At the most basic level our experience, our relationships to ourselves and others is corrupted by capitalist social relationships. Marx covered some of this ground in his celebrated 1844 Manuscripts (also known as the Paris Manuscripts). He explains that human beings are alienated in four main ways: from each other; from their own possibilities; from their activity at work, and from the result or product of their labor. Marx’s text is full of rich insights and each form of alienation has the possibility of sustained discussion. Indeed, much ink has been spilt analyzing these texts.

Here, I only want to add that work is drudgery because it is organized under capitalistic social relations. Our jobs are not to make, produce, or create anything; our job is to produce surplus value (surplus value is the source of all forms of capitalists’ income: profit; rent; and interest). As the head of US Steel once boasted, “The job of US Steel is not making steel, it's making money.” That means that the workers' job is making money for the capitalist enterprise. But this is not the only way to organize work. The hatred that most of us feel for work under capitalism is not a hatred for work in general. Indeed, work under different conditions can be challenging, interesting, fun, creative and self-fulfilling.

One of the things that makes Marx’s 1844 manuscripts so fascinating is his discussion of work as the vehicle for self-realization. Work can actually become the opportunity to not only discover your self but to create your self and develop humanity as whole at the same time. One example used by Marx is the development of human senses through work. Musicians, for instance, not only create music but develop the human ability to hear -work holds the possibility to create not only objects outside of ourselves but the creation of ourselves. Many of us have had this sort of experience outside of capitalist work relations. For instance, I enjoy writing. It is not only an opportunity to put ideas on paper, but it also allows for the creation of the ideas. The work increases self understanding and the finished product is then a way to understand ourselves more deeply. Now writing as a job would be quite different in most cases. I wouldn’t choose my topics, I would have to write in a style that conforms to someone else’s expectations, and I would have an artificial deadline —when, what, and how I write, under capitalism, would be dictated by another. This is one reason many people don’t enjoy writing, because the process is learned in school settings that are very much intended to mimic, as training, the conditions faced by workers (indeed the whole point of education under capitalism is to produce willing and able workers, i.e., people with skills capital needs and people who are willing to work under exploitative conditions enforced by illegitimate authority. You learn to accept authority and hierarchy as the norm -“Go to the Principal’s office”- and you learn to have your most intimate activities dictated by outside forces, i.e., when to wake up, when to eat, when to use the bathroom, and when to go home).

When I tell someone I worked as a house painter they often will respond: “I like painting.” I answer, “That’s because you never did it for a living.” When you paint a room in your apartment or house, it is your own freely chosen activity. You determine when, how, and why the work will be done and you keep the product (the painted room) of your labor. This is non-alienated work. One way to know the difference between alienated and non-alienated work is through your experience of time. Alienated work is when you watch the clock with unimaginable longing: "Is it lunch time yet?” “Is it time to go home yet?” You don’t watch the clock when you are performing non-alienated labor, and time seems to pass quicker than usual. The surprising thing is that not only is non-alienated work far more enjoyable and fulfilling, it is ultimately “more productive.” You can get far more work done in non-alienated settings.

Under capitalism non-alienated labor, whether playing music, programming, painting, writing or laying brick happens in between work, on the weekends (if we are lucky enough to have weekends off) or in the evenings (if we are working the first shift), but one of the main objects of the revolutionary process is to transform work so that it is no longer the interruption of life but instead the activity that makes life most interesting and fulfilling.

"From Protest to Resistance!" A Bad Slogan... (Keith) by X.

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.

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.

“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...

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.”

"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 Seattle. It became the title of a seminal underground documentary that narrated and helped define the events for progressives all over the country. The slogan was obviously a direct response to the highly undemocratic character of the WTO and to the authoritarian and repressive counter-protest tactics of the Seattle police department. But the ease with which those few words spread throughout the broader movement (and especially the younger generation) hints at something deeper: In many ways, the Seattle protests represented a reaction to the waning power of the traditional US Left. They were a reaction to the complacent 80’s and 90’s during which the advocacy faction took over the leadership of the movement and led it into steep decline, displacing the protest faction that dominated the 60’s and 70’s. In this sense, the crowds of activists in the streets of Seattle also chanted: “This is what the movement looks like!”

A large and relatively diverse array of groups had gathered in Seattle for the largest protest in years, in direct opposition to the powers-that-be. The WTO protesters delivered a broad critique of the system on the system’s own turf. But not only did they challenge capitalism’s “new world order”, they challenged the prevailing “common wisdom” of the advocacy partisans in positions of leadership throughout the US Left that for years have channeled the movement into reformist, single-issue activism by proxy (from union contracts to affirmative action to abortion rights to saving endangered species). The demonstrators -made up largely of dissidents young and old within the US Left- organized a mass (if short-lived) challenge to big capital. And it blew their minds that by working together they successfully prevented business as usual for the rulers of the planet. For a little while, they “shut down” the WTO…

The success of the protesters in achieving their goal unfortunately overshadowed the most important aspect of the Seattle experience. While the mainstream media focused mainly on isolated incidents of vandalism, the movement narrative (as told in the “This Is What Democracy Looks Like!” documentary, for example) focused much attention on the confrontation pitting the mass of protesters against the police and WTO bureaucrats.

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...

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)