Take a walk on the wild side (X.) by X.

Gandhi launched a nationwide revolution in India by walking to the beach. Does that sound ridiculous? The struggle for Indian independence lasted decades. Many lives were lost to the ruthless brutality of the British Empire. It was a hard and painful road to win that freedom. But the first step to victory came when Gandhi realized the people could shake the system to its foundations with a long, peaceful stroll to the shore.

The British had set up a colonial system to control all aspects of Indian life. They rigged the rules to exploit the people and their land. Those who resisted were arrested, beaten or killed. One typical colonial law said that only the British could produce or sell salt. Salt had always been easy to find on India’s long coasts. People would collect it for free on the beaches. Now they were forced to buy it from the colonial government.

Indians were denied so many rights – who would care about salt? But salt, it turns out, plays a very important role in Indian culture. It has a powerful symbolic meaning (to “eat someone’s salt” means to have a duty of loyalty towards them). Gandhi’s brilliance was that he figured out the salt laws were a critical weakness in the English colonial system.

On March 12, 1930, Gandhi and a few dozens of his followers began a 240-mile march to the coast. They walked for 23 days, going through dozens of villages. Thousands of others joined them along the way until they reached the beach on April 5. From wikipedia:

“The following morning, after a prayer, Gandhi raised a lump of salty mud (with reports varying as to how much) and declared, "With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire." He then boiled it in seawater, illegally producing the controversial commodity. He implored his thousands of followers to likewise begin to make salt along the seashore, wherever "was most convenient and comfortable" to them, not to the British Empire.”

The Salt March sparked a nationwide explosion of civil disobedience as thousands of Indians made and bought “illegal” salt. Caught by surprise, the British government threw over sixty thousand people in jail trying to stop the rising movement. In complete panic, a maniacal general ordered his British troops to shoot down nonviolent demonstrators in the city of Peshawar, killing hundreds of innocent people (the Indian soldiers had refused to open fire). For of its vicious repression of a mass movement, the British drew international condemnation. And although it took another 17 years and many more hardships for India to gain its independence, the Salt March was a turning point in the struggle: For the first time made it possible for thousands of Indians from all walks of life to defy the illegitimate rule of the British Empire.

Through years of practice and study, Gandhi and his fellow organizers developed a most revolutionary understanding of the Indian people and of British colonial rule. Gandhi grasped that the colonial system was not invincible and that its laws could be bent to the point of open rebellion: What was needed was for masses of people to subvert the system at its weakest point. To make this possible, he devised a mass direct action deeply rooted in the cultural, social, political and economic life of the people of India.

Some severe shortcomings of the Gandhian movement must be acknowledged regarding its lack of internal democracy (especially discrimination against women). But these shortcomings do not take away from the inspiring legacy of the Salt March as a revolutionary democratic event:

• It successfully united people across all regional, class, religious and ethnic boundaries that were all affected by the illegitimate and frankly absurd salt laws.

• It was a simple, culturally and socially legitimate event that almost anyone could participate in and yet it was a most subversive event that directly challenged the system’s legitimacy.

• It was a mass popular action that both radicals and moderates could support and yet it struck at the heart of the system’s political and economic authority.

• It empowered the Indian people to continue challenging the system on their own as they sold and bought salt, earning or saving a little money through continuous acts of civil disobedience that reaffirmed their legitimate cultural heritage.

• It demonstrated the system’s inability to stop masses of organized people and thereby established the beginning of nationwide dual power: the power of the people continually negotiating with the power of the system, until the system was overcome.

No one in India would have ever believed that a nationwide rebellion could begin over salt until the march occurred. Revolutionary Democracy assumes that a mass, popular direct action of this magnitude is equally possible under any other oppressive system, including in the US. It is up to us to figure out how to do it…

Dual Power (Keith, X.,Tommy D) by X.

At its core, Revolutionary Democracy is a strategy of dual power. The revolutionary democratic movement literally seeks to build a new, parallel society – however embryonic or preliminary – right in the middle of the oppressive system. Revolutionary Democracy mobilizes people to build their own democratically-controlled grassroots institutions (focused on the collective gathering and provisioning of social necessities such as education, healthcare, or even food, as well as on the production and dissemination of art and music, for example), organizations (neighborhood councils, student groups, tenant unions, etc.) and events (campaigns, festivals, rallies, etc.) that exist parallel to and in defiance of the system. These alternative instutions organized alomng revolutionary democractic line where people work together and decide togther are the base areas from which we can subvert, undermine, takeover, and overthrow the systems power. Dual power, for revolutionary democracy, is not only the building of an alternative, dual power is also the dismantling of the systems power.

The revolutionary democratic movement enables people to penetrate and take over the system’s organizations (city councils, school boards, trade unions, etc.) and institutions (universities, libraries, businesses, etc.) and to put them increasingly under the democratic control of those that do the work (i.e., not the millionaire politicians and appointed boards of trustees/directors) and those that live in the communities that these entities are intended to serve. In this dynamic of dual power, the alternative revolutionary democratic institutions and organizations provide the initial backbone for the movement and make it possible for organizers within the system to remain connected, to liberate resources (most of which are currently underutilized or even wasted) and to practice revolutionary democracy at every opportunity (within a union local, a project team at the office, a church group, a student government, etc). Revolutionary Democracy calls for the establishment of revolutionary democratic practices in our own spaces as well as within the system’s institutions (from city hall to the office to the church).

As the people that produce the resources (whether material, cultural or intellectual) begin to establish a regular practice of controlling those resources collectively and democratically, revolutionary democratic institutions increasingly become a direct challenge to the system, and to the system’s methods of garnering resources through exploitation and plunder.

The best kept secret (X.) by X.

The local movement based at Rutgers University and in New Brunswick, NJ experimented with the revolutionary potential of democracy for many years. But it was not until the founding of Tent State University in 2003 that we discovered the best kept of all secrets: Even though we had grown up and lived in a society that claims to be the most democratic of all, none of us had ever practiced democracy at all.

That spring, to fight back against the most drastic state budget cuts to higher education, local progressives and revolutionaries (mostly students and some alumni) decided to set up a tent university in the most highly-trafficked area of Rutgers class buildings. This symbolic protest (“Education is losing its home”) quickly grew into an entirely new experience for all involved. On the heels of the US invasion of Iraq, student organizers from the antiwar movement joined along with many others and built an alternative free progressive university in the midst of the old.

Students pitched dozens of tents, attended and taught alternative class, hosted rallies, art performances, poetry readings, spontaneous sporting events and fed several dozen organizers with the help of supportive local businesses. During the day, organizers also mobilized hundreds of students to call state legislators in opposition to the budget cuts threatening Rutgers. (1) At night, Tent State University became the longest, free music festival in the state as the best local bands played outdoors along with firespinners, b-boys and b-girls, and capoera dancers. And the only way grassroots organizers with few resources could pull off this ambitious project was to learn to work and decide together, to learn to practice democracy…

In the evening, the organizers sat down together in a large open meeting among the tents to go over the tasks at hand. New participants joined in who had just pitched a tent, attended a class or just happened upon the scene. Unlike typical activist meetings, much of the discussion focused on concrete collective tasks: In order for Tent State to exist, all participants had to pitch in. All heads were needed to plan and all hands needed to run the kitchen, clean up the site, maintain security (the “feelgood patrol”), welcome new campers, and to organize the multitude of classes and performances for the coming night and day. In order to get so many different organizations and individuals to cooperate productively, democracy become more than a way to run meetings: Working and deciding together became a way of life, day in and day out.

Sure, at times things got messy. Sometimes the work didn’t get done right. Sometimes decisions were hard to reach. Sometimes people got upset when they didn’t get their way. But most everyone stuck around because the whole was worth more than the sum of the parts. Losing a vote on one proposal didn’t mean the end of the world because Tent State remained so full of potential for everyone. In this developing culture of democracy and revolution, of free education and artistic expression, of life affirmation in opposition to greed, war and oppression, the possibilities seemed limitless… if only for one week.

Tent State University turned out to be a life-changing experience for many organizers. The Tent State movement has now spread out to other US campuses and to universities in England and Australia (for more info on the Tent State University movement, check out tentstate.com). At Rutgers, Tent State University has returned year after year and grown from a single event into a recurrent, grassroots, progressive and democratically-run institution of learning. This institution continues to evolve with the ideas and labor of all of its participants: It now includes a large town hall, an Art City and a new tradition to liberate an auditorium for the nightly live shows when it rains.(2) And as Tent State evolves and grows as a microcosm of a possible revolutionary democratic society, its mass of social power begins to bend the rules that the Rutgers University administration traditionally enforces.

Tent State never applied for a permit to pitch tents, to hold rallies, to teach classes or to run concerts at night in the middle of the campus. Back in 2003, the Rutgers administration originally warned that they would not allow the event at all. The administrators backed off when they faced a broad group of determined organizers that set up camp during a class change with thousands of students walking by. By generating thousands of call to legislators on behalf of higher education and even getting a few state legislators to attend opening ceremonies, the Tent State organizers made it even more difficult for the Rutgers administration to try and stop the rising movement. By engaging thousands of students in a whole host of diverse activities over the years and organizing hundreds to build and determine the course the Tent State institution, they have won the support, sympathy or at least friendly neutrality of a broad section of the student population (although Tent State certainly has its detractors). By working closely with Rutgers staff and faculty and supporting the causes of their unions, Tent State developed many allies within the existing university system that provide key resources and assistance to the movement in the form of access to electricity, funds, or by bringing their classes out of the classroom buildings and into the tents…

Going on five years, Tent State is becoming a tradition at Rutgers. The old university’s administration has accepted that –for at least one week each year– it must coexist with the new university’s daily assembly. Security and safety at Tent State are handled by the Tent State staff (with no fights, no accidents and no injuries in five years) while the Rutgers police remains cordially on the outskirts. By empowering students to build a culture of revolutionary democracy and a mass base of social power, Tent State requires the system to negotiate with the movement over the limits of its authority.

This is what we mean by dual power: When masses of people organize themselves creatively and practice democracy in a revolutionary way, the system has no choice but to alter the enforcement of its rules if it wants to avoid a challenging confrontation with a risky, uncertain outcome. This dual power situation then makes it easier for the movement to consolidate its gains –both outside as well as inside the system– and to continue to expand. Tent State University is now growing into a progressive headquarters as it launches new initiatives that increasingly impact Rutgers University and the city of New Brunswick year-round.

Tent State University was the experiment that broke on through to the other side. It led us to rethink all of our previous activity. We now focus on the revolutionary potential of organizing all kinds of people to practice democracy as the process of building the new world within the old. And as we continue to deepen our understanding of the Tent State experience, we begin to explore the application of Revolutionary Democracy throughout all of society.

In all our endeavors, we should engage people to discuss, debate and make decisions about collective projects of all sorts to which they contribute work. Everyone should be encouraged to practice democracy in the movement (whether organizing a rally, a community program, a festival or a factory seizure) but also to extend, negotiate or smuggle democratic practices into all areas of their lives (from the workplace to the school to the church). We should mobilize people to actually take power into their own hands and to transform the social conditions of their lives today, circumventing and ultimately replacing the undemocratic structure of our current society. Within this new revolutionary and democratic dual power structure –with on the one hand the growing movement with its liberated resources and on the other the weakening, infiltrated capitalist system– people can develop new social relationships based on the principle that the “free development of each is the condition for the free development of all,”(3) laying the foundation for a new society.
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(1) These advocacy efforts did contribute to reducing the threatened state budget cuts by tens of millions of dollars; a positive if small step in the long struggle to guarantee the right to education for all.
(2) The pirate spirit of Tent State encourages the liberation of needed resources from the system when they cannot be obtained otherwise, under the classic slogan “Take all you can, give nothing back.”
(3) Marx, 1848.

Apathy is a myth (Erik) by X.

Apathy and alienation are two different ways to explain why not all people are involved in pushing for social change, but alienation is the only accurate and practical way for any non-elitist who cares about social change. Apathy is a state of not being emotionally invested in something. Alienation is a state whereby outside influences prevent you from responding either emotionally or with action to your natural inclinations. Take for example someone who refuses to make eye contact with you as you hand out post cards that ask congressmen to intervene in the Darfur genocide. It is possible this person is apathetic, which would mean they have no emotional investment in things like mass murder, human suffering, or ethnic cleansing, but I think we know that’s not true. Want proof? Torture someone in front of them and see if they don’t care about other’s suffering.

The fact is the reason people don’t sign those post cards, don’t get involved in organizations, or follow politics isn’t that they don’t care, it’s that for one reason or another they don’t actually believe those things alleviate human suffering, or else they believe that there is no way to work to alleviate suffering without giving up oneself. And if someone has 3 kids and a 40 hour work week that is a very reasonable belief.

Apathy implies that we as organizers are doing everything right, but the people are at fault. Alienation implies that the people are fine, and some of our tactics/strategies are at fault. If you believe in apathy you think average people are cold, callous, and selfish beings, and social change will only happen when you and a few other elite “moral super heroes” manage to overcome the flaws of the masses. If you believe in alienation you believe that circumstances in your life have allowed you to both A.) have the time and energy to invest in caring about problems outside your own immediate well being and B.) have allowed you to raise your consciousness to empathize with the suffering of others, and that if other people aren’t there yet, it’s because organizers haven’t yet created the circumstances that would allow them to break out of their alienation.

In addition to being less elitist the biggest advantage of alienation over apathy is you can fight it. You can work to remove the reasons that people feel they can’t create change. You can be a better organizer, but you can’t build better people.

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.