VOID MIRROR

Witness: Children of the Riots. (Words, Images & Moments from the streets of Athens)

2012-01-30T10:41:00.000-08:00

As the financial crisis weighs heavily on Greece,
the country seems trapped in a dead end.

But discontent over the misuse of power has
long been simmering.

Greek youths reflect on how the killing
of a teenager by police and the global spreading
of economic, political and social crisis changed
their lives for ever.

This is a short documentary about
children of the streets, children from

the streets of Athens,
same children like these children in the streets
of Egypt, Tunisia, Barcelona,
New York or Oakland...

Same dreams, same desires, same rage...

These are short fragments
from the History of 21st century

Film directed by Christos Georgiou for AlZajeera

Chile student rising 2011 ( a short Documentary)

2012-01-27T07:24:00.000-08:00

During the education protests in Chile, the students took over schools and streets, demanding free education, and an end to the privatisation of their institutions.

Almost four decades after the dictator Augusto Pinochet implemented this free-market based management of education, the protests are causing a political crisis for the country’s president, Sebastian Pinera. What are the underlying causes that drive the anger?

This short documentary portrays the Chilean student movement during their fight in a country plagued by economic inequality, as the demonstrations in Chile coincide with protests erupting worldwide.

source: http://eagainst.com/articles/chile-rising/

Occupy Nigeria!: Moments of Insurrection from Revolted Nigeria

2012-01-12T07:13:00.000-08:00

short introduction by "Moment of Insurrection" group:

Nigeria is known to many antagonists for the on-going indigenous insurgency against ecological destruction. Over the last week the country has ruptured into massive upheavals triggered by the states removal of fuel subsidy. Given that Nigeria is exploited for a massive quantity of the worlds oil supply, and that the state is recognized for little more then the fuel subsidy- the initial strikes called for by the unions have been transvered by the multitude and now across Nigeria insurrection bellows.

Below is a chronological montage of twitter feeds from numerous people and various sites, including #OccupyNigeria. Although social media remains problematic for antagonists in many struggles-, the recent ‘Arab Spring’ and Occupy movements have found a social detonator in the medium. The reproduction of these messages here creates for me a (cyber)space in which to view the belligerent pluralism of a community-in-motion’s assembly.

In From Riot to Insurrection, Alfredo M Bonanno believes we must be ‘capable of understanding the communications of the future, because it is this that will make it possible to construct the insurrectionist instruments of the future to be put alongside the knife our predecessors carried between their teeth’. And it is in this way ‘we can build an air bridge between the tools of the past and the dimensions of the future’.

Messages from revolted Nigeria:

JAN 5

ANYONE IN KANO LIBERATION SQ PLEASE DM ME A NUMBER

The #Kano protesters are scampering for their lives as Police fire live ammunition and tear-gas into the crowd

The Nigerian Police are still following the #Kano Protesters to Sabuwar Kofa firing tear gas and shooting randomly.

The latest terrorist group in #Nigeria is called “Nigerian Police Force”

“some of my friends were injured but there’s no one to take them to hospital. #Kano” Police block injured protesters

Medical attention needed in #Kano as some of the peaceful protesters are injured, following the police midnight attack.

Sometime after midnight, #Kano police used teargas to disperse the peaceful crowd at Silver Jubilee Square

Friends Please as we #occupynigeria pls check the Hashtag #TearGas for info on how to prevent&deal with it. PLEASE RT

#occupynigeria has now besieged the Edo house of assembly in Benin city. If you’re in Edo state pls join them asap!

So, let’s prepare for medical teams/mobile units to go along with our protest. Unlike the FG, every life is important to us.

For tear gas, use gas mask, or soak bandana in lemon juice or vinegar&cover ur nose till u reach high ground. Wear Goggles

Lawyers protest at Ikeja,

<><><><>

JAN 6

time is 8am and start-up point is Olaiya Junction

Lugard Hall needs you RIGHT NOW!!! You should be there if you want CHANGE!!!

The Police in Ekiti have agreed to protect the #occupynigeria protesters to ensure the demonstration is not hijacked

Meanwhile, Ogun kickstarted demonstrations this morning. Protesters now at Oke Ilewo.

Volunteer medic personnel needed in Abeokuta, Abuja, Kaduna today.

Veteran Musician Eedris Abdulkareem releases Nigeria Jaga jaga part 2.

BIS services on @MTNNG is shut down in #Kaduna

Crack down started in Kano where an amazing thing happened. Xtians & Muslims protected each other.

The Nigeria Medical Association has said it will join millions of Nigerians to protest government’s subsidy removal policy.

Some ex-militants in the Niger Delta have threatened to regroup if there is excessive use of force on #occupynigeria protesters.

Soldiers beating and molesting protesters around UI and Poly area, Ibadan.

Sokoto is tomorrow. Pls join and retweet.

Lawyers in Lagos have begun a protest against the fuel subsidy removal

STRATEGIC BRIEFING 1! Remove your phone contact details from social media network. DM Your number ONLY to Trusted organizers!

Leaders of Nigerian labour unions and the Federal Government holding secret talks in Abuja right now

I must confess I never expected the protest to be dis massive, a lot of people are out here…goin strong!

Police crack him gun carry am face up, a protester shouted “u shoot one, we shoot five” other policemen begin laff

Benin City protesters block Lagos highway. Students and lecturers join in.

Word is its crazy up at Ugbowo/Lagos road as well, benin/lagos road blocked!!!

just got word dat d emir of bauchi is marching with the masses…..Sanu Sir!!!

Protesters in Benin carried jonathan’s coffin

A building has been burnt down in ilorin belonging to the minister of youth and development

Flash! The police dat killed a protester in ilorin has been stoned to death

Another Nigerian Killed during #occupynigeria protest! Nigerian TV AIT Report says 1 protestor killed in Gusau, Zamfara

#OccupyNigeria Inspires #Kenya as Kenyan activists cite Nigerian Movement as Inspiration as they start mobilisation. Now We INSPIRE others

We’ll occupy dr minds, dr thots, dr meetings, dr plans… Until Lambs become lions and the timid become bold…

Any connections to printers in #Abuja that can work magic & print flyers for tomorrow’s protest?

Join #OccupyEnugu peaceful march this Monday by 8am @ Okpara Square, Enugu.

Im so ready for the protest…however long it takes, you should be too. This madness must end, and the time is now!

murtala mohammed international airport will be occupied retweet

OccupyNigeria protest to hold in #London, #Abuja, #Ekiti, Ile-#Ife, #Oshogbo, #Ibadan, #Ijebu-Ode, others today.

A group of newspaper readers, Thursday in Yenagoa, mobbed a man who tried to support GEJ’s-led FG removal of #fuelsubsidy.

Protester killed in Kano

<><><><>

JAN 7

Security Operatives have reportedly blocked all the routes to the Eagles Square, Abuja, in bid to stall the planned #occupynigeria protest.

The nbc is blacking #occupynigeria protests out pls send your videos to occupynaija@gmail.com..

If I Die Durin D Struggle,PLS DNT LET MY BLOOD FLOW IN VAIN. C DIS BATTLE2D END.. I REST MY CASE

Go and #occupynigeria don’t be violent, don’t give the government or policemen opportunity to say we are violent….

Our comrades are gathered at Transcorp junction, Merit House. Please tell those on your TL, FB Wall, and BB contact

NANS south west have taken over Ibadan protest. As things are, it may soon turn violent

We are flooding all the senators private phones with 1 million SMS each. What do you want the message to be? Pls reply.

Support the protesters! We need handkerchiefs, mats, first aid kits, water, snacks, recharge cards for Monday!

#BenueState is on at Woodland Park, #Makurdi. Join Now!!! Please retweet, broadcast, post on facebook. Inform everybody!!!

Donations keep coming in! We just got 8 cartons of biscuits&wafers for Monday! If you can’t march, u can and should support!

Even hackers have started their onslaught. The federal looters are in trouble

All web programmers, and developers with advanced knowledge in SQL injections, proxy by pass should contact me…

London protest Live! #OCCUPYNIGERIA photo! more arrive as Nigerians students protest in london http://t.co/7tqJ27ig

Now approaching Police barricade at Secretariat, Abuja

Across Nigeria, Christians provide protection for Muslims as they observe Jumat prayers. United Nigeria.

occupynigeria‘s getting interesting. Government people should just start hiding in their offices….before una chop slap outside

UPDATE: PENGASSAN announces indefinite strike and will NOT call off even if NLC directs, until price is reversed

Market women, today, occupied the streets in Ile Ife.

SSS, today in #Minna, arrested a protester, Fatihu Aminu, a graduate of the IBB University. He’s still in SSS custody.

Attention! #OccupyNigeria #Abuja Cover your faces with kerosene dabbed hankys… That’s the fastest antidote to TEARGAS. Pls retweet!

BREAKING: #Nigeria‘s National Industrial Court rules that NLC must not embark on Strike on Monday 9 Jan

BREAKING NEWS! THE KANGAROO INJUNCTION obtained by GEJ from National Industrial Court is NOT APPLICABLE TO #OCCUPYNIGERIA NO TURNING BACK!

The criminal Judges think they carry any weight. They’ll only help upgrade this from protests to full-blown revolution.

Subsidy removal : Reps to convene emergency session on Sunday

We’ve gotten loads of water but we need First Aid Kits. Please donate towards the Monday protest

The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) – nitda.gov.ng HACKED in solidarity with the #occupynigeria protests.

We will disobey all kangaroo court rulings. That’s why its called civil disobedience, idiota! The prostests will hold.

Okada men just troop out in Benin blocking all road junctions and roundabouts. E don dey red o.

Opposition politician supporting the #occupynigeria movement, you’re also chopping our money so you don’t fool me.

Some #OccupyNigeria protesters are still at the Eagle square Abuja after passing the night there.

Every 24hrs, we @NaijaCyberHack will bring down a Nigerian Government Website until they respond to our cause!

Nigerian transport ministry website hacked by activists

#occupynigeria protests at World Bank on Monday, January 9th at 11am to 1pm & at IMF on Friday, January 13th at 10am to 2pm in Washington DC

Dear Nigerians in South Africa, ball in your court! Please welcome GEJ tomorrow. Reconfirm his attendance and go say hello.

OccupyNigeria-US washingtonDC/NewYork,Otawa-Canada,Kiev-Ukraine in top gear..international movment’s spreads.. #London a success already!

<><><><>

JAN 8

The Nigerian Medical Association and Nigerian Bar Association to offer free services to Nigerians in the struggle.

What You Should Know if Arrested While Protesting in Nigeria. http://is.gd/JAF0NP

Four staff unions of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria have planned to join the mass protest called by the NLC tomorrow.

House of Representatives vote against the removal of #fuelsubsidy.

Do you know what these Honorables have done? They are trying to stop you from occupying them.

Protest kicks off at 9AM tomorrow @ Gani fawehinmi Park, Ojota bus stop, Ikorodu road, Lagos. Pls be there!

Nigeria Labour Congress commends House Motion But Says, “The Strikes and Protests Must Go On” Tomorrow

Lagos – the take-off point for the Island crowd in Lagos tomorrow is under the Falomo Bridge at 8am

FGN is offering to buy airtime on all TV & radio stations in Nigeria tomorrow to prevent #occupyNigeria broadcasts. Watch out between 12-5pm

People of Meiran, Abule Egba, Sango, Agbado & their environs converge @ Mr Biggs, Abule Egba Bus Stop, 7:30am, then to Ojota.

Redeemed University of Nigeria forbids students from joining the #occupyNigeria protest, students threatened with expulsion.

PDP vigilantes in 30 buses NOW at Hotoro to attack #occupyNigeria protesters in the morning on the instructions of Kano State Government!

President Jonathan to disregard House of Rep order on Fuel subsidy, says Reuben Abati, his media assistant.

This just got personal! 40+ innocents #occupynigeria protesters just attacked camping outside eagle square

The Nigerian police used this steel iron to beat the young man while he slept. #occupynigeria http://t.co/XlNRxPz2

I just called 911 when I reported my emergency, the operator switched off my call

Police Attacks Law Abiding Protesters, Ordered to Shoot and Kill

It’s abt 2hrs to d grand #OccupyNigeria rally, so get d words out to everyone by SMS, BBM, FB, eMail. Rally starts @ 9am all across d land.

Streets of Lagos has been empty this morning, devoid of usual Monday morning traffic. #OccupyNigeria seem to have folks away from work

Conference of Islamic Organisations, CIO, has insisted that the NLC/TUC strike should go ahead, supports #occupynigeria protests.

BREAKING NEWS! CABAL MBR Dangote website hacked by NaijaCyberHactivists4Violating workers righ

<><><><>

JAN 9

In Ojota, protesters already marching

About 40 protesters coming to Ojota, saying “We must fight, amen.”

Flash! #OCCUPYNIGERIA Ibadan-Nigeria Protesters set up bonfire to prevent police from firing live rounds

Protesters already smacking cars, shouting at motorists at Ojota.

More than a thousand at Ojota, Lagos for demonstration

Hundreds protesting outside wuse market Abuja. Banners say ‘subsidy removal is a crime against Nigeria’

Police at Ring Road firing tear gas canisters indiscriminately.

The number of innocent Nigerians murdered by Goodluck Ebele Jonathan’s dogs is growing. Two added today in Lagos alone!

With a bunch of concerned Nigerians, trekking through a deserted Ikorodu road, to join the Ojota-bound crowd

Network going a bit screwy in Ojotoa _ likely as there are thousands here now

Mob action reported to be gathering for a showdown with Area G police command over the shootings of 3 boys.

The crowd is overwhelming.. Its hot but we are together

Kano protesters burn down police vehicle for attacking peaceful #occupynigeria protesters

TVC station owned by Bola Tinubu switches off broadcast

Protesters shut down Warri, Effurun, Udu

Jonathan’s police has killed 3 protesters in Lagos and 6 in Maiduguri today

It is a peaceful protest in Birnin Kebbi capital of Kebbi State

At least 1 dead as security forces open fire on #OccupyNigeria protestors in Kano city,

Thousands of protesters burn down police vehicle for as security forces keep attacking #OccupyNigeria in Kano.

Another 7year old crushed to death in a stampede at the protests in #Kano

Nigerian Police, no more Nigerians MUST lose their lives in d course of dis Protest if y’all don’t wanna risk an OPEN WAR !!

A chopper (registration no 5N L50) is flying over the #OccupyNigeria protest venue in circles. The crowd is chanting “ole” (thief).

The NLC chairman, Abdulwaheed Omar, abruptly stops Abuja protest, without explanation. People disperse

Protesters set vans ablaze, sought to set fire on CBN gov’s home

OccupyNigeria Lagos protest called off for Day 1. Everyone returns to Gani Fawehinmi Park tomorrow at 9am. Thank you, Nigeria!!!

There’s false information on both sides. Please be careful about the information you share so we don’t cause more harm.

We will be on TVC tomorrow. We must be heard by force by fire

S/O to everyone that took part in 2day’s protests. Tommorow is another day. We won’t STOP until Nigeria is Liberated

My friend Taiye Fatoki was run over by ex gov Oyinlola’s car in #osogbo while protesting

GTB Segun Agbaje summoned 7 branches to resume duty 2day, All in VI…AjoseAdeogun, plaza and others. Letz shut them down.

<><><><>

Jan 10

Todays set up is much better. Looks more organized. The crowd is also plenty

crowd heading to Governor’s house in Marina after stopping at otedola & tinunbu’s house to sing OLE!!!

Do you want to call President Goodluck Jonathan? This is his no 08022477777

How can you deploy Special Anti robbery squad to stop Protesters in Abuja?

Policemen reported to be shooting at protesters at Onipan #Lagos

A lot of stranded passengers waiting at Murtala Muhammed International Airport.

5 dead, 10,000 displaced after clashes in Benin

Anti-terrorism squad here at Ojota. How did they miss the road to Maidiguri?

Nigerians in Ghana have just decided – they will be occupying the Nigerian High Commission in Ghana tomorrow.

Due to threats of violence and heightened tension, #OccupyNigeria in Kaduna suspends protests till further notice

P lease remember as we #OCCUPYNIGERIA it is our duty to protect D aged, young children, women & physically challenged if we are able to

lease remember as we #OCCUPYNIGERIA it is our duty to protect D aged, young children, women & physically challenged if we are able to

<><><><>

JAN 11

Day 10 of Protests. Day 3 of National Strike. #Abuja: 8am – Berger. Same route as yesterday.

Protests-Day 10. National Strike-Day 3. #Lagos-9 am: Ojota; 8am: Falomo; 7:30am: Anthony Grds; 7:30am: Mr Biggs, Abule Egba

Abuja protesters were attacked again overnight.

Nigerian Army involved in Tuesday midnight attack on #OCCUPYNIGERIA protesters who are camping in Abuja.

The Occupy Wall Street Movement will, today, make a solidarity march at Nigeria House in New York, to support the #OccupyNigeria protesters.

At about 1.30am this morning about 15 vehicles full of plain clothes men beat up #occupyNigeria youths at Ascon Oil, Wuse. Many were wounded

Ironically, d crime rate in Lagos has fallen to an all-time low sinx d beginning of #OccupyNigeria movt, crimes recorded committed by police

As you’re occupying here in Ojota, we’re occupying Nigeria’s entire airspace. No one can fly!” – Labour Union (Aviation) Rep

This is not a Nigerian spring…it is a Nigerian awakening. After the awakening comes the spring

Update: The strike still continues tomorrow Thursday, RT and Broadcast

We no longer want the round table..we r tabling the issues on d floor

There was a casket making the rounds today, at the #occupynigeria rally. And several attempts to bring down a police helicopter with curses

<><><><>

List ends in mid-morning…

Global Insurrection is our only possible FUTURE

2012-01-04T13:49:00.000-08:00

"Anarcha-Indigenism", an edited excerpt of a conference paper presented by Richard J.F. Day

2012-01-04T12:15:00.000-08:00

Short Description:

(The following is an edited excerpt of a conference paper presented by Richard J.F. Day)

Anarcha-Indigenism is an emerging body of academic and activist theory and practice that works across and in between traditions of anarchist and indigenous political theory. The anarcha (as opposed to anarcho) part of the term refers to affinities with both Western and indigenous feminisms. If anarcha-indigenism 'is' anything, then, it is a meeting place, a site of possibilities, a potential for mutual aid in common projects within, outside, and against the dominant order. It is not an ideology or party, but part of an emergent and ever-changing network of autonomous subjects, organizations, and institutions.

Indigenous author Taiaiake Alfred writes:

[t]he basic substance of the problem of colonialism is the belief in the superiority and universality of Euroamerican culture, especially the concepts of individual rights as the highest expression of human freedom, representative democracy as the being the best guarantor of peace and order, and capitalism as the only means to achieve the satisfaction of human material needs (Alfred 2005: 109)

What Alfred sees as the heart of Canadian colonialism is immediately recognizable as what has long driven anarchist critiques of mainstream western institutions and practices, i.e. the rejection of capitalism, self-interested individualism, and the state form. Andrea Smith argues, in a similar vein, for the necessity of "creating those structures within our organizations, movements, and communities that model the world we are to trying to create... an alternative system not based on domination, coercion and control" (Smith 2005: 130).

Federation

These alternatives were understood by the classical anarchist Petr Kropotkin as examples of federation, distributed networks that rely upon shared protocols rather than top-down command, leading to the free linking of localized structures and processes into larger and more complex systems. Of course, in the nation-state system, federation is a top-down affair, with clear lines of control. In non-statist anarchist and indigenous paradigms, however, in involves dense, shifting, multi-dimensional networks that defy a simplistic hierarchical analysis, and are therefore much more difficult to manipulate.

Stateless anarchist and indigenous federations generally involve three elements: consensus decision making at all levels; the ability to remove or recall representatives; and the ability of the community to decline, in certain circumstances, participation in decisions or actions undertaken by the larger structure. (Barsh 1986: 185, 195; Burnicki 2005).

Hierarchy

Related to the problem of hierarchy is that of authority. Both capitalism and the state are deeply dependent upon structures of arbitrary authority, which can be wielded as a weapon over others. Anarchists have long been critical of this kind of authority (bosses, priests, cops, scientists, etc.). As Marie Smallfalce Marule has noted, "in traditional Indian societies, whether band or clan, authority was a collective right that could be temporarily delegated to a leader, under restrictive conditions to carry out essential activities. But the responsibility and authority always remained with the people." (1984: 36).

Direct Action

The rejection of arbitrary authority in both of these traditions is linked to "a belief in bringing about change through direct action" (Alfred 2005: 46). Direct action helps us train ourselves to look after ourselves, rather than relying on state or corporate institutions to do it for us. For many indigenous peoples, it is becoming increasingly clear that direct action in sustainable consensus-based communities and federations both depends upon, and contributes to, a process of cultural revitalization. Taiaiake Alfred emphasizes that this process is not about somehow 'going back in time,' but requires a critical relation to a living tradition (Alfred 1999: 5). It is about values and practices, and how we embody these values in our daily practices.

Anti-Capitalist, Anti-Colonial

The western world has not always been capitalist, just as it has not always been burdened by parasitic state forms. Nor have its practices always been as environmentally unsustainable as they are today. These are relatively new developments, related to modernity and industrialization. Before the white man could colonize anyone else, he had to colonize himself. This points to a need for both structural and social reorganization as processes of decolonization. A mere change in structure cannot overcome the power of structure, as Bakunin pointed out, but neither can a mere change in structure overcome the power of socialization. Evidence of this lies in the endless list of insurrections that failed to lead to the Big One, such as the recent rise and subsequent decline of autonomous institutions and practices in Argentina. Cultural revitalization has been recognized as a much-needed element to any resistance and reconstruction; the existence of autonomous women's movements within each of these traditions tells us that there is still work to be done in dealing with issues of gender and sexual oppression.

Feminisms

Anarchist feminism, which has existed as long as anarchism itself, seeks not only to dismantle patriarchy, but to abolish all arbitrary authority and hierarchy and replace them with spontaneous and decentralized organizations. Of course, if anarchism as a discourse opposes all forms of oppression, then the term 'anarchist feminism' becomes redundant: all anarchists must be feminists, not just some of the women. Despite the indisputable logic of this argument, anarchist men and women of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries often differed in the relative importance they gave to fighting patriarchy vs. fighting the so-called 'big three' of capitalism, the church, and the state. Patriarchy also permeated interpersonal relationships among anarchists (as it still does, to varying degrees).

Anarchist feminists have a long history of dialogue with non-anarchist women, pointing to the 'here-and-now' changes feminist movements have been able to accomplish for women. Radical feminism and anarchist feminism have a close affinity; they diverge, however, from those streams of radical feminism that advocate for matriarchy as an alternative to patriarchy. Anarchist feminists seek not to 'seize power,' but to 'abolish' it (Ehrlich 2002: 44). The attempts by anarchist feminists to radicalize feminism seem not to have been successful. There seems to have been more success, however, in feminizing anarchism.

Indigenous feminists tend to see patriarchy as an imposition from the outside (patriarchal colonialism); while some indigenous women reject the label of 'feminist' outright, others have constructed hybrid approaches. What ends up being called 'matriarchy' when talking about socio-historical organizations of indigenous communities is better seen as a complex system in which men and women share power through complementary roles. There is no simple relationship, then, between western and indigenous feminisms. As Andrea Smith points out, "these theories are not monolithic and cannot be simply reduced to [a] dichotomy" (2005: 118). However, Smith and other indigenous women do argue for a certain specificity to an indigenous feminism, in that it necessarily understands that "attacks on Native women's status are themselves attacks on Native sovereignty" (Smith 2005: 123).

Anarcha-Indigenism

Theoretically, an anarcha-indigenist perspective is based on an interlocking analysis of oppression, without privileging one over another. How might anarchists, feminists, and indigenous peoples work together, as individuals, communities, and nations, in ways that protect our autonomy and promote mutual aid and decentralization? It seems that the two-row wampum model is a very good one, especially once it is generalized into an 'n-row' system. Each of us must repsect the desire of the others to steer their own vessels, as we all travel down the same river together. This model could be implemented as a non-statist federation, which would include communities and nations that share the principles just discussed and are committed to acting upon them. Non-statist federation represents a turn away from "the assimilative lure of the politics of recognition," towards "direct[ing] our own struggles, ... our own on-the-ground strategies of freedom" (Coulthard 2006: 12). In the context of settler states, it would mean inverting and undermining the whole 'land claims' process, so as to recognize the historical fact that we, as settlers, are present on indigenous lands, to which we have no 'claim' at all, in the sense of ownership. Rather, we must return to our original agreements and work out sustainable modes of peaceful co-existence.

Communities and nations in a non-statist federation would have to pay close attention to diplomacy, that is, to creating and maintaining good relations between all of its constituencies. This requires protocols, which could emerge out of an explicit project to 'indigenize' and 'anarchize' dominant western understandings of 'international relations.' Indigenizing such relations requires, I think, working at a number of different levels - political and social, structural and interpersonal. Politically, settlers must stand in solidarity with indigenous peoples reclaiming land and fighting for self-determination, by taking action within and against the dominant order in their own societies. This action can and must be both symbolic and direct, including such tasks as media work, jail and court support, blockades, protests, information sessions on the history of colonialism, and so on. This kind of work is ongoing, but it tends to be sporadic and take on a crisis-response modality. Once the barricades come down, the settlers go home and don't come back until they go up again. We need to build more, better, and stronger social and personal relationships across the colonial divide. By learning about each other's traditions and practices, we can begin to address existing tensions marked with centuries of colonialism, genocide, and oppression.

Related Groups and Practices:

Wasase Movement
Indigenous Governance Program
Indigenous Peoples Solidarity Movement
Friends of Grassy Narrows
Barriere Lake Solidarity
Kingston Indigenous Solidarity Network
Warrior Societies
(un)Settler Network

Related Theorists and Traditions:

Taiaiake Alfred
Ward Churchill
Chiinuuks Ogilvie
Glen Coulthard
Richard Day
Jackie Lasky
Andrea Smith
Daniel Morley-Johnson

Related Interviews:

Anarchist-Indigenous Solidarity in Ontario (Anonymous)

Anti-Colonial Resistance on Turtle Island (Anonymous)

External Links:

Wasase Movement Statement of Principles
iGov
New Socialist Indigenous Resurgence Issue
No 2010
Solidarity for Grassy Narrows
Taiaiake Alfred

source of article:
http://affinityproject.org/traditions/anarchaindigenism.html

Raoul Vaneigem: What's Free is the Absolute Weapon / An interview with the former situationist by one of his old buddies

2011-12-25T16:32:00.000-08:00

A member of the Situationist International from 1961 to 1970, Raoul Vaneigem is the author of Traité de savoir-vivre à l’usage des jeunes générations (Gallimard, 1967),[1] from which the most forceful slogans of May 68 were drawn, and around thirty other books. The most recent to appear is L’État n’est plus rien, soyons tout (Rue des Cascades, 2011).[2]

Siné Mensuel: Can you give a brief definition of the situationists?

Raoul Vaneigem: No. The living is irreducible to definitions. The vitality and radicality of the situationists continues to develop behind the scenes of a spectacle that has every reason to keep quiet and conceal itself. On the other hand, the ideological recuperation that this radicality has been subjected to has experienced a superficial surge, but its interests have nothing in common with mine.

Siné Mensuel: What did the situs mean when they said that situationism doesn't exist?

Raoul Vaneigem: The situationists were always hostile to ideologies, and to speak of situationism would be to place an ideology where there isn't one.

Siné Mensuel: Why did you break with the Situationist International in 1970? In hindsight, what do you think of Guy Debord?

Raoul Vaneigem: I broke [off] because the radicality that had been the priority in May 1968 was in the process of dissolving into bureaucratic behavior. Each member had chosen to pursue his route alone or to abandon the project of a self-managed society. Perhaps Debord and I felt more complicity than affection, but the split doesn't matter! What is sincerely lived is never lost. The rest is only the dregs of futility.

Siné Mensuel: What's your take on the Movement of the Indignant?[3]

Raoul Vaneigem: It is a public-safety reaction against the resignation and fear that provide the tyranny of capitalism with its best supports. But indignation isn't enough. It is less a matter of struggling against a system that is collapsing than in favor of new social structures founded upon direct democracy. While the State is destroying public services, only a self-managing movement can take charge of the well-being of everyone.

Siné Mensuel: Is utopianism still on the agenda?

Raoul Vaneigem: Utopianism? From now on, that's the hell of the past. We have always been constrained to live in a place that is everywhere but, in that place, we are nowhere. That's the reality of our exile. It has been imposed on us for thousands of years by an economy founded on the exploitation of man by man. Humanist ideology has made us believe that we are human while we remain, for the most part, reduced to the state of beasts whose predatory instincts are satisfied by the will to power and appropriation. Our "veil of tears" was considered the best possible world. Could we have invented a way of living that is more phantasmagorical and absurd than the all-powerful cruelty of the gods, the caste of priests and princes ruling enslaved peoples, the obligation to work that is supposed to guarantee joy and substantiate the Stalinist paradise, the millenarianist Third Reich, the Maoist Cultural Revolution, the society of well-being (the Welfare state[4]), the totalitarianism of money beyond which there is neither individual nor social safety, [and] finally the idea that survival is everything and life is nothing? Against that utopia, which passes for reality, is opposed the only reality that matters: what we try to live by assuring our happiness and that of everyone else. Thenceforth, we no longer are in a utopia, but at the heart of a mutation, a change of civilization that takes shape under our eyes and that many people, blinded by the dominant obscurantism, are incapable of discerning. Because the quest for profit makes men into predatory, insensitive and stupid brutes.

Siné Mensuel: Explain to us how what's free [la gratuité] is, according to you, the first decisive step towards the end of money.

Raoul Vaneigem: Money isn't simply becoming devalued ([diminished] buying-power proves it); it invests itself so savagely in the bubble of stock-market speculation that it is doomed to implode. The tornado of short-term profit destroys everything in its path; it sterilizes the earth and hardens life so as to extract useless benefits. Humanely conceived, life is incompatible with the economy that exploits man and the earth for lucrative ends. Unlike survival, life gives and gives itself. What's free is the absolute weapon against the dictatorship of profit. In Greece, a "Don't Pay" movement is developing. At its beginning, the car-drivers refused tolls; they had the support of a collective of lawyers who sued the State, which was accused of selling the highways to private firms. Today it is a question of refusing to pay for public transportation, of demanding free health care and education, of no longer paying taxes and duties that serve to bail out the embezzled banks and enrich the stockholders. The fight for pleasure in oneself and in the world doesn't pass through money, but, on the contrary, its absolute exclusion.

It is absurd that a strike obstructs the free circulation of people while it could decree free public transportation, health care, and education. It is necessary that we understand -- before the financial crash that is coming takes place -- that what's free is the absolute weapon of life against the economy. It is not a question of breaking men but breaking the system that exploits them and the machines that make them pay.

Siné Mensuel: You advocate civil disobedience. What does it mean to you?

Raoul Vaneigem: It is what's going on in Greece, Spain, Tunisia and Portugal. It is what summarizes the title of the pamphlet I wrote for our libertarian friends in Thessaloniki: The State is Nothing; We Are Everything. Civil disobedience is not an end in itself. It is the road towards direct democracy and generalized self-management, that is to say, the creation of conditions that are propitious for individual and collective happiness.

The project of self-management begins its realization when an assembly decides to ignore the State and, on its own initiative, puts in place the structures that are capable of responding to individual and collective needs. From 1936 to 1939, the libertarian collectives of Andalusia, Aragon and Catalonia successfully experimented with self-managing systems. The Spanish Communist Party and Lister's army crushed them, opening the way for Franco's troops.

To me, nothing seems more important today than the implementation of self-managing collectives capable of developing themselves when the monetary collapse makes money disappear and, along with it, a way of thinking implanted in our behavior for thousands of years.

Siné Mensuel: You disapprove of the carceral system, but in 1996, following the Dutroux Affair,[5] you participated in the "White March" in Brussels that, according to the French press, demanded greater prosecution of pedophiliac acts. Isn't this contradictory?

Raoul Vaneigem: This is a good example of an obvious journalistic counter-truth. If the parents of the victims of Dutroux had demanded the death penalty for the assassin, the crowd would have agreed. Thus, the opposite took place. I admire the courage and humanity of Gino and Carine Russo [parents of one of the victims], who are resolutely opposed to the death penalty (they have even warned that they wouldn't accept it if the murderer was eliminated by the other prisoners, as is the custom). The "White March" was an extremely rare example of a popular emotion that [directly] refused pedophilia and predators in the name of humanity, and not indirectly through penal repression. There was a dignity there, in contrast to the populist ignominy that consists in using emotion to promote brutish repression, vengeance. Today, where does one see a collective reaction that denounces the strategy of the scapegoat, which, in order to prevent the anger of the citizens from focusing on the ruinous racketeering mafias, sounds the alarm bell of fear and security so as to designate the other, the foreigner, the “different” – Jew, Arab, Gypsy, homosexual or, if need be, simple neighbor – as a potential threat and enemy?

Siné Mensuel: You have several children. Do you not find it cruel to deliberately give birth to new beings in this world?

Raoul Vaneigem: I loathe the pro-birth politics that, by mechanically multiplying children, condemns them to poverty, to sickness, to disaffection, and to military, sexual and work-related exploitation. Only religious, ideological and criminal [affairiste] obscurantism finds those politics to their advantage. But I refuse to allow a State or an authority of any kind to impose its ukases on me. Each person has the right to have children or to not have them. The important thing is that they are wanted and engendered with the consciousness that everything will be done to make them happy. There are new generations – completely different from the generations that were the fruits of familial authoritarianism, the cult of predation, and religious hypocrisy – that today are in the process of opposing the liberty of living according to their desires against market totalitarianism and its political yes-men.

Siné Mensuel: Tell us about animal rights [la cause animale], which revolutionary thinkers have not taken into account for a long time.

Raoul Vaneigem: It is less a question of animal rights than a reconciliation of man with a terrestrial nature that he has exploited for lucrative purposes until today. What has hindered the evolution of man towards a veritable humanity has been the alienation of the body put to work, the exploitation of the life force transformed into a productive force. Our residual animality has been repressed in the name of a spirit that is only the emanation of a heavenly and temporal power charged with taming terrestrial and corporal matter. Today, the alliance with natural energies is preparing to supplant the plundering of vital, planetary resources. To rediscover our relationship with the animal kingdom is to reconcile with the animal inside us; it is to refine it instead of oppressing it, repressing it, and condemning it to the cruelties of blowing-off steam. Our humanization implies recognizing the animal’s right to be respected, in its specificity.

Siné Mensuel: In Belgium, voting is obligatory, in principle at least. Have you ever voted? Do you pay the fines?

Raoul Vaneigem: I never vote. I have never received a fine.

Siné Mensuel: What lessons can be drawn from this long year, in which Belgium has had no government?[6]

Raoul Vaneigem: None. During the lucrative sleep of the politicians – those 55 government ministers don’t have problems making ends meet – the financial mafias have continued to make laws and do very well with the yes-men at their command.

Siné Mensuel: How do you see the on-going “revolutions” in the Arab countries? Does it seem to you that Islam is a threat to them?

Raoul Vaneigem: Where the social carries the day, religious preoccupations fade. The liberty that is currently getting rid of secular tyranny isn’t disposed to accommodate itself to religious tyranny. Islam will try to democratize itself and will experience the same decline as Christianity. I appreciate the Tunisian slogan “Freedom to pray, freedom to drink!”

Siné Mensuel: Finally, you remain an irreducible optimist, don’t you?

Raoul Vaneigem: I can content myself with Scutenaire’s formula:[7] “Pessimists! What did you expect?” But I am not an optimist or a pessimist. I don’t give a fuck about definitions. I want to live by beginning again each day. It will be necessary that the denunciation and refusal of our insupportable conditions yield their place to the working out of a human society that is an absolute break from market society.

(Remarks collected by Jean-Pierre Bouyxou. Published on 24 November 2011 by Siné Mensuel. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! 23 December 2011. Footnotes by the translator, except where noted.)

[1] Translated as The Revolution of Everyday Life (1983) by Donald Nicholson-Smith.

[2] The State is no longer anything, we are everything. Not yet translated into English.

[3] A series of spontaneous demonstrations in Spain, involving tens of thousands of people, starting on 15 May 2011.

[4] English in original.

[5] Marc Dutroux is a currently imprisoned child molester and child killer. It took the Belgian police and judicial system an extraordinarily long time to apprehend and prosecute him for crimes he committed in 1995 and 1996.

[6] Split in two geographically and politically – Flanders (Flemish Nationalist) and Wallonia (Socialist) – Belgium hasn’t had an official government since the parliamentary elections of 13 June 2010.

[7] Note by Siné Mensuel: the Belgian writer Louis Scutenaire (1905-1987) is the author of Mes inscriptions. Raoul Vaneigem devoted a book to him in the “Poets Today” Collection (Seghers, 1991).

published at http://www.notbored.org/sine-mensuel.html

"Social Mobility (in U.S.A.)? No, there is not!", by UnderstandingSociety

2011-12-07T17:35:00.000-08:00

We often think of the United States as a place with a lot of social mobility. What exactly does this mean? And is it true? Ironically, the answer appears to be a fairly decisive "no." In fact, here's a graph from a 2005 New York Times series on income mobility that shows that the United States ranks second to last among Great Britain, US, France, Canada, and Denmark when it comes to the rate of income improvement over four generations for poor families. And here are two very interesting recent studies that come to similar conclusions -- a report on social mobility by the Center for American Progress and a 2007 academic study by researchers at Kent State, Wisconsin and Syracuse. Here is how Professor Kathryn Wilson, associate professor of economics at Kent State University, summarizes the main finding of the latter study: “People like to think of America as the land of opportunities. The irony is that our country actually has less social mobility and more inequality than most developed countries” (link).

Basically social mobility refers to the likelihood that a child will grow up into adulthood and attain a higher level of economic and social wellbeing than his/her family of origin. Is there a correlation between the socioeconomic status (SES) of an adult and his/her family of origin? Do poor people tend to have poor parents? And do poor parents tend to have children who end up as poor adults later in life? Does low SES in the parents' circumstances at a certain time in life -- say, the age of 30 -- serve to predict the SES of the child at the same age?

The fact of social mobility is closely tied to facts about social inequality and facts about social class. In a highly egalitarian society there would be little need for social mobility. And in a society with a fairly persistent class structure there is also relatively little social mobility -- because there is some set of mechanisms that limit entry and exit into the various classes. In the simplest terms, a social class is a sub-population within a society in which parents and their adult children tend to share similar occupations and economic circumstances of life. It is possible for a society to have substantial inequalities but also a substantial degree of social mobility. But there are good sociological reasons to suspect that this is a fairly unstable situation; groups with a significant degree of wealth and power are also likely to be in a position to arrange social institutions in such a way that privilege is transmitted across generations. (Here are several earlier postings on class; post, post, post.)

A crucial question to pose as we think about class and social mobility, is the issue of the social mechanisms through which children are launched into careers and economic positions in society. A pure meritocracy is a society in which specific social mechanisms distinguish between high-achieving and low-achieving individuals, assigning high-achieving individuals to desirable positions in society. A pure plutocracy is a society in which holders of wealth provide advantages to their children, ensuring that their adult children become the wealth-holders of the next generation. A caste system assigns children and young adults to occupations based on their ascriptive status. In each case there are fairly visible social mechanisms through which children from specific social environments are tracked into specific groups of roles in society. The sociological question is how these mechanisms work; in other words, we want to know about the "microfoundations" of the system of economic and social placement across generations.

In a society in which there is substantial equality of opportunity across all social groups, we would expect there to be little or no correlation between the SES of the parent and the child. We might have a very simple theory of the factors that determine an adult's SES in a society with extensive equality of opportunity: the sum total of the individual's talents, personality traits, and motivation strongly influence success in the pursuit of a career. (Chance also plays a role.) If talent is randomly distributed across the population, rich and poor; if all children are exposed to similar opportunities for the development of their talents; and if all walks of life are open to talent without regard to social status -- then we should find a zero correlation between parents' SES and adult child's SES. So, in this simple model, evidence of correlation with SES of parent and child would also be evidence of failures of equality of opportunity.

However, the situation is more complicated. Success in career is probably influenced by factors other than talent: for example, personal values, practical interests, personality qualities like perseverence, and cultural values. And these qualities are plainly influenced by the child's family and neighborhood environment. So if there is such a thing as a "culture of poverty" or a "culture of entrepreneurism", then the social fact of the child's immersion in this culture will be part of the explanation of the child's performance in adulthood -- whatever opportunities were available to the child. (French sociologist Didier Lapeyronnie makes a point along these lines about the segregation of immigrant communities that exists in French society today; post, post.) So this is a fact about family background that is causally relevant to eventual SES and independent of the opportunity structure of the society.

But another relevant fact is the sharply differentiated opportunities that exist for children and young adults from various social groups in many societies, including the United States. How is schooling provided to children across all income groups? What kind and quality of healthcare is available across income and race? To what extent are job opportunities made available to all individuals without regard to status, race, or income? How are urban people treated relative to suburban or rural people when it comes to the availability of important social opportunities? It is plain that there are substantial differences across many societies when it comes to questions like these.

Education is certainly one of the chief mechanisms of social mobility in any society; it involves providing the child and young adult with the tools necessary to translate personal qualities and talents into productive activity. So inequalities in access to education constitute a central barrier to social mobility. (See this earlier post for a discussion of some efforts to assess the impact of higher education on social mobility for disadvantaged people.)

And it seems all too clear that children have very unequal educational opportunities throughout the United States, from pre-school to university. These inequalities correlate with socially significant facts like family income, place of residence, and race; and they correlate in turn with the career paths and eventual SES of the young people who are placed in one or another of these educational settings. Race is a particularly prevalent form of structural inequalities of opportunity in the US; multiple studies have shown how slowly patterns of racial segregation are changing in the cities of the United States (post). And along with segregation comes limitation on opportunities associated with health, education, and employment.

So the findings mentioned above, documenting the relatively limited degree of social mobility that currently exists in the United States by international standards, are understandable when we consider the entrenched structures that exist in our country determining the opportunities available to children and young adults. Race, poverty, and geography conspire to create recurring patterns of low SES across generations of families in the United States. (See an earlier post on Douglas Massey's analysis of the mechanisms of race and inequality in the US.) And limited social mobility is the predictable result.

source:

http://understandingsociety.blogspot.com/2009/08/social-mobility.html

California Police Peace Officer Standards, Training Crowd Management and Civil Disobedience Guidelines / CROWD MANAGEMENT AND CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE GUIDELINES: shared by publicintelligence.net

2011-12-04T18:45:00.000-08:00

Void Network invites the friends and comrades to read, investigate, think and understand the methodologies and practices that USA and European Police uses to manipulate, passify and desolve the crowds of horizontal, anti-hierarchical and revolted communities in the streets and occupied squares of this world. The research platform Public Intelligence host (among many others) the

California Police Peace Officer Standards and Training Crowd Management and Civil Disobedience Guidelines

featuring

CROWD MANAGEMENT AND CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE GUIDELINES

35 pages
March 2003

Penal Code Section 13514.5 requires the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training to establish guidelines and training for law enforcement’s response to crowd management and civil disobedience.
These guidelines contain information for law enforcement agencies to consider when addressing the broad range of issues related to crowd management and civil disobedience. The guidelines do not constitute a policy, nor are they intended to establish a standard for any agency. The Commission is sensitive to the needs for agencies to have individualized policies that reflect concern for local issues. The Commission intends these guidelines to be a resource for law enforcement executives that will provide maximum discretion and flexibility in the development of individual agency policies.
…
In the United States all people have the right of free speech and assembly guaranteed by the First Amendment of the Federal Constitution and California State Constitution. Law enforcement recognizes the right of free speech and actively protects people exercising that right.
The rights all people have to march, demonstrate, protest, rally, or perform other First Amendment activities comes with the responsibility to not abuse or violate the civil and property rights of others. The responsibility of law enforcement is to protect the lives and property of all people. Law enforcement should not be biased by the opinions being expressed nor by the race, gender, sexual orientation, physical disabilities, appearances, or affiliation of anyone exercising his/her lawful First Amendment rights. Law enforcement personnel must have the integrity to keep personal, political or religious views from affecting their actions.
When it becomes necessary to control the actions of a crowd that constitutes an unlawful assembly, the commitment and responsibility of law enforcement is to control lawfully, efficiently, and with minimal impact upon the community. A variety of techniques and tactics may be necessary to resolve a civil disobedience incident. Only that force which is objectively reasonable may be used to arrest violators and restore order.
All agencies should familiarize themselves with the terms, definitions, and guidelines set forth in this document. These are the generally accepted principles by which agencies respond to lawful and unlawful assemblies. The material in this document is designed to assist law enforcement executives in addressing the broad range of issues surrounding civil disobedience.
…
Guideline #9: Use of Force: Force Options
Agencies should develop use of force policies, procedures, and training for managing crowds and civil disobedience.
Discussion:
When dealing with crowds and civil disobedience situations, law enforcement must be a disciplined and well-organized control force. The decisions to use force and the force options that may be applied in response to these incidents range from law enforcement presence to deadly force. Peace officers need not use the least intrusive force option, but only that force which is objectively reasonable under the totality of the circumstances (Scott v. Henrich, 39 F. 3d 912, 9th Cir. 1994, and Forrester v. City of San Diego, 25 F. 3d 804 9th Cir. 1994). Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 109 S. Ct. 1865, 104 L. Ed. 2d 443 (1989). The reasonableness of the force used to affect a particular seizure is analyzed under the Fourth Amendment and determined by balancing the nature and quality of the intrusion on the individual’s Fourth Amendment interests against the governmental interests at stake.
Prior to an event, agencies should continually review their use of force alternatives in response to potential actions by protesters. Training should reflect reasonable use of force alternatives in order that officers are prepared to consider the tactics/force options available. Chew v. Gates, 27 F. 3d 1432, 1443 (9th Cir. 1994).
* A Sampling of Use of Force Considerations:
Determine compliance or non-compliance of crowd
Physically moving non-compliant offenders
Anticipate possible actions of demonstrators
Identify criminal violations involved
Develop arrest protocol
Develop use of pain compliance protocol
Plan for disabled, elderly, and children demonstrators
Determine availability of personnel
Evaluate availability of other public safety resources
Include protection devices for involved personnel
Plan for the safety of bystanders
Evaluate mobility of suspects/protestors
Determine avenues of controlled departure
Anticipate potential for medical resources
Establish protocols for less lethal munitions
* A Sampling of Force Options:
Law enforcement presence
Verbalization
Firm grip
Compliance techniques
Control devices
Nonlethal chemical agents
Electrical control devices
Impact weapons/batons
Less lethal (i.e., sting balls, grenades, bean bags)
Deadly force

you can read more Police and State methodologies here:

you can read more info from Public Intelligence here:
http://publicintelligence.net/

"Cyclones of Struggle: From Occupation to Intifada" by the Moment of Insurrection

2011-12-01T17:19:00.000-08:00

“A beautiful storm has come, but not yet the beautiful destruction”. The cyclone of intifada continues to destroy the Egyptian state, “I am boycotting because I believe it is a circus,” said rebel-blogger Hossam el-Hamalawy, “You cannot have clean elections while the police force which has not been purged is in charge of securing the ballot boxes. You have to settle the battle in the streets, then you settle it in the ballot boxes. We have to win our occupation in Tahrir Square first.”
The street opens itself to the community-in-motion as a parallel space against the state from which the emergent counter-power reproduces new ways of thinking and acting.
The battle of Tahrir is diffused throughout society this last year. Escaping reification into the political apparatus of capture, it exists as a Popular Power in the Streets. Over the last week it has manifest as violent insurrection in the district surrounding Tahrir Square, the Muhammad Mahoud meidan, where I stayed months ago:
“The people in Muhammad Mahmoud are decidedly not revolutionaries, they are vandals,” a police captain insisted. When in Rome, do as the Vandals.
From the revolution to civil war- no longer revolutionaries but a new form of life escaping from the structures of civilization. “It’s a way of life. You don’t just become one. You aren’t converted. You have to be an Ultra from within,” said Ahmed, a Cairo native and Ultra member who only agreed to an interview if his real name and appearance were not revealed. The Ultras are “anti-media,” according to Ahmed. He said they prefer to keep their identities secret.
‘Ultra’. Who the fuck are these guys. “The Ultras have stood at the forefront of recent clashes with security forces. In many cases, they were armed with rocks, petrol bombs and firecrackers.” A fraternal organization of mad bombers.
“The Ultras are here. I know that because they’re the only ones facing the CSF (police) with force while singing their hymns,” protester Mosa’ab Elshamy wrote on Twitter on the first day of last weeks clashes. It is part of the Ultras code to remain anonymous to non-members. Dressed in a uniform of skinny jeans, neck scarves and hooded sweatshirts pulled tight over their heads, the Ultras in Tahrir could go unnoticed.
They are here now. Stepping out from the blaze of their flares. Constitutive of the ongoing occupation, their camp is set apart by hastily sketched graffiti on the tents that proclaims their beliefs for those who know the code.
“A-C-A-B,” Ahmed said, reading aloud the red etchings on the outside of his tent. “All cops are bastards,” he explained. According to Ahmed, the abbreviation is a motto for Ultras clubs around the world. Ultra clubs, and the rest of us.
According to the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer:
“Established in 2007, the ultras — modelled on Italy’s autonomous, often violent fan clubs – have since proven their metal in past confrontations with the Egyptian police, who charge that criminals and terrorists populate their ranks.  The ultras key role in the rebellion extends a tradition of soccer’s close association with politics in Egypt dating back to when the then British colonial power introduced the game to the North African country in the early 20th century. “
Out of the scene and into the streets! “Before the revolution the Ultras were confined to stadiums, so people didn’t know much about them,” occupier Elshamy said.
“After the revolution a lot of perspectives changed about them and they became really popular. They were described as those courageous guys. They stayed there in the square almost through 100 hours of fighting; It’s easy to notice them because of their use of Molotov cocktails, their extreme courage and recklessness, their chants. They became a common sight.”
Says an El Ahly ultra: “You don’t change things in Egypt talking about politics. We’re not political, the government knows that and has to deal with us,”
Rabab El-Mahdi calls this “clear class confrontations”. “Since the Ultras were created, they were always targeted by state security. They are seen as a mob or as hooligans,” she continues, “So they developed skills that none of the middle class was forced to develop. Plus they come from backgrounds where such skills are needed on daily basis just as survival mechanisms.”
She added that as long as Egypt’s security apparatus remained intact, violent confrontations would continue. “The skills they developed in dealing with police came in very handy and it comes in handy every time there is a direct confrontation,”
The ultras’ experience is also reflected in the setting up of survival services for the mass of protesters camped on the square in tents behind barricades and the introduction of a rotation of labour among them.
“There were designated rock hurlers, specialists in turning over and torching vehicles for defensive purposes and a machine like quartermaster crew delivering projectiles like clockwork on a cardboard platters.”
Ultras member Ahmed is careful to explain that he and his “brothers in blood” do not attack first. “An Ultra doesn’t attack anyone, We’re a watchdog for the truth. Any unfairness that we spot, within the state or anywhere, we have to stand up for what is right.”
“We don’t have any political direction. Whenever we go to a strike or a demonstration, we do it on an individual basis. We don’t announce it. We are just here as humans. On Saturday, initially we came individually. But then we found because we have similar beliefs we went straight to the front line and there were our brothers to the left and right. The personality of an Ultra places you at the front line because you are defending a cause. There is nothing easy in life, we have to suffer and sacrifice until we achieve.”
While ultras’ Power-Knowledge helped substantially in articulating and holding the front line, the front line was made of many other youths who carried on the fight. Some were young Islamists, refusing to obey their official party line. But the majority of front line fighters came from the substantial population of young, socially excluded men from Cairo’s peripheral ‘ashwa’i ["informal"] neighbourhoods. They are sometimes called the wilad sis.
The wilad sis are young working class men who might be described as precarious workers, most are unemployed, underemployed, unskilled and semi-skilled, doing occasional jobs that change every day (though on most days, there is no “work”). Others refuse work and subsist upon the black market. They are often marked by a particular dress code and hairstyle that often involves copious quantities of gel (the word sis alludes to the attention they often pay to their appearance).
Earlier this year I traveled through Tunisia, Cairo and in Alexandria I met, over much hash, with a group of young insurgents who identified themselves as ‘Franco Arabia’s’. They celebrated a pan- Mediterranean, as expressed in a unique style of hip-hop and aggressive migration to Italy, a proclivity towards anarchism, queer liberation and are combatively against patriarchy
Proudly they told me it was their call for a day of action against the police- who had killed one of their comrades, which helped instigate the insurrection. The day of action was organized for Jan 25^th- the national day of police, and after its announcement on face book, Tunisia exploded and the antagonisms in Alexandria and across Egypt did as well, until finally on that day, the demonstration led millions onto the streets which they violently held for weeks.
From the various field reports that I salvaged these quotes from, there is recognition of the middle class activists (as well as Islamist youths), most who expressed the understanding that without the barricades and violent resistance they would not have been able to protest. But no interviews for this montage. I will though, share this observation from Lucie Ryzova, an engaged-blogger during this last battle:
“It is in Abdeen, the streets east of Tahrir Square between Muhammad Mahmoud Street and Meidan Bab al-Luq, leading to the ministry of interior, where a battle was waged during the past week.
And a battle it was. People went there knowing what they were getting into. They went there to fight. Police threw teargas canisters and used shotguns (occasionally also live ammunition); against them was a line of young men mostly throwing stones, but also Molotov cocktails and small homemade bombs.
It was a “battle for the dakhiliyya ['the Ministry of Interior']“, but that does not mean that any of the young men facing the police necessarily wanted or intended to take over the ministry’s building. It was a symbolic battle – or more precisely, a frighteningly real and bloody fight over a symbolic location; the fight itself was the message.
The khatt al-nar ["firing line"] belonged to particular people who went there to beat and get beaten. Throughout the first week of the Second Revolution, Tahrir Square and the battlezone to its east each had its own demographic.
Each was a different crowd, but they can only be understood as a symbiosis – a specific social alliance – as both constructed and supported each other, and they increasingly overlapped. The square, the “safe” zone, contained a truly socially mixed crowd. People from all walks of life came there, often several times a day, in support of those who decided to camp out, to help “hold” the square and support its cause.
One saw a social mix rarely seen in Egypt (though it was famously present in the First Revolution): middle-class men and women, some of them activists but most of them not; young and old, in suits, kefiyehs and jeans, alongside the galabiyas and long beards of the salafis; bareheaded women as well as munaqqabat (fully veiled women).
On the front line, by contrast (and naturally so given the nature of the battle), the demographic was predominantly (though not exclusively) young male and socially marginal.
But the frontline and the Meidan are also part of one whole. The frontline’s position is to protect the Meidan, even if it also developed into a fight for its own sake. Without the on-the-ground crowd of ultras and the wilad sis prepared to stop police violence with their own bodies, and most importantly, to hit back, the largely middle-class opposition could not have held the Meidan for long.”
Was this violent defence not also the case for Occupy Vancouver? As made clear by Zig-Zag, it was the fear of the chaos brought forth in the 2011 riots that forced the city to keep their pigs on a leash. Anyone who was present at both riot and occupation know the difference was not only the communication of destruction- but also the communication of Counter Power.
The insurrections last year that has created this global intifada, was the becoming of a new solidarity between the pro-revolutionary’s and the rioting hoodlums. Such commonality was developed over years of relationships initiated by a militant underground group in Tunisia called Takriz, (its closest translations is, ‘breaking my balls’ or ‘bollocks to that’)
Realizing the advantage in working with Ultras as opposed to the same-old leftist shit- over several seasons they developed a Web forum for Ultras from different teams, hosted by Takriz. This allowed for years of mutual agitation, so that come the rupture is was a lightning transition from riot to insurrection
The ultras were also on Egypt’s streets at first crack. On January 24, the day before thousands planned to protest the Mubarak regime, the Ultra Facebook pages sent out a message saying, “We’re not political, we’re not part of this as an organization—you as individuals are free to do whatever you want (…) This is what we’ve been preparing for.”
There were also e-mails with attachments describing how to deal with the military—”an Ultra thing from Tunisia,” remembers Kotb Hassaneen, an Alexandrian insurgent. Some of the tactics they shared, says Foetus, the codename for a member of Takriz, “have roots in long-standing contacts with anarchist and international protest groups like Indymedia, the Antifascist Network, and CrimethInc. For example, the technique called “Black Bloc”—having protesters wear black clothing en masse for impact and anonymity, with padding and protection to reduce injuries—dates back to 1980 in Germany.”
Here, the potentiality of a becoming-together of the spirit of the Riot and the antagonisms of the Occupation remain an open chance for us- in this Global Intifada.
The cyclones of struggle blast this world apart. Although there are periods that the state of siege regains the social peace- any moment that will explode, and again the streets will fill with fire. In this epoch we cannot allow the memory of the dead to be stolen. We stand as the Mothers of the martyrs who hold vigil in the midst of street battles.
Over the last year the insurrection has not ceased in Egypt or Tunisia, overcoming the billions of dollars empire spends (Canada $20 million) on counter-insurgency- in the form on elections and ‘democratic-institution building’. This apparatus of capture is the same network of regulation we battle here. The institutionalization of crisis is best dealt with by the methods deployed throughout the ‘Arab spring’- that is, the absolute destruction of institutions and the armed exodus from the reifying radiation left in their wake. In Tunisia and Egypt I was witness to the ‘fired’ shells of bureaucratic control. The revolted will not trade in their looted weapons (93 cop shops and over 300 military barracks sacked in Egypt alone) for the opportunity to vote. And they have not abandoned the struggle against imperial democracy.
Almost everyone I met over there, I asked, ‘what will you do when the state steals your revolution?’ The unanimous response was, ‘We will just have another one’! Last month in Sidi Bouzid, the town from where the uprising in Tunisia began, the multitude set fire to the headquarters of the winning political party, the day after the election. Such will the beautiful destruction be wrought.

d.

Links to my travel writing & chronology of insurrections in Tunisia and Egypt:
http://momentofinsurrection.wordpress.com/fragments-of-intifada-in-tunis-egypt/
http://momentofinsurrection.wordpress.com/chronolgy-of-intifada-in-tunisia-egypt/

ARCHITECTS & PLANNERS FOR JUSTICE IN PALESTINE (APJP): STATEMENT

2011-11-30T15:47:00.000-08:00

Void Network express solidarity to the struggle of the people of Palestine for Freedom and Self-Determination. We introduce the statement of the activist's group "Architects & Planners for Justice in Palestine (APJP)

Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine (APJP) is an independent international pressure group of design professionals. We are seeking international support for an ethical and just practice for our professions in Palestine and the Occupied Territories. We oppose the building of such projects as the illegal settlements, check points, settler–only highways and above all the Separation Wall. Palestinian land has become so fragmented that a viable Palestinian State has been rendered impossible. The map of Palestine, for the indigenous Palestinians, has shrunk from being 97% of the land in 1917 to 44% in 1947(see maps below) Today only 13% of the former Palestinian lands are being recognised by Israeli unilateral ‘convergence’ policies, and that small part is being further divided by planning and architectural devices and the matrix of control.

Since 1947 Israeli kibbutzim, towns and cities have been built over the ruins of Palestinian, villages, houses and heritage that were wiped from the map by a form of architectural erasure. Israeli architects and planners, knowingly or not, have become a part of this situation. Israeli settlements built after the 1967 War, considered illegal under international law, could not have been realized without their help. Professional ethics, long enshrined in architectural and planning codes, demand that we confront these unwelcome truths and not remain silent or complicit. It is with this in mind that we are supporting particular campaigns that challenge this unprofessional conduct.

1. Currently, on the slopes of east Jerusalem, in the village of Silwan some eighty-eight Palestinian homes are under threat of demolition. This is part of a master planned development on annexed land for the benefit of Israeli citizens, which would consolidate the presence of illegal settlers to the exclusion of the current Palestinian inhabitants. The clearance is made under the pretext of gaining a large green space.

2. A further campaign includes what is called Israel’s E1 Plan. This master plan aims for the expansion of the largest illegal Israeli settlement, Ma’ale Adumim, linking it with the Jerusalem metropolitan area. This plan would dissect the northern and southern areas of the West Bank, destroying the possibility of contiguity for a future Palestinian state.

APJP calls on Israeli and international architects, planners and those in the construction industry to express their concern in each and every instance of unjust action in annexing Palestinian land, and the projects to be built on them. The future security and justice, in both Israel and Palestine, are at stake.

more info:
www.apjp.org

The Minimum Definition of Intelligence (Theses on the Construction of One’s Own Self-theory) by For Ourselves

2011-11-29T09:21:00.000-08:00

This booklet is for people who are dissatisfied with their lives. If you are happy with your present existence, we have no argument with you. However, if you are tired of waiting for your life to change...

Tired of waiting for authentic community, love and adventure...
Tired of waiting for the end of money and forced work...
Tired of looking for new pastimes to pass the time...
Tired of waiting for a lush, rich existence... Tired of waiting for a situation in which you can realise all your desires...
Tired of waiting for the end of all authorities, alienations, ideologies and moralities...
...then we think you’ll find what follows to be quite handy.

I

One of the great secrets of our miserable yet potentially marvellous time is that thinking can be a pleasure. This is a manual for constructing your own self-theory. Constructing your self-theory is a revelutionary pleasure, the pleasure of constructing your self-theory of revolution.

Building your self-theory is a destructive/constructive pleasure, because you are building a theory-of-practice for the destructive/constructive transformation of this society.

Self-theory is a theory of adventure. It is as erotic and humorous as an authentic revolution.

The alienation felt as a result of having had your thinking done for you by the ideologies of our day, can lead to the search for the pleasurable negation of that alienation: thinking for yourself. It is the pleasure of making your mind your own.

Self-theory is the body of critical thought you construct for your own use. You construct it and use it when you make an analysis of why your life is the way it is, why the world is the way it is. (And ‘thinking’ and ‘feeling’ are inseparable, since thought comes from subjective, emotive experience.) You build your self-theory when you develop a theory of practice — a theory of how to get what you desire for your life.

Theory will be either a practical theory — a theory of revolutionary practice — or it will be nothing... nothing but an aquarium of ideas, a contemplative interpretation of the world. The realm of ideals is the eternal waiting-room of unrealised desire.

Those who assume (usually unconsciously) the impossibility of realising their life’s desires, and of thus fighting for themselves, usually end up fighting for an ideal or cause instead (i.e., the illusion of selfactivity or self-practice). Those who know that this is the acceptance of alienation will now know that all ideals and causes are ideologies.

II

Whenever a system of ideas is structured with an abstraction at the centre — assigning a role or duties to you for its sake — this system is an ideology. An ideology is a system of false consciousness in which you no longer function as the subject in your relation to the world.

The various forms of ideology are all structured around different abstractions, yet they all serve the interests of a dominant (or aspiring dominant) class by giving you a sense of purpose in your sacrifice, suffering and submission.

Religious ideology is the oldest example, the fantastic projection called ‘God’ is the Supreme Subject of the cosmos, acting on every human being as ‘His’ subject.

In the ‘scientific’ and ‘democratic’ ideologies of bourgeois enterprise, capital investment is the ‘productive’ subject directing world history — the ‘invisible hand’ guiding human development. The bourgeoisie had to attack and weaken the power that religious ideology once held. It exposed the mystification of the religious world in its technological investigation, expanding the realm of things and methods out of which it could make a profit.

The various brands of Leninism are ‘revolutionary’ ideologies in which their Party is the rightful subject to dictate world history, by leading its object — the proletariat — to the goal of replacing the bourgeois apparatus with a Leninist one.

The many other forms of the dominant ideologies can be seen daily. The rise of the new religiomsyticisms serve the dominant structure of social relations in a round about way. They provide a neat form in which the emptiness of daily life may be obscured, and like drugs, make it easier to live with. Volunteerism (shoulder to the wheel) and determinism (it’ll all work out) prevent us from recognising our real place in the functioning of the world. In avant-garde ideology, novelty in (and of) itself is what’s important. In survivalism, subjectivity is preempted by fear through the invocation of the image of an impending world catastrophe.

In accepting ideologies we accept an inversion of subject and object; things take on a human power and will, while human beings have their place as things. Ideology is upside-down theory. We further accept the separation between the narrow reality of our daily life, and the image of a world totality that’s out of our grasp. Ideology offers us only a voyeur’s relationship with the totality.

In this separation, and this acceptance of sacrifice for the cause, every ideology serves to protect the dominant social order. Authorities whose power depends on separation must deny us our subjectivity in order to survive themselves. Such denial comes in the form of demanding sacrifices for ‘the common good’, ‘the national interest’, ‘the war effort’, ‘the revolution’....

III

We get rid of the blinders of ideology by constantly asking ourselves... How do I feel?

Am I enjoying myself?
How’s my life?
Am I getting what I want?
Why not?
What’s keeping me from getting what I want?

This is having consciousnessof the commonplace, awareness of one’s everyday routine. That Everyday Life — real life — exists, is a public secret that gets less secret every day, as the poverty of daily life gets more and more visible.

IV

The construction of self-theory is based on thinking for yourself, being fully conscious of desires and their validity. It is the construction of radical subjectivity.

Authentic ‘consciousness raising’ can only be the ‘raising’ of people’s thinking to the level’ of positive (non-guilty) self-consciousness: developing their basic subjectivity, free of ideology and imposed morality in all its forms.

The essence of what many leftists, therapy-mongers, racism awareness trainers and sisterisers term ‘consciousness raising’ is their practice of beating people into unconsciousness with their ideological billyclubs.

The path from ideology (self-negation) to radical subjectivity (self-affirmation) passes through Point Zero, the capital city of nihilism. This is the windswept still point in social space and time... the social limbo wherein which one recognises that the present is devoid of life; that there is no life in one’s daily existence. A nihilist knows the difference between surviving and living.

Nihilists go through a reversal or perspective on their life and the world. Nothing is true for them but their desires, their will to be. They refuse all ideology in their hatred for the miserable social relations in modern capitalist-global society. From this reversed perspective they see with a newly acquired clarity the upside-down world of reification(i), the inversion of subject and object, of abstract and concrete. It is the theatrical landscape of fetishised commodities, mental projections, separations and ideologies: art, God, city planning, ethics, smile buttons, radio stations that say they love you and detergents that have compassion for your hands.

Daily conversation offers sedatives like: “You can’t always get what you want”, “Life has its ups and downs”, and other dogmas of the secular religion of survival. ‘Common sense’ is just the nonsense of common alienation. Every day people are denied an authentic life and sold back its representation.

Nihilists constantly feel the urge to destroy the system which destroys them each day. They cannot go on living as they are, their minds are on fire. Soon enough they run up against the fact that they must come up with a coherent set of tactics that will have a practical effect on the world.

But if a nihilist does not know of the historical possibility for the transformation of the world, his or her subjective rage will coralise into a role: the suicide, the solitary murderer, the street hoodlum vandal, the neo-dadaist, the professional mental patient... all seeking compensation for a life of dead time.

The nihilists’ mistake is that they do not realise that there are others who are also nihilists. Consequently they assume that common communication and participation in a project of self-realisation is impossible.

V

To have a ‘political’ orientation towards one’s life is just to know that you can only change your life by changing the nature of life itself through transfermation of the world — and that transformation of the world requires collective effort.

This project of collective self-realisation can properly be termed politics. However, ‘politics’ has become a mystified, separated category of human activity. Along with all the other socially enforced separations of human activity, ‘politics’ has become just another interest. It even has its specialists — be they politicians or politicos. It is possible to be interested (or not) in football, stamp collecting, disco music or fashion. What people see as ‘politics’ today is the social falsification of the project of collective self-realisation — and that suits those in power just fine.

Collective self-realisation is the revolutionary project. It is the collective seizure of the totality of nature and social relations and their transformation according to conscious desire.

Authentic therapy is changing one’s life by changing the nature of social life. Therapy must be social if it is to be of any real consequence. Social therapy (the healing of society) and individual therapy (the healing of the individual) are linked together: each requires the other, each is a necessary part of the other.

For example: in spectacular society we are expected to repress our real feelings and play a role. This is called ‘playing a part in society’. (How revealing that phrase is!) Individuals put on character armour — a steel-like suit of role playing is directly related to the end of social role playing.

VI

To think subjectively is to use your life — as it is now and as you want it to be — as the centre of your thinking. This positive self-centring is accomplished by the continuous assault on externals: all the false issues, false conflicts, false problems, false identities and false dichotomies.

People are kept from analysing the totality of everyday existence by being asked their opinion of every detail: all the spectacular trifles, phoney controversies and false scandals. Are you for or against trades unions, cruise missiles, identity cards... what’s your opinion of soft drugs, jogging, UFO’s, progressive taxation?

These are false issues. The only issue for us is how we live.

There is an old Jewish saying, “If you have only two alternatives, then choose the third”. It offers a way of getting the subject to search for a new perspective on the problem. We can give the lie to both sides of a false conflict by taking our ‘third choice’ — to view the situation from the perspective of radical subjectivity.

Being conscious of the third choice is refusing to choose between two supposedly opposite, but really equal, polarities that try to define themselves as the totality of a situation. In its simplest form, this consciousness is expressed by the worker who is brought to trial for armed robbery and asked, “Do you plead guilty or not guilty?”. “I’m unemployed”, he replies. A more theoretical but equally classic illustration is the refusal to acknowledge any essential difference between the corporate-capitalist ruling classes of the ‘West’ and the state-capitalist ruling classes of the ‘East’. All we have to do is look at the basic social relations of production in the USA and Europe on the one hand, and the USSR and China on the other, to see that they are essentially the same: over there, as here, the vast majority go to work for a wage or salary in exchange for giving up control over both the means of production and what they produce (which is then sold back to them in the form of commodities).

In the case of the ‘West’ the surplus value (ie that which is produced over and above the value of the workers’ wages) is the property of the corporate managements who keep up a show of domestic competition. In the ‘East’ the surplus value is the property of the state bureaucracy, which does not permit domestic competition but engages in international competition as furiously as any other capitalist nation. Big difference.

An example of a false problem is that stupid conversational question, “What’s your philosophy of life?”. It poses an abstract concept of ‘Life’ that, despite the word’s constant appearance in conversation, has nothing to do with real life, because it ignores the fact that ‘living’ is what we are doing at the present moment.

In the absence of real community, people cling to all kinds of phoney social identities, corresponding to their individual role in the Spectacle (in which people contemplate and consume images of what life is, so that they will forget how to live for themselves). These social identities can be ethnic (’Italian’), racial (’Black’), organisational (’Trade Unionist’), residential (’New Yorker’), sexual (’Gay’), cultural (’sports’ fan’), and so on: but all are rooted in a common desire for affiliation, for belonging.

Obviously being ‘black’ is a lot more real as an identification than being a ‘sports fan’, but beyond a certain point these identities only serve to mask our real position in society. Again, the only issue for us is how we live. Concretely, this means understanding the reasons for the nature of one’s life in one’s relation to society as a whole. To do this one has to shed all the false identities, the partial associations, and begin with oneself as the centre. From here we can examine the material basis of life, stripped of all mystification.

For example: suppose I want a cup of coffee from the machine at work. First of all, there is the cup of coffee itself: that involves the workers on the coffee plantation, the ones on the sugar plantations and in the refineries, the ones in the paper mill, and so on. Then you have all the workers who made the different parts of the machine and assembled it. Then the ones who extracted the iron ore and bauxite, smelted the steel, drilled the oil and refined it. Then all the workers who transported the raw materials and parts over three continents and two oceans. Then the clerks, typists and communications workers who co-ordinate the production and transportation. Finally you have all the workers who produce all the other things necessary for the others to survive. That gives me a direct material relationship to several million people: in fact, to the immense majority of the world’s population. They produce my life: and I help to produce theirs. In this light, all partial group identities and special interests fade into insignificance. Imagine the potential enrichment of one’s life that is presently locked up in the frustrated creativity of those millions of workers, held back by obsolete and exhausting methods of production, strangled by alienation, warped by the insane rationale of capital accumulation! Here we begin to discover a real social identity: in people all over the world who are fighting to win back their lives, we find ourselves.

We are constantly being asked to choose between two sides in a false conflict. Governments, charities and propagandists of all kinds are fond of presenting us with choices that are no choice at all (eg the Central Electricity Generating Board presented its nuclear programme with the slogan ‘Nuclear Age or Stone Age’. The CEGB would like us to believe that these are the only two alternatives — we have the illusion of choice, but as long as they control the choices we perceive as available to us, they also control the outcome).

The new moralists love to tell those in the rich West how they will ‘have to make sacrifices’, how they ‘exploit the starving children of the Third World’. The choice we are given is between sacrificial altruism or narrow individualism. (Charities cash in on the resulting guilt by offering us a feeling of having done something, in exchange for a coin in the collecting tin.) Yes, by living in the rich West we do exploit the poor of the Third World — but not personally, not deliberately. We can make some changes in our life, boycott, make sacrifices, but the effects are marginal. We become aware of the false conflict we are being presented with when we realise that under this global social system we, as individuals, are as locked in our global role as ‘exploiters’ as others are in their global role as the exploited. We have a role in society, but little or no power to do anything about it. We reject the false choice of ‘sacrifice or selfishness’ by calling for the destruction of the global social system whose existence forces that decision upon us. It isn’t a case of tinkering with the system, of offering token sacrifices or calling for ‘a little less selfishness’. Charities and reformers never break out of the terrain of the false choice.

Those who have a vested interest in maintaining the present situation constantly drag us back to their false choices — that is, any choice which keeps their power intact. With myths like ‘If we shared it all out there wouldn’t be enough to go round’, they attempt to deny the existence of any other choices and to hide from us the fact that the material preconditions for social revolution already exist.

VII

Any journey towards self-demystification must avoid those two quagmires of lost thought — absolutism and cynicism; twin swamps that camouflage themselves as meadows of subjectivity.

Absolutism is the total acceptance or rejection of all components of particular ideologies, spectacles and reifications. An absolutist cannot see any other choice than complete acceptance or complete rejection .

The absolutist wanders along the shelves of the ideological supermarket looking for the ideal commodity, and then buys it — lock, stock and barrel. but the ideological supermarket — like any supermarket — is fit only for looting. It is more productive for us if we can move along the shelves, rip open the packets, take out what looks authentic and useful, and dump the rest.

Cynicism is a reaction to a world dominated by ideology and morality. Faced with conflicting ideologies the cynic says: “a plague on both your houses”. The cynic is as much a consumer as the absolutist, but one who has given up hope of ever finding the ideal commodity.

VIII

The process of dialectical thinking is constructive thinking, a process of continually synthesising one’s current body of self- theory with new observations and appropriations; a resolution of the contradictions between the previous body of theory and new theoretical elements. The resulting synthesis is thus not some quantitative summation of the previous and the new, but their qualitative supersession, a new totality.

This synthetic / dialectic method of constructing a theory is counter to the eclectic style which just collects a rag-bag of its favourite bits from favourite ideologies without ever confronting the resulting contradictions. Modern examples include libertarian capitalism, christian marxism and liberalism in general.

If we are continually conscious of how we want to live, we can critically appropriate from anything in the construction of our self-theory: ideologies, culture critics, technocratic experts, sociological studies, mystics and so forth. All the rubbish of the old world can be scavenged for useful material by those who desire to reconstruct it.

IX

The nature of modern society, its global and capitalist unity, indicates to us the necessity of making our self-theory a unitary critique. By this we mean a critique of all geographic areas where various forms of socio-economic domination exist (ie both the capitalism of the ‘free’ world and the state-capitalism of the ‘communist’ world), as well as a critique of all alienations (sexual poverty, enforced survival, urbanism, etc). In other words, a critique of the totality of daily existence everywhere, from the perspective of the totality of one’s desires.

Ranged against this project are all the politicians and bureaucrats, preachers and gurus, city planners and policemen, reformers and militants, central committees and censors, corporate managers and union leaders, male supremacists and feminist ideologues, psyche-sociologists and conservation capitalists who work to subordinate individual desire to a reified ‘common good’ that has supposedly designated them as its representatives. They are all forces of the old world, all bosses, priests and creeps who have something to lose if people extend the game of seizing back their minds into seizing back their lives.

Revolutionary theory and revolutionary ideology are enemies — and both know it.

X

By now it should be obvious that self-demystification and the construction of our own revolutionary theory doesn’t eradicate our alienation: ‘the world’ (capital and the Spec tacle) goes on, reproducing itself every day.

Although this booklet had the construction of self-theory as its focus, we never intended to imply that revolutionary theory can exist separate from revolutionary practice. In order to be consequential, effectively to reconstruct the world, practice must seek its theory, and theory must be realised in practice. The revolutionary prospect of disalienation and the transformation of social relations requires that one’s theory be nothing other than a theory of practice, of what we do and how we live. Otherwise theory will degenerate into an impotent contemplation of the world, and ultimately into survival ideology — a projected mental fogbank, a static body of reified thought, of intellectual armour, that acts as a buffer between the daily world and oneself. And if revolutionary practice is not the practice of revolutionary theory, it degenerates into altruistic militantism, ‘revolutionary’ activity as one’s social duty.

We don’t strive for a coherent theory purely as an end in itself. For us, the practical use value of coherence is that having a coherent self-theory makes it easier for someone to think. As an example, it’s easier to get a handle on future developments in social control if you have a coherent understanding of modern social control ideologies and techniques up to the present.

Having a coherent theory makes it easier to conceive of the theoretical practice for realising your desires for your life.

XI

In the process of constructing self-theory, the last ideologies that have to be wrestled with and determinedly pinned down are the ones that most closely resemble revolutionary theory. These final mystifications are a) situationism b)councilism.

The Situationist International (1958-1971) was an international revolutionary organisation that made an immense contribution to revolutionary theory. Situationist theory is a body of critical theory that can be appropriated into one’s self-theory, and nothing more. Anything more is the ideological misappropriation known as situationism.

For those who newly discover it, SI theory has a way of seeming like ‘the answer I’ve been searching for for years’, the answer to the riddle of one’s dead life. But that’s exactly when a new alertness and self-possession become necessary. Situationism can be quite the complete survival ideology, a defence mechanism against the wear and tear of daily life. included in the ideology is the spectacular commodity-role of being ‘a situationist’, ie a radical jade and ardent esoteric.

Councilism (aka ‘Workers’ Control’, ‘Syndicalism’) offers ‘self- management’ as a replacement for the capitalist system of production.

Real self-management is the direct management (unmediated by any separate leadership) of social production, distribution and communication by workers and their communities. The movement for self-management has appeared again and again all over the world in the course of social revolution. Russia in 1905 and 1917-21, Spain in 1936-7, Hungary in 1956, Algeria in 1960, Chile in 1972 and Portugal in 1975. The form of organisation most often created in the practice of self-management has been workers’ councils: sovereign general assemblies of the producers and neighbourhoods that elect mandated delegates to co-ordinate their activities. The delegates are not representatives, but carry out decisions already made by their assemblies. Delegates can be recalled at any time, should the general assembly feel that its decisions are not being rigorously carried out.

Councilism is this historical practice and theory of self- management turned into an ideology. Whereas the participants in these uprisings lived a critique of the social totality, beginning with a critique of wage labour, of the commodity economy and exchange value, councilism makes a partial critique: it seeks not the self-managed, continuous and qualitative transformation of the whole world, but the static, quantitive self-management of the world as it is. The economy thus remains a separate realm cut off from the rest of daily life and dominating it. On the other hand a movement for generalised self- management seeks the transformation of all sectors of social life and all social relations (production, sexuality, housing, services, communications, etc), councilism thinks that a self-managed economy is all that matters. It misses, literally, the whole point: subjectivity and the desire to transform the whole of life. The problem with workers’ control is that all it controls is work.

The world can only be turned right-side-up by the conscious collective activity of those who construct a theory of why it is upside-down. Spontaneous rebellion and insurrectionary subjectivity alone are not sufficient. An authentic revolution can only occur in a practical movement in which all the mystifications of the past are being consciously swept away.

Post-notes

This booklet is part of the collective self-theory of the members of our organization. It is the statement of what we call our meta-theory, our theory of the practice of theory-making.

The preparation and dissemination of The Minimum Definition of Intelligence is undertaken for the same reason we do everything else we do: because we want to catalyze a social revolution that will transform the present static layout of alienation into a moving landscape of realized dreams. We know we can only create the lives that we want tin the process of everyone else creating the lives that they want. We are revolutionaries because our desires require a social revolution for their realization.

Preamble

We have woken up to discover that our lives are becoming unliveable. From boring, meaningless jobs to the humiliation of waiting endlessly in lines, at desks and counters to receive our share of survival, from prison-like schools to repetitious, mindless “entertainment,” from desolate and crime-ridden streets to the stifling isolation of home, our days are a treadmill on which we run faster and faster just to keep in the same place.

Like the immense majority of the population, we have no control over the use to which our lives are put: we are people who have nothing to sell but our capacity to work. We have come together because we can no longer tolerate the way we are forced to exist, we can no longer tolerate being squeezed dry of our energies, being used up and thrown away, only to create a world that grows more alien and ugly every day.

The system of Capital, whether in its “Western” private-corporate or “Eastern” state-bureaucratic form, was brutal and exploitative even during its ascent: now, where it is in decay, it poisons air and water, produces goods and services of deteriorating quality, and is less and less able to employ us even to its own advantage. Its logic of accumulation and competition leads inexorably toward its own collapse. Even as it links all the people of the world together in one vast network of production and consumption, it isolates us from each other; even as it stimulates greater and greater advances in technology and productive power, it finds itself incapable of putting them to use: even as it multiplies the possibilities for human self-realization, we find ourselves strangled in layers of guilt, fear and self-contempt.

But it is we ourselves — our strength, our intelligence, our creativity, our passions-that are the greatest productive power of all. It is we who produce and reproduce the world as it is, in the image of Capital; it is we who reinforce in each other the conditioning of family, school, church and media, the conditioning that keeps us slaves. When we decide together to end our misery, to take our lives into our own hands, we can recreate the world the way we want it. The technical resources and worldwide productive network developed under the old system give us the means: the crisis and continuing collapse of that system give us the chance and the urgent need.

The ruling ideologies of the world superpowers, with their interlocking sets of lies, offer us only the false choice of “Communism” versus “Capitalism”. But in the history of revolution during this century (Russia, 1905; Germany, 1919-20; Spain, 1936-37; Hungary, 1956) we have discovered the general form through which we can take back power over our own lives: workers’councils. At their highest moments these councils were popular assemblies in workplaces and communities, joined together by means of strictly mandated delegates who carried out decisions already made by their assemblies and who could be recalled by them at any time. The councils organized their nwn defense and restarted production under their own management. By now, through a system of councils at the local, regional, and global level, using modern telecommunications and data processing, we can coordinate and plan world production as well as be free to shape our own immediate environment. Any compromise with bureaucracy and official heirarchy, anything short of the total power of workers’ councils, can only reproduce misery and alienation in a new form, as a good look at the so-called “Communist” countries will show. For this reason, no political party can represent the revolutionary movement or seize power “on its behalf”, since this would be simply a change of ruling classes, not their abolition. The plan of the freely associated producers is in absolute opposition to the dictatorial Plan of state and corporate production. Only all of us together can decide what is best for us.

For these reasons, we call upon you and upon all the hundreds of millions like you and us, to join us in the revolutionary transformation of every aspect of life. We want to abolish the system of wage and salaried labor, of commodity exchange-value and of profit, of corporate and bureaucratic power. We want to decide the nature and conditions of everything we do, to manage all social life collectively and democratically. We want to end the division of mental from manual work and of “free” time from work time, by bringing into play all our abilities for enjoyable creative activity. We want the whole world to be our conscious self-creation, so that our days are full of wonder, learning, and pleasure. Nothing less.

In setting down this minimum program, we are not trying to impose an ideal on reality, nor are we alone in wanting what we want. Our ideas are already in everyone’s minds, consciously or unconsciously, because they are nothing but an expression of the real movement that exists all over the planet. But in order to win, this movement must know itself, its aims, and its enemies, as never before.

We do not speak for this movement, but for ourselves as of it. We recognize no Cause over and above ourselves. But our selves are already social: the whole human race produces the life of each one of its members, now more than ever before. Our aim is simply to make this process conscious for the first time, to give to the production of human life the imaginative intensity of a work at art.

It is in this spirit that we call upon you to organize, as we are doing, where you work and where you live, to begin planning the way we can run society together, to defend yourselves against the deepening misery that is being imposed on all of us. We call upon you to assault actively the lies, the self-deceptions born of fear, that keep everyone frozen in place while the world is falling apart around us. We call upon you to link up with us and with others who are doing the same thing. Above all, we call upon you to take yourselves and your desires seriously, to realize your own power to master your own lives.

It’s now or never. If we are to have a future, we ourselves must be that future.

FOR OURSELVES!

February 16, 1974

http://www.lust-for-life.org/Lust-For-Life/SelfTheory/SelfTheory.htm

"All Power to the General Assemblies? Or, the Strange Case of Take Artists Space" by Trevor Owen Jones from ViewPoint Magazine

2011-11-15T12:09:00.000-08:00

After the raid on Zuccotti Park early this morning [ http://www.nycga.net/ ], what remains of Occupy Wall Street? The library was destroyed and thrown in the garbage; the kitchen and commune that fed and housed hundreds now gone. But what about the general assembly?

The police violence demonstrates that the relevance of Occupy Wall Street as a political situation is by no means in its attempts, failures and very real successes at direct democracy. It is instead a question: what is beyond democracy in the spirit of Occupy Wall Street?

This is not some terrible, reactionary deconstruction of the importance of consensus, discussion, and the camaraderie of equals; I merely mean to pinpoint tactics of affinity that force platforms of sharing and leveling to occur in the first place. As Rosa Luxemburg [ http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/russian-revolution/ch06.htm ] said,“freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently” – to not discuss this, and bring it forthwith, is to say only endless opinions matter.

Why should mere “opinions” be interesting? Why should anything like Occupy Wall Street be supposed to be a monolith of practices and ideas? Even if it were, why should it continue as it is? The power of Occupy Wall Street is in its multiplicity of democratic forms, not endless rote assemblies. The recent raids on Oakland, Portland and New York (most likely coordinated) are forcing Occupy Wall Street to radicalize its formations – autonomous affinities are necessary to propel the “movement,” but in order to do this, they cannot be wholly identified with it.

At 5PM on Saturday, October 22, a group of activists, artists and others occupied Artists Space [ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/25/nyregion/occupy-wall-street-splinter-group-occupies-art-gallery.html ], a project of the New York State Council on the Arts which had the goal of assisting young and emerging artists. Deemed “Occupy 38” (for 38 Greene Street, Soho), over the course of the next 28 hours they drew dismissive comments, if not outright venom, from every would-be analyst of Occupy Wall Street. Village Voice feigned confusion. Anonymous decried it with “this ‘occupation’ sucks !!!” On Twitter, the hashtag #occupy38 was bizarrely filled with vitriol against the action, with numerous New York bloggers and journalists claiming understanding and sympathy with Occupy Wall Street at Zuccotti Park and the movement as a whole, but eager to denounce “Take Artists Space” as “immature” and “stupid.” Despite holding open general assemblies, Occupy 38 was quickly construed as “elitist.” Though they did not try to promote exclusivity, it is true that their goal was to circumvent the General Assembly – with its undercover cops, wet blanket liberals, and bleating obsessions with process – in order to advance the movement.

Trees for the Forest

Of course, those behind Take Artists Space were well aware of their actions – the committees and process of Zuccotti were becoming overwrought and stifling, and it was a necessity to take indoor space, especially before the cold weather began, to renew the radicality of OWS’s initial gestures. In other words, to continue a serial composition of what occupation is, not defensively and hysterically crying out “quid juris?” [ http://conservapedia.com/Questio_quid_juris ]
Occupying a more community-oriented art gallery was a calculation to avoid an immediate crackdown – Artists Space failed in this regard, eventually snitching on the occupiers, because by all anecdotal reports, they were, in summary, mean.

Why does any of this matter? The obvious response was included on the Take Artists Space tumblr [ http://artistsspaceoccupation.tumblr.com/ ]. They found themselves “amidst accusations of moral deficiency and political immaturity, the same accusations wielded by the owners of Zuccotti Park at the start of its occupation.” But this critique was unfortunately lost on the liberals of the blogosphere.

The liberals felt that Take Artists Space drew attention away from the main struggle of Occupy Wall Street and its Zuccotti Park origin story, implying that if the talisman of that place were to be taken away, the “movement” would somehow cease to grow. As though the power of the general assemblies were in their unity, and not their multiple elements! The occupations symbolically uphold their occupied spaces, but any aberration is deemed “poorly organized” adventurism by people who insist on symbols alone. The “friendly,” “radical” media relished in calling out the perceived turpitude and audacity of Take Artists Space, and effectively did the work of the police’s PR department.

But never mind that. Given the real arc of affairs supplying the backdrop to the drama that is OWS – the breakdown of global capitalism as a world system – why not support emancipatory revolt in all its forms? Given the very realistic long-term consequences of today’s events, why stunt the transformative potential of everything that emerges from capitalism’s structural contradictions?

The mistake today is to look at Greece, Spain, London, Chile, and elsewhere, and hold them in relief as parts of a whole, a single phenomenon. Actually, this is what a single phenemenon looks like as it is being ripped apart. We should participate in its coming apart – it’s not as if we could do anything to prevent it! Are there some people – even those who claim support for Occupy Wall Street – who still believe a return to the status quo is possible, but with maybe a little more democracy and jobs thrown in?

The general assemblies, while exciting and resonant, are not sacred cows. The general assemblies sustain a refusal of today’s dismal situation not only inasmuch they do just that – sustain the refusal. They must meet at the intersection of revolutionary sequence and insurrectionary act: where they are a process, they should also be an act of transgression, and where they are transgressive, they should also move toward a real goal. When they are neither, they should be scrapped for something else. They do not represent anyone, and do not speak for the movement, strictly because there is not a movement, but thousands of movements, in full floral bloom.

Still Not Getting It

Simply put, there isn’t any stopping what is under way – what is important is to foster the creation of groups, agitate and educate in and out of the workplace, and splinter whatever unity the present possesses into many other factions and affinities. Forcing encounters – those moments when business does not go as usual – is the prerogative for new assemblies and methods. Global capital preserves a situation in which there are no encounters, because business must always go as planned, and nothing exists but business. Take Artists Space was an attempt at creating an encounter – to draw out the consequences of haste and audacity, and adhering not to schisms in general, but to generating schism and playing it out until the music stops. If experimentation rubs people the wrong way when its happening, this is the symptom that something new is occurring.

The last communiqué from Occupy 38, or Take Artists Space [ http://artistsspaceoccupation.tumblr.com/post/11857646857/the-occupation-at-38-greene-street-ended-at-8pm-on ] , affirmatively reads,

We battle with saboteurs, camouflaged socialists, intellectual skepticism; and we say: Let’s occupy something else. Now we know who we can invite. The ones that don’t wish only for progress to our movement, but the efforts of our bodies to expose and threaten, to break structures and clichés which are not bound only in the arena of a bureaucratic village. In this process we are educated about tactics of friend and enemy.

It is Pollyannaish to continue to assume that everyone will be Occupy Wall Street’s friend, just as it is obtuse to believe there are enemies around every corner. We must continue to discover who our friends really are.

The first sequence of the Occupy movement, as events in Oakland and Chapel Hill attest, is over. On Take Artists Space tumblr log, the key to the action was in the language used: “Take That Which is Already Yours.” It’s impossible to “occupy” something that is already yours – but it must be taken back, indefinitely. Zuccotti Park and Oscar Grant Plaza must not be just “reoccupied” in response to this recent wave of state repression. They must be taken permanently. Now the real work begins. We must change the political situation. “Occupy Everything” is literal, and because of that, stop saying “Occupy.”

text first appeared in November 15, 2011 at ViewPoint Magazine

Occupy Everything and the Politics of the Act

2011-11-07T19:31:00.000-08:00

Many people wonder what it is that these new 'occupy' protests can accomplish, and have trouble envisioning the so-called "ends" of the movement. But the beauty of what is happening is not found in the "ends", but the "means" that has been chosen. Politics is changing, and we can and should push it to be more localized.

Politics, as many of us are accustomed to thinking of it, usually boils down to what has been called the 'politics of demand'. The politics of demand can be understood as the coming together of three interlocking ideas

1. Asking someone else to solve something

A group with grievances ‘demands’ that a specific existing institution ‘fixes’ the problem, sometimes with minor input from the grieved group. This reinforces the authority and power of the institution in question, whether that institution is a corporation, government agency, or whatever else. *These institutions exist to silence these demands in any way they can that alters the status quo as little as possible* The more we ‘demand’ from them, the more we rely on them, and the more power they will have. It also has a tendency to hide, exacerbate, or multiply the source of those grievances.

2. Vertical organizing 

In order for the aggrieved group to interact "efficiently" with authority, representatives are chosen and given negotiating powers, goal making powers, and general decision making abilities that are not afforded to the rest of the group. Internal power structures quickly form and become entrenched, keeping the large majority (99%, anyone?) from actually participating in anything but being a warm body at an event, or possibly a signature or a vote… anything but a meaningful and engaged participant.

3. Education before action 

There is a very high tendency, in this normal mode of politics, to assume that everyone doesn't agree with (x) or doesn't know how to understand or do (x) correctly because they need someone to tell them what's "really wrong" with whatever…. which, when you think about it, is kind of insulting.

---

On the other side of the spectrum we have the Occupy Everything movement. Or, at least this is what I think makes Occupy so much more engaging than anything else that has happened in contemporary politics. These diffuse movements currently exemplify what has been called the 'politics of the act', which can also be understood as three interlocking ideas.

1. Acting without begging for permission 

Instead of asking for an institution to solve some grievance, the aggrieved group acts in creative ways in order to begin solving it's own problems. This may lead to some ‘demands’ being met, but does not start from making ‘demands’, and therefor cannot be told to sit down and be quiet when (x) demand is supposedly met. Occupying wall street without a permit is a prime example of this. It is a beginning, a call out to those who would like to build something better. It comes down to the idea of building alternative (horizontal) networks to the obviously corrupt (vertical) system we have, without asking permission from that very system.

2. Horizontal organizing 

Horizontal' refers to an idea of equality, that we should all be interacting on a level playing field, a horizon. So horizontal organizing is a reference to organizations that prioritize no particular personality, but allow for anyone to participate how they can, when they can. This creates a network that has no ‘leaders’, but where everyone is capable of acting in temporary leadership (spokesperson) roles. Equality in organizing. Once again, the way that the Occupy movement has been acting is a prime example of this, with the general assemblies, the human mic, and the generally 'open-source' type network building online and on the ground.

3. Equality of action 

We are all equally alive, and have our own experiences, which do not negate the experiences of others. It is from these personal experiences that we must act, not from external commands or teachings. We are individuals. We all have the capacity to act, when and how we see fit, guided by our own experiences. These experiences are what have inspired thousands of people, many of whom had never bothered with a protest before or had given up, to come out and Occupy Everything. If we continue to act from our own experiences in this way, and build up an individualized yet communal experience of building and of resistance to corrupt systems, we can change everything, and we can do it ourselves.

The strength of the Occupy Everything movement so far is how closely it has generally stuck with the politics of the act and rejected the politics of demand. My hope in pointing this out is to add to and expand our collective experiences, hopefully in a way that pushes us farther and farther towards those better worlds, because other worlds truly are possible, as long as we act to make them. We are not asking for a new world. We are not demanding a new world. We are creating it.

Concepts that can be useful:

Self-Organization

Being forced into a group can certainly improve ones skills in some senses for some people, but nothing seems to work better than a group that simply seems to 'click', when people just decide to get together themselves, without being directed. No-one knows who you get along with and what you do better than yourself.

Free Association

Life is not static, and who we act and discuss with should not be either. Free association is the ability to freely enter and leave groups according to preference  

Direct Action

When someone acts in order to further their ideas and goals without resorting to another group for mediation. Direct action simply refers to our capacity to act directly in achieving goals and resolving issues. It is an older and possibly narrower way of talking about the politics of the act   

Mutual Aid

Though many seem to think that we are inherently and strongly competitive, we are in fact what biologists call a 'social' species, we have evolved to work in groups. Competition, of course, occurs within and between the groups we form, but a high tendency for cooperation is what got us through most of the problems we've historically encountered as a species. Mutual aid refers to this capacity for cooperation with others, a capacity that we would be wise to act on.

Demand Nothing
Occupy Everything

text found: http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20111025114601766
photo-colaz found: http://friendsofibnfirnas.blogspot.com/
more info about Occupy Everything: http://occupyeverything.org/

"On the Degradation of Language and the Art of Listening", a short essay from blog "FROM POLITICS TO LIFE"

2011-10-29T08:20:00.000-07:00

When you call someone a name you stop listening to him.

I do not write, publish, speak or discuss in order to propagate a fixed set of ideas for others to embrace; I’m not interested in disciples or followers. I do so to communicate and discuss my own fluid and evolving ideas, my desires, my dreams, my experiences and my projects as clearly as possible in order to discover affinities, to find accomplices with whom to share my activities. I am convinced that the only real wealth worth pursuing is found in other people with whom one can share the creation of a life together aimed at the realization of the needs and desires of each and every one. Therefore, I gladly throw my words out into the world as a wager that they will strike a resonant chord with others with whom I can share projects of revolt against the ruling order and of taking back our lives and activities as our own. Unfortunately, often these words, chosen with so much care, seem to meet misunderstandings of the strangest sorts.

My desires, my dreams and, thus, my projects are informed by a revolutionary perspective, that is, by the recognition that it is necessary to make a fundamental, destructive break with the existing world in order to open the possibility for a world in which we can truly create our lives together on our own terms. The existing world, dominated by the state, capital and their technological and ideological machinery of control, defines wealth in terms of the things that one owns. In such a world, human beings themselves become things that are owned by the apparatus, the ruling institutions. Their value is not in the unique beauty of their being, but in their capacity to produce more things either physically in the form of products or socially in the form of roles and predetermined relationships. Thus, what is unique in each of us is suppressed in the interest of production. Wealth in this sense is purely quantitative, the ownership of a large amount of shit, possession of a greater share of the impoverished reality that this world imposes. All this must be destroyed if we are to create a world in which we recognize the qualitative wealth of the uniqueness that each one of us has to offer the other. And this is the project I try to express.

Unfortunately, it is very difficult to express such a project. Finding the balance between the simplicity that makes one’s language accessible and the complexity that is necessary to express how this revolutionary desire confronts the catastrophic reality of the world in which we live is not easy. It requires a certain precision and delicacy. By delicacy, I do not at all mean gentleness. Rather, I mean the use of great care in choosing the words that can best express one’s meaning while avoiding the pitfalls set by the increasing degradation of language in anarchist circles that has been caused by ideological thinking. But even this is not always enough. Real communication is never one-way, and the degradation of language (and ideas) doesn’t just affect how people say things, but also how they hear things. Those who make their language the servant of ideological ways of thinking will not so much listen to what someone says as filter it into the appropriate places within the frameworks of their systems for viewing the world.

The desire for simplicity itself can be a danger here. Things certainly seem simpler when we feel we have found the answers, so that we no longer need to call our ideas, our activities, our lives and ourselves into question. In a world of every day misery and catastrophe, the codified categories of ideology can be particularly reassuring. But this sort of reassurance comes at the expense of real communication and real discussion. Exchanges of words are reduced to mutual reassurances, evangelistic outreach and condemnations of those who don’t agree. The capacity to listen disappears, taking with it any possibility for real debate. Let’s look at a few examples of how this can work.

Activism, as a specialized role, carries its own vague ideology: things are bad, we need to do something to change them, we need to organize people for this purpose. Quite vague, indeed. But it doesn’t prevent activists from being fervent believers and hard-core evangelists. For the activist, as for any evangelist, the individuals they encounter are not unique human beings with whom to create relationships or share life, they are ciphers to convert into tools for the cause. Activists have sacrificed their own uniqueness and humanity to whatever cause, so why would they expect less of others? Thus, when activists speak of communicating with others, they mean that they are out to organize those others to fight for their cause. The activist transforms talking with your neighbors about the realities you face together into community organizing to build a movement.

Unfortunately, this activist ideology can seep into the way of thinking of individuals who are critical of activism and leftism, leading even these people to hear meanings in words that aren’t there. Thus, recently when I spoke of the need to talk with those around us about what we are facing in the world today and what we desire, one person asked if I was talking about “movement building”, a term with which I wasn’t familiar, but that sounds like something that would contradict my entire project as I’ve live and expressed it. (This individual was at least just asking and not immediately labeling and accusing, but her question left me flabbergasted.) Another, when I was not present, said that it sounded like the same old leftist shit (or something to that effect) and then later referred to me in writing as a “reformist community organizer”. I never knew that the idea of talking with one’s neighbors could carry so much baggage. Then again I’ve never been an activist or an organizer, and have carefully kept my distance from that sort of thinking. I always thought talking with someone meant just that, talking with someone. But ideological filters to listening can twist the simplest things into a complex maze of hidden implications in which the possibilities for meaningful discussion get lost.

But the worst attacks against open, straightforward communication within the anarchist milieu in recent years stem from the intrusion of political correctitude into the milieu. Political correctitude finds its clearest voice in the identity politics that became the dominant voice of the American left in the 1980’s. I was fortunate and managed to have very little direct contact with the preachers of political correctitude and identity politics for quite a while. It was clear to me that they were promoting an ideology based in victimization. Identity politics is an ideology based upon identifying with the category (or categories) through which one is oppressed: race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation or whatever. In other words, one identifies with the categories that the ruling order has imposed. This identification is then supposed to be embraced as a source of pride, unity and strength. I don’t want to go into a full critique of this here, but only want to deal with the aspects relevant to communication. First of all, defining one’s identity in terms of one’s oppression is defining oneself as a victim (euphemisms such as “survivor” don’t change this). This leaves one feeling perpetually vulnerable and puts one on the defensive. Here is the basis for political correctitude. People who are always on the defensive, in need of being provided with a feeling of safety, become overly sensitive to language, granting it a power over them that it need not have. In “communication”, such people no longer look for actual meaning, but put their radar out for the code words and phrases that they have defined as inherently oppressive. Their rage will scream out at the wrong word in the wrong place or at another’s refusal to use the words and categories of their ideology. In the meantime, their real oppressors in the ruling class use smooth, politically correct language to enforce their oppression. A linguistic moral order is established that creates only one real change: the reduction of our capacity to communicate. In addition, creating a group identity involves identifying an opposing group to which the first group contrasts itself. If one defines oneself in terms of race or gender or sexual orientation, then this contrasting other must be defined in the same terms, and so the world gets divided into “people of color/white”, “female/male”, “gay/straight”, etc. (or more accurately, this supposedly radical ideology maintains and enforces the divisions the ruling order has already created). Since the first group in each set is oppressed, obviously the second group must be the oppressors, regardless of what any of them as individuals have actually done. Individual responsibility is swallowed up in an automatic collective guilt. But precisely because this collective guilt is detached from the real concrete acts of individuals, some mechanism to explain it must be developed. And so we learn that all “white people”, all “males” and all “straight people” are “privileged”. And people from oppressed groups who adhere to these categories, along with their humble auxiliary of willing political correctitude cops drawn from the “privileged” groups, can use this alleged “privilege” to automatically discredit someone. Thus, this ideology justifies the worst sort of ad hominem argument, the kind based on supposedly inherent traits, not on real actions of the person involved. It should be obvious how this closes down the capacity for really listening, and thus for real discussion and communication. A statement such as “…white folks, straight people and men need to shut the fuck up” is not on offer for discussion or communication and certainly not an attempt to open up an exploration of affinities and possibilities for shared projects. It is a command clearly intended to call someone to accept a subordinate position. Again, people are seen as things, as categories, and “communication” is reduced to the arrangement of these things, making real listening irrelevant.

Communication and the capacity for listening have also deteriorated due to the entrenchment of positions that has become prevalent within anarchist circles in recent years. This entrenchment can be seen in the ongoing tendency to create categorical dichotomies: social anarchism vs. life-style anarchism, green anarchy vs. classical anarchism, and the like. The capacity to make distinctions and even complete breaks where necessary is important and must not be lost in some ecumenical haziness in which we all just embrace each other in an incoherent orgy of contradictory conceptions drained of meaning. But the capacity to make distinctions also means the capacity to recognize false dichotomies that serve no other purpose than to define one’s own ideological identity. In fact, there is much in the entrenchment of positions within the American anarchist milieu that parallels the functioning of identity politics. For example, there tends to be a hyper-sensitivity to words that are taken out of context and drained of meaning (recent discussions about the word “communism” provide a fine example). There is also a tendency to use labels to consign the “other” to a hostile ideological camp and end discussion in this way. A sad example is the way some people have begun to use “leftist” to label anyone who disagrees with them. In this way, the necessary harsh critique of the left loses its content and degenerates into a vacuous “anti-left” ideology that serves no other purpose than to silence one’s critics. If we are to ever discover where our real affinities and differences lie, we need to leave the safety of our entrenched positions, throw away our ideological filters, and actually listen to each other, sharing fierce but principled critiques and recognizing that since we are still living and the world is still changing, none of us has found the answer. We have so much we need to talk about, but it is useless to try if we cannot listen, if we only put up the radar for signals that help us place others and their ideas into our ideological categories. So among the anarchist projects worthy of effort is the revival of the fine art of listening that makes communication as peers possible. But this is not an easy task since it involves attacking one’s own entrenched positions as well as those of others.

Communication is hard enough where the art of listening has been nurtured. A few words are never enough to express all that a person has to say. The passionate reasons that goad one into action cannot fit into a few lines on a few pages. In fact, an endless flow of words would still not be enough to express it all. But the point is not to express it all in words; the point is to leave a clue, a verbal finger pointing toward the moon of one’s ideas and dreams that says just enough to find accomplices in the crime of freedom. Unfortunately, these days most people only “think” from the entrenched positions of their confused ideological conceptions and contradictory dogmas, and so one cannot expect to be understood by very many. From such confinement, most can only see the pointing finger. But the few who can think and feel and dream outside of every ideological fortress may be able to hear these words and respond with comprehension, critically, their eye upon the moon. And maybe a few critical voices, striving fiercely for clarity, will be able to break through the entrenched positions, and the art of listening will make real discussion a possibility again.

>>> the text found at the blog "From Politics to Life"

15 Theses on the Global Crisis

2011-10-10T17:48:00.000-07:00

1. We are in a global historic situation

Structural crisis, financial/banking crisis, »ecological crisis« and regional crises and a deep cyclical downturn add to a situation of historical »break«. The strategic »business models« of the past two decades (investment banking, hedge funds, derivatives trading, private equity firms) are at an end. (For example: crisis of the automobile industry and the automobile.) For the past three months world trade has been collapsing, this is the turning point and much more dangerous than the »banking crisis« of the last two years. And it goes beyond the scope of the world economic crisis of the 1930s. At that time world trade fell by 66 percent due to a protectionist wildfire in the first half of the thirties; at the current speed this point would be reached around autumn 2009, even though the protectionist race has not even really started yet. When it does start, not only the world trade system, but also the international financial system and the international monetary system will come apart.

2. Crisis of overaccumulation

Since 1974 all crises have been »solved« through a large-scale expansion of credit: the various financial bubbles expressed the basis in crisis of the so-called »real economy«. In the United States the financial sector accounted for 40 percent of the GDP. The other side is the gigantic debt of states, companies and private households. Since 1980 private debt has risen twice as fast as income in the US, in Britain it is at 220 percent of income. »Securitization« and Credit Default Swaps were at the center of this credit expansion: securitazition of new financial products rose from 78 billion euros to 454 billion euros between 2000 and 2007; global derivatives markets are estimated at 60 trillion at least. By comparison, world GDP is at about 45 trillion.
The crisis of overaccumulation means that reformism in the sense of regulation is impossible - »regulating the financial sector« would mean killing off what little growth there is.

3. »Crisis of the crisis« - the 1968ers' revenge

1973-2006 was a long drawn-out crisis - the current collapse is the crisis of this crisis. A massive devalorization of capital did not solve the crisis that started at the beginning of the seventies: stopping the collapse prevented revolution, but it also prevented a new boom. The Volcker shock in 1979 rang in the neoliberal attack, but since then the crises have been coming on faster: debt crisis, savings and loan crisis, global crisis at the beginning of the nineties, monetary crises 1997/98 (South East Asia, rouble, Latin America), dotcom crisis, and now since 2006 the global crisis.
In history the oppressed have usually struggled when severe crises broke out (famine...); operaismo (and later Bonefeld and Holloway) have interpreted the world economic crisis of the 1930s as a backlash of repression against the working class strength which had become apparent at the beginning of the century and the revolutions at the end of the First World War. The crisis after 1973 was shaped by class struggle and therefore historically a new situation.

4. Chimerica is breaking down

The debt-financed and consumption-driven economy of the US is and has been dependent on huge inflows of capital, particularly from China, which has become the global industrial center for production of consumer goods. Between 2003 and 2006 the US trade deficit rose to 800 billion dollars per year. In this triangle the banks profited most: they borrowed money cheaply on the world market and lent it expensively to consumers (mortgages, student and car loans). The main capital providers China, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea now hold four billion dollars of currency reserves between them. These investments have lost half of their value due to the dollar's depreciation. The US had to nationalise Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac because of pressure from China - which had invested 500 billion dollars there - a historic defeat of »the West«!
The capital inflow needed to maintain this fragile arrangement depends on the US dollar as »world currency« - and that depends on the US army's military supremacy, but also on China's exports - and those went down 25 percent in February.
Is that the end of a hegemon - while its military supremacy persists?

5. Protectionism and class struggle

The end of a hegemon brings about the failure of multilateral approaches, because multilateralism needs a hegemonic power. The crisis aggravates protecionism. Many states have put through protectionist measures against Chinese imports. But the now-burst »Bretton Woods II« cannot simply be replaced with something new by means of through political decisions (trade policy): it is very much entangled with class relations, and all are afraid of class struggles in China.

6. Now: banking collapse?

In Eastern Europe the suspension of debt payments is threatening to tear down the european, particularly the austrian banking system. More and more loan defaults are coming to the open. The IMF estimates necessary depreciations at 23,2 trillion Dollars. As soon as the large transmissions go into reverse, i.e. deleveraging starts, not only trillions of fictitious capital »value« are destroyed, but also »real things«.

7. It's the system, stupid!

TThe crisis provisions up to now do not aim at economic recovery, but at surviving politically. The neoliberal attacks on the working class have been continued, and even toughened.
Until now everything was about preventing panic. Parallel institutions have been built, sort of »secret governments« have been formed, power has been regiven to the IMF and so on, but up to the moment no new factions have come to the fore, which would be able to point out and enforce long-term strategies.
For the various bailouts gigantic amounts of money have been brought up which will have to be payed for by the working class in the end (in the US the sum is already estimated at 1 trillion dollars, i.e. about 4,000 dollars per person). Their problem is they know a deflation is threatening; but they do not know what the »value« of the assets, bonds, securities etc really is: it is already impossible to calculate how much has to be pumped in. Therefore the big question: deflation or hyperinflation?

8. No dialectic between reform and revolution

No »reforms« are in sight that would give some room to the working class: instead the policy of shock and awe against the class is tightened, creating constant uncertainty. More regulation does not mean more welfare state! Stronger regulation will be necessary anyway, because central banks and states cannot prolong their strategy: It is impossible to guarantee savings on the one side and let the banks take great risks on the other. (Ackermann, head of Deutsche Bank, mentioned a 25 percent return on equity.)

9. The heaviest attack in decades on working class living conditions (mass sackings, rise of homelessness etc) is already going on in the first phase of the crisis

The automobile industry, banks and insurance companies have already cut many jobs in the recent years. But until now that was managed through redundancy payments. Now unemployment is jolting up much faster than in previous crises. In Germany about 200,000 temps have already been sacked. Nevertheless the composition of unemployment is changing rapidly: in February at MÃ¤rklin (toy producer) and Karmann (automobile industry), the first lay-offs without redundancy payments are due...
Our analysis in summer 2008 was right and has become common knowledge: exports in Germany fell more than 20 percent from January 2008 to January 2009; for 2009 a decline of eight percent is estimated, the most severe decline in the Federal Republic's history - but only if exports stabilize in the second quarter, so forget it!

10. Phases of crisis policy

- 2007 until September 2008: lulling us in;
- at least with the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September it became obvious that we are in a deflationary development since then sums undreamed-of before have been pumped into the banking system while its has been hidden from the workers that they will have to pay for them
- at the moment we are in a third phase: spelling it out clearly, preparing measures and at the same time distracting us at with gimmicks like the »scrapping bonus« for wrecking your old car and buying a new one. In a context of drastic job cuts, union bosses announce their willingness to offer up everything.
In the fourth phase they will curb with the most brutal measures the hyperinflation which was fuelled up till then. (Possibly with monetary reforms - but certainly through a massive frontal attack: Volcker is Obama's economic advisor!). The dynamics of crisis will generalise throughout society and radicalise globally.

11. Crisis of representation - crisis of policy

We are already in the midst of a »regime change« - mortgage banks, hedge funds etc are rotten: »the end of Wall Street«. Even if the ruling elites have not substantially changed their policy, the little changes there were have already severely reinforced the crisis: the Social Democrats are at the end, the Christian Democrats are suffering even worse. Falling membership of trade unions and political parties is not a sign of political apathy. There are lots of initiatives, social commitment and criticism of capitalism...
Two thirds of all Germans are saying in opinion polls that the social market economy is not a good social system. But many people are still hoping for reforms. It is decisive what these hopes will turn into once they break under the force of the crisis. Two thirds of all Greeks said in December: this is a social revolution...

12. Crisis of the radical Left

The (radical) Left is not up to date but doing business as usual. Campaigning, mobilising for symbolic summit protests, placing hopes in unions and other institutions. Trade unions are offering concessions to the bosses in advance or are conducting diversionary protests. The »organised unemployed« are an expression of class division, not of fighting it! [explanatory note: specificity of the German situation where on the one hand nearly all the radical left campaigns for a »guaranteed income« while on the other hand the state has already introduced some sort of guaranteed income, the so-called HartzIV, which was the most violent attack against the level of reproduction in the last decades]
We have to intervene in social processes instead of engaging in detached representational politics!

13. The »Great Depression« as analogy - the end of a historical constellation

In the world economic crisis of the 1930s everyone agreed on how to solve the crisis: capitalists, stalinists, national socialists and US Democrats (Roosevelt) were focused on mass production of consumer goods and machines, along with a national welfare state - and all were experimenting with labour camps. Today neither a new mode of production nor a new form of productive integration by the state is anywhere in sight. The current crisis should rather be compared to the »great depression« of the five years from 1873 to 1878, which resulted in twenty years of stagnation until 1896. Capitalism got out of the crisis by changing radically, leading over decades to serial production of durable consumer goods (sewing machines, vacuum cleaners, cars, fridges...). The main innovation was the assembly line: peasant workers could be employed in the factories in large numbers, the traditional workers' organisations were at their end. Today the assembly line, the »third World« and oil as source of energy are at their end - and going with it industrial unions as dominant form of working class organisation.

14. There is no outside any more

For the first time in the history of capitalism the working class in China will be hit by the effects of the crisis simultaneously with the rest of the global proletariat. And after the uprisings called »food riots« by the media in the first half of 2008 the industrial workers in China started struggling against the effects of the crisis. It is estimated that thirty million migrant workers have become unemployed up to now.
In November and December there were movements in Italy, Russia and Greece. In January the center moved to Eastern Europe: to Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Greece - but also in England, France, Iceland, South Korea, Guadeloupe, Reunion, Madagaskar, Mexico and Ireland people took to the streets against the crisis policy - in many cases combined with strikes. The question is whether a collectively struggling global working class will emerge from these movements. Argentina (2003) and Iceland demonstrate that this does not happen automatically. The movement has forced the government to resign, but fell into stagnation in February although inflation is at twenty percent and social problems are aggravating!

15. Self-organisation!

Capitalism is not going to collapse by itself, leaving a world in which all will be well. But today radically new things should be possible. The »economic crisis« is turning into a political crisis anyway. The last crash could be blamed on exaggerated expectations from the dot.com boom and on 9/11, but everyone can see that now the financial system itself is collapsing. New things should be possible - but if we remember how quickly twenty years ago possibilities for action were destroyed and dissenters were pushed aside it becomes obvious that we cannot take any comfort in being 'ahead'.

published in Wildcat 83, Spring 2009

"Hedonism and Revolution: The Barricade and the Dancefloor" by Christoph Fringeli

2011-10-04T08:51:00.000-07:00

Will true pleasure only exist after the revolution, or will it be indispensable to lead to the revolution?

Ever since the project of universal emancipation through communist revolution existed there has been a tension between two approaches – a dichotomy of views of people who ostensibly want to reach the same goal. On the one hand we find a view that could be summarized as: Only the revolution will bring about real pleasure and fulfillment, and we have to be ascetic cadres to reach it. The other side seems to declare that: Only by developing pleasures and following our desires will the revolution even become a possibility. If we look back at the two main phases of revolutionary struggles in the last century (ca. 1917-1923 and ca. 1967-77, depending in which country), we can easily see that for many revolutionaries the idea that hedonism and revolution should go together was present and central to the whole project.
Closely related to this is the way the role of work is seen. Marx says in the third volume of Capital: “The empire of freedom begins indeed only there, where work which is defined by misery and external expediency, ceases…” (“Das Reich der Freiheit beginnt in der Tat erst da, wo das Arbeiten, das durch Not und äußere Zweckmässigkeit bestimmt ist, aufhört.”) He leaves no doubt that the empire of freedom is always built on an empire of necessity, but also that it is the human goal to achieve the most freedom possible. And this must include the abolishment of wage labor.

2.

“The revolutionary is a doomed man. He has no personal interests, no business affairs, no emotions, no attachments, no property, and no name. Everything in him is wholly absorbed in the single thought and the single passion for revolution”.
Sergey Nechayev:„Revolutionary Catechism“ (1869)

Sergey Nechayev set the pace for an ascetic image of the revolutionary that would be picked up by the direct heirs of Bakuninism: the Leninists. First of all, the revolutionary is a man. He as such resembles the hero or anti-hero in the western, which is the epitomy of masculinity. He has no desires as a person, and he only has a mission for which the end justifies the means. The “ideal” man has only one passion – the revolution – yet it is he who is supposed to bring about a society of human fulfillment. But this was something that had to go wrong, and the end came in the misery of the Maoist and Trotzkyist milieus.
A close associate of Nechayev, Mikhail Bakunin, had the phantasy that a small number of strategically placed revolutionaries would be able to start the revolution and run it in the form of an invisible dictatorship. This network has some surprisingly basic authoritarian ideas for an anarchist. One can see how it became the leading idea for an avant-garde party as espoused by the Bolsheviks that has led to the dictatorship of a party and not to the dictatorship of the proletariat as supposedly intended. Bakunin would probably try to deny the connection and his adepts would point out that his formulations were directed against the supposedly authoritarian organisation of Marx and his friends, but if we look at the wordings of Nechayev and Bakunin we can sense the specter of Lenin and Mao. According to Lenin’s understanding, the emotionless revolutionary did not have a human mother, but was given birth to by the party. The rigid structure and clandestine operation of this party, to some degree forced upon the Russian Social Democrats by the conditions of their struggle, became the model for the 3rd International and the various Communist Parties founded after the first World War in most countries around the world. As the party became the ruling organisation in Russia, the hierarchies became solidified, a new bureaucratic stratum developed, and finally the party apparatuses became purged of the revolutionaries.

3.

„Revolution is when even one single human is dissatisfied. The state of this dissatisfaction unlocks the arsenal of revolution, the weapons and means for revolution, the source of strength of the motoric antagonism and the collective movement of contradiction, and the aim of revolution: Happiness.“ Franz Jung: “And Again, The Meaning of Revolution”, in “The Technique of Happiness”

After the butchery of the first World War, a situation where capitalism had run its course in a unimaginable blood bath, the way seemed open for world revolution. The victory of the revolution in Russia opened up what seemed like endless possibilities. Despite the harrowing conditions of war communism that followed and the defeat of the revolution in Western Europe by ca. 1923, many attempts were made to extend the political and military victory not just to economics but also to the arts, to sexuality and to communal living.
The revolutionary flood of the first post war years produced many initiatives in the West, combining psychoanalysis with new artistic investigation and revolutionary politics. The surrealists re-discovered the writings of the Marquis de Sade and the utopian socialist Charles Fourier. De Sade of course describes in his writings the unleashing of libertinage in a society of domination. Fourier on the other hand extolls the qualities of free love in large communes he called Phalansteries. But when surrealist leader Andre Breton joined the Communist Party, this was not the revolutionary research the party wanted. They put him in a cell with workers of a gasworks and soon neutralized the input of the surrealists, some of who become ardent Stalinists and went on to write bad poetry in praise of historic materialism. Comparable to this was the tension between the Party officials and people like Wilhelm Reich. The KPD’s book service banned the distribution of Wilhelm Reich’s „The sexual struggle of youth“ (Der sexuelle Kampf der Jugend) in 1932 and expelled him soon after.
The Stalinist counter-revolution which emerged victoriously in the Soviet Union in the late 20’s was not only political, it was also a sexual, moral, literary and artistic counter-revolution. For example, in 1934 a law against homosexuality was re-introduced. The family policies of the Stalinist government became more and more conservative making both divorce and abortion a lot more difficult. The emancipatory project was beaten back.

4.

Crushed by the blows of both fascist and stalinist counter-revolution (which was complete after the Spanish Civil War), the idea of universal emancipation survived in small circles. The combination of political with social, cultural and sexual revolutionary ideas slowly re-emerged after the war in fringe circles of the artistic avant-garde. By the mid-60’s the cold war had been going on for nearly two decades and a long-overdue critique of Bolshevism was coming out of the small left-communist circles and received a wider reception. Simultaneously there was a much wider youth culture developing again from small groups of beatniks or ‚gammler’ who had attempted to drop out in the decade before to the mass phenomenon of the Hippie movement. Take, for example, West Berlin: This city was still an island of the West in the middle of what was then the GDR. Many young West-Germans moved there to dodge the draft, and the university became a hotbed of agitation against the Vietnam war, the Nazi-past of the West German establishment, and the state of emergency laws passed at the time. The leading tendency in the West Berlin SDS saw itself as a self-proclaimed „anti-authoritarian“ tendency. There exists an interesting document authored by 4 of the main proponents of this tendency, called „Gespräch über die Zukunft“ where they phantasize about turning West Berlin into a council republic, and expected the proletariat of the third world to be their allies in the world revolution. These somewhat pompous perspectives in a city with a deeply ingrained anti-communist consensus may seem bizarre now, nevertheless, they had a lot of resonance at the time. Needless to say these authors barely had a class perspective in relation to West Berlin itself.
We witness a brief moment where apparently revolution could just be around the corner, and a cultural rupture seems to going hand in hand with a political rupture. A counter culture is developing with dozens of left wing bars, bookshops, communes. People grow their hair, and start dressing differently. They smoke dope expressing their own opposition to the post-Nazi society, where many old nazis are high up in the justice and political system. The idea of the counter culture as forming a nucleus of a future society in the here and now is manifestly tied to the political groups and struggles. It’s no wonder one of the first armed groups call themselves „Zentralrat der umherschweifenden Haschrebellen“ (“Central council of the nomadic hash rebels”).
Similar things are happening the world over. Maybe it’s a matter of quantity turning into quality, and what could merely be a consumer niche could turn into a counter culture. The author Walter Hollstein writes,”This means that the ‘underground’, if it doesn’t want to corrupt itself, has to manage the step from the subculture to the counter culture. Subculture here solely means the accidental dissensus from dominating culture, which in a temporary way expresses itself limited to its own clothing, fashion, group relations and behavior; counter culture means the manifest alternative in the arsenal of contradictions in this capitalist society.” Hollstein revises his judgement of the Underground from a previous sociological essay to a more positive view here, especially in light of the success of the underground press in the US. Going along with the politisation of the Hippies was the politisation of the underground press in the 60’s that boasted 500 titles and 5 million readers. This went hand in hand with a network of crisis centers, communes, free stores and farm collectives. By 1970 Hollstein sees a situation where the underground is not a phenomenon isolated from the general population anymore. He sees a “restructuring of social space” at work that is coming from “liberated terrains” which are defended against state repression. Nevertheless, Hollstein sees the terrain of social contestation not necessarily as something aiming at an immediate system change. It is about a long term process of social transformation with many possible setbacks.

5.

However, the political scene and the counter culture are developing a problematic relationship. Both the American and the German SDS are spawning a number of purely political parties, or rather nuclei of parties. An analogue development to the German K-Groups happened in the disintegration of the US- SDS into tendencies such as the Progressive Labor Party, mirroring the elitist cadre concepts of the KPD, KPD/ML, the KBW, KABD, the PL/PI and what not. This phenomenon starts showing somewhat bizarre outgrowths. Each of these party-nuclei proclaim to be the true heirs to the historic Communist Party of Germany, based on the early 30’s phase of this party. Their rigorism goes all the way back to the Nechayev way of thinking on the glorification of the selfless party member. While the counter culture sees itself as a first frame of action where spontaneity, autonomy, self organisation and collective activity can be learned, the dogmatic K-groups, as they become to be known, criticize the counter cultural milieus as „subjectivist, individualist, putschist, utopian“. The counter cultural is accused of an aesthetisation of politics, which is a serious charge that directly references how Walter Benjamin characterized fascism.
The author Diethard Krebs counters this with an argument about the game and the ritual. Both are happenings that are repeated following certain rules, but the game can only be played by people who don’t suffer mortal shortages and in societies with an advanced ability to critique themselves. The game depends on freedom from fear. The ritual on the other hand has standardized regimentations and repetitions of orders causing normative behavior. It’s easy to find examples for these kind of forms in the drug culture as the game and the K-groups as strongly ritualized formations.
The fractions drift apart: cadre parties, rural communes, Maoism, and free love, agitating at the factory gate, and taking loads of drugs just go together less and less. At the same time the mainstream of society and culture is imbibing and recuperating more and more elements of the counter culture. Free love gets commodified as pornography, and supposedly subversive rock n’ roll stars are marketed by huge record companies. In the decades since then, tales from the “good old days” of the late 60’s, and ironically even memoirs about their days in the K-groups are part of a veritable industry of historification, at least in Germany.
As the elements of the revolutionary movement drifted apart, they also diminished. By the end of the 70’s the armed struggle had become the trajectory of social war with small minority groups eventually strengthening the state and the consensus of the citizens. On the other hand, sub-cultural strategies helped the rise of postmodernism and the disarming of revolution.

6.

In the 1990’s we at Datacide and others tried to theorize the techno rave scene as a possible proletarian counter culture. For a moment the techno rave had this potential, but not more, and it is now lost. Much more than any „straight“ political direction, we saw in it the possibilities of self-organisation, collectivity and pursuit of pleasure in the counter culture around sound systems, anonymous white label records and illegal parties. This movement was strong enough – at least in the UK – to be directly targeted by laws and by the force of the police. Despite a politisation that did take place especially around the campaigns against the 1994 Criminal Justice Act and the Reclaim the Streets actions, these hopeful developments had run their course by the end of the decade.
In the past decade – despite the worsening crisis of international capitalism – the radical left is in disarray and extremely weak. Worse than that, some of its elements have at points aligned themselves with reactionary and fascist forces under the banner of anti-imperialism. One example amongst many is the British Socialist Workers Party entering an opportunist alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood in the electoral front Respect. Suddenly basic emancipatory aims such as gay rights and women’s rights vanished in an attempt to forge a united front that supported the most reactionary forces such as Hamas or Hezbollah. These groups are financed by the theocracy of Iran where workers and student movements are savagely suppressed and the death penalty is used for „crimes against virtue“.

Conclusion

While we’re at an ebb of the revolutionary movement at the moment, things could look a lot different in 10 years. We don’t know yet how the movement will look, and how its international organisation would constitute itself. But we do know that it will not be an authoritarian cadre party, nor a tiny group hallucinating itself as an invisible dictatorship, nor united fronts with reactionary movements. Until then, a relentless critique has to be applied to everything in existence, as Marx put it, which is an exciting task because as Vaneigem says: „We have a world of pleasures to win and nothing to lose but boredom.“

Christoph Fringeli

text: Datacide magazine

99 Excuses for Skipping Out of Work

2011-09-29T09:18:00.000-07:00

Most of us we HATE WORK and we are searching all possible ways to survive with or without it, to build sustainable social relations of mutual aid and to use all possible excuses and tricks for skipping out from work... Here you can find 99 smart and good excuses for many many free days.

Try to use these days as best as you can for yourself and the people around you...:

1. My kids are locked outside.

2. My kids are locked inside.

3. My kids are stuck in the door.

4. I have to pick on my kids.

5. I have to help my grandmother bake cookies.

6. I have to help my Aunt Flo in Omaha make cookies. She’s much better now and she wants to send thank-you cookies to everyone who came to see her when she thought she was dying.

7. The water company has to read my meter once a year and this was the only time they would come.

8. The gas company has to read my meter once a year and this was the only time they would come.

9. The water meter guy and the gas meter guy were both leaving cards on my door about me not being home, and they got into a fight about whose meter was better, and I have to go home and clean up.

10. My daughter is graduating from high school and I’d like to go to the ceremony.

11. My daughter is receiving a Nobel Prize and I’d like to go to the ceremony. (Do not use within one month of #9).

12. I have to pick up my car at the shop. If I don’t get there in half an hour it’ll be locked up all weekend.

13. I have to get my car to the shop. If I don’t get it there in half an hour it’ll be locked out all weekend. (Don’t use if boss seems wide awake).

14. My dog has a rash all over, and the vet closes early today.

15. My cat has a rash all over, and the vet closes early today.

16. My kid has a rash all over, and the vet closes early today.

17. My truss snapped.

18. My support hose popped.

19. I got my fingers stuck together with Krazy Glue.

20. I’m arranging financing for a house.

21. I’m arranging financing for a car.

22. I’m arranging financing for a beef roast.

23. The couch I ordered umpteen weeks ago has arrived and this was the only time they could deliver it.

24. The refrigerator I ordered umpteen weeks ago has arrived and this was the only time they could deliver it.

25. The baby we arranged for nine months ago is arriving, and I think this is the time it’s being delivered. (Note: This is an excuse that can’t be used by just anybody. But if it’s close to accurate, it’s extremely effective.

26. I have been asked to serve on a presidential advisory panel.

27. I’m being sent to the moon by NASA.

28. It’s Dayton’s Warehouse Sale.

29. My back aches.

30. My stomach aches.

31. My hair aches. (This is more acceptable than “I have a hangover,” especially if offered in the early afternoon.)

32. My biological clock is ticking.

33. I have to take my biological clock in for service.

34. My furnace won’t stop running, and the goldfish are getting poached.

35. My central air conditioning won’t stop running, and the goldfish are getting freezer burn.

36. Both my furnace and my central air conditioning won’t stop running. The goldfish are fine but my basement is about to explode.

37. I have to go to the airport to pick up my mother.

38. I have to go to the airport to pick up my minister.

39. I have to go to the airport to pick up my minister’s mother.

40. I have to take my mother to the doctor.

41. I have to take my minister to the doctor.

42. I have to take my doctor to my minister.

43. I think I left the iron on.

44. I think I left the water on.

45. I think I left the refrigerator on.

46. I’m getting married, and I have to go pick out rings.

47. I’m getting married, and I have to take a blood test.

48. I’m getting married, and I have to figure out to whom.

49. I have to have my waistband let out.

50. I have to have my watchband let out.

51. I have to have my son’s rock band let out.

52. I’m having my eyes checked this noon, and they put drops in them so I won’t be able to work afterwards.

53. I’m having my ears checked this noon, and they put drops in them so I won’t be able to work afterwards.

54. I’m having my hats checked this noon, and I’ll be having a drop or two so I won’t be able to work afterwards.

55. I’m having a root canal.

56. I’m having a tax audit.

57. I’m going on a date with a sadomasochistic necrophile. (Is that beating a dead horse?)

58. My broker needs to talk with me about diversification.

59. I have to rearrange my savings so that there is no more than $100,000 in any one federally insured institution.

60. I need to break into my kid’s piggy bank while he’s not home.

61. I have to renew my driver’s license.

62. I have to get new license plates.

63. I have to stand in a long line for no good reason, while petty bureaucrats take inordinate amounts of time to work out the tiny problems that they detect in perfectly routine transactions. THEN I have to breeze by and renew my driver’s license and get new license plates.

64. I’ve got an urgent session with my therapist.

65. I’ve got a really urgent session with my therapist.

66. I’ve … I … I’m not … I don’t … I CAN’T COPE WITH THIS!!

67. I have to get my contact lenses fitted.

68. I have to get my hearing aid adjusted.

69. I have to get my big toe calibrated.

70. Hey, hey! The Monkees could be coming to our town.

71. My rheumatism is acting up. There’s going to be a terrible tornado.

72. My arthritis is acting up. There’s going to be a terrible blizzard.

73. The pharaoh is acting up. There’s going to be a terrible rain of frogs.

74. I need to give blood.

75. I need to give evidence.

76. I need to give up.

77. I’m going to my best friend’s engagement party.

78. I’m going to my best friend’s wedding.

79. I’m going to my best friend’s divorce. (We all knew it wouldn’t last. At the wedding, everybody threw Minute Rice.)

80. I have a seriously overdue library book that I have to return.

81. I have a bunch of old parking tickets, and if I don’t pay them I’m going to be arrested.

82. The police are at the back door. Cover me.

83. I’m having my nails done.

84. I’m having my colors done.

85. I’m having my head examined.

86. I’m going to the bank.

87. I’m going to sleep.

88. I’m going over the edge.

89. A friend of mine is dying and I have to go to the hospital.

90. A friend of mine has died and I have to go to the funeral parlor.

91. A friend of mine is being reincarnated and I have to go to the zoo.

92. I need to check out the hole in the ozone layer.

93. I need to check into a rest home.

94. I’m breaking in my shoes.

95. I’m breaking up with my boyfriend.

96. I’m breaking out.

97. I have to pick up my dry cleaning.

98. I have to pick out a car.

99. I have to take part at the demontration for the future of my kids, you motherfucker!

Creative Excuses to Skip Work

If you've exhausted all the common reasons for missing work, or you're simply looking for a laugh, check out some of the obscure work excuses found in the following articles:

"The Machinery of Hopelessness" by David Graeber

2011-09-22T06:55:00.000-07:00

We have reached an impasse. Capitalism as we know it is coming apart at the seams. But as financial institutions stagger and crumble, there is no obvious alternative. Organized resistance is scattered and incoherent. The global justice movement is a shadow of its former self. For the simple reason that it's impossible to maintain perpetual growth on a finite planet, it's possible that in a generation or so capitalism will no longer exist. Faced with this prospect, people's knee-jerk reaction is often fear. They cling to capitalism because they can't imagine a better alternative.

How did this happen? Is it normal for human beings to be unable to imagine a better world?
Hopelessness isn't natural. It needs to be produced. To understand this situation, we have to realize that the last 30 years have seen the construction of a vast bureaucratic apparatus that creates and maintains hopelessness. At the root of this machine is global leaders' obsession with ensuring that social movements do not appear to grow or flourish, that those who challenge existing power arrangements are never perceived to win. Maintaining this illusion requires armies, prisons, police and private security firms to create a pervasive climate of fear, jingoistic conformity and despair. All these guns, surveillance cameras and propaganda engines are extraordinarily expensive and produce nothing – they're economic deadweights that are dragging the entire capitalist system down.
This hopelessness-generating apparatus is responsible for our recent financial freefalls and endless strings of bursting economic bubbles. It exists to shred and pulverize the human imagination, to destroy our ability to envision an alternative future. As a result, the only thing left to imagine is money, and debt spirals out of control. What is debt? It's imaginary money whose value can only be realized in the future. Finance capital is, in turn, the buying and selling of these imaginary future profits. Once one assumes that capitalism will be around for all eternity, the only kind of economic democracy left to imagine is one in which everyone is equally free to invest in the market. Freedom has become the right to share in the proceeds of one's own permanent enslavement.
Since the economic bubble was built on the future, its collapse made it seem like there was nothing left.
This effect, however, is clearly temporary. If the story of the global justice movement tells us anything, it is that the moment there appears to be any sort of opening the imagination springs forth. This is what effectively happened in the late '90s when it looked for a moment like we might be moving toward a world at peace. The same thing has happened for the last 50 years in the US whenever it seems like peace might break out: a radical social movement dedicated to principles of direct action and participatory democracy emerges. In the late '50s it was the civil rights movement. In the late '70s it was the anti-nuclear movement. More recently it happened on a planetary scale and challenged capitalism head-on. But when we were organizing the protests in Seattle in 1999 or at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) meetings in DC in 2000, none of us dreamed that within a mere three or four years the World Trade Organization (WTO) process would collapse, "free trade" ideologies would be almost entirely discredited and new trade pacts like the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) would be defeated. The World Bank was hobbled and the power of the IMF over most of the world's population was effectively destroyed.
But of course there's another reason for all this. Nothing terrifies leaders, especially American leaders, as much as grassroots democracy. Whenever a genuinely democratic movement begins to emerge, particularly one based on principles of civil disobedience and direct action, the reaction is the same: the government makes immediate concessions (fine, you can have voting rights) and then starts revving up military tensions abroad. The movement is then forced to transform itself into an anti-war movement, which is often far less democratically organized. The civil rights movement was followed by Vietnam, the anti-nuclear movement by proxy wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua and the global justice movement by the War on Terror. We can now see the latter "war" for what it was: a declining power's doomed effort to make its peculiar combination of bureaucratic war machines and speculative financial capitalism into a permanent global condition.
We are clearly on the verge of another mass resurgence of the popular imagination. It shouldn't be that difficult. Most of the elements are already there. The problem is that our perceptions have been twisted into knots by decades of relentless propaganda and we are no longer able to see them. Consider the term "communism." Rarely has a term come to be so utterly reviled. The standard line, which we accept more or less unthinkingly, is that communism means state control of the economy. History has shown us that this impossible utopian dream simply "doesn't work." Thus capitalism, however unpleasant, is the only remaining option.

If two people are fixing a pipe and one says "hand me the wrench," the other doesn't say "and what do I get for it?"

In fact, communism really just means any situation where people act according to this principle: from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. This is, in fact, the way pretty much everyone acts if they are working together. If, for example, two people are fixing a pipe and one says "hand me the wrench," the other doesn't say "and what do I get for it?" This is true even if they happen to be employed by Bechtel or Citigroup. They apply the principles of communism because they're the only ones that really work. This is also the reason entire cities and countries revert to some form of rough-and-ready communism in the wake of natural disasters or economic collapse – markets and hierarchical chains of command become luxuries they can't afford. The more creativity is required and the more people have to improvise at a given task, the more egalitarian the resulting form of communism is likely to be. That's why even Republican computer engineers trying to develop new software ideas tend to form small democratic collectives. It's only when work becomes standardized and boring (think production lines) that becomes possible to impose more authoritarian, even fascistic forms of communism. But the fact is that even private companies are internally organized according to communist principles.
Communism is already here. The question is how to further democratize it. Capitalism, in turn, is just one possible way of managing communism. It has become increasingly clear that it's a rather disastrous one. Clearly we need to be thinking about a better alternative, preferably one that does not systematically set us all at each others' throats.

Capitalism is not just a poor system for managing communism, it also periodically falls apart.

All this makes it much easier to understand why capitalists are willing to pour such extraordinary resources into the machinery of hopelessness. Capitalism is not just a poor system for managing communism, it also periodically falls apart. Each time it does, those who profit from it have to convince everyone that there is really no choice but to dutifully paste it all back together again.
Those wishing to subvert the system have learned from bitter experience that we cannot place our faith in states. Instead, the last decade has seen the development of thousands of forms of mutual aid associations. They range from tiny cooperatives to vast anti-capitalist experiments, from occupied factories in Paraguay and Argentina to self-organized tea plantations and fisheries in India, from autonomous institutes in Korea to insurgent communities in Chiapas and Bolivia. These associations of landless peasants, urban squatters and neighborhood alliances spring up pretty much anywhere where state power and global capital seem to be temporarily looking the other way. They might have almost no ideological unity, many are not even aware of the others' existence, but they are all marked by a common desire to break with the logic of capital. "Economies of solidarity" exist on every continent, in at least 80 different countries. We are at the point where we can begin to conceive of these cooperatives knitting together on a global level and creating a genuine insurgent civilization.
Visible alternatives shatter the sense of inevitability that the system must be patched together in its pre-collapse form – this is why it became such an imperative on behalf of global governance to stamp them out (or at least ensure that no one knows about them). Becoming aware of alternatives allows us to see everything we are already doing in a new light. We realize we're already communists when working on common projects, already anarchists when we solve problems without recourse to lawyers or police, already revolutionaries when we make something genuinely new.
One might object: a revolution cannot confine itself to this. That's true. In this respect, the great strategic debates are really just beginning. I'll offer one suggestion though. For at least 5,000 years, before capitalism even existed, popular movements have tended to center on struggles over debt. There is a reason for this. Debt is the most efficient means ever created to make relations fundamentally based on violence and inequality seem morally upright. When this trick no longer works everything explodes, as it is now. Debt has revealed itself as the greatest weakness of the system, the point where it spirals out of control. But debt also allows endless opportunities for organizing. Some speak of a debtors' strike or debtors' cartel. Perhaps so, but at the very least we can start with a pledge against evictions. Neighborhood by neighborhood we can pledge to support each other if we are driven from our homes. This power does not solely challenge regimes of debt, it challenges the moral foundation of capitalism. This power creates a new regime. After all, a debt is only a promise and the world abounds in broken promises. Think of the promise made to us by the state: if we abandon any right to collectively manage our own affairs we will be provided with basic life security. Think of the promise made by capitalism: we can live like kings if we are willing to buy stock in our own collective subordination. All of this has come crashing down. What remains is what we are able to promise one another directly, without the mediation of economic and political bureaucracies. The revolution begins by asking what sorts of promises do free men and women make one another and how, by making them, do we begin to make another world?

David Graeber is the author of Possibilities: Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion and Desire and Direct Action: An Ethnography.

Source: http://imaginenoborders.org/zines/#GlobalWarming

download pdf and print it:
http://imaginenoborders.org/pdf/zines/MachineryOfHopelessness.pdf

"We Demand Nothing" by Johann Kaspar

2011-09-11T17:33:00.000-07:00

“I do not demand any right, therefore I need not recognize any either.”
— M. Stirner

On the night of August 8th, 2009, hundreds of inmates at the California Institution for Men in Chino rioted for 11 hours, causing “significant and extensive” damage to the medium-security prison. Two hundred and fifty prisoners were injured, with fifty-five admitted to the hospital.

On Mayday 2009, three blocks of San Francisco’s luxury shopping district were wrecked by a roving mob, leaving glass strewn throughout the sidewalk for the shopkeepers, police and journalists to gawk at the next morning.

On the early morning of April 10th, 2009, nineteen individuals took over and locked down an empty university building the size of a city-block on 5th avenue in Manhattan, draping banners and reading communiqués off the roof. Police and university officials responded by sending helicopters, swat teams, and hundreds of officers to break in and arrest them all.

After Oscar Grant, an unarmed black man, was killed by transit authority officers in Oakland, California on New Years Day 2009, a march of about 250 people turned wild when a multiculturalist’s dream focus group rampaged through downtown, causing over $200,000 in damage while breaking shop windows, burning cars, setting trash bins on fire, and throwing bottles at police officers. Police arrested over 100.

From December 6th, 2008 to Christmas, a rebellion swept Greece after the police shooting of a 16 year old boy in Athens. Hundreds of thousands of people took part, collectively ripping up the streets, firebombing police stations, looting stores, occupying universities and union buildings, all the while confronting cops on a daily basis with an intensity and coordination worthy of an army.

After the “accidental” deaths of two kids who were being chased by police in the Parisian suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, on Oct 27th, 2005, youths in the French banlieues burned thousands of cars, smashed hundreds of buildings, and destroyed shops large and small every day for three weeks in response. 8,973 cars burned all over France those nights, and 2,888 were arrested.

What unites these disparate events of the last few years? Neither the race nor class backgrounds of the participants, neither their political contexts nor social conditions, neither their locations nor their targets. Rather, it is a certain absence that unites them, a gap in the center of all these conflicts: the lack of demands. Looking to understand, manage, or explain the aforementioned events to an alienated public, prison officials claim ignorance, journalists scavenge for a “cause,” politicians seek something to negotiate, while liberals impose their own ideology. The fear is that there really is nothing beneath the actions, no complaint, no reason, no cause, just a wild release of primal energy, as inexplicable and irrational as a sacrifice to the gods themselves. At all costs, there must be meaning, they cry, some kind of handle to grab onto, something, anything. What do they want? everyone asks, and the reply is everywhere the same: Nothing.

From Chino to Paris, Australia to Athens, New York to San Francisco, these are only a sample of revolts worldwide that have increasingly given up on the desire to “demand something.” To the bourgeois press, the lack of demands is conceived of as a symptom of irrationality, a certain madness or pathology that plagues the disenfranchised. To the radical left, the absence of demands is seen as political immaturity, a naïve rage that can only exhaust itself in short bursts. But to those who’ve shared such deeds together, to those who’ve seen their demands become the means of their own suffocation, such a trend is a welcome sign of things to come.

Perhaps it’s time we stop seeing these struggles as “lacking” something, but rather as determinate acts of negation with their own particular force, meaning, and history. To take seriously the content of struggles without demands, one must see them not as isolated events, but as moments within a history of developing antagonistic relations between capital and the life it subsumes. What are the forms in which struggles without demands appear to us? As riots mostly, but also as wild strikes, endless occupations, violent rebellions, popular uprisings and general insurrections. Instead of seeing a riot as sociologists do, namely as any collective act of violence which seeks to directly communicate its message without respect to legal norms, we can see them as they appear to us: as developing forms of struggle adequate to the conditions of exploitation at their particular time. Riots usually start with some grievance, sometimes with a demand in sight. A riot can also start with no demand, but end with one. Other times, riots begin with a particular demand, but end without any care whatsoever for its accomplishment. Sometimes demands are forced onto a collectivity of rioters by a self-appointed “representative” and other times demands are decided on by the collectivity themselves. Every aforementioned case has occurred in American history, and it is the task of the insurrectionary scientist to uncover any possible logics to the historical development of such relations in the dialectic between demand and destruction. As the conditions of exploitation develop, so do the struggles against them, and with this the meaning of the struggles themselves change, expressed not by demands but by the content of the activity itself. It is this activity we investigate below.

THEORY OF THE DEMAND

What is a demand? Etymologically, it is a giving of one’s hand, an order. In the context here, the demand is a contract, the guaranteed expiration date of one’s struggle, the conditions for its conclusion. “If x is achieved, action y will end” is what the demand says. But this is obviously a trick, for a contract assumes two equal sides, two abstract individuals or entities exchanging the dates of their expiration of hostilities based on a mutual recognition of conditions. If the vote is the political equivalent to money, then the demand is the political equivalent to credit cards. It is faith, a contract, a password to get something when one has nothing. It can be used by anyone, thieves and king, rich and poor, just and unjust; its function is the same, to lock one in deeper to the structure of capital.

Why do struggles with demands tend to get wilder, and struggles without them tend to proliferate? On the one hand, the ability of the state or capital to satisfy minimal demands is being eroded. In a hyperglobalized economy, worker’s don’t need to be guaranteed to socially reproduce themselves as workers where they are, for all that capital requires is some worker, anywhere, to do the job. Wage-demands and demands to maintain work hit up against the brick wall of the law of value. Proletarians realize this and respond, now threatening to blow up their factory (at New Fabris in Paris, for example), kidnapping bosses (at Scapa in France), and striking not for improving conditions, better wages or even keeping their jobs, but for money, just more money when they sell the factory. No illusion anymore, they seem to be saying we are nothing, we have nothing, we demand nothing except some paltry means to soften our fall. The limits of demands reveal the limits of class struggle, which can either mean the opening to its overcoming through broadened social struggle — insurrection, social war — , or the closure of struggle all together. We bet on the former.

Although the possibility to satisfy demands is becoming harder, demands are still made, perhaps out of habit, or desperation. The demand is only able to reproduce capital, since we have been emptied of all content besides the content of capital: when we eat, drink, walk, kiss, fuck, fight, or learn for ourselves, it is not for ourselves but for needs and desires set by the laws of economy to produce value. Alien to ourselves, we are at home in capital. We don’t even know our needs, and yet we still hold banners crying for their fulfillment. Our only genuine need can be to liberate need from its submission to capital. Until that occurs, our needs will continue to be nothing more than a means for the purpose of reproducing wealth, and demands are simply the respite, the handle in which our needs can be grabbed, reproduced, reconfigured, and reasserted.

Without a particular demand, no mediation can be made to pacify them, no politics are possible to manage the dispute; “not” having a demand is not a lack of anything, but a contradictory assertion of one’s power and one’s weakness. Too weak to even try and get something from those who dominate proletarian life, and simultaneously strong enough to try and accomplish the direct appropriation of one’s life, time, and activity apart from mediation. A demandless struggle, whether we call it riot or rebellion, insurrection or civil war, reveals the totality of the enemy one fights (capital-as-society) and the totality of those who fight it (the potentiality of non-alienated life). In such struggles, the proletariat “lays claims to no particular right because the wrong it suffers is not a particular wrong but wrong in general.” (Marx). This “general wrong” is the generalized structure of exploitation at the heart of the capitalist system — the forced selling of one’s time and life activity to someone else in return for a wage — which can never be overcome by any particular change, only by a total one.

As particular demands transform themselves throughout American history — from wage-demands to social demands to political demands to environmental ones — the potential refusal of demands haunts the bourgeoisie. This is obvious to anyone who takes the levels of class violence employed by the exploited as rational forms of contending with an objective structure of domination. What is not so obvious is the ways in which this refusal manifests itself in differing forms of property destruction, expropriation, and arson. Only history can show this.

SEQUENCES OF STRUGGLE

The New York City Draft Riots of 1863, the bloodiest riot in American history (120 killed at least, 2,000 injured, 50 buildings burned), contains all the contradictions and elements that were to develop and separate out into their own forms throughout the next century: political demands (no draft, no war), class attacks (property destruction, arson, looting), and race war (physical assaults, killing). Between the Draft Riots and the Oscar Grant riots, we notice three broad trends that emerge in relation to the content of insurrectionary activity and the form it takes as “demand.”

Broadly speaking, we can separate three main historical periods of rioting in relation to their issues or form, and two historical styles in relation to their methods or content. The struggle between labor and capital between 1877 and 1934, the conflicts over race between 1935 and 1968, and the student and anti-war actions of the 60’s and 70’s are the three broad traditions that congealed into the modern protest of our time. The women’s, gay liberation and anti-nuke actions of the 70’s and 80’s and the revival of riots over race relations in Miami and New York City in the ‘80s continued the dual legacy of 60’s style riots in its two different forms. It is not until the Rodney King riots in LA (and elsewhere) of 1992 that a new phase of revolt begins, one which we are still within today.

From 1877-1934, labor struggles in America took on levels of violence unseen before or since. In that period, demands were made over wages, working conditions, and the length of the working day, but once these basic demands were outlined in the 1860’s, almost nothing new emerged. From then on the level of class struggle escalated while the demands become less and less important. Rail strikes immediately turned into riots, spreading nationally along the railway, leaving thousand of train cars destroyed, dead bodies on both sides, and thousands injured. Coal miners blew up their own mines, and factory workers killed Pinkertons outside their gates.

Property destruction was widespread, but its focus and meaning were different then they are today. First of all, the property attacked by workers’ was their own tools and products of labor, that is, the means of production they were using to create new value for their employer. By destroying their own instruments of production — rail lines, coal mines, factory machines — they were destroying the unity of the capitalist production process, not merely its appearance as commodity in the realm of circulation and consumption. Second, although the machines, rails, train cars, trolleys, mines, and factories that different workers destroyed were under the legal ownership of the capitalist who employed them, they were seen by the workers as their own property. This is because the machines were the product and means of their labor, their physical and mental exertion. The attack on this property was not merely an attack against capitalists, but against that which makes them proletarians: work, tools, value. The self-abolition of the proletariat was not expressed formally in any one of their demands, but posed materially in the actions and targets themselves.

From Harlem 1935 to Washington D.C. 1968, class struggles took the form of appearance of “race relations” and “ghetto riots.” Qualitatively different than the Jim Crow anti-black, and anti-immigrant riots,[1] these struggles were dominated by proletarian and subproletarian black assaults on the foundations of white, bourgeois society: police, stores, banks, buildings, cars. Looting and arson were the principle methods used to critique such elements. The looting that occurred in Harlem ’35, ’43, and then in Watts, Newark and Detroit of the mid-60’s, was not the looting of people’s houses, such as the looting of capitalist houses during the Draft riots of 1863, but rather it was the looting of shops and stores, the places at which the products people make are sold back to them for prices they can’t afford. In other words, the looting was social, not personal. It was the critique of a society which depends on people accumulating shit they don’t need and desiring shit they make but can’t have.

Arson is nothing new in the history of American class violence (English laborers burned machinery threatening their jobs in the 18th century), but it thoroughly shocked the bourgeoisie when blacks started burning down their own neighborhoods. Why? What was so new about the fire this time? Perhaps it was the change in the nature of this property destruction, a change markedly different than that of the previous era of riots. Yes, people were burning and destroying all the property around them, but it wasn’t their property. It was owned by someone outside the ghetto. As opposed to the previous rail, coal, streetcar, and factory workers’ destruction of what they deemed their own property (although technically it was owned by the capitalist), these folks knew it wasn’t their property, and were happy to get rid of it. Even if it means sabotaging their own means of existence, such as access to food, shelter, and transportation. For the practical rejection of capital entails the abolition of one’s previous mode of life, and this self-negation always appears as suicidal. But it is only suicidal from the standpoint of capital, not from the perspective of human beings actively creating their lives for the first time.

Between June 1963 and May 1968, there were 239 separate urban riots involving at least 200,000 participants, which led to 8,000 injuries and 190 deaths. On April 4th 1968 alone, after MLK Jr’s death, 125 cities across 28 states rioted, leading to 47 deaths. In Washington D.C., riots broke out 10 blocks from the White House. In the same period, at least 50,000 people were arrested. The riots in Watts, Newark, and Detroit alone accounted for 1/6th of all the arrests. Although 190 deaths is still a lot, it is nothing in comparison to the amount of deaths that occurred regularly during the more formal battles between capital and labor. The killings were mostly committed by the police and military, not rioters. In Watts, 28 out of 34 killed were black; Newark, 24 out of 26 were black; Detroit, 36 out of 43 killed were black.

As ghetto-riots proliferated across urban America, another form of protest was emerging, the student, youth, anti-war, left radical protest. The sites of struggle shift to universities, draft centers, and political conventions. During these struggles, demands rose and fell constantly, from ending the draft to “free love”, from peace to “bring the war home.” What unites the separate, contradictory, even superficial demands are the actions themselves of those who were demanding. These actions included mostly sit-ins and occupations, some property destruction and arson, lots of police confrontation, and little to no physical assaults on civilians. In Berkeley ’64, during the “free speech movement”, 1000 people occupied Sproul Hall for 32 hours, ending in the peaceful arrest of 773. In 1966, with the draft enacted, campuses revolted en masse. Students occupied the University of Chicago administration for 4 days, and riots occurred at ROTC centers at University of Wisconsin, CCNY, and Oberlin.

In Oct of 1967, a national month of protest was called, in which some occupations, some symbolic acts, and some confrontations arose. On Oct 18th, about 1000 people fought police in Wisconsin with 70 students injured, and several buildings damaged. On Oct 19th, Brooklyn College’s Boylan Hall was occupied, and in Chicago, 18 were arrested breaking into a draft induction center. On Oct 20th, 10,000 Berkeley and Oakland activists blocked the streets around a draft induction center, slashing tires, dropping nails, writing graffiti, and fighting with about 1000 police for hours. On Oct 21st and 22nd, a mass, ritualized, “nonviolent” anti-war rally took place in DC with 150,000 people. Some broke the rules and fought police, ending with 681 protestors arrested, and 13 marshals, 10 soldiers, and 24 demonstrators wounded.

After six days of an occupation at Columbia University, students fought police on April 29th, 1968, ending with 132 students, 4 faculty and 12 police injuries. That year at the DNC in Chicago, Yippies tried to inaugurate a riot, and between Aug 25th and Aug 30th, they did. 192 police injuries, 81 police vehicles damaged, 24 windshields smashed, 17 cars dented, and numerous shop windows broken as well. In March and April of 1969, black students at SUNY Buffalo, Harvard, and Cornell occupied central buildings. In May, students were killed in police confrontations in Berkeley and Greensboro. In October, the Weathermen launched their “Days of Rage”, in which 300 of them destroyed property and fought police together. Six weathermen were shot, most were beaten, 250 arrested. In Santa Barbara, on Feb 25th, 1970, UCSB students burned a Bank of America branch to the ground, and on April 18th, 1970, a student there was slain by a stray bullet from police. But it wasn’t until National Guardsmen killed 4 students on May 4th, 1970 at Kent State University that the country erupted in rage against casualties at protests.

The pattern of student and anti-war demonstrations follows the trends of its time: limited attacks on property, police escalation, sit-ins and occupations. As students and youth became more and more indiscriminate with their site of struggles, as they become more violent in their tactics and less accommodating in their resolve, their grievances progressed from a rejection of war and imperialism to a critique of everyday life and capitalism. What started with a strategy of demands and escalation ended with a rejection of anything less than revolution.

ISSUES

The three main contentions of violent struggles — labor, race, and war — all exhibited some minimal demands. In the first case, higher wages, better working conditions, and a shorter working day. In the second, equal political rights, treatment, and benefits in all economic and social spheres. And in the third case, an end to the War in Vietnam and a stopping of the Draft. Within such a demand schema, it’s easy to reduce all antagonistic phenomena of those periods to a certain structure: exploited group X demands Y from institution Z. For example, one can see the Rail strike of 1877, the Harlem riot of 1935, and the university rebellions of May 1970 as equal forms of collective bargaining, which despite their illegal means, are geared towards legal ends.

What falls out in such an equation is the very content of the actions themselves, actions which go against their very ends, in turn overflowing their political forms and becoming social. What occurs in these riots, how do they begin, and end?

The rail strike of 1877 is one of the most violent in American history. After wages were cut on July 1st, rail workers went on strike in Baltimore, Ohio, and West Virginia. On July 20, the army attacked the strikers, ending with 10 killed. The strike spread to New York, Newark, and Pittsburgh. The Philadelphia army attacked the Pittsburgh strikers, and the strikers attacked back, leaving 24 dead. In the end, 5 million dollars of Pennsylvania Railroad property was destroyed, including 104 locomotives, and 2152 railroad cars. 3000 federal troops and thousands more militia came to restore peace. Riots broke out in Altoona, Reading, Harrisburg, Scranton, Philadelphia, before moving to Chicago, St. Louis, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. Not organized by any union, the strike spread along the rail lines themselves, with workers in various occupations joining in where they could. All that over a wage increase?

The Harlem riot of 1935 prefigures the race riots of the 60’s. A black boy was caught shoplifting by white cops, and a minor confrontation occurred. Rumors spread that the police killed him (they didn’t), and Harlemites sought vengeance. In two days of rioting, over 200 white owned stores were demolished, causing 2 million dollars in property damage. This pattern was to repeat itself over and over and over again in the next 70 years. Can one really label the riots that happen in response part of a demand for equal rights?

In May 1970, the wave of student anti-war actions in the 60’s culminated after the shooting of 4 students at a Kent State University protest. In response, 1350 universities exploded in riots, including 4,350,000 participants. 400 schools shut down. Police opened fire at Jackson State College on May 14th — killing 2 black students — and again in Lawrence, Kansas on July, killing 2 youths, sparking a wave of arson and property destruction in response. All that just to stop a war thousands of miles away?

We think not. Rather, such demands are merely screens to interface between worlds of rage and worlds of law, a force of the subjective discontent of life under capital against a force of the objective necessity of capital subsuming life. Incommensurable in their content, they are equalized and understood from the perspective of one side, that of law, as attempts to collectively express a will towards a particular change in law. They are not understood from the side of the practices themselves, perhaps not even by those committing them. As goals, demands do not determine the type of struggles, actions, or events that we describe here. For every demand mentioned above can also be sought after by legal means. What makes these activities unique is the continually developing contradiction between their form and content, the form as the demand to someone for something, and the content as rejecting anyone’s attempt to accommodate anything.

ACCOMMODATION ACCELERATION

The pace in which institutions of state and capital accommodate the demands of these struggles accelerates rapidly. When a struggle’s demand is accommodated, the struggle quickly shifts from an external conflict between two opposed players to an internal conflict managed by one institution. The first major accommodation of demands took sixty years of riots (1877-1934), when in the 1930’s government and capitalists acquiesced to the assaults of proletarian violence by bettering work conditions all around.

The second major accommodation took thirty years of riots (1935-1968), when, after multiple cities were ravaged by minor insurrections of mostly black proletarians, government in the late 60’s made new legislation to enforce equality in schools, employment and public institutions. “Race riots”[2] of course existed before the Harlem uprising of 1935 (and continued after the massive riots following MLK Jr.’s assassination in April ’68), but its modern character took form then, insofar as the riots were initiated by black folks as a response to a particular act of police violence (usually an arrest, beating, murder, or rumor of murder), instead of initiated by white folks as an attack on black and immigrant communities who then defend themselves (the Atlanta Race Riot of 1906, for instance). Hence, targets in the modern race riot are property, police, and stores, and acts of physical assault between white and black civilians and/or immigrants, such as occurred in the Jim Crow era (1890-1914), are much less common, although still present.

Finally, the third major accommodation of demands took about ten years of riots (1964-1972), after students, youth, and left radicals of all stripes occupied, smashed, burned, and fought cops at thousands of Universities across the country. Shortly after the national riots following the Kent State massacre on May 4th 1970, the government began to incorporate anti-war dissidents into their debates, ultimately conceding to their demands by abolishing the draft in 1973, and pulling out of Vietnam completely by 1975.

Since the anti-war protests of the 60’s, the women’s liberation, gay liberation, Native American, anti-nuke, and anti-apartheid movements have gone through similar rapidly accelerating phases of riot — protest — accommodation — reorganization. Some of these struggles never end, but once their particular demands are incorporated into a general institutional structure in some form or another, the movement changes nature from one of opposition to one of competition. The pace has accelerated so much recently that the dialectic between destruction, demand, accommodation and neutralization occurs within less and less time from after the first riot. With the American wing of the anti-globalization movement kicking off in Seattle ’99, it took less than a decade, as the IMF, World Bank and WTO all but collapsed or had to completely reorganize their language and agenda to integrate the force of global assaults and physical critiques they received. With the immigrant protests of May ’06, it took less than a year, as politicians quickly reorganized their agenda to pass new laws (or rather, to make laws that never pass). With the Oakland riots of January ’09, it took a week.

When one focuses on the presence or absence of demands as the criteria for discerning revolutionary from reformist struggle, one ignores the relations and meanings internal to the activities of the struggles themselves. Demands are getting accommodated quicker, but revolution is in no way closer now than ever before.

METHODS

The two grand styles of American counter-violence are the generalized riot and the specialized tactic. The core elements of the former are looting, arson, property damage and physical assault; its participants are proletarians and subproletarians. The elements of the latter are picket lines, marches, sit-ins and traffic blockades; its participants are usually a minority group trained in such measures.

Prior to the 1930’s, these two forms of activity were indistinguishable in the main conflict of the era, that between capital and labor, in which strikes were also riots, marches were battles, and sit-ins and blockades were nothing but the defense and creation of barricades. After sixty years of intense class war (1877-1934), in which each strike left bodies on both sides, changes in both tactics and strategy were adopted, changes that reflected shifts in the relation between capital and proletariat, and between the state and its subjects.

In 1934, the United States was on the brink of anarchy. Wild, bloody strikes swept through Minneapolis, Toledo, and San Francisco. On May 21st and 22nd, Minneapolis truckers on strike stopped all deliveries, and in response, police and a newly formed “citizens alliance” attacked them. Truckers beat police and the “alliance”, wounding 67. On May 23rd and 24th, six thousand auto workers on strike in Toledo fought police, the company security and the National Guard, eventually forcing them all to retreat, but not before two strikers were killed. On May 9th, longshoremen all along the West Coast went on a massive strike, but it wasn’t until July 3rd in San Francisco that violent confrontations between police and proletarians emerged. The generalized strike peaked when police killed two on “Bloody Thursday,” wounding 115 as well.

With the depression raging, workers turning to more and more desperate methods of destruction[3], and police, Pinkertons, and national guardsmen racking up casualties daily, the state as well as many larger capitalists began to concede, allowing the formation of unions in certain industries, guaranteeing lesser hours and better conditions, and even a minimum wage. At the same time, workers methods began to move away from generalized rampage and towards the Sit-Down, the model act of symbolic revolt whose creation shifted American conflict from riot to ritual. In 1936, there were 48 factory sit-downs involving 87,817 workers, 477 in 1937 involving 398,117 workers, and 52 in 1938 involving 28,749 workers. These sit-downs were intentionally non-provocative, yet they would defend themselves if attacked or prevented. This in fact occurred in Flint, Michigan, January 1937, when guards stopped union men from delivering food to their striking comrades inside the GM factory. In response, workers locked the guards in a washroom, police fired tear gas at the workers, and workers sent the tear gas back. After 14 injuries, the officers withdrew in what’s known joyfully as the “Battle of Running Bulls.”

In the 30’s, as capitalists and government accommodated labor’s minimal demands, proletarian revolt shifted to specialized tactics, and capitalism began its turn towards complete, regulated commodity production of all goods and activities constituting daily life for not only the bourgeoisie, but the working-class as well. In the 30’s, the separation of demand from destruction was enacted for the first time. As specialization became the norm in the workplace, so it was in the struggle as well. This separation set the stage for the forms of ritualized rebellion that carried the civil rights movement from 1955-1965 with the lunch counter sit-ins, as well as the student anti-war actions of 1964-1972 with their sit-ins, occupations and traffic blockades. The refinement of such tactics developed rapidly in the ecological struggles of the 70’s and 80’s over nuclear power, old growth forests, water, pollution, and coal. Three main groups accomplished this: the Clamshell Alliance of New England, the Abalone Alliance of the West Coast, and the Livermore Action Group.

In August 1976, the Clamshell Alliance occupied Seabrook nuclear construction site, twice. The first ending in 18 arrests, the second with 180. After almost a year of trainings and preparation, in April 1977, the Clamshell Alliance went back with 2400 people, ending with 1400 being arrested. No violence was committed. Inspired by the Clamshell Alliance, the Abalone Alliance on the West Coast tried to occupy the Diablo plant in August of ’77. It didn’t work, but four years later in 1981 they returned, occupying the site for two weeks, blocking the plant, ending with 1900 arrests. On Mother Day 1982, the Livermore Action Group shut down the production of nuclear weapons at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory outside San Francisco when women armed with teddy bears sat down in front of traffic, as four women chained themselves to the gate. In March 1983, the group hiked through backwoods to occupy Vanderberg Air Force Base before 777 of them were arrested.

These three groups, along with the countless other environmental groups to emerge in the 80’s, formalized the already specialized tactics of the 30’s labor sit-downs, 50’s and 60’s civil rights sit-ins, and 70’s student occupations into a science, with its own jargon, methods, principles, and values. Rebaptizing riots as “nonviolent direct action”, mobs with grievances to avenge now became “protestors” with “rights” to “express.” The peaceful arrest was the ultimate end point, the lock-down became central, and pacifism dominated the ethical norm. Both government and protestors finally had a common language to speak, a shared framework with rules and boundaries to act within. Earth and Animal Liberation movements of the 90’s and 00’s took the same structure — formalized actions — yet inverted the elements: from public to clandestine, lock-down to escape, pacifism to arson.

The Rodney King riots of 1992 in Los Angeles (and San Diego, San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento, San Bernardino, Las Vegas, Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Miami, New York City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, St. Louis, Washington DC, and Toronto) explodes this logic of separation. Without specialization, these contagious events seemed to herald the return of the “race riot”, physical assault, generalized looting, arson and mass property destruction. Yet none of these forms really ended in the 60’s, they just became more and more separated from general social upheaval, pushed into “special interest” boxes. There were dozens of so-called race riots from 1970-1992. On the one hand, the pre-civil rights style race wars were resurrected by KKK/neo-nazi/white racist types against black and brown folks, especially between 1976 and 1979 in the South: Boston Bussing attacks between 1974-1976, KKK clashes in Columbus, Ohio and Mobile, Alabama in ’77, Neo-Nazi battles in San Jose, CA and St. Louis, Missouri in October 1977 and March 1978 respectively, and the infamous Greensboro massacre of Nov 3rd, 1970 when the Klan and Neo-Nazi party killed 4 protestors in the Communist Workers Party organized march. On the other hand, the ghetto riot of the 60’s resurfaced numerous times: Elizabeth, New Jersey 1975, Miami 1980, ’82, ’84 and ’89, Howard’s Beach, Queens 1986, Bensonhurst, Brooklyn 1989, Washington DC 1991, Brooklyn 1991, Manhattan 1992.

All have a similar story: a policeman or white racist shoots someone — Black, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Korean, Vietnamese — and the ethnic or racial community to which that person belong responds through immediate arson, property destruction, and looting. After four policemen charged with shooting an unarmed black man were acquitted by an all white Tampa jury, Miami was covered in blood and smoke for three days from May 17th to 19th, 1980. Three white folks were beaten to death, while police and National Guardsmen killed eleven black folks. 3600 National Guard were called in to help, and 1000 blacks were arrested. In July of 1992, a policeman shot an unarmed Dominican man in New York City, and 1000 people responded in force by overturning cars, smashing windows, littering the streets, burning three building and blocking traffic on the GW bridge. The Howards Beach, Bensonhurst and Brooklyn riots start a little differently, with white youth intentionally killing black youth, and a Hasidic Jew unintentionally running over a West Indian man. In all cases, the race war form of riot reemerged, with direct assaults between whites and blacks, Hasids and West Indians, Koreans and African-Americans.

And what about the blackout riots of ’77 in NYC, the Detroit devils nights, the Tompkins Square Park Riots of ’88, the Chicago Bulls riots, not to mention all the sports riots in Michigan, Milwaukee, and Pittsburgh? All of this goes to show that the form of generalized rioting characteristic of “race riots” never disappeared, but constantly reasserted itself from the 70’s-90’s, albeit in much more isolated, fragmented, and partial ways. It was not until Los Angeles of ’92 that generalized rioting become cohesive again within a national and social atmosphere of refusal, which allowed for the rebellion to transcend the previous limits of conflict, that is, the limit of demands.

MEDIATION

Between 1877 and 1934, proletarians (mostly white and immigrant) sought to attack capital directly (their boss, factory, means of production) but were constantly mediated and blocked by different state sanctioned agencies of legitimate violence (police, Pinkertons, national guard, army). In other words, workers wanting to destroy capitalists fought police in their place. Between 1934 and 1968, a new situation arises. Subproletarians and proletarians (mostly black), sought to attack the state directly (as police) but were constantly mediated by capital (as property). In other words, blacks wanting to fight police accomplished it by means of property destruction instead of direct confrontation (with exceptions). In the first case, the state mediates the antagonistic relation between capital and labor; in the second case, capital mediates the antagonistic relation between the state and labor. The student and anti-war actions signify the attempt to attack the state and capital together, but mediating it through the structure which prepares the transition to selling oneself as labor: the University. In other words, the crucible of future labor becomes a site of struggle, which is then further policed.

Now, from 1970-1992, the nonviolent direct action trend solidifies and isolated race riots continue to occur. Both are mediated by their own limits: the first is that their own bodies become the means by which they engage in conflict, and in the second is that the conflict only emerges in relation to an act of racist violence from police or others. From 1992 to the present, property destruction reemerges, but differently than before. On the one hand as specialized (political riots) and on the other as generalized (‘race riots’). But both of these tend to blur during the dotcom and housing bubble eras of the 90’s and ’00s. In Miami, LA, Seattle, Cincinnati, Michigan and Oakland, the target is once again capital, but now the attempt to negate it is mediated by capital itself in one of its forms, property. To destroy capital as such, capital as property is attacked (as opposed to capital as commodities, money, or labor). The state mediates this when it can (defending summits, sending in the National Guard), but it also retreats a bit, leaving capital to take care of itself. That is, the bait of property destruction lures individuals into isolated illegal activity which capital can recover from while the state can make examples out of those it captures.

As demands progressed from specific issues to general refusal, rioting regressed from a geneneralized activity to a specialized practice. Since the civil war, the nature of demands has transformed from localized to total within the content of particular struggles themselves. Revolts over work — from the massive rail strike of 1877, through the Pullman and Homestead riots of the 1880’s and 90s, to the Battle of Blair Mountain in the 1920s — revolts over racial exploitation — from the Harlem riots of 1935 to the MLK Jr. riots of 1968 — and revolts over war — from the Free Speech movement of 64 through the Days of Rage in 69 — all end on the brink of civil war. Once that possibility is breached, demands — whether real or not — are brought in to adjudicate, accommodate and pacify the populace. It is no coincidence that an American situationist group from Berkeley in 1972 called “For Ourselves” could write a theoretical statement with the subtitle, “On the Practical Necessity of Demanding Everything.” That framework was finally shattered in the Los Angeles rebellion of ’92 when it was realized that there is no longer anyone to “demand everything” from. As “For Ourselves” was theorizing the content of the last decade of revolts as the necessity of demanding everything without regard to any specific practice, the Clamshell alliance was theorizing the content of the last decades of civil disobedience as the necessity of demanding something by means of very particular “nonviolent direct action” techniques.

Besides modern race-class riots, the anti-globalization movement has inherited this dual legacy, leading to the contradictory movement of those who demand everything (as they continue the legacy of the Sit-downs of the 30’s) working side-by-side with those who demand nothing (as they continue the legacy of class violence in the early 20th century and the ghetto riots of the 60’s). The difference is that such generalized violence is now also done by specialists, black block anarchists, and the specialized tactics of non-violent direct action have become more and more accepted as the general means for engaging in social conflict. The generalization of demands and the specialization of practice leads us to the impasse of the present, which cannot be overcome without breaking with the forms and content of revolt as we inherit them, with and without demands.

DEMANDING SOMETHING, EVERYTHING, NOTHING

Struggles with insurrectionary content in the United States have progressed from demanding something (1880s-1940s), through demanding everything (1960’s-1970’s) to demanding nothing (1992-present). Each new phase is marked by the lasting contradictions of the previous one, insofar as no period is completely “new,” rather it only makes separate and dominant a certain tendency hitherto indistinct in the previous mode of struggle. When uprisings in Philadelphia ’64, Rochester ’64, Watts ’65, Newark ’67, Detroit ’67, Buffalo ’67, everywhere ’68, Berkeley ’69, Chicago ’69 and hundreds of others cities demand a change in the totality of existing conditions, they are only theorizing the implications of the generalized strikes and riots of proletarians in the last decades of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th. When rioters in LA ’92, St. Petersburg ’96, Seattle ’99, Cincinnati ’01, Toledo ’03, Benton Harbor ’05, New Orleans ’05, St. Paul ’08 or Oakland ’09 during the last two decades act with the intensity and coordination of 60s rioters, but without the general national atmosphere of rebellion, and without wanting anything at all from their targets and enemies, then they are only conceptualizing in deed the concrete failure of every institutional attempt to “change everything.” Against abstract demand, even the demand to end all demands, they are acting on the basis of a concrete rejection of demands as such. This practical shift relocates the power to make history from those who reconcile conflicts to those who make them irreconcilable. The present comprehension of history is enacted in the forms through which struggles take place today, and those forms are dominated by a demandless consistency of social acts of violence against capital in all its manifestations.

What are the ethics of demandless struggles? They are not based on a desired object or end, they can’t be judged based on calculation or utilitarian value. Rather, their strength comes from their basis in the act itself, the deed irrespective of calculation, interest, or gain; it is the privileging of the activity over the product. The danger with this anti-moralist ethic of pure action is that it can easily cross boundaries of disciplined violence, such as in the Draft Riot of 1863 when class revolt turned to race war. So how can one overcome this danger? By maintaining principles of friendship and trust, to ground the anarchy of pure action in the commune of shared needs. But what grounds the commune? Action, and its legacy. The history of acts is the only “product” created — a narrative of a whole, directed, consistent life.

A struggle without demands is a strike at the level of language. By refusing the accepted form of presenting disagreements, the meaning and justification of the action becomes internal to its presentation. But not as immediately “symbolic” or “gestural”, rather it is mediated by all those things which make up alienated life: commodities, property, police, money, labor. The critique of existing society becomes not a verbal cry for a better world but a mute rejection of the entirety of this one, only recognized by the cohesive movement and relation of acts of practical negation of all those dominant mediations making up one’s nonlife. After a battle in the social war subsides, only the ruins left behind can tell its story.

The refusal to demand allows for the abstraction of capital to reveal itself, no longer covered up in the mysticism of word-games, i.e., we are fighting for right x because of need y based on condition z. That structure will never challenge the basis of the needs and conditions themselves. The undemanding struggle is not for anything, it is a position, a stance, a risk to become a subject of one’s own activity; until then, we are nothing but objects of capital, things moved around to work, vote, and reproduce. Capital is personified in our actions (work, consume, repeat), and the state is personified in our words (rights, justice, freedom). To refuse both personifications means to destroy the form of Man which capital and state need for their reality, that form is the proletariat and the citizen, the worker and the activist, the entrepreneur and the poet. The complete negation of Man as he exists under any and every category granted by class society is the ultimate goal of communism, and this cannot be demanded. It can only be accomplished.

The demand is a tool for self-organization. It unifies separated individuals against a common enemy toward a common good. It is the unification of the exploited based upon a common enunciation, “We want X”. The demand becomes a self-mediation, a self-constitution of the undifferentiated masses into a singular one, a subject who demands. Demands, in others words, are processes of subjectification. Individuals act as class, and in that class action they become subjects and no longer merely objects of capital.

The problem is that the class of those exploited by a common structure of domination is unified on the very basis of that domination, on the very basis of the capitalist relation. All the diverse appearances of one’s fragmented life cohere around a unified essence — the identity of the exploited as worker, as student, as oppressed. This identity is crafted in struggle, and becomes the basis for a community. The community can outlast the struggle for a particular demand, or not. The difference and diversity of those living under capital is not the issue, rather it’s the essence upon which they’re united. If the struggle and the demand first unify people who aren’t unified, then the next step is to destroy the basis of that unity in a way that allows for a new unity unpoisoned by the centrality of the capital-relation. In other words, one destroys what the demand unifies, our abstract identity, the unity of a class, the unity of an identity. “The process of revolution is that of the abolition of what is self-organisable.” (Theorie Communiste). The conditions for a real unification will arise through the overcoming of this negative form of community, a form born through the demand struggle, and carried beyond it by the demandless one.

Communism or anarchy is the abolition of relations of capital in life through the rupture with the rupture that reveals them — this second rupture is determinate, a new configuration of which we can only speak in the language of potentiality: activity without work, life without value, people without things, time without measure, social without society. “From struggles over immediate demands to revolution, there can only be a rupture, a qualitative leap. But this rupture isn’t a miracle.” (TC) It is a demand upon us.

Footnotes

[1]^ With the exception of the Detroit riot of June 20-22, 1943, the last of the classic Jim Crow riots, which was predominantly whites attacking blacks (killing 25) and blacks defending themselves (killing 9)

[2]^ We put “race riot” in quotes because every race riot is a class riot, and we only label them “race riots” to distinguish them from the earlier class riots of the century. For a practical analysis of a supposed “race riot” where this is the case, see the article “LA ‘92: The Context of a Proletarian Uprising” in the first issue of the journal Aufheben.

[3]^ For example, on December 1st 1906, 250 masked men rode into Princeton, Kentucky, occupied the town for two hours and dynamited two factories operated by Tobacco Trust, destroying 400,000 pounds of tobacco.

Source: http://theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Johann_Kaspar__We_Demand_Nothing.html