More Left Out In America
April 27th, 2011
This is an interesting comment on my post of April 26 and my response which turned into a bit of a screed.
— On Wed, 4/27/11, Dean Tuckerman wrote:
Gary; You need to read more Trotsky and Trotskyism. That may seem
strange coming from me, someone who hates the authoritarianism of
Trotsky and his supposed followers. But Gary, you need to read about the
popular front, and why it's the wrong way to organize, because your
document and attitude reeks of the popular front. You believe that
Obama, the black and progressive caucuses are part of the left when in
reality they are part of the ruling class–especially oh-bomb-uh.
Anybody in the leadership of the Democratic party is part of the ruling
capitalist class and is the class enemy. Before you can figure how to
organize, you must figure out how –and who– not to organize with.
Who to work with: I find anarchists doing all kinds of important work,
especially those who are doing direct actions –no matter how small they
point the way forward. I find there is a split amongst environmentalists
between those are figuring out how to solve the greatest problem of our
time, and those who, as you say, are figuring out how to fit in. The
answer hasn't been found yet, but some people are experimenting and they
need to to be supported and added to. Some Greens are anemic (mainly
the ones who don't see the Democratic party as the gravediggers of the
movement), but some are exciting and trying new ways to organize. There
are community organizers all around the world, some in the Social Forum
movement, who are doing important work. And there's much more if you get
out of the blinders of pro-capitalist and pro-governmental hierarchical
institutions
You can read my post of April 26 "Left Out In America" on my blog if you want to know what Dean is refering to.
The problem I have with your analysis Dean is that you assume I simply am not enlightened and if I simply knew what you know, I would agree with you. Unless there has been a major shift in the universe, I do believe we are still on the same planet and have even been in the same cultural milieus. I simply was stating that I found the arguments in Socialist Voice to be intelligent, cogent and non-ideological, except for their attachment to the concept of the Vanguard whish seems to be assumed as a given. They are for the most part still wrapped around the concept of building a socialist party. I think that is a valid one, although I am not sure an uncorrupted socialist party exists. But that is part of politics.
The direct action experiments you speak of are pretty limited. Spain in the 1930's is still our best example and there had been decades of ground work done by the activists of the CNT, and other anarchist and syndicalist formations before the civil war. Other events such as organizing for specific demonstrations may show that people have skills but these are limited to a single event that may last a few days at most. There is no ongoing presence, except for perhaps an Indymedia collective or an Infoshop or a Food Not Bombs groups. All of these are nice, but they are not exactly models of successful anarchist communities.
People like continuity, and stability. When they want disorder they go to an amusement park, or play with the stock market. Free market capitalists and anarchists seem to have fetishized uncontrolled, reality, believing in the invisible hand or natural order of things to sort stuff out. In reality it is human institutions, human decision making, in the natural environment that determines what is and what is not, outside of the weather, which we have increasing ability to control. Planning is necessary in conjunction with the spontaneous occurrences of life. Back in the 1960's there was a reaction against the dreariness of the imagined 1950's with its predictable, safe white bread reality. People did all sorts of things, invented therapies, took drugs, to make themselves more spontaneous. People emulated so called spontaneous artists and prostitutes and we created a cult of spontaneity that degenerated into a consumer culture of youth worship. It was really more of a love of novelty that people fell for. We now live in a world where novelty and distraction have become the norm. What once was extreme is now considered tame and the culture mavens seek further and further afield for sufficiently distracting tales to entertain the jaded minds of the industrialized world. This is especially so in the USA where a culture of novelty has become one of violent transgression. The media is full of images of slaughter. Games are created that increase the verisimilitude of the ability to commit mayhem. The violence, although vicarious is socially destructive, it has no relationship to attaining any socially meaningful goal other than to wipe out the enemy. The means no longer have to justify the ends, there are no longer ends, just endless means in the flickering images on the tube, the computer screen, the cell phone, I-book, whatever. I have wandered a bit from the subject, because I want to describe a state that many, many Americans, especially the youth, are immersed in. It was something that grew out of a combination of the culture and the technology.
It can be seen how anarchism would be attractive to someone who was raised in a world full of these unstable flickering images constantly changing and full of violent images of fulfillment. They are rapidly changing and demand flexibility, quick reflexes at least in the fingers, and a mind able to absorb images, able to discern movement and able to react to motion quickly without thinking about it. Anarchism as a political theory fits this better, than perhaps any other except free market capitalism. Unless you are a programmer, if you write code, then you are in a different position. I am not in that position but I would be interested in seeing what a programmers dream world would be like, open source code? Perhaps our friend Julian Assange is the poster child for the future of political action. Daring, rash even, almost unaware of conventional approaches and willing to break convention for the sake of the data and data by the terabit is what he gives us, raw, uncensored, well almost. It is anarchistic. It is certainly free on the marketplace of ideas. It has created chaos in certain fields of policy and it seems to have been contained and has disappeared from the media mindscape. I am trying to find room to agree with you, but I am wondering about the mind set of modern America, our most well known subject.
I am no apologist for Obama, I simply see the election cycle coming up and wonder, will the right wing succeed in taking away what little social security I have? As a recently disabled person I have to think about this stuff. You have been living with disability all your life. These dollar and sense issues of who gets what affect me, and you. If we are to have any ability to live in this society with any dignity, we need to insure that the government does not cut what little we have and give even more to the rich under the false premise of paying down debt. Who after all holds the debt, the wealthy for the most part. It is a numbers game and is a system used not simply for neutral accounting, but for maintaining wealth concentrated in a few hands.
Resources can be reallocated. Cuba for one has shown that even in a poor country it can be done, with a little help from friends. And what after all are friends for? We all need friends and in a world as interdependent as ours, we all need to be willing to share the wealth. How we do it, what system you use is up to us collectively to determine. But first we have to wrestle it out of the hands of the ruling classes and then we have to figure out how to keep a new ruling class from arising, Unless we decide we really want one, then we might as well have a king. But the prophets of old warned the people of Israel against Kings, and they got them anyway. People forget the kings were a curse of god, not a blessing.
How we go about getting to socialism is any bodies guess. At this point we have environmental and social pressures pushing the world in that direction. But first we have to get over this whole allegiance to a financial game that is simply getting us tied up in knots for no reason other than to please a few wealthy creditors. I don't know if anarchists are up to this game, any more than most of the left. But if we don't step up, the same old gang will.
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