There are multiple strategies for change in a corrupt and oligarchical society. They aren’t all mutually exclusive. Let’s run through some of them.
Showing Up and Playing Nice (aka. Demonstrations)
Demonstrations by themselves work when your lords and masters want them to. In some time periods this is because your lords and masters have a moral system which allows them to feel shame. Seeing demonstrators who believe in peace, or not being racist, or not ruling India for Britain’s benefit, triggers the morals they have, and they are moved.
In other time periods this is because they need the consent of the governed, and they know that the next step beyond demonstrations is something worse. During the Great Depression there were occasions in which citizens took the police on, straight up. Within living memory union members had fought the army straight up. So when people started demonstrating in large numbers in the 60s, there were still people in power who remembered all that. It didn’t make them give in, right away, but it did make them think. At this point and time, no one in power in the US and much of the West, remembers the last time the population got uppity enough to go toe-to-toe with military or paramilitary forces.
Huge demonstrations could be, but haven’t been, as a rule, occasions to build real organizations. When all those people show up, all their names should be being gathered, local lodges should be being created, and so on. So far that hasn’t been done. Why, I’m not entirely sure, but what I’ve seen is that the people who run the large national organizations like the national chapters of NARAL or NOW, for example, just want a mailing list, they don’t really want a lot of direct action. They want to play the inside game, make deals and concessions, play like they’re Senators, not like outsiders. They don’t want a vibrant organization full of motivated people who would call them on their sellouts, who would make them fight their friends in DC.
Remember, though, that demonstrations as just showing up, only work if the oligarchy wants it to. If the teabaggers show up with a couple hundred people, that will get media coverage, because the oligarchy found them useful. If anti-war protesters show up in the hundreds of thousands, yawn. No media coverage for you. Not only do you not get through to your lords and masters, you don’t even let the rest of the population know what’s going on.
Showing up and shutting things down
The next step up. This is what the French unions often do. Get the truckers involved, pull the trucks up, and shut the roads down. Go to a refinery, in large numbers (not a couple dozen) and occupy it. Don’t move voluntarily. If the cops want to move you, make them do it the hard way. (I leave the definition of hard way to each organizing group’s own conscience.) Shut down commerce. Shut down key facilities which are worth a lot of money to the oligarchy. Don’t let anything move. Cost them money. Force the police to choose sides. They won’t always choose yours, but sometimes they will.
This method applies costs to the oligarchy. It changes their cost/benefit analysis. And since cost/benefit is how the oligarchy has been trained to think, it can have some effect. This method works best if you can get the blue collars on your side, in particular the folks who regularly use big equipment. Miners, construction workers, truckers, and so on. In Europe these people tend to be left wing, in the US they have been co-opted, an this is one reason why your lords and masters don’t care what you think, because you don’t have the big iron backing you up. (A main battle tank can be taken on by the right construction equipment used in the right way. The US army knows this.)
Rioting
Of course I would never write that I think anyone should riot. However, as a practical matter, sometimes people do, for example the Greeks, right now. Maybe you don’t want to be impoverished for the rest of your life to pay off rich oligarchs who don’t pay taxes for a crisis they deliberately created so they could buy up state assets at cents on a dollar. You’ve decided to fight, and not lay down. Ok then.
So if you’re going to riot, let’s talk about how you do it. First, don’t riot in your own fucking neighbourhood. The oligarchy doesn’t care if you destroy your own assets, or if you fight the police where members of the oligarchy aren’t. Cops are members of the servant class, the oligarchy doesn’t give one damn if a few of them get messed up, that’s what they’re there for. If you are going to riot, go to where the oligarchs live. March on their neighbourhoods, and fight the cops on the way there, or once you get there. If the cops don’t fight you on the way there, feel free to set up your trucks and completely shut down the entire district so no one can get through. Remember, while I would never tell anyone to be violent, if for your own reasons you’ve decided, like America’s founders, that you’ve had it up to here, and aren’t taking it anymore, do it where it matters. Productive assets owned by the oligarchs are also good. Or how about their yacht clubs. Use your imagination.
Note also that Malcolm X makes Martin Luther King possible. Everyone doesn’t have to have the strategy, what they must not do is what Arundhati Roy refused to do, they must not condemn others on the same side.
Shunning and Shaming
Simple shunning and shaming works great and doesn’t need to involve any violence. Find out the schedule of every member of government, every oligarch and every senior bureaucrat who thinks the best way to deal with a crisis is to screw ordinary people and show up everywhere they do. Heckle them, surround the building they are in. When they come out, scream at them. Make their daily lives miserable. Make it so they can’t go anywhere without a police escort. No violence necessary. Just get in their faces and let them know what you think of their policies. Ben Nelson being booed at a pizza parlor, a minor example, shook him up to no end. Don’t do business with them. Don’t shake their hands if you run into them. Make it clear that most of the population considers them a moral leper.
The Difference Between Violence and a Willingness To Die
Two different things. If you are a non-violent protester who wishes to have full effect, you must, at the least, be willing to be beaten, and to die. The protesters in Egypt were willing to die. To the extent they succeeded (and that extent is not yet known, since getting rid of Mubarak may not change much that matters) it was when they made the army choose between shooting them, and protecting Mubarak. They forced the army to make that choice. The army wasn’t willing to, though since then they’ve proved willing to shoot Egyptians for themselves.
Shutting things down in ways that really hurts the oligarchy, even if done in a completely non-violent way, is going to be met with violent response quite often. You must know, upfront, what you will do in that case.
Opting Out and Creating a New System
Be clear, the financial oligarchs don’t make most of their money directly from you. They make their money by packaging revenue streams (or what appear to be revenue streams) and selling those streams. So , mortgages, debt of various kinds, parking receipts, rent on public buildings sold to investors and then leased back, and so on. That’s how they make their money. Other elites may sell you things, but they too are in the financialization system. Everyone is looking for a locked in stream, which is why there is the huge push to make sure you own nothing. Put your data in the “Apple Cloud” and that’s great, as long as you can make your monthly payments.
Opting out is about finding a way to live which puts you on the hook for as little of this as possible. You lose a ton of convenience by opting out (tried to travel without a credit card?) But to the extent you refuse to be on the hook for monthly payments, whether mortgage or credit card, or anything else, you both increase your freedom and you decrease their power by decreasing the revenue streams they want to monetize. Their key focus is “must have”. You must have a phone, you must have internet access, you must have food, you have housing, you must have health insurance (because you will be forced to buy it). What you must have, what you must pay, is what can be securitized, what is a reliable revenue/rent stream. Every part of the oligarchy wants to lock this down, that’s why they make it harder and harder to go bankrupt, that’s why they try and make things which aren’t property (ideas) into intellectual “property”, that’s why they make unpatentable drugs illegal and patentable drugs massively expensive.
To the extent that you can get yourself and other people out of the system, you are directly hitting the oligarchy, not just because of revenue, but because the less dependent people are, the more they can oppose the oligarchy. This means growing food among small groups (something they are trying to make illegal). This means figuring out how to provide local energy without going through the utilities. This means creating your own financial institutions, by hook or crook. This is the work of creating ground based power. The right wing does this through their churches, the left has lost its lodges, the unions are in disarray, the co-ops have not caught up the slack and so on. There is a ton of room here for real social entrepreneurs (ones who don’t want to cash out).
It is important to have a market of markets. That is to say, right now, the only way most people can make a living is to work for someone else. That’s it. In the old days, if things didn’t work out, you could go back to the farm, or in the even older days you could just go homestead. It might not be that great a life, but it was an alternative to the system. As a result, the system had to treat you enough better than the alternative (family agriculture or subsistence agriculture), to keep you away from it. Even as that went away, there was the spectre of communism. The Western world felt it was necessary to treat their population better than the Communist world. When the Communist bloc fell, the oligarchs shrugged and said “so, where are they going to go?” With no other options, they no longer had to treat their own population well, or so they felt.
Opting out isn’t just about hurting the oligarchs directly, it is about creating that other economy. Call if the slow economy, call it “off the grid”, whatever. A place where people can get shelter, food, clothing and basic healthcare without being involved in the mainstream economy. What that world, should it be created, will offer, is autonomy. It will offer not having a boss riding you 40 hours a week and emailing you at home. Your material circumstances may be lower, but autonomy is worth a lot of happiness and peace of mind.
This certainly isn’t easy to do. The counterculture tried, and to a large extent failed. It is still necessary, because without the threat of an operating alternative system which people can go to, the current system sees no reason to treat people well.
Concluding Remarks
This certainly isn’t exhaustive, nor is it meant to be. The point is that there are a variety of different strategies, and different strategies are suitable for different times, places and circumstances. If you’re drawn to one strategy, that’s probably what you should be working on. At the same time, recognize that some strategies may prove more successful than others, depending on the circumstances. No strategy works in every time and place.
And for God’s sake, don’t imitate your idiot masters. If at first something doesn’t succeed, and if you try and try and try again, and it still doesn’t work, try something else.
jcapan
These two lines leap out at me:
“Not only do you not get through to your lords and masters, you don’t even let the rest of the population know what’s going on.
In Europe these people tend to be left wing, in the US they have been co-opted, and this is one reason why your lords and masters don’t care what you think, because you don’t have the big iron backing you up.”
While a movement can begin anywhere, for it to be ultimately successful (if not for this generation then the next), blue collar workers and service sector slaves (Walmart et al), have to be engaged, respected and inspired to participate. There was a time, especially before the cold war, when the left and the street stood together. Now they’ve lived apart for too long—they’re nearly alien to one another and they still perceive their interests as being different. I’m speaking of the authentic left and not what seems to be the vast majority of self-described liberals that love to refer to the poor and uneducated as stupid (unless of course they vote team donk).
The disenfranchised are gagging for an alternative narrative that muscularly addresses class inequality. At the same time, if we’re to reach out to them, we have to see their concerns as our own, we have to show them the respect they deserve. And if we’re serious, we have to have ways of communicating to them that do not rely on the corporate disinformation and at least not primarily on the internets. So to me that’s gotta to be a core strategy from the word go—how to convey our message to the people being most abused by the oligarchy. Reds, union activists, in this country and all others, when they have been successful, have always gone to where those people lived and spoken to them as equals stakeholders. Any left unwilling to do this doesn’t merit a better tomorrow.
Avedon
Um, could you fix this?
“Simple shunning and shaming works great and doesn’t need to involve.”
Sam Adams
Six weeks the US stock market is down, now watch. Interest rates paid to account holders are non-existant. Change is coming. Its not going to be shame.
someofparts
In California in the 70s I discovered the Diggers. Even back then they were already off the grid and learning how to expand on the things they could do for themselves. All these decades later I don’t know what has become of those people, but wherever they are I would love to hear their stories. Seems there might be much they could teach my urban self.
One memory that sticks out is that they would not allow me to send anyone copies of their newsletters in the mail. Their rule was that their newpapers had to be carried to people face to face. That seems so prescient now, but the Diggers knew to stay clear of the media four decades ago.
David Kowalski
For most of the elite, the last time they remember demonstrators standing toe-to-toe with the police or army was watching scenes of the Godfather concerning the Cuban revolution. Lech Walensa and the Gdansk ship yard may be more recent but less a part 0of the culture.
Back around 1937, the UAW had prolonged sit down strikes and took on the police and won. It took outsiders to preside over the coup in the auto industry. A guy with no memory except Wall Street coups, certainly not people coups. Macnamara was really chilled by demonstrators, He worked as upper management at Ford and must have heard about the sit ins in the auto industry a lot. That was over 70 years ago.
The elite broke the teamsters through deregulation and earlier prosecutions of multiple Teamster leaders starting with Hoffa. This isn’t France. Talk with a few truckers and Reagan is hated for deregulation. The result was loss of pay and loss of independence and even longer working days for less.
Btw, the classic case of workers going toe-to-toe with the army was in Bolivia in the 1950s. The tin miners were on their own turf, had explosives, and knew how to use them. They actually beat the army. Now that is something for the elite to be very afraid of.
Morocco Bama
someofparts latest post brings to mind a movie I watched not too long ago called Off The Map. It was excellent. Worth the watch.
http://www.evtv1.com/player.aspx?itemnum=7554
Jack Olson
Lincoln said that public sentiment is indispensable for any political cause. “Without it, nothing can succeed. With it, nothing can fail.” If he was correct, then the object of any political tactic such as those Mr. Welsh proposes must be to gain public sympathy for its cause.
Those tactics include peaceful demonstrations, disrupting the operation of industrial facilities, rioting, stalking and harassing government officials, and boycotting the purchase of goods and services. If you do any except the first and the last, people will regard you as a thug because you are using thug tactics. They care nothing for your opinion of your motives. They give much greater weight to their own opinion of your motives, that you seek to gain power over others by ruthless means. They suspect that if and when you gain power through thug tactics, you will direct the same tactics at them as soon as they do anything you disapprove of. Creation of that suspicion is the exact opposite of the public trust which Lincoln called vital to any cause.
Ian Welsh
Again, Olson, it’s soooo good that the US’s founders didn’t understand that violence never works. What you’re missing is that the other side is already using what you call “thug” tactics. Also you miss the simple fact that majorities or pluralities of the population often support things (like the public option) which elite simply has no intention of every passing. Public opinion, absent effective public action, simply does not work.
You assume the public never condones violence. This is not a fact, the fact is that the public often condones violence. The question is by whom, against whom. Nor does it particularly matter if a majority does, a determined minority is sufficient for many purposes (only about a third of the population supported the US rebellion against England according to estimates). And, again, Malcolm X makes Martin Luther King possible.
Elites do not care if the public is for or against something if they can convince Congress or the President to do it. It is a strictly secondary consideration.
What Lincoln was probably reffering to is a great mobilization of a society. That requires consent, but effective consent is easy enough for government to get. You can ask Stalin or Goebbels or “suspension of Habeas Corpus” Lincoln about that.
lambert strether
Demonstration: Non-violent method of persuasion and protest #47.
Shunning and shaming: A lot like haunting (#31) and taunting (#32) (for Canadians, entartism).
As for “off the grid,” see forms of social and economic intervention like Establishing new social patterns (#174) and Alternative economic institutions (#192).
Not saying this taxonomy is any sort of blueprint, or even exhaustive. However, it points to a very rich inventory of non-violent tactics that deserve consideration, many of which are being practiced (though not reported on) today, and with success. I doubt, for example, that the Egyptians would have gotten even as far as they did, had they not treated a reputation for non-violence as the strategic asset it turned out to be.
Ian Welsh
Ok folks, have you noticed that the army is shooting and beating Egyptians? Have you noticed that minus Mubarak and a few cronies, unaccountable elites are still in charge of Egypt? Have you noticed that they haven’t changed their economic system and that food is still unaffordable? It is not clear that the Egyptians won jack shit. They will get exactly what the army is willing to give them, and nothing else, and that is not going to be the restructuring their society, including their economy needs. They need to move to food self-sufficiency, which they can do, but they aren’t.
The Egyptian situation is still in play, don’t watch the shiny, watch what is actually happening in the real economy and the actual society. The cops are still raping, the army is beating people down, the food situation is not being dealt with. Some minor populist moves (opening Gaza) have been made, but we don’t know how this will work out. Getting rid of Mubarak may turn out to have not mattered much at all. It may turn out to have mattered a great deal. But you notice, mmm, that non violence did not work in Syria or Libya at all (and don’t tell me the Syrian protesters are non violent, they are not, and they stopped being non-violent because it wasn’t working.) Absent NATO intervention, the Libyans would already be crushed, but it started with Qaddaffi killing non-violent protesters.
I do not claim non-violence never works, I claim it works under limited circumstances and as part of a full spectrum of options. In many cases both more violent strategies and non-violence should be pursued at the same time. The people who piss me the off are the folks who insist that non-violence works everywhere and at all times and that violence never works. This is not supported by the record. It is not even supported by the record in the US, starting with the revolution and moving up the 30s, where there was a butt load of violence, which really concentrated the minds of elites who feared that if they didn’t make things better for ordinary people the country go straight communist and they would literally lose their heads.
This is why I wrote about Roy, because Roy has gotten the basic point: you don’t disavow the people fighting on your side. So no, she doesn’t disavow the insurgency in India, she doesn’t say “you have no right of self defense.” Because that, in the end, is what the moral puritans who think people should always turn the other cheek are saying “take it your beating, and you’ll get only what the masters want to give you.”
lambert strether
Of course the other side is using thug tactics. None of us here just fell off the turnip truck. And Mao and Stalin were soooo much better than emperors and czars.
Ian Welsh
Were the people who fought the army and the cops in the 30s no better than Mao and Stalin? Is that what you’re saying? Come on Lambert, say it. Do you disapprove of violence under all circumstances? Do you disavow the Founding Fathers, the union members who fought all through the late nineteenth and first half of the 20th century? These guys used explosives and heavy machinery against the national guard in the 20s and 30s? Do you say you are not descended from them, that they were wrong?
Own up. Where do your sympathies lie? Turn the other cheek to the point of death? I can have some admiration for that, but I have no use for it as a theory of social change.
If those folks weren’t wrong to fight, then there is a place for strategies other than strict non violence. If not, you’re rejecting a huge part of the American left’s experience, and the world left’s experience as well (and the world right’s experience, as well, as far as that goes.)
It is so unfortunate that the Founding Fathers didn’t have the wisdom of modern non-violence types. They should have understood that fighting the British was stupid and counterproductive and immoral. And those union guys who went to toe-to-toe with police and Pinkertons and the National Guard, what a bunch of misguided violent monsters, who only needed to understand that violence is never the solution and that they should turn the other cheek, because their boss’s better sides could be appealed to.
Oilbummer Kills Kids
Wow, lot of your ideas are pure anarchism. Imagine if people moved past liberalism, a failed and feckless ideology.
Morocco Bama
Shit, I was going to reply and say something, but once again, Ian said it for me. Thanks, Ian….I couldn’t have said it better…..and carpal tunnel is deferred yet another day.
I believe a litmus test for “leftists”, and I use that term cautiously because I don’t think it adequately describes what it’s intended to describe, is the Cuban Revolution and its various actors, especially Che and Fidel. I believe Che and Fidel, what they accomplished and what Cuba eventually became was/is better than Batista or anything that came before, although in no way ideal. It being in no way ideal has much to do with what the U.S., and the disgusting verminous Cuban Exile agitators, have done to Cuba since the Revolution. Sure, Che, before his death, and Fidel then, and ever since, had their hand in it, as well, but it’s not all them, and Cuba is not as bad, and was never as bad, as the Western Propaganda made it out to be.
So, back to my point, anyone who has true “Leftist” sentiments, cannot help but admire the Cuban Revolution. I know I do, and I don’t label myself a “Leftist”, necessarily. I don’t know what I am…..I tend to keep my options open, and Dualist labels don’t describe my complexity. However, the Cuban Revolution and feelings toward its actors, Che and Fidel notably, helps determine whether someone is a LINO, or not. LINO meaning “Leftist” In Name Only. If they give the standard propagandistic bullshit response, you know they are LINOs, and they have more in common with the Cuban Exiles than they do with you. Do you really think you can change their stripes, considering that?
alyosha
The people who piss me the off are the folks who insist that non-violence works everywhere and at all times and that violence never works.
As a reader, it’s hard for me to believe that we’ve consumed so much comment-space in the last couple threads arguing about this. It’s pretty obvious to me that violence works, and also that non-violence can work at times.
Great essay, and general outline of strategies. “Opt-Out” is the future, or at least I know it is my future, what I was born to work on. From this will eventually arise a competing paradigm, much as Europe eventually arose from the ashes of Roman civilization. There have been many waves of people, throughout time, who attempted to check out of the dominant paradigm physically. The 60s was the most recent wave, occurring at the peak of prosperity of the current civilization, and not all attempts failed. However, if your hippie commune went bust, you could still return to society, get a job and enjoy a relatively prosperous middle class existence, and the majority did just that. That option is less and less viable today, if it exists at all.
“Opting Out” is called “Building Lifeboats” by people like Richard Heinberg, a figure in the Peak Oil movement (switching contexts slightly). Here’s a parallel thought from that movement, gleaned from a random site:
Everythjngs Jake
The incremental gains made in Egpyt (which, in the face of counter-revolution, are tenous at best) were not solely (and maybe not even largely) in response to the non-violent “Arab Spring” of Tahrir Square, despite the prominence of that meme, even in the face of facts reported to the contrary. A few examples:
Reuters – Janauary 28 (this got a lot of play, of course:
“The headquarters of the ruling National Democratic Party were ablaze in Cairo on Friday night, shortly after a curfew came into force, live footage carried by Al Jazeera television showed.
State television confirmed the building was set on fire.
NDP branch offices in several other cities around the country were also set on fire or attacked during the day, witnesses said.”
Huffington Post -February 9, 2011:
“Some 8,000 protesters, mainly farmers, set barricades of flaming palm trees in the southern province of Assiut, blocking the main highway and railway to Cairo to complain of bread shortages. They then drove off the governor by pelting his van with stones. Hundreds of slum dwellers in the Suez Canal city of Port Said set fire to part of the governor’s headquarters in anger over lack of housing.”
Challenge News (Progressive Labor Party) – February 17, 2011:
“In Mubarak’s final days, tens of thousands of workers from Cairo to Alexandria to the Suez Canal were on strike. More than 6,000 workers for the Suez Canal Authority staged a sit-down strike at the international waterway. Al Jazeera reported more than 20,000 factory workers on strike.
In Mahallah, 24,000 textile workers walked out demanding raises and in solidarity with the protesters in Tahrir Square. Striking telecommunication workers attended mass protests in Cairo’s Ramses Square. Workers struck some military equipment factories, owned by the army. Subway, postal and Egypt Airline workers walked out. Laid-off workers at the Alexandria Library demanded their jobs back. Hospital workers at the Al Azhar University hospitals walked out. Temporary and contract workers demanded permanent jobs.”
Everythjngs Jake
My thanks also for the essay. I get too easily lost in over-complicated thinking and to be brought back to basics – it’s been done and worked before, this is how it’s done – is very helpful.
Formerly T-Bear
What is with all the lather being worked up? riots? rebellion? resistance?
Old Chinese gent had it about right – know your enemy.
Elites are not them. Nor is wealth. Or corporations either. Or most bugbears finding their way into the oft repetitious comments here. Abuse of economic power is the problem, that is your enemy, that is what must be defeated.
The tools to defeat abuse of economic power are many, history is rife with examples. The Greeks turned to democracy to defeat the economic powers of abusive kings. The Romans used a republic of citizens to do the same. Abusive kings were dethroned regularly; republics fell as often on the shoals of individual ambition and autocratic greed; many democracies met a common fate as well, invariably the inability to contain and direct power.
With power, as with any enemy, knowledge of power’s strengths and weaknesses is central to deciding the outcome of exercise to control. Ignorance is an engraved invitation to failure. One observation of merit notes the problem is no longer an economic one but a political one, “who has the wherewithal to direct and control the allocation and use of economic resource?” That wherewithal does not reside in academia, nor in any ideological think-tank. Nor does it occur in the corporate boardrooms, or in the rantings of political demagogues – whatever their colour. Seldom does the realization occur that economic power has been usurped by the managerial class, astride the economic power of great international and financial corporations, the financial might of vast fortunes devoted to extracting rents without the requirement of engaging in economic production to produce those rents (economic extortions). Early economic writing took great care to describe the “geography” of early industrial production, the factors involved, and the production of wealth from economic factors. No such “geography” currently exists to now describe the economic edifices and superstructures built since those first economic observations; those same superstructures that now are capsizing the productive and consuming economy, unable to service the debts imposed upon the economy.
Maybe the most effective way to wrest control of the power to direct and control the economic resources is to do nothing, the current edifice is built upon the sands of belief in economic fairy tales, using the marketing legerdemain of misleading mendacity, reducing the education of its citizens to the meanest levels short the absence altogether of education for serfs. Such a nation cannot last, its human resources as depleted as its natural resources and energy resources. The timber of its law fragile, dry-rotted and termite infested, incapable of sustaining support of the edifice it is incorporated into. Those wielding power will be required to apply ever greater applications to maintain their prerogatives. That nation cannot last, the political corruption will assure that outcome; lift not a finger to stay its downfall is enough. (/opinion)
James Gemmill
This is a great post.
I am not a fan of “Black Bloc” tactics, under the theory that those of us who aren’t the oligarchs – aka “the rest of us” – need to see ourselves reflected in the ranks of the protesters/resisters. “Why those people could be us!” etc. How that identification occurs differs from society to society. Egyptians may find it easier to identify with people setting barricades of flaming palm trees on fire than, say, Canadians.
But wearing masks and dressing up in paramilitary gear completely dehumanizes you. You become very easy to dismiss as some sort of “other”.
Petro
@T-Bear:
This speaks volumes. Realistically, what I see in this decline/collapse is that the most well-placed efforts will be towards survival – and I don’t mean the beans-and-bunker nonsense. I think what Ian and others have said about economically off-gridding will be the most effective (and likely default) path – it addresses both the survivability of the individual/family/community and at the same time weakens the rentiers.
dcblogger
Gotta disagree about Malcom X, or the black George Wallace. As someone old enough to remember the desegregation of my elementary school, as someone whose family was active in the civil rights movement (I was just a kid) I really have to take issue with that and will write a response over at my blog when I have a chance.
As for violence, it is easy from a distance of comfort to excuse violence, but the means determines the ends. You cannot win freedom with violence, only a different sort of dictator. That is why India is a democracy and Algeria is a dictatorship.
Your last section about getting off the grid has the most merit in my opinion. Boycotts have a long and honorable history in the United States, and a winning one I might add. The oligarchy would love strikes, provoking strikes is a known union busting technique. Boycotts are another thing all together. Boycotting the Koch brothers makes a lot of sense right now. Justice by example and all that.
dcblogger
One word about the American Revolution. It is my considered opinion that it would have been possible to devise a strategy of sustained non-violence to drive out the British, but you could never have enlisted slaveholders to carry it out. Slavery is not consistent with non-violence.
The American Revolution is unique, it is the only one I know of that was not betrayed. Other revolutions, Cromwell, the French, the Russian, the Chinese, don’t have happy endings. Even though this is America, I have no confidence in that sort of constellation of political talent being reassembled.
I don’t have any sympathy for Maoists. The time to attach the Marats of this world is before they have powerful newspapers, not after.
The means determines the ends. It is a matter of pragmatism. You have to use the tools of non-violent resistance if you don’t want to replace Nicholas II with Lenin.
dcblogger
I don’t have any sympathy for Maoists. The time to
attachattack the Marats of this world is before they have powerful newspapers, not after.Everythjngs Jake
@dcblogger
First they came for…
Hoarseface
I agree that violence must not be ruled out as a potential strategy or tactic, but I would argue that it must only be employed once non-violence has been thoroughly tried and shown to fail – like the “exhaust diplomacy before committing to war” rule. Clearly, non-violence cannot win against those without morality: even if you sway the overwhelming majority of the population into sympathy with your cause, if they’re all perfectly committed to non-violence, everybody can still get machine-gunned by a handful of thugs with a lot of ammo (one might argue “But then they’d be killing the proles whose labor enables their luxurious lifestyle!” but that’s the same logic as European Jews who were reluctant to believe the rumors of death camps in the ’40’s). I would also agree that non-violence without the inherent threat of future violence – if demands are not met – is generally toothless and easily (and understandably) ignored.
But also, the decision to pivot from non-violent resistance into violent resistance is one to be taken very seriously – violence changes the very character of any resistance effort. While it may not be particularly true of labor struggles, movements seeking a change of government can become corrupted by the violent elements employed in seeking their goal; how many revolutions began with altrustic intentions only to adopt violent tactics during their struggle, and finally replaced the existing oppressive, violent regime with a similar monster of their own creation? Your repeated citing of the the United States’ founding is valid but, I would argue, more of an exception than a rule in terms of it’s end result.
(I think this is what Lambert was referring to when mentioning Mao and Stalin…)
lambert strether
Hoarseface: I had more in mind that when you optimize for violence, you end up with new bosses who are a lot like the old bosses (Stalin to the czars; Mao to the emperors). So, worth killing for? Worth asking others to kill for?
* * *
As far as: “Opting out isn’t just about hurting the oligarchs directly, it is about creating that other economy.” Some of us have been advocating this particular non-violent strategy consistently for awhile: Gardening, cooking, abolishing rents from one’s life, alternative currencies, alternative communications systems, and so on. Are these tactics “effete”?
Eureka Springs
Disagree with dcblogger on the point of strikes. I’m reminded of a few short years ago when millions of latinos shut down many businesses and filled the US streets to a point neither major party said a peep and major networks aired it extensively. An effective strike in our times would have to be conducted by at least as many if not more people who are not in a union. And it would have to take place over an extended period… probably more than a few times. I also think strikes of a different nature… such as shaming banksters and their employees (take and publish names, photos etc.) by practically shutting down Wall Street with walls of people demanding basic decency could have many positive effects.
Hoarseface
In further consideration of this subject, I have a question.
I live in Madison, WI – not particularly far from the Capitol square. I’m also a State of WI employee represented by AFSCME. I fully supported, and participated in, the demonstrations against the “budget repair bill” which effectively stripped State of WI employees of their collective bargaining rights.
While the demonstrations were in full swing – for weeks – the demonstrators enjoyed the tacit support of law enforcement. In reality, the use of violence by either side – demonstrators or the State/Police – would have utterly destroyed any existing public support for that side. I suspect that many a protestor would have taken a billy club to the head with a smile, knowing it signified their final victory. Vice versa for the State/Gov Walker side re: protester violence. It was something of a delicate balancing of tensions.
My question is… what could the opposition (protesters) have done differently? Was an opportunity missed? What strategy could have, should have been employed? I can assure you, many organizing efforts occurred, and are still occurring – but yes, they’re largely mailing lists and the like. Recall election efforts are underway, but Americans have a short memory and shorter-lived passions; there is no guarantee the recall elections will succeed.
A general strike sounds appealing but simply was not going to happen – or, not going to happen effectively. It wouldn’t have gathered enough support to succeed because too many people would have been afraid to lose their jobs – sad but true.
So… what could have been done differently, resistance-wise, with any chance for success? We’re in a “play the representative democracy” phase now, but if that fails….? The movement will have dissipated & the damage will be done. Yet I see no other viable course that could have been taken, even in retrospect.
On the other hand, if one takes the position that the protesters played the game smartly, but finally fail in their recall efforts, what’s the end game? Continued decline until a critical mass of popular suffering is in effect, Egypt-style? Is there no middle-game?
It’s an honest question, one I have no answer for.
peon
The problem with violence is the people who gravitate to leadership, the first ones willing to torch a police car, break a window, etc are often not who you want as your leaders when the revolution is won. When thuggish tactics are winning tactics, thugs win. Maybe they are “our” thugs, but thugs none the less. That said singing “We Shall Overcome” and linking arms as your end game is not intimidating to the thugs on the other side. This is a dilemma every revolution/movement struggles with.
On opting out-I think it a mistake to say the counterculture of the sixties largely failed. Opting out is a slow process . Learning the survival skills abandoned by humans who flocked to the cities for industrial jobs is generational work. I would bet the number of children raised on small farms tending organic gardens, milking goats/cows, building fences, baking bread, messing with alternative technologies quadrupled over the previous decade. Lots of “hippies” quietly dropped out , bought farms, relearned ancient skills, and are part of the rebirth of the farmers markets all across the USA. You are right it is easier to live a third world economy in a first world country. When you need to raise some cash you do not have to travel far to prostitute yourself. Learning to “opt out” will be much harder in a decaying society.
Petro
@Hoarseface:
This is what I see. There is no middle-game.
lambert strether
Jake: On Tahrir Square and Egypt, a few responses; I’m familiar with most of the examples you cite; I blogged about many of them, in real-time. The Tahrir Square organizers grew from the union movement (itself a consequence of neo-liberal policies that encouraged Egyptian sweat shops). So, if the crowd in Tahrir Square was able to chant Peaceful! Peaceful! one reason for that is that experienced organizers helped propagate that tactic; it wasn’t a media creation, or a Western creation. Another reason that Peaceful! Peaceful! chant “worked” (if we define “work” as retain the initiative) was that it matched with people’s experience, because Tahrir Square (again, down to good organizing) became the face of the revolution. Provincial violence in no way invalidates that. What I’m saying is that a reputation practicing a discipline of non-violence is a strategic asset and, as a corollary, that the way to develop that reputation is to practice the discipline. For example, when the thugs surrounded TS for a night of petrol bombing, it was clear to every observer that the thugs struck first, and because of the “good will” the Egyptian movement had built up, they were free to counterpunch. Which they did! (Heck, after that, they attacked the Ministry of Information; but then every self-respecting revolutionary has to do that.) Finally, at least in the Egyptian context, I believe that non-violence was important for three additional reasons: (1) It enabled “The people and the Army are one”; (2) it allowed “all walks of life” to participate; and (3) it made Tahrir Square a joyful national school for self-organizing, as opposed to an armed camp. (The occupation of downtown Bangkok was very different, had none of those last three characteristics, and I wonder if that had something to do with its failure after a general in sunglasses got his faction to go violent and ended up getting shot.)
And “incremental” is bad why, exactly? The consistent demand of the TS movement was “Arhal!” Leave! That Mubarak step down. That demand was achieved. Nobody thought anything but that there was a lot more work to be done, and plenty more suffering. So they devised their own metric and succeeded.
As far as “incremental.” That’s bad why, exactly?
Hoarseface
@ Lambert
Judging from your response, I think we were broadly on the same page. Employing the violent for one’s ends raises their status, influence, and final control of outcomes (I think this is what you mean by “optimizing for violence” and it’s fallout, but I may be wrong). After all, once the revolution has been one, those actors who perpetrated violence on behalf of the cause are given a seat at the table: an “I/we crushed the opposition, I/we deserve to have my opinions heard” type of scenario.
You can correct me and elaborate if I am mistaken. I’m not trying to be argumentative.
Hoarseface
Correction: “Once the revolutions has been one” – has been WON.
ouch.
lambert strether
Hoarseface writes:
Exactly like “The people and the army are one” in Egypt; see non-violent method of protest and persuasion #33: Fraternization.
Hoarseface
@ Petro,
That is quite a fatalistic world-view, but that’s not to say that I disagree – obviously, because I’ve considered this and come up blank.
I worry: are we doomed to hitting rock-bottom before a corrective can occur?
And on it’s heels,
Given the climate issues (among others), can we afford to wait to hit rock-bottom to prompt a corrective? Will a corrective still be POSSIBLE, once we’re culturally prepared to accept it?
General Washington
@Lambert
Incremental is potentially bad because once you’ve achieved the overarching singular goal you attracted the masses with in the first place (remove Mubarak), the masses disperse, and the thugs move in – as has happened in Egypt.
Proof of such a potential is the fact that the appetite for further mass action had already abated by the time Mubarak had been deposed, regardless of any other conditions.
Granted, there is every possibility that the unaffordability of food, housing, lack of jobs, etc will bring further protests. But the just as likely possibility is that mass action – having not addressed these previously existing issues – will be seen as an already failed means of effecting change.
Better to bring down the entire structure in it’s entirety and be prepared to replace it at once (or nearly so) than to hope for the support of a sufficient amount of the citizenry during the next uprising required (to address the same damn problems) by an incrementalist approach.
Michael
@Lambert
I don’t see any indication that even the incremental changes you’re talking about are working or are going to be lasting. Keep in mind one of the biggest things talked about in the aftermath of the revolution was the supposed reopening of the rafah crossing into gaza now:
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2011/05/egyptian-military-council-still-serving.html
I think its much more likely that what will happen is more along the lines of what Joseph Massad has been warning about.
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/06/2011689456174295.html
What this shows is it’s not enough just to overthrow one figurehead, the whole of the ruling class has to be removed from power and institutions for democratic control of both the government and the resources of the country need to be established. By definition this means a willingness to engage in a prolonged struggle. That struggle doesn’t necessarily have to be violent, but it needs to be united. It helps no one but the ruling class to condemn those who, having lived under the yoke of an oppressive regime for too long, decide to violently fight for their rights (or as the case was in egypt their very basic needs for survival since they couldn’t even afford to buy bread.)
lambert strether
Ian: My recollection is that I responded to your question yesterday or the day before, in a post that this site unfortunately ate. I didn’t keep a copy, so I’ll try to reproduce it.
1. I don’t think that there are any laws to history. In consequence, I’d be foolish to say that violence never works (for some definition of “work”). From here on, I’m going to define violence as killing people, because that’s what the examples you cite all involve.
2. At least in the US right now: In small group settings, recent (and not distant) history shows that the first person to call for killing others is the cop, who just happens to have a supplier for the TNT, the uniforms, or whatever. In large group settings, the person to call for killing others becomes a target of opportunity, and puts everybody foolish enough to be in the vicinity at risk of collateral damage. Why not just wave a red flag at the drones? Paradoxically, then, those most likely to advocate for killing others — assuming they’re not cops — are also the least likely to be able to succeed in their aims; they are serious neither about strategy or about taking care for the lives of their followers.
3. Armed revolutionary vanguards in the 20th century have a very bad record when it comes to killing millions of people and ending up same as the old boss. It would be nice to see some analysis from the advocates of killing others on this thread on why that won’t happen all over again, if the killing they are advocating for is realized in practice.
4. Non-violent tactics of protest and persuasion are, I believe, an under-reported story both in our famously free press and in the blogosphere, including the left blogosphere. So I’m doing my homework and writing about them. In the course of this work, I don’t recall ever writing that “non-violence is always the way to go”, but perhaps you were addressing your strictures to some other unnamed interlocutor. My conclusion so far (often using the short-hand “non-violence”) is that a reputation for non-violence is a strategic asset (see under Tahrir Square; MLK, Ghandi; heck, ACT-UP didn’t kill anybody, IIRC). One corollary is that you’ve got to practice what you preach; a second corollary is that you can’t cultivate a reputation for non-violence and also maintain a militant wing. It didn’t work for the Red Shirts in Thailand and it won’t work here.
5. I think in general terms (and particularly in understanding that off-the-grid living hits the rentiers where it hurts) we are in the same place. When you write:
I agree and I’m working on what I should be working on. If that makes me “effete,” then so be it. However, on the merits of turning people into killers, it would be nice to see more serious analysis than has taken place here. Unfortunately, and paradoxically, that cannot be.
Petro
@Hoarseface,
It is a bit fatalistic, sure – but there is an inexorable quality to contemporary issues that seems to beckon that position.
That said – I’m highly optimistic that recent “bedrock” worldviews – capitalism, meritocracy, and (more provincially) exceptionalism – are going to take a right beating, and may go down for the long count. I wish I could be fatalistic about that!
The painful side of these contemplations is knowing that suffering will happen on an unconscionable scale – regardless of how we choose to respond. How I respond to the people that I meet is the most important thing for me right now.
tsisageya
Stop talking and read, listen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_znb0MlHTY
http://redwillowvoices.blogspot.com/
http://tiwafarms.blogspot.com/
lambert strether
Michael: “A willingness to engage in a prolonged struggle.” I agree. I don’t think anybody in Tahrir Square, including the organizers, thought that the struggle would be anything other than prolonged. “[I]t needs to be united.” I agree. One of the amazing things about the Egyptian movement in general is that “all walks of life” felt able to participate, and did.
As far as “condemn”– Speaking in generalities: Last I checked, killing others was an act subject to condemnation on moral grounds; that’s why, I assume, Ian condemns blowing Afghan wedding parties into “red mist.” No, I don’t think it’s always wrong: The Civil War had be fought to end the slave power. There was also a prolonged national debate about the issue over decades, just as with every other case Ian adduces. Nothing like that has taken place here; it doesn’t matter why. Speaking in specifics: I know nothing about the Indian situation — though if the violence there was been going in for 20 years, it seems not to have achieved very much — and so neither praise nor condemn. I know a little about Egyptian situation, having read and written a lot about it, and what they achieved seems to be a secular miracle to be emulated, and not to be, oh… “condemned” because it didn’t achieve goals they themselves did not set.
Michael
“However, on the merits of turning people into killers, it would be nice to see more serious analysis than has taken place here. Unfortunately, and paradoxically, that cannot be.”
Really not sure what you mean by paradoxically. What’s inherent in arguing that sometimes violence is necessary that prevents serious analysis. On the contrary some of the most in depth analysis in human history (both practical and moral) have been precisely on the subject of violence, the apropriateness of its use, and its effectiveness. See Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, just to name two of the top of my head.
Morocco Bama
Keep in mind that the Revolution will not be televised, and that’s precisely why Egypt is no where near a Revolution. If it was, it wouldn’t be televised, meaning it would have received scant coverage at best, and most likely no coverage. It was televised and publicized because the Plutocrats are pulling in their chips, and in so doing, they know there will be uprisings. They would prefer those uprisings are non-violent, anticipated, and well managed as to not disrupt their ultimate plans. The Bushes didn’t buy a significant chunk of land (100,000 acres) on , and adjacent to, the Acuifero Guarani in Paraguay for the hell of it. That’s just one example. Look at all the Plutocrats buying up Patagonia, as well.
Morocco Bama
The Civil War had be fought to end the slave power.
And yet, that’s not why it was fought. It was a result, but it wasn’t the intention. A stronger Union was always the intention, and the Bankers ultimately got their way. With a stronger Union, they could assuage politicians to enact legislation that affected the entirety of the Oligarchic Republic. Previously, they had to go state to state….which was a much harder task to accomplish.
tsisageya
This is a real little girl. Her name is Aspen Dawn.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McA983H60IY&feature=related
She grows up in spite of us all.
Hoarseface
“How I respond to the people that I meet is the most important thing for me right now.”
My personal ethos is essentially, exactly what you said.
tsisageya
And guess what else. They don’t write their words and never have. Why? Because they don’t want them corrupted by those in power.
Imagine that.
Everythings Jake
Lambert:
I agree that the people gathered at Tahrir Square were wise to act as they did, but I think that without the provincial actions (in particular the threat of economic losses from the shutdown of textile mills and a possible disruption of shipping in the Suez Canal), the largely peaceful gathering in TS would not have affected much if any change.
I would also suggest that the “high command” of the military were partly afraid (and thus motivated to dump Mubarak) because they were not entirely certain that if given the order, the soldiers on the ground and the police forces would comply. There were reports of widespread discontent among both junior officers because there was no benefit to them from the financial looting of the state practiced by Mubarak and high ranking generals (and there were no openings at the top to move up in the ranks). Also, several hundred members of the police force went on strike themselves and marched to TS as protesters on 02/13.
There’s no problem with incremental gains, except that they are easy for the elites to claw back and they’re not so great if the gains aren’t to you. As to what was gained, many feel nothing has changed – certainly the machinations of counterrevolution are in progress (Mark Levine has a good essay today on Al Jazeera). It was recently reported that Ahmed Maher (leader of the April 6th movement) has been bluntly confronting military leaders with their lack of movement on key reforms. As to who gained, whatever political reforms will or will not be forthcoming (and whether or not they are real or cosmetic), it seemed to me that messages of economic justice that arose with the Egyptian working class were lost in calls for political freedoms driven by the organizing class. Political freedom is certainly worth fighting for, but tamping down calls for economic justice is partly what permits so many to join in happy common cause.
Also on incremental gains, there is, of course, the overriding problem of systemic environmental destruction under present systems of market exploitation, a problem which, if not corrected yesterday, may lead to suffering for untold billions and very possibly the extinction of humanity.
Michael
“As far as “condemn”– Speaking in generalities: Last I checked, killing others was an act subject to condemnation on moral grounds; that’s why, I assume, Ian condemns blowing Afghan wedding parties into “red mist.” ”
@Lambert
I don’t think that’s necessarily correct. While killing others can be subject to condemnation on moral grounds I don’t think it always is. There’s a difference between a man who out of jealousy chooses to kill a rival, or out of greed shoots a man to steal his land, and someone who in the midst of being attacked kills someone else in self-defense.
This goes to the heart of most of our arguments in defense of those who would use violence. If someone else is occupying your land to just to steal what is under your soil, or if they are attacking you with the explicit purpose of completely wiping you out, or both (as was the case in the American Indian wars, and Germany’s General Plan for the east) then I would say yes that under any one of those circumstances violence is justified.
When Ian is condemning the bombing of wedding parties I also think he’s bringing into play three related concepts when it comes to issues of violence; Legitimacy of the actors, motives, and legitimate targets. When Ian condemns the bombings he’s saying that the people killed were civilians (not legitimate targets) who should not have been murdered. When he condemns the bombings he’s also condemning the motives for the attack probably something along the lines of “even if the attack was done to terrify the population into submission I still condemn it because that’s still an immoral reason to do it.” And that leads into the next point which is he rejects the legitimacy of one actor while endorsing the legitimacy of another. The U.S. has no right to bomb wedding parties because the U.S. has no right to impose its will onto other people. The Afghans have the right to fight back because they have the right to decide for themselves what their country and society should be.
This is not the same as endorsing violence. Fighting back can come in many forms, but it’s up to the Afghans to decide whether the fight back will be violent or non-violent depending on the circumstances hence my comment. I’m not endorsing violence I’m saying it’s not my place to condemn it.
As for your last two points;
“No, I don’t think it’s always wrong: The Civil War had be fought to end the slave power. There was also a prolonged national debate about the issue over decades, just as with every other case Ian adduces. Nothing like that has taken place here; it doesn’t matter why.”
I’m not sure I understand your point here. Is it directed at me or at the Egyptians? If it’s directed at the Egyptians I’d say this debate has for most of them been going on for decades at least. If it’s directed at me, then let me say don’t assume that because I don’t often post on this website I haven’t been following what’s going on in Egypt closely or discussing the moral issues brought up by the Egyptian uprising. As for the morality of violent resistance that’s an issue that’s been foremost in my mind ever since I began to seriously investigate the abuses of the Israeli government towards the Palestinians.
And your next point
“I know a little about Egyptian situation, having read and written a lot about it, and what they achieved seems to be a secular miracle to be emulated, and not to be, oh… “condemned” because it didn’t achieve goals they themselves did not set.”
Well then we’re in agreement. I’m not condemning them for not achieving goals they did not set. Like you who has argued previously up on this page why they should continue pursuing nonviolent resistance, I’m merely suggesting what I think would be a good way to move forward. Considering that from time to time this website discusses the issue of how our societies should be organized, and more specifically what’s wrong with the way they’re organized today, and what might be done to fix it, or what a society that replaces it should look like I was merely putting forth my own contribution (ill thought out as it might be) to be the basis of discussion critique etc.
I don’t see where your hostility is coming from. I merely disagreed with you about whether gradual reforms were really effective and I linked to an example of a reform I thought was failing already and since Joseph Massad had made the argument before me (and better than I could.) I linked to his editorial expressing my fear of what might happen if the movement in Egypt settles just for parliamentary democracy.
My last point about unity was a response to what I thought was your view towards Egyptians using violence. Namely I thought you were asking the movement at large to distance itself from those who would, and my response was that I thought since the protestors were weaker than the state it would be counterproductive to split the movement between those who use violence and those who don’t. Rereading your comments I’m not sure if my knee jerk interpretation of you was correct. If I was wrong I apologize. If I was not wrong then I still apologize if I was condescending. I wasn’t trying to be.
tsisageya
I know. I know. See ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya.
Celsius 233
Formerly T-Bear
June 10, 2011
Maybe the most effective way to wrest control of the power to direct and control the economic resources is to do nothing, the current edifice is built upon the sands of belief in economic fairy tales, using the marketing legerdemain of misleading mendacity, reducing the education of its citizens to the meanest levels short the absence altogether of education for serfs. Such a nation cannot last, its human resources as depleted as its natural resources and energy resources. The timber of its law fragile, dry-rotted and termite infested, incapable of sustaining support of the edifice it is incorporated into. Those wielding power will be required to apply ever greater applications to maintain their prerogatives. That nation cannot last, the political corruption will assure that outcome; lift not a finger to stay its downfall is enough. (/opinion)
=====================================
Very cogent; especially your closing sentence.
After years of fretting, anger, rage, disgust, and blah, blah, blah; I’ve come to much the same conclusion. Sometimes doing nothing is the most powerful action. Cheers.
alyosha
@Celcius (regarding your excerpt of T-Bear’s eloquent post) – yeah, but would you want to live there?
Bruce Wilder
Bringing about the overthrow of the old order may not be as strategically critical as just being prepared not to help preserve it through another round of crisis, collapse and failure.
It’s surprising to me, in a way, that the Left has not absorbed the obvious lessons of the Shock Doctrine and Disaster Capitalism more quickly.
Celsius 233
alyosha PERMALINK
June 10, 2011
@Celcius (regarding your excerpt of T-Bear’s eloquent post) – yeah, but would you want to live there?
==============================
T-Bear, IMO, has had some remarkable (understanding the bottom line) insight’s and subsequent posts.
As to your question; yes, because the options are necessarily personal choices for survival. These choices are made individually and not en-mass (sic).
Nine years ago, just after Iraq, I voted with my feet and left. That was after it was proved to me WE (U.S. citizens) no longer were in charge on any meaningful level. I’ll continue my self imposed exile until I die; which may not be too far off (I’m an old guy, in good health so far).
I don’t believe anything and follow no human (other than my wife) in this life, anymore, forever. (With thanks to Chief Joseph).
Cheers.
lambert strether
Michael:
Really not sure what you mean by paradoxically. What’s inherent in arguing that sometimes violence is necessary that prevents serious analysis.
* * *
Well, perhaps “serious” is the wrong word. I believe without irony that academic work is serious. That said, if the context is what do we do, now, the only way to get “serious” is to get down to cases of who to kill when and why. So, paradoxically as argued above, those who get down to cases in contexts like this one are least likely to win them.
[Others, quickly, RL calls….]
jcapan
Um, the Communist revolution in China ended in 1949. The last emperor abdicated in 1912.
Celsius 233
Bruce Wilder PERMALINK
June 10, 2011
It’s surprising to me, in a way, that the Left has not absorbed the obvious lessons of the Shock Doctrine and Disaster Capitalism more quickly.
===============================
Me too; Shock Doctrined we were…
JustPlainDave
Call me crazy, but the central strategy would have to be actually doing something in real world space rather than going around and around talking about the most dramatically gratifying options in virtual space. The most mundane incremental act that people will actually perform is better than the most potentially revolutionary thing they won’t.
Violence vs. non-violence – in the absence of a body of folks who know their IAs and stoppages for the C7A1 and/or are willing to take a baton strike, it’s pretty much entirely meaningless.
BDBlue
To me it’s not that violence is never effective, it’s that it’s most effective when seen as being in self defense (this gets to the idea of non-violence as a strategic asset). I think most successful uses of violence in this country from the left have been in response to violent tactics. The union movement did not start off with violence. Neither did the American Revolution (tea party anyone?). The benefits of not advocating violence first is that when violence comes the movement and its participants will be seen as the victims, which will permit it to 1) fight back without necessarily losing popular support (because most people believe in a right of self-defense) and 2) the violence will further delegitimize the forces who instigated it. As an added benefit, some of those brought in to hand out the violence may refuse (a critical point now days when governments have so much more firepower than the population) and the leaders of the movement aren’t a bunch of thugs who only know how to destroy things, not build things.
In other words, it’s one thing to put a gang together to go beat Mubarak’s thugs and burn government buildings. It’s another thing to do so after Mubarak’s thugs have attacked you for simply standing in a public square.
But I agree the ability and willingness to fight back (even if it’s never needed) is very important. It was absolutely critical in Egypt (although I agree the debate is still open for whether any real change will come). It was critical in the union fights. It was critical in the civil rights and the anti-war movements of the 1960s.
For me, the issue is have we put as much pressure on the system non-violently as we can? I think the answer is that we haven’t even come close and so that is where I think that’s the work needs to be done.
StewartM
Jack Olsen:
To back up what Ian said, public opinion polling shows that the US public on most economic issues well to the left of *either side* of the Washington Beltway-think. Mass protests do happen, protests much larger than Tea Party fanboys, but these are largely ignored by our corporately-owned media.
Lincoln’s remarks refer to the political democracy of his time–a highly imperfect democracy, to be sure, but in some ways much more democratic than what we have today. What’s happening across the globe, and across states with Republican governors and legislatures show amply that the oligarchs don’t give a flip about what the public thinks. They don’t because the US already is a failing democracy–what the people think per se doesn’t matter much anymore. No longer do political leaders live in terror of the electorate; they live in terror of their campaign contributors; and moreover they no that if they serve their lords and masters well they will be rewarded with cushy jobs for life if they lose the next election.
This is the end result of capitalism. Libertarians don’t get it, you cannot have a system (capitalism) that rewards sociopathic thinking (Ian’s cost-benefit-for-me-only Randian perspective) and not promote sociopaths into positions of economic power. These sociopaths will then use their wealth to buy the government. Libertarians may protest that this naked buying of the government isn’t really their libertarian utopia, but what in the hell did they expect to happen? The simple fact is that by far the most effective “investment” a wealthy person or corporation can make *IS* to buy the government. Pays off better than any similar investment in new products, R&D, or new capital. The end result of libertarian and ‘free market’ ideology is therefore not their small-government utopia, but quite different: either a kind of neo-feudalism where the government backs up the “nobles”, or fascism, neither which involves small government. I could see it going either way.
Ian, I have taken the liberty of cross-post several of your blogs to my own blog, given you credit for authorship and pointing to the original URL, to promote readership. If this is not OK, please let me know.
StewartM
groo
@Ian and all the rest,
I very much ‘enjoy’ what is said here.
which is not the correct word.
It means:
I very much agree.
But, to internationalize the movement, I urge everybody to stick to a choice of words, which EVERYBODY understands.
No codewords please!
No idiosynchracies (e.g. ‘idiosyncrasy’ is the word found by quick look, and not any variants, which tend to frustrate any benevolent reader in the international –non english speaking community- )
So, ANY international call to resistance or whatsowever should restrict its wording to common phrasing, and NOT ingroup speak!
So, please, you all: watch your wording!
You will be multiply effective, if You restrict Your words to common vocabulary, and not some esoteric ingroup speak.
Being polite is also always helpful!
StewartM
lambert strether
That’s true. However, if the record of former Communist bloc countries are any indication, and admitting the truth to Keynes’s aphorism “that in the long run, we are all dead”, there are long-term benefits even to that. One of the things that happened in the Communist bloc countries is that the Communists ruthlessly eliminated the old order which had relentless propagandized the necessity and inevitability of inequality of economic and political power, that no other social relation could exist but lords and serfs. They then taught the next generations ideals according to Marx, which included the notion of equality. Mind you, that’s not what these regimes actually practiced, but the fact that they preached it meant something.
The result has been that more than a few ex-Communist bloc countries are doing better at democracy after the collapse of Communism, than the developing countries under our tutelage, where we kept in power the old order.
StewartM
StewartM
dcblogger:
Of all the big-name revolutions, the American is actually (IMHO) the least justified. The US would have won its independence and autonomy, just like Canada and Australia and all the other member of the British commonwealth, given time. There were already proposals made before Parliament–too late, as the crises had reached its crescendo–representation in taxation, either in Parliament itself or locally. “Taxation without representation” translated really meant “we want to exist under the protection of the British empire with all its benefits and be and pay no taxes compared to everyone else”. Anti-tax stupidity and greed has a long history in the US; you saw this same sentiment arise again in the War of 1812, where Southern and Western states voted for the war then turned around and voted against the taxes necessary to pay for it.
Moreover, part of the motivation for the US obtaining its “liberty” was the greed of slaveowners and those of white colonists wishing to steal land from Native Americans (the British acting at least partially as a braking force against that). If the US had remained under British control, it is possible that slavery might have been ended peaceably with the rest of the empire, and that the Natives might have enjoyed somewhat better protection. I won’t make great claims in the latter because they weren’t exactly treated well, but the US treatment of its Native populations WAS outright genocide.
But to address your main point–conservatives like to point out the American revolution as being different from the French and Russian because of its “peaceful” resolution. Their arguments are misleading and to an extent false. For starters, to me the main reason that the US revolution was more peaceful was unlike the French and Russian, the post-revolutionary US was not plunged into yet another war for its very survival by a host of ideological enemies. Such circumstances drive the most radical and those most willing to “crack a few heads” into positions of power. If France and Russia had been granted a breathing space, the more moderate and peaceful I believe would have retained power.
Secondly–don’t let anyone say that there were no reprisals after the US revolution. The best estimate is that 2 % of the population (the prominent Loyalists) were hounded out of the country!! That’s peaceful?
StewartM
StewartM
Forgot to add: even so, with the American Revolution it was touch-and-go at times. We came close to outlawing political dissent (the Alien and Sedition Laws).
StewartM
groo
@StewartM
this is just the sort of belly-watching nobody is listening to from the outside of the beast.
Ever recognize that?
Reduce to two sentences, that even a Syrian can understand that.
groo
@StewartM,
at timesI am inclined to speak as You do,
but decide to do not.
Omm.
—————————————
GSH:
Because I always feel like running
Not away, because there is no such place
Because, if there was I would have found it by now
Because it’s easier to run,
Easier than staying and finding out you’re the only one…who didn’t run
Because running will be the way your life and mine will be described
As in “the long run”
Or as in having given someone a “run for his money”
Or as in “running out of time”
Because running makes me look like everyone else, though I hope there will ever be cause for that
Because I will be running in the other direction, not running for cover
Because if I knew where cover was, I would stay there and never have to run for it
Not running for my life, because I have to be running for something of more value to be running and not in fear
Because the thing I fear cannot be escaped, eluded, avoided, hidden from, protected from, gotten away from,
Not without showing the fear as I see it now
Because closer, clearer, no sir, nearer
Because of you and because of that nice
That you quietly, quickly be causing
And because you’re going to see me run soon and because you’re going to know why I’m running then
You’ll know then
Because I’m not going to tell you now
—————–
this is the explicit/implicit non-bullshit talk about whats going on, which even a non english speaker can understand.
Amen
nihil obstet
Watching a BBC documentary on Amnesty International last night, I learned that Amnesty would not adopt Nelson Mandela because he refused to repudiate violence in response to the white South African regime. I’d say that the South African revolution (and I think it deserves the name revolution) has had a far less violent aftermath than the American revolution, which as StewartM points out wasn’t all that non-violent in its effects on those of Native American or African origin.
The problem with violence is that it seems to offer a quick immediately effective solution to a complex problem. Brute power is a drug and a very addictive one at that, but there are times when you need a drug to combat serious disease. I’m of the “violence is the last resort” camp, but it is ultimately a resort if necessary.
Michael
“To me it’s not that violence is never effective, it’s that it’s most effective when seen as being in self defense (this gets to the idea of non-violence as a strategic asset). I think most successful uses of violence in this country from the left have been in response to violent tactics. The union movement did not start off with violence. Neither did the American Revolution (tea party anyone?). The benefits of not advocating violence first is that when violence comes the movement and its participants will be seen as the victims, which will permit it to 1) fight back without necessarily losing popular support (because most people believe in a right of self-defense) and 2) the violence will further delegitimize the forces who instigated it.”
A good example of your point in action in egypt.
http://www.nl-aid.org/continent/middle-east/the-myth-of-%E2%80%98non-violence%E2%80%99-videos/
“One of the biggest myths invented by the media, tied to this whole Gene Sharp business: the Egyptian revolution was “peaceful.” I’m afraid it wasn’t. The revolution (like any other revolution) witnessed violence by the security forces that led to the killing of at least 846 protesters.”
“But the people did not sit silent and take this violence with smiles and flowers. We fought back. We fought back the police and Mubarak’s thugs with rocks, Molotov cocktails, sticks, swords and knives. The police stations which were stormed almost in every single neighborhood on the Friday of Anger–that was not the work of “criminals” as the regime and some middle class activists are trying to propagate. Protesters, ordinary citizens, did that.”
These acts of violence also targeted economic targets as well,
“In a number of provinces like in N Sinai and Suez, arms were seized by protesters who used them back against the police to defend themselves. State Security Police office in Rafah and Arish, for example, were blown up using RPGs, hand grenades and automatic rifles, while gas pipelines heading to Jordan and Israel were attacked.”
Here’s the point I’ve been trying to make since yesterday.
“Am I condemning this violence? Totally not. Every single revolution in history witnessed its share of violence. The violence always starts on the hands of the state, not the people. The people are forced to pick up arms or whatever they can put their hands on to protect themselves.”
Also love collection tweets as regards the Gene Sharp theory of Arab Revolution;
http://globalvoicesonline.org/2011/04/15/egypt-gene-sharp-taught-us-how-to-revolt/
Formerly T-Bear
This is OT but germane: Today Al Jazeera presented an in depth report on the discrepancies in the prosecution of the Pan Am Lockerbie bombing. The video accompanying raises questions about the “safety” of the conviction, many issues never covered or reported in the corporate media in their baying for blood for blood.
More importantly the discovery of inconsistencies shows how functioning systems of justice go about beginning to correct miscarriage of prosecution and convictions, putting the principle of justice above the convenience of saving the face of the courts. Curiously, most of the issues in the report had appeared in some European newspaper reporting at the time but were swept aside by both turn of further events and the prosecutions suppression in the trial.
There is a good likelihood of the accused being innocent and a victim of governmental scapegoating to cover for their failure to apprehend the true perpetrators. It is a good example of marketing guilt to an otherwise ignorant of the facts public and propaganda exercise. Early speculation from European sources had connected the Pan Am bombing as a retaliation to the US missile downing an Iranian civilian passenger jet over the waters of the Persian Gulf (conspicuously by “accident”, the plane’s identification transponder was operational at the time). To identify Iran would have shown, upon investigation, sheer incompetence by western powers in the inadequacy of their intelligence operations; well worth the price to one incarcerated individual to keep from public disclosure.
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/general/2011/06/201169134738626549.html
groo
n.o.
1st:
it is very significant to state as a fact, that the meme of violent resistance has its comeback.
Maybe it is not apt to put Arundhati Roy in context to violent resistance.
So it is all my fault, if the impression arises, and all the antiterror-fighters please aim at my home.
But as has been said already, nonviolent resistance has the ritual asymmetry of
a) nonviolent resistance on the one hand,
and
b) the rule of law behind it.
Gandhi was possible because of British law at that time.
And when that is NOT given, the Pandoras box is opened.
Then ‘Violence’ is very much open to debate.
It is always around the corner.
Consider this:
GWBush denies some Indian tribe near Seattle the status of a ‘tribe’, because it is less than 600 or so people.
(the head of the tribe is the grand-granddaughter of chief Seattle, the namegiver of Seattle)
So what is the tribe entiteled to do?
Unrestrained force?
Which is ridiculous in itself.
It is naked power on the one hand, and the moral feeling of guilt on the other hand, with its inner obligation to retribute, and the mediating rule of law, as the minimal moral force in between.
I understand Ians essay as a meditation on this triple issue.
On what to do under the circumstances given.
The battle ground should be the rule of law as the mediator, and nothing else!
It is this shifting of the rules, on which an orderly society should rest.
But what if not?
I very much agree on Arundhati Roys position, and Vandana Shiva’s, to resist structural violence by structural resistance, if the mediating law is corrupted or in doubt.
First challenge the law, and if it does not hold, challenge the opponent.
May then there be blood on the streets.
As the ultimate sacrifice.
Nelson Mandela is, well, a corrolary of this thinking.
But remember well:
The ‘thinking’ is quite unevenly distributed upon the opponents.
For a good reason: the one group aims at a stable order, the other at its selfish advantage.
anon2525
Again, Olson, it’s soooo good that the US’s founders didn’t understand that violence never works.
For those who think that the means and ends of the American Revolution are an unalloyed good,
here is some history and thoughts by Howard Zinn that are worth keeping in mind:
Untold Truths About the American Revolution
The American Revolution—independence from England—was a just cause. Why should the colonists here be occupied by and oppressed by England? But therefore, did we have to go to the Revolutionary War?
How many people died in the Revolutionary War?
Nobody ever knows exactly how many people die in wars, but it’s likely that 25,000 to 50,000 people died in this one. So let’s take the lower figure—25,000 people died out of a population of three million. That would be equivalent today to two and a half million people dying to get England off our backs.
You might consider that worth it, or you might not.
Canada is independent of England, isn’t it? I think so. Not a bad society. Canadians have good health care. They have a lot of things we don’t have. They didn’t fight a bloody revolutionary war. Why do we assume that we had to fight a bloody revolutionary war to get rid of England?
In the year before those famous shots were fired, farmers in Western Massachusetts had driven the British government out without firing a single shot. They had assembled by the thousands and thousands around courthouses and colonial offices and they had just taken over and they said goodbye to the British officials. It was a nonviolent revolution that took place. But then came Lexington and Concord, and the revolution became violent, and it was run not by the farmers but by the Founding Fathers. The farmers were rather poor; the Founding Fathers were rather rich.
Who actually gained from that victory over England? It’s very important to ask about any policy, and especially about war: Who gained what? And it’s very important to notice differences among the various parts of the population. That’s one thing were not accustomed to in this country because we don’t think in class terms. We think, “Oh, we all have the same interests.” For instance, we think that we all had the same interests in independence from England. We did not have all the same interests.
Do you think the Indians cared about independence from England? No, in fact, the Indians were unhappy that we won independence from England, because England had set a line—in the Proclamation of 1763—that said you couldn’t go westward into Indian territory. They didn’t do it because they loved the Indians. They didn’t want trouble. When Britain was defeated in the Revolutionary War, that line was eliminated, and now the way was open for the colonists to move westward across the continent, which they did for the next 100 years, committing massacres and making sure that they destroyed Indian civilization.
Jack Olson
“(A main battle tank can be taken on by the right construction equipment used in the right way. The US army knows this.)” I suppose that explains why NATO, facing the massed tank armies of the Warsaw Pact, armed its troops with construction equipment instead of attack aircraft, anti-tank missiles, and M-60 tanks. Frankly, I suspect that a modern Predator drone would make short work of any construction equipment that wasn’t digging a tunnel.
I would have more appreciation for your fantasies of revolution, Mr. Welsh, if I hadn’t seen the complete failure of the same ideas in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. I remember all that talk of “revolution”, the race riots, the student riots, the phoned in bomb threats and some actual bombings. The Symbionese Liberation Army was running around assassinating school superintendents and kidnapping heiresses, the Weathermen were setting off bombs in public buildings. Two different women made attempts on the life of President Ford, Governor George Wallace was shot and crippled, Senator Kennedy was shot to death and so was Dr. King. The United States was politically divided by both the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. There couldn’t have been a better time for the revolution you project, if the American people really wanted one. They didn’t and they still don’t.
Ian Welsh
I would have more appreciation of your ignorance if you weren’t so proud of it Mr. Olson. The Pentagon tested earth movers against tanks. I have this from someone who knows and is credible. At the time it was 3/1. Yes, the tank shoots, but you get up to it and tip it over.
Drones get shot out of the sky all the time. The attrition on them is atrocious.
I have never specified that anything I said applied only to the US, I might note. Nor have I specified time scales. If violent revolution comes to the US, it will most likely come in the form that area denial has come to Mexico. If the US was so good at anti-insurgency, the Taliban would be crushed by now.
The inability of people to reason out scenarios always astonishes me. It’s like I have to hold people’s hands, and say “now, move the right foot”. I am also amazed by how people get fixated on the shiny. Because I mention violence as ONE strategy, people assume that I am suggesting they immediately run out and go toe-to-toe with the military. The “all violence is worse than anything else” crowd runs around like a chicken with their head cut off screaming “Mao, Stalin! We must never ever revolt! We are willing to accept any amount of repression rather than chance even the smallest amount of violence! No one should ever use violence! Gandhi is the only succesful revolutionary in history and we’re going to ignore the people killed in partition!”
Count up the words, people. How many words in that essay are in any way related to violence?
You cannot deal with resistance without talking about violence. But it is only one part of the spectrum of strategies, something I indicate clearly in the piece. Nonetheless it has its time and place. Ask the Egyptians, who DID in fact commit violence, about that.
Honestly, many of you depress me. In what ways are the 60s and early 70s similiar to now? This is not then. This is not then. Repeat after me, this is not then. The US then was much richer and fundamentally much stronger and more prosperous. The impetus behind the Arab spring was one simple fucking thing: food prices. Food prices for the laboring class.
When Americans can’t afford to eat, they’ll either starve or revolt. And yes, you are going to get there. Barring an unlikely turnaround of current long term trends, you will eventually be forced to choose: to live or die on your bellies, like worms, or to fight and in many cases, die, on your feet.
groo
@anon
…Do you think the Indians cared about independence from England? No, in fact, the Indians were unhappy that we won independence from England, because England had set a line—in the Proclamation of 1763—that said you couldn’t go westward into Indian territory. They didn’t do it because they loved the Indians. They didn’t want trouble.
…
This is a citation from Howard Zinn, I presume.
At a certain time the British were somehow like the Romans.
Insisting on the rule of law.
This made Gandhi possible.
I really do not know, how this came into existence.
But it is unique, I think.
It is not in the language.
Latin is very strict.
English is a primitive, sloppy, promiscuous language, which anybody with half of a brain can adopt as Pidgin. (no offense). Latin was different, a strict, codified language.
So it must be one or more layers upwards, where the riddle lies.
The Americans are way back on that.
Maybe because of the -ahem- Holocaust on the American Indians and the slavery of the Southerners,
which put a Kain sign on their heads, which they refuse to see until now.
The British had no problem with that.
Just thinking.
StewartM
Jack Olsen:
Uh, how many tank armies?
(From someone who has the Soviet order of battle and a list of Soviet armies on his bookshelf).
The Soviet Bear was never as fearsome as you’se guys always painted it to be to secure even more Pentagon funding. During the end of WWII, the Soviets were already feeling a massive manpower squeeze and struggled to keep units up anywhere close to their paper strengths. They started to disband armies before the war actually concluded because of this. Immediately after WWII, demobilization started quickly, because Soviet agriculture was in such arrears that if they hadn’t, mass starvation would have resulted.
Postwar, many of those Soviet divisions you’se guys like to threaten us with were essentially paper units, stashes of equipment with staffs and minimum manpower. Even the stashes of usable, modern, equipment wasn’t as much as you guys claimed. The figure of over 50,000 tanks that Reagan liked to cite included mostly obsolete tanks in warehouses; even leftover WWII-vintage stuff of extremely limited military utility (that is, if it was in working order at all).
Straw man argument. For one thing, tanks used as fill-in police typically don’t shoot their main gun–their main weapons against crowds would be their machine guns. But they’d rather not even do that; what they typically do is to rely on their mass and intimidate a crowd into submission or dispersion. A tank on the outside to civilians looks very menacing; on the inside its crew is very aware of its limitations and vulnerabilities.
It goes back to what Ian said—the cost/benefit analysis of those in power. Those in power would like that protesting crowd to disperse. But they don’t really want to send the military go in to shoot up and destroy property, especially if it’s in some way *their property* getting trashed. So they’d rather not have those tanks fight all-out as if they’re fighting the Warsaw Pact if they can help it.
StewartM
anon2525
Peter Gelderloos writes this week from Barcelona about the (so far) non-violent protests (“occupations”) used there, and describes both what he sees as valuable and what is counterproductive:
The central principles of the Real Democracy Now platform, adopted to a greater or lesser degree in other cities outside of Madrid, were unity among people indignant at the present situation, assembly decision-making, no political parties, no ideologies, and nonviolence.
…as the central occupations steadily dissipate with the passing of time, internal debates are raging that have not been reflected on the outside, neither in the pedantic journalism with which the media hope to subtly patronize the movement and discipline it towards greater pragmatism, nor in the triumphant and populist manifestos broadcast throughout cyberspace. These debates mark a strategic watershed that may determine whether the structures of protest we create will be used against us, as has happened so often in the past, or whether on a general scale we can finally identify and attack the social structures responsible for the array of privations we’ve suffered for as long as we can remember.
A skeptical view of the occupations can help us see what is valuable in them, and what is self-defeating.
Spanish Revolution at a Crossroads
lambert strether
Ian writes:
However, at least according to Wikipedia, MLK was leading the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955. Malcolm X was organizing mosques in 1955, and only emerged to national notice, at least two years after MLK, with in 1957 with the Johnson Hinton incident (which is interesting in itself).
lambert strether
And to follow up, that’s a little bit nearer to home than earth moving machinery and the Warsaw Pact. Eh?
Everythings Jake
@ Lambert
No you didn’t. Really? Give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’re tired (or maybe it’s not the real Lambert) – your analysis is usually sharper
Maybe not that early in the trajectory of their lives, but when Lyndon Johnson comes to deal with MLK in 1963 and 1964, MLK has more power at the table because LBJ (and the power elites of the day) are frightened by the kinds of trouble Malcom X can stir up.
StewartM
Jack Olsen:
So little understanding of the processes that drive history and culture is exhibited above!
Revolutions happen because they have buy-in from everyday Joes and Janes. Revolutions are not the products of “revolutionary consciousness” or some other idealistic claptrap but are the outcome of mundane and material forces at play. In the prosperous US of that era, real incomes were rising, and Everyday Joe and Jane saw no reason to revolt. Thinking that you could play at revolution with a largely economically satisfied American populace was the error of the would-be revolutionaries of that era.
That’s not true now. Tye economic decline for all but the top 1 % started in earnest with Reagan, but really took off after the collapse of the Communist bloc (a friend and I at that time were discussing this, and we openly wondered if the capitalists were rubbing their hands with glee saying “We can get away with *anything* now and no one will call us out on it!! That sadly proved to be a prescient prediction). Real wages fell, good jobs were shipped overseas, and holes were cut in the safety net. Now they’re going after the entitlements, which most of Americans were banking on in old age because there is simply no way in hell that we can save enough of our incomes to plonk into 401ks to compensate (I’ve done far better than most, yet my savings aren’t nearly enough). No way we can afford the predicted premiums for ObamaRyanCare, even if we managed to save every penny of our incomes. No way we can afford an existence where each and every capitalist thinks that you should be forking over every dime you make just to them and to them only for what you need to exist.
Revolutions are in essence a reaction of the desperate. When enough people get desperate then all it takes is a spark. Tbat does not mean that revolutions will succeed–far from it, especially if those in power have the loyalty of the police and armed forces and will stop at nothing to repress dissent. However, even there this may present the elites with a dilemna–because hardline repression to keep everyone in-line and in a state of enforced hopelessness costs a lot of money and is economically counter-productive and hurts their bottom line. You may force the elites to choose then between real reform, or a somewhat more upscale North Korea.
StewartM
anon2525
Malcolm X makes Martin Luther King possible.
I am inclined to agree with Strether’s point (as I understand it) that, unless Ian Welsh has some knowledge of U.S. history that I do not, Malcolm X did not make MLK possible. Fear of a Black Revolution did not make Kennedy or Johnson take the actions that they did to pass the civil rights legislation. To the contrary, had the civil rights movement not been non-violent, I think that it likely would have failed (been crushed) or at least been much delayed.
atcooper
There was a dialogue going on between X and King. Each was very aware of the other though I would be hard pressed to show exactly when that happened. I will see what I can dig up over the next couple of days.
It is a poor analogue, but relevant never the less. Wikileaks is the ‘reasonable’ one, whereas Anonymous is your ‘violent, crazy’ one.
Michael
@anon2525
I’d also say another reason why the civil rights movement was able to succeed the way it did (mostly non-violent though to be sure there were some race riots) was because it had the backing of the federal government. Part of the reason that happened I’d argue was because of the cold war and the propagand value the soviets were getting out of jim crow.
After World War II pointing out the racism rampant in the united states was one of the ways the soviets tried to delegitimise the U.S. during their Ideological war. The ku klu klan in particular became a favorite of soviet artists in their propaganda posters. Also the war in vietnam, (not so much the fear of revolution but of uncontrollable civil unrest at home) was probably another big reason to try and reach a settlement on civil rights as quickly as possible, particularly when you had other more militant movements starting to acquire steam, and when even the moderate leaders were beginning to become more radical and uncompromising in their critique (MLK’s triple evils speech in which he linked the civil rights movement to the anti-war movement, and even gave hints of a larger program challenging the U.S. economic system is one of the most powerful critiques of U.S. policy I’ve ever heard and certainly ranks up there with the most militant speeches of Malcolm X in its uncomprimising stance.)
Jay
The one response everyone here, even the pacifists, seems to agree on is opting out. I don’t see how that is a viable option if those on the left renounce violence, even in self-defense.
Ian pointed out that the power of the state is going to force us to pay rents to the insurance industry. Monsanto and other big agro companies are using patent laws and bribed politicos to destroy small farmers. If large numbers of Americans started growing their own food, the rent-seeking elites would simply outlaw it through intellectual property laws and zoning codes.
Even now, the banks are pushing hard for the adoption of a cashless society. If a large chunk of the economy shifted to barter and under-the-table cash transactions, the banks could just lobby to have barter outlawed (as a form of tax evasion) and cash replaced with debit and credit cards.
You are nothing more than revenue streams to our corporate elites. They will not allow you
to opt out any more than they will allow people to walk away with cash, inventory, or office supplies.
At some point, you have to be willing to make a stand and fight for your life, your family, and your community, because you can’t always depend on someone else to fight for you. If America’s laboring class embraces an absolute, categorical refusal to fight, even in self-defense, it will be reduced to slavery.
The corporate elites have gotten their way for so long, they cannot even remember what it’s like for someone to stand up to them. They want all the wealth in the world, and will reduce everyone else to absolute squalor if allowed to do so.
If the left declares to the world that we would rather live as gelded slaves than fight back, then that will be our fate. Our enemies are willing to kill some of us in order to subjugate the rest of us. If we are unwilling to kill some of them in order to survive as free people, then they have already won.
anon2525
Part of the reason that happened I’d argue was because of the cold war and the propagand value the soviets were getting out of jim crow.
After World War II pointing out the racism rampant in the united states was one of the ways the soviets tried to delegitimise the U.S. during their Ideological war.
The Soviets may have tried, but it did not have any discernible effect on U.S. domestic policy. (Likewise, U.S. foreign policy did not have any discernible effect on the domestic policy of the Soviet Union. Contrary to right-wing propaganda, reagan did not “win” the Cold War. “Correlation does not mean causation.”)
anon2525
The arrival of television likely had more to do with the success of the civil rights movement (which is, I believe, a big part of the reason that the wealthy right wing started acquiring networks in the 1970s and ’80s). It put the racism and consequent violence in everyone’s living room and in their face.
Here is news (from 1999) about the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921, which I have not heard of outside of Democracy Now!. There was no television back then (and not much radio):
Tulsa Race Riot of 1921
On June 1st, 1921, Greenwood, the prosperous African-American community of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was looted and burned by a white mob numbering in the thousands. This came after false rumors that a Black man had assaulted a white woman in an elevator, and an editorial in the Tulsa Tribune calling for whites to “lynch a nigger tonight.”
Eyewitness accounts tell of aerial bombing, internment camps for Black men, and truckloads of corpses dumped into unmarked mass graves. Thirty-five city blocks were completely destroyed, and experts believe that at least 300 people died. If this is so, then the Tulsa race riot of 1921 surpasses the Oklahoma City bombing as the largest mass murder of civilians on U.S. soil.
Petro
@Jay:
You are absolutely right. As one of the “off-grid” proponents, here’s a bit of what I said in the last thread:
The point has been made by many in the passive-resistance crowd, including Gandhi – you provoke a response by non-cooperation. When the motive of self-defense thusly becomes bared as righteous, then a little, ahem, “push-back” becomes much more popular and effective.
That’s why I think it is an essential first step. Otherwise you get your usual thugs, as has been also discussed here.
JustPlainDave
Sorry, but the earthmover 1:3 exchange ratio on any significant scale and generic engagement scenario flat out pegs my skeptic-o-meter. An M1A3 weighs on the order of 65 – 70 tonnes and has significantly better movement over terrain than pretty much anything made by Cat. A tank can be flipped but, in the absence of a good sized blast IED, it takes a lot of work, luck and favourable terrain (i.e., the tank has to start out high and end up low). And all of that presupposes that the IFVs, dismounts and many and varied forms of support have decided to take the day off. More tactical context and source please.
While the attrition rate on drones is high compared to manned aircraft, the vast majority of losses of the systems of Predator size and above are actually not related to enemy action. Something on the order of 70% of losses have been human factors, though lately equipment failure has been more of a problem (as flight hours have increased dramatically and operator training has improved).
As to the cause of the current events in the arab world, it’s a lot more than just high food prices. That certainly plays a role – particularly in ignition – but this is not something that can be attributed to “one simple fucking thing”. It’s about multiple generations that have had enough – they’ve seen various alternatives and -isms mouthed by various of those in power over the past 40 years and find all of them wanting. The more we seek to understand the complexity of all this and the less we use them as handy ciphers to slot into domestic arguments, the better.
Jumpjet
The other strategy there seems to be agreement on is shunning and shaming. I don’t think it’s tried enough, and I think if there were a concentrated campaign of it focused on a few particular individuals it could have a pronounced effect.
These craven sociopaths at the top fear two things: loss of money and loss of life. You may not ever succeed in actually taking either from them. But you can make them fear the taking. Shit, I grew up reading Batman comics. Criminals (read: our elites) are a superstitious and cowardly lot. Wage a campaign of terror against them. Feed their paranoia, because everyone at the top is paranoid. Make them lose sleep. Make them hate to be alone. Make them afraid of the dark again. It will alter their behavior, and at any rate, it’s no less than they deserve.
Michael
@anon2525
“The Soviets may have tried, but it did not have any discernible effect on U.S. domestic policy. (Likewise, U.S. foreign policy did not have any discernible effect on the domestic policy of the Soviet Union. Contrary to right-wing propaganda, reagan did not “win” the Cold War. “Correlation does not mean causation.”)”
I guess what I meant wasn’t so much that anything the soviets did was having an effect but rather that the presence of jim crow in the united states was itself a national embarassment and because of the cold war its continued existence was a problem for the U.S.
Let me try and explain; even if soviet anti-american propaganda didn’t have any effect on U.S. domestic policy, having jim crow in the midst of the cold war was still a problem, because even as the U.S. tried to convince its own people of the superiority of their socioeconomic system, the horrors of jim crow (amplified as you rightly pointed out by the rise of T.V. News) showed the gulf between rhetoric and action. As long as jim crow continued to exist it put a lie to claims by the U.S. government of the justness of their own system.
At the same time I think just the existence of the soviet union made this problem more accute because it meant U.S. government politicians couldn’t keep their populations passive by claiming (as margaret thatcher famously did) “there is no alternative.” This meant that during the cold war, and especially the war in vietnam, which was disproportinately affecting blacks, and which King pointed out reinforced racist biases, made the need to quiet the civil rights movement very important, lest their demands begin to incorporate a larger program of social justice and redistribution.
I think the cold war was also was at the top of the minds of the U.S. government during the civil rights movement simply because its difficult to conduct a full scale war if your population is opposed to it and willing to engage in civil disobediencve and unrest. The civil rights movement disturbed the ideological belief that the U.S. system was just by bringing one of its worst abuses to national prominence and in doing so called into legitimacy the right of the U.S. to intervene abroad if it didn’t even have a just system at home.
The massive demonstrations economic boycotts and civil unrest (through riots) caused U.S. leaders to have to recalculate the cost benefit analysis of continuing the war in vietnam (how many troops can we afford to send abroad before we start running low on troops to control domestic unrest) and finally, from a broader perspective if this movement wasn’t dealt with it would continue to act as a severe restraint to further U.S. military action against the spread of communism. The civil rights movement had by the 1960’s incorporated opposition to the vietnam war into its demands, if it continued it might possible prevent us involvement in other areas they felt their economic interest were threatened.
Finally going back to my earlier point the fear of broader demands, perhaps even leading to the implementation of a social democratic system in the U.S. might have been another real fear of the U.S. government. Social democracy arose in much of europe as a response to the threat of socialism (ironicallt enough one of the first welfare states ever created was by an imperialist and consevative politician Bismark in reaction to the socialist movements of his day.) if the civil rights movement had continued, based on some of the speeched given by king shortly before his death and his growing alliance with the labor movement who knows what might have happened?
Any way just my two cents. Now have fun tearing it apart. 😉
Michael
@ Jumpjet
“Shit, I grew up reading Batman comics. Criminals (read: our elites) are a superstitious and cowardly lot. Wage a campaign of terror against them. Feed their paranoia, because everyone at the top is paranoid. Make them lose sleep. Make them hate to be alone. Make them afraid of the dark again. It will alter their behavior, and at any rate, it’s no less than they deserve.”
Now you’ve just given me an image of Batman Ian waging a ceaseless war against the ruling class, decked out in full spandex throwing his maple leaf shaped batarangs (maplerangs?) at the forces of oligarchy.
lambert strether
Jake: I’m responding to the post Ian wrote, and not the post that you wish he had written.
lambert strether
Jumpjet: Agreed on the shunning and shaming. There was IIRC a union movement that was giving bus tours of hedgie mansions in Greenwich, CT. Nice! (The streets aren’t everything…)
Everythings Jake
Will the real Lambert please stand up?
On his own blog, he’s considerably smarter. That guy wouldn’t need a footnote to a blog post to understand that “Malcom X make MLK possible” must be taken (can only be taken, no one who knew anything about anything wouldn’t take it) in the longer context of their histories.
This Lambert hooked into a narrow 2 year window (after doing Wikipedia research) seemingly to disprove that Malcom X hadn’t prepared the way, chronologically speaking. It doesn’t compute – they can’t possibly be the same person.
anon2525
At the same time I think just the existence of the soviet union made this problem more accute because it meant U.S. government politicians couldn’t keep their populations passive by claiming (as margaret thatcher famously did) “there is no alternative.”
…
Any way just my two cents. Now have fun tearing it apart.
Actually, I’m going to agree with you in a certain sense. The presence of the Soviet Union (and before that, of Japan and Germany) acted as a check on the behavior of those in power in the U.S. The past ten years have made this effect clear. Keep in mind I’m referring to the behavior of the powerful not to domestic policy that affected ordinary people (as civil rights laws do).
Once upon a time in America, the politicians and media would point to the Soviet Union or its allies and say, “Look! The communists torture prisoners! We don’t torture people–we’re better than that. And look! The communists have political prisoners and show trials! We don’t do that–we’re better than that. And look! The communists are invading and controlling smaller, less powerful countries with their vastly larger military. We don’t do that–we’re better than that. And look! The communists spy–on their own people! We don’t do that–we’re better than that.”
“The people in the u.s. want DADT? Let them have it–what do we care?”
“The people want the banksters prosecuted for fraud? No. There was no crime. The wealthy and powerful do not commit crimes.”
anon2525
“The people in the u.s. want DADT?
That should have said “…want an end to DADT?”
StewartM
Morocco Bama:
lambert strether: The Civil War had be fought to end the slave power.
I think you’re dead wrong on that, Morocco, and are reversing cause and effect.
First of all–the war was started not by northern bankers, but by the South. Southerners were the ones who first seceded, and they are the ones who fired the first shots. The bankers could have gotten their stronger Union from the remnant of the nation more easily with the South gone. In fact, some of conservative bent like George Templeton Strong said in effect “good riddance” when the South seceded.
Moreover, the passions that inflamed both South and North involved slavery. The South had convinced itself that any attempt to limit its expansion in the slightest of ways would be tantamount to sealing its abolition. Their propaganda and the fact that opposition newspapers were not allowed to circulate in the South meant that many Southerners went to war thinking lies such as Lincoln having really campaigned on a platform of freeing all the slaves and then having them marry white women were fact (think of Southern histrionics as Breitbart, pre-Youtube). While most in the North were racist themselves, and hardly racial egalitarians, they did think that the expansion of slavery was undesirable (admittedly this was tied to a desire to keep African-Americans ‘down there’) and many did think the institution morally wrong. There is no conceivable way that that war would have happened sans slavery. None.
Now, if you want to say that the bankers took the opportunity and exigencies of of war to push for a stronger Union to further their desires, I have no problem with that. But let’s not confuse cause and effect.
StewartM
groo
@jumpjet
(obviously I did not introduce myself with the decency necessary,
shaming everyone by accusing them of unnecessary codewords.)
Anyway.
when You say
…The other strategy there seems to be agreement on is shunning and shaming. …
I somehow agree.
It somehow woks on the socalled second-rate sociopaths, which the first-rate-ones seem to recruit nowadays because of a lack of their genuine ilk.
So ist seems as a valid strategy to shun those types still capable of being ashamed.
But the primary ones will not.
The Gaddhafis, Berlusconis, Bushes etc will not.
So the strategy would have the effect to isolate the first tier sociopaths (which i use operationally, not clinically) from the second one.
Which, I agree, would be a big success.
And actuially it works sometimes.
In my homeland -Germany- it can be watched with the nuclear Exit, where the secondary sociopaths (e.g,., politicians) are deterred by an 80% majority to stick to the primary ones.
There seems to be some residuum of ritual shame in the political class, although i am convinced, that it does not go very deep.
Authoritarian Regimes seem to have a firm grip on the secondary Sociopaths, as seen in Lybia, Syria,and, yes, the US (Senate and Congress and its circling of the waggons),
to decide on the absurdest of laws against the population.
Here I come back to my argument, that besides the mild measures of shame (think Weiner)
the insistance on the rule of law should be second.
So -all in all-
What we can envision is a gierarchy of measures:
a) shame
b) election (and due process, without corporate interference)
c) insistence on the law an due process
d) passive resistance
e) active resistance
As everybody can easily see, if one puts a scale on the problem in this way, different countries are on different positions on that scale.
Problems arise e.g, if this scale/ladder is not respected.
Shaming Karzai?
Or Assad?
Or the Chinese?
Or Obama?
Each step of the ladder needs its own response.
Complicated by the fact, that e.g. Obama/Guantanamo is multipied by its relative importance.
At all:
If I am unworthy of consideration in this elusive and important club, debating the fate of mankind, please let me know.
I will not interfere anymore.
Morocco Bama
Stewart, I am not talking about the South’s motivation. The overriding motivation for the South was to keep slavery as an institution, but ending slavery as an institution was not the motivation for the North. It was to preserve The Union, meaning a stronger, more powerful, Centralized Federal Government.
http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/grossman.banking.history.us.civil.war.wwii
groo
@Morocco Bama,
…overriding motivation…
and what does this say, please?
the metric of money was fluid at that time, the same as the metric of distance and weight,
As well as the metric of power and ‘happiness’, if I dare to say.
Cf Jermey Bentham et al.
Ofcourse there were ‘motivations’.
As anyday.
So what?
My goodness.
‘Motivation’, in the mind of those people has the metric of profit.
Can we agree on that?
(if not , then not.)
Seems I do not make good friends here.
groo
@Morocco Bama. II
…Prior to the establishment of the national banking system, the national currency supply consisted of a confusing patchwork of bank notes issued under a variety of rules by banks chartered under different state laws. Notes of sound banks circulated side-by-side with notes of banks in financial trouble, as well as those of banks…
What does this mean, except that it is a -sorry-quite senseless citation of something.
I tell you.
At that time the diverse metrics were quite confused, and some Dudes, even the Originators of the Constitution really did not KNOW what this was all about.
There have been some insights into the money system, e.g. Goethe (Faust I&II), which You should investigate, and also the insights of the founding fathers, who were inspired by the early enlightenment, –down to Adam Smith–, and had some deep difficulties in understanding the ‘measurement problem’ versus the value-problem. Up to Marx.
The early enlightenment –I am quite sure about that–was confused by the riddle of ‘value’ and its measurement.
Please refrain from senseless citations of passages You do not seem to understand quite well.
As well as all those Economists, who refuse to learn and accept HET (History of Economic Thought, to be precise).
(Always ready for a good fight. So please raise Your fist and kick me in the face. )
Amen.
Morocco Bama
groo, what the hell are you smoking? Seriously, whatever it is, it’s some good shit. Maybe you can tell Lisa the source and she can lace the caviar at her next dinner engagement.