Wednesday, December 29, 2010
From the Archives: Anarchism and the City
Barcelona aspired to be a world city, a Paris of the south, but the low profit margins of its small scale manufacturing activity, and a poorly funded absentee state, rendered such an aspiration implausible from the inception. Catalonia, unlike the rest of Spain, embraced industrialization, but Barcelona, the center of the region's transformation, lacked the resources to provide even the most rudimentary services to the people drawn there to work. For example, housing was grossly inadequate in every respect, there was never enough of it, and it was frequently expensive and dilapidated. Flats originally built for a single family were converted into beehives, accomodating as many as eight families, while casual workers and the homeless rented cheap rooms with beds available at hourly rates, and even paid to sleep on foot in a communal room. As for education and medical care, people found themselves compelled to accept whatever was provided by an autocratic Catholic Church. Anger over the abusive treatment accorded them by the Church in their condition of dependency contributed to church arsons in 1909, 1931 and 1936, and, perhaps other times as well.
Accordingly, the location of the working class within a growing Barcelona, and their use of public space became a permanent preoccupation of the middle and upper classes. Ealham traces a thread of continuity between the monarchy, Primo de Rivera's dictatorship, and, more controversially, the Republic, in regard to policies of social control. Each, in their own way, sought to criminalize various forms of working class resistance and fragment the communities in which the workers lived. Interestingly, Ealham describes much of the byzantine maneuvering among the political factions of the middle and upper classes during this period as being partially explainable by concerns over the ability of the government to preserve public order, by which they meant the preservation of a quiescent workforce. Hence, they abandoned the monarchy for the dictatorship and compelled the liberals of the Republic to resort to more and more expansive police powers prior to the Civil War, while abandoning their promises of social assistance.
Workers, whether formally or informally employed, sought to shape their communities collectively to enable as many people as possible to survive the conditions of extreme deprivation in which they lived, an endeavor that the elites perpetually sought to suppress. They appropriated public spaces in order to gather and protest; they congregated in cafes to plan organizing campaigns; they used the sidewalks to sell goods as street vendors when formal employment, as was often the case, was unavailable. All of these activities were either criminalized or disrupted by police action. Ealham explains how the elites exploited panics over morals and vice to justify these measures. Workers also created their own secular educational and cultural venues outside the control of the state and the Church. Of course, these, too, were subjected to repression during times of class conflict on the streets.
Through such conflict throughout Spain, the Confederacion Nacional del Trabajo, the CNT, the legendary anarcho-syndicalist organization, was born. Ealham asserts that it was most successful when it was interwoven into the communities of the workers and their collective struggles, and supported evolving forms of historic direct action protest, such as forced requisitioning of foodstuffs, raucous street protest, rent strikes, and coerced hiring of unemployed people, but went astray when militants adopted unilateral, individualistic methods such as assassinating employers and other political enemies and expropriating funds through bank robberies. Of course, this is an old debate within anarchism, but Ealham marshals some impressive evidence for his perspective, namely, the precipitous decline in CNT membership between 1931 and 1936 because of police repression of what Ealham describes as militarized anarchism. Between June 1931 and May 1936, CNT membership in Catalonia dropped 291,240 to 122,812, while in Barcelona, it dropped from 186,152 to 98,292.
Hence, on the verge of the coup that everyone anticipated in response to the Popular Front victory, the CNT was, according to Ealham, in a weakened state. While praising the effective armed resistance to the military assault on July 19th, he suggests that the inability of the CNT to follow through upon its success and revolutionize Catalan society was the result of a diminished influence within proletarian communities, as well as a sectarianism that left it vulnerable to the reinvigorated power of the middle and upper classes, this time as manifested, chameleonlike as usual, through the emergence of the heretofore politically marginal Communist Party. A massive influx of new members after the coup concealed this vulnerability.
But could it have been different? Ealham suggests some possibilities. He highlights the empowering dimension of collective action undertaken in challenging circumstances, such as the rent strike launched just before the beginning of the Republic and subsequent ongoing protests by the unemployed and street vendors against efforts to drive them from the streets. Both created opportunities for organizing broad based support within proletarian neighborhoods centered issues of daily subsistence and hostility towards the police. Such support bent in the face of government repression, but the implication is that such actions created an enduring relationship that could not be permanently severed, whereas the small group campaign of assassinations and bank robberies did not. Even so, Ealham displays an ambivalence, as he does acknowledge public support for them as the Depression became more and more acute. Sectarianism also played a role as CNT militants fought with others on the left during these efforts, preventing them from realizing the reward of community based direct action activism.
Furthermore, women were an essential feature of community direct action efforts like rent strikes and efforts to combat inflation in food prices, while only being involved in expropriations, if at all, in an auxiliary role. If women were rarely involved in bank robberies, it can also be assumed that they were similarly infrequently associated violent attacks upon employers. Militarized anarchism therefore had the predictable consequence of sidelining a major portion of the proletariat and lumpen proletariat from anarcho-syndicalist activity. It constituted a marginalization of the already limited role of working women within anarchism, where women, even those within unions, provided support primarily within the domestic sphere. As noted by Ealham, unions were essentially masculine spaces. Clearly, the anarchists were not alone in this, Ealham relates how, during the Civil War itself, the Trotskyite POUMistas sexually segregated their meetings, with male party members mocking female ones. But the result was still the same, the failure of a revolutionary movement to mobilize all of its participants to their fullest potential.
Is it possible that women might have suggested community direct action and mass mobilization alternatives to the small group violence that became such a publicly prominent feature of anarchism in Barcelona in the years before the coup? One does not have to accept gender stereotypes to pose such a question. As Iulia, a Greek anarchist, said in an interview published in We Are An Image of the Future: The Greek Revolt of December 2008:
In this, the gender relations of Catalonian anarchism provide an echo that can still be heard in the present day.If we suppose that Greek anarchists are sexist I would say that it has to do with their relationship to violence in a way that excludes other activities that are more feminine in quotation marks. They have to be heroic and if they're not they're not important in the movement. It's this structure of small faction each with their own leader or face, a persona, and I don't like that. It's a patriarchal structure. Greek society is quite patriarchal and we carry these structures into our own groups as well.
As for valuing masculine labor over female labor, we lack the organization in which the importance of female labor becomes obvious. The heroic acts are most important; that's the only narrative we have, and so feminine labor is not valued. I think that's why we don't have many squats in Greece, because it requires organization. But we're getting more and more squats.
Labels: Activism, AK Press, Anarchism, Book Reviews, Feminism, From the Archives, Greece, Political Violence
Saturday, May 22, 2010
BOOK REVIEW: Anarchism and the City
Barcelona aspired to be a world city, a Paris of the south, but the low profit margins of its small scale manufacturing activity, and a poorly funded absentee state, rendered such an aspiration implausible from the inception. Catalonia, unlike the rest of Spain, embraced industrialization, but Barcelona, the center of the region's transformation, lacked the resources to provide even the most rudimentary services to the people drawn there to work. For example, housing was grossly inadequate in every respect, there was never enough of it, and it was frequently expensive and dilapidated. Flats originally built for a single family were converted into beehives, accomodating as many as eight families, while casual workers and the homeless rented cheap rooms with beds available at hourly rates, and even paid to sleep on foot in a communal room. As for education and medical care, people found themselves compelled to accept whatever was provided by an autocratic Catholic Church. Anger over the abusive treatment accorded them by the Church in their condition of dependency contributed to church arsons in 1909, 1931 and 1936, and, perhaps other times as well.
Accordingly, the location of the working class within a growing Barcelona, and their use of public space became a permanent preoccupation of the middle and upper classes. Ealham traces a thread of continuity between the monarchy, Primo de Rivera's dictatorship, and, more controversially, the Republic, in regard to policies of social control. Each, in their own way, sought to criminalize various forms of working class resistance and fragment the communities in which the workers lived. Interestingly, Ealham describes much of the byzantine maneuvering among the political factions of the middle and upper classes during this period as being partially explainable by concerns over the ability of the government to preserve public order, by which they meant the preservation of a quiescent workforce. Hence, they abandoned the monarchy for the dictatorship and compelled the liberals of the Republic to resort to more and more expansive police powers prior to the Civil War, while abandoning their promises of social assistance.
Workers, whether formally or informally employed, sought to shape their communities collectively to enable as many people as possible to survive the conditions of extreme deprivation in which they lived, an endeavor that the elites perpetually sought to suppress. They appropriated public spaces in order to gather and protest; they congregated in cafes to plan organizing campaigns; they used the sidewalks to sell goods as street vendors when formal employment, as was often the case, was unavailable. All of these activities were either criminalized or disrupted by police action. Ealham explains how the elites exploited panics over morals and vice to justify these measures. Workers also created their own secular educational and cultural venues outside the control of the state and the Church. Of course, these, too, were subjected to repression during times of class conflict on the streets.
Through such conflict throughout Spain, the Confederacion Nacional del Trabajo, the CNT, the legendary anarcho-syndicalist organization, was born. Ealham asserts that it was most successful when it was interwoven into the communities of the workers and their collective struggles, and supported evolving forms of historic direct action protest, such as forced requisitioning of foodstuffs, raucous street protest, rent strikes, and coerced hiring of unemployed people, but went astray when militants adopted unilateral, individualistic methods such as assassinating employers and other political enemies and expropriating funds through bank robberies. Of course, this is an old debate within anarchism, but Ealham marshals some impressive evidence for his perspective, namely, the precipitous decline in CNT membership between 1931 and 1936 because of police repression of what Ealham describes as militarized anarchism. Between June 1931 and May 1936, CNT membership in Catalonia dropped 291,240 to 122,812, while in Barcelona, it dropped from 186,152 to 98,292.
Hence, on the verge of the coup that everyone anticipated in response to the Popular Front victory, the CNT was, according to Ealham, in a weakened state. While praising the effective armed resistance to the military assault on July 19th, he suggests that the inability of the CNT to follow through upon its success and revolutionize Catalan society was the result of a diminished influence within proletarian communities, as well as a sectarianism that left it vulnerable to the reinvigorated power of the middle and upper classes, this time as manifested, chameleonlike as usual, through the emergence of the heretofore politically marginal Communist Party. A massive influx of new members after the coup concealed this vulnerability.
But could it have been different? Ealham suggests some possibilities. He highlights the empowering dimension of collective action undertaken in challenging circumstances, such as the rent strike launched just before the beginning of the Republic and subsequent ongoing protests by the unemployed and street vendors against efforts to drive them from the streets. Both created opportunities for organizing broad based support within proletarian neighborhoods centered issues of daily subsistence and hostility towards the police. Such support bent in the face of government repression, but the implication is that such actions created an enduring relationship that could not be permanently severed, whereas the small group campaign of assassinations and bank robberies did not. Even so, Ealham displays an ambivalence, as he does acknowledge public support for them as the Depression became more and more acute. Sectarianism also played a role as CNT militants fought with others on the left during these efforts, preventing them from realizing the reward of community based direct action activism.
Furthermore, women were an essential feature of community direct action efforts like rent strikes and efforts to combat inflation in food prices, while only being involved in expropriations, if at all, in an auxiliary role. If women were rarely involved in bank robberies, it can also be assumed that they were similarly infrequently associated violent attacks upon employers. Militarized anarchism therefore had the predictable consequence of sidelining a major portion of the proletariat and lumpen proletariat from anarcho-syndicalist activity. It constituted a marginalization of the already limited role of working women within anarchism, where women, even those within unions, provided support primarily within the domestic sphere. As noted by Ealham, unions were essentially masculine spaces. Clearly, the anarchists were not alone in this, Ealham relates how, during the Civil War itself, the Trotskyite POUMistas sexually segregated their meetings, with male party members mocking female ones. But the result was still the same, the failure of a revolutionary movement to mobilize all of its participants to their fullest potential.
Is it possible that women might have suggested community direct action and mass mobilization alternatives to the small group violence that became such a publicly prominent feature of anarchism in Barcelona in the years before the coup? One does not have to accept gender stereotypes to pose such a question. As Iulia, a Greek anarchist, said in an interview published in We Are An Image of the Future: The Greek Revolt of December 2008:
In this, the gender relations of Catalonian anarchism provide an echo that can still be heard in the present day.If we suppose that Greek anarchists are sexist I would say that it has to do with their relationship to violence in a way that excludes other activities that are more feminine in quotation marks. They have to be heroic and if they're not they're not important in the movement. It's this structure of small faction each with their own leader or face, a persona, and I don't like that. It's a patriarchal structure. Greek society is quite patriarchal and we carry these structures into our own groups as well.
As for valuing masculine labor over female labor, we lack the organization in which the importance of female labor becomes obvious. The heroic acts are most important; that's the only narrative we have, and so feminine labor is not valued. I think that's why we don't have many squats in Greece, because it requires organization. But we're getting more and more squats.
Labels: Activism, AK Press, Anarchism, Book Reviews, Feminism, Greece, Political Violence
Friday, January 29, 2010
All of these figures deserve the praise that has accompanied their deaths, but, perhaps, it is time for reflection as well. Recently, Diana Block, an American radical of the 1970s and 1980s, wrote a moving autobiography entitled, Arm the Spirit, published by AK Press. I posted a two part review of it here last April and May. In it, Block relates her experiences of personal empowerment against the backdrop of political failure. She encourages readers to ponder to what extent she, and those that she worked with, succeeded, and to what extent they failed, and, even more importantly, why they were unable to persuade more people to rally in support of their vision of society.
It is a central question for these radicals, especially American ones like Zinn, Takaki and Block, as the Europeans, Gowan, Arrighi, Bensaid and Harman, are manifestations of a culture that encourages more self-reflection. Block, to her credit, confronted it as best she could, and it would have been mesmerizing to hear or read what Zinn had to say about it as well. Perhaps, he did, and I missed it. I concede that I have not followed his statements and writings avidly. My impression, however, is that Zinn, like most others of his era, evaded the question by treating as a problem of inadequate education. If we just keep telling people why bigotry, militarism, poverty and, yes, even capitalism, are bad, they will eventually figure it out.
Well, maybe so. But it didn't happen during Zinn's lifetime, and his insistence upon support for Democratic presidential candidates, while emphasizing the necessity of social movements to push them into doing the right things (much like his contemporary, Takaki), did not spark the popular imagination. Indeed, the Open Letter to Barack Obama that he, and many other activists and academics, signed in the summer of 2008 helped to motivate me to abandon the electoral process entirely, and post an ongoing critique of it under the label Vote or Die. If it wasn't obvious at the time, it is now evident that the letter represents an abject capitulation of the left in the face of the most rigorous rationalization of the global economy by finance capital since the late 1970s and 1980s. Interestingly, Ellsberg was not an initial signatory of the letter posted on the The Nation website, although I can't say as to whether he added his name afterwards.
As I said, perhaps Zinn addressed this subject in the final years of life, and was unable to get people to listen. If so, I'd be very interested in what he said or wrote, if anyone visiting this site can direct me to places where his remarks can be found. Because, if we really want to show respect for people like Zinn and others of his generation, we should seek to understand and learn from their failures as well as celebrate their personal bravery, integrity and accomplishments. Otherwise, we risk reducing the significance of their lives to the sterility of an innocuous personality cult.
Labels: Activism, AK Press, Civil Rights, Daniel Ellsberg, Imperialism, Neoliberalism, Obituaries, Vote or Die
Friday, May 08, 2009
BOOK REVIEW: Arm the Spirit, a Woman's Journey Underground and Back (Part 2)
In this concluding post, I shall write in a different key, highlighting her decision to go underground, and the psychological complexity associated with that decision. Block emphasizes two aspects of it. First, she describes her motivation to do so, as you might expect, in political terms. In 1978, through her involvement with Prairie Fire, a publicly visible, grassroots organization launched by participants in the Weather Underground, she became involved in the militant effort in support of Puerto Rican independence. She related to this struggle within the larger context of Third World national liberation struggles in countries such as Cuba, Vietnam and Zimbabwe, while also connecting it to police repression and incarceration of people of color within the US.
Clandestinity was becoming a primary focus of such efforts, especially in relation to the Puerto Rican struggle, which was known for violent attacks upon institutions associated with US domination of the island. Despite misgivings, she decided, in 1981, to go underground to participate in a support network for violent resistance against the occupation. Her fear that such a decision would result in political isolation was prescient.
Second, Block relates this decision in terms of her personal life. In the late 1970s, she was involved in a relationship with an older Latina woman named Lola, a former actress who had participated in the Weather Underground and thereafter Prairie Fire, a woman who, when Block met her, was struggling with the mundane pressures of raising four children on low income while living in a house in the Haight Ashbury in San Francisco. Block eventually moved in with Lola and her family, and lived with them for about a year and a half. She soured on the relationship, however, and fell in love with someone else after she was unable to permanently integrate herself into a low income family.
Hence, unlike her South American revolutionary brethren, Block does not appear to have been capable of consciously becoming part of the working class as a means of engaging in direct organizing among workers, as happened in Venezuela, for example, although, she was, ironically enough, later able to do so in order to support her subsequent family while engaging in underground activity. Her subsequent relationship with a woman named Kyle was emotionally fulfilling, but politically deficient.
It is tempting to construe Block's decision to go underground as a stereotypical instance of running away from personal responsibility, but that is too facile. After all, her political motivations are credible, her politics were (and remain) central to her life, so such an interpretation is too dismissive. Even so, there are some additional personal aspects that are worthy of speculation. Again, an invocation of Fassbinder may provide insight. In his brilliant film about German terrorism, The Third Generation, Fassbinder presents the fascination of his protagonists with violence and covert life as a manifestation of dissatisfaction with their everyday lives. As Christian Thomsen describes one of the film's most riveting scenes:
One wonders whether Block was familiar with the film before she went underground, as she periodically expresses her interest in foreign film throughout the book. In any event, Thomsen provides us with some touchstones for evaluating Block's decision in more personal terms. For example, the notion that Block was unconsciously motivated to go underground partially because she wanted to abandon the falsity of her life is quite plausible, because, after all, one of the prominent cultural features of the left was the belief that a revolutionary transformation of capitalist society would be personally liberatory.Edgar and Susanne have gone into hiding, after one of the members of the group is killed. In despair they cling on to their new identities and monotonously try to learn them by heart ('I am David Greenbaum, born, etc. I am Sarah Greenbaum, nee Stiefel . . .') as they disquise themselves with new wigs and makeup, a scene that is drawn out endlessly. It is a desperate picture of two people who hoped, through this terrorist group, to find true identity in an activity full of meaning and excitement, resisting the false roles of their previous everyday lives. They are forced to realize that this way leads to renewed loss of identity, further role-play and even greater frustration.
But was it ultimately unsatisfactory for her? In this instance, it appears not. One of the striking paradoxes of Block's decision is the fact that, in order to ignite a violent rebellion against US capitalism, she was now forced to live like millions of other Americans who were, in comparison to her, apolitical and, by and large, straight. She works in a variety of lower middle income clerical and administrative assistant type jobs, she falls in love with man, a man who was part of the group that went underground, and has two children. She lives in Los Angeles, Minneapolis and Pittsburgh while severing all contact with her friends in San Francisco. All in all, it appears to have been an effective way of distancing herself from her Marxism, which she must have recognized was losing its allure, even in her social circles, her bisexuality and the sybarism of the Bay Area. The marvel is that she didn't end up here in Sacramento, which has always been the perfect destination for those seeking to leave the Bay Area and attain domestic tranquillity, preferably with state civil service employment.
Of course, I am exaggerating a little, but the larger point may well be valid. There was just one problem: she was still committed, along with her partner, to violent resistance against the US occupation of Puerto Rico. As she settled into family life, her social fulfillment was dependent upon illegal actions in support of Puerto Rican independence. The impossibility of this situation eventually became evident, when the family discovered, while living in Los Angeles in 1984, that they were under FBI surveillance, causing them to go even further underground, with new identities. Amazingly, she did so by initially separating from her partner with a two week old son. Upon being reunited, they lived in Minneapolis and then Pittsburgh. Later, in the early 1990s, they returned above ground, and her partner served a prison term in for attempting to purchase explosives for Puerto Rican militants.
Naturally, upon leaving Los Angeles, the prospect of any future political activity evaporated. Security was paramount, necessitating obsessive practices in all aspects of their personal life. Block's account of the stress that the family experienced as a result is compelling, when even the most innocuous things become problematic, such as assisting her 5 year old son with the preparation of a family tree for school. In addition to the turmoil of her family life, she was no longer actively working to bring about the revolution, or the independence of Puerto Rico. She was completely isolated not only from activism, but also access to experiences and information that would enable her to understand the political changes that she was limited to observing on television with her equally confused partner.
Meanwhile, Lola is a ghost that haunts the narrative. Years later, in the mid-1990s, above ground again in the Bay Area, Block discovers that Lola is near death, with multiple sclerosis. She talks with Lola briefly before her death, and then subsequently attends a ceremony for her in the Berkeley hills. Lola's mother shatters the celebratory nature of the event by demanding where all of them had been when Lola was ill, broke and dying. It was a most damning accusation, because Block, along with many of the others present, had sought to replace the family, considered repressive, with an extended social network of friends. But, as Fassbinder would have anticipated, they failed, and Lola had died, as people had for generations, primarily in the presence of her family.
Not only that, Block and others had abandoned Lola and created families of their own. Instead of creating a social system that transcended race and class, they had merely reproduced the old one in a more liberated form. Admittedly, families have often revealed themselves to be imperfect as well, but the radicals of Block's generation held themselves to a higher standard. Through her revelations about Lola, she encourages exploration and experimentation in order to attain it.
Labels: Activism, AK Press, American Empire, Book Reviews, Feminism, Gay Rights, Marxism, Neoliberalism
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
BOOK REVIEW: Arm the Spirit, a Woman's Journey Underground and Back (Part 1)
Block was, and remains, first and foremost, an anti-imperialist in the broadest sense of the term. Just as the German director Fassbinder recognized the inward and outward manifestations of coercion and control, emphasizing the fascism of everyday life in many of his films, Block attempted to integrate the personally liberatory dimension of feminism and gay rights while drifting towards the confrontational leftism of the Weather Underground, and its successor, the above ground Prairie Fire. Her initial forays into activism in San Francisco in the early 1970s centered around confronting violence against woman within the larger context of the brutality of the American state. As the title of the book indicates, she later went underground in the late 1970s, aligning herself with the violent attempts to bring about an independent Puerto Rico, but I will examine that aspect of the book in a subsequent blog entry.
During this period, Block was sorting out her sexual identity while simultaneously trying to create viable Marxist-Leninist organziations capable of absorbing the energy of civil rights and national liberation movements. One the one hand, she strongly identified with a feminist program that included gays and lesbians, with an emphasis upon a communal social life as a substitute for the family. On the other, she was, like many others on the left, inspired by the Cuban Revolution, and, thus, accepted the practice of democratic centralism, described by Lenin as freedom of discussion, unity in action, as a means of creating a revolutionary vanguard.
Block candidly describes her entangled relationships, romantic and political, as she embraced her bisexuality within a turbulent life of contentious activism, a life where the most minor doctrinal disagreements could mean the end of a friendship, the need to find a new place to live and the collapse of yet another promising group. Her narrative is engrossing as she relates the interwoven personal and political events in her life in an straightforward, intimate voice. She is rarely arrogant, placing successes and failures within a collective and contingent context.
Block, and others like her, were unable to maintain a bridge between the burgeoning feminist and gay rights movements and the radical left. Many of her leftist allies, still influenced by the primacy that Marxism placed upon the working class, could not avoid the reflexive subordination of feminist and gay issues in their outreach to workers. They even diminished the emphasis upon liberation movements in the Third World, pushing Block into nearly complete isolation.
As a result, feminists, gays and lesbians, to the extent that they were ever economically radicalized, focused upon gaining acceptance within an increasingly open minded middle class, becoming indifferent to the revolutionary appeals of people like Block. This was most painfully brought home to Block and her friends when their leafletting during the 1978 Gay Pride Parade, leafletting for the purpose of connecting the gay rights movement with revolutionary change worldwide, was met with indifference.
Block describes all this with honesty and critical insight, and yet, she shrinks from directly confronting the limitations of Marxism itself, specifically, the constraints of the process of democratic centralism in attempting to fashion a revolutionary movement open to marginalized people like those she most strongly identifies with, women, lesbians and people of color, especially those outside the US seeking to free themselves from Eurocentric imperial dominance. Perhaps, one can say that it is implicit in her narrative, but that is a stretch.
Block's personal reflections strongly support the notion that the Marxist concept of a vanguard party, governed by the process of democratic centralism, was inherently biased in relation to gender, race and sexual orientation because the participants disproportionately retained the biases of the society that they were seeking to transform. She leaves us with the impression that she and her follow revolutionaries were inadequate to the task, rather than critique the process itself, and the hierarchical ideology ingrained within it. She never fully grasps the fact that, despite trying over and over again, the embrace of Marxist organizational principles perpetually generated the disappointing outcomes.
But there is a reason for this. Like her European comrades, Block was, as already noted, initially inspired by the Cuban Revolution. Unlike her European comrades, she, and many other American leftists, were incapable of recognizing that the permanent adoption of a hierarchical Marxist-Leninist social model was a dead end. In Street Fighting Years, his account of his early political life in Britain in the 1960s, Tariq Ali describes the New Left deification of Castro and its subsequent relationship with the Cuban embassy in London. However, the relationship ended abruptly when Castro, after an agonizing delay, gave a speech in support of the Russian invasion of Czechoslavakia in 1968. In Europe, unlike the US, leftists associated the May '68 uprising in France with the Prague Spring and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, considering these turbulent events as a reflection of global generational discontent.
Cuba and Castro were too close to home for American leftists like Block. Indeed, one reads her memoir in vain for any indication that she was influenced by the autonomous Marxist and anarchistic aspects of leftist activity in Europe and the express repudiation of the Soviet Union associated with them. Guerin, Cohn-Bendit, Lefebvre, the Italian workerists, they, and many others like them, were all apparently unknown to her, or if known, not considered particularly important. Block mentions the USSR infrequently, and when she does, it is usually in relation to the dependency of Cuba and Third World liberation movements for economic assistance. Some European leftists, unlike many American ones, still held a belief that there was a revolutionary alternative independent of both the US and the USSR.
Hence, Block and her associates were cut off from a different radical discourse that might have been more effective than the fusion of Marxist-Leninism with Third World liberation movements that grew stale with the passage of time. Of course, the rejoinder is that the Europeans failed, too, but Europe remains more left leaning than the US to this day. Certainly, leftist agitation in countries like France, Germany and Italy has been more influential than such agitation in the US, which is now virtually moribund. And, furthermore, leftist movements in South America have put this aspect of the European experience to good use. Within the context of US radical history, I also have no recollection of any mention of the IWW, even though that movement is probably closest to what Block was trying to accomplish across the boundaries of race, sex and class.
Significantly, one also reads Block's account in vain for any recognition of the ideological implications of consumerism. There are some oft-hand expressions of dismay about the inability to politically reach Americans increasingly absorbed in it, especially after she went underground, and found herself compelled to maintain her anonymity by living like most lower middle income and middle income Americans, but that's about it. She does not engage efforts to socially understand it, such as Baudrillard's shocking assertion that people in the developed world now define themselves in relation to consumption instead of their role in the production process. Nor does the related concept of the spectacle, as expressed by Debord and amplified by others, make an appearance, which is consistent with her seemingly disengagement from the European left. She therefore failed to perceive the perils in the colonization of public and private life entailed by it.
To some extent, this is unfair, and I admit to being a bit harsh, and yet, one of Block's central motivations for writing the book (it certainly wasn't commercial) was to promote introspection among leftists about the past, present and future. If such introspection is going to bear fruit, it must go beyond the admittedly powerful self-examination and candor exhibited by Block, because, as insightful as it is, as inspirational as it is, it is shackled by a Marxist-Leninist worldview that is inadequate to the task before us.
Labels: Activism, AK Press, American Empire, Anarchism, Book Reviews, Feminism, Gay Rights, Marxism, Neoliberalism, Racism
Thursday, December 13, 2007
And, just to bring things up to date, living conditions in Gaza remain horrible, so a contribution to the Middle East Children's Alliance remains as important as ever, while AK Press has published a number of excellent books in the last year or so, including Marina Sitrin's Horizontalism and Ben Dangl's The Price of Fire. A contribution will enable it to continue to release more excellent works of this kind.Now, I admit that I broadcast on KDVS, so my self-interest is rather obvious. But KDVS is a station that is cooperatively managed by students and community programmers, with very little oversight by the UC Davis administrators. Programmers are free to broadcast almost anything outside of the commercial constraints of the marketplace. If you live beyond the confines of Northern California, look for a station with similar values, and consider financially supporting them, and remember NPR stations don't qualify.Hurricane Katrina has exacted a terrible toll upon New Orleans, one that endures to this day. Both the federal government and institutions, such as the Red Cross, have failed to respond adequately, requiring local, grassroots organizations to step forward: Common Ground's mission is to provide short term relief for victims of hurricane disasters in the gulf coast region, and long term support in rebuilding the communities affected in the New Orleans area. Common Ground is a community-initiated volunteer organization offering assistance, mutual aid and support. The work gives hope to communities by working with them, providing for their immediate needs and emphasizes people working together to rebuild their lives in sustainable ways.Living conditions for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are dire, with more than one in four Palestinians considered deeply impoverished, as are the prospects for the creation of a Palestinian state that would acknowledge their right to self-determination. Western governments have withdrawn funds because of the electoral success of Hamas, seeking to collectively punish them as a means of forcing them to elect a new government more agreeable to them. The Middle East Children's Alliance, or MECA, raises funds for food and medical supplies for them, as well as for the people of Lebanon.As described by wikipedia, AK Press is a collectively owned and operated independent publisher and book distributor that specialises in radical and anarchist literature. It has published numerous books that describe social movements within the US and around the world that have been depreciated or otherwise deliberately erased from public memory by both the mainstream as well as the institutionalized left.Last year's reissuance of The Subversion of Politics, by Georgy Katsiaficas, is an excellent example, and, having read it myself, a real page turner, as the suppressed memories of the past are remembered. Consider becoming a Friend of AK Press to assist in the continued publication of books that challenge the mainstream view of history, social relations and the origins of political change.
Labels: AK Press, Alternative Media, Humanitarian Assistance, Hurricane Katrina, Lebanon, Middle East Children's Alliance, Palestine
Monday, July 02, 2007
BOOK REVIEW: The Price of Fire (Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia)
In February, it published Benjamin Dangl's, The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia. The book is a triumph in every respect. Technically, Dangl is one of those rarities, a writer blessed with the gift of the economical use of language, capable of skillfully interweaving abstract theory, political and social history and the personal experiences of the people who have lived and transcended it. He is thorough, but not boring, colorful, without reducing his subjects to the level of vicarious objects for the benefit of literary tourism.
For Dangl, The Price of Fire describes the cost of access to the basic elements of human survival, which in Bolivia means gas, water, land, coca, employment and other resources, and it is this struggle, a struggle that has persisted for centuries, that explains what has recently transpired in Bolivia. Ruthlessly abused by the feudal Spanish, neglected by the liberal nationalism of the late 19th and 20th Centuries, and, finally, relegated to the shadows as irrelevant and dispensable because of their inability to participate in the credit and consumer economy of neoliberalism, the indigenous majority of Bolivia faced cultural extinction.
But something quite incredible occurred, truly incredible, given the small size of Bolivia in terms of territory and population. Instead of allowing themselves to be atomized, separated from one another in a Hobbesian world of subsistence, they fought back, drawing upon a tradition of collective action and creative social organization. Faced with the prospect of perpetual repression by the US financed paramilitary War on Drugs, the loss of communal water supplies to multinational corporations, grinding poverty as consequence of the implementation of IMF structural adjustment plans and the extraction of their hydrocarbon wealth, such as natural gas, without little, if any tangible benefit, they rebelled.
Dangl has spent a lot of time in Bolivia, often during many of the protests against these policies imposed by the US for the benefit of transnationals, the Pentagon and private military contractors, and his experiences, and especially those of the people that he interviewed, infuse the book with an intimacy normally associated with oral history. His subjects, coca farmers, shantytown residents, urban police officers, students and the deindustrialized proletariat describe the inhumanity of neoliberalism in terms of their day to day life, explaining how resistance became the only means of survival available to them.
Readers therefore understand seminal events like the Cochambamba Water War in 2000 and the Gas War of 2003 through the voices of the participants themselves. Along with the burgeoning movement in support of coca production, they brought down a succession of neoliberal governments, paving the way for the political victory of Evo Morales in 2005.
For Americans, Dangl's examination of the culturally essential role of coca in the lives of the people of Bolivia is especially enlightening. Beyond its medicinal value and the ability of indigenous people to make a subsistence living from its harvest and sale, it provided a refuge for people who lost jobs in more conventional agriculture and the mining sector. As one woman told Dangl: I produce coca for my children, because if I die tomorrow they will be able to continue to eat thanks to this bit of coca.
If there is a thread that runs throughout, it is the ability of Bolivians to organize communally. Coca growers formed unions, and participated in numerous road blockades and protests to defend themselves against the US mandated paramilitary eradication effort. Migrants to the high altitude, impoverished city of El Alto, many of them miners and farmers, like their brethren who survived by growing coca, brought their methods of social organization with them, creating a sense of solidarity through unions and neighborhood councils that enabled them to construct their communities and govern themselves.
As one miner who lost his job in the 1980s explained: When we came to El Alto from Potosi, all the miners put their money together to buy land . . We knew how to demand things and how to organize. We knew how to work together. That's how we got things like water quickly. We had to use our own tools, buy our own cement, everything. The state wasn't around at that time. I had the luck to have 25 companeros from the mines there with me. It's our neighborhood, we made it . . Even today we don't have help from the state.
Inevitably, the participants in such forms of communal organization, which evoke the mutual aid philosophy of anarchism, were going to come into conflict with the state. They prevailed, it seems, because, while they were being victimized by neoliberal social policies, these very same policies were simultaneously eroding the effectiveness of the state's instruments of social control. Such policies also rendered them literally expendable, as there was no role for them in the Bolivian economy other than on the margins within the informal sector as vendors or as coca growers and sellers. They were not being subjected to the workplace oppression of 19th Century capitalism, but rather, treated as the refuse of a credit oriented consumer society from which they were necessarily excluded for insufficient funds.
It is hard not to contrast the communal life of many Bolivians with the atomized individuality of the US. How would we respond if confronted with the hardship suffered by Bolivians in recent decades? Would we recover our history of collective direct action and save ourselves, or would we be overwhelmed by the forces of international finance capital? Would we join together, or turn upon one another? So far, the apparent answers are not encouraging, but then, people have a way of surprising you when they recognize that the struggle can no longer be avoided.
Labels: Activism, AK Press, Anarchism, Bolivia, Book Reviews, Neoliberalism
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Holiday Charitable Contributions
Now, I admit that I broadcast on KDVS, so my self-interest is rather obvious. But KDVS is a station that is cooperatively managed by students and community programmers, with very little oversight by the UC Davis administrators. Programmers are free to broadcast almost anything outside of the commercial constraints of the marketplace. If you live beyond the confines of Northern California, look for a station with similar values, and consider financially supporting them, and remember NPR stations don't qualify.
Hurricane Katrina has exacted a terrible toll upon New Orleans, one that endures to this day. Both the federal government and institutions, such as the Red Cross, have failed to respond adequately, requiring local, grassroots organizations to step forward: Common Ground's mission is to provide short term relief for victims of hurricane disasters in the gulf coast region, and long term support in rebuilding the communities affected in the New Orleans area. Common Ground is a community-initiated volunteer organization offering assistance, mutual aid and support. The work gives hope to communities by working with them, providing for their immediate needs and emphasizes people working together to rebuild their lives in sustainable ways.
Living conditions for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are dire, with more than one in four Palestinians considered deeply impoverished, as are the prospects for the creation of a Palestinian state that would acknowledge their right to self-determination. Western governments have withdrawn funds because of the electoral success of Hamas, seeking to collectively punish them as a means of forcing them to elect a new government more agreeable to them. The Middle East Children's Alliance, or MECA, raises funds for food and medical supplies for them, as well as for the people of Lebanon.
Both Lebanon and Gaza were subjected to assaults by the Israeli military, using weapon systems supplied by the United States. In both instances, the US government has unequivocally supported these actions, despite the consequences for the civilian populace. Samidoun is an indigenous alternative to MECA if you want to contribute to an organization attempting to assist people in the aftermath of the IDF destruction of the infrastructure of Lebanon: SAMIDOUN is a grassroots coalition that aims to work in a democratic and participatory atmosphere. The coalition is multi-confessional and diverse in terms of nationality. The coalition is also diverse in its composition in terms of supporting organizations, from student groups, to the gay and lesbian center, to arts and film production collectives, to small political parties, to environmental groups. But the bulk of the work is through young volunteers from all over the country, some of whom are refugees themselves.
As described by wikipedia, AK Press is a collectively owned and operated independent publisher and book distributor that specialises in radical and anarchist literature. It has published numerous books that describe social movements within the US and around the world that have been depreciated or otherwise deliberately erased from public memory by both the mainstream as well as the institutionalized left.
The reissuance of The Subversion of Politics, by Georgy Katsiaficas, is an excellent example, and, having read it myself, a real page turner, as the suppressed memories of the past are remembered:
Consider becoming a Friend of AK Press to assist in the continued publication of books that challenge the mainstream view of history, social relations and the origins of political change.Since the modern anti-globalization movement kicked off with the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle, a new generation has been engaging in anti-capitalist direct action. Its aims, politics, lifestyles, and tactics grow directly out of the autonomous social movements that emerged in Europe from the 1970s through the mid-1990s. In fact, today's infamous "Black Blocs" are the direct descendants of the European "Autonomen." But these important historical connections are rarely noted, and never understood.
The Subversion of Politics sets the record straight, filling in the gaps between the momentous events of 1968 and 1999. Katsiaficas presents the protagonists of social revolt—Italian feminists, squatters, disarmament and anti-nuclear activists, punk rockers, and anti-fascist street fighters—in a compelling and sympathetic light. At the same time, he offers a work of great critical depth, drawing from these political practices a new theory of freedom and autonomy that redefines the parameters of the political itself.
Labels: AK Press, Alternative Media, Humanitarian Assistance, Hurricane Katrina, Lebanon, Middle East Children's Alliance, Palestine
