“To be hopeful in bad times is not being foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of competition and cruelty but of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.” – Howard Zinn
So much promise and hope, and yet so much, still, of all the worst of us. That is, though, the stuff activism is made of, I suppose. While so much is so good, with many dear friends and promising small-scale commons, our little household has also been dealt with a whole lot of shit over the last year, as we came up against a hostile and profoundly aggressive radicalism that seems to be more interested in inventing ever more enemies for itself than in building alternative communities of solidarity, mutual aid and respect.
I’m not going into it. I will say only this. People who struggle, communities that resist, individuals and groups who throw their whole lives into the battle against the machine – these people deserve our respect, regardless of whatever differences of opinion we might have. I can analyze the shit out of old-school socialism and its very explicit role in targeting left-communists and anarchists for repression. But that does not mean those activists affiliated with traditional socialist movements are my enemies. I can understand the role of unions and other organizations in repressing class struggle, shutting down worker autonomy, and partnering with capital and the state to create an industrial regime in which the traditional weapons of workers are largely lost, and yet still recognize that workers join unions for a reason, and those unions play an important role in the day to day struggles of working people. I can disagree without contempt. I can recognize that all of our movements, our organizations, ourselves are sites of contradiction. That’s just the nature of humanity.
There is, however, a recurrent radicalism that demands no weakness, no frailty, no contradiction. And in so doing it posits the most glaring of contradictions itself: a hyper-authoritarianism, a contempt for working people and for community-building, a derision of anyone and everyone who disagrees – and does so, whether calling it socialism or anarchism, in the name of autonomy, freedom and the centrality of the commons. It is a variety of radicalism that cannot distinguish between the union as a workplace support, a legal advocate, a political organization, and an instrument of law. It does not recognize that protesters who would rather not confront the cops with bricks and bats nonetheless may surrender their lives to the struggle in more ways than any of us can imagine, nor that those who are opposed to or afraid of such confrontations are no less committed to struggle and no less a part of the movement. It does not recognize the humanity in activists – that they are people with homes, families, jobs, fears, secrets, regrets. And it does not recognize that activists are made and lost in large part by the extent to which a movement becomes not just a struggle but a community. In short, it is simplistic in its analysis, it is divisive in its organization. It is, as a politics, driven by the making of enemies rather than the building of communities, and it cannot, in no way no how, get us anywhere worth going.
An odd introduction to what I am thinking of today, though, which is that much of the left – socialist and anarchist – has some serious work to do on understanding why such a fierce hostility is emanating from some circles. And I’ve been reminded of a couple of short pieces that were doing the rounds a few months back in response to The Coming Insurrection (TCI), a manifesto put out by what is called “The Invisible Committee” (and available in full here). The Invisible Committee are well-read folks, coming out of the same kind of Marxist/ anarchist/ poststructuralist nexus that initially inspired the Situationists and more recently shaped the autonomist Marxist current and related anarchisms. The same kind of nexus, I would add, that has shaped so much of my own thinking on class and class struggle, and which continues to ground my own political identity. And while the theory they spin is exactly of the kind that is used to justify the shitty behaviour of some small but vocal groups of people, I think it is a mistake to entirely write off the analysis because it is sometimes used in simplistic and even destructive ways by those whose hyper-radicalism becomes just a cover for bullying. What is more, to not engage seriously with ideas such as those advanced in TCI is, I think, a huge mistake for the more traditional left, for two reasons: 1) because radical critiques of the left do not come out of nowhere, but are indeed the result of very real failures of the left; and 2) because to do so is to make precisely the same error – i.e. to disregard, wholesale, the contributions of an entire segment of the left simply because of the bullshit behaviours of a few.
The two pieces that started me off are these: Anarkismo’s review, from the perspective of other anarchist-identified activists, who use the piece to distinguish what they refer as “insurrectionist anarchism” from “class-struggle anarchism”; and this, from Chris Spannos – a critique from the more traditional socialist left, which frames the insurrectionist approach as just so much “suicidal nonsense”. Both pieces identify the same basic problems with TCI’s “Coming Insurrection” and the kind of activism it inspires. And in both, those are what I appreciate about the reviews. What I was a little disappointed in, though, is that both Anarkismo and Spannos show the same weaknesses in their critiques, and set up a straw-man to knock down rather than seriously engage the issues. That is, they are right that there is much that is immature and simply inane in the strategic framework TCI puts forward; however, there are also pieces of an important analysis here, and an analysis focused on real weaknesses and failings of the traditional left. And in this, neither Anarkismo nor Spannos does The Coming Insurrection justice.
The Coming Insurrection is a significant piece of work, and I will not pretend to deal with it exhaustively here. Rather, what I am interested in are the key issues raised by the other reviewers, and their responses. So, with that in mind, these are the issues in TCI that arise most often, and that both Anarkismo and Spannos raise for discussion:
1) Rejection of cooperation with non-revolutionary organizations, and particularly traditional labour organizations – the TCI does not just reject cooperation with trade unions, mainstream political parties and the like, but suggests that such organizations are the enemy, and that while there may be a few well-intentioned individuals operating in the traditional organizations of the left, ultimately the organizations will always and everywhere betray the revolutionary impulse for stability and organizational power. It’s an overstatement, and one that lacks nuance and fails to analyze the constant tensions and frequent fractures within left organizations. It is not, however, fundamentally wrong. The TCI is right in its basic assessment – organizations arise of out of struggle, but once formalized they take on their own logic and function to sustain themselves above all else; struggles that demand legal recognition, legal rights, legal status do, by their very success, create organizations that are bound up in a legal framework and limited by that framework. TCI fails to do a very sophisticated analysis of how this works, fails to recognize that there are indeed differences between how a union operates as organization and how it can still on occasion operate as movement, how unions themselves are contested sites of struggle. But its basic impulse – that the organizations of the left are not the places to seek radical social change and indeed have frequently played a shitty and reactionary role – ain’t all wrong, or even mostly wrong.
2) Insurrection without revolution; vanguardism without the working class – The Coming Insurrection is a celebration of and a call to an immediate and individual rebellion that is not held back, not reliant on or submissive to the general assembly or the mass. It articulates no strategy for broader engagement with a popular movement and indeed scoffs at such a notion. It is contemptuous of real working people, it is isolationist and purist, it is dismissive of the idea of ‘democracy’. Here I am a little more sympathetic to the critiques of Spannos and Anarkismo – such a conception of radicalism does, I think, achieve precisely the opposite of its intent. Rather than meaningfully addressing the limits of democracy, the potential fascism of every mass, the very real fact that many many workers are not interested in revolution and would really prefer to just live their lives, the approach of TCI is to retreat to the shadows, to write off anyone and everyone else as irrelevant, and to encourage a resistance that is fundamentally individual, fundamentally selfish, in which any cooperation is always and immediately a cooptation, any bridging of differences a sell-out. Let the few true revolutionaries rise up on their own; let us behave without regard for the left or for working people, for we see more clearly than they; all those who criticize us are our enemies, agents of the state or fools unwittingly preserving the status quo; resistance for its own sake, and without any clear notion of what is being resisted, for what reason, by what means, and with what implications. It is individualist, short-sighted, and ultimately libertarian not anarchist.
However – and there is always a however – TCI’s political contempt for real people does arise out of an analysis we ought to pay attention to. It is indeed true that the building of mass movements, the use of coalition politics, lends itself to less radical demands and less confrontational strategies. It is indeed true that as we seek to make common cause with a wider array of people we do, in the process, blunt the sharpness of our critique and scale back our demands. Working with people demands compromise. And in the context of political struggle against capital, against empire, that compromise very often means we limit ourselves to a fraction of what we really want and we wind up in movements that are explicitly not revolutionary and all too often end up isolating radicals and making common cause with capital or state in order to protect some immediate gain. Let’s be honest about this – that is a problem, and one that all incarnations of the left have confronted at various times, and one that will continue to confront us all forever and ever amen. That is the nature of political work, and often the long-term result of coalition-building and issue-specific alliances. So rather than simply dismiss TCI’s crappy conclusions, then, does it not make more sense to engage in a discussion about the tension between democracy and fascism? And does it not make more sense to interrogate the important relationship between mass struggle and more radical direct action? I mean, it ain’t hard to see how this works – by refusing to submit to the more scaled-back demands of the organizational and coalition-based left, the more isolationist approach opens space for struggle. Its demands for ‘everything now’ and ‘total confrontation with the state’ create that opening in which others can step in with lesser demands, cut deals and achieve concrete reforms. The existence of the radical who refuses to compromise is necessary to the possibility of compromise. And, by the same token, the existence of the mass movement or the mainsteam organization willing to cut a deal is precisely what allows the direct action isolationist to push the boundaries of what is possible and to have a political impact rather than simply getting locked up indefinitely as a non-political criminal. The two approaches do, in fact, need one another, and need the tension and anger and betrayal that exists between them. Might The Coming Insurrection ultimately make machismo, individualism, contempt and lack of strategy the practical result of its political theory? Yup, it sure is. Do I want anything to do with those folks in my organizing? Nope, I sure don’t. But do I recognize that the ground they stake out, the refusal of compromise, does actually play an important role? Absolutely.
3) Explicit condemnation of reformism and celebration of the crisis – Shore up capitalism? No fucking way. Tear it down without delay. Anything that deepens the crisis brings us that much closer to the end of this profoundly rotten civilization. That, in a nutshell, is TCI’s take on social reform. Spannos and Anarkismo both note the callousness of such a position, its complete disregard of the very human suffering that crisis brings. They note, too, that this betrays a very real fatalism, that it ultimately encourages a political action which arises from hopelessness and can only ever be destructive rather than constructive, that has no faith in the ability of people to work together to wrest concessions from capital and state. Spannos and Anarkismo are right. But, here too, I am also sympathetic to The Coming Insurrection. The whole civilization is rotten. The whole system is profoundly corrupt, is profoundly destructive, is such a tightly-wound ball of relations that there is no out other than to dismantle the whole damn thing. Let’s not pretend otherwise. We need to confront, and confront honestly, the full-on wrong that we live, the depth of the crisis, and the fact that the whole ball must fall apart. Collapse is terrifying, but collapse may also be necessary. The problem with TCI’s take, then, is not with its analysis of collapse per se, but its complete and utter failure to engage in any constructive response – not to shore anything up, but to do community differently. TCI tells us: collapse is necessary so let it happen. TCI does not tell us: collapse is necessary, but post-collapse is potentially disastrous if it’s dominant character is barbarism, so we need to work earnestly on the building of a different kind of human relationship.
Bottom line, I think, is this: The Coming Insurrection is a statement of critique, a call for complete and total resistance. But it provides nothing beyond that resistance, it envisions nothing different, it articulates no hope. Its rage without compromise, its autonomy that bleeds into selfishness, its profound arrogance and contempt for everyone else – TCI doesn’t provide us anything to build, any space to begin dialogue or establish community. And that’s a shame, because there are important pieces of analysis there that we would do well to discuss. And it’s a shame, too, that the reviews by Spannos and Anarkismo do not take that critique more seriously, because the traditional left has failed, the traditional left is in many important ways strategically bankrupt if not morally bankrupt, and all of us could benefit from teasing out of The Coming Insurrection some more sophisticated and nuanced analysis.
I think The Coming Insurrection reflects a more widespread discontent, and I think that matters for the traditional left. It matters because it is precisely the failure of capital-s Socialism to adequately address the issues above that has made the left appear so irrelevant to so many. But it matters, too, for those who appreciate and/ or are convinced by the arguments of TCI, because it is all-too-easy for critique to morph into contempt and to find that entirely appropriate and important arguments become, in practice, justifications for profoundly destructive behaviours. (Isn’t this exactly what happened with the old-school socialists throughout the 20th century, and exactly why anarchists have been so hesitant about engaging with socialists and communists in the first place?)
I’d like to think we can develop thorough and far-reaching critiques without contempt. I’d like to think that we can take things like The Coming Insurrection as places to begin dialogue. Yeah, Pollyanna, I know.
This piece started with a few words on hope from Howard Zinn. I’ll finish with words from Terry Eagleton’s “Reason, Faith and Revolution”, cited on Meg’s blog recently, words that remind us that the best of socialism, communism, anarchism is and always has been in ability to bring together a ruthless critique of everything existing and a profound faith in people, to remember that what is so rotten about the empire of capital is the destruction it does to basic human relationships of mutual aid, compassion, solidarity, and the hope – no, the promise – that we can care for each other better than this. And that the challenge is do so now, in the centre of our critique, in the fiercest of resistance.
Why, then, do some of us still cling to this political faith, in the teeth of what many would regard as reason and solid evidence? Not only, I think, because socialism [or anarchism, or communism] is such an extraordinarily good idea that it has proved exceedingly hard to discredit, and this despite its own most strenuous efforts. It is also because one cannot accept that this – the world we see groaning in agony around us – is the only way things could be, though empirically speaking this might certainly prove to be the case, because one gazes with wondering bemusement on those hard-headed types for whom all this, given a reformist tweak or two, is as good as it gets; because to back down from this vision would be to betray what one feels are the most precious powers and capacities of human beings; because however hard one tries, one simply cannot shake off the primitive conviction that this is not how it is supposed to be, however much we are conscious that this seeing the world in the light of Judgement Day, as Walter Benjamin might put it, is folly to the financiers and a stumbling block to stockbrokers; because there is something in this vision which calls to the depths of one’s being and evokes a passionate assent there; because not to feel this would not to be oneself; because one is too much in love with this vision of humankind to back down, walk away, or take no for an answer.
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