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Feature: Globalization & Dialectics
May 2001
'We ignore ideas at our own risk'
Tom Rainey delivered this talk at The Anti-Capitalist Forum in Washington
DC, "What Are We fighting for? Where is the movement going?"
The questions which make up the title of this forum are questions that face
all activists at some point. I was a high school student in the '80s. I
didn't really understand the machinations behind the Sabra-Shatila massacre
at a refugee camp in Lebanon at the time, though it had a profound impact
on me. It wasn't long before I sought out and joined the first movement I
could find. I became very active in an anti-nuclear weapons group in
Chicago.
I decided I was a pacifist. I made a career out of civil disobedience and
then direct action for five years. Then I began to identify with the
revolutionaries in El Salvador and Nicaragua. I left my pacifism behind.
I expected that all the organizing and demonstrations and direct action
would naturally lead to more and more people joining until there were so
many people in the streets that the government would be forced to change
and we would win.
But as time went on I saw movements come and go. They didn't get bigger in
direct relation to how much work my fellow organizers and I put in. I
started to recognize the pattern.
I heard the same things in every movement as it was being born: "We need to
just organize around what we are against and not have debates about
history, or philosophy. We need to organize now and then we can talk about
that later."
The ideas of Marxist-Humanism began to mean something to me. In 1990, in
face of the coming war in the Persian Gulf, I helped organize some of the
largest mass meetings I had ever seen. Hundreds of students who had never
been activists wanted to stop the war. I spoke out often to challenge my
fellow anti-war youth to deepen their activism and challenge the very
nature of our society which values oil over human life; to make the goal a
new society that doesn't go to war for oil. That movement grew faster and
collapsed around the nation more quickly than anything I had seen. It could
not survive the simple ideological assault of yellow ribbons and "support
our troops."
Most people come to the movement with a big concept, with great idealism.
Usually this idealism is channeled into "organizing"--which generally means
pragmatism, which sees people as numbers to be accumulated as in "we need
to get as many people out at the demonstration as possible." Pragmatism is
the dominant ideology of current society to such an extent that people see
it as natural or "common sense." It can be a dead end if it is not
challenged. This is an element of what dialectics is: movement through
contradiction.
The goal I've chosen is a totally new society. Blueprints by intellectuals
don't work, whether it's a vanguard party, decentralized federated
communities, or bio-regionalism. If it comes out of the heads of just a
few, then it is not true creativity, and it won't elicit the creativity of
the masses of people. The very act of masses taking control of their lives
and creating a new social organization in free association is what
revolution is. The form in which this will happen cannot be confined within
the plans of a small group.
I'm working for the concept of full freedom. Yes, it's a tall order, but if
we're going to fight, why not go for the whole thing? All these little
"baby step" reforms, and "we've got to start somewhere" approaches just
don't capture people's imagination. This is often confused with apathy.
What is full freedom? That's what activists should be discussing in the
same meetings where strategy and tactics usually dominate.
The new generation inherits a world shaped by revolutions that turned into
their opposite and failed movements. It's a heavy ideological weight that
can be seen in apathy, self-limiting ideas, and lack of patience seen in
the speed with which elements of the anti-globalization movement went to
adventurist confrontations with police.
The activist movement always comes back for many good reasons, both
objective and subjective. People want something better, but often there is
no continuity--or learning from the past to break out of the cycle. There is
a hidden history and a battle for its meaning. At the same time, I see a
progression and maturity in the new movement that in many ways is far ahead
of where the '80s movement hit a dead end. There is a global perspective;
the student battle against sweatshop labor has led to relationships between
students and workers. There are hundreds of militant anti-racist
organizations, targeting police brutality and the prison system. There is a
search for new forms of organization and self-critique. I hear youth with a
very developed sense of the contradictions they face. Throughout is an open
confrontation with capitalism itself which was very rare in the '80s.
The critique of capitalism is often watered down and confused with a
collection of symptoms or phenomena. To see through them is to see the
sweatshop workers and prisoners as subjects of their own liberation, not
victims. The Kensington Welfare Rights Union in Philadelphia is a working
example of this kind of subjectivity in the relationship between
intellectuals and workers organizing together.
I'm trying to make the case for projecting an absolute Idea. To elicit the
great creativity of the "people out there" we need to go big. Reform is so
old and people know deep down that it doesn't work. It's time to challenge
ourselves to choose between human power or capital power. Conservatives
believe people can't organize themselves, so they need a central
controlling institution. Idealists recognize the potential for freely
associated labor and self organization to rip up capitalism at the root and
create something better. But this doen't mean that intellectuals or
organizers just sit around and wait and then jump on for the ride. They
have the responsibility to challenge people to deepen their opposition, to
get to the meaning in thought and in history. Intellectuals can help a
movement speak to itself.
You say we already know what ends we want. Are you sure? Philosophy is a
question of life and death. Many anarchists who joined revolutionary forces
to fight a common enemy also thought theory wasn't necessary. They ended up
dead at the hands of their "comrades" once the common enemy was defeated.
You should look into how many anarchists were killed by Mao or Castro or in
Spain during the Civil War by Stalinists whom they united with for
pragmatic reasons.
Do you ever wonder where all the people who were your age ten years ago
are? They burned out. What makes you think you won't burn out on activism
alone, too? You say no to just talking about philosophy as if it's bringing
down the movement. Philosophy is not the problem in today's movement.
Relying on activity alone is. What we're doing is not working. The quality
of life, labor, the environment has plummeted. Capitalism has been kicking
our ass for 30 years. You ignore ideas at your own risk.
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