Once more around the Bloc
Tactics, democracy, and mass politics

http://canadiandimension.com/articles/3211/
Date Written:  2010-09-01
Publisher:  Canadian Dimension, Winnipeg, Canada
Year Published:  2010
Pages:  2pp   Resource Type:  Article

Black Bloc tactics are deeply undemocratic -- and they don't work.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

The first problem with black bloc tactics [is that] they do not work. There is no example of the successful use of “the propaganda of the deed” in liberal democracies. These tactics legitimate authoritarianism, which is fought by defending liberal rights. Black bloc, and similar tactics, disorganize and divide social movements and discredit radical ideas. They mire activists in legal process and court support. They serve the interests of the state, which is why liberal democracies have continually employed infiltrators and agents provocateurs to promote them within movements.

Black bloc tactics are also deeply undemocratic. Socialists and anarchists alike believe that those who are affected by a decision should have a say in making it. Black bloc tactics have a profound impact on the movements and place an additional burden of repression on those who are already most oppressed. Yet the decision to use these tactics is made by a small number of self-styled radicals without consent from the vast majority who will be affected by them. The unaccountable use of these tactics is just as authoritarian and colonial as the system they are supposed to fight.

Far from practicing accountability, those who favour these tactics have campaigned to impose on the movements the doctrine of “diversity of tactics,” which enjoins that no one shall be publicly held to account for the tactics they choose. This doctrine abandons mass organizing, collective strategy, and democracy for a kind of ultra-vanguardism in which those who use the most extreme tactics get to impose the consequences of their choice on the majority without consultation. Underpinning “diversity of tactics” is not an alternative vision of democratic collectivity, but a supremely entitled liberal individualism. That has no place in our movements.