http://www.haloscan.com/comments/markdilley/111245607429123999/#91863
So here are some thoughts on this so far. Think about the TheoryOfInfinateStruggle as it applies to this scenario set out by Shawn. Also think about solutions to some of the problems. So communications seems to be the biggest problem, we need to talk to people more about our point of view. Well what is that point of view? Why don't we start a wiki page of our PointOfView, and start collectively working on it. We need to start being organized, regardless of the faction of humanity that we choose to believe. (liberalism, socialism, communism, anarchism, etc. ism's) Let us really start to lay out a plan for GlobalSolidarity
http://misnomer.dru.ca/2005/03/want_to_win.html
Want to Win?
Shawn Ewald: What do we do now?
We have to want to win. It sounds obvious, but it's really not. The left generally does not behave as if it wants to win. Whether it's anarchists who think that organizing into small social cliques and doing whatever you feel like doing is going to change anything at all, or it's radicals of any stripe who think street battles with cops make a difference, or it's liberals who cling pathetically to the Democratic party, or it's people who think standing in the street and holding signs will stop a war, all of us may think we want to win, but our actions tell a different story. We have all unconsciously resigned ourselves to having low expectations. We all have accepted the constraints of simple rebellion, of mere dissent, of harmless objection. The left as a whole is gripped by a culture of impotence. We talk, we complain, we rave, we rage, we snipe, but few of us build anything, we have grown so used to complaining that we don't know how to do anything else.
To be fair, that's not really my experience. In Halifax, the post-summithopping activism is very much about building--though it's off to a slow start. A biodiesel cooperative, a free school, an organizating advocating alternatives to corporate culture, a farm: these are things that were decided upon and started by people I knew well in my one year in Halifax. It should be noted that some of these things are in disrepair, due to key organizers heading off to various corners of the globe, but I think most of these things will come to fruition in the mid- to long-term.
I don't enough of an impression of Montreal to know what the dynamic is, but one factor that is different is that the activist population is much, much larger. I'd venture that this inherently enables a level of insularity that might not be automatic in other cities. But there is also a lot of inter-group cooperation.
The thing that interests me the most right now is the lack of a winning strategy. I was talking to Justin Podur about this the other day. Here's how he characterized the conversation:
-Today I spent some time with Dru from The Dominion talking about the Canadian media landscape and dreaming about media institutions that could have wide enough reach to be able to change the terms of the debate, and about political organizations with a strategy. That's about as far as we got, though.
The looming question for me was "what is our strategy", and what our the goals that we are building it around? Put more assertively: we need to be able to imagine how to win, if we're ever going to.
Justin gave a good talk on this a while ago:
-We are smart enough to understand that sedate protests with no trajectory represent no threat and are therefore ineffective. But we seem to think that small, militant protests with no trajectory are somehow better. We seem to think that police repression at militant demonstrations is good for the politicizing effect it has on the demonstrators who get repressed and lose confidence in the state. The scenario for social change seems to be an escalating cycle of protest and repression leading ultimately to state collapse. Again I have to say that I think that if that were to happen the result would be tragedy, and not only for ourselves. Given the state of our organization, the state of the forces of repression, the political consciousness of the population, the control of the media by the other side – the result would be a nightmare. I realize you could argue that the present is a nightmare – but that doesn’t give us license to act in ways that would make things worse, and things can get better or worse from here.
And then:
I am saying that what we should really admire about movements in other places is that they understand their own context and act accordingly. We can’t say the same. Even our slogans betray us. “Become the Resistance inside Fortress North America” – this being a reference to the Iraqi resistance. “Globalize the Intifada” – this being a reference to the Palestinians. Again, on one level this is a statement of solidarity with people who are being demonized in mainstream culture and on that level it is very positive. But on another level it’s pompous. It’s embarrassing. What can we show them? Some small demonstrations with the same people showing up over and over. Some small groups where the members distrust and dislike each other. Some ‘coalitions’ of half a dozen people. Some ‘spaces’ booked on university campuses. Chavez in Venezuela had a strategy: create a party, win the elections, use referenda to pass constitutional changes, use the government to help movements solve problems in their communities, increase community control over the government. What is our equivalent?
The short answer is that we don't have one. How does one gain real political momentum for anti-imperialist causes in a rich, white country that has everything to lose by undermining empire? That's not a question that has an easy answer, and no real precedent exists that I know of. So it's easy to see how activists turn in on themselves. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't have a strategy. Of course it will inevitably be flawed, but it'll be a starting point. But we're not there yet.
A strategy
My tendency, in complex situations, is to look for what is obvious and simple, in the negative. The most obvious problem we have is disinformation.
I think that real progress cannot be made on policy and activity towards oppressed people at home or abroad without access to accurate information about what is going on. If people don't know about the crimes comitted in their name, they will be extremely unlikely to do anything about them. People get most of their information from the media.
A third premise: plain old information can (but won't necessarily) have political effect in Canada, here more than elsewhere.
So the plan is simple: build an infrastructure that can deliver accurate information to a significant percentage of the Canadian population.
How to do this? Hard to say. There are some precedents, there are some possibilities. The point is to have a goal, and start work.
Since we started the Dominion almost two years ago, my conception of who is out there and what is possible is unrecognizably different from at the outset. I've met with dozens of people across the country and learned a whole lot about what is possible and what is needed. I still don't have a clue how, exactly to do it, but I have an idea that I (and others) might figure it out sometime in the future, if we keep doing what we're doing.
Another way of looking at it is that I've been gathering a list of the "raw materials" out of which media revolution might be fashioned. There are dozens of publications and groups out there. If they could work together, they would be a lot more powerful.
The problem right now, I think, is that these hundreds (thousands?) of people are occupied with the day to day work of publishing, broadcasting, or just keeping things going. There isn't really an occasion for collectively strategizing. I think there should be. I just haven't figured out what it is yet. And as far as I know, neither has anyone else.
How to build something new, without the obvious pitfalls of centralization (i.e. the iron law of oligarchy)?
Again, difficult to say. Again, something interesting will emerge if we work at it with even a vague idea in mind.
My current (vague) vision for the Dominion is of a widely-distributed print publication that exists in interdependent relationship with an entire ecosystem of independent media. It relies on the grassroots for information gathering and stories, and it polishes them into an engaging, non-moralizing, and easy-to read format, while reporting on what grassroots groups do with the information (whether it is marches, sit ins, or creating new institutions). posted by dru in activism
from a friend:
i think he is too narrow in his assessment. i think he is using the status of the anarchist movement and incorrectly generalizes it to the entire left. some of what he writes is very true, but i think he is also quite off the mark in some places because he is generalizing his critique of his own political milieu to the entire left. i don't think he knows enough about socialist and communist strategy to be able to accurately critique their role in the left at this juncture. not saying there aren't serious problems with their stategies and tactics - there are, but he cannot criticise them properly if he does not know what they are. his critiques are not the right critiques for every aspect of the left, and that is why this seems to narrow to me. he never mentions the words "socialist" or "communist". instead of saying that he wasn't referring to them, he instead did not mention them at all, discouting their existence (which I think was intentional, but he is missing something very fundamental which is that socialists lay out the plan that he wants. Whether or not he agrees with their plan is irrelevant at this point. they lay out a plan and a program that anarchists and liberals do not. his failure to see that makes his critique inapplicable to socialists and communists). that is a mistake in that much of what he calls for, socialists are already doing. what should then be looked at is why those tactics are not working either, and the socialist/commnist orgs are in deep debate and analysis about this question.
You wrote:
i think he is too narrow in his assessment. i think he is using the status of the anarchist movement and incorrectly generalizes it to the entire left.
Shawn replies:
Although, a big chunk of my activist experience is within the Anarchist movement, I have been involved in a wide variety a movements. From the microradio movement, which actually has consistently been a broad coalition of left and right constituencies, to the anti-globalization movement, to the movement to free the Pacifica network from corporate hijackers a few years back, to working with friends from the animal rights movement, and so on.
I don't think that anyone could do anything but generalize when talking about the entire left, regardless of what their experience was.
You wrote:
i don't think he knows enough about socialist and communist strategy to be able to accurately critique their role in the left at this juncture. not saying there aren't serious problems with their stategies and tactics - there are, but he cannot criticise them properly if he does not know what they are.
Shawn replies:
Not to be a dick or anything, I'm just being honest here, but I really think the communist left is pretty much irrelevant. I really don't see anything useful coming from that portion of the left spectrum, so I just didn't bother mentioning them. Again, I'm not trying to inflame anyone, just giving my honest opinion.
My motivation for writing the essay was not to tell people what they should be doing, but to give my opinions and hope that it might get people thinking about the issue: "What do we do now?"
- Shawn, I agree with you that communist and state socialist organizations are basically irrelevant, and the more open and focused they are on their orientation the more irrelevant they tend to be. But I think you missed Mark's point in mentioning them. It's not that they aren't collosal failures; it's that they're collosal failures even though they seem to be doing (or claim to be doing) at least some of the things that you think we should be doing. That doesn't mean you're wrong about what we should be doing; but it does suggest that we ought to think about what it is about what they're doing that keeps it from working for them--if we want to make sure that the same things won't keep it from working for us.
- Cheers, Rad Geek (2005-04-03 11:48am)
Shawn, this is a wiki and we can just edit out things, I don't think there is any flaming going on, just honest conversation... working with wiki is an interesting idea, and I am not sure how it will work. Already this page is too long and we have too edit it up a bit... Best, MarkDilley
Hi Mark, I didn't think that I was being flamed, I just didn't want to give the impression that I was flaming--how do you say something is irrelevant without sounding insulting? Anyway, about the length, does the discussion tab work any better than this page at storing and organizing a lengthy discussion? Best, Shawn
No worries! :-) As for the discussion part... maybe I will move the discussion over... MarkDilley - you can also move and create new pages if you want too! :-) it is wiki
> "We have to want to win. It sounds obvious, but it's really not. The left generally does not behave as if it wants to win."
But first we have to know (and agree on) what we want to win – we cannot 'win' until we know what it is we want to win. Without some kind of agreed long term goals we are limited solely to discrete single issue campaigns. The left in the 20th Century could record more successes because it was relatively united around the goal of nationalisation and state interference in the economy. What is the equivalent goal for the left today?
The need is for an enduring organisational structure (see [1]), but that requires a list of goals, a manifesto, a platform, a creed, a statement of what the hell we actually want to have.
And if the left does not agree about what winning is, then it is not surprising that it does not generally behave as if it wants to win. If primitivists want something different from syndicalists, who want something different from communists, who want something different from democratic socialists, and so on, then, almost by definition, the left (as a whole) cannot win. At best the left can come together for particular single issue campaigns, and then disperse again as each campaign winds down. That is not normally going to be very effective. In particular, it makes long term organising in communities impossible.
Could long term goals be imagined that could be supported by much of the left and the wider public? I think so – for me the core idea would be that workers run and own their own corporations, that there be no share- and debt- holders.
> "We have to use all the tools at our disposal in order to make change happen. ... The object is to win, not to feel smugly self-satisfied that you didn't sacrifice your principles by calling your city councilman"
And the tools should include – in some circumstances – participating in elections. I've written on that at [2].
Shawn here. I agree with this generally, though I'm not a big fan of the platform. As far as the Anarchist movement is concerned, I think that if we could all agree on some basic principles of solidarity within the our movement it would be a huge step forward. I don't think there has been a movement where so many factions that count themselves as part of the same movement have been so vehemently at each others throats, often over petty ideological minutia, than the Anarchist movement as a whole. The Primitivists vs. the Anarcho-Communists is only the most glaring conflict among many.
As for voting or any other tactic I think that people who are against a particular tactic should just not engage in that tactic, likewise, they should not be in the business of telling other people what they should or must do.
I think you should have goals first and find methods of reaching those goals that objectively work. While one's ideology may inform the goals one wants to achieve, it should not dictate what you do; what works and what does not work should be your guide regarding your choice of tactics. If you are an Anarchist, or at least an egalitarian, you have to come to terms with the fact that it's not necesarilly about what you want, but it's more about what everyone wants in terms of the kind of life they want to lead and the kind of world they would like to live in. I have come to the conlcusion that ideology is the least helpful thing when it comes to being effective.
http://chuck.mahost.org/weblog/?p=883
http://shawnewald.blogspot.com/2005/04/follow-up-comments-on-essay-what-do-we.html
http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=34575
i'm not an activist in the sense that i am part of leftist movements like all of you guys seem to be (i'm not in any organization); nor in the sense that i participate in any leftist actions (i haven't). i am activist because i wish to do things to change the society i belong to. (no, i am not american.)
i have to say that what shaun is generalizing about the left is mostly true. since i am not technically part of the left, i can speak with the point of view of an 'ordinary citizen', and i can say that in my country (i'm from the philippines), the left does not do much good (especially our communist party and its military arm).
in response to the ideas of uniting the different leftist factions, i would like to cite the example of visa. visa is - as its founder, dee hock, would call it - a chaordic organization. learn more about their principles here.
what the left needs is to organize into a chaordic alliance. first it would have to have a common purpose. then, it would define a few core principles. these principles would have to be common to all factions and though individual factions may espouse their own ideals, no ideals may contradict the core principles.
in effect, this entity would have the responsibility of fighting for all the different factions' ideas; in return it would have at its disposal the talents and energies of all the activists in the world (hopefully).
all my ideas may sound immature and impractical (i'm only 16 after all) but i hope it may provide you with some ideas.
i'm very interested in learning more from you guys. please do e-mail me at: hysterionproteus@gmail.com (i hope it's not improper to leave my address here) with your criticisms and whatnot.