Surviving the Coming Collapse by Defiantly Having Fun?

For thousands of years there have been cries that the End is Nigh. We are to Repent Now or be swept away in fiery floods and collapse and extinction and whatnot, having displeased the Divine or crossed some uncrossable line.

Yes, well.

The Prophets of Doom never seem to get their timing quite right, and they never seem to see what's in store clearly enough or soon enough to affect the disaster that will surely come if we are only patient enough...

Whatever the case with the Prophets of Doom, the Innocents always pay for any transgression. Those who precipitated the Catastrophe -- if they can be identified at all -- never do.

Nowadays quite a few of those who ponder the Ineffable are in a frame of mind to suggest that this time we really are facing the End of Days, actual Extinction and the Ultimate Environmental Collapse from which the Earth cannot recover.

Oh. Dear. That sounds terrible, doesn't it?

Whatever shall we do?

Democracy, Community, Consensus and David Graeber

David Graeber's Latest

There's been a spirited and extended discussion over at Naked Capitalism taking off from the reprint of an interview David Graeber gave to Lynn Parramore at Alternet. 

Graeber has taken on something of the sheen of a semi-divinity since the heady days of Occupy, an effort he had more than a little to do with, and some of his writings on the topics dear to the hearts of Occupiers everywhere have become modern classics -- maybe not Kropotkin level classics, but still.

His latest book is called "The Democracy Project: A History, A Crisis, A Movement." It's one I haven't read yet, but it is on my list, and it is available up in Santa Fe at Collected Works -- where I'll probably try to pick up one of their few remaining copies of Forrest Fenn's "Secrets of San Lazaro Pueblo" next time we're in town, so may as well pick up a copy of Graeber's book at the same time.

The discussion at NC is quite wide ranging, and it's not entirely about nit-picking Graeber or anarchism or Occupy. Nor is it some mindless speculation on the Nature of Democracy.

Instead, it strikes me as much more a discussion of "What do we do now? Where do we go from here?" than most of what I find online these days. I've said for some time that Graeber doesn't have all the answers -- nor necessarily any of the correct ones -- but he is trying to move the overall discussion forward, and in this case (ie: the discussion at NC), I think he's succeeded smartly.

The thing about Graeber is that he participates in these colloquies -- which aren't always friendly ones, believe me -- and typically he brings them a great deal of insight without a lot of rhetorical flourish and fol-de-rol.

He isn't doing this as if he were playing a game, in other words. He isn't in it for the points. Instead, he tries to open eyes and minds to possibilities, based on models of the past, his own studies of recent and current models, and wide-ranging thoughts about what kind of society we actually want.

Graeber's views he says are based in the Global Justice Movement -- and what kind of society some people on Earth already have or once had -- which in turn is based in mutual respect, democracy, community, and cultural, spiritual, economic and physical sustainability.

In other words, Utopia. Well, that's not entirely fair, but Graeber's perspective, at least in my view, does point the way to a Utopian future -- if only we could see and seize it.

Ultimately, of course, it's all about Dignity, Justice, Community and Peace, qualities of living that seem to be ever more elusive as our journey in this handbasket continues to race onwards toward who knows what.

In that regard, I'm still making my way through Arthur Kopecky's New Buffalo Commune journals, and I was struck by something he wrote in 1976 toward the end of his time there, [paraphrasing] "We can't continue on if we have to stay poor."

But, but, but... material poverty of a certain kind is the natural state of being for most of human kind for most of human history. If we are hard-wired for community, we are also hard-wired for some kinds of poverty. It is no great loss to be without (many) things. The conscious rejection of material goods is fundamental to many kinds of communities, especially spiritual and religious ones. The New Buffalo Commune grew out of a desire to transform wealth and abundance for a few into a sustainable and survivable way of life for many, and for a time at any rate, it seemed to be on the right track. But in order to sustain themselves and survive, the New Buffalo communards had to be financially poor. They never had much money (although individuals within the commune sometimes did, and that could be a source of tension). Things -- especially vehicles -- were always breaking down and requiring more and more money for continuing maintenance and repair. Living conditions at the commune could be primitive and uncomfortable, though again, individuals were often capable of creating very vibrant, warm and comfortable living spaces -- for themselves -- despite the lack of some modern conveniences and even the lack of money.

But they needed money to buy seeds, materials and supplies, to buy livestock, to purchase vehicles and maintain the ones they had, and to pay their property taxes among so many other things. The commune couldn't function without at least some money on hand, and too often, there either wasn't any or there wasn't enough to cover all the current and likely and unexpected expenses, no matter what they did.

So Kopecky came up with plans to put the New Buffalo Commune on a better and more consistent financial foundation, and that seems to be what triggered the eventually successful effort to get rid of him, an effort that ultimately led to the implosion of the commune. I'm not sure that's the case, however, since I haven't got to that point in the journals, but that's my impression from what I've already read -- both in the journals and in other sources.

New Buffalo failed as a commune, but the place is still there and has not fallen to ruin, much of the spirit is still there. I personally am not too fond of the Taos area, mostly because of the altitude, and I would probably not do well in a commune situation. On the other hand, I don't know. I've never tried it!

Intentional communities of all kinds can be found all over New Mexico. Some have been around for decades, generations, and in the case of the Indian Pueblos, for many centuries, even millennia;  others come and go, seemingly as transitory as the wind and the weather. Seems to me, it's all quite natural.

Graeber and some of Global Justice Movement acolytes appear to want to rationalize and codify the creation and sustenance of human-scale community and democracy. It's generally lumped together as anarchism -- but I'm not sure that's what it is. And I'm not sure that will ever be a successful/sustainable model. I'm not sure that's how human nature works. Human nature is not entirely rational, and it's not always amenable to codes and rules of conduct, especially if they are imposed by fiat rather than organically developed. There are ways to do these things (such as democracy), says Graeber, ways that work. I'm sure there are, but they aren't necessarily universal nor are they necessarily applicable to current conditions and peoples -- or at least not for very long.

I think we need to get beyond what's been done, go forth and find something else again, and it looks to me like there are many, many efforts under way to do just that.

Strike Debt Rolling Jubilee

David Graeber interviewed by Sam Seder re: Debt and Strike Debt Rolling Jubilee 11.14.12

Yves Smith over at Naked Capitalism has been having something of a peculiar and extended melt-down over the effort by the Occupy affiliated Strike Debt to commit financial/civil disobedience by buying up blocks of noncollectable mostly medical debt and forgiving the debtors from any further obligation to pay.

So far, they've managed to raise enough money to 'retire' around $9,000,000 in noncollectable debt; whether they have actually forgiven more than a small portion of that, I don't know. Exactly how they're going about their task is something of a mystery in that they say they buy blocks of debt anonymously (they don't know whose debt they have purchased, and their purchase of the particular debt is not publicized), then they forgive the debtors through direct contact.

Yves stridently believes that by doing this, Strike Debt is putting itself and the debtors it forgives at serious financial risk and that ultimately the program will be counterproductive.

Could be.

Given the level of overall American indebtedness and the amount of uncollected debt being marketed by the debt industry for bottom-feeders to go after (at about $.05 on the dollar), there's almost no way Strike Debt Rolling Jubilee can have more than a very marginal impact on the American debt problem and the industry that feeds on it. It's a scale issue.

Nonetheless, Yves is convinced that Strike Debt's Rolling Jubilee is the wrong approach to the problem and  that it is or might be dangerous to its participants and their beneficiaries.

Her particular focus has been on potential tax consequences, though perversely (a term she used with regard to those who objected to her tax focus) she denies it. Further, Yves and Lambert insist that Strike Debt is guilty of failing to fully disclose the risks to debtors involved in their efforts.

Yves can and does go into great and stupifying detail over the tax issue. Lambert just acts like a bitter old man yelling at those kids to get off his lawn. And he gets even crabbier when they don't do what he says.

The video above is taken from a radio interview of David Graeber by Sam Seder  in which the topic is addressed from the point of view of Strike Debt's interest in what we might call financial disobedience. Graeber of course is the author of "Debt: The First 5,000 Years" and is one of the prime movers of the Rolling Jubilee action. I've said that they are using the weaknesses in the debt-industry and the debt-system to throw a bit of sand in the gears that are grinding so many people into dust. They cannot have a huge impact directly -- which they seem quite aware of -- but indirectly, especially by highlighting the pervasive problem of household and personal debt in this country, they can have a tremendous impact.

Yves says "No, they're doing it wrong." After she tells them how she thinks they should be doing it, she then suggests that those behind Strike Debt have "another agenda" altogether, and implies that the project is somehow corrupt.

Having been more than peripherally involved with Occupy, I'm more than familiar with this argument regarding practically any project undertaken by or with or through Occupy. The idea that "someone with another agenda" is behind practically everything done with the Occupy imprimatur is unshakable and it has a certain kernel of truth to it, though typically not quite what the accusers believe. Because pretty much everybody who does anything has more than one motive for doing it, and often individuals are seeking to further "another agenda" simultaneously -- human nature and cultural conditioning tend to be darned strong -- the accusation that something done by or through Occupy or by someone or some agency associated with it is somehow tainted by self-interest (the typical charge) is relatively true. Sure. Just as it is true enough in just about any human endeavor. The notion that this is somehow corrupt doesn't scan, however, and there is no sign that any self-interest that may be involved in Strike Debt or the Rolling Jubilee is a priori corrupt or corrupting.

Yves and Lambert apparently want a debt project that plays by the rules, upsets no apple carts, does nothing on behalf of debtors directly, and employs squadrons of lawyers and tax experts to battle the bottom - feeders and the IRS.

Otherwise they claim that Strike Debt and the Rolling Jubilee puts themselves and their beneficiaries in dire jeopardy -- particularly of the tax man. Yves has personal horror stories that can curl your hair to support her case.

I don't doubt her sincerity, but it seems to me that she is vastly overreading the situation, and Lambert is just being stupid by demanding "full disclosure" and apparently condemning the project for not providing links to Yves Smith's extensive risk assessments.

None of the scenarios of potential horrors have played out, but if they do, it doesn't mean that no one associated with the Rolling Jubilee has thought about them before, or that no one is prepared to act to counter whatever takes place.

As an aspect of civil/financial disobedience, and as an "offshoot of Occupy", the project is bound to run into official disapproval and quite possibly cruel and brutal suppressive actions by Authority. Everyone should know that by now, given the outrageous overkill employed to suppress the Occupations. It's a given. Or it should be. The fact that it hasn't happened yet, however, is something to note and to take full advantage of. Strike while the iron is hot and all that. If suppression is going to come it will come, regardless of any efforts to avoid it.

It reminds me of the idea of avoiding any sort of confrontation with police, even to the wearing of bandanas, so as to avoid police crackdowns. I and many others pointed out it doesn't work that way. If the official intent is to crack-down or suppress (as it was with regard to Occupy actions and especially the Occupations themselves) there is no way to avoid it, there is no "making nice," and there is no action the demonstrators can take to prevent Authority from their chosen task. Thus, trying to avoid something that's going to happen no matter what you do can make the inevitable crackdown even worse.

As I pointed out at Yves' Place, it's unlikely that very many of the tens of thousands who were arrested or the thousands who were injured or had their stuff confiscated or destroyed during the Anti-Occupy crackdowns had "full disclosure" of what could happen even if they sat through some of the workshops presented by Legal. Some are still so traumatized by what happened and what they witnessed they can barely speak of it. There is no sign at this point that those who benefit from the Rolling Jubilee will be subjected to such official cruelty, but you never know. If word comes from On High to suppress Strike Debt, it could get very ugly indeed.

Has Rolling Jubilee failed because the participants haven't had adequate warning? Or because there are potential risks and pitfalls? Maybe. But from my perspective (well on the outside), it has a long way to go before it is even noticed beyond a relatively small circle of enthusiasts and nay-sayers...

Anarchism Resurgent

Americans as well as peoples around the world seem to be going through a very interesting period of ideological reflection.

The cruelties of the Neo-Liberal/Neo-Conservative triumphs of the past twenty years or so have become so violent and destructive to ordinary people's lives that rebellion and resistance is now pretty much universal -- though not successful yet in overcoming the power of the Neo-Aristocracies and the technocrats that rule nearly everywhere.

Marx is generally considered to have offered the correct analysis of the Crisis of Capitalism, and Marxian critiques of the current state of social and economic affairs are no longer rejected out of hand. Anti-Marxist propaganda has very little effect any more. Nevertheless, standard hierarchical Communism, a la the Soviet Union and Maoist China,  is widely repudiated for its own tendency toward cruelty and for its extreme levels of interference in people's lives.

Hierarchies of all kinds are under scrutiny, from that of the Catholic Church to everyday hierarchies in families, schools and government.

The System is under immense strain.

Seemingly suddenly, though it has been building for a long time, "anarchism" is not just back in the news, it is being more and more widely assessed for its potential as a Future social/political organizational model.

Dmitry Orlov has offered up a series of posts called "In Praise of Anarchy" over at ClubOrlov that define and defend anarchism in some of the most potent terms. And his posts have been widely disseminated through the Left-O-Sphere, inspiring a good deal of angst as well as considerable reflection and consideration.

The Left, so called, has a historical problem with Anarchism to be sure; Old Line Socialists tend to reflexively denounce Anarchists and Anarchism as impractical and worthless and the work of the devil and so on, just as they have for more than a century. Yet the European Social Democracies that once were shining examples of hierarchical socialism without the horrors of totalitarianism have all sold out to the Neo-Liberal/Neo-Conservative Masters of the Universe, leaving the People essentially to fend for themselves in an increasingly brutal and violent "struggle for existence."

When Socialists betray the People in such a manner and do so essentially universally, it's no wonder the People reject them outright. So it has been throughout Struggling Europe. But because of the way politics is organized in parliamentary democracies, rejection of the Socialists leads to the re-empowerment of the rightists who carry out same programs of destruction and calamity with somewhat greater relish, cruelty and speed.

In other words, there is no escape from the impositions of the Masters through standard political processes.

What. To. Do?

We've seen massive protests all over the developed and much of the developing world, but they rarely get anywhere, as the "Protest" has become something of an artefact. An exception -- startling really for its exceptionalism -- is in Quebec, where four months of sustained protest in the streets of Montreal and throughout the Province against tuition increases and draconian anti-protest laws resulted in the fall of the Provincial government and rescinding the tuition hikes and the anti-protest laws.

Behold:



But that was one of the very, very few victories for protesters anywhere. Most governments ignore the Will of the People and crush any sort of unapproved protest brutally and violently. Many governments have adopted the Bushevik model of governing contrary to the Will of the People simply because they can, with disastrous results which they refuse to correct.

Justifiably, the People say "WTF?" and seek alternatives. When the political system does not work in any manner to fulfill the needs of the People, something else is necessary. When non-violent protest is met with the levels of cruelty and brutality employed widely to crush the Occupy Movement, people seek redress by other (and perhaps less overt) ways.

We've seen that governments have mostly adopted or adapted to the Bushevik Blank Stare response to the People and the People's Will; we've seen that Protest is useful for gathering support but it does not in and of itself result in appropriate changes of policy.

We've seen that cruelty has become the standard operating system utilized by governments nearly everywhere.

How can the People break this cycle?

One of the ways, which I have mentioned many times, was offered in David Graeber's Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology (pdf): sidestep and make irrelevant the "official government". Create and operate alternatives, take care of one another, limit or eliminate interactions with Government.

While he was using Madagascar as an example of this grassroots version of anarchism, in fact the model has long been standard in the United States. The way the nation expanded during the 18th and 19th centuries was through various peoples cleaving off and forming their own societies in the Wilderness. It was accepted and celebrated as part of American Exceptionalism. In most cases, these little colonies and communities existed -- at least for a time -- in almost complete independence of the Central Government, in fact, though not in ideology (for the most part) anarchist societies.

It's may be much harder to do now that the Frontier is closed and has been for many years, but it is not impossible for civil society to recognize the fact that our political system and its government have divorced themselves from the People and take steps to create alternatives to the standard hierarchical models we're so accustomed to.

That is essentially what happened when the Occupy encampments were so brutally and violently crushed and destroyed. The anarchist ideas that were fundamental parts of the Occupy Movement were dispersed throughout the land, as seeds or spores, and they are beginning to bear fruit.

Some of the thought processes here:

Alternet

FDL

Dmitry Orlov

David Graeber

There is of course much more.

David Graeber Explains It All For You -- and Charlie Rose

I have a fairly high opinion of Graeber's thought, though one could say he doesn't really present well on the television machine.

(I remember one of the disputes I engaged in with another Occupy supporter was over teevee appearances by people who don't do television well; she was outraged that someone who was interviewed about a protest action against Monsanto that was going on at the time didn't speak well enough or in the appropriate and expected sound bites, and therefore wasn't communicating. I pointed out that the interviewee did touch on all the important aspects of the protest and said what needed to be said. Expecting everyone who goes on teevee to "speak in teevee-ese" is unproductive. Would the complainer suggest that everyone who doesn't do teevee well should refuse to be interviewed? How would she make that judgement? Needless to say, the person I was arguing with was offended. I pointed out that I know from bitter experience that I don't do television well, and so I personally refuse to do television interviews. But I don't think there should be a general ban on non-telegenic people granting interviews.)

Graeber makes his points -- perhaps a bit quickly and superficially -- in the video above with regard to Debt and Occupy, the nature of the struggle and the death knell of Capitalism (of course we've heard that before!) and he seems to make an awful lot of sense. The problem, of course, is that Our Rulers simply deny it all.

Thus the mess we're in.

Talking Strategy For A Little Bit -- And What Occupy Is Not

As a rule, I prefer to use what's on hand in order to develop strategic thinking and planning rather than try to impose a strategic template from another source.

Occupy has been up and running for more than six months now, and it has its own templates for taking action. Not all of it is strategic, to be sure, but it is surprisingly effective on its own terms.

It was really tough for me, coming from a relatively organized and hierarchical background, to deal with the way Occupy was and is operating. If it was tough for me I can only imagine how tough it was for many others who were far more rigidly programmed than I was.

I know Socialists who were freaked out about Occupy from the beginning and are still nay-sayers despite the overall success and durability of the movement to date. I'm aware of plenty of political interests and operatives of all kinds who insist that "you have to have" certain kinds of structures and strategies in place in order to have any effect at all on The Powers That Be. Parts of the nonviolence community have been having a field day denouncing the movement for its lack of strict discipline and Gandhi-esque purity.

I think that those who insist that Revolution has to be done in a certain way following a certain template of strategy and action may be missing the point. Much of that argument has been made and heard long since, and some of it has been adopted. But much of has been rejected.

Occupy is not a Sharp-style color revolution. It doesn't come from the same space, and it doesn't appear to be going in the direction of a Sharp-style revolution. From my perspective, Occupy is not ultimately about overthrow or seizing power or any of the standard revolutionary motifs that are central to Revolutionary Theory and Practice As Done By Past Revolutionary Masters.

I linked to David Graeber's "Revolution in Reverse" in an earlier post because I think it is much closer to the ideological and strategic framework that OWS and Occupy in general have "adopted" -- without any formal consensing on it -- as a working model for accomplishing the deeper revolutionary objectives of the Movement.

For the record:

http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=2007graeber-revolution-reverse

It's not the be-all/end-all guidebook of this revolution by any means; I see it more as a theoretical starting point for the imagination process that's been going on throughout the Occupy movement since before there was a movement.

The key word is "imagination."

After all, another world really is possible. Making it so is not so much a matter of forcing it as allowing it, making the space for it, nurturing it, and letting it grow. That's up to us to do, not something we ask of government or corporate power. We don't need their permission, and we don't need their power to create another world. We just do it.

Starting with imagining it, which is what hundreds of groups (both formally organized and highly informal) have been doing, some of them for decades. In other words, Occupy is not starting from square one, and we're by no means operating in a vacuum. Much of the ground work for "another world" has long been in place, and many of the physical aspects of the Occupy movement have been ways of highlighting what to do and how to get there.

You take the square.

You clothe the naked, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless. You speak out against injustice, treat one another with dignity, you form communities, you foster and enable peace.

You face down oppression.

And you allow the alternatives to happen.

Pie in the sky? Sure. Magical thinking? Absolutely. Impossible? Maybe not. I don't know.

Right now I'm working on an analysis that compares and contrasts the Sharp-style revolution with what Occupy is doing. There are many parallels and many divergences. What is very clear, however, is that the premise of Occupy is essentially 180° opposite the Sharp premise of power and purpose.

"Revolution in Reverse."

Revolution in Reverse -- and Why Symbolic Acts Matter

"Revolution in Reverse" by David Graeber

“All power to the imagination.” “Be realistic, demand the impossible…” Anyone involved in radical politics has heard these expressions a thousand times. Usually they charm and excite the first time one encounters them, then eventually become so familiar as to seem hackneyed, or just disappear into the ambient background noise of radical life. Rarely if ever are they the object of serious theoretical reflection.

During the Bush Era, I often wrote about the fact that the Busheviks were engaged in Revolution while the Liberals and Progressives were -- at best -- conducting a rear-guard holding action when they weren't actively enabling the Bushevik Revolutionaries.

This idea upended the conventional wisdom of the time, of course, and the cognitive dissonance was sometimes un-pretty. But from my perspective, there had been a judicial coup in December of 2000; the government was handed over to the Busheviks -- "without objection" as they say (never mind the people in the streets and the Congressional Black Caucus) -- and the revolutionary remaking of the United States Government into an Imperial Autocracy commenced in earnest. The pace of it accelerated after 9/11.

That revolutionary remaking is being consolidated today. In other words, the Government -- and its owners and sponsors -- are not looking back.

We don't live in the same country that existed up to December 2000.

The holding action by Liberals and Progressives in Government didn't just fail, it was a disaster.

I keep running into those who believe sincerely that the current era represents the End of the American Empire, and I shake my head. No, we're at the tail end of the Republic -- something we're never going to get back, BTW, it's gone -- and we're well past the beginning of a New American Empire. We're marginally in a transition phase between one and the other, but the press of events is trending toward the continual expansion and consolidation of the NAE (New American Empire), not its retreat.

In order to fund it, the People of the United States and peoples all around the world are being plundered and looted in a kind of free-for-all of pillage that has never been seen on this scale in world history, and the pillagers are not even momentarily pausing for breath.

This Empire is not going away anytime soon. The NAE is too useful to too many interests for it to be sacrificed at this point. Popular opposition to it is still haphazard and weak. For all intents and purposes, there is no opposition in Government. Not even in the person of Ron Paul, Republican and useful foil to the Imperial aggrandizers.

So what is the rational course of action when that's the case? Is there even a point in opposition, let alone Revolution?

I'd argue that opposition -- and even Revolution -- under the circumstances is natural; what was distinctly odd was the absence of serious opposition during the Bush Era. There wasn't just an absence of active opposition, there was suppression of the very idea of "opposition" (especially after 9/11) on the premise that to seriously oppose the Bushevik Revolution that was taking place was to engage in a form of terrorism or treason.

People were cowed and effectively silenced for years.

Millions could take to the streets in a kind of pro-forma opposition to the War Industry's desire to whack Iraq only to be ignored and mocked. Protests were encaged -- literally -- and placed in Zones where no official need pay the least attention to them. Billions of dollars in bricks of $100 bills were transported to Iraq and... disappeared. The pillage of government and private financial resources by Enron and the like seemed almost quaint given what was to come.

It was as if Americans were in a trance, even those who might otherwise have been outspoken in opposition.

Elections did not change things. The Imperial Juggernaut continued unperturbed. Even the election of 2008, that was supposed to be about Change You Can Believe In, led to the further consolidation and institutionalization of the Imperial Autocracy and the permanent elevation of oligarchs and plutocrats who own and control it.

Millions of Americans are being forced into poverty every year to pay for it. Hunger and homelessness stalk the land. The Powers That Be seem to like it like that.

The Police State that is a necessary adjunct to any Autocracy is enjoying all the practice it is getting in suppressing dissent and rebellion.

If we accept that the Republic is gone and we're not getting it back, that our national Government is becoming by stages an institutional Autocracy and that it is owned and controlled by a faction of oligarchs and plutocrats who primarily see the Government as a means to enforce their will on everyone, we might gain some idea about whether and how to proceed with opposition. But if we continue to pretend that we still have a Republic or that we can wrest control of it from the oligarchs and plutocrats somehow, or that elections actually matter, any opposition that arises will be futile; it will be fighting phantoms on behalf of an impossible goal -- which of course serves the interests of the Overclass.

If we accept that the Republic is gone and we're not getting it back, think of the possibilities.

To quote Graeber:

Our customary conception of revolution is insurrectionary: the idea is to brush aside existing realities of violence by overthrowing the state, then, to unleash the powers of popular imagination and creativity to overcome the structures that create alienation. Over the twentieth century it eventually became apparent that the real problem was how to institutionalize such creativity without creating new, often even more violent and alienating structures. As a result, the insurrectionary model no longer seems completely viable, but it’s not clear what will replace it.

One response has been the revival of the tradition of direct action. In practice, mass actions reverse the ordinary insurrectionary sequence. Rather than a dramatic confrontation with state power leading first to an outpouring of popular festivity, the creation of new democratic institutions, and eventually the reinvention of everyday life, in organizing mass mobilizations, activists drawn principally from subcultural groups create new, directly democratic institutions to organize “festivals of resistance” that ultimately lead to confrontations with the state. This is just one aspect of a more general movement of reformulation that seems to me to be inspired in part by the influence of anarchism, but in even larger part, by feminism—a movement that ultimately aims recreate the effects of those insurrectionary moments on an ongoing basis.

In essence, Graeber is describing the form of Revolution adopted by the Occupy Movement. It does not look like Revolutions of the more distant past because it isn't like them. Instead, it is more like the feminist movement, the Zapatistas, and the anti-globalist movement.

Insurrection may seem to be everywhere, but it is in the form of "festivals of resistance," which is what the initial occupations were and what the current Occupy actions typically tend to be. Rather than having the insurrection first, then the "festival" of alternatives, the alternatives are built first, then comes the insurrection, which is in this movement in the form of nonviolent resistance to the imposition of arbitrary authority -- not in the form of armed insurgency.

Thus the state is flummoxed. No matter what they do, it ultimately turns out wrong. Bit by bit, the authority of the state over these "festivals of resistance" diminishes and in due time vanishes except, perhaps, as an empty shell. The appearance of authority without the capability of its imposition.

This situation was made quite explicit during one of the nightly "Eviction Theater" episodes at Union Square in New York last week. The Occupy presence there is festive -- as it was at Zuccotti/Liberty Plaza near Wall Street. There are fewer elements of an alternative system in place at Union Square, but there are some (for example, the library, direct democracy, feeding stations and so on); there is also constant discussion and debate of serious matters and enjoyment of frivolous ones, often by hundreds or even thousands of people at a time.

The police presence at Union Square has sometimes been enormous, in some cases far outnumbering the public. And of course their sole mission is to protect the park from the public by closing access to it promptly at midnight. So one day last week, this performance got underway, and a chant I'd never heard before went up: "You have no authority!" Over and over.

In the context of pushing and shoving the public out of the park, of course, the police are exercising arbitrary authority -- which is the point of the exercise. They want to show that they can do whatever they want and the public is powerless to prevent it. But most of us already know that, we're already well aware that police habitually behave arbitrarily and all too frequently lawlessly. The display in Union Square serves to highlight how ridiculous the show tends to be. Arbitrary authority is not legitimate authority at all. Consequently, the chant of "You have no authority!" points out the obvious.

As more and more of these arbitrary impositions are demonstrated and pointed out, the authority of the police is diminished.

In a discussion about Occupy versus the police yesterday, I pointed out that in many ways the behavior of the police resemble the behavior of the big-bellied Southern sheriffs and their treatment of civil rights demonstrators. They would use arbitrary imposition of grossly disproportionate power against the protesters on their certain knowledge that doing so would be shown on the nightly news, and that it would discourage and dissuade others from joining or supporting the civil rights movement. This is the standard strategy for disrupting and ultimately destroying movements.

It didn't work in the case of the civil rights movement, in fact, it backfired badly, though initially that wasn't clear at all.

For the brutality unleashed against the civil rights activists seemed to work just fine in keeping turn out for demonstrations in the South relatively small, and in keeping some people too frightened of what might happen to join or support the movement.

The more the brutality of the Southern law enforcement officers was seen, however, even people who were not particularly inclined to favor integration were convinced that what the police were doing was simply wrong. It didn't just look bad, it was bad. And the more the Southern sheriffs behaved so brutally, the more their authority diminished until it was essentially gone.

Much the same pattern is being repeated with Occupy -- as it has been with many previous movements -- and while it may not be immediately apparent that Occupy is "winning," every instance of police brutality and outrageous conduct diminishes the authority of the police. Ultimately it will be gone.

It doesn't even have to be outrageous, just... arbitrary. Especially when force is used against symbolic actions.

For example, the Wall Street Bull was desecrated liberated the night of March 21, in a very symbolic but spontaneous action described in a previous post. The activists tore down the barricades and mounted the bull in a highly festive, almost ritualized manner. When the police arrived, the crowd melted away, but not before one of the miscreants who had got on top of the statue was briefly held and then escaped from the clutches of the police. For their part, the police were far more concerned with re-erecting the barricades around the Bull, which seemed a bit anti-climactic and futile under the circumstances. What were they protecting the Bull from? Wall Street was empty except for the police frantically trying to re-assemble and re-erect their barricades.

Returning to Zuccotti/Liberty Plaza on March 17 was a symbolic act; the police wildly overreacted. In doing so, they diminished their authority. The illuminated tents on poles that appear in New York are brilliant symbols of the endurance and creativity of Occupy in the face of repression, as are the innumerable projections on buildings promoting the Occupy idea.

These symbolic acts have a cumulative effect, as do the overreactions of the police.

And the Festival of Resistance continues.

On De-Legitimizing and Building Within the Hollow Shell

[NOTE: Yesterday's post was intended to be about the continuing propaganda regarding the saga and struggle of the soldier in custody for the latest Afghanistan Massacre. But the events in New York took precedence. I spent most of the day going through written reports and videos of what was going on. As for yesterday's intended post, a digest:

The soldier in custody is being tried and acquitted in the media based on a continual feed of "information" about him and the difficulties he's faced -- basically building a defense case in public -- that is almost all coming directly from the Pentagon. Fascinating, isn't it? Though he is being held for murder most foul, those holding him are at pains to defend him because of his multiple deployments and his wounds and in yesterday's propaganda, because he and his family have been facing severe financial difficulties as well. In other words, the facts that might lead to justice are of no interest at all; the dead and wounded aren't even mentionable any more. This situation oddly mirrors -- or maybe not so oddly, come to think about it -- the lack of any concept of rational justice when it comes to matters involving the financial and economic destruction wrought by our Overclass. To the extent their victims exist at all (we're all their victims in one way or another) it is only as objects and foils to their depredations; the idea of "justice" under the circumstances is a cruel joke.]

Alcuin in comments links to a 2004 essay by David Graeber called "Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology" that I cannot recommend highly enough. It's almost 10 years old now, but it is in nearly every way apropos to right now -- on top of which, it is an utter delight to read. Sometimes academics -- and Graeber himself -- come off a ponderous blow-hards (I should talk!) but in this case, Graeber explores his topic with a light and vigorous approach that really makes it almost magical.

In the broadest sense, "Fragments" is Anarchist apologetics which some people will reject out of hand. I tend not to be a political dogmatist, nor am I all that wedded to a particular political ideology (though my leftist bent is clear enough, but that comes from something deeper, not strictly speaking politics.)

Until the Occupy Movement got under way, I had never given much thought to anarchism or anarchist theory. Like most Americans, indeed like most people around the world, I had been conditioned to disregard anarchists and anarchism as a serious political philosophy because anarchists blew up the Los Angeles Times building in 1910, an anarchist shot William McKinley in 1900 and so forth. Furthermore, like most Americans and others around the world, I had been conditioned to believe certain "facts" about anarchism, such as the "fact" that it was a theory of political chaos, the "fact" that without a state, there could be no civilization, and the "fact" that anarchism could ultimately be reduced to Social Darwinism run amok. So. Like most everyone else, I dismissed anarchism and those who professed to be anarchists as essentially irrelevant to serious political consideration. When it came to notions of "Revolution," anarchists were simply out of the picture altogether. They might trigger destruction, but they had no capability of construction, let alone re-construction after destruction.

Occupy has changed my thinking, maybe not as much as some would like, but it's a substantial change from my previous perspective. I have not got any piercings or tattoos, nor is my attire all black; I'm not much into primitivism, though I have long had a strong regard for individualism and some forms of tribalism, and throughout my life, I have tried to live lightly on the land. I don't much care for the hair-trigger temper that seems to infuse some anarchists as they go about their daily lives (though I admit to having something of a temper myself '-D ). And I'm not particularly fond of endless -- circular -- debates over inconsequentials that somehow seem to loom as insurmountable during practically every discussion that involves anarchists.

For years, though, I've had an kind of arm-length association with anarchists in real life and online, and I've often suggested that if they wanted to form a New Society of Voluntary Association -- or what have you -- go ahead and do it; there is plenty of opportunity to do so in this country. In fact, these efforts at building New Societies are fundamental aspects of the American experience; they're built in to the national consciousness -- so go, do, prosper!

The point being The Demonstration. Show us how it works. Well? Where's The Demonstration? We're waiting. Show us! Nothing happens... Back to the circular argument that seems to require the destruction of the present system before any New Society can emerge.

Well, Graeber seems to reject that notion in "Fragments." In fact, he seems to be saying, based to a great extent on his field experience in Madagascar, that the (anarchist) New Society can emerge spontaneously within the rotting shell of the old, and that it can persist side-by-side with more rigid and structured political frameworks without necessarily causing more than a minor disturbance. In other words, accommodation and replacement are both possible outcomes; the proof is all around us. He saw it in operation in Madagascar when he was doing anthropological field research. Obviously, what he saw made a profound impression on him and continues to inform his thinking and writing to this day.

When "Teh Revolution" comes, it doesn't have to be -- probably won't be -- anything like we expect a Revolution to be, and it certainly doesn't require a violent framework to take place or to succeed. Successful Revolution -- of which there have been a few - is more a matter of social affinities, alignments and timing, not necessarily force of arms or even uprisings. It just... IS.

Well. What a concept.

And here we are, in the midst of what is arguably the first Global People's Revolution, one that has been spontaneously generated at the root level -- if not actually at the soil level in which the roots reside (but I won't expand on that thought too much here). The spontaneity of Occupy is one of its iconic features; it just arrives and "is," it isn't directed or emplaced, it just... "is." Without an obvious structure or even necessarily a declared purpose, let alone stated goals and objectives, it just... "is".

Graeber wrote "Fragments" long before the appearance of Occupy, of course, but not before some of its precursors, such as the anti-globalization movement, the Zapatistas, the Situationists and the Insurrectionists, and so forth. Occupy did not come out of nothing after all; this ground has been prepped, plowed and planted for quite some time. Direct precursors are the North African uprisings, the European uprisings that interconnected with them, and in the United States, the uprising in Wisconsin.

Two strategic factors of Occupy help to clarify what's happening, what the Revolution This Time looks like: 1) de-legitimizing present authority; 2) demonstrating how a Better Future can, does, and will work.

This is not taking place on a theoretical plane, it is going on day by day in somewhat fanciful but ultimately practical ways in the real world -- in sequence, alternately and simultaneously.

These entwined strategic factors seem to be taken directly from Gene Sharp's manuals for revolution, manuals which actually propose something very different is necessary for a successful revolution than what Occupy has been doing for the last few months.

A problem I have had with Sharp's theories and recipes for Revolution is that they don't work anymore. We've seen the results of following Sharp's revolutionary models in the catastrophic and blood-soaked situations in Libya and Syria, Bahrain and the Yemen, among many other places where rebels have studied Sharp and adopted his program. A deeper criticism of Sharp is that the Revolution he proposes is not a People's Revolution at all, it's a marketing campaign on behalf of Neo-Liberalism and all that goes with it.

In other words, what you get from a Sharp-style Revolution may not be anything like what you signed up for, and it could well turn out to be worse for the People than what you were rebelling against.

I've often said that no one should engage in Revolution mindlessly or take a Revolutionary path without considering the consequences as fully as possible. But human nature often doesn't provide for that kind of in depth consideration of actions especially under the circumstances we face today.

What happens instead is that most people hold back from a Revolutionary course by force of conditioning and habit, while the few who can do so take the risk to see what can be accomplished, if anything, on a rebel path. Most often, they are simply crushed like a bug. But if the situation is ripe for change, or if alternatives and change are somehow integral to the current social framework and situation, something else, something unexpected, may take place.

I think that's where we are in this country. The concepts of change and alternatives to established institutions and power centers are built in to our conception of a national identity. Questioning/challenging authority while developing and demonstrating alternative models of social, political, and economic organization has been going on in America since before there was an "America."

The simultaneous de-legitimizing of present authority while demonstrating alternatives to it are the key factors of Occupy, and Graeber's "Fragments" helps to show how this approach to Revolution is both more radical and perhaps more natural than we may think.

This interview with Graeber expands somewhat on his thoughts on the nature of things....

David Graeber Explains It All To The Shade of Chris Hedges

David Graeber, of course, is one of the founding anarchists of Occupy Wall Street, and he's been involved in Movements of various flavors for many years.

I was glad he took on the responsibility of responding to Hedges' sad little meltdown over the Black Bloc "cancer" in Occupy. I was glad he pointed out how dangerous that kind of rhetoric is; it's the rhetoric of eliminationists, and no matter what you may think of Black Bloc and anarchists, no matter how negative you may be about them, eliminationism is a serious -- and deadly -- social malignancy; it's an attitude toward the dehumanized Other that leads to disastrous consequences, and not solely for the dehumanized Other. As I've said before, Hedges did something shameful by scapegoating and demonizing "Black Bloc anarchists." Being a writer, he knows the power of language to inspire fear and loathing and providing excuses for deadly action against the Other. He was in Bosnia. He KNOWS. Therefore, I do not cut him any slack on that account, unlike Graeber who tirelessly appeals to Hedges' better angels.

As Graeber puts it somewhat more powerfully than I do, let's go to the quote:

I am appealing to you because I really do believe the kind of statement you made is profoundly dangerous.

The reason I say this is because, whatever your intentions, it is very hard to read your statement as anything but an appeal to violence. After all, what are you basically saying about what you call “Black Bloc anarchists”?

1) they are not part of us

2) they are consciously malevolent in their intentions

3) they are violent

4) they cannot be reasoned with

5) they are all the same

6) they wish to destroy us

7) they are a cancer that must be excised

Surely you must recognize, when it’s laid out in this fashion, that this is precisely the sort of language and argument that, historically, has been invoked by those encouraging one group of people to physically attack, ethnically cleanse, or exterminate another—in fact, the sort of language and argument that is almost never invoked in any other circumstance. After all, if a group is made up exclusively of violent fanatics who cannot be reasoned with, intent on our destruction, what else can we really do? This is the language of violence in its purest form. Far more than “fuck the police.” To see this kind of language employed by someone who claims to be speaking in the name of non-violence is genuinely extraordinary. I recognize that you’ve managed to find certain peculiar fringe elements in anarchism saying some pretty extreme things, it’s not hard to do, especially since such people are much easier to find on the internet than in real life, but it would be difficult to come up with any “Black Bloc anarchist” making a statement as extreme as this.

There have been many more responses to Hedges. He is not getting away with his smears, but he may have his King of OWS crown repossessed.

-----------------------------

Meant to post a link to this response to the Hedges Smear, but forgot I guess. It's from a Socialist perspective and it's quite good compared to a couple of others I ran across; the comments are good, too:

Against Hedges on the Black Bloc

David Graeber Explains It All For You

From the outset of this OWS Revolutionary Period I've become much more aware of -- and appreciative of -- its Anarchist roots. I am not an Anarchist for various reasons, mostly having to do with my belief that Anarchist ideals can't be realized in the real world, at least not beyond a very small scale. And the scale-problem is built in to the Anarchist vision. If there were a way for peoples to split into innumerable affinity groups and maintain autonomy while doing it, without the need for government and the protections (and limitations) inherent in government, then fine, but the scale problem cannot in my view be overcome, so pure Anarchism will never be more than a pipe dream.

Nevertheless, I appreciate Anarchist thought. David Graeber's "Revolutions in Reverse" is a good selection of essays on timely topics. Well worth the time to read.


Revolutions in Reverse: Essays on Politics, Violence, Art, and Imagination

I wouldn't have stumbled on it were it not for a comment left over at Ian's Place on the post regarding "how OWS actually works" -- where I also picked up the link to the Global Research essay on the adoption of the Spokes Council model of operations.