strategy schmategy
By shag carpet bomb • Jan 9th, 2012 • Category: WGAF Fileslord. I guess the critiques of OWS’s lack of strategy really don’t understand what strategy means.
http://www.possible-futures.org/2012/01/03/a-movement-without-demands/
They make complaints about the no demands strategy, completely failing to get it through their thick skulls that the difference between an anarchist approach and their socialist approach is that the former refuse to cede recognition to government and the other does. why is that so fucking hard to understand. Thus, anarchists are guided by *theory* from the get go: it’s a theory about how society works and how to change it. It’s a theory about human consciousness - how people know - and what it is they are coming to know. This guides their strategy for how to conduct a social movement. Seems pretty fucking obvious to me. This article pretends that anarchists have no theory and no strategy rather than approaching the issue head on. Why are anarchists wrong in their claims about what consititutes social life under capitalism, how we come to know this reality, and what we can and should do about it? Why are they wrong to think that social movements should prefigure the world they want to bring into being?
Those are the questions a socialist has to address.
This article is a perfect example of why it’s a mistake to critique social life if you don’t actually participate in it. Visiting NYC a couple of times and observing exchanges on an email list doesn’t fucking count (Dean). Had either of these authors bothered, they might have learned that, Omigosh! people at OWS actually do know that the 99% isn’t a singular bloc but is, rather, constituted by a variety of “subjectivities” (gag me with a spoon). It is precisely that understanding that is behind the desire to not make demands. That’s because they have a particular theory about how people come to consciousness about what they want out of society, etc. If you happen to believe that people come to understand their needs and desires, best, by being involved in the actual struggle against the injustices of *this* world, then whatever subjectivities exist now, might not be the subjectivities that emerge through struggle.
Ahhhh fuck it. What fucking morons.
shag carpet bomb is
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If their theory doesn’t comport with mine, they don’t really have a theory? Honestly, this whole debate is so 2011. Apparently Dean doesn’t like losing.
one sort of socialist begins a response :
1 )”Why are anarchists wrong in their claims about what consititutes social life under capitalism,”
not so sure the main and critical break between views arises there
the origin and development of the state is where one might start to locate divergences
in particular divergences that arise prior to un-reconcilable oppostion
add ons
what is the state up to today ???
does it have a role beyond todays capitalism ???
example
my hero kropotkin as it turns out
had no notion of the state prior to the class struggles in western europe
largely falling in the interval
1400 to 1600
he never seems to have written down his outline of the states prior 7k tenure
as among other manifestations
“god’s word enforced among his people”
2) ” how we come to know this reality,”?
again as with question 1
not critical
i can well imagine as much over lap here between a socialist and an anarchist
as between two anarchists
3) ” what we can and should do about it? ”
ahhh now we arrive at conclusions
but the crucial departures come earlier no ??
“Why are they wrong to think that social movements should prefigure the world they want to bring into being?”
paraphrase :
what are pre figurations and what are they doing in my revolution ??
now that’s a related question
that might present a way into the more basic question
or counter question
i suggest up top
what is the state and when might we expect to get rid of it ??
what no dialogue ??
are you that confirmed in your views ??
why must we first refute
the necessity of an existing …long existing institutional reality
might not you need first to establish its possible contingency ?
paine - no, just busy. i agree with you for the most part. what i was getting at was the insistence that the issue was somehow not about a difference in theory. instead of explaining what makes their socialism superior to anarchism, they maintain there is no strategy. more anon.
look
the occ was an action organization
not a deliberative convention
not a proto party
and yet to call it a movement misses the coherence
the local occs as replications
a parallel?
perhaps the march on washington “industrial ” armies in the great depression of 1894
now reduced to one name …coxey ..and his army
itself unprecidented
or the lunch counter actions
these are actions
no nee for a demand the action embodies the demand