Re: AUT: democracy: reply on zap paper 1

[Chris <red@xxxxxxx>]

I think we are on to something here. In Canada and as far as I have
studied here in the US, grassroots multiple-issue community organizations
have also used complicated combinations of local politicians, NGOs, and
local unionists to leverage resources to at least defend the community
from the most brutal capitalist onslought (from super-exploitative work to
levelling highways) if not also build strength to assert collective
counter-institutions (often just social services, but also significantly
often new commons like co-operatives). The key to where this goes and how
remains as far as I can tell largely unexplored... I see the emergence of
an autonomous community -- and working-class -- still stifled by the
"friends" whose earlier help assisted in founding the present terrain.
However, in the present context of capitalist brute force these "friends"
remain sometimes seemingly vital to survival (without NGOs and at least
some allied politicians and unionists perhaps the police would be even
more ruthless, for example).

How is this situation shaken? Shall we wait for the equivalent of the
Zapatistas to arrive? Are they/we already here? How much is the encuentro
movement picking up?

Chris

On Fri, 28 Nov 1997, FRANCO BARCHIESI wrote:

> (shaping and modifying them) to established forms of social and
> cultural hierarchy as a vehicle to structurate and articulate popular
> demands that are antagonistic and subversive for the status quo. An
> example here in South Africa was given by the extraordinary
> experience of the rise of the "civics" and the emergence of the
> United Democratic Front in the townships in the 1980s: lots of
> populist politicians that were part (or at least not overtly opposed)
> of the apartheid's "black" municipalities were defined as leaders of
> the struggle by extremely grassroot-democratic and
> participative structures. And this took place mainly on the basis of
> the "social power" of the leaders in terms of personal morality,
> respectability, or of the place occupied in kin, professional,
> educational hierarchies. This was true for the unions in the 1970s as
> well, worker organisations with a culture of direct democracy even
> stronger than that of the civics. In fact, it would have been
> impossible for the black trade unions to develop the phenomenal
> growth they had if it had not been for their capacity to utilize
> ethnic hierarchies in the segregated worker compounds, by recruiting
> "traditional" leaders and turning their discourse into a vehicle of
> grassroot worker democracy. These (and I think what Zeynep and Monty
> pointed at) are examples of what can be called "deferential
> democracy" (I borrow this phrase, maybe a bit improperly, from some
> studies on the political systems of the first settler colonies in
> XVII century New England), ie. the capacity of an organisation to
> combine grassroots practices and established socio-cultural
> hierarchies. What this indicates to us, I think, is mainly the need,
> as I wrote above of a greater conceptual clarity (for example:
> how useful it is the concept of "democracy" to summarize such a
> plurality and articulation of resistant practices?) and of
> articulation of levels of analysis, that is: of levels of struggle.
>
> Franco
>
> Franco Barchiesi
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