Hugh Rodwell: Re:Characteristics of slums - urban poor?

[Hans Ehrbar <ehrbar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Date: Sat, 11 May 1996 21:59:28 +0200
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From: m-14970@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Hugh Rodwell)
Subject: Re:Characteristics of slums - urban poor?
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A bit more on Zeynep's points.

Her alternative slogan proposals are:

"No Justice -- No Peace"

"We don't want a crumb, we want the whole world"

"End to State Terror"

"Revolution"

They are located among politicized youth and neighbourhoods:

>Flats and food they know they don't have, and most slum youth are
>already politicised beyond asking for flats.

and again:

>The neighborhoods organise sometimes armed resistance
>against these *tearing down* attacks, usually possible only
>through very heavy police presence. I may not be making myself very clear,
>the people already associate their situation to the system they're living
>in. So, simple call for flats already means calling for a revolution, so one
>already calls for a revolution.

With respect, 'Justice', 'The Whole World', 'End State Terror' and
'Revolution' are not particularly concrete slogans.

In Ireland, concrete manifestations of some of these are (were?):

        No Go Areas excluding the repressive forces

        Paramilitary enforcement of neighbourhood order

        Troops Out actions (including stonings and vilification of soldiers by
        women and children)

But these reflect a state of armed rebellion and civil war. Turkey has this
in Kurdistan, but how well developed is this social tension in general in
the big towns?

>The line between populism and revolutionary politics is at every
>instance determined by very concrete conditions.

Very much so. That's why this discussion is so useful. I'm not in the least
wedded to my proposals. I suggested them as a starting point for thrashing
out ones better fitted to concrete conditions in various places. They're
intended to focus on real social needs that are insoluble under capitalism
in most countries, and are becoming a real problem in the poorer pockets of
the imperialist countries themselves.

The milieu of politicized youth and neighbourhoods Zeynep describes sounds
ripe for more than this kind of agitation. It sounds as if party
organization, propaganda and schooling are all on the agenda now. So good
luck and go to it!

Only make sure you've got more to offer than a mere reflection of the
activists themselves.


The most controversial of my proposals was related to the crime issue. It's
obviously open to misunderstandings, and as such it's of little use. Let's
dump it.

However, the problem won't go away by itself.

Zeynep clarifies:

>The main criminal activity in the slums is police brutality, and they call
>us the criminals. "End to State Terror" is another slogan that works here,
>not freedom from crime. Crime means theft for example, and theft here is
>only done against the propertied, since the rest have so little.

This is only partially the case in countries like Britain or Sweden where
workers may well have things worth stealing, even if this only makes them
very minimally propertied. In Britain in recent years there has been an
enormous growth of burglar alarm installations by everybody. In Sweden,
I've seen slogans painted up in my poor, immigrant suburb: 'Go rob the
rich!'.

In Latin America, Colombia is in a desperate situation with the endless
kidnappings and assassinations. 'Basta de asasinatos!' -- 'Stop the
killings!' is a slogan that is also a cry from the heart.

Around the time of the French Revolution and in the early nineteenth a
popular radical slogan was: 'Peace to the Hovels -- War on the Palaces!'


I think the problem is one of establishing our own autonomous order in our
own areas. This is the equivalent of setting up a No-Go area. It's a direct
challenge to the authority of the state -- and in effect a declaration of
war. Setting up a No Go Area is declaring the existence of a local
situation of dual power. It is in fact the confirmation of an acute
revolutionary crisis.

The process of building towards this will probably take the road of the
local community isolating the authorities more and more from its business
and taking  into its own hands the solution of more and more of any
conflicts that arise. The tribunals and councils that emerge to legislate
for and administer this kind of situation will already be Soviets in
embryo, nascent organs of dual power.

Have things already progressed this far in Turkey?


Finally, I think Zeynep describes the situation of a lot of revolutionaries
when she writes:

>My home is the most dangerous place I can be in. They can't detain me when
>I'm in the neighborhood or in a demonstration easily. I've been pulled from
>the police by fellow demonstrators before, we fight hard not to give anyone
>up. In the home, when you are alone, that's when they go in to detain, and
>often to kill; and claim afterwards you'd pulled a gun on them.

This is precisely why I added 'if of course you feel safe there' to my
statement about feeling secure at home. The professional assassins employed
by the Brazilian landowners against the organizers of the landless movement
operate in just the way Zeynep describes. Two of our comrades in Sao Paulo
state were murdered in this way in their beds at night. It was clinical and
cold-blooded.

My tendency has a macabre little joke in this connection:

        There are two kinds of Trotskyists -- the Quick and the Dead...

Zeynep rounds off by getting back the starting point:

>Yes, but that was the question was it not? The link between the
>revolutionary party and the younger population of the slum-dwellers and
>similar experiences in other countries.

So - what kind of organization (party?), what kind of organizational
framework (workers' and neighbourhood councils?), what slogans and --
something we haven't got on to yet -- what programme?

And Zeynep -- a big question -- how would you characterize the political
situation in Turkey at present? Relationship of class forces, international
situation, party political setup, labour movement, revolutionary movement?
How's it moving?


Cheers,

Hugh




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