Will Anarchists work with Non-Anarchists?

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

[Note: Most of this was written before Yoshie's post which, in respect
to the quarrel with which Lou and Doug annoy the lists, covers some
of the same ground. I think it has enough independent material, however,
to make it worthwhile to post it. As to Yoshie's central point, I have
indeed gotten along politically with people here in Bloomington with
whom I had far greater disagreements than Doug and Lou have ever
had with each other.]

Doug Henwood wrote:

> Lots of young American radicals are anarchists of some sort or other.
> There's nothing abstract about it. I think they're worth talking to.
> The last thing they'll listen to is patronizing lectures from
> "Marxists."

I don't think the problem is marxists patronizing anarchists. Marxists
have a long history of working with almost anyone who will not
refuse to work with them. That's why red-baiters get so excited about
"Communist Fronts." Anarchists (as shown by the debates on both lbo
and pen-l) seem more concerned with attacking marxists (as individuals)
past and present than with talking to or listening to or working with
non-anarchists (especially marxists). Read again that "N30 Black Bloc
[Anarchist] Communique," especially the following:

>         The black bloc was a loosely organized cluster of affinity
> groups and individuals who roamed around downtown, pulled
> this way by a vulnerable and significant storefront
> and that way by the sight of a police formation.  Unlike the
> vast majority of activists who were pepper-sprayed, tear-gassed
> and shot at with rubber bullets on several occasions, most
> of our section of the black bloc escaped serious injury by
> remaining constantly in motion and avoiding engagement
> with the police.  We buddied up, kept tight and watched each
> others' backs.  Those attacked by federal thugs were un-arrested
> by quick-thinking and organized members of the black bloc.  The
> sense of solidarity was awe-inspiring.
>
> THE PEACE POLICE
>
>         Unfortunately, the presence and persistence of "peace
> police" was quite disturbing.  On at least 6 separate occasions,
> so-called "non-violent" activists physically attacked individuals
> who targeted corporate property.  Some even went so far as to
> stand in front of the Niketown super store and tackle and shove
> the black bloc away.  Indeed, such self-described "peace-keepers"
> posed a much greater threat to individuals in the black bloc than the
> notoriously violent uniformed "peace-keepers" sanctioned by the state

Now, I agreed with Doug and others that, as it turned out, the anarchists

added to the effectiveness of the Battle of Seattle. They were right and
the "Peacekeepers" were wrong.

BUT BUT BUT

How many people on pen-l want to participate in a demonstration of
10s of thousands, confronting police, knowing that a few dozen or a
few hundred of their fellow demonstrators may take it upon themselves
to impose their judgement on that of the 50,000, without consultation,
without any regard for the opinions of others. From this perspective
it is interesting that the main complaint anarchists make against
marxists is our anti-democratic policies. And that Doug, here, seems
to be accusing *marxists* (rather than anarchists) of refusing to
speak to others. I disagree with parts of Jim Craven's judgement
of Seattle (at the end of this post I copy a response to Jim on
the marxism list), but Jim treated anarchists and others rather
more fairly than the anarchists treat the other 50,000 demonstraters
in Seattle.

The Black Bloc Communique reminds me not so much of the
warm and fuzzy feelings put out by anarchists on lbo as in an
episode involving the local Weathermen back in the winter-
spring of 1970. A mass mobilization was being planned at
Carbondale involving a center being established there to provide
academic support for AID (Agency for International Development,
which was to be the occupying authority in Vietnam when that
nation was successfully pacified.) People in campuses all over
the state were attempting to mobilize local students and off-
campus communities as well to attend the demonstration and
rally. The SDS here had just gone gurgling down the tubes with
the bulk of the membership joining the Weathermen. Jan and
I worked out a draft leaflet to use, involving not only the mobilization
for Carbondale but urging that our university (Illinois State Univ.
at Normal) take certain positions in respect to AID. On the
basis of those demands we were able to incorporate a sentence
there only as a gesture of unity between us and the Weathermen
-- a sentence to the effect that we could not be responsible for the
actions of less patient students if the University did not respond.

We got the weathermen to a meeting. We showed them the
draft, they recognized the nod in their direction, and then one
of them put and end to the argument by saying, "We've got
to remember we're communists." Since he had never read a
word of marxism in his life. and wouldn't have been able to
tell  the dictatorship of the proletariat from a mode of production
if it had bit him on the nose, I have since more or less taken this
as my touchstone for "spontaneous revolutionizing," which seems
to be what the Black Bloc is into. Those who feel too warm
towards that Bloc would do well to compare their communique
with old weatherman documents. The tone and content are almost
identical.

As I was in 1970 I am prepared in 1999 to talk with anarchists --
as the lbo posts I copy below indicated -- but I doubt very much
that most really dedicated anarchists are willing to talk to anything
or anyone except their reflection in the mirror. Other anarchists
should be viewed through a less pretentious label -- something
like good old american radicals.

I will assume that the post from Doug quoted above reflects
merely the personal feud between him and Lou. It is a pretty
silly post considered as a general comment on marxist response
to the Seattle anarchists. After all, browsing through the LBO,
Pen-L, Marxism, and Leninist-International lists for posts on
Seattle, it is quite clear that the patronizing lectures mostly come
from anarchists.

I append a series of posts to illustrate my points.

=============
First, two of mine posted on Monday to LBO.
====

Eric Beck wrote:

>  Now we just got to learn them
> old-school marxies.

Interesting -- you stole the words right out of my mouth, except I
spoke them about 34 years ago and found they were not much
good for the long haul. This is the position that an overwhelming
majority of young (and not so young) leftists started out with
in the '60s.

But what interests me is something else. Does this mean you won't
work with or enter into coalitions with those "old-school marxies"?
Almost all my political work for 30 years has involved working
with non-marxists. Can anarchists work with marxists?

Carrol

=============

Chuck0 wrote:

>  but anarchists conducts their affairs in what
> could be described as the most "democratic" way. They strive for
> egalitarian meetings, frequently use consensus, and discourage the
> emergence of any kind of leadership.

Anarchism (whether so named or not) is very often the political
tendency to which people adhere as they move leftward. And at
early stages of a mass movement (which we hope but do not know
we now find ourselves in) anarchists and socialists can (usually) get
along fairly well. At one SDS convention they flew both the black
flag and the red flag at the podium.

And of course it is relations between socialists and anarchists in the
present, not their long range differences, that count, or at least I
think that should be the concern of marxists. And the question
that focus poses is whether, in coalitions, anarchists will accept
the democratic decisions of the coalition. The description of
democracy offered by ChuckO would suggest that anarchists
of his tendency would not accept democratic decision making
in a coalition, because in a coalition (especially large unwieldy
ones such as are probably necessary for the near future) decision
making cannot be by consensus. In fact decision making in a
coalition more resembles diplomacy than even a bourgeois
legislature. No one *ever* gets all (or even most) of what they
*want* in a coalition. Will anarchists accept that fact?

Carrol

P.S. Actually, what ChuckO describes as democracy resembles
most unorganized social relations in a high school, and you have
an arbitrary leadership exercised unofficially by those who are
most personable -- usually those whose shirts fit best.

===========

Now some posts from marxism and leninist-international to instance
marxists talking to each other over the Battle of Seattle.

===========

Hi, my friends and comrades.
I have been very bussy with a film I am producing just now, and this has
been the cause of my silence in the lists during these days. But I found
a
little bit of time  today in the morning, too early for my taste, for
sending some reflections.

The report that Jim Craven has sent is, IMHO, very credible. The
composition
of the crowd and the wide spectrum of questions, tendencies, groups and
individual manias that he perceived among the manifestants is vividly
painted in his report.

But by the experience I have about riots, insurrections and revolutions
(not
triumphant, it is true, but revolutions in the end) makes that the spirit

with which I observe these historical days in Seattle is a little more
optimistic that Jim's.

I consider that a popular movement moves all the sectors that feel
themselves as attacked by the state of things and that find that the only

way to modify it is the collective and direct struggle in the streets.
And
it is in this situation when this fat women use to appear. This crowd can

not be formed by other thing that the people with the conscience that the

society in which they live can produce. Can the american society after
Reagan, Bush and Clinton, after the victory on the Soviet Union, after
the
Gulf War and the bombing of Kosovo produce better people that these men
and
women that were fighting in Seattle, with the strange worldview that only

the loneness can produce? Why could they have a better comprehension
about
WTO, globalization, capitalism or imperialism? It was very suficient that

they were there and not watching at TV. Which would the point of view of
Homer Simpson, this extraordinary example of a commun american worker,
be?
But, perhaps, Homer was in Seattle, possibbly with his union, and -I
think
that THIS is the only important- his experience, his view, his
comprehension
of this fucking world in which he lives and suffers will be absolutely
different when he come back to Springfield. This is the importance of
Seattle: the colective experience of struggle in the most individualistic

society of the world.

When Lenin said "Better Fewer But Better" he was not speaking about the
social movement, the mass movement. He was speaking about the
revolutionary
organization, organization that had to prepare itself, teoretically and
practically, for this revolutionary moment. Only in this sense "Better
Fewer
But Better". But in the streets, in the fight against the cops, the
goverment, the system, in the political fight, "Better More than Fewer".
Are the leaders not really representative? Among the crowd does some kind
of
people as Lyndon Larouche appear? And so what? An old peruan poet and
revolutionary, Lionel Bueno, used to say that many revolutionaries are as

some inexpert gold searchers, who think that gold is coined in nature.
They
ignore that gold comes very unclear and mixed with all kind of shit. The
masses will be able to replace this unrepresentative and miserable
leaders,
they will be able to discover the false prophets, but only in the middle
of
the movement, only in the most important political practice, those that
you
get in the street with the people.

I don't want to sound as some kind of naively optimistic. I know that the

system can absorbe this and others movements. But the worldwide show that

this people has given us is suficiently wonderful for support our hope.

Abrazos revolucionarios

Julio Fernández Baraibar

================


>>Seattle *has* to be regarded as the *beginning* of something, and
this carping at one or another of the elements there is ahistorical. <<

Yes, it seems like a new beginning. I don't worry overmuch about the
storefront windows; everyone has insurance nowadays, indeed the reaction
by
and large as far as I've been able to gauge has been something like, oh
dear, smashing windows, now isn't that downright ... quaint! Seriously,
I've
yet to meet ANYONE who is seriously bothered by the "violence" on
Tuesday.

Much more of a question is the deeply projectionist tone and bent of a
lot
of this. Yet, to "old radicals" 40 years ago, a lot of the "third
campism"
of the ban-the-bomb-type protests must have seemed just as off-putting.
Yet
that was, in the real world, the road the radicalization traveled.

BTW, catch the Cuban delegation's speeches at Seattle. Know what they're
calling for? "Affirmative action" or (for those from Britain) "positive
discrimination" by another name.

José

-----Original Message-----
From: Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>
To: marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Friday, December 03, 1999 7:44 PM
Subject: Re: Legal? Peaceful?


>After 30 years I have not quite gotten over my grudge at the
>ultra-left Weatherman faction in SDS which helped tear that
>organization apart.
>
>But But But.
>
>Seattle *has* to be regarded as the *beginning* of something, and
>this carping at one or another of the elements there is ahistorical. I
>have been arguing for several years that "we" (whoever "we" are
>who make up "the left") cannot will into existence a new movement
>but must rather primarily prepare ourselves for a new period of
>activity when it arises (from where and in what form being
>unpredictable in advance). If out of some  50,000 demonstraters there
>were only a few hundred (I believe there were fewer) "anarchists"
>(self-labelled or so-labelled by others), that is rather remarkable.And
>as some have suggested, an "ultra-left" fringe is probably always
>needed so the core forces cannot be isolated as that fringe.
>
>The Chinese Revolution really began around 70 years ago when
>Mao recognized something was happening in Hunan which communists
>had to take seriously, even though that peasant uprising was not
>a marxist thing. And Lenin insisted that Trotsky was a blowhard
>for stating that there would be no more Father Gapons and that
>the RSDLP had to generate their own. Lenin insisted that there had
>to be thousands of Father Gopans. That is the way to look at
>Seattle.
>
>(The point about these references to Mao and Lenin is not that
>their exact circumstances are relevant but that both exhibit a powerful
>openness to the new, unblinded by arbitrary expectations of what
>the new will look like.)
>
>I suggest the graybeards on this list not grumble too much about all
>the things that weren't right (or they think weren't right) in Seattle.
>"Seattle" doesn't even really began until those 50,000 go back home.
>What they do then, not anything that happened in Seattle this week,
>will decide whether Seattle was a blip or something like the events
>that were memoralized in a book entitled, *They Should Have
>Served That Cup of Coffee*.
>
>Carrol
==============

And here is part of a later reflection by Jim Craven himself, in which
he both agrees with Julio and restates some of his original post:
========

 And yes I do deeply resent some people summarily
pronouncing--and giving credibility to--the likes of Rudy James as an
"Indigenous Leader" without knowing anything at all about who he is and
what
he is about and what he seeks by grabbing the microphone--I see the
damages
wreaked of his type every day in Indian Country that was grossly
underrepresented at the demonstrations.

But I also agreed with Julio completely. His points were indeed well
taken.
And i noted repeated that these were some of my observations, that my
observations did not in anyway represent a totality or even wide
perspective
of all that went on (I could not simultaneosly be at both the Westin and
the
King County Jail and on Capitol Hill although I was in all places at some

time or another) and yes I am indeed optimistic that so many people took
the
time and pain to come cout, face the cops and protest instead of sitting
home watching the Simpsons. But I am writing to "radical lists" in these
comments and not to non-radical audiences and further, I do not believe
that
all action and any action is necessarily progressive--indeed I have seen
all
sorts of "actions" from police provocaturs specifically designed to give
the
illusion of something radical in order to set back something really
radical.

As for my perspective, I think, speak, live, and dream "radical" and
therefore my paradigm and how I see and interpret the world is
"radical"--anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, anti-racist, anti-sexist,
anti-fascist. I'm sorry if it sounded radical-holier-than-thou but that
is
what I experienced and how I saw some things that went on. I will never
see
punk looters or narcissistic self-described anarchistists as "anti-State"
or
progressive as the general history of wrecking and betrayal of radical
causes and movements by these types is too lengthy and too much blood has

been paid for the lessons to be learned.

I applaud and respect those who stood up against police terror and I
applaud
and respect those who came to stand against WTO, even only WTO without
understanding wider issues of imperialism, fascism, neocolonialism etc.
But
the real issues go far beyond WTO and I hope that those who protested who

were serious rather than being merely theatrical and narcissistic or
adventuristic, will be lead to join in the struggles against imperialism,

capitalism, union corruption, sexism, racism, fascism, neocolonialism,
environmental destruction etc etc at higher levels of consciousness and
commitment than demonstrated by some IMHO.

I also noted that I hoped that I was wrong in some of my more
pointed--and
some might say pessimistic--comments and observations.

Jim
=========

Where is there any unwillingness to "talk to" anarchists. And if there
is no such unwillingness, if marxists have indeed always been more
willing to talk to anarchists than anarchists to marxists, then what is
the point of Doug's aggressive, "I think they're worth talking to."

Of course they are. But will they talk to us? More important, will
they work with us? And by "us" I don't mean just marxists -- I
mean the large majority of those even mildly progressive who
are probably willing to meet the anarchists more than half way.

I hope the anarchists or most anarchists can show to be false
my personal feeling that "anarchism" and "egotistic purism"
are close cousins or even identical twins.

Carrol

P.S. Here is the another brief comment on Seattle, written from
Argentina by a co-moderator of leninist-international:

Subject: Re: L-I: About_Jim_Craven's_report_from_Seattle
     Date: Tue, 7 Dec 1999 11:07:56 -0600 (CST)
     From: Néstor Gorojovsky <nestor_gorojovsky@xxxxxxxxx>
 Reply-To: leninist-international@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Dear comrades and friends,

I am happy that Julio wrote down his sketchy but meaty notes on
Seattle. This is exactly what lay behind my joy at the scenes I
watched on the TV. Could not write this down due to lack of
time, but he has done an excellent job.

Nestor Miguel Gorojovsky